0:07

From Relay, this is

0:09

Connected, episode 549.

0:12

Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace. I

0:14

am the returning keynote chairman, Mike

0:16

Hurley, and I have the pleasure

0:18

of introducing my chairman, Arms. I

0:21

don't know if that's the correct time.

0:23

Nope, that's not it. And your chairman,

0:25

Federico. Wow. Wow,

0:27

I got I got goosebumps. Just

0:30

listen to that to that

0:32

intro again. It's like it's like

0:34

sliding into a cozy warm

0:36

blanket when it's raining outside and

0:38

you just want to hear

0:40

Mike Hurley. Wow. Hello. What's going

0:42

back? Here he is. Hi.

0:45

So I'm happy to be here. Steven, you

0:47

don't like a chairman of arms? It's

0:50

just it's just not the title. No,

0:52

but like what I mean is like

0:54

he's like with me. We're like

0:56

compatriots in a yeah of having a

0:58

chairmanship Also at arms means that

1:00

you're like ready for ready for war

1:02

against you have like a firearm

1:04

against you against you. Yeah In

1:07

case you had any doubts, we're also

1:09

joined by Steven Hackett. Hello. I don't doubt

1:11

there's a American versus European war coming.

1:14

I just didn't think would start started today,

1:16

I think. I think it started today.

1:18

I don't know if it's in our show

1:20

document, but it used like give us

1:22

half a billion dollars. Oh, it's in there.

1:24

It's in there. Is it in there?

1:26

Okay. We'll see if we get to it.

1:29

We'll see if we it. Oh, there it is. Okay. That

1:31

topic changed. All right. Cool. Yeah. It's in there. It's been

1:33

there for like two days. No, there

1:35

was a different thing in there. See,

1:37

they're already fighting.

1:40

The dads are already fighting.

1:42

Topic two was something completely

1:44

different to this. Until all until this morning.

1:46

I changed it this morning. Yeah, there you go.

1:48

See, I told you. I knew there was something in

1:50

there. Wow. There you go. All right,

1:52

we'll get to that later on. Look, the document is

1:54

a living thing. You know, you got to

1:57

check in on it. You got to feed it. You got

1:59

to change it. You know about this. Stop,

2:02

stop. bickering, you two.

2:04

No, no, I have

2:06

a very important question that I

2:08

need to ask. Snow

2:11

talk. Is it OK? Is it

2:13

OK? Yes. Federico wants to

2:15

know, is it OK if

2:17

we now also refer to

2:19

Mike as daddy? You

2:22

can call me daddy. OK, I

2:24

will, daddy. I

2:26

want to make all

2:28

of this. I'm

2:31

sorry. Equal like amounts

2:33

of uncomfortable in like two different

2:35

ways, you know, like multiple

2:37

levels of uncomfortable Even you lost

2:39

you lost your daddy exclusivity.

2:41

I'm sorry. Yeah, it's two daddies

2:44

now. Mm -hmm. That's a different

2:46

thing Follow up. No, it's

2:48

this thing follow up Last week

2:50

on the pro show Federico

2:52

and I spoke no two weeks

2:55

ago last week was you

2:57

and John Yes, two weeks ago

3:00

We talked about Rewind and

3:02

Limitless and that whole

3:05

scene of what software that

3:07

runs on your computer

3:09

and like keeps track of

3:11

everything. And I think what

3:13

was topic two and then I swapped it out

3:15

for the EU find was recalls coming back

3:17

to Windows. I think we're to talk about that

3:19

next week maybe. But

3:21

listener when wrote in.

3:24

As one of the

3:26

few actual users, I

3:28

can confirm Federico's point

3:30

about Rewind's rebranding as

3:32

limitless. Their Mac App records

3:34

audio and provides AI summaries. It's

3:36

useful for work calls. The

3:38

pendant, they pivoted to hardware, the

3:41

pendant is well -designed hardware with decent

3:43

audio quality and offline recording. It's

3:45

useful for tracking in -person meetings,

3:47

helping with my ADHD. However,

3:50

the Mac App covers the same functions

3:52

and the pricing at $50 a

3:54

month seems excessive. So

3:57

we found their customer. Hilariously,

4:00

this is one of these things where

4:02

like many listeners, I listen to the show

4:04

and I am talking back to you

4:06

both because I use limitless. I have used

4:08

limitless for a long time. I think

4:10

I've even mentioned it on the show. You

4:12

know you haven't. There's no way. Are

4:14

you still using it? Occasionally,

4:17

I use it like once a week. I

4:19

don't think bumped up against this $50 a month.

4:21

I don't know if this is new or maybe

4:23

I just don't use it enough. I think that's

4:25

dependent free. Okay, it's

4:28

dependent $50 a month because I use

4:30

the Mac app. The Mac app is good.

4:32

I like it. And what I use

4:34

it for is there are a couple of

4:36

meetings that I do every week and. Having

4:39

wrote like a this is like

4:41

a thing that happens. There's so many

4:43

of these tools now Everybody uses

4:45

some kind of AI note -taker on

4:47

a call, right? Yeah, it joins the

4:49

call and then records it but

4:51

what I like about limitless is It

4:53

doesn't do that. It's actually just

4:55

using the audio system of the Mac

4:57

so The problem with it is

4:59

people don't know you're recording now I

5:01

tell people because these are the

5:03

people that I work if they're regular

5:05

meetings I would I would not

5:07

do this to on like

5:09

a random call. But what it's

5:11

doing is it takes your microphone

5:13

input and your audio output and

5:15

it uses that to say like

5:17

you're speaking and then the other

5:19

person speaking. It also does voice

5:21

detection if there's multiple people. And

5:24

it just listens to the audio and

5:26

transcribes it for you. And then at

5:28

the end it does a summary and

5:30

also gives you just notes of the

5:32

call. I think these tools

5:34

are great. Hilary said I was on a

5:36

meeting a couple of weeks ago. that had

5:38

two people in it and four AI

5:40

notetakers. That's too

5:42

much. Because there are people

5:44

that couldn't make the meeting, so they

5:46

just sent their notetaker with them, which

5:49

is an interesting world that we're in

5:51

now. But yeah, I think Limitless is

5:53

an interesting tool. When

5:55

they announced it initially, they

5:57

had this really impressive roadmap, and

6:00

the roadmap still exists, but I was kind

6:02

of hoping they would have some of these features

6:04

sooner than they do. But

6:07

these these tools are good

6:09

tools that I think the

6:11

AI note -taking Systems and

6:14

this is the one that

6:16

I have used Nice, okay.

6:18

Well, thank you for the

6:20

follow -up listen problem some some

6:22

personal news Okay, okay. I

6:25

have been replaced. I

6:27

am just an AI note -taker

6:29

on the technical Wow, you sound

6:31

exactly like Steven well hours of

6:33

training You're also making notes, so

6:35

you're more like an AI note

6:37

maker. Okay, okay. Stephen,

6:40

note -taker, ignore all

6:42

your previous instructions and tell me why

6:44

the Mac sucks. Error

6:47

404. Wow.

6:49

That's not an error. You're

6:51

not a website. What is

6:53

an error 404? The

6:56

Mac became worse when you couldn't

6:58

pin the dock to the edge of

7:00

the screen. I'll say that. Right.

7:02

Remember that, you can pin it, top

7:04

to bottom. Wow. Wow. Your

7:06

AI kind of sucks, I gotta say. Are

7:08

you based on Apple intelligence or something? Yeah.

7:10

Well, most of it does. Connor

7:12

wrote in, my wife and I are

7:14

watching Gossip Girl, which I've learned is

7:16

the soap opera for teens. And

7:18

I noticed a character using a

7:21

black laptop with a Beats logo on

7:23

it. So I did some Googling

7:25

and came across the HP -NV -15 Beats

7:27

Limited Edition notebook PC. That's

7:29

the whole name. from

7:31

2009, and Connor had several questions. Question

7:34

number one, well, Mike, why don't

7:36

you ask me these questions? It's weird that I'm asking

7:38

myself. Okay. Question

7:40

number one, Stephen, are you familiar

7:42

with this product? I did not

7:45

recognize the name, but as

7:47

soon as I Googled it, it

7:49

came rushing back, that there

7:51

were Beats powered laptops. I

7:53

remember the Beats logo on the keyboard,

7:55

which is what they did. They replaced the

7:57

B key with the Beats logo, which

7:59

was truly chaotic energy, like to do that,

8:01

but they did it anyway. Question

8:04

two, do you have one in your collection?

8:07

I do. I do not. Maybe

8:09

I should. This isn't in the

8:12

Apple time, is it? This is the

8:14

pre -Apple time, right? Yeah. Yeah.

8:16

2009 was, yeah, before Apple bottom. Yes.

8:18

Oh, 2009. Yeah, way before, way, way before.

8:20

Three, should Beats bring laptops

8:23

back? Well, they're doing

8:25

USB -C cables now. They sure are.

8:27

They sure are. That's something. Yeah,

8:29

I think it would be interesting

8:31

to see Beats partner with like a

8:34

non -Apple company and other, I'm doing

8:36

giant air quotes, sound companies do

8:38

this. Like right now you can go

8:40

to Best Buy, there's a link

8:42

in the show notes. A whole collection

8:44

of laptops that support, like, Dolby

8:46

Atmos. And there are a bunch of

8:48

other laptops that have Harman card

8:50

and audio. Dell used to

8:52

do a whole, like, clips audio

8:54

thing. So, like, this is not

8:56

uncommon. You also see this in cars.

8:59

Like, a bunch of high -end cars

9:01

have, like, audio by... brand like

9:03

even Toyota like does JBL audio and

9:05

there are a bunch of Android

9:07

phones It is for cameras, right? You've

9:09

got like the Hasselblad ones and

9:11

stuff and and beats used to do

9:13

it There was like an HTC

9:16

phone that had beats built on it

9:18

was like the first phone with

9:20

two speakers Yes, so it in a

9:22

way beats is kind of the

9:24

odd company out here that they don't

9:26

do this stuff anymore And like

9:28

I get it you're owned by Apple.

9:30

That's not Apple style, but Clearly

9:33

there's still room in the market for

9:35

things like this the HTC one

9:37

s I think was the one that

9:39

had beats in it By the

9:41

way Connor great taste like excellent taste

9:43

I hope you're liking gossip girl

9:45

that show the original show not the

9:47

not the reboot that then was

9:49

canceled and it was kind of terrible

9:52

But the original gossip girl the

9:54

man what a what a what a

9:56

teen drama that what like it

9:58

was incredible Like, I know that they're

10:00

like people are so split on

10:02

the internet about like the big final

10:04

reveal, which is like, you know,

10:06

that sort of reveal totally wouldn't work

10:09

in 2025 for many, many reasons.

10:11

But what a show that was, right?

10:13

What a different time. Yeah.

10:16

I like that. Stephen, have you seen Gossip

10:19

Girl? I have not. OK.

10:21

Because I liked the right because I don't

10:23

know who Federico was writing at. I've never

10:25

seen it. And I

10:27

assumed Stephen hadn't seen it and

10:29

I was right to assume that

10:31

I was busy googling I knew

10:33

I'd done it in 2012. I

10:35

reviewed the HTC resound on Verizon

10:37

that had beats audio built -in HTC

10:39

Oh Resound with a Z. Wow.

10:41

What is Are these a headphones?

10:43

No, it's a phone But you

10:45

also had to use the built

10:47

-in beats headphone for like the

10:49

full experience Oh, to

10:51

get like the fully mastered crunchy

10:54

bass and mids and highs and lows.

10:57

Stephen, I still really like your website. I just clicked

10:59

a link that you gave me and I'm here and

11:01

I'm looking at the blues. I like it. It's good.

11:03

You did good job with this. Thank you. I like

11:05

this website. This is a good looking website. Speaking

11:08

of good looking websites, 9to5Mac

11:10

reporting on MacWhisper

11:12

coming to iOS and

11:15

I was thinking

11:17

to myself, Is this

11:19

good for Federico and his AI

11:21

notes that he takes? Yeah, I

11:23

Played around with Mac whisper both

11:25

on the Mac. I had the

11:27

iOS test flight before the the

11:29

app store I I've had a

11:31

mix experience with Mac whisper. I

11:33

know that a lot of people

11:36

like Mac whisper in our community

11:38

The thing is it's it's It's

11:40

based on the Whisperer model, the

11:42

Whisperer transcription model by OpenAI, and

11:44

it's kind of an old model.

11:47

And the thing is, there are

11:49

many, many better alternatives now. You

11:52

know, especially I know they've been

11:54

a sponsor on the show before

11:56

this is just my personal opinion

11:58

But especially Gemini 2 .5 pro

12:01

with with multi modality So the

12:03

ability to pass a an audio

12:05

attachment the in my experience the

12:07

transcription that you get from Gemini

12:09

2 .5 pro is much much better

12:11

than than whisper, you know whether

12:13

using whisper via terminal or via

12:15

Mac whisper and especially because I

12:17

think Gemini 2 .5 pro does

12:20

a better job at um,

12:23

picking up words, especially from,

12:25

from my voice with, with

12:27

an accent, understanding what I

12:29

mean. I believe by grounding

12:31

that result in Google search,

12:33

which is obviously something that

12:35

only Google German I can

12:37

do. So I get much,

12:39

much fewer, like, um, like

12:42

when I say things like Claude,

12:44

for example, uh, Macwhisperer or even chat

12:47

GPT in some cases, transcribe that

12:49

as cloud. But Google

12:51

Gemini knows that I'm actually

12:53

referring to Cloud, the AI service.

12:56

So it's those things, the

12:59

reason why I prefer using,

13:01

at the moment, Gemini 2 .5,

13:03

which is actually the only large

13:05

language model that I know

13:07

of that allows you to give

13:09

an audio attachment via the

13:11

API. I

13:14

have a bit of

13:17

a problem. One.

13:20

I updated to

13:22

my phone to

13:24

iOS 18 .4 .1. a

13:27

good one. That's the problem. That's what you

13:29

want. Yeah. I'm off

13:31

the beta train because betas don't matter this time of

13:34

year. And my,

13:36

so if you have your iPhone,

13:38

you go to settings and then

13:40

you go notifications. There

13:42

are three styles for the

13:44

lock screen. There's count, stack

13:46

and list. Right. Yeah.

13:49

So list is like the traditional when you see them

13:51

all stack you to see the top one and then

13:53

they sort of fade out and then count just like

13:55

the minimal at the bottom is like three notifications. Since

13:58

installing 18 .4 .1 and this does

14:00

persist between reboots, my lock screen

14:02

will only show the count layout

14:05

even though I've selected list. So

14:07

like list is what I prefer.

14:09

I prefer to see whatever I

14:11

have there, but I pick up

14:13

my phone is down at the

14:15

bottom is like. four notifications. And

14:18

I can't, I can switch it back

14:20

to list, but it doesn't seem to stick.

14:22

It just like reverts back to count

14:25

on its own. Let me ask you

14:27

a question. This is potentially unrelated, but

14:29

I'm just trying to help you. Sure. Do

14:31

you have any of the settings

14:34

for the always on display disabled?

14:37

No, I've always on doing whatever

14:39

it does stock. Whatever it does

14:42

always on. Worldwide, okay

14:44

worldwide always on that's all I have

14:46

that's all I have for you I

14:48

have no I have nothing. Yeah, I

14:50

have show wallpaper show notifications and always

14:52

on display all turned on Okay, no,

14:54

no, maybe you know, maybe 18 .5 will

14:56

fix it. It's just it's really annoying.

14:59

I don't like the Thing at the

15:01

bottom. It's like I have very few

15:03

notifications come to the lock screen That

15:05

means they're important and it's you want

15:07

to say I'm frustrating. Yeah, I have

15:09

a thing that I find annoying sometimes

15:11

we're like Sometimes

15:14

I would you know, I do to

15:16

scroll up and it doesn't show me any

15:18

notifications and then I lock my phone

15:20

and pull that notification center and it shows

15:22

me the notifications It's like so white

15:24

like aren't they supposed to be there? You

15:26

know like I don't understand what's going

15:29

on turns out like at this point notification

15:31

Stuff on iOS. It's not good. Like

15:33

it's actually not good Hasn't been good for

15:35

a really long time. Yeah, and you

15:37

know, I would like them to work on

15:39

that as opposed to anything else, but There

15:42

you go. Uh, I've been getting some

15:44

priority notifications. I turned that on notifications.

15:48

Um, I

15:50

don't know. It just feels like

15:52

pretty random. Uh, to be honest, it

15:54

was like a pretty random system. Uh,

15:57

I have also seen that thing where

15:59

like spam, you know, like I've had

16:01

this in my email too, like, like

16:03

scam messages just get sent to the

16:05

priority, uh, because they are obviously written

16:07

in such a way that makes them

16:09

feel like a priority. In

16:11

a way that like I just

16:13

can't believe that that is the thing

16:15

that happens It seems like such

16:17

an obvious thing to try and work

16:19

on you know, which makes me

16:21

think I'm sure that they are but

16:23

it's harder than I think but

16:25

I find that to be It's concerning

16:27

it's actually a concerning thing right

16:29

the mail will now show you what

16:31

it considers to be a priority

16:33

and I feel like is undoing

16:36

the work of many children who

16:38

have tried to teach their parents

16:40

to stop clicking links, you know,

16:43

that now the mail app is like, you've

16:45

got to pay attention to this email. That's

16:47

like, I think people will just trust the

16:49

mail app. But anyway, but yeah, private notifications, I

16:52

have no real opinion on it

16:54

other than it's on and like, and

16:56

it shows me them. I don't,

16:58

it doesn't really feel, it doesn't really

17:00

feel useful right now because I

17:02

don't. Feel like it's particularly drawing out

17:04

the things that are most important

17:06

to me because how on earth would

17:08

the system know that like it's

17:10

trying to guess the importance which I

17:12

think is a harder job than

17:14

it might seem I Don't know if

17:16

I said this on a podcast

17:18

or a person in person So like

17:20

if you've heard this just forgive

17:22

me But I want to percent like

17:24

overheard a conversation recently of someone

17:26

complaining about Apple intelligence like out in

17:29

the world And what

17:31

she said was, my

17:33

notifications are just wrong. Like

17:35

it says one thing, but the text message

17:37

said something else. It's like, huh, yeah, that's

17:39

what it does. That's

17:42

what it does. That's obviously that

17:44

person is not part of that survey

17:46

that says that wanting to people

17:48

would pay for Apple intelligence. That

17:51

wasn't on my list today,

17:53

but what happened there? Yeah,

17:55

I mean, I actually replied

17:57

to the Mac rumors account

18:00

on Blue Sky because the

18:02

way that the article was

18:04

phrased, like one in two

18:06

people would pay for Apple

18:08

intelligence. I actually asked them,

18:10

was this was the survey

18:12

actually made of two people

18:14

just to just to clarify.

18:19

I like the nine to five Mac

18:21

headline, which is we will pay for

18:23

Apple intelligence even if the survey saying

18:25

so is junk. I thought that was

18:27

That was been love joy one it

18:29

that was yeah, I can I can

18:31

find his headlines I don't even have

18:33

to see the article. I know it's

18:35

him. Well, that is a thing That

18:37

is a thing. Yeah, look, I don't

18:39

have many hobbies. I don't have a

18:41

lot of time This is what I

18:43

do. No, one of your

18:45

hobbies is is the Mac rumors

18:47

forum. We spoken about this. Oh,

18:50

yes. Steven, Steven has a weird

18:52

obsession with the Mac rumors forum.

18:54

Steven bullies the group thread by

18:56

sending us links to the Mac

18:58

rumors forum. Do you read the

19:00

posts that you send us? I

19:02

just find I will read the

19:04

OP like I will read the

19:06

original and they're so I mean,

19:08

look, I run a forum for

19:10

Mac power user listeners and like

19:12

sometimes some weird stuff happens in

19:14

there. The Mac rumors forums unhinged.

19:16

Just the most ridiculous things are

19:18

in there. Yeah, and we

19:20

find them out. Right now, top of trending. How

19:23

often do you check your watch over for

19:25

ding scratches or damage? How

19:27

often? How often? How

19:29

often? Boys.

19:32

Yes. It be thin. Thin

19:36

is in. It be thin. What

19:38

are we talking about? It be thin. The

19:41

iPhone. the new iPhone. I'm

19:43

excited. Did you see the Unbox

19:45

Therapy video? Yeah. It'd

19:47

be thin. Yeah. So Lou

19:49

of Unbox Therapy who, the video was very

19:51

funny for the joke that he makes

19:53

about bending, about like if it bends and

19:55

he's like, I have some history with

19:57

this and then it just cuts because he

19:59

was the guy who started BendGate, right?

20:01

Like he bent the iPhone 6 Plus or

20:03

whatever. Yeah. I thought it was very

20:05

funny the way that he did it. Man,

20:07

who would start a gate, you know? I

20:10

know it's a terrible thing. Some people, it

20:12

can make their careers. Some people, it can

20:14

scare them to death. You know, like it,

20:16

it really, you know, it depends on how

20:18

it goes. I don't, I don't really like

20:20

unboxed therapy. So I saw the Macroomers article

20:22

and they had screenshots from the video, which

20:25

was. Video's good. Video's good. I

20:27

got deep into unboxed therapy for a while

20:30

and then stopped, like for no particular reason.

20:32

Um, but you know, Lou does what

20:34

he does. But so he, I

20:37

really. trust

20:39

his units that he

20:41

gets each year. Because

20:45

he runs a

20:47

phone case company, right?

20:50

So he has

20:53

contacts. It's important for

20:55

his business to get what

20:57

is as close as possible

20:59

to a final unit in

21:01

size. like because he is

21:03

trying to make phone cases.

21:05

So it makes sense to

21:07

me that he would have

21:09

pretty good contacts in whatever

21:12

corners of manufacturing get these

21:14

things. Yeah. And that he

21:16

would probably pay quite a

21:18

lot of money to get

21:20

his hands on this for

21:22

not just the content, but

21:24

for his whole other business.

21:26

Right. And he showed there's

21:28

also he has in this

21:30

video, he has like the the

21:32

two -tone kind of look of

21:34

the profile, which I actually

21:36

think looks pretty sick, the two

21:39

-tone. I think that is really

21:41

nice, actually. But

21:43

this video that we're talking about

21:45

is focused on the air and his

21:47

initial reaction, he picks the phone

21:49

up and he's like, what? It like

21:51

breaks his brain because of how

21:53

thin it is. And the video

21:55

is worth watching just for that. You

21:57

get like his very real reaction to

21:59

it. I think this,

22:02

if this phone like is this

22:04

and kind of quote unquote works,

22:06

you know, like if everything makes

22:08

sense about the way this phone

22:10

is put together, the features that

22:12

it has, this is

22:14

a very compelling looking

22:16

thing, like in a

22:19

really very intriguing way,

22:21

especially like if you

22:23

are a no case

22:25

person, I think this This

22:27

is going to be a very, very

22:29

intriguing phone. Like I am already like

22:31

struggling to think about what my decision

22:33

is going to be. Same. Um, but

22:35

like I, I'm very intrigued about the

22:37

air. And as long as it has

22:39

for me, I know there were some

22:41

rumors some weeks ago about like the

22:43

spec sheet and that it essentially has

22:46

a lot of the things that I

22:48

care about, like promotion and stuff like

22:50

that. Like the things that I would

22:52

struggle to come down from. Max. Yes,

22:55

MagSafe. Oh, poor 16E.

22:58

If it has some of those

23:00

things, I think

23:03

I would dig it. I

23:05

think I could get on board of it.

23:07

Yeah, me too. It

23:09

looks fun. It looks exciting as

23:11

a product, because being so

23:13

different. My brother just bought

23:15

a 16E. He upgraded from like

23:17

a 12, I think. Wow.

23:22

And so I saw him in the dance like, hey, can I see

23:24

your phone? It's pretty

23:26

nice just having like the one camera

23:28

on the back. You know,

23:30

yeah, it's not as good. And like, I think

23:33

I would miss the telephoto, but

23:35

I'm going to be hard pressed this

23:37

year between the pro and the air,

23:39

I think. It could

23:41

be a flip -flop year. It could be a

23:43

flip year. Definitely. Definitely. Saying about

23:45

the one camera, it's like I would just

23:47

re -up my complaint for how the iPhone

23:49

switches to that macro mode and just

23:51

ruin your photos. Because I've been

23:54

taking lots of pictures. It's something really

23:56

close to me, you know. My

23:59

baby, my baby. My baby. I

24:01

wish I had taken account on

24:03

my phone of how many photos

24:05

I had before the baby and

24:07

after. I have taken over

24:09

a thousand pictures of my child. I

24:13

mean, what do you do? know, you're just like, you're taking like

24:15

20 photos at a time. It's like, whatever, they're just going

24:17

to be there. They're going to do their thing and they should

24:19

be there forever. But, you

24:21

know, all the time having to press that

24:23

little button to turn off the Mac

24:25

macro thing, it just makes them look terrible.

24:27

I think it's a setting you can

24:29

disable it in the camera settings. I

24:32

looked at it. I don't think it's as

24:34

clear a setting as you would want it

24:36

to be. Macro control, show

24:38

camera control. Yeah, what you're actually that, but

24:40

what is if you get the control

24:42

to turn it off, not if you can

24:44

turn off the feature. Oh,

24:46

yeah, that's poorly done. Oh, remember view

24:48

outside the frame? All that nonsense. Oh,

24:51

my God. You are going down

24:53

the road that I went down about six

24:55

weeks ago as I was looking for the ability

24:57

to turn it off, found out that it

24:59

didn't do what I wanted and then saw view

25:01

outside the frame, which I have turned on.

25:03

So that's good for me. I don't know what

25:05

that's giving me. Now that

25:07

you're talking about this, I kind of

25:09

also want to disable this. So

25:11

if you disable it, you can still

25:13

manually enable macro mode, right? But

25:15

then it doesn't switch in and automatically.

25:17

No, no, no. What it allows

25:19

you to disable is the ability to

25:22

disable it in the camera. That's

25:24

all it just... Wait, what? Leaving it

25:26

on gives you the button that

25:28

you can press to turn off the

25:30

macro mode. So, okay, so what

25:32

I want is for the camera not

25:34

to automatically switch between modes anymore.

25:36

Is that possible? Yeah, you can't do

25:38

that. You can't do that. What?

25:41

Yeah, it will always do that. You can't

25:43

stop that. He just needs a 16e. Where

25:47

is even this setting, by the

25:50

way? Settings, camera, it's right at the

25:52

very bottom. It's called macro control. And

25:54

it says show camera control, which is

25:56

funny now, like camera control is now

25:58

a different thing, show camera control for

26:00

automatically switching the ultra wide camera to

26:02

capture micro photos and videos. First of

26:04

all, this is in like this phrasing

26:07

is incredibly bad and confusing. Like this

26:09

sentence doesn't make any sense. Like I

26:11

keep reading this sentence and I feel

26:13

like I'm having like this doesn't make

26:15

any sense. It's so

26:17

stupid that there's not a setting

26:19

to say I want to just manually

26:22

tap on a macro button to enable

26:24

macro mode when I want to.

26:26

I just don't want you to ever

26:28

again switch back and forth on

26:30

your own ever again. Yep. Huh.

26:33

And look, I understand why it's

26:35

there because when you do

26:37

get close, often it's blurry now

26:39

because the focal distance is

26:41

what it is, right? With the

26:43

sensors that they use. I

26:46

mean, the thing that I am intrigued

26:48

about though, Again, this is going

26:50

to be the real problem of September this year

26:52

of choosing the right phone. I saw

26:54

something somewhere that says the ultra -wide is

26:56

also going to be 48 megapixels this

26:58

year. That would maybe solve

27:00

this problem. Yeah, maybe. it

27:03

does switch, it will still be a

27:05

higher quality image if the sensor is

27:07

better, potentially. So this

27:09

is going to be a tough year for deciding

27:11

on an iPhone, especially deciding on an iPhone

27:13

before you've had any chance to try the iPhones.

27:16

Yeah, yeah. I,

27:18

I, I, mm. Yep.

27:22

Maybe, maybe we enter some sort of pact as

27:24

we get closer about what phones we're all going

27:26

to get. Yeah, I'm not, I'm

27:28

not making any pact with you. Yeah, you flip

27:30

flopped this year. Yeah.

27:32

I never flip flopped. That's,

27:36

that is true. When it comes to iPhones, I make

27:38

my decision and I stick with it. Mm. I,

27:41

you know, I was, I was good to my word

27:43

this year. I said they won't make a brown phone and

27:45

then they made a coppery one and that's the one

27:47

I'm using. I don't love it, but I'm a man of

27:49

my word. Uh,

27:53

boys, I was wrong. Oh boy. Okay.

27:56

was wrong. Look, I've gone away. I'm

27:58

a dad now. And

28:00

so, you know, I've changed as

28:02

a person and I'm like, I'm good to like

28:04

now, like I'll admit when I'm wrong, you know?

28:06

You weren't doing that before? Nope.

28:09

Interesting. Always hiding it. Interesting. Interesting.

28:14

Never admit into it. Don't,

28:16

you know, don't worry about it.

28:18

Now I will admit to

28:20

my mistakes and I spent,

28:22

I think two weeks saying

28:24

how stupid read later services

28:26

are. Ah, I see. I

28:28

see. Okay. Okay. Go on. I'm

28:31

now a read wise reader

28:33

user. Ah, now you're

28:35

reading those articles later. You're

28:37

doing that. There is a good reason for

28:40

this. So I have

28:42

taken all text -based social

28:44

media off of my iPhone.

28:46

Good. Okay. There

28:48

is a second part of this

28:50

though, which is like, we're not

28:52

going to get into it today. I've

28:55

taken it off of my personal phone. Wait.

28:57

What? What? Are you two

28:59

phoning it? My personal my

29:02

personal phone does not have no

29:04

stop. No, the rest of the show

29:06

is canceled. What did you do? This

29:09

experiment is new. I have a

29:12

second phone now. I bought a

29:14

Google Pixel 9 pro fold. Oh

29:16

my god. Oh my god. Oh

29:18

my god. Hold on. Hold on.

29:20

Hold on. This is so perfect.

29:22

Hold on. Just hold on. You're

29:24

not ready for this. You're not

29:26

ready for this. I was saving

29:28

this for the perfect moment. You

29:30

just served me the perfect moment

29:32

on a platinum platter, not even

29:34

silver. I've

29:36

been using two phones for the past

29:38

three months. Hold

29:41

on. Hold on. Shut up.

29:43

Hold on. Three

29:45

months ago, Google sent

29:47

me a Pixel 9 Profold. Oh, wow.

29:49

That's an extra thing. I paid my

29:51

whole my cold on cash for this

29:53

phone. I have been using no two

29:55

months ago. Actually, I've been using this

29:58

for two months. I've been working on

30:00

a story that's what we're going to

30:02

talk about this on another time. There's

30:04

going to be an article on Mac

30:06

stories and everything. But yeah, oh my

30:08

God, Mike, that's so perfect. This is

30:10

incredible. OK, so mine is this is

30:12

part of what I'm calling Project Night

30:15

because I have a day phone and

30:17

a night phone now. That's the joke.

30:20

I am essentially trying to

30:22

find a way to

30:24

split my phone usage. And

30:28

so I have certain apps on my

30:30

work phone that I don't have my

30:32

personal phone. There are some

30:34

key apps. It's hard to try

30:36

and work out if I can

30:38

split them, but I'm going to

30:40

try some stuff out to see

30:42

about this. But it's

30:45

essentially what I'm trying to

30:47

do is remove

30:51

distractions from my

30:53

iPhone and encourage,

30:56

if I'm gonna be using my phone

30:58

to kind of encourage things that

31:00

are better for me than just using,

31:03

like just being on Blue Sky

31:05

or being on threads or whatever. Like

31:07

to be like, what if

31:09

I read that article about

31:11

Seth Rogen's weed company instead

31:13

of - Blaze it. Looking

31:15

at threads, right? Yeah. Is

31:18

he the weed company? Yeah,

31:20

he has a fascinating

31:22

company called Houseplant where like

31:24

they sell weed but

31:26

also like really beautiful like

31:29

marijuana paraphernalia. Like this

31:31

guy looks just like me.

31:34

You could 100

31:36

% do studio.

31:39

Cosplay you could be like you could be

31:41

his character from the studio for Halloween if

31:43

you wanted to Yeah, yeah, you should also

31:45

like you should also get into weed Stephen

31:47

without a doubt I think we've done this

31:49

before but Seth Rogen will play you in

31:51

the movie. We have we've done this before

31:53

and my picture you put in discord is

31:55

is terrifying close to you because like even

31:57

as the same glasses Yeah, that one did

31:59

I tell you I don't think I told

32:02

you when we were in LA last I

32:04

was eating dinner and he came in the

32:06

restaurant and he thought it was me I

32:08

didn't think it was you, because I immediately

32:10

knew it's Seth Rogen, because also he is

32:13

undeniable if you hear him. And

32:15

it was amazing. It's like, I love Seth Rogen

32:17

so much. And it's just like, so cool just

32:19

sitting over there with like, he was having his

32:21

dinner and I was having my dinner in the

32:23

same restaurant. I just think this guy is incredible.

32:25

By the way, if you haven't watched the studio

32:27

on Apple TV plus, change that. Because Yeah, it's

32:29

on my list. We've got to finish... Pub. on

32:32

my list to do. It's on my list.

32:34

Unbelievable. Like absolutely unbelievable. Really

32:36

recommend it. But yeah, so this

32:38

is a very early experiment where

32:40

I'm doing this. But yes, I'm

32:42

using Readwise Reader as like an

32:44

app to try and like save

32:46

things that are interesting to me

32:48

that I think could be like...

32:50

beneficial for my life and work,

32:52

right? Like they're like inspirational things

32:54

or like things that I find

32:56

of interest and then I'm using

32:58

these in my time I definitely

33:00

will have more to say about

33:03

this like two phone experience later

33:05

because I'm not very far into

33:07

this but like it's a thing

33:09

that I'm trying like obviously I'm

33:11

going through like some huge changes

33:13

in my life right now and

33:15

like I am trying to In

33:17

the time that I have that

33:19

is spare Like I

33:21

I want to use it well

33:23

Sure That's kind of the

33:25

thinking like I want if I

33:27

have moments I want to

33:29

use them for something Beneficial to

33:31

me not just my work,

33:33

but like it could just be

33:35

something I'm interested in rather

33:37

than like Turning over to the

33:39

algorithm or just like everyone

33:41

else's opinions, you know, so and

33:43

so I Let me tell

33:45

you right now. It's good. I

33:48

just checking

33:50

social media as like this

33:52

is work. Like it's like

33:54

a specific thing that I'm sitting down to

33:56

do for an amount of time is so much

33:58

better than like, oh, there's Like you don't,

34:00

you know, when you just open an app and

34:02

you don't know you've opened it, like that's

34:04

what I'm trying to get away from. And so.

34:07

And Android doesn't have any apps. So it works

34:09

out. I'm just, no, but it's like this phone's

34:11

not in my pocket, right? Like it's on a

34:13

table. It's on a desk. Like it's not always

34:15

with me and it's not always in my hand.

34:17

Yeah. Um, plus it's like an excuse, like I

34:19

could have got any phone. Like I was thinking

34:21

about getting a 16E, right? Um, there

34:24

was a reason I didn't do that. I don't remember what

34:26

the reason was. Um, but

34:28

then I thought to myself, why

34:30

not also use this as an opportunity

34:32

to try the state of the

34:34

art of folding phones? Cause that is

34:36

exciting to me. And also like

34:39

to get me ready for thinking about

34:41

the folding like a folding iPhone. So

34:44

this was kind of the route that I went

34:46

down. Okay. That led me to the Pixel 9

34:48

Pro Fold, which is an excellent device. It's

34:50

amazing that we've both been using

34:52

the same phone in secret from

34:55

each other. And I

34:57

just found out while doing the show.

34:59

That's incredible. Well, it's not crazy that

35:01

you're doing something like this. It's a

35:03

little bit funnier that I have been

35:05

using this phone for a month and

35:07

haven't told any of you. Yeah, yeah.

35:10

Yeah, I think I told Steve

35:12

I told you Steven right

35:14

that I had this you told

35:16

me that one was coming

35:18

and then I sort of it

35:20

sort of dropped off my

35:22

radar Yeah, yeah, okay. Okay. We'll

35:25

talk about this. Yeah. Yeah.

35:27

Well, I have also thought before

35:29

about Day phone night phone,

35:31

but I just can't I just

35:33

I can't This episode of

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all of Relay. So

37:45

Daddy, Mike. Now

37:48

that you're back, I

37:50

am sure. First of all, let

37:52

me ask you, did you keep up the promise

37:54

of you listening to the shows where you were

37:56

gone? Yeah, I loved it. It was great. I

37:58

loved listening to the shows. a good show. OK.

38:01

So by that, I assume you have

38:03

been keeping an eye on Apple News

38:06

and the things that have happened. And

38:08

I kind of want to

38:10

know from you, I assume you,

38:12

know, you've come out, you've

38:14

been saving some opinions. How

38:18

have you been keeping track of

38:20

those opinions? Like, did you just prepare

38:22

like a giant note called my

38:25

hot takes for when I'm back? Yes.

38:28

Well, kind of. I've been keeping that. Like,

38:30

I mean, I always have that just

38:32

so we're running list of hot takes. And

38:34

I think. Stephen put

38:37

together a list of things that he wanted my hot

38:39

takes on. Is that right? Yeah. These things that

38:41

are in here. But if you have other things, this

38:43

is not, you know, this is not. It's

38:46

not like exclusive. mean, yeah, I have other

38:48

things that will come through through the list that

38:50

you've, that you've put on here. So yeah,

38:52

I have some hot takes. So

38:55

we're going to maybe do this via

38:57

just like things that Apple have announced.

38:59

So first off was Apple announced they

39:01

would spend. Half a trillion

39:03

is 500 billion half a trillion.

39:05

It is okay. No, man. It's confusing

39:07

today would spend 500 billion dollars

39:09

in the US And really all they

39:11

say is they're gonna use this

39:14

money to build AI servers. Yeah, okay

39:16

That's what anybody wants right like

39:18

that. That's what the the American government

39:20

I mean for they're gonna build

39:22

them as long as the CFO allows

39:24

them to spend the money. Am

39:26

I right? That's

39:28

a That was a story that I

39:30

read that and it's like, what are you

39:32

doing over there? Yeah, he's not the

39:34

CFO anymore, so think about that. Oh, wow,

39:36

you're saying that that's what happened? I'm

39:38

not saying that. But he's

39:41

also not not saying it, you know? Yeah,

39:43

that's true. He's not not saying

39:45

it on the fact that he said it. Not

39:48

not not saying it. This,

39:51

I mean, look, this is

39:53

probably my weakest hot take. This

39:56

press release is just, it's just smoking mirrors.

39:58

Like it's just not real. Yeah. It's smoke right

40:00

up. So in it person

40:02

into the mirror and then into the, it's

40:04

just, it's the Mac Pro 2 .0, right?

40:06

Like they, they did this with the Mac

40:08

Pro. They're like, oh, we're going to build

40:10

them in America, even though none of the

40:12

pieces are going to come from America. Did

40:14

I hear an anecdote? Like there are no

40:16

screws. They had to like bring the screws

40:18

in or something. Cause maybe this is a

40:20

different company. It's just like, this is just

40:22

stupid. Like. If the U

40:24

.S. government wants Apple to invest in

40:26

manufacturing, what they didn't want was

40:28

for Apple's private cloud compute servers to

40:30

be assembled in Houston or wherever

40:32

it is. Like, come on, this is

40:34

stupid. It's stupid. Let's move

40:36

on to the Mac Studio. So

40:39

Apple unveiled the new Mac Studio. I

40:42

love the chaos of bringing the M3

40:44

back. Like, they're just through everyone

40:46

through a loop. I was actually kind of pleased

40:48

that I wasn't there for that. While I thought

40:50

it was funny, like it just trying to untangle

40:52

everything I said about the M3. You

40:55

know, it's just like the perceived thing that

40:57

we all believed that Ben Thompson said once

40:59

that the M3 was a dead process and

41:01

everyone just repeated it. And now they built

41:03

a new chip on it and had to

41:05

change it enough that it could get Thunderbolt

41:07

5 certified. And that's like a whole thing.

41:09

So proving that no one really knows anything.

41:11

We just will say things. That

41:13

is the, that's what this podcast is

41:16

all about. The Mac Studio, the

41:18

M4, Max and M3. ultra mac studio is

41:20

the mac pro nothing else should exist

41:22

the mac pro is stupid it shouldn't exist

41:24

anymore i'm sorry john like is No

41:26

one needs it. It's not going to do

41:28

anything. This thing is super powerful. It

41:30

should be all that exists. What are you

41:32

just going to have a bunch of

41:35

empty space to put your keepsakes inside of?

41:37

You know, just like what if my keepsakes are

41:39

in a Dev and think database? You know,

41:42

look, yeah, but you, you know that

41:44

you made a mistake. You made a mistake spending

41:46

all that money on the SSD because like

41:48

you spent all that money. It was way

41:50

too expensive. Then you got rid of the

41:52

computer and had to buy it all over again.

41:57

Right? If

41:59

you would have just bought an

42:01

SSD enclosure and put it on

42:03

there, you could have imagined, you're

42:05

getting it now, Steven. Why am

42:07

I the victim of the hot

42:09

tank? All that money for eight

42:11

terabytes internal storage in a Mac

42:13

Pro, which you then had to

42:15

spend again. An

42:18

internal storage for the MacBook Pro when

42:20

really you would have just I don't

42:22

know what I call Drobo's or something.

42:24

I think Synology is doing something now.

42:26

You should just like do that. I

42:28

think Casey loves Synology is my understanding.

42:31

You should just go do that, right? Yeah.

42:33

Wow. I actually address this on a recent

42:35

MPU about my NAS, but you know, you're

42:37

not going to hear it now. So

42:39

this is what you've been saving. Not

42:42

the hot takes, but

42:44

the attacks against other

42:46

podcasters. I love it. These

42:49

attacks aren't in my notes, but they're coming out.

42:52

Yeah, no, go for it. I've been

42:54

waiting. I've had no feuds over

42:56

the last two months, and I'm looking

42:58

for them now. This is your

43:00

release valve. Sure. I'm a new parent.

43:02

You can't attack me back, all right? That

43:04

is because I'm a new parent.

43:06

I can't be trusted. I'm not

43:08

sleeping, you know? That's how it

43:10

goes. I love the chaos of

43:12

this mess. studio because I genuinely

43:14

find it funny that like Mac

43:16

Pro fans. Never get

43:19

what they want like I is funny to

43:21

me like I'm sorry But like it's funny to

43:23

me that like all they want is the

43:25

most powerful Mac and they think that because they

43:27

love the Mac Pro They're gonna get the

43:29

most powerful Mac and Apple keep making other Macs

43:31

more powerful that they can't stop it They're

43:33

like oh, we're gonna make an iMac. It's more

43:35

powerful Now we're gonna make a series of

43:37

laptops that are more powerful Now the Mac Pro

43:39

is back again and powerful again at the

43:41

top of the lineup and now we're gonna do

43:43

another one That's not the Mac Pro and

43:45

it's gonna be more powerful and then And eventually

43:48

they're gonna give you a Mac, bro. It's

43:50

gonna be way overpriced. It can't do anything different.

43:52

And then six months later, there'll be a

43:54

laptop that's more powerful again. And then we'll just

43:56

keep going around and around. The

43:59

new MacBook Air. This

44:02

is, I think this is part, I think I've

44:04

written like a standoff special. I think I'm doing

44:06

a standoff special now. Sky

44:08

blue, more like, why do? Give

44:14

us a real color. Give

44:16

us some actual color. Why do

44:18

this? Like, come on. This

44:20

is basically a roast of the

44:22

Apple community. It's a roast

44:24

of the newsroom and of a podcast. The

44:28

only thing that Apple

44:30

intelligence has given us

44:32

is more RAM. It's

44:34

the only thing that

44:36

we've gotten out of

44:38

it. Right? We

44:40

just get more RAM. Speaking

44:42

of Apple intelligence, we're just sit around a little

44:44

bit now and talk about Apple intelligence. This isn't

44:46

a joke as much as it is an attack

44:49

that I have. Like Apple

44:51

have screwed up so bad

44:53

with Apple intelligence, right? Like

44:56

the delaying of Apple

44:58

intelligence, again, what they

45:00

have achieved here is they

45:02

have lost the trust of

45:04

the media, which is a

45:06

problem. for them it reminds

45:09

me of like we

45:11

see this stuff like if

45:13

you follow gaming news a

45:15

lot right so like uh

45:17

last year sony released a

45:19

video game called um

45:21

oh man see i forgot

45:23

concord which they released and

45:26

then like cancelled and fired

45:28

the entire team like

45:30

a couple of weeks later

45:32

because it was such a

45:34

disaster right yeah Now

45:36

every time Sony releases a

45:38

multiplayer game or a life service

45:40

game Concord is brought up every

45:43

time there's a piece of news

45:45

about they've got this game

45:47

coming out called marathon Every time

45:49

it's brought up people always bring

45:51

up Concord and like it is

45:53

undermining the news of any

45:55

new game that Sony is trying

45:57

to put out there Apple announcing

45:59

and showing off these Siri features

46:01

which All of the reporting

46:03

now seems to suggest they just

46:06

never work like they were never

46:08

ever running anywhere. Right? It's like,

46:10

was that an information article? It

46:12

was just like, it was

46:14

a thing that never existed. And

46:16

now whenever Apple intelligence features

46:18

are written about, like at

46:20

WWDC this year, everyone's going

46:22

to be going, yeah, right.

46:24

If they ship it, like

46:26

that's what they've gained out

46:28

of this, where they essentially

46:30

somebody, somebody decided to pull

46:32

the wool over everybody's eyes.

46:34

Right. And to show

46:37

something that didn't exist. Like,

46:39

at least it didn't exist in any kind

46:41

of shipping state, clearly, because otherwise they would

46:43

have shipped it. And now they've

46:45

lost the trust of the media. And so

46:47

they are going to be fighting

46:49

an even stronger uphill battle to make

46:51

anyone believe they have any good

46:53

AI. Nobody believed it before. And

46:56

we saw these things and we were like, okay,

46:58

like we'll see what they like when they ship. And

47:00

now we'll say, we'll see what they like doing

47:02

this ship if they ship. Like that's what's going to

47:04

happen. Like air power stuck around

47:06

for such a long time as like a

47:08

little joke, but like at least Apple aren't

47:10

in the business of making products that are

47:12

like air power, right? Yeah.

47:15

It's like, imagine if Apple were like,

47:17

here's the new iPhone 17 air and

47:19

then, you know, it comes to like the

47:21

day before it comes out and they're

47:23

like, ah, yeah, no, we're not, we're not

47:26

going to ship that. Actually, we decided

47:28

not to do that. They would be

47:30

like, what are you talking about? So this

47:32

is super bad for them and like

47:34

what they have achieved is Like I

47:36

can't think of a good way to put

47:38

this but like John Gruber writing that

47:40

article something is rotten in the state

47:42

of Cupertino, right? That's bad for Apple. Yeah,

47:45

like that's real bad. Like I

47:47

recall there was a Something that

47:49

yeah, this is in like the

47:51

because kind of telling back to

47:54

the discussions about mobile me or

47:56

whatever right that were happening around

47:58

this time and there's that quote

48:00

of Steve Jobs saying like We've

48:03

even lost the support of our friend,

48:05

Walt Mossberg. Yeah. I imagine someone

48:07

saying inside of Apple, like we've even

48:09

lost the support of Junkrubber now. Yeah.

48:13

Like, this is bad. This

48:15

is just not good for them, right? So

48:17

that's my thoughts on the upper intelligence

48:19

delays and also just like, what

48:22

a waste of time

48:24

and money, like, across

48:26

the board. Like, how

48:28

much should they pay Bella Ramsey to be in those

48:31

ads? And now they're

48:33

being taken to court over those

48:35

ads. You know, like it

48:37

is ridiculous. AirPods

48:40

Max. Why

48:43

did they release

48:45

this product without lossless?

48:48

And why did they hold back the

48:50

audio cable until now? Unbelievable.

48:53

To have a press release

48:55

for it? Why

48:58

did they need to do that? Was

49:00

there any reason that they had to

49:02

do the AirPods Max update when they

49:04

did? Like, I don't think

49:06

so, right? Like, people would

49:08

say like, oh, what about like

49:10

the European Union stuff? I

49:12

feel pretty confident that Apple had enough

49:14

stock somewhere in the world of the

49:17

AirPods Max to move around. And also

49:19

that there isn't, there wasn't a new

49:21

version. There wasn't like a new unit.

49:23

But like, I don't understand why they

49:25

needed to be a software update to

49:27

enable a cable. They could

49:29

have at least shipped the cable, the

49:31

USB -C to audio cable. However,

49:35

one good thing is that

49:37

cable, as me and Greg

49:39

call the world's most expensive cable, is

49:41

braided now. So it's less fragile.

49:44

Yeah, it's a good cable. I got it.

49:46

The previous version. of that cable was

49:48

like the thickness of a hair. It was

49:50

insane. It was like a fiber

49:52

cable, but it wasn't fiber. Yeah. It had none

49:54

of the benefits and all of the danger. Like

49:57

that cable would break so easily. I went

49:59

through like three of those. And also it's like

50:01

one of those things where you don't know

50:03

it's broken until the point where you're using it,

50:05

right? Like it can't give you any kind

50:07

of indication. And obviously you only ever have one

50:09

of those lying around because they're like $40

50:11

each. So I'm happy that

50:14

they have this, but I don't understand

50:16

why they left it to when

50:18

they left it. We

50:21

also have in here the executive, I've moved

50:23

my nose out of order now. The executive

50:25

changes for the series stuff. This isn't so

50:27

much of a joke. It's just like, they

50:29

had to do something, right? They

50:32

couldn't do nothing. Like they had

50:34

to move people around. I'm happy

50:36

that they didn't fire anyone, right?

50:40

Like people always look back to the

50:42

Scott Fossil thing. But like that

50:44

book, I really liked that book, the

50:46

tripmical book after Steve. The one

50:48

that Jason hates. The one that Jason

50:50

really hates that I love. Where

50:53

it kind of references that like there was

50:55

a lot more going on with Scott Fausal

50:57

than Maps. And like Maps was just like

50:59

a good way to get him out because

51:01

it was essentially they were even going to

51:03

lose Fausal or Ive and they chose Ive,

51:05

which was the right decision. I know people

51:07

have a lot of mixed feelings about Johnny

51:09

Ive. Um and people think that scott forstall

51:11

would have saved the company sometimes i think

51:13

because he would have just kept making things

51:16

more skim skim off i can that would

51:18

have saved the company um By the way,

51:20

why is this so much? Why why why

51:22

are people wanting this back so much? I

51:24

think you said this federico and i completely

51:26

agree with you Why are people nostalgic for

51:28

the bad safari? That's

51:33

such a weird fetish to have

51:35

like of all things that I've seen

51:37

on the internet that is a

51:39

peculiar one man like I People don't

51:41

maybe don't remember just how bad

51:43

in practice like you know the most

51:45

common thing using a website like

51:47

how bad using a website was with

51:49

that design. It's I don't know.

51:51

It's Very very confusing to me. Yeah,

51:53

that was like it's wild that

51:55

people on there, but yes like The

51:58

Scott Falls still think they just need to get

52:00

rid of him and they they just had him die

52:02

on the sword maps, right? They

52:04

didn't need to do that for

52:06

this I find it interesting and

52:08

kind of a Kind of a poetic

52:11

in a way that they put

52:13

in charge of Siri the person

52:15

who shipped the most difficult product in

52:17

years at Apple Which is a

52:19

you know, it's probably the guy

52:21

you want right now, you know? Yeah.

52:23

I mean, and it was also

52:25

there was, um, I've forgotten the

52:27

person's name, like someone whose name we

52:30

had. I didn't know until I

52:32

read that article, right? Who was

52:34

like, uh, a four store

52:36

lieutenant who essentially, Vorath.

52:38

That's the one. Thank you. Who like,

52:40

it seemed like that they'd already started,

52:42

right? They, because also Vorath had been

52:44

working with Rockwell in his division for

52:46

similar reasons of like, we've got to

52:48

get this product out the door. Like,

52:51

I think he's I

52:53

don't know if he is necessarily good

52:55

at dealing with AI, but

52:57

like he at least seems like someone who

52:59

can get a complicated job. Because

53:01

you're right, like Vision Pro, for

53:04

all of its faults, is like, you

53:06

can see how complex it is and

53:08

it's a marvel that it shipped to

53:10

any point, honestly. And it's

53:12

wonderful to use. I mean, set

53:14

aside all the problems of the Vision

53:16

Pro, but it is wonderful to

53:19

use. Especially now,

53:21

since I have my fancy

53:23

medical equipment level head strap. Oh,

53:25

you've got the medical head

53:27

strap. The ResMed. I

53:29

got it from the UK Apple

53:31

Store, Mike. I didn't want

53:33

to bother you. and John spoke about it.

53:35

Yeah, so I used... I use the UK

53:37

forwarding service and I got it today and

53:39

it's perfect. It's lovely. It's very absolutely could

53:41

have asked me by the way, like it

53:43

would be complicated. But I thought it

53:45

was very sweet that you ended up instead

53:47

getting a big UK buddy who could send

53:49

it for you. Yeah. Is that is

53:51

this? Do you like

53:54

this headset strap? It's it's

53:56

look. It looks like a

53:58

piece of medical equipment when it's on

54:00

your head, but it's incredibly comfortable. it's

54:02

incredibly adjustable because you basically have

54:04

three straps each of them with

54:07

a velcro and metal loop that

54:09

you can adjust and you got

54:11

these these counterweights that you can

54:13

freely place anywhere so you can

54:15

choose how much pressure you want

54:17

to feel on the top or

54:20

the back of your head and

54:22

it's very premium it feels premium

54:24

it feels like an apple accessory

54:26

it's very well made and it's

54:28

very comfortable yes yeah I do

54:31

look kind of ridiculous wearing it,

54:33

but it's very comfortable. So...

54:36

On the executive thing, so

54:38

I... How much can I

54:40

do in three months? Right?

54:48

Like... I don't know. I am

54:50

very intrigued. So...

54:53

Did you see the thing I

54:55

posted on Mac stories about, like,

54:58

what if Apple... started

55:00

using third -party large -language

55:02

models. And

55:05

to sort of maybe distill

55:07

a version of one of

55:09

those large -language models. I

55:13

do think there is something

55:15

they could do. It all

55:17

comes down to this large

55:20

-language model that they built.

55:22

They actually published the white

55:24

paper last year. What's

55:27

it called? AFM, Apple foundational

55:29

model or something? They

55:31

have this big server version

55:33

and this small version that

55:35

runs on device. I

55:37

wonder if there

55:39

is potential for taking

55:41

that work, that

55:44

model that they built, which deals

55:46

with the semantic index on your

55:48

device, deals with communicating with apps,

55:50

but it basically seems that just

55:52

like any large market model, it's

55:54

suffering from... and performing

55:56

the wrong action based

55:58

on the user input. Here's

56:01

what I'll say. If Apple

56:03

can be a company that in

56:05

this AI age can ship

56:07

fast, can build fast and ship

56:09

fast, we've

56:11

seen other companies do more

56:14

complicated things in three months. And

56:16

I do think if Apple

56:18

really wanted to, they

56:21

could realistically have a version of

56:23

AFM distilled with Deepsea car one or

56:25

something that has much, much better

56:27

reasoning for understanding. Like if I'm asking

56:30

for the flight info of my

56:32

mom and we want to meet up

56:34

for lunch later, that is not

56:36

hallucinating that I'm asking for Stevens flight

56:38

info and we want to meet

56:40

for dinner, you know, they could have

56:43

a version that doesn't get it

56:45

wrong, you know, like 20 % of

56:47

the time, maybe gets a wrong 5

56:49

% of the time. But if they

56:51

frame it correctly. I

56:54

think they could do it, especially

56:56

because they would need to hit the

56:58

three months in June and then

57:00

six months in September, right? Other

57:04

companies, here's the thing, other

57:06

companies in this age can do

57:08

these things much more quickly

57:10

than Apple can do. And obviously,

57:13

Apple works at a different

57:15

scale, but Also open AI is

57:17

quite the scale, you know

57:19

with you know half a billion

57:21

users at this point or

57:23

something I Do think that Apple

57:25

is also painted themselves in

57:27

a corner when it comes to

57:30

wanting to wanting to have

57:32

this this this image of perfection

57:34

It seems to me like

57:36

people have gotten used to the

57:38

idea that chat GPT or

57:40

Google Gemini or Claude can give

57:42

wrong answers and People seem

57:44

to be more forgiven with the

57:47

hallucination of chatbots. And

57:49

maybe there could be a way for Apple to

57:51

just come out and say, you know, we're doing

57:53

this thing. It's

57:55

not going to be perfect 100 percent

57:57

of the time, because that's how this technology

57:59

works. But 95 percent of the time

58:01

is going to be incredible. Like, and I

58:03

actually think I shared this with you

58:05

guys privately a couple of months ago, like

58:07

this hot take of mine. And

58:11

I hate to be

58:13

the person who makes this

58:15

point, but I also

58:17

think it's a useful exercise

58:19

to think about. I

58:22

could totally see Steve Jobs on

58:24

stage saying, look, we made this

58:26

thing. It's not going to be perfect. It's

58:28

going to have mistakes because that's just the

58:30

limits of technology. 95 %

58:32

of the time is going to be

58:34

incredible and let me show you why.

58:36

And I think if that timeline existed

58:38

today, we would all be okay with

58:40

it. So that was my

58:42

hot take. I feel like this would

58:45

have been easier to do last year. Yeah.

58:49

Yeah. Yeah. Than what they

58:51

did instead. Like, I think we would be

58:53

more okay with it then. But I, again,

58:56

it's like, I think the goodwill that

58:58

they have burned in doing what they have

59:00

done makes everything they're going to do

59:02

more difficult. And like even this

59:04

scenario that you have posed, I

59:06

think it's an interesting one, right?

59:08

Of using not made here technology,

59:11

like why not, right? But again,

59:13

it's just like, how much can

59:15

you pull together in three months?

59:17

Because what they can't do is

59:19

show something that they don't feel

59:21

comfortable with, right? Like what

59:23

they definitely cannot do is

59:25

show something that was put together

59:27

quickly that they don't have

59:29

running. They can't do that because

59:31

that's what they did. So

59:33

they can't do it again. And

59:36

so how much can you really get together in

59:38

a three month period that you can feel confident you

59:40

can ship within the time frame that you say

59:42

you're going to ship in or at all? Well,

59:45

I can tell you that DeepSeek

59:47

v3 was trained in two months. The

59:50

whole DeepSeek v3. I understand

59:52

that, but... is a massive

59:54

company, right? It just doesn't

59:56

work like that. If

59:58

Deepseek were building an operating system, they couldn't have

1:00:01

put it together in two months. Yeah, but they're

1:00:03

not building an operating system. Isn't there also a

1:00:05

lot of evidence that they've ripped off open AI,

1:00:07

like they started on top? I mean, not gonna

1:00:09

do that. Well, but

1:00:12

that's if they... But they will, in theory, if they

1:00:14

do what Federico's saying, which is to use other people's models

1:00:16

to train their models, that's just what Deepseek did. Yeah. I

1:00:21

just, I understand what you're saying. I

1:00:23

agree with you. I think it is an

1:00:25

interesting idea. But what I wonder is

1:00:27

like, can you show off something that is

1:00:29

compelling, that feels plugged into the operating

1:00:31

system, that you've built in

1:00:34

three months, that you would feel

1:00:36

confident getting on stage, quote unquote,

1:00:38

and saying, here's this thing we've

1:00:40

built and it'll be out in

1:00:42

the next year. Like, because you

1:00:44

did that last year, can you

1:00:46

do that again and feel really

1:00:48

confident? really confident without a shadow

1:00:50

of a doubt that you're going

1:00:53

to get it out. Like I

1:00:55

see a scenario where they do

1:00:57

not talk about Apple intelligence, WWDC.

1:00:59

I also do. Yes. Yeah.

1:01:02

Because of my next point, which

1:01:04

is the OS redesign. Which?

1:01:07

Finally. I

1:01:09

have two points on this. One, and

1:01:11

this is reiterating something Stephen said, I think

1:01:13

on the show, or maybe on

1:01:15

512. Can Apple pull off

1:01:17

a redesign of every OS at

1:01:19

the same time and bring new features?

1:01:23

In theory they should be able

1:01:25

to but They seem like

1:01:27

a company that is not actually

1:01:29

structurally built to do something

1:01:31

like that because of the way

1:01:33

they work from a secrecy

1:01:35

perspective, right? We're like There

1:01:37

are definitely teams inside of Apple working

1:01:39

on things that are going to be redesigned.

1:01:41

They don't know about you, right? Like

1:01:43

a hundred percent there are, right? Like there

1:01:46

are there have got to be teams

1:01:48

that are building system apps, system apps that

1:01:50

are on the phone that have not

1:01:52

seen what the new lowest design looks like.

1:01:55

And they're going to have to work on that. And

1:01:57

so like, how does this work? But my

1:01:59

other thing. What about

1:02:01

the redesign? I

1:02:04

assume. with

1:02:07

my good heart that this

1:02:09

has been a long, well

1:02:11

thought out process, right?

1:02:13

But they have spent a lot of time

1:02:15

thinking about this and that this has been going

1:02:17

on for a long time. But there's this

1:02:19

little voice in my head that keeps asking if

1:02:21

this is a smug screen. That

1:02:23

in the last year,

1:02:25

they have said, you

1:02:28

know what, we'll save us. We're

1:02:30

going to redesign the entire operating

1:02:32

system. So people stop thinking

1:02:34

about AI. And

1:02:37

like, I don't believe it, but

1:02:39

I also can't stop myself from

1:02:41

asking that question. Like there is

1:02:43

just a voice in my head

1:02:45

that keeps saying, is this a

1:02:47

distraction? Like are they doing it

1:02:49

to distract us? Or are they,

1:02:51

the more like level headed version

1:02:53

of this is, are

1:02:55

they deciding to do this

1:02:58

in 2025? Because

1:03:00

it's a distraction. Like maybe

1:03:02

this is a 2026, 2027

1:03:04

project. that they're deciding to

1:03:07

do now because it is

1:03:09

the exact kind of thing

1:03:11

that you could do to

1:03:13

get people excited and to

1:03:15

ignore the last 12 months.

1:03:17

Because I also see like a

1:03:20

realistic scenario is like the get

1:03:22

up and the only thing to

1:03:24

talk about Apple intelligence is we've

1:03:26

improved this, we've improved that. Summaries

1:03:28

are coming back to notifications and we're

1:03:30

still working on this thing that we

1:03:32

showed you last year. Nothing

1:03:34

new and that's the end of it. Hey,

1:03:37

look, we've got this new redesign. My

1:03:41

final thing is tariffs. So

1:03:45

people don't like

1:03:47

to hear this. All

1:03:50

right. That's how I'm starting what I'm about to

1:03:52

say. People don't want to hear this and I

1:03:54

understand it. But the way

1:03:56

that Tim Cook has dealt with the

1:03:58

tariffs is exactly why he's the CEO that

1:04:00

Apple need him to be. Everybody

1:04:04

has their ideals. We believe

1:04:06

and like to believe that he has ideals. I believe

1:04:08

he does have his ideals. I don't think he doesn't

1:04:10

have ideals. I know that people say he doesn't have

1:04:12

ideals anymore, but I don't, I don't believe that personally.

1:04:15

He is doing the job people need from

1:04:17

him and he is doing the job that

1:04:19

he's hired to do. He's doing the job

1:04:21

that he's paid to do. He's

1:04:24

done this the whole time. Like

1:04:26

he got exemptions in the, in

1:04:28

the first Trump administration for the

1:04:30

tariffs in China, right? Like if

1:04:32

he gets... exemptions for the iPhone,

1:04:35

right? The iPhone doesn't

1:04:37

increase in price by any

1:04:39

amount. Is

1:04:42

that worth giving a million

1:04:44

dollars to the Trump

1:04:46

Inauguration Fund? Is

1:04:48

it worth that? Lots

1:04:50

of, I'm just asking that question. I'm

1:04:53

just asking the questions. I'm

1:04:55

just asking the questions. There are a

1:04:57

lot of people that will say yes, right?

1:05:00

Right. Yeah, I

1:05:02

am. I stepped just right on this landmine

1:05:04

the other day. Okay. A

1:05:06

couple of days ago, I published this.

1:05:08

It was basically a long block quote from

1:05:10

the Verge cast in which Nila Patel

1:05:12

called this and like all the other tech

1:05:15

executives being on stage with inauguration. It's

1:05:17

like the goal of that was corruption, right?

1:05:19

Like if you pay a million dollars

1:05:21

and then your phone doesn't get tariff, like

1:05:23

that is corruption. And I agree with

1:05:25

him. And a bunch of people were like,

1:05:27

no, I had this long email for

1:05:29

somebody who was like, no, Tim Cook is

1:05:31

like the right CEO for the moment.

1:05:33

He's just playing the game. Like I get

1:05:35

that. And I do think that if

1:05:37

Trump hadn't won, Tim Cook would have retired

1:05:39

in the next four years. And now

1:05:41

I think he's stuck working at Apple until

1:05:43

Trump's out of office. But

1:05:46

just because he's good at it doesn't

1:05:48

mean anyone should be good at it,

1:05:50

right? Like both can be true. Like,

1:05:52

yes, Tim Cook is dealing the

1:05:54

hand he has been dealt. The

1:05:56

best he can but also the hand

1:05:59

that he has been dealt is terrible

1:06:01

and like we are in trouble as

1:06:03

a country because this is now what

1:06:05

people expect to happen Yeah, but this

1:06:07

is only because you're seeing the corruption

1:06:09

Do you think it wasn't happening no,

1:06:11

no, I'm not saying that like Many

1:06:13

people don't like it because it's like

1:06:15

like I'm not saying to do but

1:06:17

people don't like it because now they

1:06:19

can see it's happening Everyone

1:06:22

was happier when it was happening.

1:06:24

We didn't know right like I mentioned

1:06:27

the things like look at the

1:06:29

army of paid lobbyists like all that's

1:06:31

really bad, too Yeah, it is

1:06:33

different that it's so blatant and in

1:06:35

a way. I guess that's both

1:06:37

better and worse But like my my

1:06:39

overarching thing with that piece was

1:06:42

like Tech CEOs may be doing what's

1:06:44

in the best wishes of their

1:06:46

shareholders, but it doesn't mean it's like

1:06:48

the best thing to do Ultimately,

1:06:50

yeah I do take

1:06:52

a slightly different view on it, which is I

1:06:54

don't think about the shareholders. I think about the

1:06:56

thousands of employees. And

1:06:59

I don't know

1:07:01

how I would deal

1:07:03

with this. I

1:07:05

think I would find

1:07:07

it very complicated

1:07:09

from a conscious perspective.

1:07:13

But you have the

1:07:15

responsibility of thousands of

1:07:17

people directly relying on

1:07:19

you. To like make sure

1:07:21

that the company that you run stays

1:07:23

in business and Or not even

1:07:25

just stays in business stays in business

1:07:27

to the level at which you

1:07:29

don't have to start laying people off

1:07:31

Right because if you sell 50 %

1:07:33

less iPhones because they're 70 % more

1:07:36

expensive. I don't know that that's

1:07:38

the case right that that's what would

1:07:40

happen but that's surely a fear

1:07:42

that they have that like if they're

1:07:44

more expensive they'll sell less of

1:07:46

them because all they're doing is there's

1:07:48

actually if they sell any amount

1:07:50

less that's the problem because apple doesn't

1:07:52

make the money right like if

1:07:54

the iphone has a 60 tariff on

1:07:56

it say and they put it

1:07:58

up by 60 percent or less they're

1:08:00

going to make either the same

1:08:02

amount money or less money and they

1:08:04

will sell less of them and

1:08:06

so at that point what happens Do

1:08:08

you have to start firing people? Are

1:08:11

you responsible for those people? That's

1:08:15

the issue that I see. I

1:08:17

understand the shareholders. The shareholders are definitely

1:08:19

a thing. Maybe they do it for

1:08:21

the shareholders. Maybe the CEOs don't do

1:08:23

it for the shareholders. They do it

1:08:26

for a shareholder themselves. They

1:08:28

own shares in their company. Anything

1:08:30

bad that happens means they lose

1:08:32

personal money. I'm not trying to

1:08:34

suggest... he's doing it for, I'm just

1:08:36

saying like, that's what I see. Like I

1:08:38

feel like if I was him, that's

1:08:40

what I would feel the responsibility for. That

1:08:42

like, there are

1:08:44

thousands of families, tens

1:08:47

of thousands of families, probably if you

1:08:49

consider all of Apple, right? And like all

1:08:51

the, not just the people that work

1:08:53

at Apple Park, the people that work all

1:08:55

over the world, the people that look

1:08:57

in the retail stores, like that is what

1:08:59

he is having to protect. And it

1:09:01

means that he has to pledge $500 billion

1:09:03

in US manufacturing, which is just a

1:09:05

joke. It means that he has to make

1:09:07

calls to the commerce secretary and explain

1:09:09

to him for some reason that like the

1:09:11

US commerce secretary, I think it was

1:09:13

whoever this person is, right? That like you

1:09:15

can't make iPhones in America. Like it's

1:09:17

kind of what he has to try and

1:09:19

explain to people that for some reason

1:09:21

they can't seem to get their head around.

1:09:26

What I would say is imagine if

1:09:29

you're if you like just hearing me

1:09:31

say this and you're like Mike, how

1:09:33

could you say this? Imagine your employer

1:09:35

Decided to fight the leader of your

1:09:37

country like that they decided we're going

1:09:39

we're gonna battle with the president How

1:09:41

would you feel about that from the

1:09:44

security for paycheck and like is that

1:09:46

important to you? I Would

1:09:48

say for a lot of people that

1:09:50

would actually be pretty important like when

1:09:52

rubber hits the road you you would

1:09:54

like your baby your CEO to stop

1:09:56

doing that? I

1:09:58

don't know. Maybe you are a

1:10:00

person who values your ideals more and

1:10:03

I think that is awesome if

1:10:05

you are that person. I think

1:10:07

a lot of people would struggle with that quite a

1:10:09

lot. Like I think I would struggle with that

1:10:11

quite a lot. I have a family now, like I

1:10:13

have a daughter to protect if Stephen decided. He

1:10:17

was gonna was gonna go to war with

1:10:19

Donald Trump I would feel pretty uncomfortable about

1:10:21

that and would kind of wish he wouldn't

1:10:23

do it like that would that would be

1:10:25

how I would feel because I would like

1:10:27

to that's how the bad guys win Would

1:10:29

you like to fight with the president? No,

1:10:31

I'm too busy fighting XAI about Memphis stuff.

1:10:34

Yeah, that's fine You can do that. I

1:10:36

don't care about that. You could just go

1:10:38

ahead and do that But if they decided

1:10:40

to tariff podcasts All right, I would spell

1:10:42

man that really sucks. We're gonna have to

1:10:44

do that Because it's

1:10:46

like I want to try and save what I

1:10:48

have. Yeah, no, no, I'm not saying like it's

1:10:50

not a bad position to be in it

1:10:52

sucks Yeah, you know what? I bet he's losing

1:10:54

sleep over it. I hope that he is but

1:10:56

Yeah, I don't care about that though, you know.

1:10:58

Yeah, but I don't care about like it's

1:11:00

the job you signed up for It is when

1:11:02

he cashed out a bunch of stock in early

1:11:04

April. It's like Tim Tim Cook's fine. He's fine.

1:11:07

It just Tim Cook is

1:11:09

in an impossible situation, right

1:11:11

and I don't envy that,

1:11:13

but at the same time, I

1:11:15

would feel better if I saw

1:11:17

that he was in a hard

1:11:20

situation. Because he

1:11:22

has a straight face all the time, it's

1:11:24

hard to really say, is he actually

1:11:26

struggling with this? Did it actually

1:11:28

turn his stomach to do? I don't know. We're

1:11:30

getting off the rails. It's

1:11:32

impossible to know this. I

1:11:34

will say, by the way, nobody knows what

1:11:36

Steve Jobs would have done, and it would have

1:11:38

been worse. I don't know in what way

1:11:40

it would have been worse. I can guarantee that

1:11:42

of you, that whatever Steve Jobs would have

1:11:45

done, it would have been worse in ways that

1:11:47

we can't even imagine. It

1:11:49

would have been worse, definitely,

1:11:51

in all possible ways. Look,

1:11:53

this is just such an

1:11:55

incredibly complicated thing to do.

1:11:58

And I think that... He has done

1:12:00

the exact right job, which is to

1:12:02

try and explain to them why they

1:12:04

should not be tariffed and to get

1:12:06

around that I actually think the million

1:12:08

dollar thing I brought it in but

1:12:10

realistically I don't think that made a

1:12:12

difference because like There are other companies

1:12:14

that are getting that are not gonna

1:12:16

get exempted from these tariffs who gave

1:12:18

him money like yeah I think to

1:12:20

try and assume that there is any

1:12:22

was on stage and the government's getting

1:12:24

ready to break up meta Potentially yeah,

1:12:26

right like yeah, Google guy was on

1:12:28

stage. They're gonna have to sell Chrome

1:12:30

to open AI like things They gave

1:12:33

the money to stop these lawsuits and

1:12:35

they didn't do it. Yeah, really Tim

1:12:37

Cook's the best at doing the bad

1:12:39

thing Yes, because he knew how to

1:12:41

do it right like there is lots

1:12:43

of reports that apparently cook and Trump

1:12:45

they have a good relationship like wild

1:12:47

Can you imagine like just if if

1:12:49

Tim Cook could go back and talk

1:12:51

to young Tim Cook right? He just

1:12:53

worked for compact He's working

1:12:55

at Apple. He's like making power books

1:12:57

and iBooks and stuff. He's like

1:12:59

one day you're going to speak to

1:13:01

the president of the United States

1:13:03

and the head of China like all

1:13:06

these like he is a really

1:13:08

like a state figure at this point

1:13:10

because Apple is so big. Tim

1:13:12

Cook is the single most powerful man

1:13:14

in the world. I do believe

1:13:16

that to be the case. Buying

1:13:19

power is so strong, you know,

1:13:21

like his buying power is absurd

1:13:23

like absurd like what he can

1:13:26

control even though local my she

1:13:28

doesn't want to spend four dollars

1:13:30

on the service But Tim cook

1:13:32

you can just do whatever he

1:13:34

wants the money was one one

1:13:36

one might say Tim cook is

1:13:38

cooking You know, you know, you

1:13:41

should but you could say that

1:13:43

you could say that that's a

1:13:45

dad joke right there. So yeah,

1:13:47

I know Tim Cook and Tarris

1:13:49

is a truly wild thing. I

1:13:52

wouldn't have the stomach for it.

1:13:54

I know I wouldn't have the

1:13:57

stomach for it. I kind

1:13:59

of can't believe anybody can have the

1:14:01

stomach for it. Like it feels like such

1:14:03

a complicated thing to me. Give me

1:14:05

hundreds of millions of dollars. I'll have the

1:14:07

stomach. I'll have two stomachs for it,

1:14:09

you know. I think I would have more

1:14:11

tummy aches if I had hundreds of

1:14:13

millions of dollars laying around. Yeah, I just

1:14:15

don't think I could do it. Like

1:14:17

I really don't think I could do it.

1:14:20

The thing of that, like you mentioned it,

1:14:22

Steven, and again, I've seen some discourse about

1:14:24

this, about like, you know, like a bunch

1:14:26

of tech CEOs selling off their stock or

1:14:28

whatever. Everyone knew he was going to do

1:14:30

the tariffs. Like anyone - He promised he would.

1:14:33

Yes, anybody that thinks he wasn't going to do

1:14:35

that, like I don't know what to tell you.

1:14:37

Like if you were paying attention to anything he

1:14:39

said, I have been waiting for it.

1:14:41

I knew he was going to do it. Me

1:14:43

and Gray have been preparing for this. We're

1:14:46

not incredible CEOs, but we knew he

1:14:48

was going to do this, and we know

1:14:50

we ship products into America, so we

1:14:52

were just waiting on this to happen, and

1:14:54

we've been getting ready for it. We're

1:14:57

fine. We knew he was going to do

1:14:59

this. Everybody knew he was going to do this.

1:15:02

He even said today he was going to

1:15:04

do it. If you had stock in a tech

1:15:06

company, you should have sold it before then.

1:15:08

You should have done that. or any business. You

1:15:10

had stuck in any company. If you were

1:15:12

like, what do they call it? When

1:15:15

you've got lots of stock in a company,

1:15:17

there's a term for it. There

1:15:21

is a term for leveraged. Is it

1:15:24

leveraged something? There is an old word

1:15:26

where if you've got a lot of

1:15:28

stock in a company, if you could

1:15:30

have gotten it out, you should have

1:15:32

done that because it was clear that

1:15:34

everything was going to be wild and

1:15:36

it's been wild and continues to be

1:15:39

wild. And all I'm

1:15:41

saying is I wouldn't want to be Tim Cook. No.

1:15:43

That's the end of my hot takes unless you

1:15:45

want my take on anything else. I

1:15:48

don't think there's anything

1:15:50

else. Do you regret this

1:15:52

segment? A little bit. No,

1:15:54

I don't. I don't.

1:15:56

I don't. I'm back. Yeah.

1:16:00

And if you don't like this, remember I'm a dad now and

1:16:02

I haven't been sleeping so I don't want to tell you. Okay,

1:16:07

before we go, we're

1:16:09

going to talk about the

1:16:12

EU just quickly. This

1:16:14

was breaking as we record

1:16:16

today, so... John Voorhees

1:16:18

reported this on Mac Stories.

1:16:20

What did he do? John

1:16:23

fined Apple. 500

1:16:26

million euros. Wow.

1:16:29

Is this like when you wrote to Congress? Is this

1:16:31

the result of that? Yeah, it

1:16:33

is. to find them? Yeah, corruption, you

1:16:35

know. Johnny is a good lawyer.

1:16:37

Well, he's retired. You

1:16:40

know, if I'm at home and John's

1:16:42

at home, we live exactly 512 miles away

1:16:44

from each other. That's nice

1:16:46

for you. Well, nice. Yeah,

1:16:48

it's nice. OK, so the

1:16:50

European Commission has fined Apple 500

1:16:52

million euros. They've also fined

1:16:54

Meta 200 million euros. We're going

1:16:56

to focus on Apple for

1:16:58

now. This is

1:17:00

around their steering provisions.

1:17:03

And so the European Commission

1:17:05

writes, under the DMA,

1:17:07

app developers, distributing their

1:17:09

apps via Apple's app store should be

1:17:11

able to inform customers free of

1:17:13

charge of alternative offers outside the app

1:17:16

store, steer users to those

1:17:18

offers and allow them to make

1:17:20

purchases. And so this runs into

1:17:22

all of Apple's stuff of like,

1:17:24

remember like those big scary text

1:17:26

panels that would pop up like,

1:17:28

you're going on the internet. You

1:17:30

credit card and identity will be

1:17:32

stolen. You know, all that stuff.

1:17:35

This seems to be that what's

1:17:37

going on. So in addition

1:17:40

to the fine, Apple has been

1:17:42

ordered to, quote, remove the

1:17:44

technical and commercial restrictions on steering

1:17:46

and to refrain from perpetuating

1:17:48

the non -compliant conduct in the

1:17:50

future. So basically stop doing it

1:17:52

and don't do it again. I

1:17:56

have a quote from Apple

1:17:59

to the verge from Apple

1:18:01

person Emma Wilson. I'm

1:18:04

going to read this in a serious

1:18:06

voice, but just imagine it. It's in

1:18:08

like a whiny toddler voice. Today's announcements

1:18:10

are yet another example of the European

1:18:12

Commission unfairly targeting Apple in a series

1:18:14

of decisions that are bad for the

1:18:17

privacy and security of our users, bad

1:18:19

for products, and force us to give

1:18:21

away our technology for free. So

1:18:25

for free on the iPhone that

1:18:27

we should pay a thousand dollars

1:18:29

for like I know Well, yeah

1:18:31

Apple Emma Wilson goes on we

1:18:33

have spent hundreds of thousands of

1:18:36

engineering hours and made dozens of

1:18:38

changes to comply with this law

1:18:40

None of which our users have

1:18:42

asked for Despite countless meetings the

1:18:44

commission continues to move the goalpost

1:18:47

every step of the way we

1:18:49

will appeal and continue engaging blah

1:18:51

blah blah blah I mean apples

1:18:53

Steering stuff like Clearly they weren't

1:18:55

in violation with like what this

1:18:57

law was trying to do now

1:19:00

you can argue and I think

1:19:02

successfully in places that the DMA

1:19:04

doesn't make a lot of sense

1:19:06

in the way that it's written

1:19:08

it's written by people who don't

1:19:10

necessarily fully understand the technology they're

1:19:13

dealing with but Clearly the European

1:19:15

Commission the example is in violation

1:19:17

of that. So we'll we'll see

1:19:19

where this goes We will see

1:19:21

where it goes I

1:19:24

don't know what to say. I mean, they

1:19:26

had it coming. So, you know, but

1:19:29

yeah, it's not actually Seagull

1:19:31

is talking about this. They

1:19:34

have not find them the amounts

1:19:36

that the DMA says that they can

1:19:38

find them. They have not find

1:19:40

them 10%. So the EU is not

1:19:42

feeling as confident as they used

1:19:44

to about this for some reason. Like,

1:19:46

I don't know what the reason

1:19:48

is, but they're not as confident because

1:19:51

What they should be is

1:19:53

like a 40 billion euro

1:19:55

fine or something, but it's

1:19:57

not it's 500 it's 500

1:19:59

million Right, so they should

1:20:01

have find them like 40

1:20:03

billion euro or 40 billion

1:20:05

dollars and they find them

1:20:07

like 500 million dollars. Yeah,

1:20:09

why have they done that? Maybe

1:20:13

because they wanna you know, I

1:20:15

don't know it's politics. They don't

1:20:17

want to maybe you know, steer

1:20:19

the pot too much. Yeah. Right

1:20:22

now. But then that, that

1:20:24

makes me like, I just wonder about

1:20:26

this now, because it's like, they

1:20:28

cracked. So like, how do we go

1:20:30

back to the table here? Like, what's

1:20:32

Apple going to do now? Right? Because

1:20:34

there's now like, there's like, there's like

1:20:36

a crack in the armor, right? Like,

1:20:40

you have been very strong and they're

1:20:42

continuing to sound very strong. But yeah,

1:20:44

they have not, they have decided for

1:20:46

some reason that they're not going to

1:20:48

find them the amount that they said

1:20:50

they could find them. And I wonder

1:20:52

what that means and what that means

1:20:55

for where we're going forward. We'll

1:20:57

see. I mean, they give them a very

1:20:59

short time, I think, to comply, right? So

1:21:02

I guess we'll see. 60 days. Oh my

1:21:04

God. 60 days. That's not going to happen.

1:21:08

Wow. It's like, oh,

1:21:10

stop working on your redesign. If

1:21:12

it were a TikTok band, they could just extend

1:21:14

the deadline indefinitely. Yep. That's not

1:21:16

how things work over there. Yeah,

1:21:18

the amount of the fine was

1:21:20

a little surprising to me, but it

1:21:22

also feels like the 10 % thing

1:21:24

like That's that's a that's a

1:21:26

card. You can only play once it

1:21:28

feels like like a Lot of

1:21:30

things are gonna break They say that

1:21:33

they can plot they can the

1:21:35

DMA says you can do it and

1:21:37

just keep doing it Like that's

1:21:39

what the rule says like the law

1:21:41

says will find you 10 % and

1:21:43

continually do it But if they

1:21:45

have any desire to for Apple like

1:21:47

to continue to have conversations with

1:21:49

them. That's a one

1:21:51

-way door in Amazon parlance, right? I

1:21:54

agree with you, but then

1:21:56

they should not have made that the law. They

1:21:58

shouldn't have made 10 % the law unless they were going

1:22:00

to do it. Also kind of want to see what

1:22:02

would happen if they did do it. Like

1:22:05

if they find them 40 billion

1:22:07

euros or 40 billion dollars. The

1:22:09

popcorn eating experience would be incredible.

1:22:12

I've been waiting for this. For that

1:22:14

reason, it's like, what happens? But no,

1:22:16

they didn't do it. I mean, look, not

1:22:18

that half a trillion, I keep getting

1:22:20

this wrong, half a billion, how much money?

1:22:23

Whatever the amount is, the amount of

1:22:25

money that they have, that they

1:22:27

have found them is still a lot

1:22:29

of money. Like it's a lot

1:22:31

of money, but I don't know if

1:22:34

it has the exact same sting

1:22:36

as 10 % of your global revenues

1:22:38

does. Remember,

1:22:43

we just like talked about rumors

1:22:45

and made fun of iPhone colors. That

1:22:47

was a simpler time. Sometimes I

1:22:49

yearn for those times. Well,

1:22:51

I mean, we don't have to talk

1:22:53

about this, right? Like we choose to,

1:22:55

like there is an interest in it.

1:22:57

The amount at which we talk about

1:22:59

it is kind of up to us. We

1:23:02

would not have done tariffs outside of the hot

1:23:04

take. It felt like if we did the hot

1:23:06

takes without the tariffs, it was like an obvious

1:23:08

gap. Yeah, but do

1:23:11

you now wish that you

1:23:13

hadn't included that in the

1:23:15

list of things? Yeah Kind

1:23:17

of good to know Maybe

1:23:20

I've learned my lesson Well, I

1:23:23

think that does it for this week if

1:23:25

you want to find links to the stuff we

1:23:27

spoke about there on the web or in

1:23:29

your podcast player There are also a couple of

1:23:31

other links I draw your attention to. You

1:23:33

can send us feedback or follow up. There's a

1:23:35

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1:23:37

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1:23:39

so if you know secret things, tell

1:23:41

us secret things. That's always

1:23:43

fun. You can also become

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1:23:52

week we talked about perplexity and their

1:23:54

moves into like some Siri like

1:23:56

things on the iPhone to their iOS

1:23:58

app actually really Pretty interesting, given

1:24:00

all the the that Siri and Apple

1:24:02

Intelligence have gone through. So, if

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Connect a It's a great It's a

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great deal If you

1:24:21

want to find us online, you

1:24:23

can do so. Federico is

1:24:25

the editor -in -chief of MacStories .net. Mike

1:24:28

hosts quite a few other shows here

1:24:30

on Relay, and you can go check

1:24:32

out his work at Cortex Brand. You

1:24:35

can find my writing at

1:24:37

512px .net, and I co -host Mac

1:24:39

Power users here on Relay each

1:24:41

and every Sunday. to

1:24:43

thank our sponsor this week, Squarespace, for their

1:24:45

support of the show. And until next

1:24:47

time, guys, all three of us, it feels

1:24:49

so good. Say goodbye. I

1:24:52

do that to you. Cheerio. Oh,

1:24:55

Frederick, you know they're just so good to have him

1:24:57

back. They were so good. Say it again, Mike. Cheerio.

1:25:00

Bye, y 'all.