640: Put It in a Potato
22 May 2025OpenAI buys Jony Ive, the alleged AI story inside Apple, the potential for AI APIs, and why we all need to buy Aston Martins for our work.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show: 🗣️ New ATP Member Special: ATP Top Four: Game Consoles 🗣️
- Follow-up:
- Home Networking Corner 🤝🏻 Vision Pro Corner
- SSDs and long-term storage was covered on Security Now #1023 (via Paul Chernoff)
- SpinRite (Intel-only)
- Fornite is back in the US App Store
- Gurman on the Apple Intelligence fiasco
- The EU App Store warning about external purchases isn’t new after all
- Apple to open AI models to developers?
- OpenAI buys Jony Ive’s AI company,
io - Ask ATP:
- What was our favorite school camp/trip? (via Harrison)
- What’s the deal with the tire markings on the bootleg cover art? (via Josh Kincaid)
- Is there a good camera lens that’s also light? (via Matt Richardson)
- Post-show Neutral: CarPlay Ultra
- Members-only ATP Overtime: Meanwhile, in Europe…
Sponsored by:
- Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code atp.
- DeleteMe: Making it quick, easy and safe to remove your personal data online.
- Hello Fresh: America’s #1 meal kit.
Become a member for ATP Overtime, ad-free episodes, member specials, and our early-release, unedited “bootleg” feed!
Chapters
- No
- Top Four Game Consoles
- Home networking + AVP?!
- Long-term SSD follow-up
- Fortnite back in the App Store
- Sponsor: HelloFresh
- Gurman’s AI story
- EU App Store warning is old
- Sponsor: DeleteMe (code ATP)
- iOS AI SDK coming?
- OpenAI + io
- Sponsor: Squarespace
- #askatp: Favorite school camp/trip
- #askatp: Bootleg tire markings 🖼️
- #askatp: Small travel lenses
- Ending theme
- Neutral: CarPlay Ultra
No
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Hi, everybody. We’re live. No.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No one will ever know what that was with regard to. And it’s it sounds really juicy. I have to get the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s right. You have to come to my house. Don’t do that. And, you know, steal the file from an expiry
⏹️ ▶️ Casey three. Don’t do that either.
⏹️ ▶️ John We actually have a bootleg related question. Ask ATP this week if we get to it. We probably won’t, but hopefully we
⏹️ ▶️ John will. We might. We could. It’s possible. We can do it, I believe in us.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, then we should, do we have, is that the pre-show then? Should we just move right along to follow-up? you
Top Four Game Consoles
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s do it. All right. So we’re going to do the unthinkable. We’re going to combine
⏹️ ▶️ Casey home networking and Vision Pro Corners.
⏹️ ▶️ John Is that unthinkable? Because I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thought about it. It is unthinkable. Wait, we have to be before we do that. We have to promote our member
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John special. Oh, yeah, no, we almost missed it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey God, I almost forgot. I almost did it again. Oh, my gosh. Wow. I’m an idiot.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is why I wrote in our internal show notes something along the lines of don’t forget to promote the member
⏹️ ▶️ Casey special you dolts. And then it got changed to the more adult and appropriate listing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about the member special. And then I just skipped right over it
⏹️ ▶️ John keep you forgot to mention that I just said that we That’s also true.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey 96 seconds ago, I said, Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s being generous to
⏹️ ▶️ John the member special. Anyway, so here we are. We’re gonna do it. I swear.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes. All right. So here we go. Here’s our new pre show pre show. Take two click. That’s that’s a clapperboard
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like mine, like my icon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from all the clapper boards in podcasting.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We’re bringing some weird energy tonight, so buckle up, everyone. All right. So we have a new member special we also did last week,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but we never talked about it. So we have a brand new member special, the completely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey original, not copied from anywhere, ATP top four game consoles. And among other
⏹️ ▶️ Casey things, you can hear some of us get perturbed about what is or is not a game console. So if that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey doesn’t rev your engine, I don’t know what does. John, do you want to fill in anything more about this?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, we’ve actually done one top four before and I would not I’m not going to make the
⏹️ ▶️ John totally original joke because my original Conception was it is that is it is? Duly
⏹️ ▶️ John licensed we have licensed the top four format from someone we know with an inside line on top
⏹️ ▶️ John four And this is our second top four and we didn’t do it as a tier list because there’s just not enough game consoles
⏹️ ▶️ John really to Tier them I suppose and top four is kind of a better way since these are you know So,
⏹️ ▶️ John so personal, as you’ll see, if you listen to the episode, it’s kind of hard to rank consoles
⏹️ ▶️ John any way that’s not personal simply because of the role they fill in our lives. So if you are in
⏹️ ▶️ John for some game console nostalgia, uh, this is the episode for you.
⏹️ ▶️ John ATP top four game consoles.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep. I thought it was pretty good actually. I mean, not, not to imply that the other ones are bad, but I thought this one was fun. Yeah. A lot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of nostalgia from three, well, two 40 year olds and a 50 year old. 40-ish year old.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really got to point that out, do you?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yep, sure do. Cross over that threshold and suddenly I’m in a different category. Oh, wow.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s coming for us all, hopefully. Hey, John, I found this knife in your back. I think it has Casey’s name on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play? But yeah, so anyways, it was a fun one.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There’s a lot of nostalgia there. The feedback we’ve gotten has only been mildly grumpy, which for a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey member special, I consider that to be a personal victory because usually we make everyone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like amusingly upset, which is not by design, just kind of happens that way. So yeah, check it out. If
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you don’t know how to do that, or if you don’t see a member special in your feed, that’s probably because you are not a member.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So if you go to atp.fm slash join, J-O-I-N, then you can become
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a member and you can give us a little bit of money each month or a not insignificant amount of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey money each year. And you can get all of the member specials that we’ve ever recorded. John,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what’s the count now? Like 20 or 30, something like that?
⏹️ ▶️ John We’re somewhere in the 30s. I need to look this up, because every time you talk about this, you try to speculate a number, and I tell you it’s too low, but neither
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey one of us actually ever looks it up. So
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s my homework.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fair enough. So anyways, there’s somewhere in the vicinity of 30 of these, and I think they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all fun in their own way. So you should go check them out. again, atp.fm slash join.
Home networking + AVP?!
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s do some follow-up and we are going to do the unthinkable. We are going to combine
⏹️ ▶️ Casey home networking and Vision Pro corners. Prepare yourselves. Buckle up, everyone.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was looking at Reddit because I do that because I hate myself sometimes. And I noticed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at the Ubiquity subreddit, somebody posted how I use my Apple Vision Pro to retrofit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Unify Access Points and finished homes. And it’s a video where the voiceover is regular
⏹️ ▶️ Casey speed, but the video has been sped up. it starts well, let me just say this, if you have five
⏹️ ▶️ Casey minutes with which to kill and you’re in a position that you can watch a video safely, you should pause the podcast right now and watch this video
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because seeing it without the description will make it land that much better and it will be quite amusing to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey see what I’m about to describe. With that said, welcome back. So what this person
⏹️ ▶️ Casey does is they use USDZ files, I forget what the technical term is for those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Universal Scene Definition zipped.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, there you go. I did. I did not know that. So thank you. So they use these USDZs that are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the files app and they just drag them into 3D space. And what they do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is they take like iPhones and Pepsi cans and Iron Man
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and they put these things in 3D space to mark out like walls
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or accesses or things like that. So it begins with this person in the garage and they put
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like a couple of Pepsi or like a Pepsi can and Iron Man, something else in and they go
⏹️ ▶️ Casey upstairs to see where those cans are. Because I’m sorry, I left out the important part.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey They’re putting these in the ceiling of the garage because they’re software, right? They’re not real.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So they just put them right in the ceiling of the garage and then they go up to the second story and they see exactly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where that thing is. Now, granted, it’s probably off by a couple of inches here or there, but effectively,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they’re poking a virtual hole through the ceiling slash floor to see
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where they can get access to all these different things. Then they use iPhone models to map out where walls
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are because iPhones are roughly rectangular shaped. It is incredibly clever. I am
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so mad that this never occurred to me. I haven’t really had this need, but just in principle, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so mad that I never thought of this. And for all of the many problems that the Vision Pro has,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey things like this are just so cool. And Leo, earlier today, I went to a library, as I often but not always
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do, to do prep in the morning and I went and I got a little room in the library
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to myself and I put on the vision pro and did Mac virtual display. And I got to tell you,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you have a vision pro and if you don’t, if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you haven’t tried Mac virtual display, you’ve got to try it because it’s so cool. Anyways, home networking and vision pro together
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, I watched that video too. And I had the same thought as you kind of like the, the measure app on the iPhone where
⏹️ ▶️ John you can like supposedly measure things in real life. So they put the soda can in the garage and then they
⏹️ ▶️ John walk through a door, walk up some stairs that are like not straight stairs, but like stairs that kind of circle back on themselves,
⏹️ ▶️ John go into another room and then they see the soda can poking up. I’m like, okay, what’s the error here? What are the error bars on
⏹️ ▶️ John this? How like you think a few inches? I’m like, is that a few feet off? Because all I’m thinking the whole time is like,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh my God, how is it registering? How is it tracking? Like, how is it? You know, how much is what is the error here as they
⏹️ ▶️ John leave the room, go through several doorways and up a winding staircase and into another room and see the soda
⏹️ ▶️ John can and it’s roughly where you think it would be. But I’m like, is it three feet off? Is it six inches
⏹️ ▶️ John off? Is it nine feet off? I’m dying to know. So I want you to actually try this in your house, Casey.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like find like a known good spot where like, I know that this spot in the ceiling here
⏹️ ▶️ John corresponds to that spot on the floor on the upstairs thing. And do it with something a little bit smaller than a
⏹️ ▶️ John three foot wide Pepsi can. And tell me what the accuracy is like. Cause I know from experience
⏹️ ▶️ John using the measure app on your phone that just uses the camera and your screen to like draw these little lines and measure
⏹️ ▶️ John things, it’s not that accurate. And I’m like, if the phone can’t do like, you know, I’m trying to measure something,
⏹️ ▶️ John is it 10 inches or 12? And it gets it off by an inch. Like what’s the error rate of walking into another room? So please
⏹️ ▶️ John try this and connect to us.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, you know, we’ve talked about this long ago, but one of the reasons why I was really interested in putting fiber
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the house is because if you recall, in the garage, we used to have the furnace for the entire house.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that meant we had duct work running from the garage all the way up into the attic. And we’ve since gone to a two
⏹️ ▶️ Casey zone system. So there’s a furnace in the attic, furnace in the crawl space. And that duct work is empty. And what I had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey planned to do was run fiber through that duct work, because that’s a direct path from the garage all the way
⏹️ ▶️ Casey into the attic, easy peasy. Well, that, that duct work it’s behind drywall, but it goes through
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the corner of the primary bathroom, like our bedrooms bathroom. And so what I should do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is stick a Pepsi can in there and then in the garage and then run up to the, to my bathroom and see if it’s approximately
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where it should be, I should have done that. I didn’t think about it, but I will take that as homework do it at some point.
Long-term SSD follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s talk about SSDs and long-term storage. Paul Chernoff writes, Steve Gibson on this Security
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now podcast covered the SSD longevity issue in episode 1023. According to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Steve, simply powering up the SSD on occasion does not help. When the bits don’t get refreshed, they start going bad.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If you rewrite every sector on a drive on a regular basis, every 6 to 12 months, the problem
⏹️ ▶️ Casey goes away. His Spinrite app, S-P-I-N-R-I-T-E app, and we’ll link it in the show notes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey will do this, but it’s for, John, I mean, Intel only. I think it
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe is it for Intel only for Windows? I’m not
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey sure. Anyway, this
⏹️ ▶️ John extra bit of information is worth repeating. The just powering
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey on the drive
⏹️ ▶️ John is not enough. You need to read and then rewrite the data apparently. So that’s a bummer. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John SSDs for long-term storage, don’t do it.
Fortnite back in the App Store
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. Semi-breaking news. Do do do do do do do do. We’ll have real breaking news in a minute. Fortnite
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is back in the App Store in the United States App Store. Even reading from Verge, Fortnite is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey once again available on the iOS App Store in the US. Epic says it has returned to the Epic Games Store
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and Alt Store as well. Epic asked a judge in the in the Epic versus Apple case to order
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple to review its Fortnite submission to the App Store on May 16th yesterday, which I believe was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the 20th as we record this. Maybe it was 19th. It doesn’t matter. Anyway, recently the judge said in the filing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that Apple is quote fully capable of resolving this issue without further briefing or a hearing quote And that if a resolution
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wasn’t reached the Apple official who is quote personally responsible for ensuring compliance
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We have to appear at a hearing next Tuesday. That is literally see you next Tuesday
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Shortly after fortnight returned to the App Store on Tuesday epic in Apple filed a joint notice saying that they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have resolved all issues from epics May 16th filing Apple didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Epic also recently rolled out a new promotion to encourage players to use its payment systems. If you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use Epic system in Fortnite, Rocket League or Fall Guys on PC, iOS, Android and the web, the company will give you 20%
⏹️ ▶️ Casey back in Epic rewards that you can that can be used for other purchases in its games or on the Epic Game Store. The
⏹️ ▶️ Casey app shows that 20% bonus when you pick which payment system you want to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use to buy V-Bucks. So it says choose how to play Epic Store earn 20% or one dollar
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 80 cents back in this case, in epic rewards or in a purchase.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s been very nice with this dialogue. Don’t you think this is much nicer than it needs to be? Like the two things are side by side.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re roughly the same size that the earn 20 percent is so tiny. You can barely read it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Just very, very. Yeah, I’m not sure why they needed to be that nice, but they are.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I love how in a purchase is all lowercase, including the I.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Well, I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s just, you know, laziness. But
⏹️ ▶️ John this this this whole thing was interesting because, You know, the the rulings in this
⏹️ ▶️ John case were, you know, basically, Epic, you lost the the app store is allowed to exist, but Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re not allowed to stop people from telling about better payment methods. That was the ruling.
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple didn’t comply with it. Then Apple got smacked down and said, guess what? Now, Apple, you have to let anybody do anything.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can’t take any money for them, blah, blah, blah. But still, Fortnite wasn’t in the app store because Epic
⏹️ ▶️ John broke their developer agreement and Apple banned them. And it was like an open question. Did
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, does this ruling say anything? I mean, it doesn’t say explicitly, but it does this ruling or the follow up
⏹️ ▶️ John ruling where Apple got spanked for disobeying the original ruling. Does it mean
⏹️ ▶️ John that Apple has to let Epic back in? Like it seems it seemed to me always is like a separate
⏹️ ▶️ John issue. It’s like, OK, here’s the rules of the App Store. But still, Apple can kick people out of the App Store for breaking
⏹️ ▶️ John rules, even if they were rules that existed a long time ago. So it didn’t seem to me that anything
⏹️ ▶️ John having to do with this court case meant that Apple had to let Epic put the put Fortnite back in
⏹️ ▶️ John the US app store specifically. And so they didn’t. And Epic kept saying, we’re going to be back in the app store.
⏹️ ▶️ John We’re submitting it and Apple just ignore them and not even review their app. Like they didn’t even reject it. They’re just like, because Epic
⏹️ ▶️ John pulled it themselves and then resubmitted because they have content refreshers they needed to do. And Apple was just like slow
⏹️ ▶️ John walking and say, we’ll just never going to look at it or whatever. But Epic went and ran to the judge and said, Hey,
⏹️ ▶️ John mom, Apple’s not letting us put our app in the store. And The judge basically said, oh, you should probably
⏹️ ▶️ John let them put the, you know, Apple can resolve this. When he’s saying Apple, just let them put it in the store.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The judge said, see me.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, if you can’t resolve this amongst yourselves, you’ll have to see me. Now it’s not a slam dunk
⏹️ ▶️ John that the judge would have said, okay, you have to actually do it. But Apple, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John I was gonna say the Apple’s credit, but the bar is so low here. Looking at this whole thing, you
⏹️ ▶️ John may be thinking, what is Apple doing? Don’t they want Fortnite on the App Store? It’s just so vindictive. Like this is
⏹️ ▶️ John like, it’s all over except for the shouting here. Epic wants to put their game back on your store. You’ve already lost,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, you won the thing that you cared about, which is the app store can stay, but you lost the thing about steering and you lost it hard
⏹️ ▶️ John and twice, but you’re still appealing or whatever. Just let like, it’s like Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ John speaking of biting off your nose, despite your face, don’t you want Fortnite? And Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ John answer was no, we don’t cause we don’t like them. Uh, but apparently they finally, cooler heads prevailed and they said, you know, why
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t we just let it back in the store? If it turns out we win an appeal, We’ll kick them out again. But why don’t we just let them back in?
⏹️ ▶️ John So they did. They didn’t have to go before the judge. And so we are they are spared that
⏹️ ▶️ John that punishment. And so there you have it. If you want Fortnite on your iPhone and you’re not in the
⏹️ ▶️ John EU, you can get it again now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, this is one of those like we only record once a week, and it seems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that’s not actually enough to keep up with all of Apple’s legal
⏹️ ▶️ John court filings and public battles, especially when it comes to epic and Tim Sweeney’s is making statements
⏹️ ▶️ John online. You know, this is going to happen and that’s going to happen. And Apple’s not doing this. And Apple’s mostly just sitting there quietly.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the judge is saying things and issuing rulings. And, you know, weekly cadence is pretty good because we got to skip over
⏹️ ▶️ John all the drama and just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. But the good thing is like in this case, I don’t think Apple for a second wanted to let
⏹️ ▶️ Marco epic back in the store. But I think what, what happened finally was they, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, it’s almost like when, You know, when you have somebody you care about digging
⏹️ ▶️ Marco themselves a hole and they just keep talking and they keep digging and you just keep thinking, oh my god, stop talking,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco please stop talking, oh my god, you’re just making it worse, please stop, please stop. Apple finally realized
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that if they get themselves back in front of this judge, only bad things will happen. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco obviously this judge is not pleased with Apple’s behavior. We know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple would have arguable grounds to keep Epic out of the store
⏹️ ▶️ Marco forever. And if the judge issued, say, another injunction, I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how the legal system works, sorry, but if the judge somehow, as a result of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this hearing that she was asking to have, if it ended up that Apple lost the ability
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to keep anybody out of the App Store, that would be very bad for Apple indeed. So I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple’s finally realized we should just let this through. That way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the judge never addresses the issue of whether we can reject things or not. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if the judge addresses that issue in a way that does not go in our favor, that’s very bad for us. So finally,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple realized maybe we should stop digging. So you know, it’s a limited
⏹️ ▶️ Marco effect in this particular case, but maybe they’re finally realizing now the position they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually in and I don’t know it at least maybe has stopped bleeding.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and because that because they for whatever reason they did that guess what now they’ve kind of walked themselves backwards
⏹️ ▶️ John into oh now you have this very popular game back on your platform see isn’t it nice Apple did seemingly
⏹️ ▶️ John nothing could happen to make you act in your best interest except for now the threat of whatever the judge was
⏹️ ▶️ John going to do was enough to say fine we’ll make our platform better for everybody and we’ll slightly increase the amount
⏹️ ▶️ John of money we make because before we were making $0 from fortnite in the US and now we’ll make some portion
⏹️ ▶️ John depending on which button people pick in that dialogue and you know what I think a lot of people will pick an app but
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll see how it goes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Honestly so my prediction is that you know assuming that the current injunction
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which lets the which forces apple to permit everyone in the US app store
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to allow link outs to web purchases. I bet in six months,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when we start to see whatever the quarterly results would be that would include this time period,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I bet we see no noticeable difference in services revenue. Like I bet they did all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of this and risked all of this and fought this hard and just destroyed their credibility
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with developers in so many ways. I bet they did it all for very, very little. But we’ll see what happens.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe they’ll win on appeal. I don’t forget what the dates are for the appeal, but suffice it to say, this is still winding its
⏹️ ▶️ John way through the court process. It’s not over. It’s seemingly never over.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. But unless they get that emergency, like stay on the injunction that they filed to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco say, like, wait, let’s wait until we fight this. If they don’t get that, and therefore, if they have to go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco through an appeal to turn this over, that could be months or years. So we will have enough time, if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that does happen, we will have enough time to see the impact in their quarterly results and again
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I bet it’s going to be basically nothing.
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Gurman’s AI story
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right. With regard to fiascos, let’s talk about Mark Gurman and the Apple intelligence fiasco.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So Gurman basically said plus one to everything that we talked about. It was the last episode,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know, recently on, on ATP episode 635 and effective operator. I know it was a couple episodes ago.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anyways, there’s a lot here that I can read.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, do you want me to just start? Do you want to just start talking about any particular highlights? How do you want to
⏹️ ▶️ John handle this? we just go through the ball. This is mostly the juicy quotes, because like I said, when we talked about this in
⏹️ ▶️ John episode 635, it was from a report from the information, which really got the scoop
⏹️ ▶️ John on like all the inside info from Apple folks. And we talked about it at length and there’s not really anything in this report
⏹️ ▶️ John that is just not more of the same, you know, sort of confirmation from, of the, or
⏹️ ▶️ John seconding of the earlier reporting. But there are a bunch of what appear to be direct quotes
⏹️ ▶️ John and some of them are juicy. So I figured we would just hit the juicy quotes. So we just, there’s not, again, There’s not a lot of new information here.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you want to hear a longer discussion of this, check out an effective operator. We’ll put a link in the show notes, but
⏹️ ▶️ John the juicy quotes are fun. So we should just go through all of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey them. Cook, who is generally known for keeping his distance from product development, was pushing hard for more serious AI
⏹️ ▶️ Casey effort. Tim was one of Apple’s biggest believers in AI, says a person who worked with him. He was constantly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey frustrated that Siri lagged behind Alexa and that the company didn’t yet have a foothold in the home
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like Amazon’s Echo smart speaker.
⏹️ ▶️ John So this is the first I’m hearing of this angle where like this is obviously pre HomePod, right? So this is, you know, before
⏹️ ▶️ John they had anything that was like the, you know, the Echo and the Home. So this is a while ago
⏹️ ▶️ John and Tim Cook was, you know, seemingly like, I really want to do AI. I’m, I don’t like
⏹️ ▶️ John us to be behind it. It kind of explains why the HomePod project existed or got, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John reportedly it came out of the Apple TV project. That’s how long ago it was back when Apple was supposedly making a television
⏹️ ▶️ John set. But if this is true, that he’s a big believer in AI was frustrated
⏹️ ▶️ John that Apple didn’t have anything like the Amazon Echo. He didn’t do a good job
⏹️ ▶️ John of changing that and he’s the CEO. So that’s a put a black mark in Tim Cook’s book for that one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, as you got to judge the results like what actually has happened and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what has happened is Apple is really far behind in AI and seems to have taken a lot of missteps along the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way to what will eventually hopefully be the right path. So that’s, you know, regardless of what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some anonymous report says that Tim thought about AI at some point in the past. Look at the results. Didn’t happen.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s why it’s surprising to hear that it was the top person in the company that they were really wanted Apple to do this. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John if you want Apple to do it and they don’t do it, then something is wrong.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey When JG started at Apple in 2018, almost immediately he concluded the company would need to spend hundreds
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of millions of dollars more on the kinds of large scale testing and image and text annotation required to train
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the machine learning models that AI technology technologies are built on. Oh, that was a lot.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey He got enough money to hire some top AI researchers away from Google and to expand the teams responsible for testing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and data analysis. Still, Gianandrea’s efforts were often stymied.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Federighi, Apple’s software chief, remained reluctant to make large investments in AI. He didn’t see it as a core
⏹️ ▶️ Casey capability for personal computers or mobile devices and didn’t want to siphon resources away from developing annual updates
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the iPhone, Mac, and iPad operating systems, according to several colleagues. Craig is just not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the kind of guy who says, hey, We need to do this big thing that will require big budgets and a ton more people, a long time
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple executive says.
⏹️ ▶️ John So this is interesting. So JG coming in and saying, we need to spend tons of money. We talked on earlier
⏹️ ▶️ John episodes about how he wanted to buy a bunch of GPUs and the CFO said, you can get them but only
⏹️ ▶️ John half to start and then more slowly after that or whatever. So it seems like when he landed at the company he was pushing
⏹️ ▶️ John for things to be in the right direction but sort of the other folks who were there like Craig
⏹️ ▶️ John being responsible for essentially the sort of annual cycle of like, what does Apple do every year? They revise all
⏹️ ▶️ John their operating systems on all their platforms. They have a bunch of new features. They put a bunch of new hardware out. Like just keeping
⏹️ ▶️ John up with that treadmill. We talk about how difficult it is for developers to keep up with the Apple update treadmill. But if you’re inside
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple, you have to actually generate that treadmill every year and ship it. And so you can see like,
⏹️ ▶️ John he’s there. Craig’s got enough on his plate to do. And if some new guy comes in the company and says, actually
⏹️ ▶️ John what we should be doing is this big other thing. Like to be a very successful executive in
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple, to be as an effective operator, as I described Federighi in that earlier episode.
⏹️ ▶️ John You kind of have to know like, look, here’s how we do things at Apple. And the way we do things is every year, I don’t go to
⏹️ ▶️ John my boss and say, hey, give me 500 new employees and millions and millions of dollars because they’ve got
⏹️ ▶️ John this harebrained idea. It’s like, no, I know what I have to do every year, new versions of all our major operating systems that work with all the new hardware,
⏹️ ▶️ John with new APIs and new features. And we show it every year at WWDC. I’m not gonna be down here asking Tim
⏹️ ▶️ John Cook for money every time I have a harebrained idea. this new guy comes in a company, he wants hundreds of millions of dollars.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I’m going to push back on that. So I understand it. In hindsight, it’s easy to say, Oh, Craig, you made a mistake.
⏹️ ▶️ John But, you know, back in 2018, when you look at it, she’s like, well, Craig’s doing what he’s supposed to be doing. And JG is doing what he’s supposed to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Other leaders shared Federico’s reservations in the world of AI. You really don’t know what the product is until you’ve done
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the investment. Another longtime executive says that’s not how Apple is wired. Apple sits down to build a product, knowing what the end
⏹️ ▶️ Casey game is. As a result, the company was blindsided by Chachi PT’s launch in November 2022.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey One senior executive says Apple Intelligence wasn’t even an idea before that. It’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like what open AI was doing was secret, says another. Anyone who was paying attention to the market should, the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey market there should have seen it and jumped all over it. Within a month of chat GPT’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey release, Federico used generative AI to write code for a personal software project he was working on. The technology’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey potential was suddenly evident to him. Hmm. Who would have thunk it?
⏹️ ▶️ John So this is a little hindsight 2020 though, the whole like, Oh, you should have known. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple needs to know what they’re building ahead of time. And that’s not the way it is with AI. I would argue even today, a
⏹️ ▶️ John lot of the biggest AI companies are kind of like, we’re not sure how far this can go.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like how far can we take this? What are these things good for? Let’s try it like l companies with LMS have tried
⏹️ ▶️ John all sorts of things. What’s the best way to make this product? Is it just chatbots? Can image generation,
⏹️ ▶️ John coding aids like fixing your writing like this? They’re not sure exactly what it’s going
⏹️ ▶️ John to be good for, but they know it’s useful for a bunch of stuff already. And they’re trying to figure it out. And that’s just not how something is going
⏹️ ▶️ John to work. Like that’s that’s what new companies and startups and people on the edge
⏹️ ▶️ John of new technologies, that’s how they can act. But Apple can’t be like anytime there’s something
⏹️ ▶️ John that could potentially be good. We need to just start investing in it as hard as the as the biggest startup. So I kind of understand
⏹️ ▶️ John that. And whoever they’re quoting here, I’m saying like, they could just look at open eyes and like what they were doing with secret. It’s like, yeah, there’s a million
⏹️ ▶️ John startups doing stuff, But you don’t know whether they’re going to be successful now arguably given
⏹️ ▶️ John the timeline of Federico waking up and saying wow this LM stuff Is really good. He was a little late on that
⏹️ ▶️ John I always give him credit for noticing and saying we need to get on this right now better late than never
⏹️ ▶️ John but the sort of you know armchair quarterbacking even people inside the company just
⏹️ ▶️ John because Some people were very enthusiastic about open AI and everything until open AI
⏹️ ▶️ John had shown that they had the goods It’s, you know, it’s not the time to tell Apple, you have to
⏹️ ▶️ John invest in this because there’s, I’m sure there’s people who work for Apple, whatever their pet technology is, they think Apple should
⏹️ ▶️ John be investing more in this than it turns out the technology fizzles and goes away. It just turns out this was the one that actually
⏹️ ▶️ John turned into something good. So Apple was late, but, you know, I still feel
⏹️ ▶️ John like condemning the company for not getting on it as
⏹️ ▶️ John early as OpenAI was, is asking for a bit much.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, okay, I’m not sure about that because Apple has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so much money that all they can think to do with it is buy their own stock back. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they have so much money. Why shouldn’t they have more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco major R&D projects? Like I don’t think that’s necessary, especially like when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s something really exciting in technology that is causing a stir
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and pushing a lot of products and investment forward, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe that’s a good reason to have a bunch of R&D projects and to invest more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco often in things. The thing
⏹️ ▶️ John does have tons of R&D projects. That’s the whole, that’s the whole thing. It’s like, again, hindsight 2020, it’s like, look up all the
⏹️ ▶️ John R&D projects Apple has, whatever they’re doing with the robots and like, not just like the car and stuff that we hear about, but like,
⏹️ ▶️ John there, I’m sure there’s tons of R&D projects, but they’re doing tons of things. Even just in software, setting
⏹️ ▶️ John aside all the weird hardware stuff that they’re surely doing, figuring out new materials or whatever, they’re constantly doing
⏹️ ▶️ John R&D projects that go nowhere. That’s what I feel like the hindsight thing is like, oh, well, but you have all this money,
⏹️ ▶️ John you should, you know, chat GPT or LMs should have been one of those projects. It’s easy
⏹️ ▶️ John to say that now, and I agree that they were late, but I don’t agree that they were so egregiously
⏹️ ▶️ John late that like in 2018, they should have known that open AI was gonna be the next big thing, because that’s asking for
⏹️ ▶️ John a bit much. Like it wasn’t clear to the world until a year or two later, And it wasn’t clear to Apple until
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe a year too late. So I’m gonna ding Apple for being late, but I’m not gonna ding them for
⏹️ ▶️ John predicting the future and saying, this is what we should invest it in. And you may be right that there was like surplus
⏹️ ▶️ John budget that someone should have spent on this. Obviously, again, in hindsight, they should have or whatever, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I get the feeling from all the random stories that I read that there’s tons of research projects that Apple is doing all the time,
⏹️ ▶️ John most of which go nowhere. So I don’t think they’re being stingy and like, oh, we’re just gonna buy our stock
⏹️ ▶️ John back that we can’t think about what to do with their money. I think they invest in the things they think
⏹️ ▶️ John are worth investing in, and they just made the wrong call on this particular one. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s hard to tell from an article like this, because it’s obviously this is going to be all about, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John why Apple missed, like, why were they late? Who was for it? Who was against it? Again, hindsight 2020.
⏹️ ▶️ John In the end, it turns out these people were right and these people were wrong. And let’s get some juicy quotes from that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, that’s I think that’s very generous of you to look at it that way. I think the way it seems, the way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it looks to me is Apple is a company that has,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that its ability to hustle has atrophied because they’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had so much success and success in ways that have allowed them to build up walls to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco preclude competition that they really don’t seem like they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trying very hard in a lot of areas. are in some sure they are trying very hard in some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it seems like the company in general lacks any kind of hustle in most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco areas and again this is true of everything like I do think they are leading in things like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know laptops and you know computer power and like processors like they’re really good at all that stuff but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like when it comes to like new areas certainly most areas of software I would I would describe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this way but certainly like you know new new types of devices or kind of new areas in tech,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it seems like Apple’s got no hustle whatsoever. And I think it’s because they have just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gotten so used to not needing to compete much in those areas because of the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco walls they have built that it seems like they’ve lost the ability to really bust their butt and actually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so fast forward to now-ish. Inside Apple, Gene Andrea has
⏹️ ▶️ Casey absorbed much of the blame for the delays and false starts, according to several employees and people close to the company. They
⏹️ ▶️ Casey say he’s found it difficult to fit in with the members of Apple’s innermost circle who’ve worked together for decades and run the company like a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey family business. And he’s learned, like senior transplants before him, that this makes it difficult to enact change. Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey leadership is a realm of forceful personalities who are ultimately judged on bringing new products to market.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey JG is low-key, and some people say he didn’t fight hard enough to get the money his group needed. Quote, JG
⏹️ ▶️ Casey should have been much, much more aggressive in getting funding to go big. But John’s not a salesman. He’s a technologist,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey says an employee who knows him.
⏹️ ▶️ John He is not an effective operator within Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sure. Seems that way. Uh, others say G and Andrea isn’t hands-on enough and doesn’t drive his workers particularly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hard. Quote, every other team at Apple, at least in engineering is balls to the wall. Get it out, get it out on time. And JG’s team
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just doesn’t operate that way. One executive says they just don’t execute.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John They just didn’t.
⏹️ ▶️ John So, you know, yeah, this, this is one of the consistent things you see. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ John much more about this, about jealousy, about the perks that that team is is getting or whatever. And
⏹️ ▶️ John again, I mostly give Apple credit for understanding that this is an important area
⏹️ ▶️ John and making what seemed like a very good hire and allowing that person to spend a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John of money and hire a lot of people and run their kingdom the way they want to run it. But in the end, the bill comes due.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like, okay, Apple, the company, is trying to do what’s right, even though they’re starting late,
⏹️ ▶️ John to say, we need to invest in this, we need to do it as best we can. But if you are the person in charge of
⏹️ ▶️ John that, you gotta produce results. And that’s why we had the big shakeup.
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway, no news here, but more juicy quotes. We didn’t even put all of them in. You can read this
⏹️ ▶️ John in Bloomberg if you want to see more, but someday someone will write a nice tell-all book.
EU App Store warning is old
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The EU App Store warning that we were talking about a week or two ago, I think last week,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about external purchases, apparently it’s not new. Reading from Daring Fireball, John Gruber, Apple told
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me this external payments warning has been in place since the very beginning of their DMA compliance in March 2024.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Jacob Eitling, who is the CEO of Revenue Cat, tweeted, I think this is EU only and might have been around
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for a while. I just assume nobody bothered with the DMA implementation for external purchases since they were pointless.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fewer than 100 have availed themselves of this option for obvious reasons. Then back to Gruber.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think this blew up a bit yesterday on May 14th, because despite the fact that it had been around since March 2024, a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey few of us had ever seen it before because so few apps in the App Store use it. Iteling includes a link
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to Apple’s own developer documentation for its DMA compliance features, which makes this clear, quoting from there.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey To help users understand whether an app contains an alternative payment option, the App Store will display an informational banner
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the app’s product page to identify the developer’s enablement of this entitlement. When downloading an app, users
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are also informed if the app uses PSPs. What’s that stand for? Something payment,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John something service processor.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you go. Or links out on the purchase confirmation sheet. Apps that contain alternative payment option are required
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to present users with a disclosure prior to each transaction or link out to purchase to help them understand that the purchase isn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey backed by Apple. A real time follow up. I believe it’s payment service provider. Thanks to Chris Fonaso
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Yeah, this is
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, all this, us, these facts are actually coming up in court now. Like, as we said, when Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, you know, implemented its supposed compliance, we said, you know, this Apple is making it as unattractive
⏹️ ▶️ John as possible to use these things. And lo and behold, if you make it really unattractive, nobody uses it, which is exactly
⏹️ ▶️ John what Apple wanted and is also why, uh, their compliance is not particularly compliant.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. I love like, yes, we were indeed wrong last week when we said Apple just started to become a jerk in this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way. Apple’s defense was we’ve you’ve been a jerk in this way for years.
⏹️ ▶️ John Look at us go. He just never noticed because because we made it so attractive that no one ever wanted to What is this?
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iOS AI SDK coming?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s do some topics and we’re going to start tonight with some news from Bloomberg. Reading from there, Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is working on a software development kit and related frameworks that will let outsiders build AI features based on the large language models
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that the company uses for Apple Intelligence. Apple expects to unveil the plan on June 9th at its Worldwide Developers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Conference. This sounds pretty cool. I don’t know. I was thinking about this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey over the last couple of days after I read this article. I don’t know specifically what I would do with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this with call sheet. And I obviously don’t know the capabilities either, but I can see how this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would be really neat. And as an example, I can imagine, you know, being able to ask
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this, you know, AI thing, you know, given, given all the information, you know, about my pins
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and call sheet, for example, show me movies that have, uh, you know, at least two of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actors I’ve pinned in call sheet in the same movie, I don’t think I’m doing a good job verbalizing that, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hopefully You know what I mean? Uh, and I think that would be really neat or, you know, maybe show me a podcast that are similar to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ATP and overcast or something like that. We’ll see what this actually is. And I’m, I’m,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m really trying not to get my hopes up because oftentimes Apple really doesn’t like to give us a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey long leash with which to run, but I’m here for it and I mean, I think we talked about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey last week, the week before that, you know, Ben Thompson’s been calling for this for months now. I’m here for it. This sounds
⏹️ ▶️ Casey great. Tentatively. We’ll see what actually happens.
⏹️ ▶️ John Marco has been calling for it for months. As
⏹️ ▶️ John Thompson has mentioned recently, Marco’s been for maybe years. This is what Marco wanted out of Apple Intelligence and
⏹️ ▶️ John has complained since WWDC 2024 that he was not getting. So how do you feel about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this announcement? Right, because, you know, last WWDC, you know, there’s been a lot of the recent
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stir up about how, you know, Apple Intelligence stuff that was debuted in last WWDC was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco delayed or seemed like fabricated in some degrees. But my problem at the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time was at this developer conference, you’ve just announced a whole bunch of features that developers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have no way to use. All of iOS 18 has gone through with Apple Intelligence
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slowly appearing in bits and pieces, and there’s no APIs for developers to use any of this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff. And so, these days, there is actually a lot of utility that apps can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have by using LLMs or other advanced AI models, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco transcription, for instance, which would be relevant to me. There are other
⏹️ ▶️ Marco uses of AI in apps, and the only way for apps to do this to date has been to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco either bundle in a giant model into your app and run it on the device, which is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco huge and cumbersome and requires some advanced knowledge to actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get it to work right. Or you could call it to a web service and use some kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco API, which is very expensive. Or you could host your own on your own
⏹️ ▶️ Marco servers and have your app talk to your servers and do it server-side, which is also very expensive and requires
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very advanced knowledge and everything. So what I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hope, and what I hoped for last year, and what this sounds like maybe we’ll get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is whatever Apple Intelligence is currently capable of doing with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco its models, let apps have an API to do similar things.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco When you look at the history of software development and the advancement of computers,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, what really makes the tide rise and lift all boats? Maybe that’s a bad analogy in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco era of climate change, as I live on a barrier island. But when… what really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco raises the standards for everybody is when the platform, when they add APIs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to make things that used to be difficult, easy for everyone. That helps
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everybody. You know, it used to be back in in the days, basics of like graphics and sound APIs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then networking APIs got added. And then over time, we’ve gotten much more advanced APIs that like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the platform vendors offer nice API layers on top of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco complex things that, you know, are maybe hard to do yourself if you’re not an expert in those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fields. And then individual developers like me can have an app that does pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco advanced things because I didn’t have to write every little detail of the UI framework,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the graphics layer, the animation layer.
⏹️ ▶️ John The audio engine, oh, sorry.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, right. I haven’t written a lot of the audio engine. I wrote the parts that generates
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the samples and processes them, and I didn’t even have to do that. But there’s a lot of parts about routing it to different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco speakers and stuff, the whole AirPlay layer. I didn’t have to write that. So there’s a lot of power
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when the platform owner makes an API to make otherwise
⏹️ ▶️ Marco complex things possible, easy, and free to do on device
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to all developers of all sizes. We all win, including Apple, because then more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco great apps are available for their platforms, and therefore more people buy their hardware
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and use their platforms. And Apple’s APIs, in many ways,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in many instances, throughout time, have been class-leading. So certain things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are way easier to do with Apple’s APIs than they are on competitors’ APIs. So that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also tends to bring you better apps or the best apps or apps come out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first on your platform, which has been an advantage that Apple has enjoyed a lot with iOS. So there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco huge value in the platform vendor offering amazing APIs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to make complex or expensive or tricky things easy. And Apple also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has this amazing asset that the iPhone is a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really fast computer and has a lot of resources. And even though we’ve complained about like, you know, RAM in the past,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco limiting LLM models and stuff like that, the reality is compared to other platforms,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the iPhone and of course also the Mac, which would presumably also benefit from some of these APIs,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple’s hardware is really good. It’s really fast. It’s really capable. They have really good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco neural engines that they’ve had for a long time. They have lots of memory. So they have the hardware grunt
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do on-device LLM processing to an extent. And generally to a greater
⏹️ ▶️ Marco extent than most of their competitors in most ways. So that’s a huge asset. All
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of Apple’s developers are writing software for these super computers that people have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in their pockets. So like, you know, from my point of view for Overcast, if I wanted to offer transcription,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I could do a whole server-side thing. It would cost a fortune.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I probably would lose a lot of money on it and I don’t really know much about server-side
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hosting of AI models and stuff like that and so I would have to learn a whole bunch about how to do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it I would spend and lose tons of money it would be a huge ordeal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it might at the end of the day not even be able to to be worthwhile because I might just lose too much money
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on it but my app is running on many many many
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPhones all the time and those iPhones have all this computational power.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I can’t use it whenever I want, but I can use it when they’re plugged in and charging overnight. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s like a huge resource there of all these iPhones that are sitting around that could do local
⏹️ ▶️ Marco computation for our apps. Now, if Apple wants to enable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a whole bunch of developers like me to be able to make cool AI features
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in our apps from big to small, like it could be as simple as a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basic text summarization API so that I can summarize things in table view cells the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way they do in mail. Like that would be great. It could be as simple as that. And it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could also be more advanced stuff like transcription or like, you know, generation based on prompts, like, you know, text
⏹️ ▶️ Marco synthesis, it could be image generation. You know, it could be all sorts of things that we see the devices are able to do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now. If Apple makes those available as APIs and those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco APIs are not fatally restricted, then we can do a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with that. The entire app ecosystem can grow. Apple’s software platform can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco grow. Everybody wins. And we all also, you know, that generates maybe some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPhone lock-in, which I know Apple loves, because the iPhone’s really good at this stuff and usually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a generation ahead of Android phones in computational power and stuff. So that would be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco great for everybody. I hope they actually have done it, and I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hope there aren’t too many fatal limits. So what would a fatal limit be? Number one, if we can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use all these models on the phone, but they suck. Like that would be a fatal limit. I don’t expect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the models on the phone to be competitive with like flagship chat GPT and stuff like that, models that run on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco giant servers. They’re not gonna be that. There’s not enough memory for that. But I hope whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re shipping on the phone, if there are APIs for it, I hope it’s decent at least, and decent for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what it is, for an on-device model. I hope they’re able to do that. Number two, I hope
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the apps are allowed to use them in an unlimited fashion, bound only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by power constraints. So obviously, if your app is being used
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the foreground, you should be able to use LMs and whatever these APIs might be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in an unlimited way, the same way you can use unlimited graphics and GPS and stuff like that. You can use all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these things as much as you want when your app is in the foreground. I also hope that there’s some way to do them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the background. Like they have the system I mentioned earlier about being able to use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco power when your phone is plugged in and charging overnight. There’s a whole system called Background Tasks in iOS,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this whole API, and you can register for a background processing task, which you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically tell the system when your app launches, hey, if you get a chance to have unlimited power,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco let me do this and wake me up and call me when you’re ready. and then you can do as much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco CPU time as you want during those tasks. And the phone will tell you if you have to stop,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but like otherwise you can just go nuts. Whereas, and you can do this all in the background. So these are typically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco scheduled when you’re charging your phone overnight, like most people do. And so you’re like any, all the iOS
⏹️ ▶️ Marco limitations on like how much CPU time you can use in the background over the course of a minute or whatever, those are all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lifted when you’re in that mode. So if we can do things in that mode, that process things with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the LLM APIs the AI APIs, whatever we’re calling these. Great. So there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all these ways that this can be really good. I hope these models or APIs,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I hope they don’t suck. I hope they’re not limited in ways they don’t need to be, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they absolutely need to be. And I hope Apple gives us a breadth
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of access to them, not just a couple of really narrow uses,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but a more broad way to access their capabilities and a more broad set of capabilities so that we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can all make better software for their platform. Because that’s, you know, we all complain about Apple. Look, I’m, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lead the charge about complaining about the way they treat developers and everything. But you can paper
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over a lot of the way they treat developers if they enable us to make really good software for the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco computers that we have. That is what we all love doing. All developers want to make great
⏹️ ▶️ Marco software for the computers that We have, like that’s, that is the dream of being a developer. We love that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So if they enable us to make great software for their platforms, we can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whistle past a lot of the ugly stuff. So I hope they’re doing that.
⏹️ ▶️ John A couple of people in the chat room are pointing out that as the typical Apple pattern is they will roll something
⏹️ ▶️ John out that only their apps use or only the OS uses before they are ready
⏹️ ▶️ John to make it a third party API that developers can use this is repeated
⏹️ ▶️ John for decades. It’s just generally the way Apple does stuff. And most, a lot of operating system vendors
⏹️ ▶️ John do that. A lot of platforms do that. Two things on that. First,
⏹️ ▶️ John this is another result of being late. If you’re late, that means that Marco was complaining because
⏹️ ▶️ John he felt like he should have had these APIs last year, but of course last year was the first time that even Apple was using them in
⏹️ ▶️ John a major OS update. So yeah, if you’re late, that’s, you know, I’m not,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think you’d be feeling better if 2023, Apple did the stuff that only they could use in 2024. They rolled it out to
⏹️ ▶️ John everybody, but now it just feels like everything’s farther behind. And second is tangentially related to
⏹️ ▶️ John our past discussions of the various DMA requirements in the EU of saying basically
⏹️ ▶️ John when Apple adds a feature to its platform, it needs to be available to third parties. This is another place
⏹️ ▶️ John where this will be difficult for Apple to comply with because,
⏹️ ▶️ John and again, it’s not just Apple, the usual way to do it is you roll it out first as a private thing
⏹️ ▶️ John and shake it out and make sure you figure out what works, what doesn’t,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, like figure out how useful it is. And then a year later, you can say, okay,
⏹️ ▶️ John now we have something that we can make an API because of course, once you make something an API, Apple tends to support its APIs
⏹️ ▶️ John for a very long time. So you’re really committing to it. And it’s like, well, if
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple could get it right on the first time and the first try and say, here you go, it’s a new API
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s available for Apple’s apps and for third party apps all at the same time. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John so much harder than saying, we’re gonna give it a year where just Apple apps use it to figure out
⏹️ ▶️ John like how it works and work out the kinks and figure out what we want the API to look like or whatever before we commit to
⏹️ ▶️ John it for third parties. Maybe that’s one of the reasons that Apple’s APIs are usually pretty good because they do,
⏹️ ▶️ John as they say, dog food it themselves and use it themselves internally. Most of the things that like, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, like when SwiftUI came out here, that came out for everybody at the same time, didn’t it? Well, no, because they were kind of using it on the watch before
⏹️ ▶️ John you knew it was SwiftUI. There are exceptions, like it is possible to roll something out
⏹️ ▶️ John both internally and publicly more or less at the same time, but all I’m saying is that it’s more difficult. So anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple is behind and Marco is impatient, but maybe this will be easier.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think wanting like basic LLM and modern AI APIs on your smartphone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco platform in 2025 is being impatient. And you can kind of judge by looking around at the rest of the industry
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to see like, look, they’re all shipping this
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re late and you are impatient. Impatient doesn’t mean wrongfully so. It means
⏹️ ▶️ John your patience is being tested by Apple being late in this area. Oh, and the other thing I’ll add here is that I feel
⏹️ ▶️ John like this is a perfect fit for the model that Apple has used with some of its other developer
⏹️ ▶️ John services. Like, I don’t know the names of these, maybe you two do, but like the various like Cloud Kit APIs where
⏹️ ▶️ John you get a bunch of stuff for free, but then if you go over a certain limit, either it starts being
⏹️ ▶️ John charged to the user’s iCloud storage, for example, and isn’t there one where also the developers
⏹️ ▶️ John have to pay for some I forget what the weather
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco also works that
⏹️ ▶️ John weather is a good other ones. Like, it’s a great thing that Apple does that platforms can do is say, this is too hard
⏹️ ▶️ John for a small group of developers to do on their own. So we will vend this API, but this API does cost us money to
⏹️ ▶️ John run, but you can use it for free for a small number of customers for a small number of requests
⏹️ ▶️ John for a small number of calls, but then above and beyond that, we’ll charge you for it. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John actually I mean, that is a thing developers like, like, I don’t want to have to worry about this, I would love
⏹️ ▶️ John to be able to try it for free, especially if I can like ship. And if I don’t get a lot of customers, I don’t never pay anything.
⏹️ ▶️ John But if I get a lot of customers, that’s a problem I like to have, I’ll gladly pay for this API for me to use private cloud
⏹️ ▶️ John compute is a perfect solution for that we’re saying all the models that run on device are going to be crappy and burn your
⏹️ ▶️ John battery. Apple has a solution to that don’t want to run it on your phone, transparently,
⏹️ ▶️ John through private cloud compute, you can run it on our servers, which costs us money. So we’ll probably have to
⏹️ ▶️ John charge you just like open AI, the other company is and that seems like a reasonable business. I really hope that’s part
⏹️ ▶️ John of their announcement is not just you can use our dinky tech summarization engine on the phone and kill your
⏹️ ▶️ John users battery. I would love to be able to say, Can I use your big honking model, and I
⏹️ ▶️ John get x number of requests for free, but then and you start charging me or whatever, because that doesn’t have to run on the phone.
⏹️ ▶️ John And, and but with private cloud compute, it can be fairly transparent that that’s happening. So fingers, that’s my
⏹️ ▶️ John wish for this story here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, be careful what you wish for, because that can also go a little bit wrong. So for instance,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe one of the ways that Tim Cook will start squeezing more profit out of developers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they can’t hike the rates and keep looking under everyone’s couch cushions and be like, hey,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it looks like you got some income coming some other way. One of the ways that they could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco grow the services revenue more would be, hey, you know what? These new APIs that everybody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wants to use that even run locally, you have to pay extra for those like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They could do that. That is not beyond Tim Cook. I 100% guarantee that they shouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do that for lots of reasons. I think that would be a strategic error in many
⏹️ ▶️ John To be clear, that’s not what I’m asking for. I’m just asking for like what open AI has like you can you if you use their
⏹️ ▶️ John API, you have to pay for it above a certain usage.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’re right. You’re saying let let us use Apple server side APIs and that you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that would be reasonable to charge for. But I would be careful because Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then, as devices get bigger and better over time, Apple would have more of an incentive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to not make the on-device models, or at least the publicly available on-device models, to not make those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco better. You want to be real careful what kind of incentive you give Tim Cook, because he will squeeze
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every single cent out of whatever he can without regard to the quality of the software experience.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you absolutely don’t want to do that. And also, once you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John paying for it- I mean, again, there’s precedent here with all the CloudKit APIs and stuff that so far
⏹️ ▶️ John have not been a slippery slope that has led us into doom. So I’m mostly okay
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with it. Yeah, but those didn’t debut recently. Like, let’s see what today’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple does. I mean, Tim Cook
⏹️ ▶️ John was in charge when they rolled out the CloudKit APIs too, so.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but he was also printing money from the App Store back then. Like, if things were starting to get squeezed, you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they will never accept less money as the solution. Like, they will find other ways. Like, look, we have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco search ads came up in the meantime, and now we all have to pay to get our apps installed, you know, in addition to paying Apple the 30%.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, there’s just, if there’s a way for them to squeeze us, they will. So if they get into the business of charging
⏹️ ▶️ Marco us to use private cloud compute, that could create a bunch of very bad incentives that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over time I think would not be good.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, that’s a competitive market though, because apps are out there now saying, please enter your Open AI
⏹️ ▶️ John API key here that you’re already paying for. Like, so there is, it is competitive. It’s not like we’re locked into using
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s private cloud compute APIs, which currently don’t exist. Tons of apps are out there using third party APIs
⏹️ ▶️ John and paying them for it. So I feel like it’s a competitive market and it won’t be that big of a deal.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, the other thing is like, if they are making you pay to use their private cloud compute,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you would probably also start looking around at other APIs as competitors. And I think I would be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shocked if Apple’s APIs were competitive. Once
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re already going out to a server and paying for it, I bet you have a lot of other options that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would be better and or cheaper than Apple’s.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I said it’s competitive. So if Apple wants people to use it, they have to like, you just look at the cloud code APIs. There’s lots of other APIs
⏹️ ▶️ John you can use for data, remote databases or sync engines or just rolling your own AWS. And there’s all sorts of like
⏹️ ▶️ John managed and unmanaged solutions to doing that. Apple rolled out an API and they did make it, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, it’s convenient to use, it’s nice, it fits with their APIs and it’s actually pretty cheap. Like it’s price competitive with the other
⏹️ ▶️ John things that are out there. So again, that’s why I’m not worried about this, but we’ll see, we’ll see what they announce. I mean, I don’t think any of the rumors
⏹️ ▶️ John even talked about server-side stuff. It just seems mostly like that you’ll be able to use the on-device models, which is less
⏹️ ▶️ John interesting to me because I feel like the on-device models, like you said, are gonna be dinky. And
⏹️ ▶️ John even if they’re not dinky or they do what you need them to do, they are gonna, they’re running locally
⏹️ ▶️ John and they’re burning your battery. So like there’s a bounce to be struck there. And I think a lot of the, you know, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know, like, I don’t actually, I would love to see a survey of like, of all the apps that are shipping now. How many have shipped their own models
⏹️ ▶️ John and eat up the, you know, disk space on people’s phones or whatever, versus how many use API keys
⏹️ ▶️ John and what the best practices these days, because some things you just can’t run on device.
⏹️ ▶️ John But if you can run on a device, maybe it’s better to do it over the API anyway, just because it simplifies everything
⏹️ ▶️ John about installation and everything. Although, again, as we’ve talked about, apps aren’t shy about taking disk space. I
⏹️ ▶️ John just looked at, I think someone, who posted about this? Somebody posted about it recently, about
⏹️ ▶️ John the LG app that tells them when their laundry is done. And I
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco instantly, they had said
⏹️ ▶️ John it. They had said it at the same time that I got a notification that my laundry was done from this very same LG
⏹️ ▶️ John app. And I looked at it, 800 megabytes. Good gracious.
⏹️ ▶️ John sends me notifications when the washing machine is done, 800 megabytes. Oh my God. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bananas. I have home assistant powered solutions for you that we can talk
⏹️ ▶️ John about. Yeah, I got a Raspberry Pi and point a camera at it and it’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, no, no, it’s not that bad. It’s not that bad. We’ll take it offline. It’s almost that bad. Hey, stop
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. Now you’re gonna make me talk about it. I’m gonna be an adult and I’m gonna resist, but there are solutions.
OpenAI + io
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We also have other breaking news to do to do to do to open AI has decided to buy Johnny
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Ives AI company I’m, sorry what? Let me say that one more time open AI decides
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to or is going to buy Johnny Ives AI company This is not love from mind you that’s his design
⏹️ ▶️ Casey company. This is his AI company. So reading from the verge Uh open AI
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is buying io lowercase io Not the really good peter gabrielman But instead, a hardware
⏹️ ▶️ Casey company founded by former Apple design chief, Johnny Ive, and several other former engineers from his time there, including
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Scott Cannon, Evans Hanke, and Tang Tan. We gathered together the best hardware and software engineers, the best technologists,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey physicists, scientists, and researchers, and experts in product development and manufacturing, Ive and OpenAI CEO
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sam Altman said in a joint post. Many of us have worked together closely for decades. The I.O. team, focused
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on developing products that inspire, empower, and enable, will now merge with OpenAI to work more intimately
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with the research, engineering, and product teams in San It’s a nearly $6.5
⏹️ ▶️ Casey billion all-stock deal, Bloomberg reports. From the announcement, as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I.O. merges with OpenAI, Johnny and Lovefrom will assume deep design and creative responsibility across
⏹️ ▶️ Casey OpenAI and I.O. Just as a quick reminder,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Humane went for $116 million. I.O., which has been around for like 10 minutes, apparently
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has just earned or sold for $6.5 billion. I
⏹️ ▶️ John think it’s like 55 people. So that’s a good payday for, uh, yeah. For real. You’re wondering all those people who, Oh, they
⏹️ ▶️ John left Apple. Was that, why would you ever leave Apple? I know Johnny left, but why would they leave and go off and do their own thing? It seems
⏹️ ▶️ John like they should just stay at Apple. No,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey well, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John join, join a company that gets bought out for six and a half billion, uh, and you’re one of the founders slash
⏹️ ▶️ John early employees that probably worked out pretty well for you. Um, again, it is all stock and not cash. So they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of pinning their hopes to open AI, but so far open AI seems to be doing pretty well. So kudos to all
⏹️ ▶️ John those folks for getting a good exit, as they say. And, you know, we we had on
⏹️ ▶️ John the show rumors about this before that Johnny I was working with open AI and some kind of AI thing. We talked about it when
⏹️ ▶️ John we were discussing the humane pin that you just mentioned. And in fact, I didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John get the quote for it here, but I believe there was a quote from Johnny basically dissing
⏹️ ▶️ John the humane pin and the rabbit are one saying, yeah, those are bad products.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I mean, it’s better. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I was
⏹️ ▶️ John right. This is a paraphrase. This is a paraphrase, but Johnny Ives is not one to say things like that, but he was pretty blunt in saying, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John they didn’t do a good job and we’re going to do better. There was the, did you guys watch the video
⏹️ ▶️ John that accompanied us? The announcement video thing?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh, I sure did.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco It was the slowest, like 18 minutes ever.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So what this is, is they put together like a kind of a single serving site and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in a video associated with it. is at openai.com slash
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what is it uh sam and johnny with hyphens in between um this video
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh my word it was beautifully shot i that that’s about where
⏹️ ▶️ John coppola family maybe if i saw
⏹️ ▶️ Casey i saw that in the credits too yeah yeah um it’s about 10 minutes long if i recall correctly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is 10 minutes of navel gazing and talking about how san francisco
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is the was the best place in the entire world, which as a born and bred East Coaster, I take major offense to,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but that’s neither here nor there. Um, it was so vapid and silly and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey weird and a lot of words were said, but nothing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was really accomplished. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, it was kind of, it was kind of a love fest, not a love from, but a love fest. Sam and Johnny,
⏹️ ▶️ John both believe in the same thing and have the same values as far as Johnny knows. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ John and, and they both, they both really care about the future of technology and they want to help people with technology and they
⏹️ ▶️ John believe in beauty and truth and all these other things. And I’m watching this and it’s like, I don’t know Sam Altman that
⏹️ ▶️ John well, but the little I know of him makes me suspicious whether he actually
⏹️ ▶️ John shares his value. Johnny, I totally believed us. I’ve seen Johnny for many, many years, but following his career very closely,
⏹️ ▶️ John read at least one complete book on him. Maybe two. I feel like I have a
⏹️ ▶️ John bit of a read on the public persona, at least of Johnny Ive. Sam Altman,
⏹️ ▶️ John I know less about, and what I have seen makes me think, hmm, that’s what you would say if you wanted
⏹️ ▶️ John company and have him join you. So I’m wondering how that relationship is going to, because if you watch
⏹️ ▶️ John the video, you think Johnny Ive found the next Steve Jobs, and it’s like, dude, it’s Sam Altman. Like he wore two collars
⏹️ ▶️ John on stage at WDC or whatever. It’s that guy, or he got kicked out of his own company.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not saying Sam Altman’s a bad person. I don’t know that much about him, but he just
⏹️ ▶️ John does not seem like a Steve Jobs caliber visionary but he fancies himself one for sure. In
⏹️ ▶️ John this video, he plays himself up as one. And you can do that if you’re not sitting next
⏹️ ▶️ John to Johnny Hive when you do it, because I feel like there’s a little bit of a resume imbalance there.
⏹️ ▶️ John But then you get Johnny being like, I think my whole career has been leading up to this.
⏹️ ▶️ John All that time I spent in Apple was just the warmup back, so I’d be ready to do this thing. And it’s like, all right, Johnny, whoa,
⏹️ ▶️ John okay. All right, just, you know, I love the confidence. Yeah, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, a lot of ability there, but anyway. So we mentioned the
⏹️ ▶️ John HumanePin and the RabbitR1, both of which we talked about in past episodes of the show.
⏹️ ▶️ John The things that were headwinds, as they say in earnings call for those two products
⏹️ ▶️ John are still things that OpenAI and IO and LoveFrom have to deal with.
⏹️ ▶️ John No one in this new collaboration has a phone platform. That was a
⏹️ ▶️ John problem for Humane and Rabbit. They had to do things on their own. They were not allowed
⏹️ ▶️ John to integrate with Android or iOS in the way the product like the ones they were making needed to.
⏹️ ▶️ John OpenAI will have to deal with that too. And I’m not sure there are any easy solutions. Second thing is,
⏹️ ▶️ John Humane and Rabbit had the problem where their entire products hinged
⏹️ ▶️ John on, you know, large language model AI things that they did not make.
⏹️ ▶️ John OpenAI doesn’t have that problem, because guess what? They make the LLMs. So
⏹️ ▶️ John plus one for OpenAI there, because if you’re building a product on top of someone else’s
⏹️ ▶️ John thing that you don’t control and don’t have ability to improve, it’s a big weakness. But then the third thing
⏹️ ▶️ John is, we don’t know what this product is, but I’m not the one who brought up HumanePin
⏹️ ▶️ John and rabbit Johnny did. And everyone thinks it’s some kind of post phone
⏹️ ▶️ John thing that you can use an LLM with. And, you know, maybe you don’t need a screen. Maybe it’s a pin, maybe it’s a headband,
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe it has a small screen, maybe it’s a family of devices, one of which has a screen or whatever. But like
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re thinking in the same, in that kind of realm right there, right? Those type of products
⏹️ ▶️ John are essentially a way for you to get access to open AI’s,
⏹️ ▶️ John AI technology. technology. Uh, and Johnny has been talking, I’m making the rounds saying like, Oh, you know, people
⏹️ ▶️ John on their phones and the consequences of that. And we could get away from that and have a more human interface.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t doubt Johnny Ives ability to make an innovative, attractive, nice
⏹️ ▶️ John thing that connects human beings to open AI technology. Where I doubts come
⏹️ ▶️ John in is can the thing that it’s connecting me to do
⏹️ ▶️ John what Sam Altman and Johnny Ive hope it be able to do. Open
⏹️ ▶️ John AI, unlike the other companies, is empowered to make that happen because so far they’ve made a lot of things
⏹️ ▶️ John happen with LLMs. So hey, they’re the ones to do it. But right now
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t, I have never seen any AI based technology
⏹️ ▶️ John that is able to do the things that a successful humane pin or rabbit R1
⏹️ ▶️ John type product needs to be able to do to be useful. And all the demos is like, I talked to it, it does these things.
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s so useful, I ask it questions, you know, everything’s great. But in real life, if you’ve actually
⏹️ ▶️ John used these products, you know, they can’t do that yet in a way that is not frustrating.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right. You really, especially when you’ve got no, no screen, no keyboard, you’re not at your computer, you just
⏹️ ▶️ John ambiently. It’s like a thing that you carry with you. In the video,
⏹️ ▶️ John Sam Alderman makes this weird analogy of like, just think if I need it, want to ask chat, you’d be a question. What would I have to do?
⏹️ ▶️ John I have to go into my bag and take out my laptop and open a web browser and it’s like, dude, you take out
⏹️ ▶️ John your phone. Why are you not saying that? You’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco heard about smartphones, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Right, but I felt like he wasn’t saying that because one of the products they have is kind of phone-like, but anyway, here’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John thing, so many of these companies, including OpenAI, have stars in their eyes about,
⏹️ ▶️ John when if things keep advancing the way they are, pretty soon we’ll have a thing where we can just talk to it and it will do what
⏹️ ▶️ John we want it to do. And that’s the dream, and kudos for them for shooting for it and if anybody could do it, They’re
⏹️ ▶️ John a leader in the industry. So I’m not saying they’re not going to do it. All I’m saying is if they’ve done it,
⏹️ ▶️ John I haven’t seen it. And so this whole product, this whole Johnny, I’ve powered $6.5 billion
⏹️ ▶️ John acquisition, huge amount of investor money depends on them being able
⏹️ ▶️ John to put something in that thing at the other end that you talk to that isn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John insanely frustrating and they can actually do all the things that you want it to do. Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John certainly isn’t in this race. Amazon, which we’ll get to in a future show, announced that they’ve redone
⏹️ ▶️ John their Dengis product, I don’t wanna say the name, and we’re like, well, look, they’ve done what Apple couldn’t do,
⏹️ ▶️ John but they’ve barely shipped it and it’s not totally working. So it’s like, I just felt like this entire industry is always,
⏹️ ▶️ John what is it, the phrase, their reach always exceeds their
⏹️ ▶️ John grasp. They’re always looking to the future, to the horizon, whatever. I don’t know which thing
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m referencing now, but like they believe they can get to this place where
⏹️ ▶️ John it will be good in this way. And it’s not good in that way. It’s good for a whole
⏹️ ▶️ John bunch of other things. And it’s good, it has utility now and it has places where people can use it, but they’re like, but imagine
⏹️ ▶️ John if it was just like your friend and you could talk to it and do stuff where it’s like, that would be cool, but you don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have that yet. So don’t make a product whose entire existence depends on
⏹️ ▶️ John that existing, unless you’re sure that by the time this product comes out, supposedly next year, you will
⏹️ ▶️ John have something that does that. So this is quite a moonshot and I’ll feel
⏹️ ▶️ John bad if Johnny makes a beautiful, thoughtful, humane, sorry,
⏹️ ▶️ John humane hardware product that connects to an LLM that just makes a lot of mistakes and frustrates
⏹️ ▶️ John everybody who tries to use it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right, so I’m gonna go out on two limbs here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You’re gonna hate them both. Number one, I think it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to work. And number two, I think that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there is a potentially likely future, it could be a distant likely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco future where Sam Altman becomes a high Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John What? Well, so the first one I don’t hate at all. Because again, like I said,
⏹️ ▶️ John if anyone’s going to do it, it’s going to be the leader in the industry and not like humane or rabbit, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John So but all I’m saying is they need to do it because no matter how good that hardware is, the
⏹️ ▶️ John LM has to fulfill the promise of that heart like it has to, it has to be a good product.
⏹️ ▶️ John In the end, it has to be something that people want to use. And the problem with all the other products that are like that is like,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, I try to use it for its intended purpose, and it doesn’t work. And there’s no screen and no keyboard,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s not a phone, and it’s not a computer, and I just get frustrated and chuck it. So they have to make that work. So I I don’t hate your
⏹️ ▶️ John first point. They could do it. It’s a year from now. We don’t know what they’ve got in the works or whatever. Like I’m not saying
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s impossible. Like I think a product like this is someday possible and that’s what everyone
⏹️ ▶️ John thinks. I just, I doubt their timeline. So I don’t hate that one. Second one, Sam Altman is a high powered
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple executive. Yeah, I hate that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think open AI is valuable enough that at some point it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is possible that open AI and Apple might merge in some form.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Microsoft might have something to say about that. I know exactly what I’m like, I know how big
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of a scale thing that would be. And that’s also like, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco part of why I’m predicting that this might happen down the road. I don’t know how far down the road,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know in what form, but I think something like that could happen because OpenAI
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is both really good at AI, which Apple is not, but also has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really good product sensibility, which Apple lacks. Apple has, as we discussed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco last time, they really don’t have clear product leadership under Tim Cook.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think Sam Altman has really good product sense. He, yeah, he’s young. He
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could use some experience. He’s getting that. Maybe this is like next. Like I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know that’s a reach, but I honestly think it’s a possibility. Not tomorrow,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but you know, I think there is an actual possibility that Sam Altman has the right kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of product sense to actually bring a lot of good to Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if he had enough power to actually execute on what he wanted to do. And that could take,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, a few forms, but I think that is a possibility down the road if Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco own AI efforts don’t work as well as they want them to, if they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not very competitive, and if AI starts to actually really disrupt Apple’s core products, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it has the potential to. So that’s the Sam Altman in Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Steve McLaughlin No, let me just pause you for two seconds. Jared Polin Yeah. Steve McLaughlin How
⏹️ ▶️ Marco old do you think Sam Altman is? Jared Polin
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, I don’t know, maybe like 40? Steve McLaughlin 38. Jared Polin He is freshly 40, like a month ago. I thought he was younger
⏹️ ▶️ Casey than that. And 40 is not old, old, because- Steve McLaughlin
⏹️ ▶️ John He was young when he was on that stage with the two collars, but that was a long time ago. Jared
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Polin Yes, it was. No, I didn’t, I mean, because because you said a minute ago, he’s young and he’s still learning,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which I think that is true, but he’s already 40. He doesn’t look 40, but he is 40. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey he’s not as young as I thought he
⏹️ ▶️ John He’s got a little bit of a baby face.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but I’m telling you, he has really good product sensibility and that is rare in this
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know if he has that sense. It’s hard to attribute to the person. Obviously he’s in charge
⏹️ ▶️ John and so everything the company does that’s good, you say it’s him. I don’t know. I don’t know enough about him, But
⏹️ ▶️ John the Apple, you know, the prediction that Apple’s gonna buy one of these AI companies has been going around
⏹️ ▶️ John for years. Anthropic is usually the name that comes up like Apple should buy Anthropic. They’re, they’re smaller,
⏹️ ▶️ John less expensive, and they actually have really good technology. What they lack is open AI money. So they’re kind of behind open
⏹️ ▶️ John AI in a lot of ways, but they’ve done a lot with what they have. So maybe Apple should buy Anthropic. Buying open AI
⏹️ ▶️ John is fraught because Microsoft is heavily invested there. And that’s, there’s a whole nonprofit connection in that whole
⏹️ ▶️ John drama. a little bit messy over there, but you know, it could happen. I
⏹️ ▶️ John like Apple having to buy one of these companies, like you said, because they have the potential to disrupt Apple’s business.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if they started to Apple would say, well, time to take out the wallet. Right. And then we’ll see if the depending
⏹️ ▶️ John on what administration is active at the time, whether that merger is even allowed to happen.
⏹️ ▶️ John But yeah, I can see that happening. But then Sam Albin is an Apple executive. Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ John track record with making big acquisitions, then integrating the people who used to be in charge of those acquisitions is
⏹️ ▶️ John uneven, worked out with Steve Jobs, right? That worked pretty well.
⏹️ ▶️ John Other companies, those executives, even if they’re still at Apple, they don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John set the world on fire. Like if they find a place at Apple, and Sam Altman strikes me as the type of person
⏹️ ▶️ John who would almost not be happy in that, and we’ll be looking for the door as soon as whatever his
⏹️ ▶️ John golden handcuffs let him leave Apple. Like I don’t think he relishes being
⏹️ ▶️ John a cog in the Apple machine. I think he wants to be the CEO of OpenAI. I think he will accept a buyout for
⏹️ ▶️ John enough money, but I think he’d be itching to go do something new because like that company he
⏹️ ▶️ John was on stage for at either Macworld or WWDC was not OpenAI.
⏹️ ▶️ John He seems like someone who wants to be starting new and interesting things. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not sure how that will work. But I’m not currently, again, I have limited knowledge on Sam Holtman. So I’m not,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m basing this not on a lot of information, but the information I do have makes me think he would not make
⏹️ ▶️ John for a great Apple executive, who wouldn’t fit in and want to be looking for the door, even if Apple could buy them. But I do agree
⏹️ ▶️ John with you that Apple sure is headed on a course right now, where they’re gonna have to buy one of these
⏹️ ▶️ John AI companies, even if it doesn’t turn out to be a huge threat to their business, even if it just turns out to
⏹️ ▶️ John be an essential thing that’s out there. The Tim Cook doctrine, which I mostly agree with, is own
⏹️ ▶️ John and control the primary technologies. If it’s real important for every company to have a great model, and Apple doesn’t have one and can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John make one, then you gotta buy one. They had to do it with the operating system, And again, that worked out pretty well. But the other
⏹️ ▶️ John companies have their own LLMs that are way ahead of where
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple is, and they’re iterating on them. So Apple needs to have one too. And if you can’t make it, buy it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and I think the more prudent thing for Apple to do would be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to buy an established large team that has built these, but not necessarily
⏹️ ▶️ Marco OpenAI the company. Because as you mentioned, there is a lot going on there. Open AI also does
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, you know, spin off a lot of talent through all the messiness, like a lot of talented
⏹️ ▶️ John nice way of putting it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco exactly. Yeah, a lot of talented people flee open AI and go somewhere else and start their own stuff. And so there’s a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco smaller AI companies out there that Apple could buy or, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John That shows like Google being smart for whenever they bought DeepMind, like Google was so much
⏹️ ▶️ John farther ahead of the game on this in terms of making acquisitions and making it work. I don’t know if, we’re probably not gonna talk about
⏹️ ▶️ John Google I.O. I don’t know if you two watched it, but. Google, once they finally settle
⏹️ ▶️ John on a name for their thing and called the Gemini a few years ago and stop calling the thing BARD, they
⏹️ ▶️ John are just iterating like you can you can again, Google’s product sense may be not great,
⏹️ ▶️ John but the Gemini model and the things it can do and the rate it’s advancing, it’s just it’s really
⏹️ ▶️ John embarrassing for Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. And again, like this is like this is why this is critical technology for the modern era,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like talking about owning and controlling, as you said, Like, Apple needs a strong
⏹️ ▶️ Marco AI story on their platforms. Right now they have no AI story. We’ll see, you know, the rumors from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these articles are that they’re like, they’re getting there maybe, but you know, there’s a large amount of space
⏹️ ▶️ Marco between getting there maybe and there. And so we’ll see what they can actually do. I do think that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco long-term, what will happen is Apple will end up buying one of the medium-sized AI companies.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I would not rule out the possibility that somehow Sam Altman ends up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, heading up a large part of Apple. And I think, and I’m not saying like, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, next year, but maybe like within the next 10 years? Maybe. I think he’s somebody to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really watch because he does show very strong product sensibility. Now, in the meantime, what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think he is making with Johnny? A watch. Think about it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Johnny frickin’ loves watches. He also loves cars.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John They’re probably not making a car.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco agree, I’m just saying. So I think they’re going to make a… because, you know, what we saw with the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco humane dumb pin is that having some kind of like wearable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for AI lookup type stuff is not completely a terrible idea.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They just did a terrible job of it and they kind of picked a bunch of wrong decisions on the way there. But what a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of people kept saying was like, this should be the Apple Watch. Like, the Apple Watch should just do these things. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple’s not doing it. And so I think this is actually very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco likely to end up being some kind of watch that we know Johnny loves making watches
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and he’s decent at designing them, you know, so we’ll see how that goes. We know that the watch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a physical role that a lot of people will have in addition to their phones,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it doesn’t compete for an already like it doesn’t try to create a new category
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like you don’t have to realize like, oh, how do I wear this with jackets or whatever, this is the way the AI pin
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just failed on a number of physical fronts. You don’t have to worry about that. People are already used to wearing smartwatches. They’re very popular.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Also, despite the success of the Apple Watch, which was largely successful, it’s far from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ubiquitous. Not everybody has an Apple Watch, and changing your smartwatch or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco adding a smartwatch to your life is a much smaller request, and it’s a much smaller
⏹️ ▶️ Marco competitive burden to overcome than replacing your phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or replacing your computer.
⏹️ ▶️ John Although speaking of phone though, what do you think about the barrier to platform integration? Oh, I do expect to get notifications from
⏹️ ▶️ John my iPhone on it. Why can’t your thing do that, Johnny?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It can. So number one, like you look at what, like what can pebble and stuff do? They
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can show notifications. Like they can’t interact with them necessarily, but they can do that. Right.
⏹️ ▶️ John I was like, is that the, the, the, the interactions that Apple allows between the iPhone and third party watches and the iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John and Apple watch are very different, which is the thing that you is trying to make them change. but that is
⏹️ ▶️ John a barrier to entry where you they won’t be able to Easily do everything the Apple watch
⏹️ ▶️ John can do in terms of platform integration and that you know changing your watch is easier than changing your
⏹️ ▶️ John phone platform, but you never know which integration features that someone with an Apple watch is
⏹️ ▶️ John Just expects to be there and when they find out the Johnny Ive thing doesn’t do it It will be a little bit of a problem
⏹️ ▶️ John like platform integration is a tool that Apple has to preclude competition
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in this area Oh and and believe me, they’re gonna fight very hard on it But I think the watch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the area that like a well-designed, like a Johnny
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Ive designed product could look really cool. A lot of people buy watches
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not for their utility, but just because they look cool. The application surface area for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what people expect their watches to do is very small. Like you don’t need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a whole phone platform to make successful smartwatches. Lots of smartwatches exist that aren’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple watches and they do just fine in the market. Lots of smart fitness trackers and stuff like that. This
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a very healthy category. Lots of them exist. And the EU keeps trying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to crack open more capabilities out of watches from the iOS. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think this idea would make a lot of sense. Like if you imagine the Humane
⏹️ ▶️ Marco AI pin done far better as a watch, that actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could be something. And when you have OpenAI and Johnny Ive,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those are two massive titans in these respective areas of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco physical design of small electronics, and in particular watches, and the AI
⏹️ ▶️ Marco backing of it. I think that could really be something. It could have its own cell modem.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We know watches can fit cell modems just fine. Many of them do. It’s like, it can even have its own cell modem. It wouldn’t have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to use the phone for that. It could be an independent device. watches use very little data
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so they could have a subscription to some, you know, to carriers and you just use like the existing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quote smart watch plans that carriers offer for like 16 bucks a month or whatever. Like, I think there’s enough
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ground laid there. And it’s an, it’s enough of a category that like people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are willing to take risks with watches and wearables and stuff that they wouldn’t take with their phones. So I,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m guessing that’s what they’re doing. And if they do that, I think that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could really be something that could be really cool.
⏹️ ▶️ John So the one wrinkle to this is I believe the rumor is that this is a family of devices.
⏹️ ▶️ John So that’s why people are thinking one of them might be screenless and one of them might have a screen. So maybe one of them might
⏹️ ▶️ John be watch like kind of one of the problems with watches and the reason they go with brooches and necklaces
⏹️ ▶️ John and stuff is based on even this video, they kind of make it seem like, oh, like the if
⏹️ ▶️ John I take out my laptop, I won’t have heard the whole conversation that we had. So I’d have to catch it up and type a bunch of stuff in.
⏹️ ▶️ John So it seems like they’re leaning towards something like those those various pendants that are constantly listening to you and everything. So if you
⏹️ ▶️ John put something on your wrist, but you have your hands in your pockets, it’s harder to pick up audio than something that is
⏹️ ▶️ John around your neck or, you know, an open AI nose ring. I don’t know,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, anyway, we’ll see. Like, I think there is something to the watch thing. There are barriers to entry
⏹️ ▶️ John there. If it’s a family of products, there’s probably gonna be one with a screen and one without. It
⏹️ ▶️ John seems like they’d have to be on your body somewhere and where can you put a screen that it could be on your body?
⏹️ ▶️ John wristwatch as a place to go. So I could see that, but I’m thinking, I’m thinking more towards like
⏹️ ▶️ John the low end one that doesn’t have a screen. Is that around your neck? Is that behind your ear is like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know, Johnny, I will figure something out, but, uh, it seems like it has to
⏹️ ▶️ John be somewhere where I can hear your voice and potentially see what you see and hear what you’re hearing. And so
⏹️ ▶️ John anything that you can stick in your pocket might be a bit of a problem there. But anyway, I, I, what I keep coming back to is that
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s lots of if you gave me a magic AI that could work the way everyone who
⏹️ ▶️ John raves about AI thinks AI will someday be able to work. The form factor almost doesn’t matter. You
⏹️ ▶️ John could you could put it in a potato and people will
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco be like I need one of those potatoes.
⏹️ ▶️ John It does everything. I just talk to it and it does stuff for me like the value of a thing that you
⏹️ ▶️ John can actually talk to and have it do things for you reliably is so huge. They people will buy
⏹️ ▶️ John literally anything that would do that because it’s not the potato they they care about, it’s the thing inside it.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I feel like this is really on Sam Altman and Johnny can just, you know, fulfill his little
⏹️ ▶️ John desires to make a beautiful object. And like I said, it almost doesn’t matter. Like, because it’s all about,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, because on the flip side, if he makes a beautiful thing, they’re like, this is the best hardware I’ve ever seen. It’s a brilliant idea. I’d never
⏹️ ▶️ John even thought of making a nose ring, but it turns out it’s great. Like he becomes something no one ever thought of before. And when you talk
⏹️ ▶️ John to it, it behaves like the humane pin. No one wants that product. But on the flip side, Apple, the
⏹️ ▶️ John bottom for cheap after that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, I, I don’t know. I’m not sure what to make of this. I I’m,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I find it very easy to believe that a watch is the product or a product. I think that’s that you can,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you can sell that to me pretty easy in a figurative in literal sense, potentially. Um, them,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey them slash Sam getting swept up by Apple. I can see a series of events where that happens,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I don’t know, man. I, and plus open AI is getting, I mean, I know Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is gigantic, but but open AI is getting big. I mean, they’re buying companies
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John They’re just
⏹️ ▶️ John big in venture capital. Like they’re, they’re in the phase where like they’re, they’re not big like
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple where it’s a machine that produces billions of dollars of profit. Open AI is not there yet. They’re in the growth
⏹️ ▶️ John phase let’s say. So they’ve collected huge amount of investment, but they are burning money like crazy.
⏹️ ▶️ John Uh, including spending $6.5 billion of their stock, not money but stock to
⏹️ ▶️ John do this acquisition. So they will need to someday eventually make money. but
⏹️ ▶️ John that day is not yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. I don’t know. It’s fascinating. I mean, as, as silly as that video was, this is very,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very, very interesting. And 2026, if they meet their self-stated goal of,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, premiering something in 2026, it’s going to be an interesting time. A really, really interesting
⏹️ ▶️ John Did they say they would show it in 2026 or ship it? I think they said show. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think it just says next year. Like, I don’t, I don’t know how, I think they were pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John noncommittal. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ John enough wiggle room where they could announce it next year and ship it in in 2027, but like,
⏹️ ▶️ John know, take your time guys. Because we know that the thing you are sort of hinting that you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John going to make does not yet exist in the public. So wait until you have it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, but I mean, no matter what, can you imagine watching Johnny effectively competing with Apple? That would be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very funny and very interesting.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Honestly, he seems like he’s embracing that. Like, you know, he gave that interview last week or rather it came out last
⏹️ ▶️ Marco week where he basically like insulted the smartphone. And what he said,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, he basically said like, you know, everything in this video, he’s basically said like all the platforms we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use today are decades old form factors. Like that’s, he was taking aim
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right at the phone.
⏹️ ▶️ John He’s looking for the next, next new thing. Yeah. I mean, even when he was at Apple, he was kind of bored with doing Apple-y
⏹️ ▶️ John things. Like he basically produced some of the biggest hardware device revolutions.
⏹️ ▶️ John And once you’ve done that, you’re looking to do it again. You don’t do it again by making more iPhones.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that’s why I really think this is going to be something. I think this is, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very optimistic between Johnny’s seemingly renewed drive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do cool new tech and Sam Altman’s good product sense and the amazing resources
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they both have at their disposal. I think this could be something really, really good.
⏹️ ▶️ John I really hope that Johnny is not just like, bamboozled by the
⏹️ ▶️ John promise of a thing that doesn’t exist. I really hope he is seeing things that I’m not seeing and I hope an open AI actually
⏹️ ▶️ John has tech that will, it doesn’t have to be perfect. It just needs to get over that threshold. I think of it like a million times
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ve talked about touchscreens and the iPhone. Touchscreens exist for decades and people hated them. And it
⏹️ ▶️ John was, you just had to make them just good enough where you passed over the threshold. And if it goes from this annoying
⏹️ ▶️ John interface that no one wants to use to like, oh my God, this is the best thing I’ve ever seen. And the original
⏹️ ▶️ John iPhone was not perfect by a long shot, but it crossed that threshold. And we’re just waiting for AI
⏹️ ▶️ John that you can talk to without a screen and a keyboard. I don’t know a way to can say absolutely this, we’re waiting for that to cross the threshold. It’s already crossed the
⏹️ ▶️ John threshold for like, this can do tons of useful things, you know, for people in its current incarnations.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s why these are popular companies we’ve talked about all the time and limited applications for a thing that you wanted to do.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s better than it’s ever been. Like Google was just showing off their, you know, real-time translation or whatever. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John the LM was originally made as a thing, like the original LM paper basically
⏹️ ▶️ John was talking about doing translation from like, you know, one language to another, like human languages, Spanish to English or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John Fast forward to 2025, Google I O and they’re showing the seventh revision of their thing where you talk
⏹️ ▶️ John and it translates in real time with like a human sounding voice to a person at the other end.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like that was science fiction decades ago and now it’s a real thing. So like
⏹️ ▶️ John it can sneak up on you and that’s current technology, those things exist now, but everybody wants,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, what’s the thing, plan a birthday party for my five year old Here’s the budget, go
⏹️ ▶️ John make all the arrangements, go to all the things, like, not even, let’s just say like, ask it questions
⏹️ ▶️ John and have it give you truthful answers. Have it do what you could do
⏹️ ▶️ John if you had access to Google and could turn off all the AI results. Look something
⏹️ ▶️ John up, find some information, you know, put it together, figure out, read a couple of webpages,
⏹️ ▶️ John figure out an answer, go to a Wikipedia page, do a thing or whatever, only now you know how to do all that. You just ask
⏹️ ▶️ John it a question and it gives you the answer. We want a thing that does that and doesn’t make up stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then you can maybe ask it to do stuff for you. And that’s the promise of something with no screen, no keyboard connected to
⏹️ ▶️ John an LLM that’s somewhere on your body that’s listening all the time that can see things, yada, yada, yada, right? So
⏹️ ▶️ John I wish we had a better name for that, but that’s what everyone is trying to make and does not yet exist.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so here we have a new, a new contender has entered the ring with a stacked cast.
⏹️ ▶️ John Johnny Ive and the leader in the world of LLMs. And yet still, like I look at Johnny, he’s
⏹️ ▶️ John so hopeful. I’m like, Johnny, I really hope this is real. Because I believe Johnny is sincere.
⏹️ ▶️ John Don’t entirely believe Sam Altman is sincere, but we’ll see. We’ll see how it goes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey especially since, you know, from what it seems, Johnny has the A-team of Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey expats, whereas I’m not so sure that Humane and some of these other, and Rabbit, and some of these other
⏹️ ▶️ Casey companies necessarily did.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, like they, yeah. Marco mentioned the people, people who have left open AI, and
⏹️ ▶️ John Anthropic has a lot of good people too. And there’s a lot of good people from DeepMind at Google. And like the
⏹️ ▶️ John smarts for AI, people working at the cutting edge of AI technology
⏹️ ▶️ John are spread pretty well throughout the industry. Even in Apple, I would say that, but there’s a lot of good people. You
⏹️ ▶️ John wouldn’t know it from the results the company’s produced but I’m saying like staffing wise, I bet they have some
⏹️ ▶️ John good people on staff there too. So that’s not the secret sauce, but yeah. but Johnny Ive has
⏹️ ▶️ John some people with experience. In the later years of Johnny Ive, when
⏹️ ▶️ John those same people are at Apple, some of the things they produced were not great, but you know what, there’s a lot more leeway when you’re entering a new product
⏹️ ▶️ John category to be fanciful and go full iOS 7 on it because what are you
⏹️ ▶️ John comparing it to? It’s not an established category. Do whatever you want, figure it out, be bold.
⏹️ ▶️ John No one else has done it yet, so you are free to be full on Johnny Ive, unedited
⏹️ ▶️ John by anybody, and good luck to them.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Except potentially Sam, which I mean, to come back to what Marco was
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m sure Johnny’s gonna let Sam tell him how to change his product. They’re such
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey buddies now. I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know, man. They’re best friends. They’re soulmates.
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#askatp: Favorite school camp/trip
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, let’s do some Ask ATP and let’s start with Harrison who writes, I’m in grade nine and I love listening to ATP. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about to go on a four week residential camp with my school. I decided to send my question now because based on Ask ATP times
⏹️ ▶️ Casey could be answered while I’m away and I will be able to listen upon my return or it’ll be in a show weeks or months in the future. Clearly Harrison knows what’s going
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on. Uh, so here’s my question. What was your favorite school camp or trip and why? Uh, for me, uh, very briefly, I went to school in a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey different places. I went to school in a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of different places because we were moving a lot at the time. And I went on a trip when I was in fifth
⏹️ ▶️ Casey grade and I was going to school in Naperville, Illinois, and we went to some like, I want to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey say it was a college campus. I couldn’t tell you what it was, couldn’t tell you where it was, but we did like a night or two there, which was really fun.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then when I was in high school, I feel like I’ve told the story somewhere very recently, probably here, but when I was in high
⏹️ ▶️ Casey school, I was a member of the future business leaders of America, FBLA. And,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John um, as it’s known,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s why I said FBLA.
⏹️ ▶️ John remember it from my school. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when you go to school, it’s a high school in a little podunk state like Connecticut. Um, and you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey decide that you’re going to do a, you’re joined the statewide competition for,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I want to say it was called computer concepts or something like that. Like it was typically like marketing and sales
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and things like that, where you would like take a test or something along those lines. Well, I did one in computer concepts and guess what? I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey second in the state of Connecticut, and that entitled me to go to nationals at Disney World. And so,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uh, myself and a few other people, uh, and our teacher, I think it was maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey five students and the teacher, uh, all went to Orlando and stayed in either the swan or the dolphin,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I forget which one. And, uh, we’re told, you know, you’re going to be here for a couple of days, you’ll compete. I did not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey place at a national level. Um, and then we’ll go back to Connecticut. And I remember vividly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that we were told by our teacher who we all got on really well with. Uh, we were
⏹️ ▶️ Casey told by our teacher, Hey, here’s the thing. You need to be in the hotel. If you leave the hotel, you need to tell us what’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going on. You know, you need to tell, tell me where you’re going, et cetera. And this was in the late nineties. So none of us had cell phones.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Um, we were, we got that speech and let, let’s say two o’clock in the afternoon. By three o’clock in the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey afternoon, we were, I remember sitting in the back of a Volkswagen Jetta that was being driven by a former
⏹️ ▶️ Casey student of the same high school that we, that we were in, except he had moved down to Orlando
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and he was taking the rest of the people I was with to go get like cold cuts and, and sandwich bread
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and whatnot, because all of them came down to Walt Disney world with like 20 bucks in their pockets.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so they knew they weren’t going to be able to eat for the three or four or five days that we were there.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Um, if we didn’t turn our kit, our sink in that, we had like a little sweet
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the hotel, if we didn’t take the sink in the like, not bar area, but like kitchen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey area and turn that into a makeshift refrigerator that these idiots wouldn’t have been able to eat. And so flat,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, it’s don’t leave the hotel crash. I’m in the back of a jet of driving around downtown Orlando.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It was so wild and so ridiculous and so much fun. And I value
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that trip to this day. Marco, what about you?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Uh, to nobody’s surprise, who knows how much of a nerd I am.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, no band band. Yup. Band camp.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There it is. Oh, one time at band
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yep, I it was nothing like American pie.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey I went to band
⏹️ ▶️ Marco camp every all four summers preceding my four years of high school,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it was such a good time. Every time it was each
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time it was like about a week. I believe maybe a little, you know, a little less than a week, and we would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go up to like one of those, you know, like campground kind of things, you know, I guess a couple hours away in Ohio you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you know, and I was in the drum section. So we would like, you know, figure out all the all the cadences for the year
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we practice them and teach all the freshmen or I was the freshman. I was learning them. That was like when we got our
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like when you’re in the drum section, you kind of move around to different different drum types as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you get older. So like that was like, you know, we’re learning the new, you know, oh now this year I’m on snare drum this year. I’m on quads
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, you know, so you learn the new instruments you get to flirt with all the people that you want to flirt with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you get, you know, you’re It’s sleep away camp, so it’s all the fun in that. Um, it, it was a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco great time every time. I absolutely loved it. Definitely far and away.
⏹️ ▶️ John John. So I’ll first give my least favorite trip
⏹️ ▶️ John just because it’s a, when I, when you say a school trip, this is literally the first one that I think of,
⏹️ ▶️ John um, uh, in fifth grade, Uh, my elementary school, uh, uh,
⏹️ ▶️ John took us all, uh, to, uh, go on a whale watch off Montauk point.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, you’ve talked about this and you were like sick as
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s where I learned that I get seasick.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh no. And that’s not an ideal,
⏹️ ▶️ John not ideal time to learn it because whale watches, if you’ve ever been on one, are long and they’re not going to turn
⏹️ ▶️ John that boat around just because you’re puking your guts out. Uh, I threw up 16 times on that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh my God. I love that you still remember this 40 years later.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then also on the bus ride back home. Oh, gosh. I still remember
⏹️ ▶️ John what the ground looked like when I got off the boat after being stuck on it. I also remember
⏹️ ▶️ John that it was cold and rainy and they wouldn’t let me back in the cabin of the boat because I was puking my brains out
⏹️ ▶️ John and I was cold and I had short sleeve shirt and shorts on. And yeah, that’s not the great, not the best way
⏹️ ▶️ John to find out that you could violently see sick. I did break that record later in life as an adult
⏹️ ▶️ John with the flu, but it stood for many decades. I get seasick.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll never go on a whale watch again. It’s, you know, anyway, so there you go. Fifth grade whale watch, no good.
⏹️ ▶️ John Other people had fun though. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco my best school trip,
⏹️ ▶️ John and I think I might’ve mentioned this before, was part of
⏹️ ▶️ John the way they used to do school back in the late 80s and early 90s was they had a G
⏹️ ▶️ John and T program, which was not gin and tonic, but it was gifted and talented. And so they would separate the nerds from the rest of the population
⏹️ ▶️ John for maximum bullying potential. But on the bright side,
⏹️ ▶️ John gifted and talented people got to go on a trip. I believe it was between junior
⏹️ ▶️ John and senior year, somewhere in there. And it was supposed to be like
⏹️ ▶️ John some place like scientific where we were going to like study some environmental thing or whatever. But like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a high school trip, right? To take a bunch of high school students and take them somewhere for a week. And yeah, maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John some science was done and some learning happened, but it was mostly like Marco’s band camp anyway, where we ended
⏹️ ▶️ John up going like I forget how it was kind of like a committee or the teacher kind of knew where the places we could potentially
⏹️ ▶️ John go and I don’t I think they made it seem like that the kids were like had input in it but for all I know it was preordained
⏹️ ▶️ John but we ended up going to Newfoundland in Canada. It’s the first time I’ve been out of the country
⏹️ ▶️ John and we were there for like a week or maybe nine or ten days or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John and we slept in, we spent some time in like a day
⏹️ ▶️ John or two when we got there in like a college dorm. Then we were in like a campground, then we were in tents.
⏹️ ▶️ John And yeah, it’s just, I mean, it’s really, it’s like a Canadian version of Marco’s Man Camp, I’m sure
⏹️ ▶️ John with a bunch of hormonal teenagers out there in the wilderness. At one point
⏹️ ▶️ John we were trudging through the Canadian wilderness in pants that were absorbing all of the damp,
⏹️ ▶️ John cold water from the bushes that we were trudging our way through. And we came around the corner and there was a moose standing right
⏹️ ▶️ John in front of us, like far enough away that you could like practically reach out a stick and poke
⏹️ ▶️ John it. And we were all so startled. We just came around the corner and believed they’re huge. They’re way
⏹️ ▶️ John bigger than you think they are. And we just all stood there with our mouths open and the moose looked at us and took off into the woods.
⏹️ ▶️ John And we were like, I cannot believe that happened. We went on a whale watch. I went on another, I had no choice.
⏹️ ▶️ John I had to go on another whale watch to end we went to go see icebergs. and I was also seasick,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I managed not to puke in a Herculean effort of embarrassment of standing in just the right part of the boat
⏹️ ▶️ John and bending my knees to try to keep my head level. Incredibly embarrassing, but I didn’t puke, I’m proud of that.
⏹️ ▶️ John I ate an entire one of those weird silver fish heads, bones, and all. I’m sure someone from Newfoundland can tell
⏹️ ▶️ John me what it is, but I’ve long since forgotten. But you ate the bones or they were just, they were present?
⏹️ ▶️ John You eat them, no, you eat the whole thing. It’s maybe like the size of the length of a pencil and like
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe three or four times is why it’s kind of a flat silver fish and eat the whole thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not that dramatic. When bones have, when fish have small bones, you just eat the whole fish.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t, but okay. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John I, I just to give clarity why I remember that I did not eat seafood
⏹️ ▶️ John for my entire childhood. I still basically don’t eat seafood. I eat shrimp and
⏹️ ▶️ John calamari, but like, other than that, I don’t really eat seafood at all. And at that point, I don’t think I’d ever eaten
⏹️ ▶️ John an entire fish of any kind. So that was a little bit exciting. But yeah, that was surely the most memorable
⏹️ ▶️ John one. It kills me that, you know, camera phones had not been invented yet. I
⏹️ ▶️ John did have, I believe, a Kodak disc camera. If you know what the quality of the photos
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco are like from that.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s just, I wish I had so many more pictures. I envy my kids. They
⏹️ ▶️ John have these amazing cameras with them all the time. They never take pictures. I’m like, you are going to regret this. take more pictures
⏹️ ▶️ John of the people you’re with and the places you go. You think you’re not going to care what like
⏹️ ▶️ John the, the back room at your first job looks like and all the people you work with, but someday you’ll want to know and they take zero
⏹️ ▶️ John pictures. So anyway, I have a few pictures of that, but I wish I had taken more. No one would’ve got a picture of that moose
⏹️ ▶️ John though. Again, we were all stunned. So they have Newfoundland. It rhymes with understand in
⏹️ ▶️ John case you ever want to know how to pronounce it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wow. That was way more than I expected. So thank you, Harrison.
⏹️ ▶️ John He’s back from his trip by the way. This has been in here for a while. Sorry Harrison
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Not as much time as it usually takes though. So I’m proud of us in that regard. Yeah, he’s still a kid He’s still a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kid, but well put.
#askatp: Bootleg tire markings
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Josh Kincaid writes, what’s the significance of the tire markings on the bootleg feeds cover art?
⏹️ ▶️ John when I saw this question, I was like, yeah, we should explain that. And then so I pulled up the bootleg cover art. Can
⏹️ ▶️ John people see the bootleg cover if they’re not members? We’ll put it in the show notes. I put a link to it if you don’t know what it looks like. But it’s a, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the wheel from a Mac Pro. And the wheel has like a tire markings
⏹️ ▶️ John like on the sidewall of the tire on your car tire, there’s a bunch of markings on it. So we put that on the side of the Mac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John wheel. And so I’m like, oh yeah, we should put this explanation in. So I pulled up the picture, I looked at it and I realized
⏹️ ▶️ John I no longer remember what the.
⏹️ ▶️ John know we had meaning behind them because I picked out the meaning of every single one of these things in here.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I’d forgotten. But thank goodness for the Slack scroll back. I looked it up and I said, we need to put this in a show
⏹️ ▶️ John because if I’ve already forgotten this, I need it. I need it burned into audio so that at some point
⏹️ ▶️ John in the future, I can say, oh, we talked about what those markings mean to remind myself, Casey. So here you go. I’m I’m with you
⏹️ ▶️ John on this. I’m not remembering. Thank you. However long ago we made the show.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey You don’t remember this?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I remembered every one of them.
⏹️ ▶️ John I didn’t remember all of them. I
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey mean, I remember some of them. I didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey remember any of them. Who, do you really think I remembered even one? Come on. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know. You remembered the name and face of the person who drove Marco
⏹️ ▶️ John around the BMW driving school.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey no idea how your memory works anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And your boat trip. Thank you very much. Where you puked your guts up. I remember that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. Oh, I’ve told that story multiple times.
⏹️ ▶️ John so on real car tires, there is a meaning for all of those little letters and numbers.
⏹️ ▶️ John Each one corresponds to something. We’ll put a link in the show notes to something that shows you what the numbers mean.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so I tried to pick realistic values for the bootleg thing. So the first is the P prefix,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re starting from left to right going around the wheel clockwise. And that is a P metric tire or a
⏹️ ▶️ John tire used for passenger cars. And I felt like that was appropriate. And most tires you see are going to be car
⏹️ ▶️ John tires, even though this is a Mac Pro wheel or whatever. There’s also LT for light truck and HL for
⏹️ ▶️ John high load rating. Those didn’t seem to apply to a Mac Pro even though it is a big computer. So
⏹️ ▶️ John the next thing is the tire width in millimeters. So I got someone when we did this, I got, I
⏹️ ▶️ John asked around on, probably masked it on back then, I forget. Can someone measure the Mac Pro tires?
⏹️ ▶️ John Because real tires have like, you know, 255 millimeter for like a big sports car tire or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John or 210 millimeter for like a regular skinny car tire, right? Can someone measure the actual Mac Pro wheels?
⏹️ ▶️ John And they’re about 40 millimeters. So it says P40, so it’s a 40 millimeter width. The next number is
⏹️ ▶️ John the aspect ratio, which I think, what is that? Like the ratio of the sidewall height to the
⏹️ ▶️ John width or something? Yep. Anyway, that’s 25%, which is, again, we’re relying on people send
⏹️ ▶️ John us pictures of like holding like a ruler up to the Mac Pro wheels. So it’s P40 slash 25, 25% aspect ratio. B for rigid
⏹️ ▶️ John sidewall, which is the same as the tread material, which seems appropriate for the Mac Pro wheels.
⏹️ ▶️ John a two inch rim diameter and a 32 load index. So a typical car tire
⏹️ ▶️ John load index range is from 70 to 126. I couldn’t look up what all those numbers mean, but it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John each number corresponds to how much load they can endure. And I’m like, well, the Mac Pro wheels,
⏹️ ▶️ John let’s say they’re a 32, it’s a round number, it’s a power of two. Maybe it’s a little high for a load rating for the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro wheels, but you know, they are $700. So maybe they really do have a great load rating. So
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s P40 slash 25, B2, 32, and then Z, which is the speed rating in Z. Which Marco knows
⏹️ ▶️ John about, because I made a big
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about that when we were in Germany, because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we were trying to hustle back to Munich at something like 140 miles an hour,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it occurred to me, oh wait, these are winter tires. We should probably make sure that they can handle 140
⏹️ ▶️ Casey miles an hour. And I basically made Marco pull over so I could quickly look
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at the side of the tire. And I think they were Z-rated winter tires, which is preposterous. It’s Germany for you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yep. And that was, by the way, that was when I learned that tires had speed ratings. Like I had no idea.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, it’s a good thing you have Casey with you to tell you the tires have speed ratings and to find the battery in your car.
⏹️ ▶️ John But anyway, so yeah, the Mac Pro is fast. So of course it gets a Z rating. So that’s the meaning of P40
⏹️ ▶️ John slash 25B232Z. Then it says unedited live stream. And then also there’s usually a
⏹️ ▶️ John maximum tire pressure printed. That’s not the pressure you’re supposed inflate your tires to if you want to find that
⏹️ ▶️ John number, look at maybe the door sill on the driver’s side door, but it does tell you what the maximum air pressure
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re ever supposed to put in these tires is. And this one says 80 PSI. And the
⏹️ ▶️ John reason it says that is because ATP-SI, get it?
⏹️ ▶️ John 80 PSI, ATP-SI. So there you go. That’s what all the letters and numbers on the bootleg
⏹️ ▶️ John show art mean. You can’t see them at small sizes, but if you get a podcast client, they can zoom it in and you
⏹️ ▶️ John will see those numbers printed there.
#askatp: Small travel lenses
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then finally for this week, a friend of mine, Matt, Matt Richardson, who does incredible
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Disney related content. Uh, Matt actually works for Raspberry Pi, but his hobby is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey doing Disney related stuff. I’ll put a link to Matt’s Instagram in the show notes, because if you are a Disney
⏹️ ▶️ Casey person, you absolutely should be following Matt. But anyways, Matt writes, I’m a Canon shooter and I’ve always splurged
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on good glass, but for travel, those lenses are starting to feel so heavy. So I don’t take the camera
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with me as much. Is that always going to be the trade-off? is there good glass that’s also light? I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not sure if I should switch to cheaper or lighter zooms or maybe stick with good glass and get like a 35 millimeter prime.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So let’s start with Marco. What’s the right answer here?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It depends on what trade-offs you’re willing to make. So first of all, if you need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco long reach, like if you need like, you know, a good zoom reach, you’re gonna be looking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at pretty heavy lenses unless you want them to be very low quality. The other thing is, you know, what Matt said, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at the end, like maybe stick with the glass and get like a 35 millimeter prime, that is very close to pancake
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lens territory. Most pancake lenses are approximately somewhere around the 40 millimeter range.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would suggest when traveling, if you’re okay with that perspective and that being like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your only perspective on the camera, I would say absolutely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get whatever the pancake lens is for your camera system and try traveling with just that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lens on the camera. Because when you compare the pancake lenses to any other
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like decent quality lens, they’re shockingly smaller. And it radically changes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how the camera feels. And you know, just not only in terms of like sheer weight
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and space in the bag, but also just how it handles in your hands. Like pancake lenses generally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco weigh approximately nothing compared to any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John other lens you can put in a camera.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so it radically changes how the camera feels. It feels much lighter and much more nimble. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is, I would say, the budget option is get a Panasonic.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because Panasonic lenses also, they tend to be like, you know, F2.8 or similar. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they don’t tend to be like super fast primes, but they tend to be very small, very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco light, and usually pretty inexpensive, depending on your system. Now, that’s the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco responsible option. The irresponsible option.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Ah, this is the Marko option, excellent.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What makes camera lenses big and heavy Often, not always, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco often part of that is it has to account for like the distance between
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the lens and the sensor on the, on the mountain, the format that you’re using it on. If you get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a compact camera that has, it has a built in lens.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can usually achieve the same quality and speed in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco terms of aperture as a much larger lens on a detachable system. So that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m talking about things like the Fuji X100, the Leica Q, like, you know, the old Sony like RX1 series.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know if they’re still doing that one, but you know, like the Leica Q is probably the flagship
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in this market. The new Fuji GFX100RF, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I happen to have gotten.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s an interchangeable lens camera. Which one? Isn’t that an interchangeable? No, I thought you were talking about
⏹️ ▶️ John the one that’s like a solid block of aluminum, not that one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right? Oh no, that’s the Sigma thing. No, no, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John not talking about
⏹️ ▶️ John that. Okay, yeah, so which one did you buy the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Fuji GFX 100 RF
⏹️ ▶️ John you talked about that? Isn’t that the medium format thing or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes, it’s basically a medium format x100 and it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just I’ve only had it for a Couple days so far. It’s amazing so far. We’ll see how it goes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but that kind of thing of like, you know when you when you look at the size of something like an x100 or the GFX 100 RF
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or or like a Q, like when you see like how big
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of a lens is needed to achieve that aperture and that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco focal length on that size sensor, it’s always much smaller on those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bodies than it is on detachable lens systems. So if what you’re optimizing for is small size
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for travel and small and light for travel, something like that could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be an option at the high end. I mean, obviously these, you’re talking about buying a whole separate camera. These are often
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very high-end models, so they can be pretty expensive, but that might be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco worth looking into if you want a fancier or an upgrade pick. But what you should start with,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for now, if you don’t wanna get a whole new camera for thousands of dollars, is get that pancake lens for your system.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s a fantastic option, and you will find it so compelling that I think you will start bringing the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco camera on more trips.
⏹️ ▶️ John So this isn’t really what Matt is asking, and I’m sure he knows this anyway, but I’ll just say it for the listeners.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m in a similar situation where I don’t wanna be carrying around these big lenses. And my
⏹️ ▶️ John advice for travel is the way to deal with this trade-off
⏹️ ▶️ John is to get a smaller sensor. I’m sitting here on my desk with my full-frame camera
⏹️ ▶️ John with a 24 to 70 lens on it. And then I have my APS-C
⏹️ ▶️ John size sensor on my other camera. And it has a 70 to 350 lens on it. and the 70 to 350
⏹️ ▶️ John lens is smaller on the APS-C camera than the 24 to 70 is on the full frame.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco people who don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John speak camera speak, there is a very small zoom range lens
⏹️ ▶️ John on my big sensor camera that only goes from 24 millimeters to 70 millimeters. And
⏹️ ▶️ John then there is a huge zoom range that goes from 70 to 350, which is a big range.
⏹️ ▶️ John 350 is way zoomed in. Like if you can look at, I guess people are starting to learn millimeter numbers if you look at the camera app on your iPhone,
⏹️ ▶️ John even if you don’t have a real camera, now they put like little millimeter equivalents that you can see. 70 to 350,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s a pretty far zoom. And if you’ve got a 70 to 350 on a full frame
⏹️ ▶️ John camera, even if you’ve got the cheapest one you could find, that’s gonna be huge and heavy.
⏹️ ▶️ John So what I’m getting at is the lenses for APS-C sensor cameras are so
⏹️ ▶️ John much smaller and lighter for the quote unquote same lens, even the same quality. Like, yes, you
⏹️ ▶️ John are sacrificing by having a smaller sensor, but if you’re on vacation and you’re not doing everything at night,
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe you’re in a sunny place, there should be plenty of light for an APS-C sensor. You know, you lose some pixels, but
⏹️ ▶️ John like it’s worth it for how much smaller the lenses can be.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I know you’ve got a Canon thing, the Canon makes some kind of small, I don’t know the Canon line or whatever, but
⏹️ ▶️ John Marco’s introducing the new camera thing, so I’m gonna throw it in there too. Get a camera with a smaller sensor
⏹️ ▶️ John because all the lenses are smaller. And then you can pick from whatever brand you want, lots of, every brand makes small sensor cameras.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you wanna stay with interchangeable lens cameras, not detachable, interchangeable lens cameras,
⏹️ ▶️ John get one with a smaller sensor. Modern APS-C cameras
⏹️ ▶️ John take amazing photos. You will not miss the 61 megapixels from your giant thing
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. Because like Margaret was saying, there’s no getting around. Like you can’t fight physics.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you want an interchangeable lens camera and you want it to be full frame, those lenses are gonna be huge.
⏹️ ▶️ John And yeah, you can go for the pancake or the prime or whatever, but like if you need, it’s like, oh, but I need lots of long reach. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John what are you gonna do? Like it is what it is, but you can get around that by getting a camera with a smaller sensor. And yes,
⏹️ ▶️ John the cameras that are an interchangeable lens where the thing is built in, they can be smaller and lighter,
⏹️ ▶️ John but then you can’t change the lens on them. So I hope you like whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John range that lens is giving you. And I feel like it, especially like, if you wanna keep the size
⏹️ ▶️ John and weight down, you’re gonna get better quality from, let’s say an APS-C camera with a pancake lens
⏹️ ▶️ John on it than you would from that same focal distance in a non-interchangeable lens camera of the same size and weight. Because the
⏹️ ▶️ John good non-interchangeable lens cameras are either horrendously expensive, like the ones Marko was describing,
⏹️ ▶️ John and sometimes they’re surprisingly big. They’re not as big as they would be if they had an interchangeable lens, but
⏹️ ▶️ John since they’re so expensive, it’s not going to be something that’s small and light. They’re gonna be like high quality and
⏹️ ▶️ John actually pretty big. So that’s my advice. Look at APS-C.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you don’t travel that frequently, this is a good consideration to maybe rent cameras.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like you can go to lens rentals, that’s what I always did in the past. And like, you can actually rent
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of these small, compact, fancier cameras if you want to. Or some lens that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you wouldn’t normally buy for constant use, but maybe you go on like one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trip a year that it might be useful for. You know, renting is an option. It can be a little expensive if you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do it more than rarely, but it’s an option.
⏹️ ▶️ John Do it to audition the camera you think about buying. Like, so look at a bunch of, let’s say you decide you’re gonna do like
⏹️ ▶️ John a non-interchangeable lens camera. Narrow it down to a model or two, then rent the one you’re thinking
⏹️ ▶️ John of buying as sort of a last check.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. I would also say, don’t go smaller in size, in sensor size than APS-C.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can get like the super zoom cameras that are smaller. I actually did. I rented one or two of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those. I tried them here and there. Like the Sony RX100 series is one of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these. What I have found is that they are not better enough than an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPhone to be worth carrying. You know, unless you have very specialized needs that they fit for some reason, but like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t go with smaller sensors than APS-C if you want it to be better than an iPhone. Within
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the APS-C family, if you really want a very, very small, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very high quality APS-C sensor camera, look at the Ricoh GR3X.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is very high quality for a very small camera. It is almost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pocketable, not quite, I mean, unless you have big pockets, but like it’s an almost pocket-sized camera. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shocking how much quality it has in such a small body
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and as image stabilization in there, which I don’t know how they did that. But like when you look at like, you know, the challenges
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, you know, how Fuji takes forever to add image stabilization to their small cameras and Ricoh came out with the GR3X
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s built in and it’s really great. We have one in the family, like I got it for TIFF a while back.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s a great camera overall, but it’s very, very small. The only reason I don’t use the Ricoh GR3X more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is because like the handling of it is very small for me and my fingers and my hands. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s like, I don’t like the way it handles. It’s like too small for me. But if I want to have a good camera
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with me to be able to capture good images at the smallest size possible, nothing comes close
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to that one. But I personally like the larger offerings from Fuji
⏹️ ▶️ Marco better just in terms of handling and in terms of how they render like JPEGs and stuff like that. But anyway, yeah, definitely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look at APS-C or larger sensors. Renting is a good idea. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco definitely the pancake lens category, if you don’t mind the loss of zoom.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right, thanks to our sponsors this week, HelloFresh, Delete.me and Squarespace.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And thanks to our members who support us directly. You can join us at atv.fm slash join. One of the many perks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of membership is all those awesome specials we were talking about earlier. Another perk of membership is even more exclusive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco content, ATP overtime. This is our weekly bonus topic. Every week we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco talk for usually like, you know, there are 15 or 20 minutes on some bonus topic called ATP overtime.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This week that topic will be, as John put it, Meanwhile in Europe.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What’s going on with the EU and the DMA and stuff like that? That’ll be this week’s overtime. Thank
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you so much. You can join us at ATFM Thanks, we’ll talk to you
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental John
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him Cause it was
⏹️ ▶️ John accidental, oh it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey accidental And you can find the show
⏹️ ▶️ John notes at atp.fm And if you’re into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s K-C-L-I-S-M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T
⏹️ ▶️ John S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John accidental, they did
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it mean to Accidental, check podcast
Neutral: CarPlay Ultra
⏹️ ▶️ Casey CarPlay Ultra was announced, kind of. Uh, the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey next generation CarPlay has been now deemed CarPlay Ultra. There was a press release about it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and Top Gear did a video review of it. Well, they also did a written review, but the video review was very well done.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I want to say it was a little less than 20 minutes long, but it does a really, really good job of showing you top
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to bottom how CarPlay Ultra works. This is not something that I need in my life,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I think I would like it if I had it. Um, I, the basic just is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the car actually will render its own stuff like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the tachometer, the speedometer, um, a lot of the error, uh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uh, indicators and things like that. The car will render them itself, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s doing it in a visual language that Apple provides. And so when you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey initially connect to CarPlayUltra, one of the things that happens is Apple downloads a whole bunch of like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey assets and resources and whatnot into the car such that whenever you turn that car
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on, henceforth, it will actually use Apple’s UI. I believe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even before it connects to your iPhone and then it will obviously use regular traditional
⏹️ ▶️ Casey car play as well as have this new ultra stuff on top of it. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the ultra stuff will integrate with the onboard infotainment for things like the backup camera for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey perhaps unique settings that they they couldn’t really figure out a good way to do in the car play
⏹️ ▶️ Casey world. It’s it, if you control HVAC or, you know, your, your air conditioning
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in using the car, like if the car has dials, it’ll be reflected in car play. It looks
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really, really well done. Um, that being said, some of the. Um, gauge
⏹️ ▶️ Casey clusters that you can choose between. I like that they let you choose between different gauge clusters. I like that they work
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with the car manufacturers in order to build, uh, at least one or two different gauge clusters. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Aston Martin, you know, looked like an Aston Martin in the corner of the speedometer. It said, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t know, something like hand-built in Britain or whatever the case may be. Or maybe it said
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’ll fail in two months. Isn’t that how that worked? No, never mind. I think I had that wrong. It was hand-built in Britain. Hey-o!
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John But anyways,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the point is, you know, they work with a car manufacturer to do these things. But then they also have like a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey purely Apple interpretation where you can have like one of the dashboards was,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or gauge clusters, was a bunch of like horizontal progress bars, and that represents speed,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey engine RPMs, et cetera. It’s really, really interesting. And I don’t think I will
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ever buy a car, well, you know, asterisk, whatever. I don’t think I’ll ever buy a car without CarPlay,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey regular CarPlay. I don’t think I would go out of my way to get a car
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with CarPlay Ultra, but I think I would really like it if I had it. John, what do you think about this?
⏹️ ▶️ John So we talked about this much more extensive discussion of the, what was then called Next Gen CarPlay,
⏹️ ▶️ John the Next Gen CarPlay architecture, in episode 593, right after WWDC
⏹️ ▶️ John last year. But Next Gen CarPlay was actually introduced, I think it was WWDC 2022, maybe? I think
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s right, yeah. It’s been a while, because they announced it, and we didn’t hear anything about it, and then
⏹️ ▶️ John they waited, and from 2022, 2023, 2024, they re-announced it, but then they had sessions on it, WWDC,
⏹️ ▶️ John So we really got the nitty gritty detail and like all the questions we had were essentially answered.
⏹️ ▶️ John But at that point, no car company had actually shipped it. Apple kept saying, here are our partners. Porsche is gonna do
⏹️ ▶️ John it and Aston Martin’s gonna do it. And they’re like, the list of partners is very long. But since 2022, it was like, okay,
⏹️ ▶️ John who’s, is anyone ever gonna use this thing? And now Aston Martin has. And
⏹️ ▶️ John just to refresh with the questions that we had from before and the answers that we got
⏹️ ▶️ John at technical depth in 2024, when you get into one of these
⏹️ ▶️ John cars, you don’t need an iPhone. Like everything, there’s a instrument cluster in front
⏹️ ▶️ John of you, there’s a screen, there’s all this stuff. The car has all its own interface if you
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t own an iPhone. So you don’t need an iPhone to do this. And if you don’t have an iPhone,
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t worry, you’re not gonna see any of this crap, right? So what that means is that anyone who uses CarPlay
⏹️ ▶️ John Ultra, any car company, they have to make a full interface for their car because they
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t assume that everybody has an iPhone. But if you have an iPhone and you get into the car
⏹️ ▶️ John and you pair it and initialize it and say, yes, I wanna use CarPlay Ultra,
⏹️ ▶️ John then essentially every screen in that car is covered with CarPlay
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff. And as Casey noted, it’s not just all projected from your phone. There’s a bunch of stuff that the car
⏹️ ▶️ John itself is projecting because you have to make it so that when you get in, like the screens can light up and you know, like
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t have to wait for your car to connect to see your speedometer, for example, right? So the car is doing this stuff, but the thing
⏹️ ▶️ John is, CarPlay Ultra, the product, gets to cover all of
⏹️ ▶️ John those screens. And part of the technology they have is that the sort of quote-unquote native car interface
⏹️ ▶️ John can punch through that interface for regulatory reasons and for practical reasons. The regulatory reasons
⏹️ ▶️ John that you gotta have like the warning lights in whatever jurisdiction says you need to be, how these warning lights have to be visible
⏹️ ▶️ John and you have to show this. Like that’s all sort of the quote-unquote native car interface, and that punches through the CarPlay interface,
⏹️ ▶️ John which sometimes doesn’t look great, even the Aston Martin, there’s very strict regulations about what the
⏹️ ▶️ John fuel gauge or the oil light, or the, not the fuel gauge, but like there’s, the warning lights do have lots of regulations
⏹️ ▶️ John around them. They kind of have to be there and they have to be on at a certain point. So those punch through and they don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John always match the rest of the interface because those you can’t restyle as easily. And then things
⏹️ ▶️ John like the backing up camera, the 360 camera in the Aston Martin, the thing that
⏹️ ▶️ John controlled like the seat massaging, that was a punch through of the native interface, punching through
⏹️ ▶️ John the Apple interface. And then around all of that is Apple’s thing. Some of it projected from the phone on like sort of the
⏹️ ▶️ John main, you know, CarPlay screens and then the instrument cluster stuff that’s downloaded into the thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the question was always like, who’s ever gonna do this? Who’s gonna basically do a full interior
⏹️ ▶️ John of their car? Because you have to, you have to do, because not everyone has an iPhone, do a full interior design for your car software
⏹️ ▶️ John and then allow people with an iPhone to cover all of that with an interface that
⏹️ ▶️ John you in cooperation with Apple design to be a blend of Aston
⏹️ ▶️ John Martin or whatever your company is and Apple’s aesthetic. And they talked to the nice
⏹️ ▶️ John Aston Martin designer and he put a brave face on it and saying, oh, we love this or whatever. It’s like, if you’re a car
⏹️ ▶️ John designer, like do you want to work with Apple to design an interface that
⏹️ ▶️ John is part Apple, part Aston Martin? I don’t think you do. I think you just
⏹️ ▶️ John want it to be Aston Martin and Apple should get what it needs to get for its apps to display, but the instrument
⏹️ ▶️ John cluster, What value is Apple adding there? But Aston Martin has done it. So we’ll see how the,
⏹️ ▶️ John finally there is a car. I mean, they’re not gonna sell a lot of these. It’s not a high volume model, but
⏹️ ▶️ John the questions still we had about CarPlay Ultra are no longer about how it works. And now we’re about,
⏹️ ▶️ John is this a thing that people want? Is this a thing that car makers want? I mean, obviously Apple was able
⏹️ ▶️ John to make it happen with at least one car maker after, you know, three years of trying. So kudos for Apple. A
⏹️ ▶️ John car is going to ship in very low volumes to a very small number of customers. But
⏹️ ▶️ John how many of those Aston Martin owners will choose to use this? What they didn’t say is if
⏹️ ▶️ John you have an iPhone, can you do CarPlay but not Ultra? I think the answer is no.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like what if I just want CarPlay on the middle screen where I can just see my music and maps and stuff? Can I do that and still have the
⏹️ ▶️ John Aston Martin Native Instrument Cluster? I think the answer is no, which is kind of a shame.
⏹️ ▶️ John But anyway, this is a good, we’ll have a better market test if the other car makers and their supposed
⏹️ ▶️ John list of people who are gonna support this comes out, cause I think like Hyundai was on that list and other like large volume
⏹️ ▶️ John brands that make affordable cars. I don’t know about this. I, you know, again,
⏹️ ▶️ John see past discussion. It just seems like something that appeals to Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John and maybe appeals to people who really dislike the aesthetic of their car and prefer
⏹️ ▶️ John the aesthetic of Apple. They want the Apple look because they think their car is ugly or unappealing or not
⏹️ ▶️ John as nice, but, And CarPlay is, the CarPlay Ultra is extremely
⏹️ ▶️ John flexible and able to be modified and themed and changed or whatever to look more like the other cars.
⏹️ ▶️ John But in the end, it looks like, because it’s supposed to look like, a blend between
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple and the car company. I don’t really want Apple blended at all
⏹️ ▶️ John with my instrument cluster because I don’t see them as a car company. I want them,
⏹️ ▶️ John I want Apple to show me an app interface because I see them as an app company. And there are lots of apps for
⏹️ ▶️ John their platform. Like that makes sense to me. But anyway, I’m not excited
⏹️ ▶️ John about CarPlay Ultra, let’s say that.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco And I don’t think Aston Martin
⏹️ ▶️ John is excited about CarPlay Ultra either, but they are a trusted partner of Apple, so here it is.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it actually looks really good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Yeah, me too.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, you know, it is worth pointing out, there was a really good segment on the Verge cast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about this a couple of days ago. So I would say if you wanna hear more about this, listen to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, really good coverage of it. I think the you know, obviously when you look at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what Apple debuted and what we talked about back in 2022 about like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their next generation CarPlay, this seems like it is a little bit of a step back from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. This is a little bit more like we’re going to compromise and we’re going to have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some stuff designed by us, some stuff rendered by our phone, not everything and not everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, some we’re still going to have some of your UI show through when you feel like it or when you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco refuse to you know give it to us.
⏹️ ▶️ John But in outside of 2024 the punch through stuff was there when we talked about it in episode 593. Right so but like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know so anyway this is a bit of a walk back from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what they did you know a few years back or that what they demoed but could get apparently nobody on board with.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think this is a more approachable version of it that for the automakers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it’s very clear like when you watch the video and when you kind of, you know, listen to some of the details here,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s very clear like Apple has to work very closely with the automaker to get this done.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so I don’t think this is ever going to be a common thing. I mean, maybe they could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco work with like Toyota, but you know, I doubt it. I think it’s much more likely they’re going to do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a few boutique integrations like this with the Aston Martin. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think that I think it will mostly fizzle. I don’t see this becoming the common case.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That being said, it did appeal to me more in the Aston
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Martin demo and like what we were seeing there. It appealed to me more there than the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco original version they showed off in 2022 for the next gen CarPlay. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ultimately I don’t want the entire dashboard and instrument cluster of my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco car to look like an iPhone forever. Apple designs things nicely.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Also, Apple’s design is really boring and safe and bland. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t want my car to be boring and safe and bland and to always look the same no matter what car
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have. I like the personality that cars bring. You know, sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s not as nice of a user experience in certain ways. But I don’t want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything to always be the same. Like iOS’s design is really stripped
⏹️ ▶️ Marco down and safe. Like when it showed like navigating through those settings screens, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just wanted to die. I’m like, you’re in an Aston Martin and you’re navigating through these like big gray
⏹️ ▶️ Marco table rows like that’s just so boring and ugly.
⏹️ ▶️ John then occasionally you have the Aston Martin’s own UI punch through to show a totally incongruous
⏹️ ▶️ John art style on top view of the seats.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, exactly. Like it’s just, it’s not, it’s nicer in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some ways and certain parts of it I did think looked nice but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t want every car to be like this and that’s a good thing because not every car will be like this and not even close I think this is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to be a very rarely implemented thing but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a fun it’s a fun thing it’s it’s a unique thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and overall I do like carplay as a whole
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I think what carplay is today in every other car which is a rectangle
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the phone projects onto the screen, that’s fine. I don’t need CarPlay to be more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than that. Having more integration with that is maybe nice. Like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of the nice things about this is not necessarily that it has to take over every screen in the car,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but one of the nice things about CarPlay Ultra, as shown here, is that by having more integration with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the car, you can have things like, for instance, the climate control, like the status,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the temperature and everything, that can be displayed on the CarPlay home screen. like next
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to your CarPlay stuff. That kind of integration, that could be nice here and there, and depending on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your car model and how it’s displaying stuff otherwise, that could be nice. So I think this has a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco potential to be like nice little upgrades here and there, but I cannot imagine most automakers
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s why I was asking if you could just do the main CarPlay screen, like because then you would get the integration where you can see your AC
⏹️ ▶️ John control or the current temperature and stuff, but you didn’t have to say, okay, but take over every screen in the car, including the instrument
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know. Again, I don’t know if that’s even an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco option. Yeah, I don’t know. I also think CarPlay could really use a redesign. CarPlay,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again, it looks really bland and boring and kind of old and stale. It has looked the way it looks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for its entire life, basically. It hasn’t ever really gotten a redesign. So I’m curious to see,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as Apple allegedly redesigns all of its OSes that we’ll see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a couple of weeks, if the rumors are true, I wonder if any of that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gets to CarPlay and how that affects this announcement? Like how that how it’s going to look like do you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want Apple to redesign software and all of a sudden your entire car looks different?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like I had that with Tesla it sucked like that was a terrible experience to have your car all of a sudden get redesigned
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and all of a sudden you can’t find a defroster anymore. Like so I I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is fun this is interesting I’m curious to see where else it goes and I’m glad that Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is putting a lot of work into car play and it seems like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m glad that they are willing to walk back some of the ambition and hubris they have with that original
⏹️ ▶️ Marco design to actually work with automakers instead of just fighting them with everything so we’ll see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if anybody actually ever you know adopts this in a car that I ever want to own
⏹️ ▶️ Marco although if I end up having to buy an Aston Martin to test out my app and car play
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’ll suffer through I guess I’ll get the DB 12 for my work it’s a work expense.
⏹️ ▶️ John Sorry, it only comes with the SUVs.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco No, it does. So far,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so far, so far, it’s just in this one SUV. Who would buy that SUV? Who would who goes who
⏹️ ▶️ Marco says I want an Aston Martin and looks at that and says I want that the best selling Porsche is their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco forget. But Porsche like is at least a little bit more of a common brand and a little bit less expensive. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you say they’re sportier than Aston Martin is what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco getting at. But if you’re buying an Aston Martin, you’re buying an iconic look more than you’re buying like raw
⏹️ ▶️ John I would almost guarantee you that they sell more of their stupid SUV. Oh, God, that’s so sad. That’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John world we live in. I agree. Here’s from 9to5Mac. Here is supposedly the list of car
⏹️ ▶️ John makers that had pledged to support what was then known as next gen car play from 2022. Land
⏹️ ▶️ John Rover, Lincoln, Audi, Volvo, Honda, Nissan, Ford, Porsche, Jaguar, Acura, Polestar, Infiniti,
⏹️ ▶️ John and Renault. And Mercedes was on the list, but Mercedes has since come out and said, ah, no, hell
⏹️ ▶️ John no, we’re not doing that. We talked about the Mercedes CEO saying, we do not want Apple taking over our cars
⏹️ ▶️ John and obviously Aston Martin has actually shipped it even though they weren’t on the list. So from this 2022 list, how many of these
⏹️ ▶️ John people are still pledging to support what is now known as CarPlay Ultra? We don’t know,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not sure Apple is saying, but yeah, it’s taken a long time for
⏹️ ▶️ John a single car company to actually produce a product with this because things happen slowly in the car industry.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s not a very good test bed because so few of these will sell and it’s not representative of the overall
⏹️ ▶️ John market. But yeah, I kind of agree with Marco that I don’t want all my cars to look like
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple stuff, mostly because I don’t think, I don’t particularly like how, for example, any of the Apple instrument cluster
⏹️ ▶️ John things work. And one of the things I choose a car based on is whether
⏹️ ▶️ John I like the interior and the software. And in some ways, CarPlay can help, like, oh, I
⏹️ ▶️ John love everything about this car, except for the inside, except for the screens, but I don’t have to worry about that, because when I get them with my iPhone, they’ll all
⏹️ ▶️ John be replaced with Apple thing, and I like that. But I would prefer to choose a car where I like everything about it as it
⏹️ ▶️ John comes out of the box, and then just let me put a rectangle on the screen with my phone. But we are
⏹️ ▶️ John all at the whims of the market. As I well know, as someone who prefers stick shift sedans,