Pixel 10 Gets ‘MagSafe,’ Google’s AI Camera Went Too Far, is iPadOS 26 Actually Good?

That's a contraband item, ma'am, because it is illegal in every state except Texas. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. Google launched their whole Pixel 10 lineup, which now has MagSafe. Believe it or not, they call it something different, but we'll into that. The Apple Watch blood oxygen sensor saga continues.

I like that we're always friends. That's nice. That's the best way to be introduced. But, yeah, I'm good. I I am in my home studio, which is like, there's no place like home.

There's no. I can't wait. Can't wait to be back. I will say, everything's bigger in Texas is the saying. And, we are at the Gaylord Resort

Mhmm.

Here in Texas. And my goodness. First of all, the place is huge. There's statues of bulls in at least five locations around the resort. And there's signs that say, please don't get on the bull. But then there's just the chairs in the lobby, huge. It's silly, but I guess everything in Texas, including the chairs, are way bigger, which is why I did a movie quote about Texas at the top of the show. Do you have any idea, because I don't, what movie that is from?

No. I think you just made it up, or you asked JCPT to make it up or something.

I saw this quote on two different websites, so I think I've corroborated that it is an actual movie quote, supposedly by Thomas Hayden Church as Dwayne LaFontant in Over the Hedge.

You just made all of those words. I think from now on, you you are not allowed to ask me movie quotes unless you you've seen the movie.

Yeah. Probably. But I was trying to find something with Texas because I'm in Texas right now. We actually have some five star review shout outs. Thank you all for continuing to do that. Alex Polar Bear from The UK said we're informative, engaging, witty. If someone from The UK says we're witty, I think we're doing a good job. You know what I mean? S Gernani from The USA had very kind words and WBMC thirty six from The USA does love listening to me and the other guy. He knows the inside joke.

Or like the display of it on the watch.

The display, I guess. So you won't be able to see the data on the watch when you update your Apple Watch, but you'll be able to see it on your iPhone because that's the workaround Apple came up with. And now we're gonna break the same news again, but, well, slightly different news because Massimo has now sued US customs over Apple restoring the Apple Watch's oxygen tool. This is a feature that probably two people care about because, a, I don't know if it's very accurate, and, b, people even haven't had it. And I just think it's hilarious that this is still just going back and forth.

Yeah. Well, just let's clear up a couple of things. First of all, by breaking news, what Steven means is that I got an email as we started recording, and I just read part of it on the show. The only reason we broke news is that we were the only podcast recording at the time that Apple sent out the email. At 9AM

last Thursday.

Don't wanna take too much credit for this, but I haven't even written about it yet because by the time I got around to it, everyone else had already written about it. But the other piece of this that I think is very I will take issue with one thing. I think it's actually a great feature, and it actually works very well. We have said you were talking about Yeah.

With the finger thing.

We've compared it to the finger thing, And I actually was at the doctor today just for normal reasons. And when they put the thing on my finger, I made my watch do the thing. The the only real difference is that your watch takes longer. Right? Because you have to wait

thirty seconds. Do think your mileage may vary, though, because I think my mom, when she had the feature, she thought she was dying every day because it would tell her her blood oxygen was like 92%.

Tell her to take a deep breath. Seriously, like that's actually the best part of this is that when it says, like, 93%, take, like, five deep breaths and do it again, and it's like, I got up to 97.

Oh, really? Well, 97. 97. 77 is not good.

No. 97.

Oh, okay.

I got up to 97.

The hotel Wi Fi, I thought you said 67. I held

my breath for a long time and I got down to 77 and then I passed out.

Okay, you know what, I've never done that. I've never done the deep breath and then retaken it. I'll try it. But anyway. But also, think it's hilarious. Massimo is suing US customs, not Apple, because they're the ones that's supposed to be blocking the watch. It's just this is just hilarious.

Yeah. I haven't first of all, like, you didn't actually send me the link, so I can't actually

I put it in Notion. Put it in Notion, which Notion's in the news this week.

Notion talks about Notion.

We're gonna talk about Notion.

Put it oh, there it is. Okay. You did run it nicely.

The hotel Wi It takes a while. The hotel

link didn't show up for a while.

I'm gonna blame everything on the hotel Wi Fi. If I mess up, let's say hotel Wi Fi.

So I was so I my watch have an Apple Watch Ultra two, but I bought it before they killed this feature. Same. And I also have an Apple Watch series seven, which was before they killed the feature. Like, so both of those have it. I actually forgot that the series seven had that feature.

A series eight, nine, 10, or you have a watch in the last year. Yeah.

Yeah. The experience is, first of all, you have to get an update on your phone. Right. Then you have to get an update on your watch. And then I believe you have to, like to get that update, you have to, like, open the ECG app or something.

But it tell you like everything's normal. It'll tell you

you don't have a, well, it will tell you you don't have AFib. It will not tell you everything is normal.

It will

tell you you don't have AFib. You just know. Yeah. Yeah. But, anyway, so I just think it is actually weird because it turns out that the patent was for something very specific, which had to do with processing it on the watch, I guess Right. And then displaying the result on the watch. And so Apple's like, whatever. We we don't have to do that. We have the phone. And by the way, the phone is way more capable of processing and displaying things.

Right. And my kids have watch as ease, which don't have that feature anyway, so it doesn't even anyway, there's a bunch of Google news just today. Earlier today, it was the Pixel ten event. But the first part of the news actually crosses into the sports ball category, so you'll have to speak to this.

Very curious where this is going.

I don't know if you knew I had an arch nemesis.

Is this the person that made fake TikToks of you?

No. No. This person, he doesn't know that he's my nemesis, but it's Wait Stephen a minute. And the the reason why

I know Stephen Curry.

I know him. The reason why is because ever since he came on the scene, the default pronunciation for my name is now Stefan. It doesn't matter if it's Chick fil A drive through. I will literally I've complained about this before. I will have a mobile order and I'll say mobile order for Steven.

Is this, like, when Alicia Keys was the creative director for what's that? Like Oh. BlackBerry or something? I hope this works out. I don't know. Who is Alicia Keys? The who Alicia Keys

That sounds like it might be right. Creative director. The fact that BlackBerry would have a creative anybody, like

I mean BlackBerry. Yeah. BlackBerry. They parted ways in 2014, and then the company went bankrupt. But, yeah, in 2013, she was named BlackBerry's creative director.

The fact that they had creative anything is hilarious.

Like Yeah.

There were there were BlackBerry phones that were fine. I had the BlackBerry tour. I think, like, one of the later BlackBerry phones, but that's lense.

Yeah. They couldn't afford to pay her anymore, I'm pretty sure.

But anyway Right. Probably that. So Google did announce a bunch of Pixel things today, including the Pixel 10 lineup. They had some interesting announcements about Gemini and the smart home, which we'll get to, and something that, I'm actually pretty excited about. So the Made by Google event, Pixel 10.

That's Steven's like yada yada yada Tensor g five. But let me tell you about this ridiculous thing. Actually, I think Pixel Snap is a great name. They just should've used it for the camera control. Pixel Snap literally means take a pic. Yeah. I don't know. I don't I don't really think this is the most interesting part It is not. Of

No, it is not as all. I just want to make a big deal out it because it's me. But I want to get into the AI camera stuff, but there's also So there's the Pixel Pro Fold as well. They say it's more durable, like dustproof, things like that. And then they have their own chargers and cases and stuff.

Well, I thought the most interesting thing is that they had Jimmy Fallon, like, doing this event.

Okay.

So And they had Steph Curry at the beginning. Like, I think it's interesting that Google is positioning a lot of phones that really no one is going to buy as being, like, the mainstream pop culture devices. Now I'm not I don't mean any shade towards Pixel's phones. I just mean that, like, they are one of the smallest brands within the Android ecosystem. So, like, take half of the smartphone ecosystem.

It is a shame because if I was gonna use an Android phone, I'm actually I might actually use nothing phones because I think they're at least visually interesting hardware wise. But if I really had to use one as my full time device, I would use a Pixel just because it's the raw Android experience. I think the Gemini features are interesting. A lot of them feel gimmicky, killed by Google. It's a meme because a lot of times Google talks about these features, and then they just kind of either disappear, go away, people don't use them.

Right. I don't know. And I mean, people who use Google pixel phones are, like, Android purists for the most part, because you get the purest version of Android because it's Google. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, listen. They're gonna be great. Every time I've been at a Google event where they've had their hardware, it's all very good. Right? I was Yeah. When they released the first fold, I was at that. It was at Google IO, I believe. And, you know, like, they're they're fantastic. I have a Google

You have a foldable.

Pixel seven a sitting right here.

Oh,

sorry. I've used the foldable. I don't own one. So, like, listen. They're they make good hardware. Like, Google and Microsoft both actually make really good hardware. It's surprising. You don't think of it that way. I just it's hard to know, like, is this important because Google the reason I mentioned that is Microsoft makes hardware so it can be like, hey, PC makers. This is what you're supposed to be doing so people will keep using Windows.

Yeah, absolutely. And I would do the same. But a couple of interesting AI features too. One, like, there's gonna be, like, a contextual awareness thing where, like, magic queue is the name for it. But if you're, like, you're on the phone and you need to call the airline, it will proactively suggest pulling up your flight information.

That's how he's teasing the bonus episode.

I'm teasing the episode because I'm talking about the next app that I'm trying to make and the maddening experience it has been, but the camera. And I will always, I mean, Eli Patel and the Verge are always like, what is a picture? He will talk about it in-depth, I'm sure, whenever he's back from his paternity leave. But the Pixel phones are saying that they have this super res zoom where it'll go from 30x all the way up to 100x. But they say they're using AI, even generative AI, to make that 100 x image actually look decent.

Yeah. But no one needs let me just say this very clearly. No one needs a 100 x digital zoom photo. Like, just no one does. Like, what do you need that for? Why are you what?

If if my kids are playing sports you I mean, your girls play soccer. Like, if you could get a really cool close-up photo in action but the problem is this is not gonna do that. This would probably look insane if you try to do a 100x Zoom while someone's running around a field. You know? But I think that's the hope that one day you can get that action or if you're at a concert and you're in the nosebleed section, you can take a picture of, you know, whatever, Taylor Swift down there, and it actually looks like a real photo, then you're AI generating people.

Okay. So here's a tricky thing. No. I don't think it's a photo. Also, I don't think people care. Here's what I mean.

Sure.

When I used to photograph this was mostly true at the peer point of my career where I was photographing, like, weddings, which is a thing that basically every photographer does at one point in their career. It I had this philosophy that people were not hiring you to photograph the details and to photograph the moments and the portraits. They're photographing you. They they're hiring you to help them remember the way they feel at their wedding.

That's really

And those photos are the way they do that. But what people really want is like, oh, this moment is cool. I want to remember this feeling. And if the whatever AI voodoo magic they're putting into these things help people do that, that's what people actually care about. That doesn't mean now in a in a wedding, was shooting with the d you know, Nikon d seven seven hundred and d seven fifty.

Yeah. I guess so the verge in their article, they had this image where they took a picture of the little android robot, like, across the room. And I guess the AI, like, it's pretty blurry and gross, and then it processes it. And then it hardens the edges, and it tries to look a little more real. You know, If someone was traveling, maybe they're in a big city and they wanna take a picture of a skyscraper like really far away, like you're saying, they're remembering the moment of them standing there.

yeah. Sure. Also, the thing I think that the AI should do is when you are trying to take a picture of a three inch tall Android figurine from across the room, it should just say move closer. Like, there is a better way to get a good photo of that, and it's just like walk over to the side of the room and take the picture. Like Yeah. I don't understand.

I will say so in his video, I'll link his video in the show notes. I was trying if you heard music playing in the background, it was MKBHD's video. So I was trying to see what it was gonna do. It's trying to he was testing a little bit. He did not seemingly do an in-depth version or review of this photo feature, but he did show he does show a couple examples.

Yeah. I mean, that's not a photo.

Oh, guess that's so you can prompt it now too. You just

add Price generative. You just tell it. Yep.

That's but that's see, that's that's not remembering them. Well, anyway.

You could also have just taken that photo and given it to chat GPT and said, make the sky blue in this photo, and it would create you an entirely fake version of a photo. Right? Like, was I

don't know. It's nice to have it right in the camera. I mean, I'll give the Pixel that, you know, if you could just do it right there. I will say, of all the Apple intelligence features that you can access right now, I do feel like the photo cleanup is actually one of the best. Do you Absolutely. Ever use

Yeah. On every photo. No. Do.

Every photo. Remove all the people from every photo.

I just take the

yeah. Family portrait, wipe

them Just constantly getting rid of distractions and

That's hilarious. I mean, but no. But I've done that. I've like, I think we were I don't know if it was a museum or something, but I took a picture, you know, us, like, our selfie, weird people in the background, cleanup. It works really well. Like, it's one of the best features.

Well and I think that if you could say to the camera app, especially on the iPhone, because what happens a lot when we for one, the cameras on the iPhone are are especially the main camera and, obviously, the ultrawide are pretty wide angle cameras. And so or lenses actually. And so it's really hard to get a square, like a head on square shot, in most cases. And so what people end up getting are distorted. Like, why why they they don't really know, like, exactly what feels weird about the photo, but, like, something doesn't feel right because it's, like, not you weren't perfectly, like, horizontal or whatever.

It is weird. I'm curious your experience. So I'm here at a conference. There's hundreds of people. I've been taking a lot of photos with people because people who use Riverside, they see my face on the website all the time. I feel like nine times out of 10, people are taking vertical photos. And I imagine it's because they wanna share it to their stories. Do you find that to be true? Like when you see just random people taking photos, vertical versus horizontal, like what's the split?

I mean, I don't spend a lot of time just watching random people take photos.

When you're in,

I will say people. I will say that I I think typically, like, if I watch my kids or their friends, they're always just taking vertical photos. Like literally they just know no one takes horizontal photos anymore except for like actual photography people.

But what do you do?

It does depend on what I'm taking the photo for. If I'm taking a photo, because it's like, this would be a fun thing to share as a story or whatever. I will just take it vertical.

If I am explicitly taking a photo for a story, of course, yes, I'll take a vertical photo. But any other time I'm taking any photo, selfie or otherwise with somebody, I default to landscape. And then here's this is the this is the thing now. Please leave us a five star rating and review an Apple Podcasts and tell us what is your default? If you're gonna take a photo or a selfie or whatever.

But I think that's different. If you're taking a selfie, people typically hold it horizontal, right? Because you got two faces next to each other.

The people at this conference, they've been doing it vertical too, but how

long are their arms?

Everyone has massively long arms. Wow. If you had, because that's the scenario. If you had that one chance to take a photo with that celebrity, that person you looked up to, and you hand your phone to someone, do you ask them to hold it landscape or vertical? What would you do? Who's I mean, I never be.

Who would you I would, first of all, never hand my phone to someone. Second of all

No one's gonna steal your phone. Everyone's got a phone.

I don't I don't I would never walk up to somebody and ask them if I could take a selfie with them.

I know. Like there's 0% Because you've at multiple events and I couldn't believe you didn't take selfie.

There's no chance I would ask anyone. But

your family, you were recently down here in Florida, you were at Disney World. If okay. You're saying you don't do it. Let's say you actually had a friend with you that You

would walked into Mickey.

Let's say you had someone you trusted to take a photo, to hand them your phone. You're gonna take a photo of your family standing in front of the Millennium Falcon. Do you tell them to hold it horizontal or vertical?

Well, it depends. Okay. This is a complicated question because framing is everything.

Oh my.

Okay. I No. No. Because, like, for example, I'm looking right now. I got a picture of my four kids, and they're in front of the tree of life. Well, that picture has to be vertical or else you're not gonna have the tree of life in it. Right? Sure. Well, there's a picture of us in front of the magic kingdom with the train station or whatever behind us. That one's horizontal so that all six of us can be in the picture. They just depends.

Yeah. Maybe, maybe I'm an overthinking, but I still wanna, I still wanna, I still default landscape unless there's a tree or I'm posing at Instagram stories. But anyway, anyway,

now I will, I will say this. I will default. If I can't decide, I will always take it horizontal. And there's two reasons. One of them is purely just practical, which is I use the camera control. So just being able to tap on it and tap again is this is like I don't like to try to do that with my thumb. But I use the camera control button to take almost every picture that I take. So I can just whip it out real quickly and just, like, do that real quick. I just took a bunch of pictures of

No. No. Hold on. I'll I have stop you right there because I just saw the back of your phone. And you got onto me a little while ago for the patina on my leather case. And I just want if you have not watched

It's just from the leather. It's from the MagSafe thing.

Those stains are from just MagSafe.

They're not stains. That's just worn. It's just because it's worn. That's worn now.

Okay. Okay.

So what you're seeing is the substrate. Have worn this down to the substrate.

You gave me a hard time for my patina on leather, which is a natural process.

Because you had a brown leather with green marks all over.

No. It was not anyway. It was not that bad. Anyway It

was that bad. Anyway But here's the other reason to default to horizontal. We are so not talking about Google anymore.

That's fine.

Let's get back there. Because I find that if you do a good job and you frame your subject in the middle of a horizontal image, you can still crop it vertical if you want. That's But you can't crop a vertical image horizontally almost ever.

Thank you. They they yes. That is part of my reasoning as well. Anyway, alright. We'll get back to Google.

I do. I almost said I have one right there, but that's not true. That's actually just a tablet, a Google Pixel tablet. It looks like it looks like one of these, but that's because it literally never comes off of that base.

Well, Google Gemini will be on the Nest Home Hubs, and it should be much better at things like natural language input and understanding your requests. And this is what we need. This is probably why the HomePod with a screen has been delayed forever because you need this kind of natural language parsing, like an LLM in the thing for it to be really good. Now Alexa Plus was announced months ago. And from what I've heard from Jennifer Toohey at The Verge and others, it's either not around or not that great.

I think they've said 100,000 people have access, which is like, wow, there's a lot of people. But you're like, well, first of all, there are a billion Alexa.

Well, how many of those people know they have access is the question? Because, like

Well, that's only six people, and it's none of the tech tech journalists.

There might be a bunch of people with Echo shows that never do anything with it except play music, and they might have Alexa Plus.

They just set alarms. You don't that's the thing about most of those devices. You don't it's like, what does it even do for you? Now something with a screen makes sense because the we have one of the whatever name you gave it, things sitting on our kitchen counter, and it's used all the time because the kids will walk up to and ask a question. And it shows photos. That's actually the best feature. Do you remember this, Steven, the time when the photo frame thing was a thing that the

digital picture frame?

Yeah. But they were terrible. Because you had to first of all, had figure out how to get the pictures off of your computer onto, a mini SD thing, stick them in there USB. Load dump them on there, Yes. The whole thing was a complete mess.

Right. Well, and now I mean, I always always heard that Google Assistant on Nest devices was always better than the voice assistant on HomePods anyway, just as it stands today.

Well, yes. That's a 100% true. Even doing very little, it was you could set more than one timer, for example.

Right. So it was already better, and now Google Gemini on these devices. That is an interesting proposition. You'll you'll have to let us know. I I don't have any Nest devices or speakers, so I don't know. But that's also what we need on HomePods. Because honestly, my kids shouting at HomePods trying to get them to play a specific song, it's maddening.

Do think, though and tell me what you think about this, Steven. This is an interesting topic on a day that there's nothing else happening. I don't know that the idea of ambient AI that you talk to and that it talks back is the model that people are ready for. I think it has to have a screen. So I don't think HomePods were ever going to work.

Yeah. I somewhat agree. I mean, I feel like there's a place there's a HomePod mini in my bedroom that I use to run my goodnight scene, to play music sometimes, and to turn off my Apple TV. Like you can ask your HomePod to turn off your Apple TV. Like those very few use cases, like I'm fine with that.

Well, and the HomePod mini in your bedroom, though, doesn't have any need for AI. It would be better if it understood you. That's fine. Right. But you're not asking it AI things. In fact, everything you ask it to do, you could ask your watch.

Correct. Yeah. I could. I also it is a testament though of still how annoying HomePods are because if I can have a HomeKit switch to run my good night scene, I actually have that. Even though I could just talk to my HomePod or my watch, I would rather just press a button and it just runs the scene.

Yeah. Also, your watch is like four generations more powerful than your HomePod. HomePod mini anyway.

They're HomePod mini. Supposedly we get to know HomePod Mini this year. Those are the rumors. I don't know what would be new about it.

New colors, man. They gotta do the new colors.

The colors, man. Like I said that. All right, last Google news. The Pixel Fold, Pixel 10 Pro Fold. I don't know which name is worse.

On the Virgil's website, on Google device.

That's hilarious. I still see a little bit of a crease, which, you know, it's there.

You're never not gonna see a crease. You're literally not it's never gonna be is that the goal, do you think? Like I mean is not gonna be the standard.

I can't imagine Apple releasing a foldable that you see a big old crease down the middle.

You're it's a it's I don't gosh. Something happens to be wrong. I don't think it's yeah. There's no way. Because you you if you just think about the mechanic of what's happening there, that screen has to be it has to increase in size in order to fold.

Yeah. Yeah. No. I get it. Yeah. That is true. Listen. If anyone can overcome physics it's not Apple. So, yeah, there'll probably But be a anyway, I don't know. I'm still I wanted to try the Fold seven because everybody said it was so thin that it was amazing. I never got to. I didn't wanna drop $2,000 on it or buy it and return it. And so, yeah, I don't know. I probably won't try this either, but it looks it looks kinda cool.

You didn't wanna do the was it Jerry Riggs everything who, like, did the bend test on his $2,000 Samsung fold?

I don't. The YouTube channel is not big enough to sustain to sustain snapping foldables.

Do you ever do and it didn't snap. That's, like, the the takeaway. But do you ever do that math where you're like, this video would have to literally do a million views in order to make it worth it?

Yeah. It would. And because I don't have a single million view video on my channel, I do not assume that a Pixel Fold video would do that.

All right.

So yeah, I don't do that. All right, wanna talk about Notion has a new feature, OpenAI is a billion dollar month, and this fine woven case leak is pretty hilarious. But first, wanna I thank our friend. I'm actually super stoked about this first sponsor because they have a brand new feature I'm literally going to try as soon as I get back on my actual Mac. But CleanMyMac, you've probably heard about CleanMyMac.

I probably

new feature called Cloud Cleanup. Cloud Cleanup, Jason. And what it will do, it will actually you can connect it to your cloud services like iCloud Drive, and then it will go and clean up your cloud storage. Restore order everywhere on your Mac and in your cloud. It reveals large files that take up your cloud storage, find redundant local copies cluttering your Mac.

Adobe.

Adobe, one of the worst offenders of that. But and Zoom, which I have not I've still avoided installing Zoom on my new Mac Studio. It can also clean up stuff from your messages. So if there's any big attachments like video files and other things, it's taken up your iCloud storage because it's in messages, it can take care of all of that stuff too. So here's what you do.

in a time warp.

We're living in a bookshelf in the interstellar. This is Insta360's brand new pocket camera, the Go Ultra. They price about the size of an Oreo. So it's a funny comparison. Weighing just 53 grams, it can shoot up to four k 60 footage.

I did not. I did see it in my feed.

It was it was pretty good. I actually watched it while I was traveling. Chloe Abram's a great interviewer. I had never really heard Sam Altman talk at length, like that in an interview style, so that was, you know, a curious experience. He definitely thinks before answering any question.

I think it'll be interesting. Obviously, they're not a public company, so we just don't know this stuff. But I don't think that they're losing money. There's a reason they're raising as much money as they are is because they're spending it. They're still in the phase of we're spending the money that we're raising, not spending the money that we're earning.

Right, and they're not public about their burn rate, I don't think, right? Right. Startup When company is in that pre public phase, they'll talk about how much money they're spending to make a dollar. So sometimes a company might say, It's 1.5 for every dollar. So we're spending $1.5 to make a dollar, and that's why they need the investment to keep that pace up. I But don't think they've ever talked about that publicly. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. So we have no idea.

Well, it's a very complicated thing because they've gotta figure out how to do the whole we're a quasi Profit. Public company within a within a company, within a nonprofit. And that there's a lot for them to work out for that first. So I don't know. Like, it's all I don't think so this year.

I feel like not either.

They will But it could vary with me. It could happen, like, October like, it could happen on Monday. Like, we just don't know.

That's true. Because we did I think last year when we talked about this, we it did feel like it was gonna be this year, like, 2025. Yeah. But given that there's not even rumblings about it.

I bet there's some rumblings somewhere. They're just not loud enough for us to hear yet.

Oh, I see. Okay. Ear to the ground, I guess we have to be. I don't know why I said that like Yoda. Anyway, Notion announced a new feature, which actually I think is pretty exciting, working offline in Notion.

I do. Use it a lot. Don't so I was trying to think about this. Am I ever somewhere where I need Notion and don't have the internet? I don't

because even on a plane,

you know? Yeah. But, I mean, it's like, if I genuinely don't have the Internet, I probably can't do the things like, I don't just do Notion things, I should say.

Right. Just, like researching.

Yeah. I'm web I'm clipping web files, saving them as articles, reading them later in Notion. Maybe I could do that ish, but I'm only doing that when I'm also trying to, like, be able to find other things. Maybe I'm taking four or five of them, and I'm trying to summarize them, and you still have to have access to the Internet for any of the AI features or if I was gonna put them in ChatGPT. That's true.

It's increasingly, I'm just never without Internet. Just go

Well, that's yeah. That's the other piece of that. You know?

Yeah. Yeah. Only when a hurricane may or may not hit Florida. That's pretty much the only time. And even then, if the generator is running, think we still have Internet.

Awesome.

You know? Alright. Last thing before we get to some personal tech. Finewoven. It might be coming back with the iPhone 17 series this fall. This was a leaked image. I think this was Majin Buu on x. This is a looks like a pretty legitimate phone case. This is for the iPhone 17 Pro Max, tech woven, not fine woven. This is now

Maybe no one no one's gonna know. No one will figure that out, Steven.

No one's gonna know. It's like that TikTok meme. No one's gonna know. Your kids probably know about that. Anyway, tech woven, I don't know.

What you're saying is it's equally bad.

Listen, I'm still a leather case guy, and like I said on the last episode, I think it was the last episode, I even have my own leather case color coming out just to be real.

I don't get Apple's thing. I I understand that they there's they would they probably feel there's a degree of intellectual dishonesty to be like, hey. We're the environmentally friendly, and then we're doing leather. I like, I'm not gonna get into the whole whatever, like, complexity of that. But Yeah. This stuff is it's gonna just be bad. It's it's not gonna be any

It's not gonna be we'll see if it shows nail marks.

Be better. Mine will Also, are we prepared for the minion phase of iPhones?

The single goggle over the

I don't this is I this is not good, Steven.

Listen. I I mean, I have I think I showed it on camera. I I don't know if was last week or the week before, but the iPhones yeah, I did. Yeah. The case from Ondar in my code.

It's not good.

I don't know.

This is really the path we're going down now? The Ginster will.

I don't know. I mean, we have to see it in person, I guess, but all the mock ups and the models, like of the big bar at the top, I don't know, man. I don't don't, at a glance, I don't love it.

The only redeeming so first of all, the it's the the phone back is one thing. The cases are another thing, and the cases look ridiculous. But almost no one is ever gonna have to deal with the case that's not on the phone, so maybe it'll be okay.

Yeah. I don't know. I'm I'm cautiously not pessimistic. Cautiously terrified. What's in between optimistic and pessimistic? I'm cautiously meh about what this I

mean, chaotic neutral. Chaotic good?

I don't know. The last thing I wanna say about Apple, if you don't wanna make bovine leather cases, just use cactus leather. Just use vegan leather. There's lots of companies that make good cases. Ondar being one of them. Ondar had a cactus leather case in white that I really liked. Moffed makes vegan leather cases. Bellroy makes vegan leather. Like, the cases are good. They're gonna be way better than this one.

A lot of the vegan leather cases, though, are, like, synthetic. Right? And that's chemicals

just as much. Well, then do the cactus leather. I mean

I guess And I guess Apple probably, don't you think, feels they have to offer cases? Because people walk into the store and wanna leave with well, mean, they could just let other people sell the cases in the store.

Well, and they're the only cases you can have an Apple logo on your case too. I don't

want any logo on my case.

Well, some people like that. Some people like having an Apple logo on the back.

Yeah. Because you might not know who that minion belongs to.

I still like the silicone cases. I always I always get one Apple silicone case a year for when we go to the beach. That's it.

So that way when it's not sticky and the sand will stick to it better?

Well, so it's easy to clean out. I don't wanna bring leather to the beach. It's gonna get all wet and nasty. So anyway Okay.

Fair point.

Alright. We have a couple quick personal tech items. You had some good questions.

I just keep adding them. I'm sorry. We don't have to talk about them all.

No. No. You wrote an article because of Sloan Newsweek. You wrote an article about the iPad update, but I legitimately want to hear your thought on it because, iPad OS 26, it's finally quote unquote what Apple should have done with the iPad for a long time, make it more like a Mac. Again, I've been at this conference.

Yeah. I think it's okay. There are two things I was trying to point I was trying to make in this. One, I think with the exception of Spotlight on the Mac, which is great Yeah. The update to Spotlight, that the iPad got by far the best update. Most important update of all of them. Because on the iPhone, it's like it's just a different way of looking at the same exact like, you don't use your phone any different with iOS 26.

It's fair.

There's nothing different about it. Like, right, we

we Shortcuts, actions, but I hear you.

No one is going to use their phone any different except for Steven. But, like, when we got widgets, that was a big interface to difference. When we got the expanded control center where you could, like, move things around and have multiple pages, that's, like, that's different. Even when there's a physical button added when it was the action button or the control camera control. Like, that's people will use Liquor Glass is just like, now you can't read your notifications because the picture shows through.

you can't use text expander? You can't have a clipboard manager. You can't.

Right. So that's what I'm saying. It's like, we're so close now that I actually, I think Apple's like, great. Here we go. We did the thing you all want. And people are like, actually, you're so close. You should just go all the way. But I think it's great. I think that, like, I was using preview on the iPad just just just yesterday because I I had my laptop. I had to deal with, like, I had a a document that I needed to, like, verify, like, 10 things.

Now here so I have one question, and then I have a thought. I want to get real close to the camera to share this.

I know. I'm so anxious right now.

Are you primarily have you primarily tried iPadOS 26 on a 13 inch iPad?

I've almost I I have it installed on a 13 inch m three MacBook or iPad Air. Okay. But I don't ever use that.

So you've been using it on an 11 inch? Yep. Here's the thing.

So I first installed it on my m two.

Yeah. Yeah.

And then I was like, no, it's good. I'm gonna just actually I'm I'm I'm in on on '26.

Listen. Here's the thing. We get real close. I don't know if I'm crazy about it. Okay?

I mean, you could still use, like, Stage Manager if you wanted to.

Well, and that's that's the thing. But I also can't have multiple instances of FerriT open, don't think. So, like, have it in a split view with Bayer in one stage and then have it full screen in another stage. I don't think you can do that.

Yeah. And I don't know. I don't know if this, whoops. I don't know if this is like a technical thing. There are the one thing I do miss, which is similar to what you're just saying, but I don't think that they could have this this many variations of complexity is like slide over. Slide over was fantastic because you know what I had in slide over? I had spark, I had messages, and I had Slack.

Right. Right. Right.

Right. So I could literally just slide it over no matter what I was doing and swipe between those three things, and that was what I just I really enjoyed doing that. And and you don't get that now. So, like, if you want and I don't even think you get it if you just use it in window mode, like, full screen mode. Like, you've lost all of the things you talk so what they should have done is that you stay in that mode and you could just stay with the past, do or not I mean, like, use those features if that's what you wanted to do if you're used to doing that.

Yeah. And I guess I just find, like, if you are if you love the windowing because you can have three, four, five apps all windowed at once, then I get the iPadOS 26 implementation is better. But if, like me, you had a maximum of usually two apps that you wanted to just see side by side, I feel like that is more cumbersome to get into that view. And if you could just drag an app from the dock to one side and immediately go into just that fifty fifty split, that might solve what I'm looking for. But just in my experience the other night, was like, I don't know if I love this.

missed those three dots in the middle there that let you

I just miss being able to drag from the dock and immediately enter fiftyfifty mode. That's all I wanna do. I wanna have a full screen app up, and then drag an app from the dock to one side or the other, and it's split fifty fifty.

I mean, can go between the side and the full screen by just hitting the green traffic light.

Yeah, but you have an app full screen on the iPad and then fifty fifty split another app with one step. And previously, you could Well because you could just drag an app up and and split Technically can.

How? Just you toggling that the green that green button. So I have the two apps side by side and I can drag one or the other over using the little, there's a little handle in between them. But if I go to eat the app, I want full screen. I go up to the traffic light and I hit the green. It goes to full screen.

Yeah.

If I hit it again, it goes back to side by side.

Right. But to a like, starting from scratch, if you want it to fifty fifty split apps, you have to

Don't don't you only have to start from scratch once, though?

Yeah. But not if you're going, like not if you wanna see bare full screen sometimes and then see fairy full screen. I don't know. Maybe this is an asinine complaint, but I don't know. That was just my use case. We'll see. I'll try.

Just trying to help you.

Thank you. Alright. Last thing, cable choices before we get to our bonus episode. You said what kind of cable do you prefer?

Yeah. I mean, I just realized I had like 12 different braided cables on my desk for various Yes. Reasons. I've also got one of Apple's Thunderbolt cables, which I understand is a different thing. Steven, don't even understand because some of these cables are 240 watt cables, so that's good. I have in my and I've got a magazine. I've never taken into consideration how many watts of cables okay for because Yeah. Doesn't the Mac just deal with that? Like

Well, and and even the biggest MacBook Pro doesn't charge a 240 watts. I think it's like 100 at the most, 120 maybe.

Right. That's true. So anyway, I was just curious. Do you have a favorite? Do you like braided cables? I know you like your tacos.

I have my tacos. I literally have a bunch tacos on this hotel desk right now because I'm using you all the USB cables. I like braided cables the most. I like basis braided cables. That's usually that's a lot of what my cables are.

my preference. Now I've noticed that and maybe this is just me, but I've noticed a thing that I didn't think I ever had to care about, which is a lot of these chargers here have you can't even necessarily plug like, I don't think you can plug this in if you had a case on your iPhone.

Well, that is why I can't unplug anything right now because then I'll kill my

because everything will stop.

But I like the Basis ones because the connector fits into a regular iPhone case port, USB C port. Because there are a lot of them that are too big for that. Even

This is why I'm still carrying around Apple cable. I have two of them

in my little bag. Don't have do that because this actually, this braided one is from Anker, and they have one that is small enough to fit into your iPhone case. But yeah, I like

the So you don't carry any Apple cords with you?

Only the MagSafe charging cable for my laptop.

Because I really like in my my bag to have the Apple ones because they're much more low like, they're so thin. They're like nice and they're nice cables, but they take up zero space.

Right. I, yeah, I've got, I went with BASIS. I just got a bunch of I Brady like them. Last thing, did you see Quinn Nelson's Snazzy Labs game show that he did with Yes. You did watch it all the way?

Wait, are you talking about the one that Mike Hurley did?

Yeah, yeah, he hosted it.

Okay, yes, I saw that. I saw that. If I The Apple brand quiz.

The brand style guide. Yeah, And the one thing, you should go watch it. I'll try and find the link.

I watched the whole thing.

Yeah, watched the whole thing too. I was saying our listeners should go watch this. It's a fun game show. He Mike Curley basically asks questions about Apple's style guide. And one of the questions were, how does Apple want you to refer to their laptops? Do they prefer laptop or notebook? And I thought that was an interesting question because Do you remember the answer?

Yeah, they're laptops.

They're laptops, but they didn't always used to be that. Because I feel like if you think back to like iBook days, they called them notebooks. Isn't isn't that true?

Maybe. I don't remember. Like the Performa, was the Performa a notebook or was it a laptop?

Well, it's what Apple called is what I'm saying.

Right. Right. Right. Right. Yeah.

IBook site colonapple.com/newsroom. Let's see who can find this first. When was the last oh my goodness. The first one is a 05/01/2001 Apple unveils all new iBook. Here it is. Oh, I need to share my screen so everyone can see it. So you can see the proof that I was, that I was right. Apple today introduced an all new iBook, the lightest and smallest full featured consumer and education notebook on the market today weighing just 4.9 pounds, the new iBook. Wait a minute. I have to keep going.

Mhmm. But why is that surprising?

Because you can get an m four MacBook Air today for a thousand. That's amazing. Well,

one, they didn't have m fours back then. And two No.

No. I'm just saying, but just the cost of that laptop, it just seems wild. That doesn't seem wild to you?

No. No. That seems normal to me. That's That seems about right. Then then because they had, like, because then the MacBook Air was supposed to come in, like, as a I don't know. I have nothing except for that that thing had FireWire, and it was awesome.

That it did. But now I now I wanna just quickly compare. I'm gonna look for the m four MacBook Air newsroom article. Here's the MacBook Air. So they did use they did use to call them notebooks. That was their preferred nomenclature back then in 02/2001. And here on the m four newsroom page, let's see, does it call it? Yep. It says I need to do a command f. Search for laptop.

Right there in the subhead.

World's most popular laptop delivers more value than ever. There used to be notebooks according to Apple. Now they're laptops. There you go. All right. We're gonna record a bonus episode. I'm gonna complain a little bit about Chatchipati and trying to build my next app. So you wanna listen to that? Get an ad free version of the show. Get the daily show.