TikTok: There and Back Again, iOS 18.3 Apple Intelligence by Default, Galaxy S25 Edge

Every time I see y'all, I got the silk shirts on, jewelry, you know, looking real Miami. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. Big week. TikTok was banned for 16 hours, and then it came back. Lots of news between them and what Trump is doing with executive orders, plus iOS 18 dot 3 will be coming out soon.

Well, I mean, I'm well, I sound really bad, but I'm not freezing right now. It was it was super freezing. I mean, it's 20 it's, like, 19 to 20 degrees today, but it that is 35 degrees warmer than it was yesterday. And people don't think about, like so it was, like, negative 15 or so yesterday. And people think the difference between, you know, 20 degrees Fahrenheit versus negative 15 degrees Fahrenheit.

Oh my. That is crazy. I have not experienced those temperatures in a while. I'm down in Miami, which is why I'm in a different recording environment. It was it was cold here too, but, like, 50. Not not in the negatives. Now I think there's a 0% chance you're going to get the quote, but I had to pull a quote about Miami because that's where I am right now. And, do you have any idea where that came from?

I have no idea where it came from because I'm almost a 100% sure that it did not come from a movie I've ever seen.

Right. Right. But I

if I had to, like, guess, it feels like it's gotta be something like Fast and the Furious ish or something like that. Like, I don't know. I have no idea.

Jason, I don't know how you did that. That quote is from 2 Fast 2 Furious.

Definitely a movie I've never seen, just to be honest. That

that is amazing. I was also hoping you were gonna say Fast and Furious. That wow. There there you go. You did it.

No. No. I mean, I heard you say it on the video, and that's it. I've never heard it before.

I've never heard that word before. Biophilic with p h I l I c, apparently. But it means like architecture that's designed with the, like, harmony with environment and buildings and stuff. So, yeah, biophilic. It's a biophilic building. So there you go. That's gonna be our new tagline, a biophilic podcast.

That is not that is not a homophone. Is that what the is that when you say, like, a word that sounds like what it means? That I don't even know what that word sounds like.

You know, you got

it sounds like it's like probiotic. It's like Forever. The thing you would eat to to try to ward off cancer or something.

This sounds like probiotic. You got the homonyms, the hit, the hot never mind. Alright. Anyway, we got 1 5 star review shout out, Bluey h k from the UK. Battery percentage on points to Jason. Blue dots on, though, point to me. Pencil facing down, which I don't know if if BlueHK

only one that matters.

I I think that means your your orientation. But you can hold an iPad in various orientations. I'm just saying. So anyway, we have to talk about TikTok. It's been a wild roller coaster of a week for a variety of reasons, but last Saturday, it was Saturday night, the TikTok ban was supposed to go into effect Sunday, January 19th, And come Saturday night, it was like 10:30.

Yeah. And they were doing it just to make people mad. Literally, the only reason for them to do it at that point because the law had not gone into effect, and nobody had shut off any of their services at that point.

Right. And we and we had talked about the possibility of, well, once it goes into effect, it might still be that the app functions. It just might be like an unupdated app like on an old iPad or iPhone. You know, it just would slowly stop working over time. That wasn't the case.

to that.

It's close to that. But one of the things that he signed was Trump, one of his executive orders was delaying the enforcement of the ban, which this the language gets really dicey when you see some of these headlines or even hearing how Trump might talk about this. He did not reverse the ban or change the law. The executive order delayed enforcement of the ban for 75 days, and so there's 75 days where this issue will be revisited or it could be revisited earlier, and we'll have to see what may or may not change then. But right now, TikTok, if you had it on your phone, you can use it like normal.

They were the publisher. Yeah. One of their companies was the publisher of Marvel.

Right. Exactly. So but notably, again, even now we're almost a week later, Apple is not going to reinstate these apps into the App Store. So you're not gonna be able to download them. And again, they make it clear, like in this article, and I'll put all the links to these in the show notes.

Well, I mean, the CEO of TikTok was at the inauguration the next day, I guess. So maybe they were making plans, and they just sort of had this come this is this is weird. I I just wanna say we were right that it was going to the ban was gonna stay into effect. That was that was we were right about that. Listen.

Right.

And because the speaker of the house was like, this is a law. You can't just wave away a wall old law just by, like, magic words or whatever.

Right.

So the the flip side of that is if Trump just decides they're not going to enforce this law, can anyone do anything about that? Right? Because theoretically, congress would be the only people who could say, we passed a law. You have to enforce it. And just as I said that congress doesn't seem inclined that they would wanna change their mind about it, I that I don't know that that extends to the point where they would sue the executive branch to enforce it.

Well and yeah. I mean, when someone if someone and upgrade your phone, upgrade your iPad if you have it installed there, like, you can't get it either. This is so bizarre. I've heard and seen reports of, like, maybe TikTok will sell a percentage ownership to a US company or person. I've seen the name Elon Musk turn around.

I don't is anything possible? I the law does not say that the US gover if the US government owns 50%, then it's cool. That's not what the law says. The law says that it has to be divested of it cannot be owned by a Chinese company. So, like, what does that really mean?

Yeah.

Whatever. I think more than the principle, what he really wants is he is the deal. He enjoys the being in the position where he holds other people's fate in his hands and he gets to use that in order to make a deal. So do I think listen. I think that the most likely outcome to this the most likely outcome is that eventually TikTok just has to go away.

Ready to write a check. Yep. It is so bizarre. The last thing I'll say, last episode, you, I think, eloquently talked about the transactional nature of this administration. I can I can knock it out of my head? And as I saw those messages on TikTok Saturday, when it was went dark, and talking about we're working with Trump, and then Sunday when it came back saying thanks, Trump, exclamation point. It just yeah. The the idea of transactional was it was strong. It was strong with this one. Yep.

Oh, my gosh.

Instagram announced did release. This is not an app you could download, but they announced edits. An Instagram app. Hilarious. They're saying it's expected March 13th, which is my birthday, by the way. You can give me the edits after my birthday. I thank you. I got you. So so funny. After last week's conversation, literally the 2 of us last week talking about Mark Zuckerberg calling out Apple for not being innovative and not inventing anything.

Yeah. When you just think of Mark Zuckerberg's philosophy of resource allocation, it's literally look around at the biggest dumpster fire and figure out how quickly can we make a dumpster that's not on fire. Like, that's literally, like, his entire strategy. And but I will tell you, like, CapCut, it's killer feature. You can disagree with me if you want, but in my mind, it's killer feature is it is better than any other app, including Final Cut, Premiere, whatever, at taking a horizontal video and making it a vertical video while following the subject.

motivated to make it. And I also thought I saw Wesley Hilliard writing an Apple Insider and John Gruber linked to his article being like Apple Clips. That is a thing and used to be a thing. And it's like, Yeah, Apple Apple released that at the perfect time, but made like, like the worst app for that. Like, they they if they would have, like, made that actually a great app.

Also, did they ever talk about it once? I have never heard a person with an apple.com email address talk about the Clips app. Not one time.

I would I'm actually wondering right now. I'm going to the App Store. I'm searching for clips. I feel like one of the weirdest thing was like it was square, by default, like wanted things to be square.

I have it.

Oh, yeah. Here

we go.

I have it here. Let's see. When was the last time it was updated? It was updated 8 months ago for stability and performance improvements. And then a a year ago, it was right there. Apple had it that you could you could have made stuff. But anyway Wait.

Can I say one more TikTok thing? We talked about opportunism and how opportunistic Mark Zuckerberg is. I should have put this in there. Did you see what I posted? I from Carrot Weather.

Oh, yeah.

So on on Saturday, Carrot Weather updated their app so that the little snarky message says, you're just checking the weather because TikTok is gone. And I thought that was so perfect. It was so good.

It just

made me happy.

I forget his name. But yes, that developer is on point. He is Mister Carrot.

He's doing a good job.

Mister Carrot. That's not his name. Mister Carrot. And so I I was not on the beta train, Jason. I was not doing the betas. And then I saw Ios 18 dot 3 was in release candidate phase, and I'm like, that's not really a beta. I mean, that's basically the this version that comes out to everybody. So I upgraded as you do. And I While you're traveling. Literally, while I was traveling, I started the update on the train that I took from Orlando to Miami.

If only if only you were somewhere close to a biophilic building with lots of plants that you could

Jason, genius. I'm literally gonna step outside and go go biophilic identify whatever's around the Apple Store. A bunch of trees. There's a lot of foliage. So anyway, but yeah, so Visual Intelligence is going to be better.

Yeah. I just well, as a general rule, don't think you that companies should put this sort of thing as a on by default sort of and and I heard, John Siracusa talking about, like, eventually, these are just going to be features, and I agree. And at that point, they will be just part of the operating system. There won't be, like, an extra tab for, do you wanna turn this on? Do you wanna not turn it on? But It's

still in beta too.

There's, like, a beta tag

on it still.

Yeah. That's the thing. They're still calling it a beta, and it's bad. Like, these features are bad. They're just not good features right now. I can't I'm trying to think of, like, in the visual intelligence thing, I think it was I heard Steven Hackett yesterday say, you know what else you could do besides pointing your phone at the dog to find out what breed it is? Just ask the guy at the other end of the leash. Listen. What kind of dog is that?

When you walk up to the tree, just ask the tree. What kind of tree are you? That's all you have to do.

I think that's a slightly different use case.

But it identifies plants too. That's what I'm saying. It now identifies plants. There you go.

Yeah. And there's a lot of apps that do that, and that's great. But I feel like I just think that for the most part, these things are it's they're just not quite ready for mass use. And the fact that Apple's having to turn some of them off, you know, tell for like, the example I put in the our notes is the New York Times that summarized an article that says, the morning of the inauguration, before president Trump was president Trump, it said Trump pardons 5 family members Uh-huh. Which here's the problem with that summary.

No. No. I have to I have to show this one on screen because these are x notifications. It says Ben Thompson reposted about Stargate. Sam Altman complimented you. How did it even get that? How did it even

Because Sam Altman okay. So this was Sam Altman's reply to Elon Musk about Stargate because Elon Musk was like, they don't actually have the money or something like that. And and we can talk about that later if we get to it. Sam Altman responded basically saying, you know, you are one of the greatest entrepreneurs of all time to Elon Musk in the chain. But because the word says you, Apple's notification summary is like, well, clearly, they're talking

about

it's like, is new a proper noun? It's like, complimented you, not me personally. Like, you is the name. That's my daughter, our oldest daughter, when she was a kid, like, she was 2 years old, she thought her name was you. If you asked her, what is your name? She'd say, you. And we could not figure out what is wrong with you. And then we realized it's because all we ever say to her is, I love you. You are so cute. Do you want this?

And then you said, you, go to your room. Yeah. You. Yeah. Yeah. That's, those summaries are amazing. Anyway, I I guess it's good that they stopped the news and entertainment summaries. I well, anyway, I don't know. We'll see. Visual Tellus shouldn't have shipped the new they just shouldn't have shipped those the

the notification summaries yet.

Yeah. They shouldn't have done that.

And I'm actually the problem is it is not clear. Like, some of the replies that I got were from people saying, this will get better. It's fine. Whatever. I don't know that that's true, and I don't think that the people who know a lot more about LLMs are sure that it's actually gonna get better.

know what

I mean? Like, there's gotta be because you could just you can move markets and cause national security problems.

Well, I wonder too if one of the issues being that Apple grouping summaries and then summarizing a grouping of summaries like that's or it groups notifications, and then it's summarizing the groups. Like that's an issue. I imagine if it just summarized individual notifications, you will get less confusing wording. But then, also, what is the point? Because notifications can't be that long anyway. They're they're only

1 issue. A headline if it's not a summary of an article? Right? Like and you know what a fun game you can play? Seriously, listeners, this is actually genuinely a fun game to play. You pull up a news grouping of headlines that it has a notification summary and just tap on it so it shows you all of the things and swipe away, like, 2 of them and then go back and click show less, and it'll go back to a summary, and it'll be a different summary.

Oh. You

can just read different new different notification summaries as you change the group. If you if you delete something, then that takes it out of it, and it's actually kind of a fun game you can play.

Jason says he doesn't have time to watch half the things I say to watch, but he's over here playing around dismissing individual notifications.

It's for the work, man. I gotta do this for my job.

Yeah. You do. Yeah. It's for your job. Okay. I actually have gotta try that, though. That's kind of interesting. So, anyway, I got 18.3 on here. Also, can I just say I've talked to a lot of people people's post reply on social media like so many bugs still in iOS? Do you ever get this, Jason? And if any of our listeners and viewers get this, I'd love to know. Where autocorrect just like doesn't it's not on. Like it just it's just off. That ever happened to you?

My problem is it's it's my problem is that it's too much on. It's autocorrecting things that I did not ask for.

I'll I'll be texting someone. I'm literally in the messages app, and all of a sudden autocorrect is just not working. And so I have to, like, hyperfocus on the letters I'm tapping because if I just type like I normally type, it's gibberish because autocorrect not doing it, which a, is super troublesome because I'm like, am I really not hitting any of these letters? Like, how is autocorrect

right

when it's working that good? But b, why is it not on right now? And I will go into settings and I'll go to keyboard and autocorrect is on all the settings are fine, but for some reason, it's just not working. Screen Time has been even more buggy for me and my kids. I don't know about yours, but like, you know, website access will just like, yeah, just that get whatever you want. You know, sometimes it just disables

I have a theory that the screen time team is a bunch of 17 year olds.

That the

entire development team are just teenagers.

It's like the swift boot camp or whatever. They're like, listen. Why don't you guys work on some, screen time settings?

It's like asking the inmates to design the security system at the jail, basically.

Jason did not just compare our kids to inmates. Just wanna clear that up. Okay. I mean, kinda did. Anyway, let's let's thank our sponsors this week, which is to say about that. This episode brought to you by HelloFresh. And I'm excited because I actually have a picture of the meals I made of HelloFresh. I am not a cook. I I don't know why. Anyway, I don't cook.

Also, that's my least favorite scene of any of the Star Wars movies, just to be clear.

It's not it's kinda gross. Anyway, but HelloFresh, not a TomTun is America's number one meal kit. Also, if you're tired of figuring out what's for dinner night after night, especially on busy weekdays, get dinner done easy thanks to HelloFresh. And it's easy to find and eat well because you have 50 wholesome, hassle free meals to choose from each week delivered to your door. I'm gonna I'm gonna get my picture of a meal here.

We did. We had some southwestern beef. It was like a pasta. I this is gonna sound, like, not as appetizing, but it's like it was like a goulashy type thing. I don't know if

that's a good way

of calling it, but it like goulash, but it tasted like a wet burrito. And the thing is, I was very, very sick. And so I no. No. I wasn't gonna I do most of the cooking in our well, that's not a fair thing to say.

It was that amazing. HelloFresh also will bring your taste back. No. That's not a promise they make. But HelloFresh, I can cook. Anyone can cook. Ratatouille. So get up to 10 free meals and a free high protein item for life at hellofresh.com/primary10fm. The link's in the show notes. You can just click it there.

That's great.

Samsung Unpacked. Neither of us are there. I'm in Miami. You're in freezing in Michigan. But they they announced some things. This one I think is just funny. I just want to throw this out there first. This is like the budget vision pro. This is Samsung's VR headset. This is Project Muhan.

Yeah. I wonder where they got the inspiration. It's hard to

command c command

figure it out.

Copy paste the strong, here and at meta. But Samsung also announced their entire Galaxy S 25 lineup. The Galaxy S 25 Ultra, which is their flagship phone. I watched MKBHD's video on it. And this is the Verge's article I put in the show notes.

I don't know why. Is that is that is that a thing? I don't know. What? I'm curious. Why?

I mean, it looks cool. It looks cool that it's that thin. Like, sure. But the battery life, man, I don't I don't know. I do want but this also, I mean, if Samsung's doing this now, I feel like the rumors about an iPhone 17 Air may be a little more legitimate.

know. I just don't know if it makes it's fine. Like, everyone gets all excited about the the iPhone 17 air, whatever. I just I think, like, battery, all of it. Just give me I don't want a thin device that I have to stick a MagSafe battery in the back of just to, like, go to pick up kids from soccer. It just seems like Yeah. I don't know. Is this the phone that's I got it. It's it's a phone that's meant to always be plugged in.

Oh, that's nice. They're

bringing back the landline. You gotta have it plugged in all the time for the battery. It hasn't it actually doesn't have well, that's the thing. It doesn't have a battery. It's just got, like, you know, it's got a battery to keep the clock going. That's it.

It keeps it always on display with the clock. I don't know. We'll see we'll see when the reviews actually come out about it. I will say I I have my you know, I'm traveling, so I have my whole setup here. I have my Belkin 2 in 1 that I bring with me when I when I travel.

Yeah. You know, I had this experience that's this is totally unrelated, but you made me think about this. I've been meaning to say this for a while now.

Are you about to make a confession?

No. I got that, what what was the car mount MagSafe thing that you suggested?

Yes. I'm

one of those for Christmas.

Yes.

Sure. There you go. Sure. Okay. I got one of those for Christmas. And I have a I think it's either, like, a moment or something in a in a different vehicle that doesn't charge. It just clicks. Yeah. And it seems like in concept that all of these things make sense to just clip them onto the vents. Right.

Overheat.

Charging stopped until it returns to normal temperature. And I'm like, what what what what's wrong with the temperature? I'm like, oh, yeah. I'm blasting 80 degree air at the back of this thing. So, like, I'm starting to feel like maybe that wasn't the best design choice.

See, in Florida, it's a feature because I have the air conditioning blowing 90% of the time, so it cools the phone down no matter what. And I will I will say, just just a side note, my car you know, I recently got a different car a few months ago, but with the heated seats, I've never had heated seats before in anything. It's pretty nice. I do like the heated seats. I imagine you wear the valve.

Thing is?

No.

Listen. You know what the best thing? Well, first of all, the nice thing about heated seats in an electric car is they're on instantly. Right? Like, you just you get in the car and it's but and my wife makes fun of me. And the kids actually think this is kinda crazy too. The best combination and I know this is gonna sound absurd. I wanna get people

to get started. Know what's coming in.

Heated seats on with the air conditioning blasting.

I could totally get it. I totally get it. No. I I totally get it. I mean, I will it's like, you know, when you wanna have a blanket at home, sometimes you you lower the temperature a little bit so you could use a blanket. Like, it it makes sense. It totally makes sense to me.

It's amazing. It's amazing.

I mean, I think yeah. It would no. It's it's totally fine. I haven't tried that yet. I don't even know how to do that on my oh, no. I guess you just turn the heat to the seat on and crank down the temperature. Turn the

air conditioning. I didn't do that.

I'm new to that. I had a 2011 Kia Soul for, like, 10 years. Okay. I'm still I'm still getting used to it. But anyway, if you're a Netflix subscriber, which I still, I pay for it. I'm not sure why, but they just hiked their prices up again for all the plans now cost 89 no. The top plan, I think it was like 23, and now it's 25 or $26. And then all the tiers went up. And it's like, I don't even know if there's outrage anymore. I think people are just like, yeah, whatever.

Well, the thing is they reported, you know, that they added 19,000,000 subscribers. They're over 300,000,000 subscribers for the first time.

Yeah.

They had a record quarter. And they're like, so you know what we're gonna do? Because we're not reporting subscriber numbers anymore after this. This is it. Last time, we're going out with a bang, and then we're raising prices.

I guess I was wondering, you know, as a company like publicly traded like that, how can you not report that number? But I guess they'll still report revenue and profits. So

Yeah. So I mean, Apple doesn't report how many iPhone units they sell. Right. Like, companies can decide what they want to. But, yes, they have to publish their revenue. They have to publish their, income statement and their balance sheet. And there's certain things that are required by law. But other than that, they can just be, like you know, because Apple breaks down its revenue by these broad categories.

Right.

But companies, it that's not, like, by law that you have to. It's like there's there is a threshold at which a business unit has to be reported separately because of its significance to the bottom line or whatever. That's that's not a quote. I just made that all up. But, anyway, they don't have to report subscribers.

Right.

And the reality is none of them were making money. So those numbers look bad. So you're not gonna be, like, we lost $3,200,000,000 this quarter. Instead, you're gonna be, like, we are not yet profitable, but we continue adding subscribers at a, you know, a 17% rate or whatever. That sounds good. And people are like, great. Eventually, you'll figure out how to make money. And it turns out that so far, Netflix is basically the only one that figured out how to make money off of subscribers.

And I did see, apparently, the Tyson Paul fight did actually garner a number of new subscribers to the platform, which I think makes sense. I'm curious if they do more sports, live sports, if that will garner it. I was listening to the Verge cast where David Pearce was talking about sports streaming packages, and I forget who was on the show with him. But basically, like, if you had wanted to watch every NFL game this season, you had to have paid $800 in streaming costs for all the different services because the games are so fractured. So like CBS and some on Fox, you know, Netflix had 2 of them on Christmas Day.

We're way worse than the cable days. Like, it's cheaper to just go in person to every NFL game. Like, it would just make it'd be easier.

It's cheaper to go to the Super Bowl than pay for all the football streaming games. That's probably not true. Yep. But I it's so weird. And I do I'm looking at all my streaming services because I now I have everything on my Apple Card.

Adam. You know what you could do? You know what you could do?

What's that?

You could go into your Netflix account. Yes. And there's a button, and it just says cancel membership. And you could click it. It takes 2 clicks. I wrote an article about this, by the way, Steven. And then just guess what? They won't bill your card anymore. And then at some point, you'll sit down in the future and you'll be like, I really wanna watch The Crown. You just open your account again.

That's pretty deep. That's pretty deep. Well, I also I will, sometimes on a Friday, we'll open the app to see, is there anything here that I wanna watch? And then after 20 minutes of scrolling, I think, no. There's not anything I wanna watch. That's not worth it.

I wanna watch that back to work. Is that what it's called? Is that the Cameron Diaz, Jamie Uh-huh. Fox movie?

Maybe. Oh, you know what? We did use it the other day for Nate Parkazzi. Back

in Action. Sorry.

Oh, Back in Action. Nate Parkazzi's on Netflix. Those are I like his specials. Anyway, alright. We have one of our

chalk artist guy who paints on the sidewalk? Nate.

Oh, no. That's it.

Fair enough. K. Never mind.

I'm just kidding. That's Nathan's hot dogs. Hey, Nate. He was he's at Disney. He was eating a 3 d Hulk the other day. He was pretty amazing.

He just sent us a text message, actually. But, anyway

Why is he he knows we record now. So he's sending

text messages. To answer live on air. He'll have to stay tuned for the bonus episode.

He's asking about AirPod Pro sizes. Should we? No. Okay. Never mind. We'll answer that later. One last thing before we get to our personal tech segment, which is this iPad mini that's powering the hotel room I'm in. You put this article in here, so I'll let you get in trouble instead of me. But what is this? This is, what, the kiss the ring segment? Is that the kissing is that what this is?

Okay. So the short background on this is Elon Musk, Sam Altman Sam Altman used to be buds. They sort of cofounded, OpenAI way back in the day. Elon Musk left. He now has his own, XAI, I think is what it's called. Yep. And he's trying to turn Twitter slash x into this whatever. It doesn't that that part's not as interesting. But the guys used to get along. They don't get along.

you know, SpaceX.

SpaceX entirely dependent on government contracts. Also, one of the most successful stories of the last couple generations in terms of what they've been able to do. Great. So, like, that's not knocking the company. But Tesla became a thing mostly because of, like, EV tax credits and that kind of

thing. Right.

And so he he's feeling a little bit sour.

Interesting. Yeah. This is the the interesting one. I will put this TechCrunch article in the show notes, and there's a back and forth between Elon and Sam. This is, I have one question, though. Whenever Sam Altman tweets, it's all lowercase. He doesn't even capitalize the beginning of his sentences. Do you think he has disabled autocorrect? So he's or auto capitalization so he can do this? Or does he literally delete the first capital letter every time he types so he can have a lowercase?

Well, I think he definitely has it because, like, my teenagers have it turned off. Like, they

Auto capitalization?

Teenagers don't use yeah. Teenagers don't use capitalization at all. What? Like, do your teenagers yeah. Like, my Yeah. My kids literally have it turned off because they do not wanna use capitalization.

They don't want to use

capitalization. Times no. They don't want to. It's they Why? It's not cool to use capital letters. Not cool. Listen. I don't I don't make these rules. I'm just explaining to you what Is

it Skibbty, Ohio Riz to use capital letters? I'm so sorry. I don't even know what you said. I'm so sorry I even said that on

air. What? I thought for a second that you had a stroke. I

don't know. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Why is it uncool to use capital letters?

I am a writer. I'm not saying it's uncool to use capital letters. I'm a 50 gram or punctuation in all of its forms. You're literally right. Just saying. What?

I don't understand it, Jason.

I know.

But also I

there have been times when my daughter will hand me her phone because, say, she wanted to, like, reach out to a college coach or something like that. And she's like, hey. Would you just help me? And I'll, I'll, like, try to type something.

And I'm

like, what is wrong with your phone? Why won't it why does it not understand that if there's a period, the next letter should be capitalized? She's like, yeah. I turned that off. I'm like, well, turn it on or you're never going to college.

You You, turn it on.

Yeah. Hey, you. It's the same one. A 100%.

Well, but what but Sam Altman is not a teenager. I don't understand. I don't understand why.

Okay. That's a fair point. I just I don't know. I think he's explained it at some point. I just don't have the energy to

Yeah. I don't know.

To find out.

That's weird. Anyway yeah. Watching these billionaires go, tit for tat on social media, it's that's we're in 2025. Well,

I think they think it feels casual and hip.

Casual and hip. Okay. Anyway, personal tech oh, you know what? Well, no. Never mind. I was gonna I was gonna say what you thought of the new, redesigned Tesla Model Y, but I feel like that's gonna get a wave of comments no matter what you say.

We can say that. We can talk about that another time. I'm happy to.

Okay. Have you seen it? Did you see the new design?

Yeah. And I don't mind comments. It's just you just Oh, no.

I I know that. Probably. Yeah. No. I know that. Anyway, I'm gonna talk about my hotel room. So I'm I'm staying at this, I'm staying at this, I think it's called a citizen. I've never heard. Wait. Is this our personal tech section? Personal tech. Yeah. Yeah. Personal tech. Are we

in okay. We're in personal tech.

Yeah. Yeah. But you got something for personal tech?

No. No. No. I just I didn't I'd wanna make sure that that was the section that we're in.

Yeah. A chapter marker. Yeah. A chapter marker. Yeah. Okay. So I'm in this hotel, and, like, it's it's a very bizarre room. It's, like, it's very narrow. I almost feel like I'm in, like, a ship hull. But it's nice. It's a nice room. But

Wait a second. What word did you just say?

A ship hull, like h u l l.

Okay. Super not what it sounded like you said.

Oh, super well, I I got all those stuffy nose. I don't know what it sounded like on your end. Except for Steven doesn't usually say bad words.

It's the only reason I didn't think he said he's an asshole. But Hole.

Hole. Anyway, so I walked in this room and there's a there's an iPad mini. This is an iPad mini, what, 5

Like an actual iPad mini. Oh, you can't even update that anymore. And I know this because my wife has one and it won't update.

It's a home button iPad mini with lightning. It feels so much larger than the iPad mini I have at home because, you know, it has the chin and the forehead or whatever. But this is, how you control the entire room. Like, if you because I when I first walked in, it was a little warm, as you do. You turn down the air, and I was looking for the thermostat on the wall. No. No. No. No. You do it here on the iPad, but also it's kind of annoying because you can't see the temperature.

Steven Steven, that is that is unacceptable.

But hey. I didn't like that. I didn't like that. You could turn the TV on and off from the iPad. That's like a little toggle at the top. So you could And it

tells you if it's on or off. So see that's this It does. They give you some indication. It probably has a battery percentage indicator too, but they will not tell you what temperature it is.

It doesn't tell you the temperature. It also has smart lights, so you can literally, like, change the colors of the lights in the bathroom. That's the only place where there's colored lighting. So if you want your bathroom to be purple or blue, you could do that. You could

turn Definitely where you need the colored lighting is in the bathroom.

Right. You could turn the whole lights on or off. And even you can raise and lower curtains. They have blackout blinds that you can raise and lower. And they also have like a a day curtain. You can do all of this, from the iPad. You even this is not an ad for the hotel. I wouldn't even suggest staying here. But you even you even like, you order your cleaning. You're like the Yeah, cleaning services from the iPad.

Steven's staying in a hostel, actually.

I don't know. It's a

it's an Airbnb. He's just camping out in somebody's spare bedroom.

I got I I chose to stay here because it's the closest to the Apple Store. It's, like, super close. Anyway, this thing was on the bed when I got here. I don't know what it is. Do you do

you think the hotel owns that, or

do you think that that

just got accidentally left behind by whoever rented that room before you?

No. No. There's there's one of these by the front desk, and it has, like, a little story behind it. I have not read it. But, it's a weird dog because it has no nose or mouth. It's just 2 black dots for eyes. I guess a red hair type thing. Anyway, I forgot to take this off the bed last night when I got into bed, and so I just kicked it off. And it's been laying on the floor ever since. But, yeah, this was staring at me when I walked in this hotel room. I don't know what I don't know what this is.

But you couldn't see it because there's no light switches, so you

had no idea how to turn on the lights in the room. I don't I don't understand. Anyway, I'll, I'll try to make that the the chapter art for those listening in the podcast. Anyway, smart hotel room. I don't think I prefer it. I like lowering the curtains. That's about it. But anyway, smartest hotel I've ever been in. It's also I don't know how to send you a picture. It's a weird it's a weird place.

of those? Not a new not a new store opening. No.

Well, this one. They're doing picnic blankets. This is a picnic blanket. And, so the giving badge I'm

gonna tell you right now, that thing is useful. I I I have one that says WWDC on it, and we've actually used it lots of times.

Well, I'm excited. I'm I'm gonna open it at home with my family. This this was exciting for me. I know this is not a big deal maybe for other people, but first time I got an Apple media badge and, that's yeah. It's really fun. It's a nice media badge too. Like, it's nice colorful. This is like, indented, embossed. I don't know what the right word is for it, but, like Sure. Textured. You have a bunch of them. Right? You probably have, like, a collection of these.

I got one right here from WWDC. Right.

That's your name on it, though. Right?

Other ones over there. No. They don't have your names.

Oh, no.

None of none of the Apple ones have your names.

Oh, okay. Okay. Then well, anyway, but I I will, treasure that. It's really fun. But anyway, I wanna talk about the behind the scenes experience because it was kinda funny. And, so we're gonna do that in the bonus episode. So here's what you do. You go to primary tech dot fm, click bonus episodes, You can support the show. You get the whole back catalog of bonus episodes, plus you get an ad free version of the show. You can also support us in Apple Podcasts, but there you don't get chapters.