551: Boost Your Truck Parts
01:22:15 Share

Hello and welcome to Connected, episode 551. Today is Wednesday, May 7th, 2025. Sometimes we say the date, sometimes we don't. You never know what you're going to get here on this program. My name is Stephen Hackett, and I have the pleasure of being joined by our keynote chairman, Mr. Mike Hurley. Sometimes you don't know how many hosts you're going to get on the show either. That is true. We are down one Federico Vittici.

He was attacked by snakes. You can't just say that. There's a podcast that I listen to. That's what they do. Every time someone's like, oh, snakes, they got him in the eyes. And then they just move on. So that's it. Federico got attacked by some snakes. And that's it. The ones that are in his ISP box, they come back to get him. And hopefully he'll be back next time. I thought it was fiber. Nope, it's a snake. Nope, it's a snake.

You know, if the snake was like at the end of the house where the water runs off, it'd be snakes on a drain. Should we do some follow up? Yes. Google accidentally leaked their new Android design. They're just doing what they do, which is accidentally leaking everything. So we touched on the rumors of a potential redesign of Android coming and some imagery leaked on the Android blog. I just, I can't even, I just don't understand how they do this stuff.

It was picked up by 9to5Google. At least this portion of the redesign stuff is called Material 3 Expressive. This doesn't seem to me... There's some images in the article that's in the show notes. This, to me, doesn't feel like the entire operating system. I think that there's

something else here uh this feels more like if you're an app developer these are the types of elements that you could use um in my experience of using android uh so so far and more recently i have not come across many apps that use material design really yeah i mean i'm sure they're out there but i'm i'm not using many apps that i feel look like google's apps um

I get the impression that there is less of this going on than even SwiftUI. I'm sure that there are lots of examples of apps that do use it, but I'm not finding them. None of the, as you can imagine,

None of the big company apps are using this kind of design style. Yeah. So this is nice. And I would say like the images that are in this, that were in this blog post, I love the overall energy that is in these screenshots. Lots of really vibrant colors. Like this to me feels like, like how material works of somebody chose purple was their favorite color. And then all of their favorite apps look purple. I would love it if that was like a realistic thing that would occur. Um,

Maybe it does in some apps and for some users, but I don't know. I feel like you would see material design more in the indie app developer kind of world, like the person who has not got 50 designers who want to have their own design.

But I expect that there will be parts of Android that will also have this vibe, but I don't think that's what we're seeing here. Like this looks like all third party examples. Yeah. The color is awesome. What strikes me is, you know, if the rumors of Apple's redesign are true and it's

kind of Vision OS-y, kind of like the Invites app, that's distinctly different from this. This is still, I mean, there's some translucency in places, but this is pretty flat, just more expansive use of color. And so we may actually see these OSs diverge some this time around. I think maybe in a way we haven't seen in a while. If this is true and the rumors about Apple are both true. I think that would be a good thing. Me too. Me too. Yeah.

Okay, we got a follow-up from somebody. I'm going to spell their name because I looked at this for like five minutes. It's S-T-E-P-H-A-N, where I am E-N, but then they say it rhymes with farm. Yeah, I've also really gotten stuck on this because I'm sure like you, I looked at that name and I'm like, Stefan.

But I don't say, are you going to the farm? You know? Farm yard. I don't know what to do with that. I'm assuming, so we go like Stefan. Stefan. That's what we're going for. Stefan. But that doesn't rhyme with farm. Unless farm was a typo or like an autocorrect and they spelled farn, F-A-R-N. It was like Stefan. I don't know.

This person, who I'm sure is lovely, has broken my brain with our almost the same name. They wrote in. The context here is we talked last week about how we learn new things. We talked about resources on the internet and that sort of thing. And this jumped out at me because of something you did a couple of years ago. So...

So Stefan rhymes with farm wrote in 2021. I wanted to learn about data science for my job and for personal curiosity. I started using the internet, but quickly became frustrated with the lack of clarity and depth, even on YouTube and in online courses.

Mike mentioned looking for the Jason or Steven of the industrial design world. They are out there, but they teach at universities, not online. Same thing for me with data analysis. There's shallow stuff on the internet, but experts mostly teach in person in a university setting. Sad. Like, yeah, that makes sense. Like, that these people are out there, but they're not publishing. That's sad for me because I want that experience. And I got some of it that the most...

that I have gotten from... The biggest experience that I've gotten was from that course that I did. The problem is, and this is the same as it was then, and it's actually a bigger problem now, for me to get more of that, I would have to enroll in a bigger course, and I can't. There was a while I was thinking about it. I was trying to see how could I... Maybe I could do a part-time thing for a year, but none of those things really existed. And so...

I would like to do it again one day. There is nothing stopping me from doing this at any point in my life. But right now, more higher education is not really on the table. But that, I agree, would probably be the best way for me to get more expertise than what I feel like I'm currently getting. Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's totally fair. But that's a hard trade-off though, right? It's the time, it's the money, it's out of reach for a lot of people. One thing I did think about, and it's not as big of a thing as it used to be. Back in the day, iTunes U, remember that? A lot of colleges would put stuff. That was discontinued in 2020 or 2021. But a lot of that content is in Apple Podcasts and Apple Books.

And so some of that stuff is still around. I think really famously Stanford had like an iOS development course that they kept updated for a long time. So many people became developers because of that. Yeah. And it was just free. Yeah. Like I remember when I was doing more interviews like that, like talking to developers, like doing inquisitive and command spaces, it would come up a lot. Like people would learn to code because of that. Yeah. Um,

And so, like, yeah, you know, I will say, actually, I've also found use in, like, Skillshare and Masterclass. Definitely. You know, like, I've done some of those before. There's a Skillshare course that Aaron Draplin does, which I actually recommend you sign up for a month to Skillshare to watch these because I know you would enjoy them as much as I do. He's my favorite designer.

Have you seen his Skillshare thing? Where he, there's Design Great Stuff and also there's something else. There's also, I'll find it, he did for Skillshare on their YouTube, he did a tour of his office. I did watch that. That was really cool. Okay. But yeah, just the Design Great Stuff course, it's an hour and 43 minutes long. It's worth signing up to Skillshare for a month. All right. I am putting that in my Read It Later app.

Yeah, you will like this. I haven't finished it yet, but I've been really, really, really enjoying it. But yeah, I'll put... It's like a 20-minute video he did showing off his office that I'll also put in the show notes for people to watch. Because, yeah, it's super, super good. I did actually have an experience like this that I wanted to share. So...

Obviously, today we're going to talk about legal stuff because Apple Podcast isn't right now. I was listening to the Stratechery Daily Update and Ben was rattling off a list of 15 court cases to make an argument that he was making. And I was once again struck by...

How I find the American legal system to be confusing. Like the fact that it seems that every court case is decided based on how previous court cases have gone and like the precedent that they set. And like the precedent is very important in just making any decision. And I was struck again by like, well, then how does anything ever change? So I open chat GPT, like I was walking along into the voice mode.

and was just having a conversation with it. And I found it to be actually a really good experience because you're just like having a voice conversation, like you're on the phone and I'm just like, and it's like, explain it to me. I'm like, yeah, but that sounds really hard to get anything changed. It's like, yeah, that's kind of the point. I was like, all right, fair enough. So it was, I found that to be a good experience of like, this is just a piece of information that I want and I would like it

in a different way, like someone can explain it to me. So it was like an evolution of how I'm finding these kinds of web, this kind of web searching to be useful anyway, in that like I can ask for something

And then refine it by asking subsequent questions, which is like not really a thing you can do with Google. You kind of have a conversation with a Google search, right? Yeah. You kind of like do a search, find the thing, and then type in another search based on what you found, where this is like, no, I don't mean that. I mean this. Can you go and do that and do this? And so I found that to be a good experience. I still don't, I'm still not fully on board with the way the system works, but I at least understand it a little bit more than I did before. It's just peculiar to me

that cases aren't judged purely on their merit and it's it's like it's on its merit plus everything that happened before that may have been for a ski and ski ticket company is why we're it's how we're working out the antitrust in the app stores like right that doesn't really make sense to me but like whatever whatever yeah

Okay. Matt wrote in and said, with all of the talk lately of Beats branded products made by companies other than Apple, it reminded me of when I worked at Vodafone before the iPhone. At the time, we sold a model of a Motorola phone that had iTunes built in called the Rocker. I'm curious if you guys had or still have one. What did you think of it at the time?

I'm sure you have one. I'm pretty sure I've seen it. No, I don't have one. You don't have one? Because it's another item that goes for way too much money.

The Rocker E1. And I, today, I didn't have one of these, but I thought I might have had a phone that did it, but I don't think I did. But again, I asked at GPT and found out there were three other phones that had iTunes built into them. The Rocker Sliver L7, the Razer V3i. My brother had that one, and it was sick. The Sliver? Uh-huh.

and the Motorola Rocker E2. Yeah. Which I found funny. It's like in some regions, it later switched to a different media player, I assume when the deal ended with Apple. I'm going to put this in the show notes. There is a with a box...

itunes plus singular motorola rocker e1 that this has been on ebay for years for a thousand dollars and now it's 50 off at 4.99 and steel steven every once in a while i send it to our friend quinn nelson and be like hey hey dude buy this make a video is the idea here that he makes the video and then sends it to you for permanent housing i mean i wouldn't be opposed to that

Yeah. You know, if that happens, that's what happens. Like I can't control the future, but these are really expensive. Yeah. So this phone was basically just like a very like mid aughts Motorola phone. It wasn't a flip phone. It was a candy bar. Yeah. And they stuck a really crappy iTunes version iTunes in it. You could copy a hundred tracks from your computer to the device and

And it was announced the same day as the iPod Nano, which of course blew this thing out of the water, both in the news and in sales. It was announced the same day as the Nano? Yep, same keynote. Oh, I had forgotten that piece of information. It's brutal. Man, there are some of these things where when you're so far apart from them, they have this split apart in your brain. Mm-hmm.

I would never have, you, I could never have guessed that, but yeah, I get, I mean, obviously you put in the show notes. If you've never seen Steve Jobs introduce it, it's worth watching because you've never seen someone introduce something so begrudgingly like the demo portion. I don't know if that's in this video, but in the demo, he's clearly unhappy with it. Like he, he is not happy about this. I mean, because the thing is at this point in 2005, uh,

We all want the iPhone. Yeah, yeah. Because you don't want to carry a phone and an iPod, right? Like, that's the whole thing. The imagination of Apple making a phone...

has begun in 2005. Like, that was a thing that people wanted. I mean, it took to 2007 before we got it. But, like, the idea that Apple could make a phone, and not even really a smartphone. Probably, honestly, we were imagining at that time something quite like the Rocket E1, but with Apple software. And, oh boy, Motorola's operating system at this point was so bad compared to the others around it. Because they...

They existed for so long on the back of the success of the Razor that they didn't really bother to put any energy into anything. Yeah. I do have a Razor, and my word, it's still so nice. I mean, they're doing it. You should get the wooden one. It looks pretty sick. A big Moto X energy too there, right? Yep. The X thing. Okay, so that's the Rocker. So we've got a lot of breaking news here. Not connected without Federico.

This episode of Connected is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one website platform designed to help you stand out and succeed online. Whether you're just starting a new business or scaling a project, Squarespace gives you everything you need to claim your domain, showcase your offerings with a professional website, grow your brand, and get paid all in one place. I've been using Squarespace since I was a kid.

forever. And I absolutely love building on it because I can take a website or a brand and really make it shine. I built the Widgesmith, Pedometer++, and Sleep++ websites on Squarespace about a year and a half ago, and they look great. And it's easy to add things to them, to modify them over time, and it all works together.

But maybe design isn't your strong suit. Well, Squarespace's AI-enhanced website builder lets you quickly and easily build a site bespoke to your business. Just input some basic information about your industry and your goals, and

And Squarespace, you know, they're known for their awesome professionally designed and award-winning templates. Well, those get infused with the information you put into the system. So however you start, you will have beautiful design options with no design experience required. And the same thing comes to SEO tools. Look, I'm definitely not an SEO expert, but Squarespace makes it easy to

Every website is optimized to be indexed with meta descriptions and an auto-generated site map. So more people find your site through search engine results.

So head on over to squarespace.com slash connected for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use the code connected to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain name. That's squarespace.com slash connected and the code connected to get 10% off your first purchase. I'd like to thank Squarespace for their support of the show and all of Relay. We're now entering a section of the show I call two phone, two follow-up.

Incredible. This is an ongoing segment now. It is. I got some questions about my newly set up two-phone lifestyle. I don't want to call them day phone, night phone. Work phone, home phone is what I'm going with. Tony asked questions about iMessage in particular. And this is something I think we talked about, like trying to share something with you all. And Federico's running a Mac mini in the cloud with like some weird iMessage server thing. So...

Tony asked, how do you manage iMessage syncing? If both phones are signed into the same Apple account, then messages can sync in theory. I have iMessage and FaceTime linked to both my phone number and email, but you said you just use your phone number. So I assume you don't see iMessages on the other phone. So yes, both phones are signed into the same Apple account.

And what you can do, like when that happens, the phone number gets registered with your Apple ID. And in settings on both phones, I have them set to send and receive just from my primary number. So even the T-Mobile number that WorkPhone has, like that I honestly don't know the phone number, it works.

is not getting iMessage, iMessages. Neither is my email address, just my personal phone number that I've had since I was 16. So they can both send and receive, and I have Messages and iCloud turned on, so it's synced. Now, I do have it set up a little bit differently. I have no iMessage notifications on the work phone whatsoever. Not even a badge. Like, if I want to go see it, it's there. It's all syncing.

annoyingly pinned messages or like pin threads don't sync in iCloud. So I don't have any... You need to re-pin them. I don't have any pinned things in there right now. But really, I'm not using iMessage very much on that phone. Like if I'm reading something on it, I want to send it to y'all, they're like, you know, whatever, I can do that. But it's not like my primary iMessage phone. And so they are in sync if I need them, but they're kind of just there in the background. Yeah, I mean, this is like...

This kind of thing is the frustration of using the devices in the competing operating systems where sometimes I see something on one device and I want to send it to someone. And it's like the way in which I need to do that is really complicated. Because I've got to then find the thing in Safari and send it. But in general, the thing that I am finding the most complicated with my home phone, work phone is...

moving things between the devices. And I'm finding some solutions. We'll see which ones stick and which don't. Different services in which I can put something somewhere and pick it up on another. It's not ideal, but...

I'm still very happy about my choice of device. The Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold is very, very good hardware. I use it most of the time, probably 70% of the time. I'm using it as just a regular phone, just that screen. But then if I'm getting into something...

You need to bust out the folding screen. And you've got a big screen in front of you. In Notion. That's how I was preparing for the show today. I just broke open the phone. And just big screen. Let's go. And I'm in Notion. And I'm split keyboard. And I'm off to the races. Or a few days ago. I was doing...

some work with Google Sheets and Chrome open, like side by side. And I was pulling in some numbers into a Google Sheet. Like it's really nice to have that flexibility of the second screen, even though I'm like,

you know, there's a little frustration moving things from thing to thing, but I'm also, I'm finding it interesting to bump up against what I consider to be the friction points of Android and then trying to push myself to find a way to solve them. Like it's an interesting experience of like, no, but like if I'm forcing myself to work on Android, how am I going to do that? And like, what is that going to be like? And how is that going to work? And so I've been finding it an interesting experiment so far. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah, I had a question kind of about that split usage from Peter who wrote in. It sounds like instead of cutting the pie in half, you now have two pies. Are you really leaving the work phone alone when you aren't working? That is a totally fair question, like totally fair question.

And the answer is yes. Like, so just this past weekend, like we were busy most of the day, Saturday, and we were busy all day Sunday. And the work phone was just like on the kitchen counter. And I checked it a couple of times just to like check in. Nobody needed anything and it was fine. So I had my, my, just my regular phone with me and no social media, no work apps other than Slack is still there, but that I think is getting ready to go away too. So yeah.

Nothing bad has happened, which is great. Nope. Bad things will happen, right? Like they will, but it'll be okay too, right? Like it will be fine. Like these things can be worked out. You know, it is what it is. Like I've had a similar experience, right? Where like,

the phone is either in my bag or it's on a counter or something and it's just it's doing its thing and it's getting the notifications that it's getting and the messages it's getting or whatever but I'm not seeing them and so like I'll just come to them later like today you know like I went out for lunch and left the work phone in the studio I was like I'm just gonna have an hour to myself for a bit like what a nice thing to have I have taken slack off my iPhone now I did that

uh, on Monday this week. It's a weird experience, but I think it's going to be okay. Like I've had things where it's like people need stuff from me, but like they'll get to it when I'm working, like when I'm at my desk or like when I'm in work mode, like I, and I think that that's totally okay. Um, again, similarly, if something is a true emergency, the people that

The people that I work with that something would be considered like a true emergency, they can get a hold of me. Yep, exactly. And so it's fine that they can wait for the answer to a question or can wait for me to sign off some marketing copy until 25 minutes from now or two hours from now or whatever. It's like, you know, people I think that work with me are used to this. Like,

part of my job is going missing for a couple of hours yeah multiple times a week yeah exactly yeah it's been it's been just fine so yeah i i think overall things are going well for both of us which is great and i know that like i think uh i saw some some feedback uh somewhere with people saying like can't you just use like focus modes and stuff like that and like solve this problem no honestly no i can't

or i would i've tried for a long time yeah the temptation of having it there is is too great and i need the physical separation of these devices to stop me from uh just to kind of break that and and so in an ideal world yes but the answer for both of us is no it needs there needs to be an actual physical separation to to stop us from checking in on these things

So it's an addiction. But what we're addicted to is the thing that we love, which is our jobs and like our work. And that can be very addicting. But it means it can also just like take everything away from you if you give it, you know, take all the energy you give it. And we both want to be able to put energy in places that's not work. I feel like everybody can understand.

I do like the idea of the folding phone being the work phone. Maybe that's what future me does in a few years if Apple goes that route. The idea of being able to open it up and really hone in on something is very intriguing to me. But I do not want to be split across ecosystems. I want them both to be iPhones. Understood. It's a pain. It's a real pain. But I also really wanted to give this a college try so I could understand folding devices in preparation of next year.

Yeah, I like it. Just real quick, I'm just going to put a call out. If you like the show, go give us a review on Apple Podcasts. Why? Why do you want this? Because I had a moment the other day. I was in Apple Podcasts doing something else. I was like, let's look at our reviews. And they're great. We have 4.5 stars, which is awesome. But it's been a while since we've had an influx of them. So go check it out. I also want to read...

Some mean reviews. I did this once. Do you remember? I'm going to start with one that I was on, I think, but you weren't. I don't know. John was on it. They mentioned John. Connected 525. There's nothing Mac Stories releases that requires John to have 64 gigabytes of RAM in his Mac. I'm adding words to this because most of these sentences aren't complete sentences. It's disingenuous to suggest otherwise and will cause others to overspend! Exclamation point.

I've never purchased the Pro model because I thought I'm a pro, nor do I claim the regular iPhone to be for normal people. I get the Pro model because I like the 120Hz refresh rate. I can't notice my iPad Mini's at 60Hz. I prefer 120Hz. Why do I have to defend that choice? What is happening? Why is this person writing a blog post in the review? And also, how many stars is this review? One star.

Thanks, John. I don't believe you are not some creative gods that know what's the most creative and best looking thing for everyone. Creativity is subjective. Do you know what that means? Federico, do you know what that means? All of your websites aren't all that great. I don't think Apple intelligence learned anything from scraping your websites other than how to waste people's time. That's actually a pretty good pun. For us or Apple intelligence?

for everyone everyone involved i think that was i think that was pretty good here's a two-star review that just has the letter x i don't know that's what that means i'm gonna give it to you um one star review title enough old guys rant become a going complaint session with less and less humor success may have spoiled it with hosts becoming a built a bit self-absorbed too bad

yeah it's a shame we are the same there's a lot of stick in your lane stuff yeah yeah yeah um but i'm not gonna read any of there was a very particular few weeks of the year where everybody decided that like everything was too political no matter whether anyone was actually talking about politics or not it was uh you know in the fall last year in the u.s i don't know what what that's about um

Short analysis, Federico equals shortcuts, shortcuts, and even more shortcuts, iPad, iPad, and even more iPad. Mike, don't be clowning yourself with ignorant takes on American politics and culture. I love it. I love it. Steven, the most tedious podcast host I can think of with the exception of Andy Anako.

Drones on and on. Skip this truly boring podcast. So, so far, John Voorhees and Andy Anarkoa are taking a catching strays in our podcast reviews. Yeah.

This is awesome. Anybody else? Is anybody else like... Some people misspelled my name. This episode... Must be somebody else then. Made me wish... This episode with John made me wish we could have a podcast with John, Steven with a V, and Federico instead. Mike complains all the time. Oh, no.

Oh, well, you know, what are you going to say? You know, actually saying about this, I'll say I was, uh, because you put this in, I went and looked at the reviews for connected. I looked at reviews for upgrade too, to see if there's a correlation, which there was in time, but there was this, there was one where it's like, um, something about like, I really enjoy upgrade to the, to the never have John Syracuse or on the show. Wow.

I was just like, why? What happened? What happened to you? What did he do to you? Yeah. I just can't do it anymore. This one's four years old. I'm going pretty far back now. I've listened to these three long before Relay during the 5x5 days, and I looked forward to it every week. However, they become so pretentious and consumed in their own bubble and forget that regular Apple fans do not care about their, quote, workflows. Basically, nonstop ramblings of auditory...

Conspicuous consumption. Mike has gone full vocal fry and can barely be tolerated. Stephen doesn't talk enough. And Federico just complains. Can I... That scene, I know why you've read that one. I didn't even see that part until I opened it up. The show would be so much better if Stephen said more. Did you write that? No. Nope. That's my vocal fry for you. So what you're saying is...

Here's what I want. If you're going to review the show, review it positively. If you want to review it negatively, please just include somebody else in it as well. That's all I ask for. So if you're listening to this and you're like, I want to give them a bad review, pick another podcaster, just put them in there. Because I like that. I like people getting... Casey called a stray. Oh, good. Please. But it's in a five-star review.

I don't care. From 10 years ago. Mike Hurley and the great Casey List host a podcast covering Apple and tech-related news and opinion. A nice, friendly, non-jerkish duo engaging in an intelligent discussion. None of the smugness found in some other podcasts, just two real nice gentlemen talking about what they find interesting in the tech industry. This is Unconnected? Yeah, but that also doesn't describe Analog. Like...

No, well, it might have at the time. I mean, analog has changed a lot. That's true. Maybe that was in the beginning. It was much more like tech focused than it ended up becoming like life focused. That isn't catching a stray. This is getting a compliment. Here's one from somebody who I'm pretty sure is in our Discord. This username seems very familiar to me.

Real quick, the idea of the reviews saying we're pretty self-absorbed, the fact that we've been reading podcast reviews for 10 minutes, but anyway, carry on. Do we really need yet another podcast of people talking about Apple products? Do we? I don't know.

I'm pretty sure this person is in the Discord. Well, then why don't you find out what shows they support? Because maybe they changed their mind, you know? Let's see. Let's see if I can do that. You ain't got to give me any information about them, obviously, except the shows that they're supporting. I would like to know. And then that person can really think about themselves, I guess. This person knows who they are. Let's see. Viewful profile. I'm trying to remember how I get back to the memberful thing. I can never remember.

Anyways, drop us a note in Apple Podcasts. It'd be great. You didn't find out? I'm still looking. I was trying to vamp. Oh, okay. Oh, okay. It sounded like you were moving on. I mean, not really. Let's see. Now I've got to know if they support Connected. Because that would be incredible. Because maybe they just changed their mind. I mean, we're changing hearts and minds. That's really what we do. Well, you're really struggling in the memberful backend. I really am. Okay, here we go. Let's see.

This particular person supports Connected and Upgrade. So the answer is yes. Nope, nope. The Connected is set to auto-expire in July. Oh, they changed their mind. But are they sticking with Upgrade? Seems like it. I like that they chose, that the answer was no. They didn't need more than one tech podcast because they already had the best one, I guess, is what they're saying. So thank you to that person.

Kate says the first time Casey was on Connected was in 2017, which is three years after that review was written. So I don't know what's going on there. That person just loves Analog and hates Connected. I guess so. There's the situation. I guess so. This episode of Connected is brought to you by NetSuite.

Say that you go out and ask nine different experts about the future of business. You're going to get at least 10 different answers. Some say rates will rise or fall. Others might say inflation is up or down. It's an unsure time out there. So the only way business owners can have surety is if someone invents a crystal ball.

I don't know if that's going to happen anytime soon. So until then, over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one fluid platform.

With one unified business management suite, there's one source of truth, giving you the visibility and control you need to make quick decisions. With real-time insights and forecasting, you're peering into the future with actionable data. And when you're closing your books in days and not weeks, you're spending less time looking backward and more time on what's next.

I'm a business owner. I know the importance of having a single source of truth. When data is scattered across a bunch of different systems, it really slows down your decision making. So whether your company is earning millions of dollars or even hundreds of millions, NetSuite helps you respond to immediate challenges and seize your biggest opportunities. And speaking of opportunity, download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at netsuite.com slash connected.

The guide is free to you at NetSuite, N-E-T-S-U-I-T-E, netsuite.com slash connected. Our thanks to NetSuite for their support of the show and all of Relay.

So a couple of hours after last week's episode, the app store fell apart. It was Wednesday night. Okay, I'm going to tell a story here. It was Wednesday night, and I was at like a kid's choir thing for one of my kids. And I got a text message from somebody. They'd be like, well, the app store is over. I was like, what? And then after the choir thing, I went home and blogged until the wee hours of the night.

Yep, this was one of those scenarios where I picked up my iPhone and there was like 29 unread iMessages. Yeah. And that's when I know something's going on in the group thread. The group thread's popping off. And yeah, multiple group threads are popping off actually over this news. I don't think we need to go over it. There's like... People know. Surely you know and or have heard other podcasts. There will be links in the show notes. I actually really, really recommend listening to App Stories. They're great.

so basically I listened to app stories plus before app stories came out and I text John Federico and was like, you should release this to everybody because John puts his lawyer hat on and explains a lot of the, like, this is how a trial works kind of thing, which I found to be enlightening. And I'm really pleased that they, they thought it was a good idea and they did. So everybody can hear it. Um,

And I'm happy with the episode of Upgrade that me and Jason did. We've got a lot of good feedback, including from Stephen and Elias. Thank you. But yeah, so the monopoly is potentially over in America, at least for now. Anybody can...

you know, you can put in your app and say like, oh, it's, you can go and pay us on the web and you can have a button and people can press it. So the steering, the steering is done. I don't think you have had a podcast opportunity to talk about this. I can't imagine you and David are talking about this, maybe in more power users or something, but. It's on more power users this coming Sunday. So it's like a week and a half late. And I did what app stories did. It was like, David, explain the law. Like, you know. Oh, I can't wait to hear that then. So that,

That would be good. So yeah, I've not, I mean, I've written about it, but I've not talked about it. Yeah, I mean, it's, I think we all knew a year and a half ago when the first injection came down and Apple did the scare screens and the 27% that, I mean, we said it, everyone said it, like this is malicious compliance, right? They are following, well, turns out they actually weren't following, but they were trying to draw the closest line they could to what they wanted to do

And what the judge had told them to do. And this comes back and says, no, you actually did not do what we told you to do. And the thing that keeps rattling around in my head is there were a thousand opportunities for Apple, not just in the last year and a half, but the last 15 years of the App Store to make decisions that would have

Left them in control of their own app store. And now they're not in the US. And I guarantee you, like, I bet you all the money in my bank account, it is a, there's going to be a line down the street and around the block of other countries and governments saying, hey, that's what you're going to do here too.

You got the smoking gun, right? It's all public now. It's public now. I mean, I don't know how this kind of thing works, but... The cat's out of the bag. Yes. If you do the same discovery, you can get the same information. And so you can look at making a similar judgment, I'm sure. Like, the EU must be just rubbing their hands together, right?

They now know everything that they need exists. Yeah. And the thing is, it could have existed the whole time. Again, Apple could have done this. I went back and kind of spent some time reading about like the original app store and I skimmed the announcement video, which is like on town hall. You remember back in the day, Apple used to do like iOS, like roadmap keynotes in the spring. Yeah. And then, you know, WBC kind of consumed it all.

But they talk about the app store. It's like 30% and our goal is not to make money on it. And maybe that was true in the beginning, but that hasn't been true for well over a decade. It fell apart when in-app purchase became a thing. Yes. I think. I think that's absolutely when it fell apart. Because I think they probably weren't making a lot of money on the app store when it was just you paid up front and...

got an app. I'm sure they were covering their costs and maybe a little bit more, but not to any kind of wild degree. In-app purchase was originally... It was just...

For paid apps, right? It was just for paid apps. Yeah. And it was additional content, basically, is how Apple pitched it. I think very quickly people were using it for premium feature unlock like it is now. Yes. And you could have other levels of a game and that kind of stuff was what they were thinking about. So you could have multiple in-app purchases. A game's a perfect example and something that they talked about in those keynotes.

Like, hey, you know, levels one through five are with the paid app. And then you can pay for levels six, seven and eight. And you're done with those. And there's new levels in the future. You can buy those before subscriptions. Right. Before. Remember the term freemium? Remember that free apps with paid in-app purchases? That's the model now. Well, now it's free apps with subscriptions. And so much of the world changed.

Through the growth of the iPhone and the iPad and the app store changing and the business models changing, but the core of it, Apple never changed because they saw that it was a money printing machine and that has finally caught up with them. And so that's kind of like thought one, like there were lots of off ramps here and Apple never took a single one of them.

In fact, they doubled down with like the ridiculous 27 percent cut. They're like, oh, it's scientifically proven. It's like, no, it's not. And the judge saw right through it. Rightfully so. And so all of that's just just pretty terrible. And the other thing that I keep hearing people say, and I don't actually fully agree with it, is like Phil Schiller comes off as the winner. He comes off looking better than anyone else in these documents.

But he's been in charge of the App Store for a long time. He's been at Apple for a long time. Like, if he... You know, his... He was brave, I guess, in saying, hey, we need to follow this injunction. And Tim Cook foolishly followed the advice of his now ex-CFO instead. But Schiller carries guilt here, too. And I just...

I feel like I like Schiller. Like I've met him several times and we had a funny exchange on Twitter years ago that I have screenshots of and day one, but it's, uh, they all had opportunities and none of them took them. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I think I would like to think that, you know, what Fushilla was seeing was like he had a mirror held up to their practices and realized they were wrong, or it was just that he knew they were going to lose, right? Yeah. And it kind of doesn't really matter to me either way. I agree. I also wish that they would have listened. I mean, something that I don't know if any of us really anticipated this, right? Like as you were saying about like,

The judgment came down and they did the things that they were doing about the single link, single text link. I never really foresaw that the court would say that this wasn't going to work. In my mind, it was like they were given the ruling and this is what Apple went and did. It never really occurred to me that this could come back to the court again.

I didn't even recall or even know that there were additional hearings going on. Maybe I just got lost in all the many hearings that there are these days, which, by the way, I do love. I love that we're getting so much

coming out of these tech companies. It's fantastic. We have more of it in a little bit before the end of the show. I think it's great that we're getting all this stuff. I am a little bit surprised. Maybe the court mandated this, but we had a whole discussion on this show about how Apple does not take minutes and no one's taking notes in their meetings.

And a lot of these conversations seem to be coming from minutes of meetings. Maybe there's something different about this stuff. But I was really struck by the fact that there is so much written down.

And a lot of it came from Slack messages too. That's the real killer. If you're going to do crimes, don't do them in Slack. That's the real lesson. Why do you think I took it off my phone? You know? Yeah, this is it. But like, this is the thing that, I mean, I was really talking about this a lot on Upgrade of like, the thing that I think is the big problem here is the fact that a lot of this is in Slack because it's the company culture has trickled down to designers and developers that aren't executives. And they're like,

acting on the way that they think their executives want things done, which is like to be in opposition of developers and customers to make more money, which I just think that is how corporations work. It's not how we believe Apple should work. It's not how Apple position themselves, which I think is the bigger point. And so, or at least the way they have positioned themselves in the past. So like it's, it's,

I think that is the bigger problem that Apple's got to condemn with here is how do they change their corporate culture? I don't know if they even, I don't think they want to. I mean, they obviously don't want to because they're not taking this lying down. They're appealing it, which is also hilarious, right? Where like one of your executives told you not to do it. We've all seen that. You've now suffered the consequences and you're like, we're going to appeal this.

I'm also like the appeal thing is interesting to me because it's like, is it too late now? Like you can make the appeal, but like is the cow the bag like Spotify and Amazon?

You know, they're doing stuff now. Is it too late? Like, I guess you could just change the rules again, but then what, are you going to kick Spotify out the store if they don't change the button back? Like, what are you going to do now? Marco said something really smart on this week's ATP. It's like, if you are a developer, like, rushing into this could prove challenging in the future. Like, Amazon and Spotify, they'll be okay, right? They'll go back or they'll fight it.

But if you're an indie developer and you switch up your app to support this and it does get rolled back, like then what? Do you think Apple is going to have like a graceful tool for those subscriptions and purchases to like.

be blessed back in the app store system like well i don't think you need to worry about it though right like if you have an account-based system it's like how you could have an account-based system now like the way that you sign up for an app doesn't always have to be in ios right but like you would have to remove that functionality and go back to apple system potentially but it's not like you'd lose your customers you'd have to make sure whatever you set up can can manage that um yes

but i wouldn't i mean if i if i was doing it oh like i'll speak on your behalf okay like we just shouldn't do this no until i mean maybe you guys would want to consider it after the appeal process is done you know like but i mean like a a company of your size which admittedly is a large one but it's only a few of you is very different to spotify or youtube where there's like you know

They've got all these developers. I mean, Spotify have clearly got so many resources. They already had this ready to go. Oh, yeah. They also have a version. Yes, they have a version of the app for if it gets appealed as well. Right. Yeah. They just roll it back again. But yeah, like if you're if you're trying to stay lean as an organization, you shouldn't do this until you know it's going to stick.

Unless you're willing to go through the hassle of changing it all back again. And maybe that's worth it for you for the 30% extra money that you'd get over the probably year that this will take. I mean, I don't know how long an appeals process takes, but it doesn't feel like these things happen particularly fast.

No, I don't think it'll be fast. Yeah. I mean, it's an interesting question. Like I don't, we're not pursuing that at the moment, but who knows what the future may bring, you know, underscore had this really great thing on Macedon the other day of like, he's paid Apple an eye watering amount of money over the years. Like, yeah, it is. I mean, it's, it's nuts and it's allowed app independent app developers like David to be independent app developers, right? Like the app store has been a huge boon to millions of people and,

But that doesn't mean that the deal that they set up 15 years ago is still a good deal today. And Apple just has been unwilling to change or adjust it. They've tweaked it around the edges, right? They've done the small business program where if you're under a million dollars a year, it's 15% instead of 30. But the second you cross over the million, it's like,

Game over. You're not in that program anymore and you've got to wait like a year to get back in. And where I've made the argument many times that I actually think that once you go over that million, it should go down, not up. Yeah. Yeah.

You can you'll get 15 percent cut over over 30 after a subscription is a year old like they have made tweaks, but the general deal is still the same. And and in addition to the money, it also caps what people are willing to do and try. Right. Right.

And it makes the user experience worse, right? In the previous system, so one week ago, the system of if I want to sign up for Spotify, I download the iOS app and then I have to like figure out what to do. Or I encounter a screen that is like super scary looking. The user experience

While it will be fractured now because some apps will support what Apple does. Some apps will have to go out to a website like people can manage that. Like people do all sorts of things online shopping and that's fine. It will be.

a little messier, but you can't tell me it doesn't make the platform better. Like, I just, I just don't believe that. And also people are paying more money for things, right? Like I pay more money for YouTube premium because I do it through the app store. Yeah. If you buy, so I actually recently encountered this. Um, as I had some, well, I had some truck parts for sale on Facebook marketplace and, um,

had never done the thing where like you can like boost or like buy an ad for your marketplace thing I was like I wonder what that's like and I went through it and right there they literally call it like an Apple tax of 30% there's a little button and it explains Apple takes 30% of in-app purchases and if you you know and unsaid is if you do it on the web it's cheaper but they couldn't say that before now they'll be able to or at least link to it so I mean I have this with Instagram right like I do boosting on Instagram and

And Instagram is very aggressive. They do the Apple tax thing. If you've ever boosted on Instagram, they email you and they're like, Apple's taking money from you, basically. Like, is this the email? And they're like, you should boost on the web. Meta hates Apple so much. It's incredible. Of course they do. Did you see that quote? I actually thought it was quite funny. I like Sundar. Yeah.

No, where he's like, I'll leave Tim alone. He's had a bad week. Oh, yeah. That's actually pretty funny. There was another one of like, I like Sundar. It was the same. They were two halves of the same quote. Okay, okay. So he's like, Tim's had a bad week, but I like Sundar. Yeah, so good.

Like, yeah, I mean, because I, you know, I don't... I am of the feeling that I don't think that Apple deserves any of that money. Like, from YouTube, I don't think they deserve any of that money from Facebook. Like, they're not involved. Like...

Apple is only involved in the way in which they own the platform. And I don't think because you own the iPhone that you get to take... Apple is absolutely not involved in your ability to boost your truck parts on Facebook Marketplace. Apple's providing zero for that. Yeah. Right?

the forcing of using their system. It's like you're being charged to use a system you don't want to use. Patreon is an even better example, right? And we spoke about it on this show. We were so mad about it. And I'm so happy that now Patreon uses in the U.S.,

they're able to now be in the app and you can press a button. It takes you out to a web and you sign up and Apple's no longer taking 30% away from individual creators because they're forced to, you know, because if you want to be in the app, which you definitely do because it's how a lot of people use it, Patreon, all that nonsense, right? Like I was, I don't know if you saw it, but I was starting to see more and more over time of like creators being like, do not sign up in the app store. Like don't do this.

which is just like such bad marketing. I saw it from a creator who is not a tech creator. Like they're a comedian kind of thing. And like they have a Patreon and they talk about the end of each video. And she was like, hey, you know, do it at this link on the web. And it's, you know, better for everybody. I was like, okay, we've crossed like the Rubicon here. Like regular people now know this is a thing, right? I mean, this person makes a large part of their living on Patreon, but...

Their audience is just like regular people. It's not a tech audience. And that's really the biggest thing here besides like Apple had off ramps.

What they tried to do was awful. They lied in court about it. Slack messages are disgusting. It's like the reputational damage this company has inflicted on itself is just unbelievable to me. And refuses to stop, right? Yeah. They should take this one and just work it out, right? Yeah. Actually compete. Compete. Don't keep going to the courts. Compete. We've been asking you to compete.

for like five, ten years at this point. Make this actually a competitive offering. Don't legislate me into paying your tax. Create a system where I have choice as a developer, but I want to use yours. That's what they should be doing. It's 2025 and you can finally press a button in the Kindle app to get a book. Yeah, which is, as Gruber pointed out, that is like the quintessential example of this.

Right. It's like no one understood who didn't listen to tech podcasts. Why can't I buy a Kindle book in the Kindle app on my iPhone? And then you have to explain, well, Apple has these rules and like, and there's just, they've been indefensible for a long time. And yes, I want Apple to compete. Like I had this thought yesterday and like, you know, sometimes the last several years, Apple's done like a pre WWDC thing to like make developers happy going into WWDC. Yeah.

It's like, how great would it be if they say, hey, you know what? The 30% is gone. We're going to charge you credit card processing plus 3% or something. And you get to use our infrastructure as you always have. Like, boy, that would change the tune for a lot of people. But I don't think they're going to do it. I think they're so stuck on this that they are going to lose a lot of business.

to outside processing and they're going to continue to do harm to their brand. And the brand is Apple's most important asset, right? The way people feel and think about Apple is the most important thing that company has. And to just shoot yourself in the foot over and over, over the 30%, it makes no sense to me. You know, as you were saying that, I'm not sure that's the case anymore, man. I think it was.

I think now just the iPhone's really good. Yeah. I think that the majority of customers, like Apple's customers now, don't think of them as good. Like in the way that they used to. Like we used to think of that, right? And like it's not that they think of them as bad, although maybe some people do, but I just don't think a lot of people really think about them anymore. I think they just like the iPhone. Yeah, that's fair. I think that's fair. But that's also potentially something that is...

Under attack, right? Which we'll get to in a minute. I don't necessarily want to move away from this topic. But yeah, I just, my hope would be that you're right. That like, they appeal this in court because they don't want to have their hands tied on what they can and can't do, but also use this as an opportunity to be like, hey, we're going to make some big changes now. Mm-hmm.

But man, if we'd gotten a dollar for every time we'd said that, you know? Like every WWE seat that comes around, you're like, is this the year? Is this the year? Like surely this is the one where they're going to do this. But I just... Now that it's happened, like it's actually happened, like the first Hammer was... I feel like this is more devastating than the DMA. I think so too. Like it absolutely is more devastating than the DMA because...

Well, I mean, I don't know about the DME's fines. If you take the fines out of the equation, just like structurally, because Apple was able to kind of...

finagle its way into a system that they, you know, and you know what? It's actually similar. Now there's not no more. I'm saying it of like, Oh, we just haven't gotten to that end state with the DMA yet. Like it's a little bit delayed because the European commission has been like, no, this thing you've done, we're not happy with it. We're kind of, we've been at that point already with, um, with judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers. And then we got to the resolution phase, which is now where it's like, Hey, no, we're shutting this down. Um,

maybe we're still going to get there with the European Commission. I don't know. But this still is much more harmful than the DMA stuff has been because the DMA stuff still requires users to go and make choices, right? You have to go and get an alternative app store. You have to care enough to go and do that. I don't know how much of a take-up there is going to be there where this is like,

every major company that's on the App Store is just going to stop using the 30% if they ever were. They're just going to stop. And then that is like, that's real bad. It's worse than the DMA effect so far. I don't know what that effect could end up being in the future. But the US market is bigger anyway, even if they did the same thing. Anything happening in America to Apple is worse than if it happened anywhere else in the world. Mm-hmm.

Do you think this kind of stuff affects the DOJ at all? I don't know. I think it's hard to nail down what the DOJ is going to do. I mean, you see them, they're getting ready to dismantle something out of Google for sure, and probably meta. I think it's harder to get a read on what the DOJ thinks about Apple currently. You know, both political parties in the US, one thing they agree on is big tech companies are mostly bad. And so that's been...

That's been interesting, but yeah, I don't know. You know, I think the, the finance VP or whoever who's got, we've got referred to the attorney general for lying under oath. Like, I think he's fine. I mean, I'd be sweating bullets and hiring a lawyer, but you know, I think, I don't know if they would pursue that necessarily. So I don't know, man, I don't know. I think that however, it ends up for meta and Google and with the DOJ and, you know, if,

whoever else is involved in those cases, that I think is a bigger view into what might happen with Apple than this. I don't think it's looking good for either of those companies in all honesty. No, it's not. I think Google in particular is getting ready to get gutted. I think that there was an expectation that the CEOs had and that everybody else had was that if they played ball and gave money to the administration, they would be given a pass. And I don't think that is what is happening at all. No.

It's a shame when your corruption doesn't work, you know? It's a real bummer. It's real bad to do the corruption and then get nothing back, you know? Yeah, that's where you went wrong. That's where you went wrong. You paid the bribe money and then just, like, got nothing. It's just disheartening, you know, to see how they've handled this. It's a shame when you see the things you knew were happening. You just actually see that they were happening. Yeah.

This episode of Connected is brought to you by ZocDoc. When was the last time you needed to go to the doctor but you pushed it off? Too busy, or it'll get better on its own, or maybe you just didn't know what doctor to go see. We've all been there. Because booking doctor appointments can feel daunting. But thanks to ZocDoc, there's no reason to delay. They make it so easy to find and book a doctor who's right for you.

ZocDoc is a free app and website where you can search and compare high-quality in-network doctors and click instantly to book an appointment. We're talking about booking in-network appointments with more than 100,000 doctors across every specialty. Mental health, dental health, primary care, urgent care, and more.

You can filter for doctors who take your insurance coverage, are located nearby, and are a good fit for any medical need you may have, and that are highly rated by verified patients that are actual other humans. And once you find the right doctor, you can see their appointment openings, choose a time slot that works for you, and click to instantly book a visit.

Appointments made through ZocDoc happen fast, typically within just 24 to 72 hours of booking, but you can often even score same-day appointments. I love that insurance filtering feature of ZocDoc. As someone who has changed insurance coverage several times over the years, it can be kind of difficult to know if you've got to change doctor's offices or who's going to take the new coverage. At ZocDoc, you can just set those filters and see who is available to you.

So stop putting off those doctor's appointments and go to ZocDoc.com slash connected to find and instantly book a top-rated doctor today. That's ZocDoc, Z-O-C-D-O-C, ZocDoc.com slash connected. Our thanks to ZocDoc for their support of the show and all of Relay. Thank you.

Eddie Q has been on a tear with some hot takes. He's just saying some stuff today. He sure is. So this is from our friend Ryan over at 9to5Mac. This is coming from, actually from the Google case, because in that case is wrapped up Apple services money. We're gonna talk about that in a second.

So Eddie Q said, you may not even need an iPhone 10 years from now as crazy as it sounds. The only way you truly have true competition is when you have technology shifts. Technology shifts create these opportunities. AI is a new technology shift and it's creating new opportunities for new entrants. Sounds like a pretty dangerous thing to say, I think. Yeah.

Several things in here. Yeah, not great. Not great, Eddie. I wouldn't have said that. The iPhone company is like, oh, maybe in 10 years time, we won't even be here. What is he saying? Is that a good thing to say? 60% of your business is the iPhone and you're saying that within the next 10 years, you might not need one?

10 years is not very far away. It's really not that far away. Because what that means is, between now and 10 years from now, if Q is correct, the iPhone is going to start declining. Is that the thing to say? What is it being replaced by? Does Apple have that product? I think that the track record of the last 12 months would suggest that if an AI technology is going to come along, it may be an Apple. Who's got it? New entrants. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Also, you can have true competition without technology shifts. See the previous 20 minutes of this podcast. Yeah, not sure that you can. No.

And, yeah, what a wild thing to say. And I mean, we started this episode talking about the Motorola Rocker. And the thing that people wanted was their phone and iPod in one thing. The iPhone solved that problem and it ate the iPod alive, right? And Apple cannibalized their own product there. Apple hasn't really done that since, right? There was a time where maybe the iPad was going to do it to the Mac, but that's not happening. And

what does Apple have after the iPhone that is going to be powered by a technology shift marked by AI that replaces the iPhone? Like, I don't think anyone has that currently. And if they do, I don't think it's going to be Apple. Nobody has it. And I think it is a short-sighted view that people have. Well, hang on. HP has it. HP has the remnants of the AI pen.

yes, yeah, you're right, you're right. HP has Humane, so that's great for them. But like, I think it is short-sighted when people say, and like, Marcus does this all the time, and I don't think that it is an accurate thing to say, don't bet against a smartphone. That's true for right now. I think that it is, I think it is becoming increasingly clear that there is a possibility that we could be on the verge of some kind of technological shift. And I think to assume that the smartphone is always going to be king is not the right thing to do. Because,

There was stuff before the smartphone. There will be other things. We can't always assume that smartphones are going to be the dominant technology that people want. I don't know what they are. I don't know what they are. Yeah. But I just think that if you're all in on smartphone and you're like, we will do nothing but smartphone, I'm just not sure that that is the right move. Because I think over time, people like their phones less. Yeah.

but we all have them because we have to have them. Right. But who's to say that there is, who's to say that something else couldn't come along that would give you what you need? Like, I don't know what that is. The personal computer ran the world, you know, for years and years and years. And, uh,

Then the iPhone or smartphone came along, but the personal computer is still important, but it's not the primary thing anymore. Right. Lots of people have smartphones that have never and will never have a personal computer. And it's foolish to think that that won't happen again because it is how technology moves. Right. The personal computer replaced things before it that replaced things before it. And so. And as ADQ himself said, you might not even need an iPhone in 10 years.

Eddie said it. Eddie, what are you doing, man? What are you doing, Eddie? I love... Eddie Q is just... What's he doing up there? I can't believe that quote. You may not need an iPhone 10 years from now. You think somewhere in the organization someone just slammed their head against the desk when they read this? It genuinely feels like an episode of Veep to me. Like...

I cannot fathom a world in which that was a thing that everybody agreed he should say when he went up there. Maybe it was, and that's why they sent Eddie, because he's the guy you would believe it if he said it, you know, of all the executives. But genuinely to me, this...

that feels like a huge risk factor. Like if you're doing your SWOT analysis, like Eddie just made threat, you know? Like I really, I find that to be so strange, especially to be like, it's in the same breath to be like, it's creating new opportunities for new entrants, new entrants that will mean that your iPhone isn't needed anymore. It's like, it's just a wild thing to say. And I know you can say, Mike, you're really pressing on this, but like Apple never say anything about,

that they shouldn't say, right? Now,

The problem is you put these people in a courtroom scenario where it's not like this incredibly rehearsed thing and they might just say it. But that's why it's interesting to me. Why is Eddie even thinking about this? Are people talking about this? Is Tim Cook saying this? And Eddie's just said it because Tim says it as well. Do they all talk about this? I find it fascinating. But that's not all. That's not all. Quote from The Verge. I think this is from The Verge. It's from The Verge on Net5. We've got two links in here.

Apple is going to add AI search providers to the Safari browser on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Bloomberg reports, it's from Bloomberg quoted from somebody else, Bloomberg reports Apple SVP Eddie Q made the disclosure in court testimony today stating, quote, we will add them to the list. They probably won't be the default in reference to providers like perplexity and anthropic. So this makes a lot of sense, right? That Apple would be considering adding

uh, LLM search engines to the search engine list. Uh, it's going to be really interesting to me to see if AI companies build specific UI for this use case, like the use case of you type into the Safari search bar and a search begins because that system is slower than Google right now. Right. And I wonder like, are they going to create, will they create some kind of UI that is good for it? Um, I wonder if like,

on mass if these tools are tailored to delivering web searches in the way that people expect. It's a very different experience. I think in a lot of places it is a much better experience than just a straight Google search now. And I do wonder in this world, like,

If Apple will convince people or will suggest that people should switch, will they give a choice? Or will perplexity, anthropic, open AI, are they going to try and convince people? I think open AI could do a pretty good shot at it, right? Like if they could put it in the chat GPT app. Hey, by the way, do you want to use this in Safari? It would be very interesting to see how that goes. I'm intrigued to see them doing this. But there was another thing that Qt...

it Q said Q also revealed that the number now this one obviously he was allowed to say I'm gonna guess that Eddie was allowed to say this this is what they wanted him to say the rest of it was just you know off we're not sure off the cuff yeah he was given one thing and it's like oh by the way the iPhone's dead yeah got some other things hey I'm here you know I'm selling all my stock and I'm going to Cuba like I'm done

Q also revealed that the number of searches through Safari fell for the first time ever in April, suggesting users are looking to AI sources as alternative ways to find information. Yeah, this is super interesting to me. Like, are people using other search engines now?

I think he's talking specifically about Google searches, but it's kind of unclear in what the reporting is. I mean, it's Google searches. It's Google searches. Yeah, so people are using Kagi or DuckDuckGo or whatever, or people using ChatGPT for search and not even searching in Safari anymore, like going to the ChatGPT app, to your point earlier. They're going to potentially build those things in. And I do think, to answer your question, that they will build things.

some sort of user interface that works better in those sorts of use cases. It's a bit lighter. I mean, you can see, by the way, that ChatGPT have already started opening. Did you see their shopping thing? Mm-mm.

So if you're doing a query that is kind of focused around products, they have kind of like a new UI that you get, which shows more imagery of products and stuff like that. Like it's a bit more tailored around you want to shop and it's using what it knows about you to make recommendations that the system thinks would be specifically tailored to you as an individual and your preferences. So like you can see that there...

They might not even need to quote-unquote build the search engine that people thought they're going to build if Apple just...

gives them a hook into Safari. It's like, oh, we just created like a slimmed down version of the ChatGPT interface, which is like specifically tailored to searches. And it will just, we have like a UI there rather than being like, oh, you know, we're building like a quote unquote search engine. So if you go to ChatGPT, you just type it into Safari. Yeah. Oh yeah. I just got it. I just, I was like, so let me show my options for Tacoma headlights. And it's like, it looks like Google shopping. It's just like a bunch of cards and I can scroll through them and there's some information below them with links.

These are some pretty good suggestions, actually. It does have good suggestions. This is what turned me around on using ChatGPT for searching, was when I was trying to find baby products. Because Google was terrible at this. Because there's so much sponsored stuff, and it's also like...

there's like a thousand articles that i've got to try and go through if i don't want to go through google shopping because i don't trust that either because it's like people just it's just pay pay to win yeah and so i was using chat gpt more and like again it was like i could refine what i was looking for based on the answers that it was giving me and it was reading the 1000 top 20 lists that i didn't have the time to read and that was when i really started using it more for searches and like yeah it's very good yeah

I went to shopping GPT, which is like a thing they've set up. But darling, let's get into some glamorous into the glamorous world of MacBook, shall we? Apple's lineup is sleek, powerful and oh so stylish. But choosing the right one depends on your taste and your needs. That's all italicized. So I've whipped up a fabulous comparison table of the current MacBook lineup and

to help you slay your tech decisions like a pro. Why is it talking like this? I don't know. I think you found something weird. There's a shopping GPT. I just asked regular chat GPT for Tacoma Headlight suggestions, and it was like, try shopping GPT, and it sent me to this, and it's like a custom GPT that's zesty. Got a personality. A little zest, darling. Interesting. Darling. Darling.

Get out the charge gun. Yeah. Whatever's going on here. I think there's two like high level things. One, uh, we've talked, people have talked for a while that Google is potentially in trouble as AI search gets better. This is a huge point towards that debate. I think like if people are using AI to search instead of Google and Safari, that's, that's not good for Google. Um,

But also wrapped up in this is the $20 billion annually that Apple has from Google to be the default. Yeah. And so I went to sixcolors.com, this website written by Jeopardy player Dan Morin and some other people.

And so in 2024, services were 93.5 billion. That means Apple made up or Google, excuse me, Google made up roughly 21% of the services number last year. So if the court says you can't pay that anymore, which I don't know if that would happen or not, or they may have changed the deal. But right now, if it went away, it'd be like losing almost an entire quarter's worth of services revenue over the course of a year.

I mean, it's wild. That number is way higher. That was 20 billion was in 2022. That's grown. Yeah. Okay. So yeah. That's definitely grown. So like, you know, it's probably one of the reasons that number keeps going up, right? It's like one of the reasons that that keeps going up on that chart from Dan Morin and co. It keeps going up. Is that like, because it's a, it's a revenue share, right? Yes. But I guess here's the thing.

Is it going to have gone down if searches went down in April? I don't know. They're probably going to. I mean, this is I don't know what's going to happen to that money. Right. Like maybe Google won't stop paying them, but somebody else will. No one's going to pay them that much money, but maybe they can get it up in pieces from other people. You know, like OpenAI pays some, Anthropic pays some, DuckDuckGo pays some. You know, I don't know.

Wild times. But we don't have to worry about it anyway because in 10 years the iPhone won't exist. Yeah, we'll be searching on our Steve Jobs edition AR glasses. Quickly, before we leave, I wanted to talk about the rumor of an iPhone. A split iPhone release schedule?

So lots of reporting over the last couple of days, including from the information that for 2026, Apple could be looking at some iPhones coming out in the fall and then other phones coming in the spring. So you could see a world where the iPhone pro the air and maybe the foldable are all in the fall of 26 and the regular phones and the e-phone are in 2027, which I think is a great idea. Like,

I think it's easier for Apple. It gives, I mean, I think a lot of people who buy a regular phone, like definitely a lot of people wait because they know the phone's in the fall. But people will learn that, oh, the regular phone comes out in the spring. And a lot of people just don't care. They buy a phone when they need it. I don't really see much downside to this, honestly, other than what kind of impact it could have on Apple's holiday quarter. That'd be interesting to see.

I think the fact that they'll introduce more expensive iPhones will cover that up nicely. Yeah, the foldable is going to be pricey. It'll be at two grand. More, probably more. $2,500, something like that. Like, it's going to be expensive. They're going to make you pay for that. Like, if they think you're not going to need an iPad anymore, they're going to make you pay for an iPad. You're going to be paying for both. But I'm fine with that. I do a whole episode of MPU where I'm like, I don't really use the iPad very much, and I buy a foldable iPhone that costs just as much.

Yeah, but I'm halfway through the episode, so I know the things that you're doing on an iPad, you're doing on a foldable phone. You watch a video on it, you read books on it. It will be really nice. I'm very excited about the potential for this product. Me too. But I am very aware of the fact that I'm going to pay for it. I always think back to Federico saying...

I pay $3,500 on a Vision Pro. I'll pay $3,500 for this instead. Like, charge me more than the iPhone and iPad together and I'll pay it. Because, you know, the possibilities for that product could be really, really, really good. Like, really, really, really good. If the hardware is there. But I also, yeah, the split iPhone thing I think makes sense. Like, logistically it makes sense. Marketing-wise it makes sense. Yeah.

they clearly the pro phones do so well for them they may as well double down on that and like continue obviously continue having a wider lineup um and but this will allow them to continue expanding that lineup uh by having it split in in two places and they can definitely handle revising the products multiple times like throughout the course of the year you know they're a big company

Well, it's going to be fun. I feel like a lot of things are like right in the process of changing right now in this industry. And that's that's fun. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, not if you're Tim Cook, but whatever. Well, things are changing. It's just whether he wants them to or not. Yeah. Well, I think that does it. We we've made it to the

The end. We have links to all the stuff we spoke about in the show notes. They're in your podcast player and they're on the web at relay.fm slash connected slash 551. There's a link to send us feedback or follow up. So drop us a note. You can make it anonymous if you want to. There's a little checkbox there.

And you can join and get connected pro, which is a longer ad free version of the show that we do each and every week. So no ads, extra content at the beginning and the end. This week we talked about how the show, the outline got blown up like 20 minutes before we started recording. And then we got distracted about ceramic Apple watches. So yeah, pretty typical stuff.

If you want to find more of us, Federico is the editor-in-chief of MacStories.net. Mike hosts many shows here on Relay and check out his work at Cortex Brand. Tell us about the Pocket Notebooks.

Yeah, we released some Pocket Notebooks called the Sidekick Pocket. There's a .grid, a to-do version, and a lined version. I think people listening to the show will appreciate what I did with the lined version. Go look at the website and you'll see it. I hope that you'll get the reference. We're really pleased with them. You get two in a pack, 60 pages in each version.

It's really well made, 100% recycled paper, very, very high quality materials. I think you'll dig them. Go check them out at cortexbrand.com. I've got some dot grid they shipped yesterday. I'm very excited. Oh, I can't wait to see what you think about it. Yeah, I'm pumped. You can find my writing at 512pixels.net. There's a lot of like AI angst on 512 right now, but look, they're polluting my city. What am I going to do? And I host Mac Power Users here on Relay each and every Sunday.

Next this week's about Alfred. It's pretty good. I'd like to thank our sponsors this week for their support of the show, Squarespace, NetSuite, and ZocDoc. And until next time, Mike, say goodbye. Bye-bye. Bye, y'all.