559: Chart Man
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From Relay, this is Connected, episode 559. Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace and FitBud. I'm your Ricky Benchman, Federico Vittici, and it's my pleasure to introduce Stephen. Hello, Stephen. Hello, Ricky Benchman Federico. Hi. Hello. How are you? Man, I'm good. It's summer. My kids are home. We're doing swim parties. We're going to shoot some fireworks this weekend, safely and responsibly.

I'm going to watch other people shoot fireworks safely and responsibly, I meant to say. Don't write in. Hello. I am introduced by Federico, and I'm introducing Mike. I'm in the sandwich this week. I'm in the middle. Are you not allowed to fireworks? You know, people get...

Don't do fireworks! They're bad for animals, they're bad for the environment, and they're especially bad for dogs. See? Okay, so we found the person. He's on our podcast. I am one of those people. Yes. The complaints are in the podcast. Okay, so that's good to know. Jesus, people still doing fireworks. I am not a fireworks fan, personally. I am of the opinion that fireworks should just be done by professionals, but I just wasn't sure if there were rules because of the way that you said that, but like...

If it's legal to do, fine, but I just think they're never as good as the ones that professionals do, so I just figure...

I will find a link, put it in the show notes of that time when all the fireworks went off at once. It's my favorite YouTube video of all time. Federico, if you've never seen this, you've got to watch it at some point. San Diego fireworks. It's San Diego's thing. It's just the best. It's so good. 11 million views on YouTube. It's the loudest noise in human history. I think

I have seen this video many years ago. I'll tell you when I watch this. Every New Year's. I'll watch the fireworks display on TV that they do in central London. And then once that's done, immediately go to YouTube and find this video and then laugh for 15 minutes. And make everybody watch it. Oh, it's so good.

The sound is just incredible. There's never been a sound like it. My favorite thing is just watching the reactions. My second favorite thing after the noise is just watching the way that people react to it happening while it's happening to them. There's people running, people moving in circles. Oh, it's incredible. Oh, so good. I mean, it's overwhelming in video. In person, it probably felt like the end of the world.

The people running, I just saw something new for the first time where there's a woman who's pulling her husband away. He doesn't want to leave, but she's just like pulling him. I got to watch this video again. Oh my God, it's so loud. Yeah, just watch. Just watch one section of the video.

each time on replay yeah yeah oh i see the i see the woman pulling the guy yeah just pulling that guy he's like no i'm too cool for this and then there's like these two younger women who just start like running in circles oh it's so good oh it's the best video but that's not what we're here to talk about is it not i mean it could be i'm not gonna bring my favorite youtube videos to the show we just talk about them in audio form it's perfect uh follow up mike

Yeah. Chris and Steven both wrote in, not me. Okay. Another Steven, although they spelled their name correctly. Mike, when you ask for feedback in a blog post, how do you prefer that feedback to come in? Reader's choice. Really? So social media, you find facts.

Yeah, you find me. I know I sound stupid. Maybe people can reply to the emails. I don't know. Or they can find me. People can get to me. I'm not hidden. Come find me. I think this was a question out of respect. Yeah, yeah. What works best for you. I'm fine with it. I'm fine with it. People can get me how they need to get me. That's kind of how I feel. I don't yet have like a...

And I don't want another place to check, right? So like, I'm not going to be like, and here's the feedback form for the website. It's like, no, no, just like, I'm online. I'm on three text-based social networks. You know what I mean? Just send me that or like, you can find my email address and send me that. Like, that's kind of how I feel. Do you have like a Macedon Blue Sky Threads account just for the website?

No. Good. No, I'm just posting every post myself. Yeah. Because that simplifies things. It's my website. Right? Simplifies things. Yeah. Yeah. But it's just like, I understand why people do it because it's like the way people did it. But it's just like, especially this particular thing, it's just me. Right? So it's like, I don't, I feel like I'm just going to publish the links to my posts. Man, you haven't blogged this month. You're falling off. Yes, I have. Oh, this month. Oh, it's the 2nd of July. Come on. Wow. Come on. Yeah.

Our boy fell off. Is that how it works? Is that how it works? You're going to keep up the habit or something? You do. Yeah. I've got to do like NaNoWriMo for blogging, but it's every day. It's like Mike's free... I don't know. I haven't got a thing for it, but there you go. What was that? Do you get it? Never mind. Nope. Dimmy wrote in and said, I work in a big company in tech. We have a policy to change our passwords every 12 months. We use this password for everything. Laptops, email, Slack, Jira.

Mine just expired so I can finally share it. A year ago, I said it to, it's not what you think. And every time I had to type it, it gave me a chuckle. I think this is a great idea for a password, but I have a question. So you would presume that the policy is for security reasons, right? That's what they say. Change it every 12 months. But then this password is used for four or more things. Yeah. And for a year.

No, but like even a year, it's like fine. You change it every year. Like I understand that. Like that's good. But like, I don't think it's that secure if you're then using the same password for four separate things. Doesn't seem like it. Laptop, email, Slack, and Jira. That actually seems worse. When I worked at the Apple store a thousand years ago, we had to do this. We had to rotate our passwords. And I think it was every 60 days. It was just off enough to be really annoying. Yeah.

And what I ended up doing for a while on recommendation from a friend was the first letters of like a movie series. So I did like Star Wars movies. And at the time there were just six of them. And so it was like S-W colon A-N-H movies.

Like Star Wars, A New Hope or whatever. Or the whole title. I forget what I did. But you pick a theme for your passwords. An annual theme for passwords, Mike. That's a Cortex idea for you. There you go. Just very specific. Get one password to sponsor it. Yeah, it's going to do really well. I used to decide to do this too when I worked in the bank. And I would have the same password and increment the number.

But the problem is sometimes, you know, you go away for two weeks or whatever, you start remembering the number. It's like, well, I don't know what the number was. I think more modern systems don't let you do that. I'm sure they don't. And I am, in having this conversation, I am realizing why 1Password pivoted to the enterprise. Yep. Yep. Yeah. And like in having this conversation, it's like, oh yeah, like,

It's better this way, right? Like you force your employees to use one password and then they will set better passwords. And then they just have to remember one password, which is the name of the app. Wow. Wow, that's deep, man. Okay.

Time for some follow-out. WidgetSmith 7.3 is out. It's a really good update. I don't want to give Stephen a chance to talk about it, but I just wanted to do the intro for him so he doesn't have to do it for himself. The big thing in 7.3, I assume this was a long-requested feature. I know it's one that I've enjoyed a

um is that you can now there are now it's like a wallpaper gallery um and there are a bunch of wallpapers so you can get some fun wallpapers if you want them which is always good because i always struggle with how to find new wallpapers if i want a new one not that i ever want one but you know if i was the same one for like five years yeah i would like one on my ipad so if you could like get that get that role in that interesting okay yeah and uh but

Now you can choose these wallpapers and easily have thematically appropriate from a color perspective, like themes for your widgets. So here's the wallpaper. Here's a bunch of options that are colors. But my favorite feature is you can say, here is my wallpaper.

theme the widgets and I've been doing that to my widgets and they look great so thank you both for doing that yeah it's great we've worked with a couple of designers for this initial set including basic apple guy which was really awesome nice I just sent them an email like hey I have this idea like are you game and they were totally game I got some of my own photos in there I'm really that's my favorite thing is how many credits are Stephen Hackett I like that well we wanted to test like would photographs do well compared to like

graphically designed. You're a good photographer. You have good photos, so they might as well go in there. Give them to the world. And we're going to have drops moving forward of new wallpapers, which will be fun. And yeah, the ability to theme a widget based on your own photo is really cool. And underscores

magic of like, these are the colors that look good with this wallpaper. It doesn't miss like in while he was building this, I kept throwing more and more unhinged images at it. And it's,

It just does a great job all the time. So I'm sure he explained this to me over lunch the other day, how the colors work. I could not explain it back to you. Oh, I know. I heard this. I heard a similar thing. I was like, oh, cool. Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah. Color theory. Have you ever seen him like in development mode?

No, I wish I have, but I've never. I know you've seen him a few times. I've seen him a few times in this. And so he's like, he's at his laptop, you know, he carries this like foldable stand and a keyboard and mouse with him. It's awesome. Yep. He recommended that stand to me once. It might be the Roost. I think it is. Or similar to that, I think. They're really good. And that's how people should use their laptops if they're like going to be working for a long time. Yeah. But he is just like, his hands are like a blur. Yeah.

And then they'll be like, hey, look at this. And he'll like swing his laptop around like this whole new idea has just happened. It's it is really incredible. And you can see a lot of that work. Yeah. Widget Smith 7.3. It's out now. Go check it out. Can I tell you a secret about a future drop? Yes. I have some iMac G3 photos coming. Let's go. Let's go. I don't know when in the next couple of weeks at some point they'll be in there.

Can't you control that? Technically, he controls that because it's like caching server somewhere. Technically, you're like U2. You're Songs of Innocence-ing us, right? Wow. There's just millions of people around the world who are going to be forced to see the iMac G3 photos. I'm not...

I'm not putting that as people's wallpaper. That would be the true Songs of Innocence. Like you unlock your iPhone in the morning and it's a picture of a tangerine iMac. It wasn't the only music I could listen to. I could choose other music. But like, I, you know, it was just there. And so like, I guess it's the same where you're just like, hi, here's an iMac. Would you like it? Yeah.

please look at my iMac I did have him order them in the color the color order is in release order of the iMacs obviously he had tangerine first I was like no tangerine can't go first even though it's the best one I am you too that's a really upsetting realization you're really good too can I get like I know David was just with you I wish that you he was still there so you could do like the the finger thing

You know, you can touch your fingers together. Maybe we did. And then IMAX to millions of people around the world.

Speaking of music, it's 10 years of Apple Music. Apple celebrated 10 years of Apple Music in a, I think, truly chaotic way. With a press release. They built an entire building. No, they built a building for musicians. It feels to me this is like the Developer Center but for music. That's what they did here. It's in LA. And similarly to the Developer Center, it's like, here are all these facilities. How do you use them?

Don't ask. Here's the thing that kills me. So our friend Ryan wrote this at 9to5Mac describing what's in this building. And he's quoting from Apple.

The last bullet point, the A-list corridor and the archive corridor showcasing images and artwork of unforgettable moments from Apple Music's past and present. So at some point you're deemed cool enough to be in the A-list corridor. And then when people don't care about you anymore, you get moved into the archive hallway. Oh, no. Oh, that's really sad. That's rough. Oh. What do you think Bono is in here?

Well, you know what they do, though, right? They know someone's coming in. It's like, oh, you're in the airless corridor now. Oh, it's a living document. It's a living... And they just move you from one to the other, you know? Just like, oh, Stephen's coming through. Let's put the IMAX in the airless corridor, you know? So he can look at them there. This facility looks truly unbelievable. Like, there's these...

This room, which looks like a spaceship, and it's immersive spatial audio where you can listen to it. And they've got podcast studios and stuff in there too. Sounds incredible, but I don't know how you get to go there. I will go there. I'll go. I'll go there if people will let me. I'll go there. You know what? You don't even have to put me in the corridor.

That's true. We just want to use the studio. Let us record in that podcast studio. You know, you say that. Historically, Apple has done a pretty bad job at setting up podcast spaces for us. One year we just recorded in a hallway. That was the first one though, right? It's gotten better. Yeah, they do a good job. The last one was pretty good. Federico is pretty good, right? It was good with Jason. I think that the most recent one was the best one I've seen from them to date. Good, good. They get better. They get better.

They also have a replay of 10 years of Apple Music history for users. So you can go in and there's a special playlist and it shows you over the last 10 years what has been your most listened to music, which is cool. Yeah, about that, I got some problems with it in the sense that... So I'm...

I've been using Spotify for a year. Over the past decade, I would say I've used Apple Music for like eight years and, you know, combined all the times that I've switched back and forth. I would say it's an eight to two split, you know, eight years of Apple Music, two years of Spotify over the past decade. So I do have like most of my history is in Apple Music.

Now, my problem with this playlist is that they don't do any sort of like sorting or... Like, it's just a straight up list of songs by play count. There's no AI in it. There's no algorithmic... Like, for example...

The album, and Stephen knows about this, I have been listening to Plants by Deadcap for Cutie for the past, well, 20 years, I guess. And it is my go-to album for relaxing at night and falling asleep, especially when I'm having a hard time falling asleep. I just love to put on Plants and fall asleep to that record. Not because it's a boarding record, just because it puts me in a really, really good mood. Amen.

But just when I open my replay all time playlist, the top, how many, 12, 11 spots are all the songs from Plants. Okay. Really, it would be nice to have just like a representative. Exactly. Like just do something. So no, this is just a straight up play count in a playlist. I mean, okay. I mean, I'm pretty sure.

If you have a Mac and you can put together a smart playlist with the same filters, like give me the top songs from the past 10 years, you're going to have your replay all the time. Oh yeah, it's just a pure smart playlist. Nothing else is going on here. My playlist is kind of ruined by the fact that when I stream, I have a playlist in Apple Music that plays, so it's just all that. But if I go down far enough, then it's a lot of Taichou,

Vampire Weekend, Jungle, Fleetwood Mac, Maggie Rogers, Foo Fighters, 1975, and Churches. And Two Doll Cinema Club. Foo Fighters. Foo Fighters! They just announced a new song today, by the way. Yeah, I haven't listened to it yet, but I could see that. I just found a very funny thing, and music on the Mac, I was trying to build that playlist, and there's a limit option. Minutes, hours, items...

or megabytes i only want 25 megabytes of music please and thank you oh wow that is a that is an old school feature that's ipod shuffle history right there boys like your sanrio how much can i get on this sd card that's right that's good 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

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That's squarespace.com slash connected and the offer code connected to get 10% off your first purchase and to show your support for the show. Our thanks to Squarespace for their support of Connected and all of Relay. Mark Gurman is reporting that Apple is considering partnering with a third party to power Siri.

Apple has been building an LLM of their own, which was hopefully going to be powering a new version of Siri in 2026. If my memory is correct, this was not the more personal Siri. This was like a whole new endeavor to actually make it what it should be in today's world.

They are now talking to, like actually having meetings with both OpenAI and Anthropic about one of their models being the back end for a new Siri, potentially abandoning their own efforts. Give a couple of quotes from the piece. The iPhone makers talked to both companies about using their large language models for Siri.

Mike Rockwell and Craig Federighi don't see the need for Apple to rely on its own models, which they currently consider inferior when it can partner with third parties instead. And Apple believes that running the models on its own chips housed in Apple-controlled cloud servers rather than relying on third-party infrastructure will better safeguard user privacy. To add on to that last part, the conversations that they're having, they're basically saying to these companies, you give us privacy.

the model and we'll run it. Like we want a custom version that will run on our hardware, like either on device or private cloud compute, probably private cloud compute, right? If it's Siri to be realistic. That's kind of where we are. That like they are now, and my thought on this before I hand it over to you two to talk about as well, is that whether this is going to happen or not,

The fact that they are considering it is important. The fact that they are actually having meetings with these companies is even more so. And that's probably how this information has gotten out. Mm-hmm.

I have so many thoughts and questions, as you can imagine. First off, I will say, I said this two months ago, and I'll say it again. This is Craig getting his way. This is exactly what they should be doing. This is exactly the sort of vibe that we got from the original German report from a couple of months ago about sort of Apple not being so, and especially Federighi's team, not being so religious about not using external technology and external AI providers for AI features on their platform. So,

I will say upfront that I think this is a good move. Is it a short-term solution? Possibly. But there's nothing, I think, especially right now when it comes to marketing, when it comes to telling people that you have an AI platform, that you have an AI-capable phone, and you've got to fix Siri. I think the short-term is especially important. I continue to be also skeptical of the long-term. Are we so convinced that Apple is going to have a Siri LLM that...

with comparable quality to, let's not even say the big models, right? Let's even just say GPT-4.0 or even GPT-4. Like, are they really going to have a GPT-4

equivalent Siri large language model by next year. Happy to be proven wrong, but I see these comments from people saying, oh, they're just doing this for the next six months. I don't think this is the kind of thing that you can fix in six months, but we'll see. Yeah, and also Mark Gummer makes a really good point in his article, and I'm not entirely sure from my memory if this is from having conversations with people or not, but if they do this...

the people at Apple who are building this technology will leave. And I think he spoke to people who said, if Apple decide that we're not going to be building R and L anymore, or we're going to partner with somebody else to do this, I'll just go to OpenAI. Yeah, or Meta, who's offering $100 million signing bonuses right now. Yes. So if they do make this move...

It's going to be even harder for them to do whatever it is they would need to do. But I just don't think they need to do it, right? I think the best possible thing to do is to just be a good platform, right? I know I'm not the only person. Everyone's saying this now in our space, and I think for good reason. Just be a good platform, a good computer for AI to work on, however it might be, and partner with people and do all the stuff you've got to do.

I still think they should be building their own large language model, which is why I think what I would like to see them do is basically a reverse Apple Maps situation, where instead of debuting a version of a serialized large language model that sucks...

Keep building it in private. And in the meantime, keep the Google Maps equivalent of an LLM. So partner up and continue teaming up with OpenAI or Anthropic. And I have some thoughts about that. But keep building your own thing

close doors in private, keep trying to understand, like, can we actually get there in a year, in a year and a half? Like, do we actually have the knowledge and the team and the resources? And up the spending. Like, there's no world in which Meta can afford to pay more for AI engineers and product managers right now than the most powerful tech company in the world, which is Apple. Like, there's no... There shouldn't be any timeline in which Apple is not going to...

Tim Cook is not opening his wallet and be like, okay, look, all right, how much do you want? They should be doing exactly that. I know that it's a crazy situation to be in. It's ridiculous that there's now this bidding war between Google, Meta, OpenAI, and Anthropic on who can hire, who can put together the most superstar of an AI team. But hey, this is the timeline we're living in now. And either you play ball or you don't. And I think Apple should play. But regardless,

So OpenAI or Anthropic. So I think this is a really reasonable choice right now, but I've been thinking, like, how do you choose between ChildGPT or Cloud? When it comes to having a Siri, like an LLM-infused version of Siri. So when you're talking to Siri, first of all, you want fast interactions, right? So you want quick responses. You don't want latency. You want something to happen quickly. And you want Siri to...

understand you and also follow your instructions and i do believe having played with all of these things for the past several months i really do think that when it comes to instruction following cloud is the better model right now both sonnet 4 but especially opus 4 are really really and even previous version of cloud versions of cloud were good i think in general

the work that Anthropic has done for instruction following and making sure that the LLM sticks to what the user is asking, I think they are best in class when it comes to that. I think the main problem when it comes to Anthropic, when it comes to Cloud, is that historically, Anthropic's inference platform has been very bad in terms of performance and speed.

They're based on Amazon Web Services, obviously, because Amazon owns a stake in Anthropic and they have their own investment thing going on. But obviously, Apple wants these things to run on private cloud compute. So,

First of all, I don't think it's as easy as saying, Anthropic, give us your model. We'll just drag a zip file on private cloud compute and that's cloud. Like you got to... Potentially you need to... Potentially you need to retrain the whole thing. You need to...

Not retrain, but basically you've got to run on a completely different architecture. So it's not as easy as saying, well, give us the code, we'll put it here, it's going to run. It's a month-long process, I assume. But the main question is, assuming that you've got it running on private cloud compute,

Can Sonnet, like, let's, again, disregard Opus 4, which is a huge model. It's not going to run fast. Can a version of Sonnet, Cloud Sonnet 4, assuming Apple is going to ask Anthropic to run Sonnet 4, can Sonnet 4, without reasoning, so, again, assuming you don't want to wait too long for a response, can that run quickly on private compute as quickly as Siri?

But the main problem from my perspective is, isn't the whole thing with Siri right now that a portion of Siri runs on device? Isn't it the whole thing that Apple has said over the past few years, we have continued to upgrade Siri so that some of your requests...

can run offline on device. And then when necessary, we're going to go to the cloud. Like that's the whole thing. Like when you're setting a timer, when you're setting an alarm or even creating a reminder, I think like you're not going to the cloud, you're doing so on device. And by definition and by the laws of physics, if something runs on device, it's going to be faster than whatever latency they're going to have on private cloud compute. Right? So

Question. How are you going to do that? Like, you cannot. I think they can have an Apple intelligence model operate the on-device stuff. And then, because remember they said they have a model that decides where it goes, right? Right. So we're basically looking at an Apple take on, this is interesting because a bunch of companies have been exploring this space of like dual LLM systems.

Apple has their own flavor, which is they have the sort of the orchestration model that takes a look at the requests and says, well, I don't think I'm capable of doing this. I should go off to the cloud. Google has actually published a paper on something similar. It's a system called Camel. And it's basically like this dual LLM system that was theorized by Simon Willison and applied...

by researchers at Google for a different purpose, not to understand the request, but to prevent prompt injection. It's a really fascinating paper where basically Google has these two LLMs talking to each other, one of them being quarantined and basically being unable to execute code, and the other model that actually takes the requests from the safe model. It's really fascinating. You should go take a look at the paper. So that's a potential project.

like to have the Apple intelligence model coordinating and saying, well, I think this can be done on device and this other thing should probably be done in the cloud. But still, still,

Assuming all of that works and assuming you team up with Anthropic, they have Sunnet 4 on private cloud compute. How do you fix the very fact that Siri sometimes doesn't understand you? Like the thing you're speaking into the microphone doesn't understand you. Or, for example, a scenario in which I ran into the other day where I asked Siri, can you give me my schedule?

for the upcoming week. And Siri understood that it could do that on device, but it just gave me my tasks for today instead of the upcoming week. So...

How exactly do you fix the problem where Apple intelligence may hallucinate? Well, I think I'm going to be able to do this on device. And I think the user is asking for events and tasks due today, while in fact, the user is asking for data for the upcoming week. So that'll be interesting. Well, yeah. Well, maybe that's like...

They can't? Maybe the answer is just can't?

And I think here instead we're talking about something else. We're talking about infusing Siri with LLM capabilities. So if we are following that trajectory, I think we're talking about getting rid of the on-device parts of Siri. I even think this is the kind of thing where you may actually launch it as a beta preview that is completely separate.

from the existing on-device Siri. That may be a solution for Apple to say, hey, look, you can continue using the traditional Siri. It's going to have some stuff on-device. It's going to have some other stuff in the cloud. Or you can opt in for a beta version of Siri LLM where it actually behaves like a large language model. You can have conversations. You can have back and forth. There's even going to be an app where you can have text conversations with it, like a proper chatbot.

I think that's what we're talking about because it doesn't, from my perspective, it doesn't make a lot of sense to have half and half. Like half Siri, silly, stupid Siri on device and the other half is actually Cloud coming in and be like, uh-huh, Siri, you got it wrong. I don't think, it doesn't make any sense to me. I just wonder if though, like the device control stuff, if that has to be dealt with. I guess it didn't always get dealt with on device, right? Yeah.

It wasn't always. They switched and, I don't know, potentially got even worse. I don't know. Just one final thing about OpenAI. Why not OpenAI? Obviously, they already have a partnership, an existing relationship with OpenAI, which I think is an important factor right now. Apple seems to suggest that they're using GPT-4.0 when it comes to their integration right now.

I continue to be a little skeptical that it's actually the latest version of GPT-4.0 that they have with child GPT integration in Siri, but whatever. That's beyond the scope of this argument. So they have an existing relationship. Somehow, OpenAI is letting Apple use their model for free, which is nice. So they obviously like each other.

But I do think that when it comes to instruction following, so being able to follow the instructions of the user, I think that all of the GPT models are worse than Cloud. The one that is better than 4.0, than 0.3, than 0.4 mini is GPT 4.1, but it's expensive to run. And it's kind of slow. Like it's not as fast as 4.0.

It's expensive. I don't think OpenAI will let Apple use GPT 4.1 for free. Now, two asterisks are important to mention here. The first one, OpenAI as an open source model come in the summer and they have said it won't run on phones. So should Apple take a look at the open source model by OpenAI? I don't think so.

I bet that's obviously going to be much better than the model that they have. I don't think Apple is just going to say, oh, we'll take OpenAI's open source model. We're going to put it on a private cloud computer and call it a day. OpenAI also has GPT-5 coming out this summer, potentially. And that's the big deal that's happening in OpenAI land in the upcoming weeks. And Sam Altman has said GPT-5 is going to be a big release. It's going to take...

all of the aspects of the research and the work that they've done lately. So it's going to be a big model, you know, GPT 4.5 style, the model that was like huge model that nobody cared about because it was kind of weird. They're going to combine that with the speed of 4.0 and it's going to be a true multi-model release. Also in the sense that in addition to images and text and, you know, URLs, for example, it's going to be a really,

it's gonna be the kind of model where it will know whether it's supposed to answer you quickly or it's supposed to reason over your request I cannot describe how much I hate hate the

Yes. Yes. Which is, OpenAI seems to be very much aware of how ridiculous that old thing has grown into, you know, that model picker. They are responsible for it, though. Yes, they are. If they're unhappy about it, this is the bet they made. Who did this? We're all trying to find the guy who did this.

Yeah, yeah. So they said they're going to unify everything. But again, I doubt that OpenAI will let Apple come in and say, sure, take GPT-5 and run it for free at no cost on private cloud compute. So I think, realistically speaking, from my perspective, what we're looking at is a partnership for a separate version of Siri that is a chatbot that

that is potentially labeled as a beta version opt-in, no on-device processing, or as very little as possible because the main problem with Siri is that it doesn't understand you. And they obviously want a version of Siri that understands you and that behaves like a chatbot, like a large language model. I think they should do this. I think it should potentially be a separate opt-in different version of Siri. We'll find out.

They've got to pay these companies, though. I mean... Right? Yeah. I don't think Anthropic is going to... I don't think Darga M-O-D is going to sit in front of Tim Cook or Eddie Q and be like, yeah, sure, take Silent 4, run it for free on private car compute, whatever. It's good for our exposure. No. Like...

It's different with the way that ChatGPT integrates right now, where it feels a little bit more like advertising in a way, right? Where it's like, this is provided by Open. But the point where you're just straight up, the entire Siri infrastructure is powered. It's like, no, you've got to give us some money now. So what you're saying is these companies with LLMs don't want another company to use their work without paying for it.

I walked right into that one. Yes. Yes. Interesting. Yes. Yes. Yes. Silly me. This episode of Connected is brought to you by FitBod. When you want to change your fitness level, it can be hard to know where to start. That's why I'm pleased to let you know that FitBod is an easy and affordable way to build a fitness plan that's just for you. Everyone's fitness path is different, which is why FitBod uses data to make sure they're customizing things exactly to suit you.

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But you can get 25% off your membership by signing up at fitbod.me slash connected. That's fitbod, F-I-T-B-O-D. Fitbod.me slash connected for your customized fitness plan and 25% off your membership. Our thanks to Fitbod for their support of the show and all of Relay. Big news, tiny processors coming to a new MacBook. I am fascinated by this report.

Yeah. So this has been, as Jason pointed out in his Six Colors article, it was rumored a couple of years ago that Apple was looking at putting an A-series chip, so the chip from the iPhone and the entry-level iPad, putting that chip in a entry-level Mac laptop. And...

A couple years ago, it kind of made sense, but it sort of didn't really amount to anything. Now the rumor's back with Ming-Chi Kuo having a report on X, and then MacRumor's actually saying that they have seen code from Apple software with a reference to an A18 Pro running macOS.

which is fascinating. So I want to break this into three things. Just like Steve Jobs did when he introduced the Power Mac G5, we have the chip, the system, and the product. Talk about these things in three levels. We're lucky to have our own Steve Jobs here with us today. Yeah.

It's true. Thank you, Steve. Thank you, Steve. Oh, finally, I get to call you Steve. Yeah, you're Steve now. For this conversation, you're now Steve. Feels gross. So as Snell points out, I don't know if you guys know this, Jason really likes charts. They're very handy. Really? He's a chart man. Chart man. Chart man. Chart man. The A18 Pro is...

is 46% faster than the M1 in single core tasks and is basically identical in multi-core and graphics tasks. That is wild to me. You know, the M1, I can't wrap my mind around this really. The M1 is getting ready to be five years old. The Apple Silicon transition started in the fall of 2020 with the M1.

And in, you know, we've had four generations. We've passed five years since announcement. Yes. It was WBDC five years ago. And in those years, the a series has continued to improve and improve. And so that means the 18 pro even in its worst benchmarks is similar to the M one. Like when you get into Ram and SSD bandwidth, uh,

It struggles a little bit against the M1, but in single core being in between the M3 and M4 is huge. And a lot of users who just need a laptop for school or work who aren't doing production work the way we do single core is what makes a machine feel fast and almost all of those things. Right. And so it being 46% faster than the M1 and single core is a huge percentage. I have no doubt the A18 Pro is,

could handle Mac OS from a power perspective. The M one, the M one does. And the M one. So I have an M one MacBook air. I pulled it off the shelf this morning to just from re acquaint myself with it. And it's totally fine. Like it's great. And, and something that's 46% faster in single core would be even greater. So yeah,

I have no doubt the A18 Pro could handle this. And of course, the A18 Pro supports Apple intelligence, which any new Mac will have to do for better or worse. So that's the chip. Let's talk about the system that what you build around the chip. And one thing you run into immediately is IO. And so the A18 Pro has USB 3 support at 10 gigabit a second, which

not Thunderbolt. Remember that we talked about this in the lead up to these, these current generation of phones, like, Oh, well the pro phone have Thunderbolt. They haven't done it yet, but they are doing USB three as opposed to USB two on the non pro system on a chip, which is just ridiculous. Like everything should at least be USB three. Now. Um, I said in my post that, you know, maybe that would lead to confusion for some users and, um,

I stand by that, but at the same time, if you're buying a potentially very cheap laptop, it probably doesn't matter. And for most people, they don't care. They want USB-C. People don't care about Thunderbolt. They want USB-C. Federico cares, but he's Federico. I mean, obviously, I was going to chime in. Obviously, the big problem here is that I don't think you can do USB 3 at 10 gigabit per second. I don't think you can do external displays.

For sure, you cannot do 4K60 because that 10, it's probably not enough. I don't think you can do that. So potentially, this computer will not let you do a 4K external display. Which I think is fine. I think it's probably fine too. I'm going to jump ahead a little bit if you don't mind, Stephen. Sure. Because in your post, you reference this machine coming in at like the 999 point. Yeah. And I...

I don't think that that's what this is. Jason was talking about, we were talking about this on Upgrade 2 and Jason mentioned that. I think this does not sit in any price slot that Apple is currently occupying on their website for a Mac. I actually agree with that. The whole reason that this product exists is it goes below and, you know, we were talking about this on Upgrade 2, like Apple has seen

whatever success that cheap Walmart M1 MacBook Air has been and has been like, why are we giving Walmart any of this money when we can just make a Mac ourselves for this money and get all of the money?

Yeah, I don't disagree with that. I sort of hedged my bet on that in my post and I wish I hadn't because you're not the first person to say that to me today. Because I don't think you can replace anything and do less with it. And I didn't... Federico, that's such a great point about the displays because...

That would further my point of you can't say this is the new entry-level MacBook Air and now it doesn't support external displays, but I think you can say this is now the new entry-level MacBook Air and it's just a single display experience. It's your laptop and that's the end of it.

No, it's just a laptop. You could say that. This is a laptop. Honestly, I think they call it the MacBook. I think that name comes back for something like this. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. They should. They should. They should not call it the Air. The airline is actually kind of confusing now because you have the M1, which you can get for $649 currently at Walmart, and then the M4, which starts at $999. They don't look the same. They don't have the same features.

Obviously, the performance is pretty different. So I think USB-C at USB, you know, tinkering a bit a second, like, I think it's fine. Would it power any monitor? I'm sure that it would. Like something. It's just not going to be... Not 4K60. Right. But like, in theory, you could plug it into a display. You're just not going to have a good... 1080 for sure. Let me see. 1440p.

Like, the studio display requires a Thunderbolt cable. It does. It would not push the studio display. Yeah, but it could power... I'm sure LG make a display that you could plug this into and it would work. Mm-hmm.

But it's just not going to be great. I think potentially you could do 1440p at 60. Yeah, because you're at 6 gigabit per second with 1440p at 60. So realistically, you could plug it into a 1080p display. You can do 1080p, 1080p. Yeah, you cannot do 1440p at 120. So you can do 1080p. You can do 1440p at 60 hertz. Maybe 1080p at 20 hertz.

120. Yes. And you got to wait four minutes to move. Gaming on the Mac. Am I right? So you can do, so you can do 1080p at 60 or 120 or a 1440p at 60. I think it's reasonable.

But that's the thing of like, you can plug into a display, but like that's a messy situation for Apple to explain. So it's like, you can plug it, you can plug it into a 4K display. You're just going to get the, you're not going to get the native resolution. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. I mean, and that's really what I was saying about it, about the confusion it brings is just explaining that sort of stuff.

But I would imagine that out in the world where people are most interested in the cheapest laptops, like education and just like a fleet of laptops for business workers, like 1440 is probably, uh,

probably fine it's a laptop it's just a laptop it what it is is a computer that you use on your lap like don't worry about anything else like this is a laptop it's like the laptop's laptop it's like this is what it does forget about everything else like it's not important right like really it is a way that you would promote a product like this of like look at this thing and they'll probably make it look fun maybe what do you think yeah so so the

Going from the system to the product now, you gotta have my shtick, okay? I'm sorry. I've helped you get to point three, right? It's true. Yeah. Walk quietly and carry a big shtick, as they say. Hello? Yeah, we're still here. Like, I just don't... I didn't even understand the reference. Like, I don't even know what that means. Yeah, it's an American president thing. It's fine. So, the... Yeah, so I think there's two directions I could go with the design. The simplest thing...

And the most cost effective thing would be you take the M1 MacBook Air, which is really like the old Retina Intel MacBook Air design from 2018. And you pop an A18 Pro in it and you call it a day. And so it's wedge shaped, no MagSafe, just USB-C ports, Touch ID, and

I think it's a real possibility they do that, but I think that's really boring. What would be more exciting and the direction I hope they go, and Ming-Chi Kuo says this in their post on Twitter, they rattle off some colors.

And what I thought of immediately was the Framework 12, their new little laptop that comes in fun colors. Yes. And, I mean, they designed that laptop with, like, basically, like, four people. I mean, Framework versus Apple, huge gulf in terms of the amount of resources they have.

yeah surely apple could design something but this is exactly that the framework 12 steven is such a great like example of how do you make a fun computer today yeah yeah like i have no need for one but i want one yeah you know and that's like the most that's like the most uh praise i can give a pc it's like this looks sick and i want one even though i'll never use it yeah

So you could, you could design something that was fun, but also that makes sense for these types of users. Now I'm not saying you go full iBook and do like rubber injected molding colors, right? Like they're not going to do that, but are there things in the wedge MacBook air design that you could improve or change to make it an even better computer for people who are shopping for a $700 Mac? And yeah,

I'm sure that there are like, I would hope that this would have Mac safe. Cause that's like a quintessential Mac experience, but having colors, even if they did, uh, got rid of the wedge and did a slab design. So you could like really get bonkers battery life out of it. Um, I think all that's all, I hope all that's on the table. And I know that some people look at this and say, gosh, Apple should make the 12 inch Mac book again. Um,

And I would argue that that is not what this product should be. I think there is theoretically room for an ultra thin, small, like sub notebook from Apple. Again, people who love the 12 inch MacBook really loved it despite it being just to be honest with you, a pretty bad computer in a lot of ways, people love the size and the lightness. But I think looking at this, if you're looking at a 700 ish dollar laptop,

MacBook, I think a 13 inch display is basically as small as you can go and still be mainstream enough to fit the needs of people who want to buy a $700 MacBook. I think if you're thinking about schools and consumers and students and, you know, companies that just need to have everybody have a Mac, I think 12 inches is too small. I think 13 is about right.

how many usb ports could the a18 pro power hmm that's a good question that i don't know the answer to honestly because this is part of my like i think it has to have magsafe for that reason right usb usb 3 speeds yes 3.0 yeah 10 gigabit a second i mean we know it can do one yeah right we know it can do one maybe it's do more maybe it's magsafe and one usb c port

I think it might be, right? So we're looking at... I'm looking at the power delivery. Yeah. And it's not clear. These USB specs are so confusing. I think we could be looking at MagSafe on one USB-C port here, realistically. Maybe. It's not great, but maybe understandable. Yeah. So my hope for this product is it's made of plastic and it's somewhat chunky.

So it can go up to 7.5 watts. By default, the USB 3.0 port standard

was designed for 4.5 watts, but by implementing additional specifications like USB battery charging specification, it can go all the way up to 7.5 watts. Now you're playing with power. Yeah, so...

I think MagSafe. I think they should put MagSafe on it. But I want it to be colorful, right? I want it to be made of plastic. I want it to be chunkier. You mentioned the ultra-thin and light. That's the MacBook Air now.

Right? Like, that's the ultra-thin and light. Like, if you want that, you don't get that at the bottom end. You get that at the top end, and that's just what you're going to get. And I agree with the 13-inch. I feel like if you want a smaller screen laptop, hello, can I introduce you to the 11-inch iPad Pro? Like, if you really want a small laptop. Yeah, but you pay for it, right? Like, that's the thing. The smallest, I think, except for the MacBook Air, if you really want a tiny laptop...

In history, you paid more for it. Yeah. Right? The 12-inch PowerBook was expensive, right? Mm-hmm. And the MacBook...

Macbook. There's so much Macbook that's expensive. Miniaturization is expensive. That's the way that that goes. Or do you know what? Buy an iPad mini. You get the smallest screen. Or you get a regular iPad. I feel like this product is going to be a budget product and so it is going to exhibit budget things, but I want it to be fun with it. Because then it will be a fun product to have. Colorful, chunky, plastic laptop? Like...

It'd be fun. I was texting with somebody earlier today. This would be a really fun secondary Mac for somebody who maybe they have a desktop. Maybe they got a Mac Mini or a Mac Studio or something and they want a portable Mac. This would be great. Someone, Stephen? Me. So you're going to have a second laptop? It's just a secondary laptop. Eight terabytes of storage into a $700 computer. I have a secondary laptop now. It's fine.

So we'll see. This is very exciting to me just because, well, for many reasons, but mainly because this is a space Apple hasn't played in before with the MacBook. You can get a Mac mini cheap, but the MacBook Air has basically been a thousand dollar computer. Roughly, I'm not doing any math about inflation, has roughly been a thousand dollar computer forever. And

If they drop below that, it's for education or it's like the M1. It's an older machine. And I would expect an A18 Pro MacBook. God, the Pro naming just comes back to bite you and all these things. I suspect that it would not get updated every year. It would be a longer cycle and that would be fine. But having Apple build something that's inexpensive from the jump is

It's just really interesting because they don't do it very often. And times they've tried it in the past hasn't always gone so well. And I think they have all the pieces here to make something really good. I hope they take it, take the opportunity to make something with this market in mind and not just put it in the M1 air enclosure. But we'll see.

So moving on from small MacBooks, we now have to talk about big awards. We are now grading the Teachylympics. I have no recollection of this. Well, yeah. Like, where was I? You don't have a recollection because you don't know this happened. You don't know this happened. You don't know this happened. What? Because this was on an episode. This was episode 510. There's a link in the show notes.

This was a show that you missed last summer, but we had John on, and then we banned you from listening to the episode. Ah, yes, yes. You told me, Don, listen. That's right. Okay. That's right. Okay. And we've also forbidden you from scrolling down in the notion. Yes, but the Stitch Olympics were public for people. Yes. Everyone else in the world heard it but you.

Yes, every single person on the planet has heard this episode. We did. We YouTubed it to everybody. Yeah. This was the game to remind everybody and to explain to Federico for the first time. We're going to make picks on what source of technology experiments Federico may undertake in the next 12 months. To avoid a space-time paradox, Federico has been forbidden from looking at our show planning document and isn't allowed to listen to the episode.

We will each make three picks. A correct prediction will earn one point when graded in July 2025. That's now. That's now. Passion picks are ungraded and are for passion. You may remain seated.

Yeah. Federico, you're going to have to help us, I think, in some of the, in most of the grading of this. So now, now I can look. Okay. Well, yeah. And we'll read these out to you as we go. So don't read too far ahead. And we'll read John's. Maybe John will win and we'll just never tell him. And we'll ban John from listening to this episode. Yeah.

All right. Well, wait, what would be like the John games? So round one, John's pick was Federico finds a use for Thunderbolt five. Uh, this, uh, John knows me well. Uh, and I assume he was looking at the potential timeline of Thunderbolt five devices. Uh,

This is not a point because I thought about it. I thought about waiting for a Thunderbolt 5 eGPU, but then obviously I upgraded to a full-blown gaming PC. So I am no longer relying on... I sold all of my eGPUs, in fact. So this is not a point, but it came very close.

And also by a similar token, the next item. Yeah. So, okay. I was extrapolating out on your life, right? From my first round pick, which was, I was convinced at a certain point you were going to be fed up of unfurling your fiber optic cable from your office to the bedroom. Okay.

You always said it as if you enjoyed it as a thing. I was convinced that at a certain point, life was going to hit you and you were going to be like, this is ridiculous. Why am I doing this? And eventually I'm going to break this cable. And that one day you would get the approval to drill a hole through the wall to run this cable to power an external GPU in another room.

Incredible. Incredible. Because you stopped using standard GPUs. Yeah, I stopped. So I'm now a happy boy with a gaming PC. Yeah, sorry, Mike. That's not a point. Stephen, it seems that you're up next. Federico tries an e-ink phone to help reduce distractions and get more into reading. This is a point because I did try one. You get it. I did purchase one.

Actually, I purchased two e-ink phones. I tried each for like a week and then realized, oh, I'm never going to be, like, I'm not. I'm not really an e-ink phone person. I forgot how this went down because isn't this cheating? You said two days before recording that you were going to do this before we recorded the show. Stephen, I don't remember how. Read the tweet. At the beach, wanted to try and read a book for a few hours under the sun. Try it.

Oh, okay. All right. Fair enough. I ended up purchasing... Let me see if I can find it. But for sure I have a Books Palma. Everyone does. I do. I purchased something else that I barely even used. I'll try and find it. I purchased it for this website about e-book readers. Six Colors. Six Colors.

Yeah, it's basically like that. I'm trying to see if the superhuman AI search still works. You mean Grammarly. Yeah, I know, right? On top of the Vox Palma, you bought another one? Yes, yes. A few months later, thinking, oh, this one...

I bought one that has a SIM capability, like that you can actually use it as a phone. And I remember trying it. I vaguely remember trying it like around Christmas of last year and thinking, yeah, it's got the same issue. Like I just like using a proper smartphone with like a colored screen and apps, you know? So that's why. But the pick is correct. I did try...

an eating phone to get more into reading. Not about the distractions, but the reading. All right. I'll take it. So the end of round one, I'm winning one to zero to zero. Congratulations. Thank you. I'm sorry for challenging you. I apologize. That's okay. My round two, first pick. Another Windows handheld is declared to be the best result in Federico selling his Legion Go.

Well, I haven't sold my Legion Go, Mike. Although I do think there are now better Windows handhelds, but I haven't sold my Legion Go. In fact, I'm waiting for the Legion Go 2, but Legion Go 1 is now running SteamOS, and I like it. So you think another Windows handheld is the best? Yeah.

I do think that... I do think that right now the Rogue Ally X is better than the Legion Go, technically speaking. Like, it's the better handheld for most people. And I do think that...

supposedly over the next few months, the Xbox ROG Ally X. Jeez, that's a name. That's going to be the best one this year because it's going to have like the Xbox partnership and the Z2 Extreme inside. But right now I would say the ROG Ally X is the more well-rounded Windows handheld, more than the Legion Go.

I'm trying to find a definition of the word sold, which would somehow answer for you removing windows from the Legion Go. I have a suggestion, actually. Okay. These rules don't say anything about half points.

Incredible. You can get a half point. I'll tell you, you can get a half point from mine. I do feel like, especially in the fact that while he hasn't sold this, he's no longer using Windows on it. You deserve a half point. You deserve a half point. Haven't you also, at this point, gotten into a non-sellable point because you kind of ruined it by putting SteamOS on it, if I remember from MPC? Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's unsellable. And it's also, no, no, no. And I mean, it's also modded, right? It's the Legion Go with a little cage in the back for the SSD. So yeah, it's unsellable. Stephen, you're up. I love getting half points. We should bring these back to the rookies. Federico speaks before a government body in an official capacity about AI training.

Nope, this has not happened in any timeline. There was a timeline where it seemed possible. Well, I don't think they would have called me, but it hasn't happened. So...

No point, Stephen. And John said, and this is a weird one, John said Federico buys a 3D printer. No. And also John should know better than I prefer to purchase physical things. I think this was a good pick from him. Me too. Here's where he was coming from, if I remember him rightly, which was you were getting more and more and more into modding things, right? Right. And you have that garage space.

No, I cannot put stuff in the garage. No, I cannot do that. But I think that was the thinking. You wouldn't put one of these in your house. I'm not sure if you should have a 3D printer in the house. I don't know. I would never get permission to do it. Maybe in the garage, right? I think it was the thinking. I get the thinking, but the reality is that I would never get permission to do it. No point.

So at the end of round two, we have Stephen with one point and Mike with 0.5 points. Love it. Good job. All right. Round three. Federico adds a water feature to his balcony. Can you define water feature? I think... What is a water feature? I think it's mostly decorative. Yeah. Or could have fish in it. Like a fountain? Yeah, a fountain or like a koi pond.

I see. More than just like a garden hose for watering plants. It's not an irrigation system. Right. Okay, okay. So that's what I was asking. You were not thinking about an irrigation system. So you don't get any points. We don't have any water features in the balcony. We just have a really good, homemade, automatable system.

irrigation system, but no water features. It's a feature of water, not a water feature. Yes. John said, Federico re-explores the world of glasses that serve as an external display.

John gets a point. Oh, here he goes. I have done that. In fact, I do own and use them occasionally. What are the latest X-Reel called? Pro? Max? Pro? No. X-Reel. X-Reel. X-Reel. I don't have any. I don't think I have the Ultra. Are they really called Ultra? I don't know. Hold on. Why is this website so weird?

Air 2 Pro. Air 2 Ultra? Oh my god. These are all products that they make. One Pro, one Air 2 Ultra, Air 2 Pro. Hold on. We got it. So we're searching for... I'm actually now, while you're doing this, I'm going to read all of their products in the comparison. X-Real 1 Pro, X-Real 1, X-Real Air 2 Pro, X-Real Air 2 Pro plus X-Real Beam Pro, X-Real Air 2, X-Real Air, X-Real Air 2 Ultra.

I feel like this company has been around for like two years and they bring out a new product every four months. So I have the X-Trial 1. Okay. Okay. That's what I purchased at the end of 2024. I like them. I got the custom lenses with my prescription on them. And occasionally I use them...

as external displays for the iPad or for the Steam Deck. I haven't tried them with the Switch 2, actually, now that I think about it. It doesn't work without power. It doesn't.

There needs to be a power source in the middle. The reason I know this is because there's a gaming podcast and they are actually sponsored by XREAL and they tried it during the... Their Switch 2 launch coverage was sponsored by XREAL and they tried it. It's like, ah, it doesn't work. And this is the thing with the original Switch. There needs to be...

There needs to be like a thing in the middle for the switch. Yeah, I got that. I got that dongle. I got that. So you need that. I know what to do. Yeah, okay. But yeah, good job, John. What is that, the Genki thing or whatever? Is that it, right? Genki maker thing? Where it's like you're...

You're faking a powered HDMI or something like that. I got one of those. I got one of those. You still need one of those. It's like a little dongle. What I have is a little dongle that allows you to have both USB charging and USB video pass-through in the same dongle, which is kind of rare as a thing to find. So yeah, it should work. Good job, John. You know me well. Well, we'll see.

And then my last round pick was Federica makes more than 10 flexi picks in one game of the rookies, which is correct. It happened very soon after. You got really excited and then we all did it. And then afterwards, somebody, I think John pointed out that I got my point and I was very excited about that. It was the September rookies where we all went mad.

So at the end of round three, there's been a few changes. We have Steven and OTJ tied with one point. And surprisingly, Mr. Mike Hurley at 1.5 points. So I now win John's share of Mac Stories.

Is that what was at stake? Yep. We all put on the line our ties with you. And so now I get Mac stories. So you have a new business partner. Congratulations, Federico. I don't know how you feel about that. Nice. Nice. You're welcome on board. Thank you. Thank you. I'm blogging now. I was in preparation for this.

So I'm going to be doing the Mac review this year. It's all mine now. You know what, Mike? You're fired. Oh, no! So close. Are you going to give me severance? Yeah, the TV show. That's what I'll give you. Hire me. So, Stephen, can you please tweet, hire me? Hire Mike. Hire half of him. Hire Mike. Hire Mike, because Federico's fired him. There were passion pics, though. Yes. Okay. OTJ said...

Federico builds something new with magnets? No, not since... Not in the fall, not in the winter. Hold on. No, that was before. I was thinking of the MacPad. That was before. This was after MacPad. This was after MacPad, which is helpful because I think there are a lot of passion pics related to the MacPad. Yeah, yeah. Okay, okay. Then no. Okay. Federico finally breaks down and admits his friends were right and buys...

A and Odin 2 and why he hasn't yet. Yes, I did that. I did. I did buy the Odin 2 and then I sold my Odin 2. And in fact, I miss my Odin 2. And I'm really look, I really hope that the rumors of an Odin 3 are correct. By the way, Stephen, this is a gaming handout. I figured it was that or a vape. Yeah.

Yeah. No, I don't vape. Turns out all Federico's friends are vaping. Gamers. To be honest, a lot of similarities, I feel like, between the vaping world and handheld gaming. Maybe. They're all really into kickstands. Next, portable cigarettes. All right, Mike, you're up. Federico returns to WWDC and tries a new food. He doesn't like it.

Yeah. Yes. Yes. What was the food? So, do beverages also count? I mean, yeah. It's something that you eat. You drink. Chris Lawley had me try the abomination of the Dr. Pepper. I don't know why he made you do that. It was almost like bullying, like emotional bullying to you. Like, I saw that video and it's like, I don't know why this is happening right now because this is going to be very upset about this. Yeah, it was terrible. It was terrible. Um,

I also have to file a complaint about some of the actual Apple cafeteria press food. There was something about like, I tried like a cookie at some point because basically my entire week, I survived, especially breakfast and lunchtime on cookies, on chocolate chip cookies, because everything that they made

that was advertised as vegetarian, they seem to have gotten some kind of memo where vegetarian means, oh, you must put lots of raw onion inside, which I really don't understand. You've made this complaint on multiple podcasts, including this one.

And I will continue. I really like the, they claim is vegetarian. What's the claim? Like it could be vegetarian. They have their fancy labels in front of the food, you know, all printed with a nice font and everything says vegetarian. And it's like, sure, eat the vegetarian and then try and talk to people at the conference. You're going to have a good time. Um,

And also I tried this cookie, which was different. I was like, oh, today I want to try a different cookie. It was horrible. It tasted like dish soap or something. I don't know what they were doing. Oh. Do you eat coriander? No, I don't. Why? Because it tastes funny.

That's what was in that food. So people that don't like a common or potentially a common complaint for coriander or cilantro, as it's known in America, is people feel like it tastes like soap.

It does. It really does. Yeah. But not to everyone. I love coriander. It doesn't taste like soap to me. Like this is like a, there is like a thing. There's like a thing that goes on here for the way that people taste. And coriander is like, some people think it tastes like soap and some people don't. And they like the taste of it. So that's what was going on. Too much coriander. John suggests here, John made a third passion pick in the middle of mine.

Federico hires Mike as his taster after becoming convinced that I tried to poison him in 2022. Good idea. I have no doubt that something like this would have happened because he did try to poison you. It was 2023, by the way. Okay. Yeah.

the story is I tried to convince you to come to breakfast with me that day and you didn't and you let John take you to go get a sandwich and you got food poisoning. Mike, you tried to save me. I tried to save you. We went and had a very nice breakfast that day, Adina and I, and you could have been with us.

And he's dead. Look what happened. He nearly lost his life on a plane. Look what happened. I could have died because of John. You could have, but luckily you didn't. Federico creates another Frankenstein computer device. No. He didn't do that. Federico discovers a new kickstand technology. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on.

I did assemble the crazy eGPU that at some point caught on fire and then was fixed in the summer. Yeah, I'm taking that point. I'm taking that point. Because that was like a 3D printed computer case. Yes. I think that was the result of that. And then there was a dangerous smoke that came from that. And then finally Federico discovers a new kickstand technology. No. I don't think so. I don't think so.

I just had two and I was weirdly fixated on your body. Yeah, that's interesting. Who isn't? Who isn't? Interesting. All right. He gets a new technology-related tattoo. No, I haven't gotten any tattoos in a while, unfortunately. I'm ready. I'm getting itchy. Me too.

Federico considers in planting a magnet and or NFC chip into his body. No, no, no, no, no, never, never. Nope. That's not the kind of the kind of tech person I am. I'm sorry. Nope. Huge nope. Not yet. Nope. I also won the passion picks. Federico, come on. Who knows you best?

You know? I gotta say, Mike knows me best. I know you best. Based on... These are very strategic picks, but also very good ones. So... You know, there was strategy in everything. I feel like I get you. I know your thing. I knew the WWDC food thing was going to happen. Like, that was an obvious one. But I was also... See, the thing that... There's a second part to this pick, though, that I predicted you would return to WWDC, which at that point...

You were very much like, I'm never going back there. Yeah, yeah. You know? Because of the food poisoning. Because of the food poisoning, yeah. Yeah. It's a good reason. It is a good reason. But I was confident you'd return and you did. Yeah. Well, so Mike, do you get any title because of this?

Why don't you decide? That wasn't under the rules. You can be the Ricky Benchman's best friend. I love it. I love it. That's incredible. I'll take it. I'm happy about that. We don't need to introduce me as such. Federico could choose to if he wants to. Occasionally. Occasionally I may use your secondary title. Yes. Speaking of secondary titles, it's now time for the show to end.

I don't know. That's sad. One very good. All right. We have a bunch of links for you to check out. They are in your podcast player or on the web at relay.fm slash connected slash five, five, nine. One of those links is to leave feedback or follow up. You have something you want to tell us. There's a form there. You can make it anonymous. You can write us a poem, whatever you want to do.

There's also a link to go join Connected Pro, which is the longer ad-free version of the show that we do each and every single week. So there's an extra section before the show, an extra section at the end of the show, and you also get a bunch of cool perks from Relay, including a newsletter, some members-only podcasts, and access to the Discord. So go check that out.

If you want more of us, you can find us online. Federico is the editor-in-chief of MacStories.net. Mike is the host of many, many shows on Relay. You can check out his work at both Cortex Brand and TheEnthusiast.net. Love it. I got it in there in the template now.

You can find my writing at 512pixels.net. You can find my photography featured heavily in WidgetSmith 7.3. Whether you like it or not. Whether you like it or not. And I co-host MacPower users each and every Sunday. I'd like to thank our sponsors this week, Squarespace and Fitbod for their support. And until next week, guys, say goodbye. Arrivederci. Cheerio. Bye, y'all.