553: We Have Jony Ive at Home
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From Relay, this is Connected, episode 553. Today's show is brought to you by Scorespace. I'm your annual chairman, Federico Vitticci, and it's my pleasure to introduce Stephen. Hello, Stephen. Hello. It's me.

I don't have a title. I will never get tired of this. I was concerned that it would get tiresome after a while, but no, no, it never gets old. It's still funny that you don't have a title. I'm sorry. Hey, we're going to play the Rickies in just a couple of weeks. Maybe I can take Keynote Chairman Mike's title away from him. Hello, Keynote Chairman Mike.

Hello. I wonder if it's tiresome for other people. It's not tiresome for us, but I'm expecting it's probably tiresome for some. If you hate it, let us know in the feedback form. Not on the Apple Podcast Reviews. No, not there. We're going to get to that, though. Some people think that the feedback form, I think, is the podcast review form in Apple Podcasts. Okay, that's not great. Not the same thing, y'all. Okay. Follow up.

uh vibe coding which we've been talking about federico explained it to us uh last week cade pronounced as in arcade it's very funny i look forward to the follow-up next week no no we don't know how to pronounce arcade you know arcade cade cade in italian cade means um uh he or she falls cade oh no yeah well a cade and i can't get up

Yeah. That's interesting. What are video game arcades called in Italy? Sala giochi. Sala giochi? Yeah. Giochi is games and sala is just like room. We don't call it the arcade. The room of games. We don't say we go to the arcade.

There used to be many salad jockey when I was little, and now you don't see those anymore. Salad jockey, that sounds fun. It's kind of like chicken jockey, which is a different thing. Oh, that's a very different thing, yeah. What did Cade say, Stephen? Well, after they got off the ground, Cade said, after your conversation about vibe coding, I realized it could solve a really simple problem in my research. I'm an infectious disease scientist at a large U.S. university...

Hopefully Kate still has a job. But the open source microscopy software we use doesn't have a batch save feature, which means it can take hours to individually save images despite the editing only taking minutes. Using GPT-4.0, I was able to get a workable macro made in about 30 minutes. Thank you all.

I would like to speak on behalf of RelayFM, LLC, and Max Stories Incorporated that we take no... We are not in any way responsible for what comes out of this infectious disease research university. This has got nothing to do with us. We didn't tell Cade to do this. You, Cade, decided to vibe code your way into infectious disease analysis. Not us. Not us.

In fact, I think I specifically remember last week saying, if you work in infectious disease research, do not do this. I'm pretty sure I said that. It might have been quiet, but I definitely said it. Yeah, this is how the new pandemic starts. Don't do that. Vibe coding. Vibe coding. Whatever, I'm not taking it any further. I'm very pleased to hear this, actually. I think this is great. Yeah.

Cade solved the problem. I think this is awesome. Dan also wrote in and said, since listening to your episode with no coding experience, I have a small one-person speech therapy practice and have been looking for a simple CRM for ages to manage referrals. All of those out there are too business-focused and don't work for what I need as a healthcare provider. I spent a few hours coding a web app using Gemini Pro 2.5 and ended up with a serviceable CRM that I can build on over time. It is amazing given my zero coding skills.

I've been thinking about this and reading this. This is Mike talking now. This isn't Dan anymore. Hey, Mike. Hello. Is this the best end result for AI? That everybody can make their computers do computer things no matter what their skill level is? It's one of them. This seems to me...

I haven't done this yet, but I'm actively thinking about, like, I'm trying to pay attention to things I might want to do this for, right? So I can have a reason to try this. But I just think that this is the dream, right? You get the computer to do the thing that a computer can do that you can't. And you don't have to spend tens of hours trying

learning JavaScript or whatever, you know? I just think this is cool. And again, it's like, is this the best version of it? Absolutely not, right? Like, this is not the best version of it. But is this working for Cade and Dan? Yes, it is. And so I just think that that's fantastic. It's way better to have a little CRM than to just try and do it in a Google Sheet. And it's better to have a little CRM than programming a microscope, probably.

I don't know. I mean, it depends. Look, the other thing is we could potentially have been the reason that some infectious disease gets solved, if you think about that. Oh, that's true. We could, you know, like maybe K now comes into some big discovery because the microscope is working correctly. We want to be listed on your Nobel Prize. Yeah, if you don't mind. There is something, Mike, I had not thought about your question about vibe coding being the best end result.

I think part because I spend a lot of time with programmers and, you know, there's sort of the weirdness around that. But there is something that your question has changed in my mind a little bit. And it makes me think about sort of the the early days of computers and like people were like figuring out basic and stuff as kids. Like, I think if vibe coding can help teach you something, it's good. Like that has certainly been my experience and.

Using chat GPT-4 to do some WordPress stuff for 512 pixels, like I can see what it's doing and it's helping me like close a gap in my knowledge, but I'm already somewhat knowledgeable about PHP and how WordPress works. So if you're starting from nothing, like I would like to see what that educational angle is like, but it certainly is interesting to consider that this is a positive outcome for most people.

I think you're being slightly optimistic with the idea that it might be teaching people programming. I think I am. I think most people are copying and pasting and then telling it it doesn't work. But I think that's fine for your own personal use cases. I think that that is totally fine. You're just doing the thing. A thing that... Look, let's be honest. I know people are like, oh, but what about the pro... Kate or Dan were not going to employ anyone to do this for them. There is no lost money in this. Right?

What was going to happen was Cade was going to be upset with their microscope and Dan was going to continue writing things into numbers or whatever. But what this has enabled them is to actually have a thing that they need at the budget that they have most likely. And so I just think it's cool that these people have these options available to them where they would otherwise just be kind of

Or like Dan would have ended up buying some very expensive software that they don't need to do a thing that is very simple. And I share this. We've looked at CRM tools in the past and they are just nightmarish because they are all trying to cater for the most

like biggest sales teams and we've always ended up coming back to something like air table or whatever instead because it's just simple compared to like use this sales force thing which wants to take over your entire business you know there's a lot of money in that sort of corporate software and they can't help themselves but try to take over everything

Well, yeah, because the more money there is, the more money they want, right? And so they, like, for example, Salesforce buys Slack so they can also have routine communications. Yeah. And what a good job they're doing. Slack never changes.

What Slack gets is more features I don't want. Like always, constantly. Here's brand new parts of Slack that you don't need. But here you go, we have one. Today it told me I could make a folder. I don't know what for, but it's like, hey, make a folder. I'm like, I don't, why? What is the folder for? Did you make a folder? I didn't make a folder because I don't really know why I would make a folder. Like what is the folder? Here you go, it says...

new and I click it and it's like create a folder. It's like why? What is it doing? But like you wanted to put a little blue dot next to the plus button in all of my windows for me to tell me to quote make a folder but I don't know what the folders are for and so like just leave me alone please. You know? Make a folder. We talked about podcast reviews a few weeks back and

Ask people to go to Apple Podcasts and drop us a review. Some people have done that, which is really nice. And that link will be in the show notes again today if you want to do that. But Robin wrote in, and I mean, I'm glad that this isn't in the podcast directory because it's pretty funny, but also really bad. But I was going to read what Robin wrote. Robin wrote, I asked ChatGPT for a limerick on the podcast today.

So this is what ChatGPT wrote. And Snell, what happened to me? You're gone, baby. Oh.

Why? I don't know. Sorry about that. I mean, look, I'm happy. I get like everything in here. You know, it knows. It also gets cortex. It knows upgrade. It knows cortex. I'm like in this limerick left, right and center. This is Federico Aracia right here. It really is.

This is not right. At this moment is when Federico stop uses ChatGPT forever. The disrespect of it. Hello, Claude. Friendship ended with ChatGPT. We should see if Gemini will do a better job. Yeah, for 250

$49 a quarter. $4 million a month. They will write you a good limerick. We'll get to that later on. A couple of news items. Fortnite is back in the App Store. So basically Apple kind of held Epic's submission. They did not reject it. They did not accept it. This kind of broke Fortnite because of the way in which they submitted the application. Epic wrote

to judge Yvonne Gonzalez-Rogers and was like, we think that they shouldn't do this because we're following all the rules now. And the judge wrote a letter saying, ah, you should just deal with this yourself. And if you can't, there'll be a hearing at the end of May. Someone from Apple who's responsible can come to this hearing. Then about two days, about like a day later,

It was approved. Apple was given zero statements about this. And now Fortnite...

A long national nightmare is over. Fortnite is back and number one in the app store. Yeah. A couple of things here. I cannot believe it's been five years since this started. Yes. Like I keep reading that. I kept thinking that's got to be a typo. And like I go to text whoever wrote the article, like, wait a second. That's not a typo. Yes, it is the top free thing in the US app store as of right now.

They are, as you would imagine, promoting their own system. And they're doing this in a couple of ways. The big way is earning Epic Rewards and V-Bucks. And they're also, which I don't really know what V-Bucks is. And none of my children are home for me to ask them.

Okay, V-Bucks is the currency inside of the app. So you're not earning V-Bucks, you're buying V-Bucks. So you're buying V-Bucks to then use that virtual money to buy things inside of Fortnite. Got it. They are also promoting that across their other applications. So Epic has more than just Fortnite. So they're making a big push, which is not surprising. And honestly, like,

I don't even mind it because you know what? We've never had competition like this in the app store and it's really interesting to see what it could look like. I mind it. I'm annoyed about what they're doing here. Like the whole point about this has been like, oh, it's bad for the customer, right? They're not giving you more for your money. Did you think they were going to just take 30% off? Like they want that for themselves? I thought you would get more V-Bucks for the same amount of money, right? Yeah.

But if you do $1,000 V-Bucks for $8.99, you get an extra $200 or something like that as a bonus or something like that. Or $1,000 V-Bucks costs $8.99 through in-app purchase or $6.99 with the Epic Game Store purchase.

Which is what everybody else is doing, right? Spotify's doing that, right? It's like, if you buy it through internet purchase, it's this. Is that correct, Federico? And if you buy it through web purchase, it's this. Is it cheaper? I think it is, yeah. Yeah. So I'm really surprised that the way that they're doing this is you get epic rewards. Which maybe you can spend for V-Box too, but this is just not the way that I expected them to do it. I find that to be really weird. But, you know.

You know, they need all the money to pay for that litigation and lawyers and stuff. I guess so. I guess so. It's interesting. V-Bucks? More like... No. No. I got nothing. Okay. Down. Fossil arm. Fossil arm. Big news. Everybody ready? Yeah.

Incredible news. Okay. This is from Bloomberg via MacRumors. Apple is planning to open its AI models up to developers via an SDK in iOS 19. This would include the LLMs that power Apple intelligence notification summaries, writing tools, Genmoji, and everyone's favorite image playground. Does anyone care about this?

Was anyone asking for this? It's a shallow and narrow framework. Look, here's the thing. So these Apple intelligence tools, I want to guess that Mark did not read the technical white paper that Apple published last year about their models. So they work in a couple of different ways. There's a small model that is called AFM. So AFM stands for Apple Foundation Model.

And it comes in two flavors. The small one, the little model, which is called AFM on device. And that is when Apple says, oh, it's downloading Apple intelligence and it runs on device. That's what it's downloading. It's downloading like, what is it, like three, four gigabyte or something, possibly more. That's AFM on device.

And that is a large language model that deals with the on-device generation stuff. Then they have AFM server, and that is the Apple Intelligence large language model running in the private cloud compute stuff. Now, for that size and performance, I struggle to imagine, based on the current version of AFM,

who's the developer who will want to say, well, you know what? Instead of using the new GEMMA 3, what's it called? GEMMA 3N that they rolled out yesterday. We're going to talk about that later. Or instead of using like a small Mistral or a small DeepSeek, like instead of using one of these small on-device models, I really want to use AFM. I really want to use the Apple one. The only advantage that I can think of

Instead, like if you want to stay local, so if you don't want to call a cloud model, you just want to run on device. The only advantage I can think of is that obviously in this case with AFM, your app wouldn't need to come bundled with any additional model in the download. So you wouldn't have to download the three gigabytes or you wouldn't have to put out like a three gigabyte app on the app store, right?

You wouldn't need to worry about the license. You wouldn't need to worry about anything else. You would just call a native API. Apple is going to give you an SDK. And that's potentially nice,

I want to see if there's an updated version of AFM. That's the thing. I want to see if there's a better version of the Apple Foundation model improved from last year that maybe could tip the scale for developers to say, you know what, instead of calling Gemini 2.5 Flash or

GPT 4.1 nano or something, or instead of downloading a Mistral model or a Gemma model on device, we can just use the Apple stuff. I really want to see how they advertise this and what kind of performance they show to convince developers, hey, come here and use this instead of this other open source thing. I don't know.

Can I give you some breaking news? I was just coming here to say this. I'm going to read something to you. What happened? May 21st, 2025. This is an extraordinary moment. Computers are now seeing, thinking, and understanding. Despite this unprecedented capability, our experience remains shaped by traditional products and interfaces.

Oh my god!

The ideas seemed important and useful. They were optimistic and hopeful. They were inspiring. They made everyone smile. They reminded us of a time when we celebrated human achievement, grateful for new tools, and helped us learn, explore, and create.

It became clear that our ambitions to develop, engineer, and manufacture a new family of products demanded an entirely new company. And so, one year ago, Johnny founded IO with Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey, and Tang Tan. We gathered together the best hardware and software engineers, the best technologists, physicists, scientists, researchers, and experts in product development and manufacturing. Many of us have worked closely for decades.

The IO team focused on developing products that inspire, empower, and enable will now merge with OpenAI to work more intimately with the research, engineering, and product teams in San Francisco. As IO merges with OpenAI, Johnny and Lovefrom will also assume deep design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI and IO. We could not possibly be more excited, Sam and Johnny."

This is insane news. This is monumental. This is huge news. Apple is so cooked. This is crazy. I have chills right now. This is insane. This is insane. This is on the OpenAI website. There's a 10-minute video that I can't wait to watch. I can't believe this. I can't believe this. I don't even know what this means. It doesn't really mean anything yet. What it means is...

Johnny Ive is building stuff again, and it's with OpenAI. Oh my god. And I'm scrolling through. So here's a... I don't mean it to be an unpopular thing. I don't mean it to be controversial. I'm just stating the facts. These kinds of news, right now, if you want to find these links, like...

There's so much stuff on what used to be called Twitter and basically nothing on Blue Sky and Mastodon. And it sucks because like all these people that I would like to follow. For example, I just found out that Mike Mattis, remember Mike Mattis? He made paper, right? Yeah. And went to Facebook. Yeah.

excited to share love from an open AI have come together to form IO, a new company creating the next generation of AI products and interfaces. I've rarely felt so inspired by a project and team. So Mike is working there. Yeah, I heard about that. I think on threads. I think so, not on threads. Some of this stuff finds its way to threads, but...

There are quotes on this, like for example, Johnny Ive, I'm reminded of a time three decades ago when I immigrated to America as a designer. I was drawn to the exhilarating and innocent optimism of Silicon Valley. I can't believe this. They are purchasing I.O. for $6.5 billion. OpenAI is? Yeah.

Let me tell you that Johnny Ivey knows how to make some money. Let me tell you that. Oh, man. So, I mean, I'm assuming Love From remains. Yeah, Love From remains and Johnny and Love From are going to be doing the design of OpenAI and I.O. along with the fact that I.O. is now part of OpenAI. This is, I mean,

If I were Apple, I would be trembling right now. Still waiting to find the thing that Johnny Ive is working on at Apple, which I always say. Remember that? It's like, oh, he's going to keep working on stuff. Can't wait to see what that is. I mean, this is...

I don't know. Who knows, right? But this is about as bad as it could be for all of the current companies, I think. I know that Johnny Ive catches a lot of flack. I know that. I understand that. But he is also the greatest product designer of all time, in my opinion. No question. There are people up there. Braun is up there. People are up there. But I just... In the modern world, the things that he has made...

Right? Like, I just don't think anyone is operating at that level. They have defined...

Our society and culture, I mean, it is what it is. From the smartphone to the tablet to the earbuds to the AirPods to the Apple Watch, he's made stuff that has defined modern society over the past 20 years. And that's like, it's not an exaggeration. It is what it is. And if you think he's still got it, which I have no reason to believe that he wouldn't still got it, right? Like, I just don't know why he wouldn't. This could be a problem.

In a joint statement to Bloomberg, I've said, I have a growing sense that everything I've learned over the last 30 years has led me to this place and to this moment.

Oh, man. But for one sec, let's just go back to that. Where was that letter? As I.O. merges with OpenAI, Johnny and Lovefrom will assume deep design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI and I.O. So ChatGPT designed by Johnny Ive basically is what I'm reading here in the short term. Yeah.

Oh, man. With hardware, maybe software products to come. Wow. Well, okay. So we were saying about Apple Foundation model. I just want to put a note on something real quick. Just as a thing that I wonder about. I don't really know much about Apple.

Sam Ullman. But what he clearly has is the ability to convince people to do things, right? Like he clearly has that. Like he can convince everyone to give him a lot of money. I really wonder in Johnny Ives, like, does he see him like a Steve Jobs kind of figure? Like, does he see that? It's like, is that why he's doing this? Like, does he see in him of like, oh, I know a person who was like you, like a person who could lead product, right?

And get things done. Because I've got to wonder, why else would he do this? He doesn't need this. Johnny doesn't need this. Johnny's good. He's generationally good. You've just got to assume that he sees something. And if you're Johnny Ive, you hope that you still have the ability to see what's good and what's not. But yeah, I find this...

Truly fascinating news. And I'm very intrigued. What you just said, I think it's fascinating the way what you just said. A friend of the show, Parker Ortolani, just also basically tweeted the same thing you just said, which is hard not to read all of this as Johnny basically saying Apple's fallen behind and Sam is the closest person to a modern Steve Jobs. Yeah, I mean, look at the picture of the two of them. Yeah, they're hugging, you know. But that is just like...

It's Sam in the front and Johnny in the back. Sam's slightly out of focus. Yeah, I noticed that. Sam's face looks like that meme with the guy from The Incredibles. On the left, it's in color. And on the right, it's in black and white with one side of the face slightly darker. You know what I mean?

How do I describe this? Oh, man. Oh, Ozone? I think his name is... No, no. Yeah, it's the villain from the first movie, right? It's like the kid, like everyone's special, no one's special. I do think that there's something to the idea that...

Johnny Ive likes to work with visionaries. Like, and then he needs it to a degree. I mean, we absolutely, the criticism of him after Steve jobs death was there's no one to keep his ideas in check. And we got some weird ideas from an office. That's all glass. And people walk into the glass walls to, uh,

you know, some product decisions that maybe weren't the best in terms of hardware design. And maybe he needs that. I don't know. I don't think Sam Altman has the pull that Steve Jobs had in those areas. But we also haven't seen Sam Altman's ideas for a hardware project, except for that creepy eye scanner thing that we didn't talk about because it was too weird. So.

It is very interesting. I am not sure I'm willing to go as far as Apple is screwed, but it is potentially the most interesting news in the AI sphere in a long time.

Yeah, it's... Obviously, it's fun, right, to say, like, Apple is cooked. They're just, like, a funny thing to say. Yeah, yeah. But it is just, like... But there will be people who think it, seriously. Right. I'm not saying... I don't know if Federico did or not, but...

I mean, I guess what I'm saying is there's, you know, slightly sizzled, at least, you know? It's not good. It's not good for everyone, right? Because something, something is coming, right? Yeah. No one knows what that thing is. Like, we're going to talk about Google I.O. Google I.O. is trying everything. Yeah, geez. Google, I should say, is trying everything. Something is coming next, right? Yeah.

it would be a decent bet that the person who came up with the thing that currently is could maybe do it again. Now, there's nothing to say that he could, right? There's nothing to say that Johnny Ive has in him the ability to do the next thing after the iPhone, right? But maybe he can, right? Like, maybe he can do that. And of course, he wasn't wholly responsible for creating that product. No.

But he's very important in making that product. Yeah. The other thing, I can't believe I'm coming down the side of like defending that this could work because I just don't know. But the...

The Humana AI pen, right? Or some of the other AI hardware things that we have seen. All of which I think, it's safe to say, are failures. That's like, Mom, we have Johnny Ive at home. It is. No, it is. I was going to make a different thing, which is it's so funny to actually hear Stephen talking through his head in his hands. Yeah. Is he even saying that? I can hear him talking through his hands. Yeah. But there were...

Other smartphones before the iPhone, there were other MP3 players before the iPod, right? Like Apple, one of their things is like, let others try weird ideas and then they hit on it. And Johnny Ive was at the center of most of those. And so while the fact that we have not seen an AI hardware product makes sense so far doesn't mean the category is a bad idea. No. I do think that,

Creating a product like this in 2025 is unbelievably harder than it was in 2007. The iPhone coming into the smartphone market in 2007 is just fundamentally different than an AI product coming into the smartphone market of 2025. Maybe he's the guy to do it. Yeah, the table stakes are so high.

Can I read you some quotes from Johnny? Please. I want them. You know I want them. I have felt that my most important and useful work is ahead. That's nice. But...

reading from the end of the article, there have been public, this is not a quote, this is just Bloomberg, there have been public failures as well, such as the Humane AI pin and the Rabbit R1 personal assistant device. Now, Johnny says, those were very poor products, said Ive58. There has been an absence of new ways of thinking expressed in products.

You know the meme with The Simpsons with Ralph and his heart? That is everyone who worked at Humane. Right now, everyone who worked at Humane is like, oh no, Papa didn't like it. Yeah. And also, I was thinking of Tim Cook as Ralph on the bus saying, I'm in danger after reading this article. Basically, there's a Ralph Wiggum meme for every possible scenario. Of all the things that...

We've had plenty of things disrupting the show over the years, from my internet going down to me catching a burger, like a person trying to break into my home live on my own camera. I don't think anything's ever beaten that. But I did not have Johnny Ive coming back like this on my bingo card. Back from the dead. Mm-hmm.

I mean, it was obvious they were working on something together because it's basically said as much. It was announced that they had started this startup. And, you know, I think it's one of the most interesting things about that is the relationship with Love From, like that it is...

That will continue. You know, I don't know what Love From is doing. Like they're doing stuff with Stripe and they made the postcard for the king and stuff, but. Airbnb. Airbnb. Yeah. Which we should say just like, see what I'm doing? John, John, one true John.

and Cardi B both went no Megan Thee Stallion oh no oh Steven now you see now John's cool and you're not yeah you know there's a screenshot in my photo library of me saying in a text today I learned someone named Cardi B exists and Federico's response is oh Steven

Cardi B could have been there too. But anyways, John was at their keynote two weeks ago or last week where they announced a bunch of cool stuff and y'all did some stuff on App Stories and on the website. Go check all that out. It's really interesting and cool. But yeah, John is just like, he's doing stuff. It's great. Maybe John's going to meet Johnny now. Maybe that's what happens. Yeah. Do you... Maybe. I don't know. I'll do anything, by the way. I'm just putting that out there. Like...

I will do anything. I just want that to be said into the universe to meet Johnny Ive. I would do anything. Didn't you meet Johnny Ive? I just want people to know that. No, you saw Johnny Ive. I saw Johnny Ive, and it was suggested I go and speak to Johnny Ive, but I said, why would I do that? Why would I do that? He doesn't want to talk to me, and so I didn't go and talk to him. So my...

uh my example of this is when i i went to the iphone 15 launch it was the only iphone uh thing i've been invited to but it was really cool and avi tovanian was walking around and no one was talking to him because no one knows that he you know made bsd and next step and stuff but he was there it's like you should have gone and spoke to him hey avi

Because it would have been fine, you know? Like, my problem was everyone wanted to speak to Johnny in that moment. And so, like, I wasn't going to go up and talk to him. Because it's like, what do I say? Like, hi, I'm Mike. You know what I mean? But I'm saying, like, I want to speak to Johnny in, like, a professional context. Someone let me interview Johnny. That's what I really want to do. Man, crazy town. What a... Man, sometimes...

Recording this show live when breaking news happens is just so much fun. And it's been a minute, I feel like, since it's happened. Sam Altman just tweeted, thrilled to be partnering with Johnny. In my opinion, the greatest designer in the world. Excited to try to create a new generation of AI-powered computers. Oh, my God. They're doing it. AI-powered computers, that's a very interesting phrase. Yeah.

Do you think this, this is pops in my head. It's not a fully formed thought, but do you think Sam Altman like getting, I'm putting that in huge air quotes, getting Johnny Ive, like it's just a giant flex to all the other billionaire tech people. Like I got him. You know, I got him. Yeah. They would all want him. Right. Like all given the opportunity, everybody wants to make hardware, get the greatest hardware designer that exists. Like,

Yeah, anyone will take him, which is why Love From has been able to charge obscene amounts of money just to consult. Because then you get to say, I got him. I can't even imagine how much money Airbnb paid. Oh, dude. Just ungodly amounts of money. Just so you get to be the person who says like, oh, yeah, he's making my thing. Everybody wants him. But this is like, oh, no, you like...

You got him. Like, you didn't just get him to consult. Like, he works for you? With you? Right now? Because he's not even the CEO now, right? Is that right? He's like, someone else is the CEO, but he kind of still runs the company? Yeah. Very strange. What a time.

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Yesterday was Google I.O. We spoke a couple weeks ago about their Android announcements that pre that ran before I.O. And we assume that I was going to be all about A.I., which, of course, it was.

There's a lot of stuff here. I feel like even more than previous years, Google just threw a lot of stuff out there. And it's honestly was like a little overwhelming to watch it live because it was just one thing after another. A couple of just meta things for me, though, and then we can get into the announcements.

I wish Apple did live events. Oh, okay. I thought it was so good, like them on stage and they had demos. Microsoft is doing this too with Build, which was last week or a few days ago. Although right now, I think Microsoft wished they weren't doing live events. Yeah, there's a story that... Okay, we got to talk about this for like three seconds. There's a story out today. Mike will put it in the show notes, I think, of...

uh, build was interrupted by protest. And during like the recovery of that, of like getting back to the demo, the person on stage basically like switched to Microsoft teams for a second and leaked a bunch of stuff about Walmart's AI plans. Yep. And just a few things here. One,

Why does your demo computer, your actual computer, like have a demo machine? That's all that's on it. But if you are going to use your actual computer for the love of everything, close every other application. Like I feel so bad for this person. I honestly do, but it was so easy to avoid. So I'm saying.

Uh-huh. Anyways, Google IO, we got a bunch of links in the show notes. We're going to walk through some of the things that we thought were the most interesting. And we're going to start with Google Beam, which replaces Google Starline, which we saw, I think, two years ago. And it basically makes video calls feel much more personal. And there's a video the Verge does. It's wild. So you sit at this table. There are six people.

video cameras rendering you in 3d at 60 frames a second. All that's infused with AI to make it smooth and make it look really cool. Um, apparently HP is shipping something later this year. It's going to be in a bunch of offices, uh,

I wrote in the notes, seems physically heavy for vaporware, but if it ships, it's not vaporware. This is like the re-re-reintroduction of this technology. This is what Google does. You'll see something, and then the next year you'll see it again, and you'll see it every year until it's a thing. And at least this time, they have committed to actually being a product that's shipping and listed a bunch of companies that are going to put it in their offices.

But the thing that I find interesting, so Alex Heath did a little video about this on The Verge. Everything he describes is my experience of special personas. So like, I would like to try this

But like, you know, it's like, oh, there's nothing like this. There is. Like everything he's describing about a sense of presence and you can see facial expressions and it doesn't feel so fatiguing to do the meeting because it's not like a regular... Like all of this is... I feel like I experience the facial persona meetings. And so I would like to experience what this is like. But I do feel like that there are similarities here. But it does look cool and...

It looks like some of the footage that they've shot, I don't know how they did it, it gave an idea of how you can kind of see the effect. And it does look very good. Like it does just look like someone sitting on the opposite side of a table to you. It's cool. Maybe we move the podcast to that instead of Zoom. Love it. Let's do it. Has anybody made the joke Gemini-o yet? Has that been a thing that anyone said or am I the first person to say that?

You've been exposed to Steven for too long. But it's good though, right? Like Gemini-o. I love it. Because this is what this was. I love it. This is what this was. Yeah, of course he does. Of course he loves it. It was all Gemini all the time. Like it's almost at this point kind of embarrassing that Google is called Google. Like they shouldn't be called that anymore. They should just be called Gemini because it's in everything. I mean, it worked for Meta, I think. Did it? Yeah. Hard to say.

I mean, they did it. It worked. People do call them meta. It's like we do not call Google Alphabet. Nobody ever calls them Alphabet. That whole thing is just a mess. Because they didn't do it right. And the same guy runs both companies. It's very confusing. They didn't do it right. There were a few things that I found interesting. I think, Federico, I'm sure you did too. We probably find different things interesting. Where I guess I'm probably...

The things that I liked from this were more of the products, and I'm expecting you at least found more of the API stuff a bit more interesting because that is more your speed right now. One of the products... They showed a couple of things that were effectively either currently shipping as of right now or going to be shipping very soon, versions of what Apple tried to do, really, with Apple Intelligence. So Gemini Live...

So Gemini is the app. Gemini Live is where you can talk to it. Oh no, I'm doing the ad reads that we did. Yeah, they sponsored a long time ago. They've basically put this feature in so you can open your camera and show Gemini what you're doing and what you're seeing and you can talk to it about what you're seeing and it will talk back to you.

So it's essentially like the ultimate version of the visual intelligence. And they're also adding integrations for apps. It looks like all Google apps right now, but maybe other apps will be able to integrate with it. So like, for example, you could do the thing where you point it at a flyer and say, add this to my calendar and it will do that. And it knows what to do with that. Like I found that really interesting. There was a thing where Sundar Pichai says that when he's talking about another thing that we're doing, something we call personal context. I'm like, oh,

Yeah. Where they are able to and they are going to be shipping a feature right now.

Gem and I can learn about you from across all of your Google apps. So like all of your Gmail, all of your calendar, all of your docs and sheets and everything to provide information, results and answers. Like, for example, he was like, you could reply to an email in Gmail and the personal context will know everything about you across all of your Google apps. And that could be very powerful as a way to help you

write things, for example. I thought that was interesting. The thing that I liked the most was

just a like it was a video of like a thing that they're trying to do uh as part of their project astra which is project astra for google is like these are the things we're working on that will come later so like that thing i was mentioning about like the visual intelligence you think that was part of project astra they showed it last year and now it's here but they're showing computer control in the gemini app on android so you gemini on android can like

actually do things for you. And I recommend watching the video that's linked in the piece on this in the show notes where there's like a guy fixing a bike and

he's doing a bunch of things so he asks it to look up a youtube video and you see youtube open it starts scrolling and it clicks a video like it's doing it there's one thing where he like needs it to make a call and makes a call for him which is hilarious because that's back do you remember that the drama they had years ago about calling their hairdressers they're kind of like oh they can do that and you know so the ai is calling this bike shop to get him a new screw uh you should watch this video if you haven't steven because this guy has a lot of problems with his bike and you

maybe that will hit home for you. Oh, I was watching it live. Okay. A few things. One, Google put a good bike in your demo video. It's like not a good bike. I am. I am. And a person who knows enough about how to fix a bike to like be that far into it would not be, I don't know. It was fine. You just think that they should know more to be better, right? At biking? Be better.

This was a nice demo, I think, for a bunch of reasons. Not just the visual stuff, but how the model was taking actions in multiple places. And if you think about it, those are things that Google is working on. Right now, Google has these technologies and it's the classic Google problem of this tech is being implemented in slightly different ways in different places. For example,

When the model was opening a PDF and reading through a PDF and scrolling through a paginated PDF, that was a version of computer use that Google has demoed in a couple of different occasions. And they have their own version of computer use, for example, when it comes to Gemini in Google Chrome, which is another thing.

Then the model was like saying, okay, I'm going to watch a YouTube video. I'm going to find a YouTube video. And YouTube video understanding is one of the current features of Gemini. I think if you use it with 2.5 Pro, I think you

It used to be exclusive in AI Studio, and now it rolled out to Gemini. So if you go to Gemini, you can just paste a YouTube link and say, hey, can you tell me what this video is about? And Gemini is going to, quote-unquote, watch the video for you and tell you what it's about. So they're bringing together this... And obviously the phone calls, right? They're bringing together these multiple...

things that they showcased before under the umbrella that everybody loves to use now of like agentic AI. So like you're basically spin, like, and that there is a whole separate conversation here about like the real innovation right now in these models. It's not necessarily happening in the model itself. It's happening on two fronts.

First is happening on the reasoning front, so the model actually thinking and reasoning over each individual step and basically enhancing the compute power, requesting more resources, taking longer to run to produce a better output. That's what everybody's doing now from OpenAI to Google and Anthropic. Everybody's doing this. And the second is tool calling. So what Google showed here was a really fancy tool

a visual, approachable version of multi-tool calling in an agent. So you have the model, you're having your conversation, and then the model is basically splitting the conversation into multiple sub-agents. There's the one that goes off and makes a phone call. There's the one that scrolls through a PDF. There's the other one that opens a YouTube video and watches the video, and you're still holding a conversation with that model. That kind of structure is what

every single company is doing now. Every single company is doing these asynchronous agents. You look at OpenAI, what OpenAI is doing with ChaiGPT, and especially when you use O3 and O4, or when you use Codex, which is their new asynchronous coding agent. You look at Anthropic, how Anthropic with cloud research, how it works. It literally, in front of you, spins up a bunch of sub-agents, and every one of them is doing its own research.

And now Google is doing the same thing. So I think it's kind of funny. And I think, by the way, that of all the companies, Google had the best demo because they didn't even mention things like sub-agents or asynchronous. They just showed a conversation doing multiple things, like with the robot doing multiple things. And it was, I think, the best version of what all these companies are doing now, for sure.

Sorry about the parentheses here. No, it's good. It's helpful. I just thought that this was a really good demo video of kind of like one of the dreams. Your device doing stuff for you, like it's helping you. You're not...

It's kind of like your phone becomes an assistant for you rather than the tool that you use to do things. Like, that you talk to your computer that just goes all the way back to Knowledge Navigator, right? Like, it goes all the way back. Yeah, let's go! Maybe this is what... Maybe that's what Johnny's doing. He's going to build the Knowledge Navigator. He's going to be in his bonnet. He wanted to do it, you know? You're going to make a Newton. Like, it goes all the way back, right? Like, just...

Everybody understands the idea and I think believes that you should just be able to tell your computer what to do and it should do it for you. It's what everyone has always wanted. It's what all of these voice agents have attempted to be, right? It's what Echo is. It's what Siri is. It's what all of these things are, but none of them have been able to do it. This is what appears to be the technology that could unlock it, right? That like...

It's actually your phone can do things in the background and also in the foreground of like operating the device, understanding how it works. There's this thing, this MCP thing, which I only slightly understand, right? But it's like a...

It feels like an SDK, really, in a way. Just a way to get computer programs to talk to each other, but it's AI. AIs can talk to each other. Kind of. It's basically become this standardized format for plugging tools into a large language model in a sometimes concerningly non-secure way, but it's improving. It's improving.

It's improving, like compared to when it actually launched a few months ago, where like there was basically no authentication in front of MCP and everybody was like, well, you know, you just paste this thing into cloud and it connects to your file system. Good luck. It's evolved really, really quickly over just, what is it, like six months or so. Yeah. Yeah.

So you got that, and you already kind of mentioned it, but I just want to speed run a couple of things to read a quote that I thought was very funny. So then you've got another thing where Google Chrome is doing the...

going out and doing stuff for you on its own so you can have like chrome doing it for you on its own then you have something called ai mode in search which is like a total reimagining of search which is available in the u.s right now which is doing a bunch of things including personal context and also doing stuff for you kind of like agentically in the background then you have this thing called visual shopping which you've probably seen videos of already where it can like put in it

put an outfit on you, but then it also can go out and buy things for you on its own. And there's Gemini and Chrome, which is like a whole other thing. I want to read a quote from Casey Newton. Two quotes, actually, because it was very funny in Platformer. Also, the products overlap. Would you like to search with AI? You can now do that in Google Search and get an AI overview or in another tab within Google Search called AI Mode or inside Gemini, the standalone AI search app.

And while the company continues to protest, it seems obvious that this new world will give you many fewer reasons to visit the open web. Google will generate the things you want searched for and all the businesses that once relied on those services will need to plan B. Those are like two things I found interesting. But like the second part is like all of this is like, oh, great. Everything is here. But also, why is anyone going to publish stuff to the web anymore? I include that really because I know that it will hit Stephen in the heart. Yeah.

Shut down the heart! Yes, that is exactly what it is doing to him and I know it. But the thing is, Google are doing so much and so much of it is exactly overlapping and I can't understand that. There needs to be a person at Google that's like, no, don't do that because we have it over here. Let's just...

Bring it together instead. I find it so weird. That's a tale as old as time with Google. Or at the very least, confusing and overlapping products. Like, look at just their long list of dead messaging platforms. There's no one at Google, seemingly, that has a high enough level view...

to be able to dictate those things and or the power or the power and you know google historically and i think to this day i think to a lesser degree now but definitely historically is made up of a bunch of like disparate teams that don't always know or communicate with each other like and that's that's fine apple works that way too except someone at the top knows what's going on and google just has never had that and it leads to this sort of thing and it leads to

confusing products and, you know, looking through this and we're going to get to the paid offerings in a little while. It is not easy to understand like what all of these things are and how they relate to each other. And I don't know, I wish they were better at it. I think they would find more success if they paired these things down before they went out the door, they would cancel fewer things if they were a bit more editorial, uh, in the beginning.

Yep. Anyway, those are some of the things I found interesting. I think that their filmmaking tool is horrific. But I just hate it. I hate it so much. It was... They have Imogen and Veo. That's like their image and video models. And one of the things added to their video model is it can create sound effects and speech and add them to the video, which is just like, oh my God. And then there was just this moment where this guy's making this...

ai video in an app they call flow which is like an ai video editing tool like the way that it works is is interesting right that like you know you can uh chop up a clip and extend the clip by changing the prompt and it's like i don't want this in my life i kind of wish it didn't exist but if you're going to do it this is an interesting way to do it but there was just this very dystopian moment to me of like

This guy made a video, showed the video, and then people applauded. It's like, what are you applauding? Like, what are we applauding here? Like, what is going on? Like, why is like, oh, yes, congratulations on this AI video you made. Like, what is that was so weird to me that people applauded that. But anyway. Yeah. Remember that time Apple got in trouble for smashing a bunch of creative tools into an iPad? Yeah.

Google is not going to get the same backlash that that did, but it is... I was just sort of reminded of that a little bit watching that video. And I agree with you. I don't like it. I wish it didn't exist. I don't think it looked... It very clearly had the AI look to it and...

It will get better over time, but I just... That AI look has really changed, though. The AI look is very different to what it is now. Oh, yeah. It's not Will Smith eating spaghetti like it was two or three years ago, which has burned it in my consciousness for all time.

But I don't know. We said it before on the show. We all just wish generative AI would go away. And like, agentic AI is so interesting. Just get rid of the generative. Like, just get rid of that. Like, go. Go away. No videos. No imagery. Like, just get rid of it. I don't know. What would we do without image playgrounds? Exactly. Just agentic AI is so interesting. Like, why can't we just have that?

Anyway, that's the stuff I found. Federico, what kind of spoke to you? I wanted to go over some details that I saved. Project Mariner, this is the agentic computer-use browser integration. It can now multitask, so you can spin off up to 10 tasks at once. And that's basically...

a version of Gemini sort of using browser tabs on its own. So if you don't want to do it, you'd be like in a browser tab, can you go here and book a table for this day? And then you go into another browser tab and you're like, I don't know, understand my kids' soccer practice in my Google calendar or something. So you can multitask with that. The computer use stuff when it comes to web browsers is one of the things that I'm really skeptical of because

And computer use in general, I do understand the wild implications for accessibility. And I am intrigued by some of the upcoming models for computer use when it comes to understanding a complex application like, say, Final Cut or Logic,

with natural language. That's interesting for me. But this computer using a web browser, I still struggle to understand. We'll see. Anyway, that's Project Mariner. Still unclear, like, is it going to be an actual product or an extension in Chrome? It's like a lot of the things that I would want a computer to do. For me, I'm not going to be able to have it go and buy me tickets to a concert because that's going to be...

They're going to find something. They don't want me to do that, right? Like, that's like the whole thing. That's pretty much like the thing that, like, Perplexity is launching this Comet browser, which is based on Google Chrome. And that's our whole thing right now. Like, it's a browser that does things for you in Perplexity. I don't know. Maybe it's just me. Some of these things I don't understand. Agent mode in Gemini. I think this is one of my favorite announcements. Yeah.

Soon, you will be able to integrate MCP tools in Gemini, as well as Search and Chrome. But I'm mostly interested in MCP in Gemini. MCP can be confusing in so many different ways. You can find MCP servers that are hosted remotely on GitHub, and you literally connect to a thing on GitHub directly.

via code made by somebody else. You can download and install an MCP server on your own computer. So at the very least, the code is on your actual machine. That's a double-edged sword because, well, the code is on your actual machine. There's just no good way of doing it. Thankfully, over the past couple of months, things have sort of standardized a little. So there's a popular directory for MCP tools called Smithery, Smithery AI. That's a really popular sort of

gallery for different MCP tools that have sort of verified and you can see how many people use it and so forth. But by far, I think my favorite MCP integration right now is the Zapier one because they made it so easy to integrate with Cloud and other apps. And they have this UI where they give you a private link

that's tied to your account. So they authenticate you with your Zapier account. And that link is private to you. And they have this interface where you pick and choose the tools that you want to use. So instead of installing like 20 different MCP servers, you just install the one Zapier one, which contains like 50 different tools. And they have a visual interface to do all this. It's very nicely done. I use it with Claude all the time now. And...

And soon you will be able to do that in Gemini. So that's exciting. They had the Gemini 2.5 Flash update, which according to them, it's second only to 2.5 Pro in the LLM arena, which it's a whole other thing, these benchmarks that I don't fully understand.

I don't think they're necessarily reflective of actual performance and quality, especially because the funny thing about benchmarks and leaderboards is that these companies are training their models against the best possible outcomes for the leaderboards, which kind of defeats the purpose, you know, somebody actually using a model and understanding what it does. So Facebook did that, right? Yeah, no, everybody does it. Ben Thompson interviewed Mark Zuckerberg and he asked him about this.

and it's like but it's like ah we make so many things and like sometimes this is what we make them for i don't know you get an lm and you get an lm it's like ah come on ben yeah yeah what it was like it was very funny yeah uh

They showcase audio previews in Gemini, including a mode that can talk in multiple languages and also whisper, which was kind of creepy, but also quite impressive at the same time. And as I was mentioning before, given that the innovation right now is happening in tool usage and reasoning models, they also announced a version of Gemini 2.5 Pro, which is a big model. This one is called 2.5 Pro with DeepThreads.

think so it guess what to give you even better responses um you don't need a new model you just need the existing big model to run for longer and use more compute power so that's what deep think is going to do and it's going to be in preview right now for gemini ultra subscribers which is there have we talked about the crazy expensive um subscription tier uh yet probably not not yet but yeah we're going to talk about that at the end um

What else do I want to mention? Personal context is interesting. It's kind of similar in some ways to memory in ChatGPT. And this feature, like this personalized assistant, I am noticing that...

people either love it or absolutely hate it. One of my favorite writers about AI right now, Simon Willison, they have an excellent blog, like really old school blog with like blog posts and linked posts, pretty much inspired by Daring Fireball. Yeah, who would do that sort of thing in 2025? I know, right? And it stands out because like there's all these grifters on X and on YouTube with like these AI influencers. And here's an actual developer. Wow, this is an old school blog. Yeah.

And with an old school block that is so full of useful information every single day, has to be one of my favorite. The little orange and white RSS thing. Oh man, look, look at this.

This is incredible. Simon is the real deal. The LLM command line tool that I've been using lately is made by Simon. Incredible, incredible open source tool. In any case, if you take a look on Simon's blog, you will see I really don't like ChagiPT's new memory. And Simon has been writing about this for a long time. And I disagree, but I understand why. This idea that people want to use a large language model in its sort of like pure language

essence. Like they don't want personalization. They don't want the model to change responses based on what they think they know about you. So it'll be interesting to see this personal context in Gemini, just how much it'll influence. Like if I ask Google, hey, tell me about California, is the answer going to be influenced by how many times I've been to California over the years? So that'll be fascinating to see if you can turn it off or not, how much you can customize it.

Have we talked about AI mode in search? Only referenced. I don't really understand...

what like this is that thing is like what i was saying like what what um casey newton says like it's confusing for me to be able to separate all these things from each other because they just still seem to overlap and become the same thing yeah yeah um so this is basically google doing perplexity right uh the ai mode i mean if you compare them side by side it's basically perplexity with a sidebar uh

AI mode, which is, but of course it's powered by Gemini, which is again, 2.5 and especially 2.5 pro, one of the best models right now.

And so they're feeling the pressure, I guess, from people searching in ChaiGPT where search is no longer like stringing together a bunch of keywords, but it can be multiple sentences strung together. So that's what they're optimizing for. I guess what it gets kind of confusing is that on top of that,

you have the shopping integration and you have the visual shopping and you have the more agentic behavior where you're like, okay, and now go find this ticket for me. So I don't know. We'll see. It's rolling out in the US. I mean, it's out in the US for everybody right now. And this is very different from AI overviews, which, you know,

I'm sure you've seen at the top of Google searches. This is once again basically like a chatbot UI. It sort of gives you a page of results and then you have a right sidebar with more information and you can click through and do a bunch of things. It was a funny thing what Sundar said because this AI mode thing has existed for a while like in the labs feature or whatever. And he was like, he was touting that like typically a search in AI mode, people write two to three times more words than doing a Google search. It's like, what does that

What is that? What are you saying? Like, is that good? Like, is it bad? Like, you know what? Like, why is that like a, ah, so great. Like,

You know what I mean? It's just like a strange thing to tout as a benefit of this feature. It's like, people write more stuff in the box. It's like, okay. Like, okay. I know, because I am aware of this. When I am searching for something in ChatGPT, I search with more words. And there are two reasons for this. One, because I just feel it's a bit more chatty than...

like I know what to look for on Google, but also because I feel like I have to give it more information. So like, because I, I know that without that, it is a less efficient thing. But if I give it all of the information, I can get the answer I want better. So it is essentially saying that like these, these tools require more effort from the user. I just found like, it's a strange thing to be like, Hey, people type more. It's like, okay, yeah.

This isn't like a thing we're all looking for. Like, oh man, if only I could type more in my Google search. Why can't I do that? If only. Just found it very strange. Android XR got a bit of time. Android XR is a big...

project spanning all forms of AI, sorry, like alternate reality stuff, like mixed reality stuff. It's their headset that they're working with Samsung on, but it's also glasses. And they spent quite a bit of time essentially showing their reference design, which Samsung has made, but is not going to be a shipping product, which is basically the Meta Ray-Bans, but with a display inside.

They did a demo. The demo was fine. It was clearly pushing the device really hard. The video stream came from it. It was very choppy, but whatever is how I feel about that. I don't particularly feel like it needs to be live streaming as a product point that it needs. I thought that the idea of

metha ray bands but with a little screen inside so it can show you stuff it's like ah okay like that's it right they've announced they're working with gentle monster and warby parker i thought the warby parker thing was just funny to me of like so okay there's two brands that make good looking glasses and like they're gonna you know it's they're both doing stuff now but it's it's like understanding so so victoria song at uh the verge had a good point about this is like

They understood the right thing from meta. You have to make products people are actually going to want to wear. So they need to be designed by people who design products that people want to wear. Like, you can't just make the here's the Samsung ones. Like, that's not...

the thing like samsung don't understand how to make attractive eyeglasses like you need to work with companies that do that so yeah i thought it was an interesting demo i'm intrigued to see what comes of it um also x-ray or making some federico i'm sure you're excited about that yeah yeah yeah i thought the glass demo looked like excellent like um

I'm sure there were Wi-Fi issues. Yeah. But it's like, I don't like fault them for that. It's like, that's not what I care about. Like, I don't care about how well it live streams, right? Like, the things that it was doing that

were interesting, right? Like it could take a picture, take a picture, show a few finders. It was showing directions. It was showing little pieces of text. Now, as I've said a long time ago on this show, I'm not sure I want notifications in my eyes. Like that's actually a thing I do not want. Like I don't want that. But for things that I'm asking it for, being able to get turn by turn walking directions, um,

I would love that. Oh my God, I would love that. To just be able to see where, not have to have my phone out while I'm trying to navigate somewhere. Just use my eyes like that. Yeah. Looks fantastic. What's interesting about that is we're talking about our phones and other things wanting to be more proactive, but something in your eyes you want to be

basically solely reactive, I think is what you're saying. And I agree. I think that's spot on. It's just interesting to me, like the difference there caught my attention. Yeah. And I think it's just the, there's like a spectrum, right? Where it's like your watch is somewhere in the middle, right? Of like the kind of proactive reactive. But like, I just, the more connected it is to my physical senses, the less I want it to

take over without me asking that's kind of how i feel anyway but yeah i i thought that looked really cool um and it's fascinating to see that like 10 11 years later or whatever it is they actually the technology exists for google glass to be like a thing that people were willing to accept yeah that's a good point yeah should we talk about uh pricing

Yeah. How much does everything cost, Stephen? So Google AI Pro, you get the 2.5 Pro and Deep Research and Veo 2 and the Gemini app. You get that AI filmmaking stuff flow that Mike talked about. You get Notebook LM.

with basically five times more audio overviews and notebooks and stuff. Gemini and Gmail Docs, Gemini and Chrome, and two terabytes of storage. That's Google AI Pro. That is $19.99 a month in the U.S. Which used to be called Gemini Advanced. That's right. Yeah. It's basically, I think, almost exactly the same plan, just with these newer features. And then there is Google AI Ultra...

For $125 a quarter, so that's what, $42 a month? $42 a month, you get all the pro stuff. Why would you do that? Why would you charge it that way? I don't know. Why don't you just charge me monthly? I thought it was $120 a month. I did too, which is like, wow! And that apparently is discounted. Normally it's going to be $250 a month. That's like drawn with a

on it. I don't know. You get everything in pro. You get basically like Gemini app turned to maximum. You get Veo 3. You get...

the highest limits in notebook LM. You get the highest limits in Gemini and docs and Gmail and everything you get project Mariner, which is the, the agentic research stuff that Federico talked about. You get YouTube premium and 30 terabytes of storage for photos, drive and Gmail. All that is Google ultra for one 25 a month for three months.

Wait, no, it's not $125 a quarter. It's $125 a month, but you sign a three-month...

contract so i misstated that or is it just 125 for the first three months and then 250 i think that maybe actually that is very confusing you know it is google ai ultra is available i'm looking for the google blog 249 a month with a special offer for first-time users for 50 of your first three months okay so it is 250 a month okay so so forgive my quick math of uh that is confusing on the

It's very confusing. The Google AI plans page. Yeah. Um, AI,

AI Ultra is US only for now, and Google AI Pro is free for students through, quote, finals in 2026. So if you are a student, you can see if you're eligible for a student discount. There's a page about that. $250 a month is a lot. That's a lot of money. That's a lot of money. What's the expensive OpenAI one? Is it $200 a month?

They're all about $200, aren't they? So OpenAI Pro is $200. And Cloud, they have two versions of Cloud Max, which is, let's see, either $100 or $200. Okay. So it's a little bit more than that, but maybe they're offering more. It's expensive.

Federico, let's just put our cards on the table for a second. What, if anything, are we paying for with AI tools right now? What do you mean? Like, are you paying for Claude Pro or...

Chat, GPT, you're paying for all of them, aren't you? Yes. Why would you do this to him? Why would you make him say it? Federico's spending money everywhere. I don't think I'm going to pay for the Gemini Ultra 1.

Because I mostly use Gemini over the API and that's built via the Google Cloud console, whatever. So I don't need the consumer subscription. Okay. I'm paying for ChatGPT, the regular one. 20 bucks a month? 20, yeah. Yeah, me too. And was paying for Gemini paid?

But then somehow I got it free. I think with my Android phone, like they got like a year or something. Um, yeah.

Oh, no. Okay. Yeah, I remember now. I got it for free. I got free for a year on my personal account, like Gmail, like Google account. And then I'm paying for it on a business account. Well, now it's all integrated with Google Workspace anyway, but I was going to pay for it because I wanted the good notebook LM. I needed more space.

And so I was going to pay for it, but then they kind of rolled it into Google Workspace and increased the price. And so it's like, all right, so I got it. I don't pay extra for it. So the only one that I'm like paying for is the regular OpenAI subscription, not the 200 one.

Yeah, I'm doing the $20 a month at ChatGPT. That's it. Yeah, you're probably also getting the Google one. Yeah, I think... Because it's something you pay for somewhere. You're getting it somewhere. They basically, I think, turned that on for a bunch of Workspace accounts, which I found really frustrating because the price went up. They turned it on and then increased the price of Workspace, which is just like, well, who are we asking? So probably also paying for that, but I have not... Really, I've not spent much time with the new Gemini stuff. I tried it out...

I don't know, six months ago or something, but definitely not any of the, any of these newer things. Gemini, Gemini is getting better and better. Like it's getting better and better all the time. And it's like particularly good on an Android phone, obviously. If you love this podcast and would like to hear more from us each and every week, consider Connected Pro.

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So the open AI news that we covered a second ago, the breaking news, that aside, I feel like there's been a real shift in the way we're thinking and talking about Google in the era of AI. I feel like six months ago, maybe even three months ago, it was like, well, Google is like they're in trouble, right? Because chat GPT search and these other tools are going to make people search less, right?

And it seems to me, and some of this was in that Casey Newton column that Mike mentioned earlier, it feels like this IO is in a way was designed to counteract some of that and say like, no, like search is still really important. We're making search better with AI, but we're also doing these other things. Is the way that y'all have thought about that, has that shifted after IO in any way?

I still think Google's in trouble. I just think that they're attempting to meet the moment more. Like, Google search is at risk. And the way Google makes money, which is Google search, is at risk. Like, one of the reasons they're pushing so hard is because of that, right? So, like, I think Google is struggling. But, you know, my opinion of Google's ability is,

is significantly better than when they started, right? Bard was a joke.

which is why they had to rebrand it. Yeah. Because it was just so bad, right? Like it was getting things so wrong. And I like Gemini, like my experience using Gemini has been very positive. My experience with the Google AI summaries has been very negative. Like I kind of don't understand why they're so different. Like I feel like I get better responses from Gemini than I do from the Google AI summary thing.

But yeah, I think you're right. They're in a better spot now. I think people look at them as being more of a leader again. But I still think that Google's core business is a threat. They need to try and work out how that's going to not fall apart for them, I suppose. Sure. I feel like if the current...

landscape of the tech products that we use is to stay the same. Google is the company that's best positioned right now, given the status quo of devices that we use. And they are trying, I feel like they have

They have the most compelling ecosystem right now of existing products. What Johnny apparently is calling legacy products in the promo video that I need to watch later for IO. So if we are considering legacy products, and at this point, I mean, even glasses and headsets are legacy products, to an extent, especially headsets. But if we consider the current ecosystem of legacy products, Google right now has the most compelling one.

Because they have a really good AI. And I know that Apple people, Apple fans that listen to this show don't want to hear this. But they have a really good AI integrated with the system in a way that Apple dreams they could have it. So if we consider the current landscape, they are well positioned. If we consider that everything is changing,

They are also at risk, right? They are, like, especially search, given that their core business is, you know, ads, search and all that stuff. And they're not necessarily making money off of Android, really. I do think that, though, the company that is in the worst shape right now

is Apple. Like, it's just objectively speaking, you know, they clearly people are... And I think it's so funny. I think it's so funny that...

either over the feedback form or in the Discord or on Blue Sky or, God forbid, on Mastodon, we get this feedback still after two and a half years of these things existing from people saying, oh, you know, it hallucinates. It's, you know, it's, you know, it's snake oil. I mean, do you think that half a billion people, half a billion people,

using chat GPT on a monthly basis or whatever it is, daily basis, I don't even remember. Do you think that half a billion people are stupider than you? And that you, the feedback center, are the clever one for having assumed over the past couple of years that these products, there's nothing, absolutely nothing good about them?

The half a billion people just for TagGPT. I mean, how many if I consider all the other services? They're just stupid. They're using these services, they're using these products because they're under some kind of like collective gaslighting or something? I think the thing, this technology just elicits a lot of very strong emotions in people. I mean, but when you look at the numbers, when you look at the numbers, like leave...

You know, nerds tend to be people who appreciate the empirical method and the scientific method. So just take a look at the numbers. Do you think that it's possible that given these numbers, all those people are part of a collective hallucination? Or is there something potentially good about these products? I mean...

I don't think it's got to be as hardcore as that. Yeah, I understand where you're coming from. Like, because I, you know, you know me, like, you know me. I don't, I find it frustrating when people just repeat the same things over and over. And like, you know, the joke of like, oh, I told you to eat, put glue on pizza. Like, I just, I don't think it's funny anymore. It's kind of funny.

I don't think... I know you like it, but I don't think it's funny anymore, really. It's just like, yes, that was a thing that happened, but it doesn't happen now. So, you know, they fixed it. But I am acutely aware of the fact that this causes a lot of feelings in people. And so I think it elicits a response that is unlike other stuff in technology because it is...

It's still... It's a hot button and it's going to continue to be one for a long time. And I think that a lot of... The things like the glue on pizza thing, it is a very hard thing to shake out of people because it's like if you come at it from a spot of like, I don't want this technology, then you are going to be leaning way harder into all of the problems of it. Similarly of like the environmental stuff, of which there are environmental concerns. I think...

Everything that I've seen, it's in the middle of what a lot of people think. It's bad, it's not as bad, it's worse than a Google search, but how much? But I don't know because I'm not smart enough to understand it. But I feel like I've seen a lot of people whose opinions I do trust that talk about it. It is definitely worse than a lot of the things we're doing on computers currently.

But to what actual degree? And I think it's people overestimate it, maybe. Yeah. And I can be mad that XAI is using tractor trailer sized gas turbines in poor neighborhoods to power grok of all things and think that

There are uses for this that are helpful and pay for chat GPT, right? Like those, yes, some of those things are in conflict with each other, but it's just the same conflict we feel over. Like we like Apple products, but think there needs to be change in leadership. Or I really like driving my truck, even though I know the gas mileage isn't what, you know, I would be getting with a hybrid, right? Like all of us make conflicted decisions all the time, right?

AI is just the latest. And we've been doing this a long time, a long list of things that gets nerdy oriented people worked up. And so I don't think it's got to be as hardcore as what you said, Federico. But I also think that like all of us need to understand that base, almost everybody, except for maybe those bros on X that you were talking about, like trying to scan people with AI courses or whatever, um,

Except for those guys who we all dislike. So many of them. Right. You know, those guys wearing two polo shirts popped. Hey-o! That was a thing, all right? There was a place and time where people were wearing multiple colors. And that dude just bought Johnny Ives, so... Yeah, yeah. Jokes on us. Exactly. So...

I think basically everyone has conflicts about it, even on this show. Right. We, and Frederico, you've talked, you and John talked a lot about this, right? Like y'all don't like how these models were built, but you do like the technology, what the technology unlocks in terms of your workflows and what you can create. Right. Those things are in conflict. And so that is all inherent to this. And, and,

Any hardcore statement about like, this is 100% good or 100% bad. Like, there's just not like, this is not useful because it's not true. And everyone's going to fall in between those two, those two things at some point. Mm hmm.

Anyways, I'll get off my soapbox. That's been rattling around in my head for a week. So thank you for letting me get it out. Everyone has soapboxes. That's kind of the point of the conversation. You know what I mean? I think we've spoken about this many times. In all the years that I've been interested in technology and have spoken about technology professionally, nothing has elicited the kind of responses that this technology elicits in people. Good, bad, bad.

In the middle. It is really interesting. Like there is a lot of emotion in this, which is just an intriguing thing to see unfold. Okay. Feelings. Thank you for. Yeah. Yeah. We're allowed to have them. You know what I mean? And we're allowed to express them. It's important to remember there's nuances, right? And just like, we're just all here just talking. You know, we're just here. We're just talking. And that's the way the show is always going to be. Mm-hmm.

Anything else from IO we want to get back to? We sort of got derailed there for a second. I think we covered everything. But we didn't have time to talk about my Mac studio, so we'll talk about that next week. I copied that to next week's document. I was like, nope, not making it to that. But yes, you have a sick Mac studio that you're doing wild stuff with. Yeah, boy.

Well, until then, if you want more of us, we're around. You can find Federico's writing and work over at Mac Stories, where he is the editor in chief. Lots of great stuff. I know you guys are gearing up for WWDC. You just did the Airbnb thing. John's hanging out with famous people. It's awesome.

Mike hosts... Who am I to say? Some people say Cardi B. Some people say. Many people are saying. If you want to hear more of Mike, he hosts a bunch of shows here on Relay and check out his work at cortexbrand.com.

You can find my writing at 512pixels, and I co-host Mac Power Users here on Relay each and every Sunday. I'd like to thank our sponsor this week, Squarespace, for making this possible. If you like Connected and want more of it, check out Connected Pro, the longer ad-free version of the show that we do each and every week. The link is in the show notes. It's just seven bucks a month. Until next time, gentlemen, say goodbye. Adieu. Cheerio. Bye, y'all.