The Ethics of Tech Reviews, Humane Ai Pin Backlash, Game Emulators Come to iPhone

They were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. Today we have a massive show. We're gonna talk about the ethics of technology reviews and the backlash to MKBHD's humane AI pen. I ordered yet another AI gadget.

It's good. I've learned a lot this week, Steven, and I can't wait to talk about all of it.

You've learned a lot about yourself. You've learned a lesson about love and about Appolition Pro. Yeah. You've learned it all. You've learned it all. At the

same time. Yep.

It's we have so much so much to cover. I'm I'm excited to to talk about tech reviews because I have so many thoughts. So many thoughts. Couple of 5 star review shout outs. Web 1032 gave us a 5 star review shout out. Battery percentage on. Sorry. Nobody's perfect.

Thank you so much.

Hey. Yep. So keep those coming. We wanna give 5 star review shout outs at the top of the show for those of you who leave them, And wanna ask you this, share the show far and wide. There's still people that are discovering the show who follow Jason and I on, like, social media and stuff, but they actually still hadn't heard about primary technology.

I

don't know. I mean, Jason's a photographer. I can make t shirts. I don't know if either of us are necessarily merch experts. Would you would you consider yourself a merch expert?

No. Okay. I had to even think about what would that mean. Merch expert. No. It sounds very contraband ish. But

Yeah. I'm not sure. But we would I mean, we want t shirts, and so we're gonna think about oh, I'm asking all of you, the audience out there listening, watching, if you make designs and t shirts, you know, we don't want you to do work for free. We could maybe figure something out, but reach out to us because we love to have some cool t shirts, for primary technology. Yeah.

It's very exciting. Hey. Before we before we let you tick your horn, I wanna let you do that. But I did wanna say, so Steven said you can leave us questions in the reviews, which is absolutely true. I will just say there is a, like, slightly better chance that we might answer them if you, like, send them to us on social media or email us at, I don't know, what is it, [email protected]?

That's right. [email protected] or the other guy at It's true. Primary tech dot f

I did get an email I did get an email to that email address one time. Yeah. Yeah. I feel really bad because now I don't remember what it was about, but it was like a follow-up to something I had said. I mean, I'm gonna look it up. But, anyway, all I'm trying to say is sometimes if if especially if you're updating your review and you add something and it's at the bottom, and we we we may not see

that

there is a question in there, We will look. I try to keep Steven honest by checking all of these things that he puts in here. But if you email us or send it to us on social media, you have my word that we will give it our best, effort to try to answer those questions if we can.

Yes. Absolutely. So you can email us. The email's in the show notes as well. You could just get it there. Yeah. Just real quick, I just wanna say the Washington Post, a reporter reached out to me. His name was actually is Chris Velasco. He used to write for Engadget back in the day, and then before that, he wrote for TechCrunch. And we tangentially had heard of each other around then, but he's writing for the Washington Post now.

Not just $8 a month or whatever. $8 a month. That was actually, how I a month.

That was actually, how I got verified because I was able to link to the several articles that you had quoted me, and I think one was about smart home. The other one might have been about shortcuts. I don't remember, but, yeah, I appreciate it.

So I'm I do I feel good that I was able to save you the $8 a month at that time anyway.

At that at that time.

I provided you with that service. You're welcome.

And and it does say that now Twitter brought it back where it says verified since the year, so you can actually see when somebody's verified. Anyway, let's talk about tech reviews.

Alright.

MKVHD, after we published last week's show, shared his review of the humane AI pin, which the title of his video is the worst product I've ever reviewed for now. Like all the other reviewers, I think that's an important detail, like David Pearce at the verge, who was also very negative about the pin, and many other reviewers. I watched several reviewers. Joanna Stern had a review at the Washington at The Wall Street Journal. Everybody was negative about the AI pen.

Right. A Hippocratic Oath, I think.

Yeah. It's part of the Hippocratic Oath, Oath, not the oath of tech reviewers, which there is no oath. So this tweet made the rounds everywhere and brought much conversation on both sides, whether Marquez's right to do this, whether this was responsible, or whatever. And I I want us to get to our thoughts in a moment, but to to close the story, MKBHD then published a follow-up video, which he doesn't often do directly about commentary about his own reviews, but his video was, do bad reviews kill companies? It has almost 3,000,000 views right now as we record, and he talked about his stance on basically reviewing products as a whole.

Yeah. I think well, 2 things off the bat. First, it I there was really only one that I could find person who took issue with the review. Right? There were a couple of other people who maybe added on to the replies in really it really sort of magnified this weird perception that people have of this because, like, the the most searing indictment you can make of him is that he wasn't as hard on the Cybertruck.

I I just wanna interject there. I did see other a good number of other people, both on threads and Twitter, calling MKBHD out for being unfair with specific examples, such as the Pixel 6 a. MKBHD said it had a 60 hertz refresh rate, and it felt slow. But when he reviewed the iPhone 13, 14, 15, which has a 60 hertz refresh rate, he doesn't mention it's slow, to which I would say, I actually have a Pixel 6 a and my wife has a 15 with a 60 hertz display, and the 6 a feels slow compared to the 15.

Yeah. Also, the 6 a has a processor that's the equivalent of the original Macintosh to, like, a Power Mac. Like, it's Yeah. Right? Compared to the iPhone 15? Come on.

I mean, it does have a tensor chip supposedly, but it it feels slow. Like, the bottom line is MKB is due when he reviews a product, it is for the viewer, which we'll talk about, like, who are tech reviews for. It's for the viewer, and if a viewer's real life experience would be that swiping on a Pixel 6 a is gonna feel slower than swiping on a iPhone 13, then that should be what he said, even if the technical spec matches. So anyway

Right. Well and, also, like, yes, every person who reviews products has some kind of a bias. That's irrelevant to this particular part of the conversation because the I think, that rose above sort of, like, into the mainstream because he he I think, that rose above sort of, like, into the mainstream because he he has 18,000,000 subscribers. So Marques Brownlee, MKBHD, is the Taylor Swift of the tech reviewing industry. And what I mean by that is he's sort of singular and that he, like, the he is on a different, like, platform than even the Joanna Stearns, the Grubers, whoever.

us anyway. Anyway.

Anyway. So he is on a different level, and he does have 18,000,000 subscribers. But what I mean when I say that he's the Taylor Swift of this industry is that he's also incredibly savvy. Right? Yeah.

Right.

But humane has spent years hyping this up as the biggest product that is going to be released. They did a Ted talk. They did a, you know, all these different types of things. They have been it has been the most mysterious company for, like, the last 5 or 6 years, and they were positioning this as the device that will break you free from the terribleness of your smartphone. I I don't know anybody who hates their smartphones.

Right.

He flat out says in the review, this is, like, the worst product I've ever reviewed.

Right.

And he just made that the title. So it's it is honest. It is not sensational. I so if Marquez really believes that this is the worst product he's ever reviewed, how can someone come in and be like, this is not an honest title? I just, like it

just doesn't make any sense. Well, and also for YouTubers like myself and maybe in, like, the 100 of 1000 of subscribers instead of 1,000,000, there is an element of how do I package my video so people will click it, and sometimes making a slightly sensational title or thumbnail is the answer to that. But when it comes to MKBHD specifically, he requires no clickbait for people to watch his videos. Know, when the Apple Vision Pro launched, his were the only videos getting millions and and millions of views every time. Like, he published multiple Apple Vision Pro videos.

It was bad is what you meant to say.

It was Now there were some things that were good about it, like getting text messages and notifications being able to respond, really cool. Some of the widgets, only first party widgets. Some of those were were decent, and it was a new product category, and the fitness and everything was exciting, and so I gave it 3a half out of 5 because it was not good in many areas, and I say that in this review, but it was still, like, exciting, and the hardware was beautiful, like, I thought 3a half out of 5 was fair, and I don't regret it even to this day. The comments on this review at the bottom were so polarized. Half of them were, you're an idiot, this deserves 5 stars because this is a groundbreaking new product, the first in this product category, and the other half were, like, you're an idiot.

Right.

Because they're the ones just doing research, just trying to learn about a product, and so in that moment, I realized, okay, you really need to not it's hard, it's hard, not consider what people will think about your review, but honestly use a product for a decent amount of time and provide feedback as you experience it. That's all you can do. On the experience you have using technology from the past, with your knowledge of the, you know, the world, the tech space right now, and that's that's really all you can do. And that's exactly what MKB each did, and his review matched everybody else's. Yeah.

Yeah. Absolutely. I have 3 quick thoughts on this because I think you just touched on something that's really important. So I'll get there in a second. The first thing I actually wanted to say because you had said that the you know, he doesn't have any obligation to the company, which is true, and that the review is not for the company, which is also true.

it's not

$24 a month, you can't call it experimental. You are asking real people for real money for a thing that they're going to expect to do do things, and it just doesn't do those things very well. And so the second thing was, I feel like I should say this because I know that our executive editor, my executive editor listens to our podcast. I've also never been paid for a single product to review. It's a little different because I don't make YouTube videos with the exception of this podcast.

He says, quote, sure feels like the humane review debate is actually the collective anxiety of a bunch of AI founders who are worried their products can't actually do the things they claim, and poisoning the well of reviews is easier than fixing it.

Yep. There you go. So I I actually think that says it about as well as anybody. So

For sure. And so three other quick things I'll say about it and we'll move on. You know the humane response to MKBHD's review was actually very, like, friendly. They were like, we appreciate the feedback. Sam Sheffer who's been one of the biggest, like, advocate, like ambassadors, he's on the Humane team.

Not exactly what he said. But the point was, it it that's not why he writes stories. He couldn't possibly care less about a company's stock price. He didn't own stock in any of the tech companies that he found that he covered. And it that's, yeah, it's a gross misunderstanding of MKBHD flat out says, we disagree about what my job is.

Exactly. Exactly. But I'm also gonna link your article in the show notes because I feel like your headline is just as as cutting. The AI pin review reveals its fatal flaw. It's not bad tech. It's just a bad idea.

Yeah. Well and look, I and to be clear, I I think it's clear from my article. I don't I have not used the humane AI PIN, so I didn't even try to review the tech. That's not the point. The point is they set out to create a product to replace the smartphone without stopping to consider whether or not anyone needs a product to replace their smartphone, because all of the reviews, David Pierce hammered on this.

Every review of the humane AI pin has been bad. Yeah. So this is MKBHD. Like, if you search for humane AI pin review, the Virgin review was negative. MKBHD is negative. Mister Mobile, his review was negative. It was not great. Mister WhosetheBoss, his view his video has 2,100,000 views also, and his title is, I tested the humane AI pin. It's not good.

Right.

Universally reviewed as not good. Even though I don't even know what this is. The humane ad pin is so bad. I would find I would think there would be more backlash if somehow MKBHD came out of the game and said this thing is great. Like, his review matches the consensus.

Even Joanna Stern was like, I thought it would be really cool, but it's literally not.

It's literally not. That was what

she said.

And, you know, if that should also be a signal to you, a consumer or people watching the reviews, okay, maybe there's one outlier who says they like the humane ad pin, but every reviewer or most of them that I see on YouTube saying it's bad, it's probably a bad product. And guess what? I I haven't tried it yet. I imagine it's a bad product. I imagine if and when I ever get one, even though I pre ordered on day 1, if I ever get one, it's probably gonna be a bad product, but anyway.

You're just wanting to beat MKBHD getting mentioned on stage at the iPhone or the at was it yes. The iPhone event. Yeah. There

you go. I'm I'm, yeah, totally fine with that. I'm yeah. And, also, while I was in the, email thread with their team, I was like, hey. Can you send me a review unit? Because I'd love to review.

Of course.

And they said, oh, no. We're only sending it to people who have pre ordered it. Well, I quickly pre ordered it, and I sent them my order number. I said, well, here's my order number. If you wanna send it out early, I'd love to review it.

I thought they sold out of them. I thought, like, they had, like, 20,000 available and they sold them all or something.

Well, they said they're sending the, like, reviewers who have bought them. They're gonna try and expedite those. So again, to be clear, I have now paid for my own Rabbit r one and I paid for my own HumanAI pin, neither of which I have received. But when you see reviews of them, they are not paid reviews.

This will be interesting because you probably will get your r ones faster Probably. Which is, I think, the take I've heard is that that's, like, indicative of the difference between the 2 devices. The r one is much faster. And here, I even said this in my article, which was simply, like, that the r one is actually great because the fatal assumption that Humane had was that they that people wanted an AI powered assistant assistant that was separate from their smartphone. And I don't think that that's true.

Something super sketchy.

It's a little weird. I think they gotta workshop that a little bit, but at least they're moving in the right direction. Right. So

on last thing, and then somehow we'll get through the rest of the news today. I wanted to mention this because Nothing, another startup hardware brand, which you can look at MKBHD's reviews of the Nothing Phone and, like, he offered honest feedback and Nothing is very good at, like, taking feedback and then improving on their product, they released new earbuds, which this might not be very interesting, but at the very bottom of this Verge article, they talk about the new earbuds, that they'll become more capable in the months to come, and the company plans to add chat gpt integration to its smartphones and earbuds. And I found that interesting only because if you're going to have a separate device that can talk to chat GPT, earbuds seems like a way better piece of hardware than a separate device like a pin or whatever because, a, you're gonna use those earbuds anyway to listen to stuff. Sure. And and if you're gonna interact with chat gpt, there's a microphone in those earbuds.

Yeah. I think that's I think that's a good point. I don't know that I want my earbuds getting really hot while I'm

in my ear.

But because they but they'd still have to have, like, yeah, I think that's a better solution than wearing your best Sunday brooch, you know, and talking to it when you're standing in front of the New York Stock Exchange and saying, tell me what you see.

Your brooch. Your corsage. Yeah. The cros the humane AI crosage. That's what's gonna be all the rage at the next prom.

I'm all for it.

Homeschool dance. Alright. We have we have a bunch of other stuff I wanna get to. We're gonna I don't know. Maybe try and do a 20 minute lightning round of all this other stuff. We can

do it.

Yeah. Just got a bunch of pro. I do wanna take one second. I wanna thank our members who support us directly. Thank you for continuing to support the show. There's increasing numbers every month, and so if you have not, we would appreciate your support. $5 a month, you get an ad free version, so this part's cut out. Also, you get bonus content every week. I think Jason has an update on his appliance story

from last week. I forgot. I've lived a lifetime since then, Steven.

With a 1000 lifetimes. This is the Gandalf that comes back to you. Yeah. So we're gonna hear about Jason's continued appliance saga in the bonus episode today. We have bonus episodes every week when you do that, so you can support the show directly in Apple Podcasts.

No.

Oh, Jason. Now I I Well, here's

the here's the here's the reason why.

Okay.

Downloading a game emulator is not the end of that sentence. There are, like, 9 things you have to do after that or else it's not really all that useful, and I'm not doing any of those things.

I quickly discovered that downloading this app and doing nothing else does nothing.

Right.

You know, when you open this app on your phone, all you have is a blank screen with a plus button.

You have to feed it. You have to feed it.

You have to feed it. You have to feed it roms to play games. But I actually watched the video from Fernando Silva over at 9 to 5 Mac, and he mentioned this website. So I'm gonna put I'll put the blame on him. He told me about this website.

This is the last episode of our podcast.

No. No. No. You go to this website. That's all I'm gonna show. It's right there. I'll put it in the show notes. Not even gonna say it live on the air. But you could you download ROMs from this website and then you can play games in this emulator. And I just have to say, I downloaded Kirby for the regular Nintendo and I downloaded Super Smash Bros for the Nintendo 64 and I literally played it on my phone And it was kind of magical. I will be honest.

Wow.

I've never been into game emulation. I've never tried this on any of my devices. But doing it on your phone, being able to play these old school games on your device, I think it's like, it was fun. And then I showed my son, who has iPhone 13, and he was like, cause he's played something because I my Nintendo 64 is still at my parents' house and my regular Nintendo is still at my parents' house playable. Wow.

Yeah. Yeah. I was listening to the ATP guys this week talking about this, and the the only thing that kept going through my mind well, 2. 1, this does seem like Apple is simply trying to preempt the alternative app marketplaces because that seems like it's the most logical reason to have an alternative app marketplaces for apps like this that weren't allowed before. There are other types of apps that I don't think Apple's ready to allow, but this is a big one.

Yeah.

You know, some of the companies that made these games are not going to think that this is as cool as the rest of us do.

And there was a bunch of emulators that tried to get in the App Store and Apple denied or kicked out. So it's curious that this is the one that finally made it through. We'll see if it stays, but it's cool right now. You should try it. It's it's totally free. The roms are free if you go to that website.

It only cost you 3 to 5 years. If you download the roms.

Supposedly, if you had to listen, I've only I only downloaded game

Is this the VHS rule?

Is this the VHS rule? Meaning if you own the game already, if you own the physical thing, you can have the ROM. And I I own all those. I I own I have the 10 of 64. I could play right over there.

Welcome to primary tech lawyers dotfm.

No. We are not as we have said on numerous occasions, we are not lawyers.

Alright.

Not lawyers. But if I was a lawyer, I would immediately sue, Boston Dynamics for creating The Terminator. That's how I transition. I just had to mention this. Boston Dynamics, who's made the Atlas robots, and if you ever watch their videos, they're both incredible

Amazing.

They're amazing and terrifying. They made the they put Chad GPT in their little dog robot. All I'm saying is this was how they announced their newest Atlas robot. You go to youtube.com/atprimarytechshow. I'm showing it right now. The way this thing gets up from the ground in a contortionist, like, gymnast fashion and then has ability to rotate its head, body, and legs 360 degrees. It has, like,

a terrible Steven, this is a sort of video, isn't it? This is a 100% one of those body horror AI generated videos. I don't believe you.

It is totally body horror, but robot body horror, which is a new genre I didn't know I didn't like.

This is a

totally new genre.

It's not quite as bad as human body horror, but it is terrifying to think that this could exist.

And it does. And it does. This is the new Atlas robot. It has, like, a Pixar lamp style head. I'm glad they didn't try to put a human face on it. Yeah. So it is absolutely terrifying, but it's also incredible the work that they do at Boston Dynamics. So this is the robot. All I'm saying is like, I paused it in this weird contortionist pose. All I'm saying is don't let Chad GPT get near this thing.

Yeah. Because I

feel like once it does, I mean, it's over. Right?

I mean Yeah. The last thing you want is your humanoid robot to hallucinate. Do you remember the whole Kevin Roose from the New York Times with Sydney and Bing? You really want this thing to tell you to leave your wife? Come on.

This is not good. Not good. And then, just in one other terrifying AI news, Microsoft now announced VASA 1. It's a lifelike audio driven talking faces. So what this does is it can take a still image and make it sing and then animate it like a video.

Just one more job that AI is going to kill.

Not at well, an entire robot AI powered Hamilton performance would be pretty wild. It would be revolts. It would be revolts.

The humans the humans do a pretty good job. It's fine.

No one's replacing Lin Manuel Miranda in this lifetime. We'll just say that. So

I mean, well, that's a hot take that I think

we're alone because Maybe I should maybe I should step that back. I should walk that back. We'll see. But he's, you know, he's he's at the top of his game right now. But anyway, that's a Microsoft VASA.

a Twitter account, by the way, not like a position at to a target.

There's not a company called physical media and this person is the president. But, you know, this he is saying Target sources are telling me that they will stop selling physical media in store and online by 2025, which is next year. Whether or not this is true I mean, Best Buy officially announced that they are doing that, physically stopping selling physical media. That's what we talked about in our bonus episode a couple months ago. Now it looks like Target is following suit.

Yeah. I think you're right. I'm gonna have to look into this and talk to Target about this. I mean, when I wrote about Best Buy doing it, like, it was one of the most widely read articles I had written in the last, like, 12 months. People, like, have lots of feelings about this sort of thing, which is funny because I really just wanted to ask the 1,000,000 or so people, When's the last time you bought a DVD?

But there are people like John Siracusa out there. And if you're like a real home theater enthusiast, you will still get a better visual and audio experience watching a physical disc than streaming it because

I think that's debatable. I mean, you said there's people in the world like John. There are very few people in the world like John Syracuse, who I really think is amazing. He's one of the cohost of ATP.

Yes.

But he is also very particular about a lot of things that in a way that most people are not particular about them. And I feel like, I mean, yes, Blu ray DVDs are going to be a higher quality than streaming something in 4 k on Netflix. Is it how how much higher? Like, we watch things on our Yeah. You know, OLED TV that are in 4 k. I don't think having the DVD would make it better. I don't know.

I will. I will just say this. I still have some Blu rays of, like, Star Trek, like modern Star Trek movies or whatever, and I do find it is it looks slightly better, mostly because there's like 0 artifacting, cause it's not buffering from the internet. But this could be solved if things like the Apple TV went back old school and let you download the movie Yeah. But, like, if you just look at the the data, like, if you rip a Blu ray movie, the data it's like 40 gigabytes, 30 gigabytes.

tell us. I do just wanna say there is one other way you could solve the problem of buffering and artifacting, and that is you just need faster Internet, Steven.

You know what? That's exactly right. I need faster Internet. That's that's always the it always comes back to faster Internet.

I'm not gonna lie. I waited, like, 2 minutes to say that because I was, like, this is the guy who has the fastest Internet I know and he's complaining about artifacting? Come on, dude.

I don't I mean, listen. I don't see it and there is oh, as with anything, there's that convenience, like, quality pendulum and streaming something that convenience wins it Yeah. Because it's still close enough. But Alright. I wanna talk about you getting trolled though. Yeah. You got trolled, because you posted a bad take.

I don't know if I got trolled or if I got dragged.

I think it was a little bit of drag. It felt a little bit like the day you were the main character on the Internet for your headlines. But

Awesome. Here's the thing. It's okay.

They got me.

I'm a good sport.

It's awesome. Yeah.

But it's here's the thing I just wanna say that I learned about the Internet because I've been a tech columnist for a while, and there are things I learned about the Internet that are new every single day. So, clearly I should just be on the record saying, yes, Apple does update its first party apps that are not system apps through the app store. Apparently, you can even, like, update the app store through the app store. I learned that's not a thing, but that's what it said in some of the replies. But I don't have pages in numbers in GarageBand on my phone.

there is no final cut

on your iPhone. Right. Exactly.

Imovie.

And just to be clear, I was very inarticulate, which is a bad thing for a writer. I was specifically only talking about the iPhone because, yes, like, all of those apps update on my Mac on a very regular basis. Like, I don't pay any attention to it, but it is just very fun funny to me that this was the thing that people decided like

to hammer you on.

Yes. And I am just like, I have gotten messages from people like, but I do stand by my take of who is using pages on their iPhone.

Okay. So first, so first of all,

what monsters are I'm sorry. I should actually be careful because if our 5 star rating ratio starts to go down, this is going to be why, and I apologize.

Don't rate it just based on Jason's take because I'm gonna I'm gonna reply.

What we really need though, loyal listeners, is I really need all of you to leave us 5 star ratings because who knows where the trolls may go

next. They might go to our reviews. The only bad take I would say is quote tweeting all your hate comments.

That's a bad I didn't quote them all. I only quote tweeted about half of

them. You quote threaded a few.

I quote quote threaded the ones that I felt were especially nice.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's

There was one person who is, like, literally building a social friend. It's it's like build is, like, the friendly social app, and they came into my mentions to tell me how stupid I was. And I'm like, you seem

nice. Yes. Yes. I saw that. I saw that post. I will say, I get it. You don't see it very often. I do have pages numbers in Keynote on my iPhone. Oh

my gosh. What's wrong with you?

And I was for several reasons.

Keynote, yes. I Keynote was the one mistake I made.

Thank you.

Because it actually is useful because you can actually control Keynote event. But I don't have to do that very often except for when I go to my kid's journalism class.

Sure. But in the same way, numbers I have some budget and project spreadsheets in there, and sometimes if I'm asked a question, either by my family or I'm trying to check a number, and I only have my iPhone with me, I will open the Numbers app and look at a spreadsheet. It's the magic of Icloud, Jason. All those docs are everywhere. The page is 1.

I I do understand that there are some life and die life life and death situations where you have to print something immediately from your phone that you could not wait till you got to your computer to do that. That does that does make sense. But no, I do stand by the idea that, like, who's using pages on the and the problem with and this is the mistake I made. Then when you ask that question, people will find a way to answer your question.

That's if

you say who is using pages on their iPhone? Oh, well this one time I had to print the photo from my, from my kids. They're like, it's like, Oh, I'm I use it all the time to write. I'm like, nope. No. I mean, because honestly, Steven Yeah. Do you use pages on your Mac? Really?

On my Mac?

Do you really use pages on your Mac?

I do. I do, because I have to

deal If you had to write something, you're not opening pages. You're opening Google Docs.

I'm opening I'm opening bare.

Okay.

If it's for work, it'll be Google Docs. Yeah. But, like, I write long form of bare. But I do use pages for things like I have some invoices that I do regularly that I have in I have in pages. And so I just duplicate the Pages document, change the numbers, change the dates, send it. You know? Do you wanna

know what I the only thing I use Pages for? The only thing. And listen, Pages is actually a really good app.

It's a good app.

In my opinion, the best page layout app you can get for free

Yeah. Absolutely.

Easily. But, you know, the only thing I use it for is I when I take screenshots of app like, apps. If I'm writing about an app and I take a couple of screenshots on my phone, like, of the screen of the views. You know, when I did this when I did the call sheet review recently. And then I just open pages on my Mac, and I dump them on there, and I take a screenshot of them laid out. That's it. That's the only thing I use it for is laying out screenshots.

I there's a We should build a shortcut. You could build a shortcut for that. Then you it'll be even faster. It'll be even faster. Pages also I I did use iBooks author back in the day to build some interactive books when I worked in the travel industry.

But not on your iPhone. No. No.

But you can't. You can export an EPUB from your iPhone. Do you? Anyway. Anyway. Anyway, let us know. Everyone who has pages on their iPhone, they're gonna write, and they're gonna Yeah.

Well and just to be clear, yes. Uh-huh. I was proved wrong that, yes, Apple's first party apps do update

They do.

In the App Store outside of point releases.

I just Not not all of them.

No. And I just don't have really very many of those apps that people started like, Garage Band clips. I didn't even know I didn't even know what the clips app was. I had to look it up because I deleted off of my phone every time.

But I was

Like, what is this?

The only thing I'll say in your defense, like, there are apps like shortcuts, which will only get new actions when there's a point update, but you don't see that.

Mail or messages or any of those. They only update that way. So Yeah.

You don't see the update there. So I get it. I get it.

I'll take my trolling. It's fine.

I I just wanna mention this because we talked about the undersea Internet cables a couple episodes ago in the bonus episode. Yeah. And now The Verge has an incredible story. The incredible I mean, the reporting is amazing, but also just the animations and web design of this story is amazing. I'm scrolling through it right now just very quickly, but, like, it's awesome. And so

Their art direction is top notch.

Oh my goodness. You know, they did this with, early on when the Verge first launched, they talked about, like I don't know if it was bunkers, like, underground bunkers. They talked about something. But anyway, they've they've had a few stories like this that are just visually amazing and visually from a webpage perspective. And, you know, you could still tell a great story and do amazing reporting on a website, which is what Neil Patel says all the time.

And soon, I'm looking forward to the in the in investigative reporting that they're going to do about people using pages on their iPhone because clearly somebody was listening to our conversation.

So bitter. You're gonna get you're gonna get more trolls now. You're fighting more trolls. All the trolls are coming up.

Listen, like, It's fine. People can use pages on their iPhone. I'm just saying it's not the most common use case. Can we at least agree on that?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. I agree. Right? Yeah. It's not it's not common at all. Alright. We gotta talk about personal tick because you got an Apple Vision Pro, finally.

I did.

Finally. Tell me about it.

Well, I also should clarify. I did not buy an an Apple Vision Pro. I just wanna be real clear because I know that there are people who are listening to this who'd be like, you seriously bought one of those, and I did not buy one. Apple did send me one to review. They sent me a review unit. It took it's funny to call it a review unit at this point because it's been, what, 6 months, 6 weeks, 8 weeks?

It's a long term usage unit.

I mean, but but that's great. I am going to, like, be able to do some more reviewing, especially with some different types of applications and experiences. And that's great. I just I will say I've used it every single day since I've had it. It came last week.

The solo.

You know? Yeah. Thank you. It was a terrible experience. I did get headaches. Wow. Whatever. I changed the band, and it completely changed the experience of using it.

So I

will just say for all of you YouTubers who are using it and getting headaches, you may not look as cool, but the over the top strap works really well. The dual loop. Yeah. I so I've used it every single day. I think most of what people are saying about it being bad is sort of tainted by the idea that a lot of the people I hear talking about how bad it is, I think, have buyer's remorse from spending $3,500 on it. And I don't actually have that problem at this point because I did not spend $3,500.

Right.

And so, because even a lot of the people I know who reviewed it and maybe who got review units from apple, they still bought one of their own. And so I think that they're sort of like, what did I spend $3,500 on this thing for that? I'm going to use it to justify that price. I can just use it. And so I was surprised though.

would be enough. Just look around, see the

Absolutely. But and I did the whole going to Disney plus and go to the scare floor or the Disney theater or tattooing

Did you do the the high line or the rhino immersive?

I haven't done those yet. I haven't done those yet. Well, we did, I think the High Line was one of the ones we did at WWDC. So I have done some of those things.

You did the Alicia Keys rehearsal room?

Yep. We did that stuff. So Okay. But the in the immersive environments are great. I did I like the, throne room, the iron throne room in, the max app. That's pretty cool. Yeah. By far, the best thing about the vision pro are panoramas. Like,

those are cool.

It is like emotional.

It is.

It is in a way that I did not expect the immersive experiences. I totally knew what to expect because I had done that. And they're done very well, but I have panoramas dating back to I was using crappy iPhones because they are not very good photos, probably 2012. I don't know when they added the panorama feature, so I could be wrong about that. Yeah.

And you have to choose the you

have to choose the Imax version. Apparently, I'm like, can there just be a setting that says 3 d is terrible. Please don't make me watch anything in 3 d. I just wanna see the normal movie.

It's bad. Apple TV app, if a movie has 3 d, it asks you 2 d or 3 d, like, right when you press play. Yeah. But in the Disney play yeah. It's it's a little annoying.

It thinks everyone wants 3 d, and I'm like, nope. I just wanna watch a normal version of this movie. Because, honestly, like, the 3 d version. I started watching, I I listened to your review of Wet Water. Yeah. And I thought, oh, I gotta watch this, and I'm like, nope. Not watching this in 3 d.

It it was weird. Right?

I can't make it I'm not gonna make it through this movie. I it it'd be hard for me to make it through it in 2 d not doing it in 3 d. Just not gonna happen.

It's apparently 48 frames per second and the 3 d in the Disney plus app. For whatever reason, it felt like a video game cutscene the entire time. That's all I'll say. I reviewed it on movies on the side, but I it I struggled. Like, I was traveling, so there was nothing else to do. So I did watch the whole thing. I did not enjoy a minute of it.

Well, the so then the other thing that really I knew that it was gonna be cool. We wouldn't normally think this, but I think the most encouraging experience I had because I'm hoping more people will do this. And I to be fair, I stole this from Casey List. I think he talked about it on Upgrade when he subbed for Jason Snow, but it's the Gucci app. And I don't know if you've done this yet, but if you

download because I heard him say it.

But Yeah. And so if you watch the first thing that happens when you open the Gucci app is it wants to show you this documentary about the new creative director, Sabado Da Silva. I I can't I don't know his last name. It doesn't matter, because I don't know who he is, but I watched the thing, and it's, like, starts out just as a 2 d video. And then all of a sudden, the environment becomes immersive because you're, like, on the street where he had the, you know, his runway show.

That's pretty cool. So have you captured spatial video on your iPhone and watched it in Vision Pro and it it was not impressive?

Yeah. But, I mean, I captured video of spatial audio of me sitting in my office, which is not that impressive because I can just look at my office. It's like, oh, yeah. It looks just like this. So

So I I would encourage you to maybe, like, if one of your kids has a soccer game soon or some sporting event, like, to take spatial video of that event and watch it. Which night?

You want me to wear the VisionPRO?

No. No. No. Do it on your phone. Just do

it on your phone.

No. No.

Okay.

Because I I did that Christmas morning where I took a spatial video of my kids opening their presents, and that I watched in VisionPRO. And that was I will agree the panorama is more, like, a visceral like a visceral reaction because it wraps around you and it really feels different. The spatial video is not as much like that because it is relegated to, like, this window in your view. Yeah. But it is pretty cool, and it did have, like, that emotional tinge that you're saying when you capture a spatial video like that.

Yeah. I did record a spatial video at Christmas this year, and I actually watched that. And it was like, oh, yeah. This I could see this being cool. Yeah. But then I did a pan then I opened the photos, like, went down one toggle into the panorama. I'm like, oh, what do I have in here? And all of a sudden, I'm standing back on the shore in Alaska, like, in Seward, and there's just the the bay in the mountains, and I'm just like, holy crap. Like, this is, like, intense. Yeah.

I will say there's one other app, Zillow. Have you tried the Zillow app?

You're talking about, like, the buy a house place?

Yes. The buy a house app. They actually added immersive experience in their app, and then you can go to some again, it's not all listings, but you can go to some listings. It's like the over $1,000,000 listing listings, of course. Yeah. But you can actually it puts you in the house, and you can look around.

So, like, anybody any of the listings that have those immersive 3 yeah, like, walk throughs or whatever, you can do that in the VisionPRO?

It'll show yeah. It'll show show you which listings are immersive and then you can do it. And, like, that seems like a really cool use case. I will say I tried it and, like, it was kind of, like, rendering the whole time and it never got super sharp. So it's not like a perfect experience, but that seems like a cool use case.

Yeah.

But I will say, I mean, I'm still using it once a week. I did bring it to a Starbucks, finally. I finally drummed up the courage. I was at a Starbucks.

That's fantastic.

I was waiting for myself to appear on a TikTok or an Instagram Reel. I kept, like, looking by location, like, anybody post me? Because there were bunch of, like, college students there, and I was, like, surely, they would post apparently, nobody cares. Nobody You were in

the Washington Post, and you were concerned about getting posted to TikTok in a Starbucks with your vision probe.

I was just curious. I was just curious if anybody would do it. No one did it, apparently.

Alright.

Dune 2 though, I haven't watched it yet in Apple Vision Probe, and I'm excited to watch that one. And also but I have to say, Argyle, did you try watching Argyle at all?

Not yet.

It's not good. It's not a good movie. Bad movie. Okay. I was kind of I was upset by it because I was very excited for it, but I'm glad I didn't pay for it. Not worth not worth paying. Do you have any other thoughts on VisionPRO, or you wanna use it some more? We can

I'm I think I will keep using it. I think that it is the 2 the 2 biggest frustrations I have are I wanna rearrange the apps,

which is

weird that I can't because I don't wanna have to, like, swipe several screens to open the thing I wanna open. Also, it's annoying that all your iPad's apps just are in one folder, and you forget about that. So I'm using Spark's mail app, and I'm just like, where did it where did that go? What do I have to do? Oh, I have to go in and do that. I forgot

it too. Yeah.

And then the notifications thing where it just dings at you, but it doesn't give you any visual notification anywhere that there's cause you're just like, what was that? What happened?

And then you have

to like, look up, open the thing, look in, it'll show you them. I'm just like, oh, but part of that's because I'm so I have most notifications turned off on all my other devices.

Right. Right. Right.

And so I'm just like, what's going on? I I will confess. I did install Slack. I opened it once. I closed it and removed it from them. Like, nope. Never doing that again.

I did the same thing. I did the same thing. I got down. Let me try it. And I was like, no. I don't want

any of that. Because here's the thing. If I really needed to do things where I was using Slack, I would use the virtualization of my Mac screen, right, which is actually really cool. I didn't realize that this was true because this was not an experience that we had when we demoed it at WWDC that your Mac screen actually goes black. Like, the Vision Pro isn't just blacking it out.

Well Which is

a weird Venn diagram, but That's

exactly if you find

yourself in the middle.

But, honestly, like, that's exactly what I did at the Starbucks because I was I was gonna use my Mac and I was, like, I can my Mac is just gonna be black for everybody around, which is great. If you're on a plane or traveling, you know, that's also a great opportunity because, like, you know, someone is gonna be right next to you and would be looking at your screen just Yeah. By the nature of it being something to look at. And so if it can just be blacked out, I think it's pretty cool use case. Yeah.

So That's fine. So I'm I'm looking forward to using it some more. I'll have more opinions because I'm, you know, 6 weeks behind the curve on this. But but I don't think panoramas are a reason to buy one of these, but I will say that they they are indicative to me of, like, you know what? There are some experiences that someday, like, version 2 of this or whatever.

I do want us to do, like, that game app sometime where you can play, like, Battleship across the world.

I gotta set up my persona. I haven't even done that yet.

Oh, set up your persona, then we should do, like, a game of, checkers or something. It'd be something Alright.

Sounds good. Good.

Alright. Before we get to, our bonus content, I do wanna do one follow-up. Jenna C. Emailed us. We talked about photo backups last week and about how Google Photos, is a good way to kind of back up all the photos from your device on device.

And I do appreciate, Jenna, you sharing that because that's a fair point.

Yeah. And that

is it the only pushback I would give is that sort of like saying you're using Backblaze, and if your house burns down, you gotta wait for someone to mail you a drive. Yes. It's not the most convenient thing, but if you're using it as a backup.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Right? Like, it's like at that point, you're just glad that it exists somewhere.

Sure. Sure. But do it somewhere. And so Jen is saying she has a good experience with Amazon Photos. That's a great option. I actually started doing the Google Photos sync again. I stopped for a while because sometimes your phone gets hot, but I'm like, probably worth it. You know, my phone's getting hot, my AI pin's gonna get hot, my my VisionPRO's gonna get hot, everything's gonna be hot. So we're in the summer. Let's just do it. Alright. We're gonna get to our bonus episode. Wouldn't you say?

Burn it down. I said burn it down. Just burn it all down.

Florida. Yeah. I actually get so speaking of reviews, I'll just say I needed a pool vacuum. This is one of the benefits of being a YouTube creator. There was a company reached out, they wanted to send me a pool vacuum with one of the things that crawls along the walls and stuff. I accepted no money. No money exchanged hands. But I'm keeping that pool vacuum. And so I will I will offer my my honest review, soon on the pool vacuum.

Alright. My

channel. So there you go. But you should subscribe to this YouTube channel, youtube.com/primatetechshow. We're slowly getting to those 1,000 subscribers. But you can accelerate it.