You Can Now Airbnb More than Travel, Galaxy S25 Edge, M4 Max Mac Studio Review

We'll prepare and serve with Flair, a culinary cabaret. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. Lots of news this week. Jason was actually at the Airbnb event where they announced a big app redesign, but also offering experiences and adding a ton of features into Airbnb. We're gonna talk about that.

I'm a little bit jet lagged. I'm not gonna lie, but I'm here.

You were in LA what? Like, yesterday?

I got back yesterday. Yeah.

Wow. That's wild. But you saw Chance the Rapper. Right? I

did. Hung out with Chance.

You hung out with Chance the Rapper. You you have a I don't know. Sometime some weeks, you're the most interesting man in the world. I mean, you go to the f one race.

I have the weirdest job. I just I just keep texting you. I have the weirdest I

just get pictures of of random celebrities and Jay Jason not taking selfies with them, just taking pictures of them like it's a paparazzi.

I don't do it's such an interesting dynamic at stuff like this because there we'll we'll talk about it, but there are a lot of celebrities at that event. I just don't because it feels like it's hard to it's hard to interview someone and be treated seriously and then be like, oh, by the way, can I get a selfie? It's just whereas you see all these influencers and the YouTubers and they're like, screw it. Give me a selfie, man. Like, I need to get this on my channel.

I don't know. There was a you met an you can't say who you met at the f one race. Right? Is that kind of against?

I probably I mean, I there were a lot of famous people, but that's all I'm gonna say.

There were a lot of famous people. One famous person in particular, you said you met, and I told my kids, and they were like, how did he not get a selfie from this person? And I said, I know. I don't know.

I know. Situation, in fairness, it was darker than the midnight. Like, it was very dark in that place. It was at a it was at a restaurant called Delilah, which is fantastic. But it I don't know if it's it was Miami, and it's, like, restaurant slash nightclub happening at the same time. It was loud, and it was dark.

I will what I'm gonna say. Won't reveal who it was, but let me just say, if I was there meeting that person, I would have been the guy to turn on the flash on my iPhone and if someone said, please take a selfie.

We're going back to the early two thousands and just flash everything. Right?

I don't care if it's blurry, if there's, like, light streaks across. I want a selfie. Anyway, do you have any idea where the quote might be from today?

Oh oh, we did that, don't we? We still do this thing.

We still do

that Culinary flair.

A culinary cabaret. We'll prepare and serve with flair, a culinary cabaret.

Oh, yeah. I mean Oh. It's gotta be Beauty and the Beast.

Nailed it. Nailed it. You know, I thought Airbnb, be our guest. I thought that was a apropos, Germaine, as you do.

I like how your brain works, Steven.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Alright. We you were at the Airbnb event, so I wanna talk about that. But also we have a five star review from Mexico, Jer MSMZ, because he loves the show. Battery percentage he turned the battery percentage off during a recent trip and confidently says that they despise it. Yeah. So he will be turning battery percentage back on, but phone in dominant pocket. There you go. Jason wins on that one.

Yeah. He did had a busy week. He was on Dakota the same week.

He He was on that's right. And then, I don't know if I say this on the show, but I did finally subscribe to Dithering, his his podcast, and so I am listening to that now. It is a very good show. Fifteen minutes in and out.

It's great. The only complaint I have about that is I liked it better when it was three times a week because It was three

times a week.

When they started it, it was three times a week. He and it's only twice a week now, but it's only a fifteen minute show, and it's him and Ben Thompson. And and I really yeah. I like

that show. It's a good show. They're they're smart people. But speaking of multiple times a week, our survey, which we've been going a couple weeks, I'm gonna still put it in the show notes one last time, but it seems far and away people want a daily podcast with summary of the news, the tech news of the day, as a member benefit. And so I am hyping myself up to do this, to do it.

show notes. So are we just charging people, like, $5 a month to vote in the survey?

No. No. Anybody that's the thing.

Anybody could take the

survey because it needs to

be So they don't actually have to commit because you just said we're asking people what it would take to get them to sign up, and it's like, well, how about if you answer the survey? We'll sign you up.

What what would it take to get you in this car today? Alright. So the big Airbnb event, I'm gonna hand it to Jason in a second because he was there, but not only has Airbnb redesigned their app, they have now offered things called experiences and more, where not only can you book a place to stay, whether you're in a city or wherever, but if you want to have a sushi chef come to your Airbnb and prepare something, you can do that. Or even book experiences in the town, like go to a museum with someone that's actually gonna give you a tour, like really trying to be an all in one vacation or trip resource. So not only where you stay, but also what you do.

Twice, actually. Yeah. There's two I've I've there's two I've done two podcast interviews.

Okay. Alright. So yeah. So tell me, what was it like being at the event? I saw a lot of YouTubers there, a lot of press. What was it like?

So well, okay. So, like, the meta discussion, what it's like to be the they do a good job. They definitely wanted a lot of attention on this, and this is a pretty, you know, pretty big update for Airbnb. They do these releases twice a year, essentially, and this was their summer release. They they did an event.

And Johnny Ive was there.

Johnny Ive was there. Yep. Johnny Ive was there. Angela Arons, who used to be the head of retail, was there. She's on the board. And so but the other things that the the kind of the headline features were services and experiences. Now experiences, they actually rolled out a while ago and nobody cared. Just like that. Didn't work. Okay.

So I actually I just went to the Airbnb website experiences nearby. You can do this right now. And yeah, you can do all of this.

I was talking about sir. We're, we're still talking about services first of all, but that's okay. Like, so the second piece are, yes, you can book these experiences. And the idea of the experiences is, you know, if you go to Paris or you go somewhere, you might look up, like, a travel blog, top things you should do, and you discover that everybody who went to town that day looked up the same travel blog, and everyone's there. Right?

should have put you in that experience, Jason. I wanted to see you get the lane up and

some good. Now there were a number of experiences that they took people on while I was there. And Yes. One of them was yoga, and I was super thankful that they did not put me in that group. Very, very thankful. Yeah. So, yeah, the one that I ended up doing that they sent us on was a listening party with Chance the Rapper. So that it was this sort of interactive there's sort of this, like, light experience. I'm not gonna do good enough explaining it. Very cool.

can Yeah. It's like pay somebody to say, like,

happy birthday. Yeah. Or whatever like that or good job on that test. You you didn't fail. Good job.

I'm sorry. Now that you when you mentioned Cameo, I was a little distracted because I was very curious.

Who's on Cameo right now?

Because apparently, YouTubers is a category that you can filter by, and yeah.

I don't know who any of those people are.

I've seen this guy on TikTok. He's like a workout guy. I actually, I really like this guy. He does he's a firefighter, and he does he reenacts basically wild, like, nine eleven calls that he's done. Let's see, is MKBHD on here? No. No.

That's what I'm saying. Like the

Jason Aitin.

He's not on there anymore.

I don't think any of these guys are you. Anyway, know, it makes sense as the next step for a company like Airbnb because I have booked some Airbnbs in the past, and you do feel a little bit like on your own as opposed to when you go to a hotel and you have all the, whatever, amenities, even if it's just like a restaurant. I'm curious the cost of some of these. Like, is this going to be cost effective?

So, like, you could do a so they tried to they're trying to keep that at a reasonable price point. So for example, you could do a chef for $50 a person. Personal chef for $50 a person for a family of six seems kind of expensive to me. Like, I'm like, man, I could just, you know, go to Chick fil A, and it does not cost me $50 a person. But also, like, if you are the type of family that that would be a enjoyable experience to have a personal chef come, like, that's you're not paying for the food at that point.

And I I just looked apparently, here in Tampa, One of the you can book this, a private dining with award winning chef. This is chef Brittany, ten years of experience. Hundred $20 a guest for handmade pasta experience, but it looks like maybe you'll make your own. Like, she'll walk you through making your pasta or $140 per guest for la genesee. I don't know what that is. I don't think I'm fancy enough for that. But

I don't know either, but I'm I am gonna be honest that paying a hundred and $20 a guest and you have to make your own pasta doesn't actually feel like a great

May may may maybe she's making the

I will come to your house and you make your own food. Jason, you should you should be

on this Airbnb experience. Listen. I'll come to your house, and I'll show you how to make some pasta.

Yeah. I will I and I'm gonna do, like, tech support. So when you come to an Airbnb somewhere and you need to, like, set the Wi Fi doesn't work, you can just call me, and I'm gonna just come to the Airbnb and be like, unplug it, unplug it.

This is this is fascinating. You know? No. No. This is all live. Right? Like the experience?

Yeah. So some of the Airbnb originals are, like, coming in the future kind of thing. The other thing I was gonna just mention, so a part of their app redesign, and I actually think this could be the most interesting long term thing for Airbnb. I so I interviewed Jay Carney, who's, like, their head of policy and communications. He used he was Barack Obama's, press secretary, and then he was the head of communications for, Amazon for, like, seven years.

It feels like the the first social feature that's actually social. You know, most of the time most of the time, a social network is just people broadcasting things and then other people maybe replying, but interaction, you know, but to actually be have had an experience with some people in person, hopefully something that you enjoyed doing, and obviously, whoever you are with does these kinds of things. Yeah. I mean, that that kinda makes sense, getting

these people. Social in the sense that you actually had a real world experience with these people. These are not just people who you friended on Facebook because you were scrolling through profiles and you're like, oh, that person likes it.

Yeah. Wait. Wait. Wait. You just scroll around and just to friend people I have not

added a friend on Facebook in

I gonna say

years. I don't even every I'll be honest, every time I get a friend request on Facebook, I'm like, are we still really doing that?

Like, it's not spam.

I just

I just assume it's spam. Even if it's someone I completely recognize as their profile picture, I'm like, this this probably

I'm like, I'm 45. My friend list is set. Don't talk to me. Yeah. Don't need any more friends.

The door is closed. Okay. The gate the gate is down. But one thing you had said before we started recording, and I saw others on social media who were at the Airbnb events say, is Apple really needs to go back to in person, on stage presentations. And Apple, I think, is one of the last holdouts since COVID to continue the video event.

Yeah. And, I mean, they do in person events, obviously. Like, WWC is an in person event, it's not a live event. I mean, Tim Cook will come out and be like, good morning. And then, you know, we're so excited that you're here, and then we watch a video.

Craig Federighi is close, though, because Craig has done a lot of live demos.

He's still not nearly as good overall at the thing, that Steve Jobs was. Like, Craig Federighi is good. He's he's got a great personality, very charismatic. John Turnis, very charismatic. Like, very good.

I've I just think, you know, the demos that Apple used to do, like last year when they were doing Apple intelligence and the semantic index for the assistant, I think maybe that would have had a natural filter because they wouldn't have been able to demo some things on stage. And so maybe this year, it would make it it would almost be a proof proof of legitimacy. I don't know. Like, go back to some live demos. I feel like they could even mix and match some things, you know, do, like, a live intro, live announcements for iOS, live demos.

Oh, yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Kevin you know, if you're gonna have Kevin Lynch on a beach somewhere because he's talking about Apple Watch and diving in the water, like, do that. But I think doing some live demos I I don't think it's gonna be this year, but it will, again, bring back, I think, some legitimacy and like, oh, okay. Yeah. Let's show this stuff off live.

I mean, Brian Chesky is pretty good. Like, Brian Chesky had the same kind of a vibe. Yes. There's a point in time I'm like, I wonder if he's available for a job. I don't know, but he

Brian is different. Like, I feel like he has an intensity that, I don't know, it works for him. Because I've listened to him a lot of podcasts. You know, he's been on Decoder a couple times. Obviously, you've interviewed him. I feel like it's a different vibe than Apple.

And I mean I would argue though that his overall approach to products and his his the way he tells the story about them is closer to Steve Jobs than probably anybody at Apple currently. Okay.

Alright. Well And

it was one of the things I thought that was really funny is he's like, I'm gonna pull up an iPhone now. He's like, so this is a real life demo. Like, almost like throwing some yeah. He actually said that in

that thing. Shoot.

That's shade. It was interesting because he went back to the demo several times. Now he could have been picking up different phones. That's entirely possible. I I didn't pay that close of attention.

think was fine. VPN different VPNs.

No. I guess what I'm saying is, like, I watched your last interaction, and the only thing that showed up there was Paris, and now all of a sudden Tokyo is one of your recent searches. So I'm like, is there someone else somewhere logged into your Airbnb account? And when you put the phone down, searches for Tokyo so it'll appear at the top, which is, I guess, entirely possible. But either way, they pulled it off very well.

See, but that that's also the kind of magic. I mean, I still love hearing the stories about, like, the original iPhone demo demo and and, like, the phone call just, like, hanging by a thread, you know, and it just barely made it through demo. But also, like, pinch to zoom. Doing that demo live on stage was huge. And even, like, Coverflow, which some people are like, still bringing back.

Depends on what's happening. Like, people

The calculator app. Did people applaud when they announced the calculator for the iPad?

I think people were pretty excited.

Okay. Alright.

Well mean, more excited than they were when they realized there weren't gonna be apps on the Vision Pro.

What do you mean app?

I mean, is Netflix on there yet?

Oh, well, YouTube. YouTube still. Oh, I'm glad you said that because we do have, some Vision OS three point o rumors I just wanna touch on later, but you still use it every day?

Pretty much. I mean, I didn't Still? Here's the thing. I don't take it when I'm traveling, so I feel a little bit disingenuous saying

Which is insane. Which is Not as the old

Steven, I have never I travel a lot more than you, and I've never

You do.

Ever seen a human being with a VisionPRO on an airplane

Have you ever seen a human being have you ever seen another human being with a VisionPRO, period, outside of California?

But what no. But what you're saying though is that people should be wearing them on planes, and I'm saying no one does that except for YouTubers. The the people the the Venn diagram of people who make YouTube videos and people who are willing to wear VisionPro on a plane is a one circle.

I saw a video yesterday. I think it was from

You can't even argue with that.

Well, I saw it from the Washington Post, and they were saying, like, here are the five gadgets you need when you travel. And the dude was like, I fly five straight days a year, like a hundred thirty hours. And he basically said AirPods Pro, AirPods Max. He had an Anker charger. He said this and that.

And those are basically just like a display for your computer. Right?

Yes. But just way more discreet than a Vision Pro.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And and also sorry. Last I note, and then we'll move on to iOS and Apple Maps and stuff. Did you see the Price Is Right Vision Pro thing?

Yeah. Nobody knows how much that thing costs.

There was so it was a recent Price Is Right episode, and they had the Vision Pro, and all the contestants guessed, like, $1,000. I think the most someone guessed was, like, $1,200. And then and then, what's his face? Is it Drew? What's his name?

But I think Apple seeded that question as market research. They wanted to know, what do people actually think this thing should cost?

$1,000.

Think it was brilliant. If you think about it that way, it was pretty brilliant.

Yeah. That is it was pretty good. Alright. Real quick. IOS 18 dot five came out earlier this week for everyone. You got updates on all your devices. All my HomePods are still stuck in limbo, so that's usually what happens with an iOS update, which is cool. But one feature, which I think is good, and it's just nice that to know that Apple has not forgotten that screen time exists.

This is the hold on. This is the best thing Apple has introduced

Yes.

In, like, five years.

Well, and because screen time hasn't changed in five years.

No. But, Steven, I I I have to write about this. Yeah. I was listening to some podcast. I don't know what one it was, and they just said, like, oh, and this thing happened. And I took out my AirPods and I just yelled at my daughter, you are so busted because we have one child who has been she's been good lately, but we have a child who is very good about at getting her on screen time. It's not hard. It's totally just the honor system whether or not this thing works or not, and now she'll

So this so this update, basically, there is a settings toggle in screen time, but it's on by default when you update to iOS 18 dot five, where if you have a child device and screen time is enabled and you're managing screen time from your account, if they put in the screen time passcode, you'll get a notification on your device that the screen time passcode was used on that named of device. Now there's a lot of things that would be nice to have in this kind of notification, like rather than just say the device name, actually say the iCloud account because a lot of my kids' devices are just like iPad three or just like iPhone two. So that would be nice. It also does not send you a notification if they put it in incorrectly. So if they tried to put in the screen time passcode, but it failed, you don't get a notification.

Steven, do you know how many times I try to go in and, like, set app limits on my kids' phone? And a few hours later, I open Instagram and have to put in my own password because I realized I just set the limits on my own account because it's so confusing

sometimes. Confusing.

But do you know what? This basically so I this is the best feature Apple has done for screen time maybe ever. But do you realize that what this just means is we can't figure out how to make it better, so we're just gonna let you know.

Yeah. I mean, it's still really bad when it comes to sometimes the restrictions just turn off, you know, like with your web restrictions, it's just like, I don't know. You can just access. And again, thankfully, I mean, my kids are like, hey, can access every website ever, just so you know. So yeah. But but at least it's we know Apple has not forgotten about the feature. So that's

They're like, we just can't fix it. Screw it. We'll just tell you when your kids are doing stuff.

Yeah. Exactly. And also Apple announced a couple of other things. We'll talk about the accessibility features in a little bit. But Apple added more information to maps, including Michelin guides and things from the Infatuation and Golf Digest. I never heard of the Infatuation, but apparently that's a thing. But you can look at the Michelin guides right now. It's available just in select cities. So this is not something where it's gonna show you Michelin restaurants in every city, which I

mean There are not Michelin restaurants in every city. That was that was one of the points that I made to Airbnb. I was like, there are no Michelin starred chefs in Michigan. So who's coming to my house to do this dinner for me?

Chance the rapper. Chance the rapper is just doing all the experience.

Gonna bring KitKats over.

Hey. That'd be pretty good.

That's how I had explained to my wife who Chance the rapper was. I had to show her the KitKat ad that he did. Do you remember?

Oh, yeah.

She she doesn't listen to a lot of Chance the Rapper. But as soon as I showed her that Kit Kat I wonder how much he got paid for that because

All the all the money. All the money. All the money. This is, this is what the guide looks like. This is Miami, which is the only city in Florida that has it, but you can, browse Michelin Star restaurants and see it on maps. That's pretty much it.

At least they're doing something like, they're making this product better. And the reason is because there's a very good alternative out there, which is made by Google. Although, to be fair, Apple Maps' overall user interface a hundred billion times better than Google Maps. Because Google Maps, you open it and you're like, I think that there's a map underneath all of these ads, but I can't actually find I

know. I know. And that I posted a anyway. Yeah. I agree. I will say I went through the car wash yesterday and the person was saying, Hey, we're doing a survey and it's a competition. We're trying to like see which attendant gets the most surveys and it would mean a lot if you did it. So I was like, Okay, cool. I'll do it. So what they gave me was a business card with their name on it and a QR code.

Well, and if you think about it, it's because all of these small businesses are our workspace, and so the integrations are already there. Apple has this. Apple has Apple Business Connect. I bet you that 85% of small businesses have no idea that it exists because you can go in. You're you're right. By default, Apple will just show you, like, Yelp photos of

Right.

Stuff, but you don't have to have that. You can go in and upload your own photos as a small business. It's just most small businesses don't know that

There was actually a business that I frequented, and whenever you try to search for it in Apple Maps, it would send you to the wrong place because they weren't listed in Apple Maps. And Google Maps obviously would tell you where they were. And I would tell the owner like, hey. I can help you get on like, this is free. You can just go to this website and you can list your business in Apple Maps, and then people can find you.

They'll be like, okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, we'll do that. Didn't do it for years. I think eventually, I don't know if Apple Maps did it. I don't know what happened, but eventually they got them.

They thought you were trying to sell them something.

Maybe. I'm not trying to sell you anything. We're talk about Google announcing a bunch of Android features, and they also announced something about watchOS, which I feel like shows how right you were about something that you sell.

Yeah. I'm taking my points.

Yeah. You're gonna you're gonna take your point when we get to that. And also, they had a big rebrand, a big redesign. That's a little tongue in cheek. We're gonna talk about that too.

The hall? The hall pass you're

talking about? The hall pass. Yeah. The hall pass. Do you remember that? Did you ever have the wooden thing?

Yeah. Well, I mean

Yeah. I remember that you

I remember, like, they'd just have some weird, like, kitchen spoon thing that you'd be like, here. This is the hall pass. Like, basically, it's like you put a thing, but you have to attach it to something large that no one can steal because it's like if we yeah.

Yes. Exactly. Well, and that's what that's what I feel like when a company gives their employees a device and they say, yeah, use it for all your work stuff, but then it's hamstrung by all the weird IT stuff and lockdowns. It's basically like saying you gotta have this big old wooden hall pass every time you wanna do something. Like, you gotta ask the teacher, give me the block and then I can walk down the hall. I don't know if it's a perfect analogy, but I'm going with it. It's thing.

It's a thing.

It is a thing. It is an analogy. But there's a better way to do that, which is 1Password Extended Access Management. It's the first security solution that it's a solution that brings unmanaged devices, apps, and identities under your control, and it ensures that every user credential is strong and protected. Every device is known and healthy.

Here's what we know. All they're gonna talk about next week is Gemini.

Oh my word. We're gonna have to do a word don't do a drinking game every time they say, Gemini, take a drink because you will die. You'll probably die.

Be over before the event begins. I mean, that that makes sense. I get it. Like, that's especially because Google Gemini is it's out there. Like, it's farther ahead in a lot of ways. Gemini, I think, is what is it? 2.5 is probably the best model for a lot of things right now. And Google's certainly able to do some things that, our friends in Cupertino have not figured out yet.

Our friends in Cupertino. But before we even talk about watchOS nine and the the Android redesign, Google rebranded. It's the G logo.

They didn't rebrand. They just tweaked the logo.

No. No. No. This is a totally different brand. This used to be the old G logo with the hard lines in between each color, and what they did, I think Basic Apple guy said this, they basically selected that layer and turned on the Gaussian blur and blurred the colors together. So now it's kind of a gradient.

Yeah. It's brave. I mean

Courageous.

Well, actually, here's the thing. We've you and I had this conversation recently. I am opposed to companies tweaking their logos because they don't really need to. The only exception I will say to that is and this was actually I was I was thinking about the I don't know if you, if you listen to the ATP member episodes, but they they, s tier

I was listening to the

tier ranked

the game system one.

But they tier ranked a bunch of company logos. Right? And you go back in time and you look at, like, Microsoft's logo, Pepsi's logo, all these different companies' logos, And they do signify different periods of the company. And Google is definitely entering a new period of this company. Right?

It's just pretty. Yeah. So what you're saying is being against rebranding as a whole, Apple should have never rebranded all this.

Hold on, though. There's a difference between a rebrand and changing your logo. Your logo and your brand are

new.

I just wanna be clear about the difference. I I'm I know I'm being very, you know, pedantic about this, but I definitely don't think that was a good logo, the original Apple logo, just to be honest.

Honestly, that Isaac Newton is epic. I mean, not as a logo.

It is a fantastic piece of art. It is a terrible line.

It's art. But they you know, Apple did rebrand because it was originally Apple Computer Inc, and I think it was around 02/2007 or '8, they rebranded to just Apple Inc. But that I mean, I assume you would be okay with that. I mean, that made sense.

But I get I mean, so that was it was they did it when they I think they did it the same day they announced the iPhone. I'm pretty sure. Because it was, I think, was, like, 02/2007 when they changed it to Apple Inc. Because it was like, we're no longer just a computer company. Right? Because they literally

It was January 2007. Yeah. Right.

But again well, whatever. I don't wanna argue about what it means to rebrand. But changing that name from Apple Inc like, a rebrand is when Netflix decided that the mail order DVD things was gonna be called Quickster. Do you remember those days? It did not last very long.

DVDs. I did I did have the DVD.

They changed their mind very quickly, which is a theme we're gonna get to here in a little while. But that's I mean, anyway, whatever. Yeah. I think Apple when Apple changed from Apple Computer to Apple like, that's like when AT and T changed from whatever American Telegraph and Telecommunications, which everyone just abbreviated as AT and T. And now they're like, actually, the name is.

Ma Bell. They should have rebranded as Ma Bell. That would have been that would have been it. So Google did also announce changes to Android, specifically redesign or a new design language, which does feel like this happens every other year where Androids like, we have a new look, fresh new coat of paint. And, you know, it's fine.

Well, and the important thing about the mid material three is it's not just Google's design language for how it presents things. It's sort of its customization layer and how it allows people and I I don't think that we could argue that Google isn't doing a better job with Android of that than Apple. Right? I mean, Apple's like oh, yeah. A %.

I'm just

saying you can't make the, like, it is so far ahead.

You can't put stuff in the middle.

It is so far ahead of that. And so for people who that is important, Android does a very good job of that. I mean, on Apple, it's like you can have three widgets on your lock screen, and they only go here. Like, in whereas Google's like

Right.

YOLO, do what you want. It's fine.

Yeah. And they also allow you to change your font and people make it look horrendous. But but, you know, if you wanna do

that I'm not saying that what people do with it is gonna be good. I'm just suggesting

that they offer

If that's the thing that you care about, that's what this is that's what this is for.

Well, it's even like like icon packs. I I don't know if Google does this with Android proper, like the the vanilla version of Android, But on the Nothing Phone, there's actually an option to just give it an icon pack and then select that icon pack, and it would just change all the icons in one step where I made an elaborate shortcut to try and do that, which is still cumbersome and a pain in the neck. So even in that regard, you know, if you wanna do custom icons on iPhone, it is an hours long process. It really needs to be a labor of love because you really want custom icons. But yeah, yeah, Android does that.

There's a reason Widgetsmith was the most popular app in the universe for a period of time, and it's because finally, you could do things that you could never do before.

It is true. But there was also another thing they announced, is this is a huge point for Jason. Wear OS six, which is Google's wearable operating system, is going to bring Google Gemini AI to the watch. And you've been saying this for a long time.

I mean, I haven't said anything. I didn't even know Google made a watch, but I have been saying No. No.

But that

the watch it's not true. I did know that Google made a watch. But that the watch is the device. That's where these things if you're gonna talk to a device that you're wearing, you don't need a pin. You don't need a rabbit that goes in your pocket or whatever. Like, just the watch. Just make it the watch. And I app I think the don't you think the, like, the Apple Watch series 10 and the Ultra two should be capable of doing?

It it definitely should be. I mean, it feels plenty fast. Even if it is just communicating with your phone, which it was saying in this in the verge article, your the watch does need WiFi or LTE. Like, is not using some on device model.

No. Yeah. But but most people's watches are either connected to their phone or connected to the Internet. We've solved that problem. Like, make it so that I can chat at my wrist. I don't even have my watch on. That's really weird. Anyway, talk to my wrist and have it do its thing.

Yeah. Which did you know actually saw I'm gonna do a video on this. Did you know for setting a timer, if you have the raise to speak enabled on your Apple Watch, you can literally just say a time, and it will set a timer for that time. You don't have to say set a timer. Did you

know that? I believe that that's true, but I just no. I did not know that.

Five minutes. All I did was say five minutes. Look at that. All I did was say five minutes to my Apple Watch, and it started a five minute timer. I didn't know you could do that. And do you

know what Apple does better than Google in this regard? That when you say set a timer for a blank amount of time, if once it figures it out, it takes it a couple seconds, but it starts the timer based on when you told it to do it. Whereas if you set a timer on a Google device, you're like, hey, Google, set a timer for five minutes.

Oh, I can drop a marker to mute that. Or maybe not. Maybe I'll just let everybody's Google just set timer.

So now it's telling me I'm going to set a timer for five minutes, and now the timer has started. And now it's like, now everything's boiled over. Like,

this is not useful.

This is not useful. But I anyway, I but, like, it can't be so Apple's already doing this. If you pick up your phone and you're like, ask chat GPT what the weather's gonna be like tomorrow, my phone isn't doing anything. It's already sending it to the cloud anyway. So, like, why can't my watch do that?

Yeah. That would be that would yeah. That'd be nice. I'm up for it. I'm up for it. One other android y thing before I wanna talk about the iOS 19 accessibility features, these Samsung Galaxy s 25 Edge is out there in the wild. I'll link to MKBHD's video. He didn't call it a full review. He was just kinda talking about first impressions because it looks like they just got it. But Samsung is first to the thin phone revolution, I guess, and we're expecting to see iPhone 17 Air soon as well.

I feel like we're now entering our skinny jeans phase of phones. So does that mean we eventually end up with really baggy, you know, high waisted? I'm just saying, like, the mom don't are we gonna go to mom jeans event like, the phone?

No. We're go to bell bottoms. We're just the bottom of phones. They're super wide.

I think so. Or maybe reverse the phone. Skinny jeans came after bell bottoms. I'm just I'm just saying.

Everything goes for full circle.

You could always say weird that

Why is why is your why is your speaker still listening to you? Was that a HomePod or your

I think it was a HomePod. I don't even know what was talking to me.

Jason's Jason's assistants are becoming sensitive. Cool. Gonna be they're gonna get they're gonna tag. So anyway, it's out there. We'll see what actual full reviews say about it. But the thin phone the thin phones are here.

We want I

don't I don't think I want them.

Are you buying a thin phone next year? This year?

I mean, gonna buy one to make a video, but it's probably not gonna be the one I use as my full time phone. I'm still on the fence. I don't know if I'm gonna go pro or pro max this year. I don't know because

You have a pro max now. Right?

I have a pro max right now. Very large. But better battery life. Also, of all I make all the videos, the screen's bigger anyway. We'll see. We'll see. Speaking of things that everybody gets though for their next iPhone. IOS 19 in the last I think it's been the last three or four years Apple has done because World Accessibility Day is May 15. Actually today, I think, as we're recording. Yep.

I did not.

So personal voice is one of the best Apple videos, I think, that happened recently where, you know, if you if someone was losing the ability to speak, they could train the iPhone to then, do text to voice in your voice, and it's supposed to sound like you. Now personal voice to train it previously, you had to read 150 statements, and it did not sound very good. Like, it did not sound like me. And I have an Eleven Labs professional voice trained on my recordings, and then I did the personal voice on iPhone. The iPhone version doesn't sound anything like me, especially compared to Eleven Labs.

That's very anticompetitive of

That's alright. I'm I'm down for the competition. Go ahead, Apple. Let's let's bring it on. Bring on whatever shortcuts you wanna make. So that's cool. And then now, also, did you see the the sound therapy stuff that came out?

I'm I yes. I didn't have a lot of time to dig into it, but I it was interesting that this came out at a time related to when I went to that listening party thing because a large part of that was this partnership that he he did with Chromasonic, which I don't exactly know what Chromasonic is except for that we went into this room and there was music playing and there was all of this light. And the frequencies of the music changed the lighting, and then the lighting also changed the music. Like, there was this and so it was, like, this twenty minute experience that was designed to help you, like, relax or whatever based on all this. And so I'm like, oh, I know exactly what otherwise, I would have read this and I would have like, I have no idea what they're talking about.

And it's it's kind of like remixes of some songs, but then it's basically just Apple Music playlist. Like, you could just add these playlist to your Apple Music and try it So curious to if anybody's done that. I don't know. Have ever tried the Endel app?

No.

Endel is like this supposedly an app that tries to predict what kind of atmospheric music will help you focus or give you energy. I've done it a couple times. Like, it's interesting, but, yeah, so sound therapy. Every time

I put on music to help me focus, it just makes me tired.

What are you what are you putting on? Sabrina Carpenter?

That does not make me tired. No, I'm just saying like, I, cause the music that I'm weird cause I I'm just, that's just a true statement period. But like, I just would rather listen to normal music to help me focus because it just hurts me. Like, but if I, if I'm gonna, I think what happens is if I'm listening to something that someone else thinks should help me focus, now I'm thinking more about the music. And then it makes

me like helping me focus.

But it's like, this is not what I would normally be listening to. So it's different and it's weird. And now I just wanna go to sleep.

Okay. Alright. That's, yeah.

We should

move on. Yeah. We'll move on. VisionOS three, there's some rumors coming out. There's a there's a ton of rumors coming out about, like, the iPhone 18 and the iPhone 19.

Wasn't the headline like, 2027 is gonna be a real big year for Apple? Yes.

Yes. That is literally it. What? That's two two years from now. Are are what what is that? Why do we have this infla is it just, like, there's not enough Apple news right now and so people are talking about 2020? I don't know.

I feel like I can't I I can't really put my mind on why someone would leak that information unless it's to be intentional on Apple's behalf. Because it's like you could see a scenario where the some executive is like, we need the world to know that we're still doing some things over here even though we're in the middle of getting, like, sued or we're gonna lose search. We're gonna lose 20,000,000,000 from search. We're gonna use $10,000,000,000 from the app store because of all this stuff that's happening. But 2027, it's gonna be a real big year.

Two years. I don't know. It it just feels like we have a timeline inflation. I don't know. But, okay. Well, Vision OS three, supposedly, this is a rumor. It's going to let you scroll using just your eyes. So rather than having to, you know, do the pinch and swipe up and then floating in the air, you can just just scroll by looking, I guess.

I don't know if I like that because my eyes need to move around the screen in order to consume what's on it, but I don't necessarily want the screen to move. Like, this just makes me feel like I'm gonna throw up.

Maybe it's just like maybe it's like a half squint. You know what I mean? Like, you open you you look with your whole eyeballs, and that just you look around and then you squint halfway and then you can that seems

like It's gonna be really good in allergy season.

It's yeah. I still think I don't know if you said this or someone, but, like, it it is weird how in the VisionPRO, your eyes, which are typically a strictly input device, now become a output device and controller. And it's it's it can be a little weird. It can be a little weird. Alright.

Included their little I should've I'll add a

Little screenshot. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's But, yeah, super cool.

Ridiculous. Every single time you wanna do a search and it's like, would you like to continue this in the Google app? And then the button says continue, which is selected, or stay in browser. So if you just click continue, what you think you should be doing is, like, just don't do anything different. Just let me make my search and do my thing.

That is true. I I'm a little tired of Google search, I'll be honest. And last week we talked about what if an AI was an option as a default search engine. And I feel like and when I search in just the Safari address bar on my phone, I'm getting Google's AI overview 90% of the time anyway. And I feel like if I could change that to, like, ChatGPT web search, I might switch now because I'm like, I'm already getting AI results.

Yes. Well Okay. I use ChatGPT. So here's the thing. I wish there was a way for me to go and, like because in ChatGPT, I can see exactly how often I'm using it. Because there's just a list of all of the things I used it for. Right? So I can basically I wish they were time stamped, but I can basically figure out how often I'm using it. And for almost everything, I'm now just using ChatGPT. Not I don't even I'm just going to the app.

Right. Right.

Right. Least now I knew what I was looking for. Right?

Yeah. Exactly.

Exactly. I mean, like, ChatGBT, just from a photo that said what how did it know, Steven? If I sent a photo of something and it could tell I mean, some of those labels are not exactly like, that doesn't matter, though. Like, it did the thing, and it took my photo, and it knew instantly, like, yeah. Looks like your little that that long screw thing or that long spring thing right there. It's like it looks like that's engaged. I'm like, how does it know?

I I will say the rotate clockwise, the arrow, I think, is backwards, but

It is.

It is.

There's plenty of things that are not exactly correct. But

But if it gets you but if it gets you 90% of the way there, you know, even knowing what to search or the term that you need, you know, it's it comes a long

way. But if I can take a photo of something that's not working and just say, why is what is wrong with this? And it can actually look at the photo, and it knows what it is, and it can tell that there's a problem. I didn't say the chain won't work. I didn't say this is a chainsaw that I took the cover off of. I just said, what is wrong with this?

That's listen. That's wild. I'll give you that. Alright. Last thing before we talk about my m four max studio. There was a company that did rebrand again, HBO, which is a part of Warner Brothers Discovery. It's now it's it's back to HBO Max.

The streaming service. They've changed the name. Know, this HBO was originally HBO, and then it was HBO Go, and then it was HBO Now. And then they made it they combined them all, they made them make it to be on Max, but they kept the HBO Go app around for a while.

Yep. And then they just

they just made it all Max when they merged with Discovery. And, because they thought that HBO would be not a good name to have in an app where they also had, like, you know, whatever Discovery has kind of stuff. Is is it HGTV and all that kind of stuff they didn't wanna Yeah.

Stuff like that. Stuff like that.

And then they were like, actually, HBO was the most valuable brand that we had. We should put it in the name of everything, please.

So silly. I saw a couple of people online being like, did HBO just do this for the Internet memes? And I'm I'm almost inclined to believe that theory. Like, maybe this was the best marketing move ever because all everybody's doing is talking about HBO and Max, but also it's just really kinda really.

It's pretty bad. It's pretty bad. My thing was like, this is the smartest thing that they've ever done. It's real bad if the smartest thing you ever did is just reversing the stupidest thing you've ever done.

Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. Alright. So now it's it's back to HBO Max. Yeah. I think I think they should really just go full circle and just call it HBO. I don't understand

why mean, there is more, though. Like, that would be like like, Disney plus is not just Disney. You've got ESPN stuff in there. You got Hulu stuff.

Got Marvel. HBO Plus. HBO Plus.

Everybody else has they didn't do HBO Plus is because everybody else's streaming service is Plus. I actually think that the Max is like, that part is fine. Meaning, adding that as the adjective.

Sure.

It was when they it's like, you have a name of a brand, and then you add an adjective to it to signify that this is, like, the better version or whatever.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And they just took away the brand and just left the adjective, and it's like, what is Max? What? It's just it's the

most things.

It's the most of what?

Yeah. We don't know. The the the pro max. That's true. HBO pro max.

Plus. Pro max plus.

HBO Max Mac Ultra. Anyway, speaking of maxes and ultras, I'm coming I've been recording this entire episode on my new brand spanking new Mac Studio, m four Max Max Studio. It's gonna be funny. I'm gonna make this video. You'll hear about it here first because I'm gonna make a video about this versus my m one Max Max Studio, but I'm gonna hold up the m one Max at the interview.

Steven, also, can I just say a thing? I want you to talk about this. I just wanna tell our listeners, you should not buy a brand new computer and then do a podcast. It's not a good idea.

I've been I just no. No. No. I wouldn't have done it, but it came in Tuesday. So I had a whole day okay. Listen. Let me listen. Here's how it happened. K? I got it on Tuesday. I was on the fence. Migration assistant are set up from scratch. And I I was very close to doing migration assistant. Then I started looking at my applications folder. And I said, a, I have all these Adobe apps installed that I haven't used in a year or two years.

I heard.

Even the m one chips are still very good. So I started doing side by side tests. I did exports in compressor of, like, my videos. I did transcriptions using transcriptionists and seeing how long those took. It is definitely faster.

lot of thoughts. But the first thing I will say, if you want a good test, and I just did this recently. So I downloaded, while I was in Miami, the Berkshire half Berkshire Hathaway had their annual meeting. And I watched part of it, I was thinking about writing about something, and I wanted to know what they might have said about a couple things. And much easier than searching through every article on the Internet to find out if they happen to include a quote about this particular topic.

It's yeah. I mean, it's literally saving me two to three minutes, but there my process, I will typically be exporting a video in Compressor and transcribing the audio and also making my thumbnail in Pixelmator. Like, I'm doing all of that simultaneously. When I do that on my m four Air, it it chokes. Like, it does start actually, like, getting unusable.

And so Because the three is a lower number. That's the reason.

Honestly, yes. Yes. That but also, I even again, from my workflows, I knew that the m three ultra was I mean, what I have now is overkill, the m three ultra would be even more overkill.

And what you had last week was was maybe not overkill, but was plenty.

Yeah. What I had last week was good. But I never have to think about RAM or SSD space again. So I don't know. It's it's it's fun to have. It's it's hey. It's just gonna sit here as another block of aluminum. And, yeah, there you go. And ports. I have to say, Mac Studio ports, undefeated. I use every I use every port, and it's wonderful. Every single one.

Now I just wanna say for our listeners, you should not do what Steven did. And I don't mean buy all the RAM and the SSD. I'm just gonna say for for most people, migration assistant is the way to go because it does put everything the way you need. And, you know, it does not take very long to migration assistant. I think you could have done migration assistant and deleted everything from Adobe, and and it would have still taken you less time because it's real

fast to do that. But I just don't try I don't trust the like, I have Hazel looking all through all the files to see if anything else was installed. I just don't

I just know. Is going to do if some little tiny Craig thing of a kid stuck in a, so what? What's it gonna do?

I don't want it in there. I just don't want it in there. Let me know in the community. Let me know on social media. If you identify with my desire to not I just don't want it in there.

That's fair. I'm saying the trade off is we go to record a podcast and it's like, oh, shoot. Now I can't share my screen without restarting.

That have been case even

critical thing.

I feel like that would have been the case either way. I feel like I would have to give it permissions. But I did I did do the thing where I had my old Mac Studio on a display over here with the preference the system settings, And I was literally going pain by pain just to make sure all the settings matched, like mouse tracking speed, vice screensaver, time out settings, all that kind

of stuff. That's amazing.

Anyway, it's enjoyable. I'm gonna do a video on it, so, that'll be on my personal YouTube. But we're gonna go talk about bonus content. I wanna talk about microphone that I bought and already returned. See, I don't keep everything. I have returned some things, especially when I don't need them. And then I

think just microphones. So far in my experience, the only thing you get and then return are microphone.

I've returned some chargers that I've used in a video and not no. I do have more. Have more chargers here. I got these were sent to me though. I got this Anker one that's like also has a nightlight.