2024 Year in Review: Tech Winners and Losers
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Should all acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind? Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. It is the final episode of the year, and this was our first year in existence from January to December. Thank you all for being with us. So we're going to do a big year in review, go month to month, talk about all the big events as well as stuff.

overhyped, underhyped, and everything in between. This episode is brought to you by 1Password and you, the members who support us directly. I'm one of your hosts, Stephen Robles, and joining me on this final episode for the year, my friend Jason Aiton. How's it going, Jason? It's good. It's good. I think you deviated from the plot a little bit. I deviated from the plot. Normally, it's a cold open movie quote. This time, I did a lyric from Old Lang Sang. Except, hold on though. Here's the thing. That is a quote from a movie.

Do you know what movie they, where the guy tries to figure out what it even means? He's very confused about what that phrase means. I'm getting a feeling of this memory.

But I forget. No, what is the movie? This is sort of inception here. You gave a movie quote and I had to try to get when Harry met Sally. Oh, they talk. Yep. It's in that. So he Harry Burns is trying to figure out what Auld Lang Syne even means. And so you gave a movie quote without even meaning to. And I just thought that was great. We still did a movie. And my my question to you was I have had the lyrics wrong for decades, I think.

I did. Did you know what they were saying? The first lyrics of that song, as in that the words were not old Lang sign, like, like, what do you mean by that? Should all the acquaintance be forgot? I always thought that line was, should all acquaintance be forgot? Like a L L. Uh,

Did you know that it was the Ald? I did. I don't know that I thought about it that much, but yes. Now, there's apparently other... I'm looking at the Wikipedia, so who knows about accuracy, but apparently there's a history here about the poem that was printed in 1711 by James Watson, and that supposedly said, should old acquaintance be forgot? Like OLD. So I'm not... Is Ald old?

Is that what that means? I mean, it's a Scottish word, right? So I have no idea what it means. If I right-click old in Safari and I click look up, it says old is old. I guess it's Scottish English for old.

Well, there you go. I didn't know that. Anyway, this is the final episode of the year. It's been a good year. It's been a big year for the show. I shared on social media. I don't even know if I, I think I shared this with you. We have like over 200 and something thousand downloads for the year, which is amazing. 1.7 thousand subscribers on YouTube.

So just awesome for the first year. So I want to thank you, Jason, for agreeing to do this show with me. It's been a lot of fun. It has been a lot of fun. I'm especially, I have to say thanks to Steven and apologize because I

Stephen sent me this wonderful Christmas gift that really relates in no way to primary technology, but he knows my favorite Christmas movie is Elf and it's not up for debate. And so I got a bunch of Elf paraphernalia. That's really the only way to describe it. Socks, towels, and coasters. Coasters, yeah, and coasters. That's right. And you might have seen an episode drop in the feed earlier this week, which was the crossover episode of Favorite Christmas Movies where Jason joined me and Nate from Movies on the Side Primary Tech.

crossover yeah movie on the side is actually like one of my favorite podcasts and the only way i'm able to become a guest is if i sort of jerry rig my way into doing a crossover episode we just find ourselves recording with you and i mean wait a minute how did jason get over yeah exactly the riverside studios get mixed up no um yeah but that was like it was a fun episode it's been a great year i'm looking forward to another big year because i mean just well first we're gonna have one episode the first week of january like right after new year's so like january 2nd

And the one after that, we're going to record live from the show. Well, I don't know if we're going to be on the show floor. But we're going to both be at CES in Las Vegas. So I'm very excited. We should at least record the intro of the episode from the show floor just so that Stephen can finally say that and have it actually be true. Because the number of episodes that you started that way that were just not true. I know, I know. But I would love to...

I'm going to, I got, I got some fancy mics for this trip. I got, well, first of all, I got a DJI Osmo pocket three and I'm going to use on the trip. And then I got the DJI mics too. Uh, those are good. What I would like to do, Jason is we, we lav ourselves up with these mics and then we go to the TV section and you just talk me through things.

and that convinced me to buy an oled or whatever but but then uh yeah i think that'd be that'd be fun that could be like this that's great i have the dgi the original ones those are such good microphones the best the killer feature of them is you can actually plug the dgi lav into the packs and then they record locally and they're anyway we don't have to go into that no no they're great trust me i'm gonna make a video on them because they are very good but anyway all right we have one uh five star review our final five star review shout out of the year from that virtual boy from colorado and the

regards to last episode where Jason was talking about ice cubes down the toilet or whatever. Virtual Boy said, never flushed ice cubes down the toilet or slept on a spoon, but snow days did happen. Also, battery percentage on, dots on, pencil tip down, phone in dominant sides, back pocket. He's just all over the place. I don't even know. I don't know. Yeah, I think there's some... Hold on. I'm looking. I'm fact-checking you as we go because I'm not sure that everything you... Well, I don't...

There was also someone who was from like South Dakota. Oh, maybe that was in our member area that they were talking about that. I think so. But I just want to say like, again,

We're not talking about what you might have done 20 years ago to get a snow day. It's what kids talk about today. He said neither has his kids. He said neither have the kids. So, you know, I'm just saying. I haven't heard anybody else put ice cubes in the toilet. But I'm good with the battery percentage on Dato. Other than that, he's on my side. I appreciate it. All right. We're going to go through the year, Jason. We're going to talk about the biggest events of the month, January through December. And I want to rate it like,

underhyped, overhyped, appropriately hyped. I don't know what the best phrase for the whole month. Just want to be clear. We're doing the whole rating the month, choose the big products of the month. And then we will, we will discuss that for each product. For instance, just an example. Let's go to January. We'll go back in time in the time machine to January, 2024. CES was in January and at CES, rabbit R one made the big stink about it. Uh, it was the big announcement, lots of excitement. Now,

Now, the reviews for Rabbit R1 came later. This is, of course, David Pierce from The Verge with the video thumbnail that just says, this sucks about the Rabbit R1. The reviews were in, like, later in the year when it became available. The Rabbit R1 was announced at CES in January. The Humane AI pin...

was in between being announced because it was announced at the end of 2023, but it hadn't come out yet either. So we were in the AI gadget hype cycle, but I'm going to say we'll stick the rabbit R1 in January as far as like, was it the hyped cycle? Also correct me if I'm wrong, the vision pro like hype cycle with the early reviews, because it was available February 2nd, but I feel like we started seeing teasers before that, right? People were doing like weird press events and,

I saw Al Roker wearing a Vision Pro or something. Yeah, all these people were going to weird places and they were doing demo round six or seven at that point for people. And this time they'd expanded it to Hoda got to wear one and a bunch of other people got to wear them. And then the actual tech reviewers in that round did not get to wear them. Right. And it was one of the, I feel like, strangest...

PR seasons for an Apple product because it was unlike any Apple product before it. It is a new product category, so, you know, totally get that. But, like, this was, let's see, this is an article from I'm not even sure, but, like, it was these kinds of, people would show pictures of themselves wearing the Apple Vision Pro that the Apple PR person took because people weren't allowed to take their own photos at this point. And they would talk about their experience, and people would have, like, full reviews, and, like,

Even this is like a lengthy explainer about what it's like to use Vision Pro, but there couldn't be any video footage of it. No one had it like in hand yet. And it wasn't until early February, but I'm going to put Vision Pro on

We'll do the hype part in February. And I just remember this being the end of January. It was like, it was really weird. I didn't, I didn't care for it to be honest. Well, I think it's fair to say that for both the rabbit R one and the vision pro January was the high point. January was the highway. Yeah.

yes i think okay we'll reserve the hype judgment for i'm just i'm just saying like i think that that was the as hyped as they were going to get well vision pro i mean i got to try it out at wwdc last year and that was probably a high point for it but the hype was never higher for either of those devices than it was in january fair enough and then the important point there being no one actually had them right no one had them yet and

And then the last thing, this is one of the few tech events you went to last year. Didn't you go to Samsung Unpacked? I did not go to Samsung Unpacked. Oh, you didn't go to Samsung. And I did not go to CES. January was a low-key month for me last year. I just, I planned to go to several of these things, even had plane tickets for a couple of them, and then just didn't go to anything. That's right. Okay, well, then all the Samsung Galaxy phones were announced, and I think were made available shortly after, which I don't...

Did you get any of the review units? You do this year. I did not review any of the devices in person. I still had a Samsung galaxy, something or other from a couple of generations ago. We're showing our, our Apple slant as we did, as we discussed. Anyway, let's, let's rate the rabbit. Our one overhyped appropriately hyped or underhyped. Well, I mean, I think that it was, uh, yes, I'm trying to think of the right word. Uh,

it was hyped and it did not, I don't think it lived up to those expectations. I think that the period in time when it had been announced and yet no one had used it was the, the best period of time for that device. And then people got them and realized, uh,

not only do they want to set your house on fire when they charge, Oh wait, that was a humane app. And we'll get, yeah, we'll get to that. We'll get to that. That really all this thing is, is like a terminal for someone using an Android phone on your behalf somewhere in the cloud. Yes. I still have my rabbit. I want to haven't charged it in months. Uh, overhyped a hundred percent. This thing was overhyped. I mean, overhyped to buy rabbit, uh,

Everyone was skeptical until we got it in hand. And then even then, it was a very small contingent. I think that was like excited about it, but then they quickly quieted because it just doesn't, it doesn't work. It never worked. I think even the thing about the rabbit are one is not just that it was overhyped. It's that, uh,

To some extent, it was a brilliant concept. Sure. The idea that you'd have this gadget that could order you a sandwich. I mean, did you ever get your sandwich, Stephen? I could never get an order. Did it ever show up? Never. Never showed up. It was still on its way. It was this great idea. It was this great idea. But it was so disappointing because it just did not happen. I could never get a DoorDash order to go through or hail an Uber.

And so it is one of the dead AI gadgets in my, I'm adding to my library. Apparently the Robles graveyard of AI. That's what it is. So that was January. Then came February where we actually got vision pro in hand. I literally met my UPS guy at a shady gas station so I could get it early to capitalize on the hype of Apple vision pro. I made like five or six videos about it. This is my video about my kids and friends, uh,

reacting to Vision Pro. This seems like so long ago. It's wild. But there's the Vision Pro and all the reviews came out and it was pretty clear like this is a dev kit. This is something that is a proof of concept. Some cool things like immersive video. But I mean...

Yeah. You use it every day still. Yeah, that's true. And I was going to write an article about how I used it every day for a month. And then it was three months. And at this point, I'm just going to write a one year. You need to tell Apple, I need to hold on to one year so I can make this one. Listen, the review period on the Vision Pro is actually only three months long. But they didn't send it to me until April, remember. But three months is still three months, isn't it?

Anyway. So you're already past what they told you to return it. Steven, I was past it when I went to WWDC, I'm pretty sure. Has anyone said anything? No. That's amazing. No one has ever said anything. I mean, I send the things back. I've actually, I rearranged my office. And so I sent a bunch of stuff back because I'm like, why do I just keep storing like the 16 laptops? And remember last week we talked about iPads. I had like five iPads. And I'm like, this is just getting ridiculous.

Ridiculous. Because I can't use any of them. I mean, how many computers can one person... Tim Cook apparently uses every single one of Apple's products every single day. I can't do that. He uses the iPhone SE. He uses the iPhone 15, the 15 Plus, the 16, the 16. Two MacBook Pros, an iMac. 14 and 16-inch. M4, M4 Pro, and M4 Max. All in the same day. So that was the... Yeah, the Vision Pro, all the reviews came out. Plus, OpenAI search was rumored. Then it didn't... Obviously, it didn't come out. But it was...

rumored and we started talking about it in our episode. I basically went through our episodes and like looked at all the titles of the episodes and what I put in the titles to see. And this was the first time we talked about OpenAI developing its own search tool. And then months later, in October, it became a real thing and you can use it now. And also in February was the first Sora preview where they kind of released the first initial videos and started talking about that video generation. But we'll save the actual hyped rating for Sora and stuff for the month that actually came out.

But Vision Pro, Jason, I'm curious, would you say overhyped, appropriately hyped, or underhyped? I think it was definitely extremely overhyped, but...

I think it's important to distinguish that that's a very different rating than the Rabbit R1 because the Vision Pro is actually a super useful thing and it has actually gotten better as time has gone on. Your Rabbit R1 has just gotten deader as time has gone on. You haven't used it. You don't charge it. The Vision Pro at least has gotten additional functionality, additional content. I mean, the killer update for it just came like last month, right? Yeah, the Mac. Maybe it was this month. Yeah. And so I would just argue that it was, I think it was overhyped.

but I don't think it's a bad product. Yeah, I think I'm going to cheat a little bit. I'm going to say overhyped until it launched and was in people's hands. And then I think it's appropriately hyped now. I think everyone understands the Apple Vision Pro is not for the average consumer. It's not even the thing most people should buy, but it is a concept of the things to come. And I saw this on social media, like,

I do think Apple vision pro rejuvenated interest in headset computing in general. Cause like I knew the, the meta quest two was out there. And before that, the Oculus, uh,

And I never really had much interest in it. But since the Apple Vision Pro has launched, there's this rejuvenated interest of like, oh yeah, the Quest 3, that's really a thing. And now eyeglasses, which we're going to talk about later. So I do think it's created a general interest in the platform as far as like head-worn computing. And I think that will be part of the future of technology, even if it doesn't look like the Vision Pro does today. So I'm going to say overhyped initially and now overhyped.

I think appropriately hyped. I think everybody's hype level is pretty even keel. Yeah. I mean, I think I haven't seen a vanity fair interview with Tim Cook for any other product that they've released recently. I mean, they were, they're pretty all in on this as like the next platform. The interesting thing is, well, I mean, Chad GPT was a thing at the time, but they were, they were clearly thinking that a, like,

They would have probably been farther ahead on AI if they weren't working on the vision pro, because clearly that was the, what they thought was the next big computing platform. They've said it. Tim Cook has said like, we think this is the next big computing platform. It turns out it's actually generative AI. That's the next big computing platform. And maybe they'll find a way to combine those two things. I think overall, like to say something is overhyped, you can have a great product, but if the company that made the great product, uh,

it too much, it's still overhyped. And I think that it sort of feels like the original Apple Watch where at first they thought this was a fashion device. And it's like, no, actually people just want to track their heart rate and how often they stand up. Like that's what people want from an Apple Watch. And then they want you to make the battery better so that it lasts longer. And they've added all these features and all of that stuff is great. But Apple wasn't sure what to do with it at the beginning. Right. And it's, we are now entering like the,

the fitness app version of the vision pro is the Mac screen sharing, right? Like, so we're, we're dialing it in. It's just right now it's ridiculous. Cause I mean, if you're going to spend $3,500 on a vision pro to pair it with your Mac, you might as well just buy this XDR at this point. Like, come on. Like, yeah, I know that's still more expensive, but it's a, it's still a way better like display and it's five years old at this point. And so, um,

I don't know that. I think that is the killer application for it. I just think let's have version two. Let's get rid of the screen on the front. Yes. Let's not worry about like the hand tracking and some of those types of things. Let's just make this a killer device that you can wear, sell it for $1,200 and make it like, if they could make it cheaper than the studio display, it would be the best display you could buy from Mac. A hundred percent. And I still think that immersive content, if it were to become regular, uh,

like also things like live sports and other events, if there were more pieces of content like that, then I think it will reach a wider audience. Again, I think of my father-in-law as the canonical sports ball example, but if he could watch his every NBA game, like he is courtside, he might actually like put this thing on his face. Like that would, that would be compelling. So I do think content is, is another big piece of it. So we'll see. They just released a new, but you don't, you don't need,

Sorry, you don't need past you video though for any of that. No, right. Exactly. Or googly eyes on the front of it. Like none of those things have to happen for to do the things that I 100% agree with you. Like the immersive video stuff where you can feel like you're there sports spend money on that. Just get rid of the stuff that really doesn't actually add to this experience because what we're finding out is other than YouTubers, nobody actually is going to wear these around other people. So like the whole be, you know, awareness of having like this, your eyes show up on a thing.

nope nobody needs that i mean seriously like steven we talked about this i'm gonna plug our crossover episode again but when those things show up on here it's like polar express horrifying right like it is uncanny valley when your eyes show up on the outside of this and nobody needs to see that i'm curious uh on my flight to las vegas i don't know about you i'm going to wear vision pro on my flight to las vegas and i'll let you know how the reactions are we'll see who looks at me you're going to see yes it'll be fine you should you should do it too though i'm just saying

You should do it. Wear the Vision Pro on a plane. You have yet to do it. I have yet to do it. Okay, so Stephen...

One, I'm not ridiculous and so I don't want to wear it on a plane, but I could see the reason why you would want to. I also will just say I travel a lot and I have my like packing routine like pretty well set. So I've had a hard time justifying like, well, where am I going to put this thing? I know it's not huge, but like. Don't you have the Belkin case? You got the new Belkin case, right? Yeah, but what am I going to just carry around like a lunchbox? No, put it in your backpack.

No. Oh, I don't even travel with a backpack. I have like that Waterfield. I got this Waterfield bag. That's not a backpack. Oh, do you have that and the carry on? Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. I do my Waterfield backpack and a carry on.

Yeah. And I put it in my backpack anyway. All right. So that was February, March. I'm going to share an ink.com article here from writer Jason Aten. You might be familiar with him. The M three Mac book air came out in March as well as the tick tock ban here in the United States began part of its new cycle and a side loading in the EU became a thing in March with 17.4. But, uh, the MacBook air, which do you still have that review unit sitting around?

No, I have sent back the M3 MacBook Air and the 15-inch M3 MacBook Air. I sent them both back. So many left. Yeah. Yeah, the M3 MacBook Air, which, you know, thinking about it now, in retrospect, the M3 MacBook Air came out in March. The M4 iPad Pro, which we're going to talk about, came out two months later in May.

But we never got an M4 MacBook Air. So I assume this coming March, February time, 2025, they'll probably get the M4 MacBook Air. They'll probably throw it in there. And then I guess that'll be the cycle maybe. Just new MacBook Air refresh chip every spring, maybe along with the iPad Pros. All the Pro machines get updated in the fall. And then the Pro desktops, whenever Apple feels like it, maybe they skip four generations. Who knows?

but yeah yeah m3 macbook air is still one of the best i mean it's a great computer yeah i mean it's the best version of that yeah computer that you can get it's it's fantastic the only thing that i mean they made the midnight blue slightly less smudgy i guess sort of like yeah they made that a little bit and i mean actually the highlight of the m3 macbook air is that they made a 15 inch version

which I understand is maybe not the most popular thing, but I think it's great that they... I actually think that that is underhyped, but I know that didn't come until later, so we'll have to wait. Oh, that is true because... Oh, yeah. So for March, we have to do the M3 MacBook Air overhyped, appropriately hyped, underhyped. I guess I would say appropriately hyped. Everybody likes MacBook Air.

Like I think it was a press release. They didn't even do an event for it. So yeah, appropriately hyped. Would you agree? Yeah. I would say it was underhyped. I think that the, I think that the M3 MacBook air is better than ever. I think they, they, they kind of sold it.

They were clearly getting ready for like the M4 iPads, right? And so they didn't do a whole lot for it, but I actually think that it is a better device than they gave it credit for, especially because of the 15 inch. Well, I'm going to, so here's, I don't know if you know about this. If you go to, I'm at walmart.com right now.

And the M1 MacBook Air is on sale. Get this, $650. Yeah, if I were you, I'd buy it right now. Just because? Just buy three of them and stick them in. Seriously, these are the... Like Walt Mossberg with a whole closet of MacBook Airs. Steven, listen, you could buy three of these. You have three kids, right? I do have three kids, yes. You could buy three of these right now.

Put, leave them in their box in the closet next to that Mac mini that you bought and hand them to them when they graduate and go off to college. And it would still be like the best computer they could get at the moment. The eight gigs of Ram and the two 56 storage is what holds me up. That's why they're going to be doing a lot of Apple intelligence. You're worried about the gen mojis or something. The way you said that. Oh yeah. They're going to be doing that on their phone, I guess. But all I'm saying is this,

under hyped i think this should be hyped way more you just don't hear but 650 for an m1 macbook air i mean i edited my youtube videos with an m1 macbook pro which is basically the same thing like it just doesn't have a fan but like yeah or a touch bar thing good but you could like do you could get this today for 650 bucks and like edit 4k video you can do some music stuff like so capable like this is this is the deal oh yeah it's great and i agree with you like

eight gigs 256 fine but again for a kid who's going off to college who just needs it to be able to use chrome and write google docs like it's fine that is true that is true all right so moving on to april april we started complaining about google search results which i think is has carried through to today just the ai overviews and all that kind of stuff is annoying but the humane ai pin uh came out and also the delta iphone app the emulator which i wanted to shout that out because it actually is pretty cool did you ever try it or did

heard your kids ever try it i did uh but i didn't have any games for it like really and there was some you could like add to it but i'm just yeah i i have i probably still have it on here except for every time i search for delta it brings the delta app yeah yeah it brings on my next flight my humane ai pin look here it is i still have it and uh i have it sitting on the charger 24 7 and uh it's on like a smart plug so it doesn't charge like constantly but like randomly some afternoons

I'll hear a voice in the distance and it says, your AI, or what does it say? Booster charge is low.

The booster battery pack says booster battery pack is low. And I'm like, I don't even care. But honestly, I like hearing its voice every once in a while. No, I don't. I don't care. Oh my goodness. Does your smart plug, can it detect whether that thing is on fire just in case? It's never gotten that high. Listen, I did stop. Wasn't that the thing that like the egg case or something was burning down people's houses? There was a warning about the egg case. Don't use the egg charging case, which I don't even know where mine is.

but I still haven't, I stopped paying for the stupid subscription. So this is now a paperweight because you can't do anything with it. If you don't pay for the subscription, this, this thing now, you know, they recently actually announced cosmos or cosm OS, you know, their operating system for this actually licensing to put into other possible AI gadgets that are, uh, will be failures or whatever, whatever. Well,

They want to put it in cars, Steven. You use that thing. Could you imagine if you had to, like, can you imagine if you go to change the temperature on your car and you have to put your hand out and wait for the laser to shine? You have to like do, I'm sorry, but this is a terrible idea. This is a company that it's going to just die. It needs to die. It's going to die. Listen, Humanae Ipin, massively overhyped, both by the company itself and the

You know, I never did like a straight Humane AI pin review because MKBHD eviscerated it basically in his video. And it's like, no one's going to outdo that. So I did like some comparisons or whatever, but I would, I would never tell someone to buy this obviously. And it was not, oh, it's lighting up now. It was doing something for a second. It's alive. Let's stop. I mean, this is just so overhyped. And the AI gadget, I can, these again, these two things, the AI gadget world is,

It became a bubble and was popped basically overnight. Like CES 2024, massive AI gadget bubble because the Humane Eye Pin was announced but not released. The Rabbit R1 announced but not released. Both of these devices get into people's hands, bubble pops. And now everyone's on to Apple Intelligence and OpenAI. So massively overhyped. I assume you agree. Yeah, and I mean, part of, like, you cannot exaggerate

overhyped this was by the people that were making it. Absolutely. The pompousness, the self-righteous just commitment to the bit all the way to we are going to transcendentially existentially something like your life will be completely different and you'll never touch a phone again and you're still waiting for your sandwich.

This video should have told us all when Imran Chowdhury and I forget, what was her name? I totally forget. Bethany Bongino. Yes. This video, which they changed their enthusiasm in future videos, but this initial launch video was so drab.

So like they're talking about how this is going to change the world, but they also like, I don't know, are so mad, but I don't know. Amazing. Yeah, it is. It is. Yeah. It felt like a Saturday night live skit. The whole thing. It totally does. That would be an amazing YouTube channel. Someone does SNL skits, but just for tech things that are pretty good. Anyway, so that was April, May, May. We had the M4 iPad pros and,

There was actually, I believe in a virtual event for this, uh, cause we did a live stream after it to recap it, but the M4 iPad pro came out. It was also debuted with that crush ad, which, uh, was rather unfortunate, rather unfortunate. Uh, and also copilot plus PCs were a thing in May. Uh, that's a gross port on my iPad too. But anyway, so that,

Before I ever broke. Well, and they did it. So they did a, they did two press events. They did one in New York city. Right. Cause I went to that. And then they also did one in London. I believe it was, they did a big one in London. Yes. I think the teacher was there. Yep. And I think like Tim Cook and John Ternus were that, that event. And there were none of those, like none of them were at. In New York. In New York.

I think... I don't know if it was Bob Borchers maybe there. There was a couple... There were a couple people, but it was not Tim Cook and it was not John Turner. Because you were there for that, right? Yeah, I was there for that. And then they also had the...

I guess that was, no, that was not, I'm thinking of the, in last year when they, same place when we did the MacBook Pro and the iMacs. But yeah, this was just iPad. And then you recorded at a co-working space for our live show. Yeah, I ran down the street to a WeWork. Knocking on doors. To find a room. Do you have internet? And I went into this little conference room that I totally underestimated. Misunderestimated. I think that's, you're a writer, right?

I can say whatever I want. This is a podcast. It's different. Talking is different than writing. But anyway, and I did miscalculate the amount of ambient noise that there would be at the time. This was our live show after the iPad event. You and the co-workers. Yeah, that's me. I never realized the photos behind me before. This is the first time I'm seeing the blood coming out of that person's eyes. It was traumatizing, but we all got through it. People can listen to the audio version.

Anyway, so the M4 iPad Pro... I also have a theory. Well, first of all, M4 iPad Pro. Underhyped, appropriately hyped, overhyped. I think it was appropriately hyped. This is weird. This is a weird rating for me because I feel like it gets points because...

It's amazing. And they moved the camera. And so every, it is the perfect form factor. The negatives are the ad was terrible. And as much as the, the pencil pro is great. I don't think it was really, we didn't really need a new pencil.

And it's a bummer that the pencil and actually, oh, jeez, I've been meaning to write about this and I still might. The single worst thing about the M4 iPad Pros is that they stopped making the Smart Folio keyboard. I want to go back to using the M2 iPad Pro because the Smart Folio keyboard was the single greatest iPad accessory. I think it's better than the Apple Pencil. And I mean that sincerely 100%. It's better than the Magic Keyboard.

So yeah. So I think it was appropriate. So, so smart folio keyboard massively underhyped, you would say. Yep. I mean, I still have one sitting right here. This is an M2 iPad pro. Yeah. And this thing is amazing. Listen, I wrote, I think it was about an 80 page, I'll say book or whatever on the smart folio keyboard and my iPad pro. Yeah. And it was great. It was a great typing experience. I love bringing it into like a coffee shop because of the material. I was never worried about like stuff getting on it, staining,

I like it was waterproof. So thin too. It was like so thin compared to the magic keyboard. So yeah, it's so good. I'm with you on that. I'll say that's underhyped. The M4 iPad pro I'm going to say is appropriately hyped for

I think there's still a lot of consternation about the iPad OS and some of the capabilities and being hamstrung by software or whatever, but you cannot argue the hardware is incredible. I mean, the thinnest Apple device has ever, Apple has ever made in the 12.9 inch iPad. The 11 inch is also crazy thin, super powerful. I edit this podcast on my M4 iPad pro every week. I mean, it's just incredible hardware.

Sure. I'd love to see iPadOS get a little better, have some more, you know, power user type features like audio input output control, or maybe something where apps can do things in the background, like so Audio Hijack could release an app on iPad or something like that. But I would think it's appropriately hyped. It's incredible hardware. Yeah. And the stacked OLED screen. Yeah. That is underrated. Yes. The screen is amazing. I will, I do want to point out when it comes to the commercials and the ads, I

I am going to point to that crush ad as a slow slope in the degradation of Apple's marketing for its products. And right now we are in like the Apple intelligence marketing and it is clearly not good, like widely reported, not good. And so it does feel like maybe that crush ad was kind of the beginning of like maybe a little bit of losing the plot. I don't know. I don't have no insight into the team or whatever, but,

But I feel like the crush ad, the Apple intelligence ads, there's just been a lot of misses in that area. Well, there are three. Okay. I've actually spent a lot of time thinking about this because I wrote about the holiday ad that they did, right? With the AirPods pro two with the audio, the what's it called? Hearing aid. Yeah. With the hearing aid feature.

And I thought that was a great ad. And there's like, if you think about it, Apple has, I think there's essentially three groups of ads, right? There are these product ads that they do, right? Which are the Apple intelligence. I would put into that the, the crush ad I'd put into it, that kind of thing. Right.

those I would agree with you are kind of lost at the moment. Okay. Then they have like these films. So the Apple, the holiday ones. And then the other kind they have are these goofy, weird things like the privacy ad. They had the Safari one with the little bird, like the, with the surveillance cameras following the guy around and he's nuking them because he's opening Safari. The remote work ones that they did during COVID with the, what do they call those guys? The something, the undesirables. That's not what they were called. The,

I don't remember what they were called. The underdogs. No, I think it was the underdog. You know, and those are funny and then they don't take themselves too seriously. They make a good point.

you know, they're highlighting features of things, but they're not specifically about a product and they're not too sort of presumptuous about it. Those ads and the holiday ads are sort of Apple at its best. You could put with the holiday ad, honestly, the same kind of things like the Apple watch saved my life opening to WWDC or those types of things. I think Apple does those really well. Are they emotionally manipulative? Maybe a little bit. Okay, fine. But they do a good job of telling story. It is these sort of like,

The product ones right now, the Apple Intelligence one, the M4 iPad, those types of things, I do feel like that area is maybe...

missing the point yeah like the the apple intelligence ones are especially bad that's why i started thinking about this because the apple intelligence ones they just and who was it somebody i would i'm sorry that i can't remember who it was but it was the the reporter i think for cena who wrote who's like apple intelligence is for dumb people because that's basically what apple thinks of you they think you're an idiot yeah so then that's

There's just even words that weren't even words in that dude's email. Anyway, but no, you are right. There's a separation of like, I'm just scrolling the Apple's YouTube page and there's just a wide variety of like the heartstrings AirPods pro to add. It is very different than the recent Apple intelligence ads, which is different than Apple.

you know just some of the other stuff that they've put together yeah but so yeah uh it's it's a weird time the apple intelligence ads they just need to change they got to do something different there but uh copilot plus pcs i feel like no one talked about it since they actually came out and like microsoft's recall feature had an issue where it was like everything's being saved as a plain text document everybody's like oh no i don't know what i don't know what to say about it but

Yeah, I mean, I have a Dropbox folder that automatically saves every screenshot that I take because I take a lot of screenshots and I need quick access to them. And so I just have a thing called screenshots and it's in my Dropbox folder. And basically the Microsoft Windows was just doing that, taking a screenshot of your screen every like three seconds and OCRing it and saving it in plain text. I mean, I don't care because there's nothing in that Dropbox folder that I would be particularly worried about because I wouldn't take a screenshot of something I was particularly worried about. Right.

But I don't still want to have it publicly available to anyone. Right, exactly. Copilot Plus PCs, underhyped, overhyped? Does anybody care? I think they're super overhyped at this point, but that's just because I haven't heard anything about them since then. I'm going to say overhyped. I don't know if that's overhyped or not because I don't hear anything about them anymore. But at the time, I feel like they were pretty hyped. It was like negative hype. It's like the air has been... No one just talks about it. We've got a big June with WWDC. But before we do, we have one...

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from apple campus from the show from the show floor here was us doing our dub dub recap live you look a little bit like a hostage at least you're a hostage in apple podcast studios listen it was a very surreal experience to have like seven cameras pointed at me they were probably i don't know at least five maybe nine people in the room with me which is just a strange thing because like i'm used to i'm right here there's no one else around it's just you and me you and the dog sometimes it's just it's yeah yeah

Yeah. Yeah. It was fun though. But, uh, I'm again, hopefully this is a big year where maybe we can do that together at, uh, Apple campus, WWDC. Anyone from Apple? I mean, if you come, we'll figure it out. Well, I gotta at least get a press pass. I gotta be able to like, you know, anyway, I'm hoping, I'm hoping this year, but at DubDub, correct me if I'm wrong, but there was no hardware announced at DubDub. No Mac studio, no Mac pro, no,

Correct. No, no, nothing, no hardware. Instead, the big, obviously we had iOS 18 was the big deal, but the biggest announcement was obviously Apple intelligence. That's where it was first announced. That's where we kind of got a first look at what it meant. We didn't get to play with it until August in those betas. And then obviously it's still rolling out today.

So I'm curious, thinking back and more will be rolling out next year, thinking back to DubDub in June and what we know of Apple intelligence today, you saying it deserved at least a D in my Apple tier list. Was Apple intelligence in June overhyped, appropriately hyped or underhyped? I think it was overhyped. And the reason is because I think the only thing anyone wanted was to make Dingus smarter.

Right. And I think it does a better job of understanding what you're saying, but it is no more capable of giving you an answer to what you're saying. And that is, it's just so disappointing. It is just so disappointing. The best feature of Apple intelligence right now is the chat GPT integration, which is telling that the best feature is not actually anything to do with Apple intelligence. It is. And it's, it may be the best feature, but it's a worst way to use chat GPT. To be honest, it is kind of, it would be better just to go to the app.

But it is pretty wild that Apple did a big software launch and it's just so clear that other companies are farther ahead. Like OpenAI is just so far ahead in the LLM space, regardless of like what they have overhyped. OpenAI may be overhyping their like AGI aspirations and what their reasoning models will be able to do. But just looking at what they...

like have done this year. I did a video recently for Connor on social media. We're doing a compilation of other like tech creators and what they thought was the best tools. And like, if I look at what I actually used in 2024, what new tool did I use? And that was significantly beneficial to my workflows. I have to admit it. Chat GPT is that thing.

Because not only do I use the app on my Mac, but I've incorporated it into several shortcuts that I use many times a week, sometimes daily. And ChatGPT has made my workflow so much more efficient and enabled me to do so much more. Like the amount of content that I make with videos and podcasts would not be possible without that tool. So whether or not what OpenAI is overhyping is overhyped, I think ChatGPT itself, I don't

I almost would say is slightly underhyped, but we're not talking about that right now. But that's, that's just how I feel about ChachiBT because you, I mean, you use it all the time too, right?

I use it. Yeah. Constantly this entire podcast. I've been sitting here using chat GPT. What do I say next? What do I say to Steven and tell me what to say next? But I mean, but I mean, I'm one of the few people, well, I'm not one of the few people, but I called them. I called chat GPT on the phone last week just to talk, just to talk. But I, I just think if you look at Apple intelligence, the way it was talked about the whole, uh, Craig Federighi section on Apple intelligence, we,

We don't even have most of that. And I just looked, I wrote an article in when, I don't know where the, I don't know where to find the date. Oh yeah. And this was in October when it actually, in 18.1 actually came out talking about the 10 best features of Apple intelligence in 18.1. And I just realized, I think I had to stretch to come up with some stuff because none of these things like Siri enhancements, not really.

It's better listening to you and it does let you change your mind. I just love that that is the demo every single time. It's like, because I've been in quite a few of these demos for Apple Intelligence and it's like, make me a list of things that I, well, actually, nevermind. Let me do this other thing instead. It's like, I get it. Like that should not be the killer feature of Siri is that you, because you know what else you could do? You could just stop the Siri thing and start over if you change your mind. Like this is, it's just, it's just absurd.

So, well, we'll see. I'm still... I still want to see what they're going to do with Apple Intelligence in 2025. I just... I don't know if I'm optimistic. Ha!

I'm just kind of like, it just, it feels like there is a thing that Apple could do better than anyone else. And it is the thing people want. And it's the thing that they talked about, which is like, what time does my mom's flight land? And it can figure it all that out. It's like, okay, how long will it take to get to the dinner reservation? And it can figure all that out. And just to, that is the thing people that we want to do that thing. And it isn't German, like saying it may not come till 2026. I don't know. Yeah.

That that's devastating though. If that's true for Apple, that is devastating. It is devastating because surely Google will have something like that at IO this year. I mean, they already talk about how much Jim and I can do for you. German's out here saying like, Apple's going to have its own doorbell, a first party doorbell camera by 2026. It's going to have the home. I don't know. German saying a lot of stuff coming by 2026. Yeah.

Well, and I just want to talk, you said about Gemini. I was listening to sharp tech this week and one of the two of them was talking about like having a list of dates or a calendar and Gemini will take that and we'll actually add them to your Google calendar right now, which Siri can't even do. No Siri be like, you look like you take a picture.

Do you want me to clean something out of the background? No. Even like visual intelligence, which, you know, that was a big announcement at the iPhone event, which was not even part of the dub dub event. Visual intelligence, I think massively overhyped, but even now that it's in our hands, like I did, that was a big part of my video about 18.2 and like even taking a picture of like a date and time with like a header above it. Visual intelligence can't,

can like say all right you want to add this into your calendar but it's not smart enough to pull out other information from what i just took a picture of and it's like big header it was like a concert thing from my wife's orchestra and it's like surely you see this text like you can literally tell visual intelligence to summarize all the text on screen so like it sees it but they're like not doing those extra steps to actually make it that much more useful uh so anyway that's apple intelligence i would say

Apple intelligence overhyped. Also in June was the Sonos Ace headphones and the Sonos app debacle, which, yeah. That was bad. That was bad. I'm not even Sonos, but it was bad. That was bad. I have not, you know, I tried the Sonos Ace. I reviewed them and then I returned them because I don't. AirPods Pro 2 are so good and it's like, yeah. And then RCS, we knew RCS was going to be coming to the phone in June, but yeah, that was that. Yeah. Oh, listen, you know what?

I'm thankful for RCS. I'll be honest. There's a few people I text that are green bubbles, and now I see RCS in the little compose field, and I know that my reactions will be seen. I actually have one group text. Let me see. I think it's with Nate and his brother that I actually get. I can do all the things. It says RCS. It's with two different people, one iPhone, one Android user. Reactions actually work and everything. I'm down with RCS. Yeah. Do you text any? You don't text.

You don't associate with any Android people, do you? I mean, I receive text messages from Android people. Okay. I'm sure that there are times when I respond to them. And yes, the RCS is fantastic. Alive and well. I mean, yeah. I just feel like it's one of those things. Actually, to be fair, there was a situation recently where there was two other people. And it was nice that the...

rcs like seemed like it worked relatively well you could reply you could do whatever that's great i just i just feel like it's a text message well yeah i'm thankful for it uh july was pretty quiet although it was in july when the unofficial apple web blog became an ai content form which is unfortunate just for the history of the unofficial apple web blog and i believe it's still like

an AI contact form today. Like you can just go visit it and it's still all, I mean, this stuff. But I think it was, again, a first sign of like, oh, this is the AI content apocalypse. You know, we talked about the social media apocalypse last week. Yeah. And this was kind of the first foray into like, oh, shoot, this is something that's possible. This now actually is real and it's out there. And I don't, I don't know if I've seen much

I don't know. Do you see a lot of AI just content slop on the internet like that? I mean, I try to avoid content slop, period, whether it's AI or not. Right.

I think I have a finely tuned radar for avoiding content, farmy stuff, period. I just, you know, you do a, you do a search on Google and you know what that you're going to get just complete garbage. The same thing is true. I mean, here's the thing. They're putting it on television as Coca-Cola ads at this point. And my children think it's so cool and it makes me so mad every single time. I'm like, well,

Why? Why is this where we're at? You feel like Coca-Cola should have done a real thing and not AI? Well, let's... I mean, it's obviously computer generated. Yeah. Like all of those ads, the polar bears, the Coke truck, all those things. Yes, I'm saying. But a human being had to do that. It's like the Pixar people. It's not the Pixar people, but you get what I'm saying. It's ILM or whatever. Yeah, do that. Don't just... Whatever magic AI is or something like that. Because it has this weird soft look to it. It's like...

I just makes me feel slimy. All I can think about are the, the hands waving in the sort of videos of the birthday. That's all I can think about. Yeah. It's just terrifying. Yeah. All right. August, we got our first Apple intelligence look in the early betas, but we won't rehash that. The pixel nine happened and all the AI features that let you literally generate stuff in photos you take. So more AI stuff. And I think just the AI photography discussion was a big deal in August. Um,

But I don't know. I feel like this hasn't really been a thing, like a big concern since. Like, honestly, I was really concerned. I was like, if people on their phones can literally generate whatever in the pictures, that's probably a problem. Maybe it's because nobody buys Pixel phones. Don't shoot the messenger. But I do feel like... Hey, I got one right here, but it is a 7A, so it's been around for a while. Right. So I feel like it did not... I don't know. The AI-generated photos, I feel like, did not become as a big of a concern, at least yet.

And we went through the election cycle without tons of like, is this picture real or fake issues? So was it, was the AI photo of adjustment, uh,

concern was that under hyped appropriately hyped or overhyped i don't think we know yet i don't think we first of all no one has pixels so we haven't had a large enough number of samples to really measure but i think i don't think we know i don't think we know yet i think we're we're a ways off because right now it's like oh let me add a dinosaur to this picture of a kid's birthday party and it's like whatever but sure we're not at the point where people are like

What if we make this video of this guy who shot a CEO on the street also have a t-shirt that says, you know, you know, go Trump or something like, you know what I mean? We're not, we have not seen the potential for what this could be yet. That's true. So yeah, but it remains to be seen. A September was Apple. Hang on July. There's one more thing in July. You didn't mention. I'm sorry, but, but anyone who tried to fly on a plane in that month will remember that

8 million windows computers went down because of an overnight upload to CrowdStrike. I would say CrowdStrike very overrated, very overhyped and a windows old version running an old, old version of windows on a computer to schedule all of your employees. Also very overhyped.

I'm sorry. I'll throw your article in there because I know you. Yes. That was pretty wild. That was, yeah. Yeah. Crazy. Bad news. Sorry. Sorry about that. No, it's good. September, Apple's big event. We did another live stream after that event, recapping everything, which was the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro, the Apple Watch Series 10. Not really a new Ultra. It was just the Ultra 2 Redux in space black. You can get a new color. Yeah.

And then it was the AirPods 4. That was basically, that was the whole announcement. Let's do a real quick then. So you got four, I guess we got four things. You got the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro. You got Apple Watch Series 10 and you got AirPods 4. Let's go Apple Watch Series 10. What's the hype level? Apple Watch Series 10. Better or worse than AirPods Max with USB-C? I mean...

that's the lowest bar possible i'm just saying you didn't even mention that one but that was an outfit too right yep that's super all right okay yeah airpods max is version two in the biggest air quotes possible massive apple watch 10 was like just it was good i don't think it was overhyped but i don't think it was certainly not under i don't think it was like yeah i think that's true and then uh airpods 4 i

I think those are underhyped. I think those are a keeper. I think those are a, yeah. I really like mine. This is another Apple review unit I have not returned because I keep using them. Welcome to the club. I really love this. This is how it starts, buddy. This is how it starts. I don't have a whole room. You get hooked on AirPods 4. The next thing you know, you got a Vision Pro and four MacBooks sitting on your desk. I do have my own four iMac over there. So I'm not.

That's staying there for a minute, I'll tell you that. But no, I agree. AirPods 4, I think, are underhyped. I think they're incredible.

The sales on Amazon were crazy for AirPods 4. I mean, you could basically like 140 bucks maybe for the noise canceling version. Wow. So yeah, underhyped. iPhone 16. I think it was adequately high. I think it was good. I don't think it was, I don't think they over-promised it too much. I think the camera button is a little, or camera control, don't call it a button. Where am I sticking it? I don't know. But I think that was maybe a little overhyped in general. But overall, I think solid.

Yeah, I would say appropriately hyped to slightly underhyped because I do think they put so much in the normal phones, non-pro, that they became such a good deal. Like action button, camera control, visual intelligence. Like unless you really wanted the 5X camera and 4K 120, the iPhone 16 is great. And my mom actually upgraded from her 12 to a 16 in ultramarine and the colors are

it changed the ink cartridge the colors were great so 60 yeah i almost reached up to show you the ultra marine but it's actually the camera i'm looking into right now so that would have been which is also another review unit isn't it yes well i was just going to say though every time i pick that phone up i'm like i just want to use this so good yeah it is really good it is just so lightweight and so good but i actually use the 5x camera a reasonable amount i don't think i care about promotion

The only other downside to it is after looking at the 16 pro for a long time, the bezels do look like, yeah, you're putting on a little weight there. 16, the bezel, the bezel did get smaller when you compare them side by side, at least. Yeah. Yeah. Analysis. So the iPhone 16 pro, I'll probably say like just adequately hyped again. I, yeah, I don't think it's,

overhyped because I do think the camera like you're saying the 5k the 5x camera and the video capabilities of the 16 pro I've used some b-roll of the 4k 120 from this thing and it's pretty impressive so yeah adequately agree we also had the meta orion glasses in September which I feel like

I think it's a big thing because I do feel like Meta is really going to push into that come 2025. And it is a proof of concept that is compelling, I think. Yeah, but I think they're still incredibly overhyped because they don't exist yet. They're not real. They brought in a bunch of people, put them in a controlled demo, and then said these are 10 grand a piece and we don't know when we'll ship them. Well, and they said this is not for...

You know, like they said, like they cost $10,000. That is why we're not selling them. Well, they cost $10,000 to make. So, I mean, if you just figure out the margins on a normal thing, they're $15,000 product. Right. So, but I do think it is interesting. And again, to a non-Apple brand, namely Meta, really pushing in a new product category, I think is interesting. We'll see. Yep. So October, we'll go quick here.

OpenAI raised a bunch of money. The iPad Mini 7 was released via, I think just press release and a little video thing, but iPad Mini 7 came out, the M4 iMac and M4 Mac Mini. So I guess we have those three products. And then iOS 18.2 with visual intelligence was in beta. But iPad Mini. Oh, go ahead. What about the MacBook Pros? Oh, and the MacBook Pros. I forgot about those. Oh my goodness. All the M4 things. All the M4 things. So M4 iPad Mini, it's a...

Hold on. Yeah. The iPad mini with the A17 Pro is, I think, what you meant. What did I say? You said M4 and iPad mini. You said M4 and iPad mini, but there really wasn't M4 all the time. That's the dream. Sorry. The dream is an M4 iPad mini with ProMotion. Because that would be super underrated if that was the case. That would be the dream. Give us one of those. I'm sorry. But it still doesn't have ProMotion. Sorry. iPad mini 7 with an A17. Ah.

I think it was probably a little bit underhyped because they didn't really talk a ton about it. But I mean, it's a good improvement. But I mean, it's not like life-changing. Yeah, I would say appropriately hyped, yeah. M4 iMac. I think it was just appropriately hyped. It's fine. I really like it. And I still have to do my video review of it, but it's good. M4 Mac. I have no use for an iMac in my life, whether it has an M4 or not. That's the thing. My kids have been using it like family computer. I've never had like a family computer. And having one just kind of set up in the family room, it's kind of nice. But anyway.

m4 mac mini super underrated like super underhyped it's the it's one of the best new computers they've made in a long time i do although mine is dead right now i don't know what happened that is strange if we were about to start recording and it just went maybe apple bricked it remotely apple's like you got too many i was wondering about that like this one is expired no the statute of limitations on the review unit yeah i will say it is weird looking at the entire year of apple announcements

and thinking the M4 Mac mini might be the most exciting thing they did this year. That's a little weird, I think, but I also feel like that's true. I think the M4 iPad pros were probably still a better thing overall. Like I think they were probably more exciting. And to be honest, I think that the nanotexture display on the MacBook pros super excited. And if they put that thing on an eye on a MacBook air next year,

You could charge an extra 500 bucks and I think it'd be worth it. Okay. Well, I'll say the M4 Mac Mini also underhyped. I do think it's an incredible machine. I agree. I agree. The M4 MacBook Pros...

What do you say to that? I think they're appropriately hyped. I think they're fantastic. I think the base model is probably underhyped because it got all the ports and they upped the base memory on it to 16 gigs. Wait, is that true? Or is it 24? 16. 16 gigs on the base one? I mean, it's a legit MacBook Pro now. It's not just like, here's a thing that we put out there so we can call it a MacBook Pro so all the companies will buy it. It's good stuff. Now you're making me go, I'm going to Apple.com.

I'm going to MacBook Pro. The base has 16. The reason I know that is that the review unit they sent me has 16. How many laptops do you have in that shed? Hold on. We'll be back in 20 minutes when Jason's done counting his laptop. There are seven, but I just realized we did forget something back in May. They released the M2 iPad Airs, which is not a big deal, but they did. That is true. That is true. M2 iPad Airs, solid. That's a solid iPad. It's great. Fantastic. For sure. No, it's good.

Okay, and the... Oh, yeah, an M4 MacBook Pro, I would say, is probably appropriately hyped. I think people are excited about it. They are amazing machines. Yeah. It's good. All right, in November and December, it got pretty quiet. November, Final Cut Pro got a big update. It had magnetic mask and, like, the caption transcription. The Google Department of Justice case is out there. They might get broken up. That's November. And then December, Verge announced its paywall, which was interesting. And then the Sora video generator, which I've just...

basically resolved to make polar bears and medieval knights and that's my entire Sora account didn't Sam Altman tweet that they were like extending the availability of Sora over the holidays because I think he posted something like the GPUs get kind of quiet this time of year and so we've

We've reduced some of the restrictions on even just the chat GPT plus subscription or whatever. So yeah, there you go. You got a boost by the way about the Google breakup. I think that's underhyped. It's going to happen. I think, I think Google is going to get broken up. That's wild.

That's going to be wild. It's going to happen. But that was the, I mean, big year, pretty big year in tech. I feel like, let me ask you this as our personal tech slash final segment before we record a bonus episode. Who do you think company wise came out as like the winner this year? Like looking at the span of the year, the different announcements, the different products you have Amazon, you have Google meta open AI, Apple,

Obviously, NVIDIA is the winner money-wise because they made all the money this year. But as far as excitement, I think people being interested in what a company is doing, do you think Apple still made it? Did someone else take it? How would you think about that? I would say it's got to be OpenAI. I mean, if you just look at the fact that Microsoft's AI ambitions depend on OpenAI, and at this point, so do Apple's.

Right? Like, I don't know how you could pick anybody else besides opening eyes. And that doesn't, I mean, that doesn't mean that, like,

That they're getting everything right. But I think that in the mind share of most people, they probably had the biggest overall year. And I'm not even talking about the fact that they're now charging $200 to some people for using it or whatever. Or you can call them on the phone now and talk to them. I highly recommend that you do that. But my point in my article was like, imagine around Christmas. Whoops, sorry. I just hit my desk. Imagine at Christmas, somebody asks a question and you're like,

I know how we could find out. And you just call 1-800-CHAT-GPT. Like, it's the best party trick of all time. Seriously, think about that. Around the holidays, yeah, just tell your family. Just dial it for them and hand them the phone. Yeah. Put it on speakerphone and just be like, I know how we can find out which NBA player led the league in both assists and rebounds but not scoring and had five technical fouls. The answer is probably dream on green. Anyway, moving on. You'd be a wizard. Be a wizard among men.

So that was the year I would, I would agree. I think open AI, I think won the year as far as excitement releases usability. I mean, I will say iOS 18, I think was a pretty impressive update. There's a lot of tiny things, a lot of little improvements like scheduling a message to send later and like Safari built in summaries, transcriptions when you attach audio to a notes. So there's a lot of like cool features. So I think it is actually a pretty big update this year, but,

But yeah, I think open AI, I think they won the year. Can I, I just want to push back. I know some of our listeners have to agree with me on this. iOS 18 is one of the worst updates in probably a decade. Now, what do you mean by worst? Have you opened the photos app lately?

The photos is unfortunate. Has your phone tried to summarize notifications for you before? Is that up to you at all? Did you hear about the invasion at the school? We're conflating some things here. Now, hold on a second. No, it's an iOS 18 update. Fair enough. It's a flagship feature of their new operating system, and they are garbage. The photos app, literally every person I know whose phone is updated to iOS 18 wants me to tell them how to revert it back as if I'm the one that made the mistake.

Surely this has happened to you, Steven. My children are so furious when their phones finally automatically updated to iOS 18. They were like, can you buy me new phones that have iOS 17 on them? That should be a special section in the Apple store. Seriously, it is the worst. I think it's the worst iOS update they've had in like a decade. I do have to admit, I will agree with you. I'm still not crazy about the photo redesign. I feel like it takes me

much longer to get to what I want to get to than it did before. And obviously I've been using the new photos app for like eight months. So it's, or say six months or whatever. So I'll have to agree on the photos app. I will also say bug control center. Come on. I'm good with control center. No,

But the average person is not Steven Robles and does not automate all of the things in their universe. But how often, how hard is it? Like I haven't even changed any of the placement of anything because it is so bad. Customizing it is a pain in the neck. I will tell, I will give you that too. I will also give you that the bugs in iOS 18 are rampant and it is one of the buggiest updates that I've ever seen. They really need to do a snow leopard update for iOS 19 where just fix all the screen time. Still super buggy.

All right. I retract my statement. Listeners, leave us a five-star review. iOS 18 best or worst? Yes or no? Is it the worst? Yes or no? That's good. And you can also, if you've already left us a five-star rating and review, you can do it again if you want. But go to social.primarytech.fm and leave a comment on the post for this episode. And you could tell me I'm wrong about iOS 18. I'm also admitting I am slightly wrong about iOS 18, but there's also some cool features in it. It's just a very conflicting update. I'll just say that. Also.

I'll say that. Yeah, there are some cool features in it, but overall, the thing is just, it is overall the worst, I think, update they've had in a while. And I think they were just, everyone who was writing software was drafted onto the Apple intelligence team. And unfortunately, they didn't make it across the finish line either. Wow.

Yeah. Okay. Well, there you go. Happy new year. Steven, the reason I'm holding on to all these review units is I may never get another one. This has been our year review for 2024. I'm excited to do this annually. I think 2025 is going to be a big year and we'll see if Siri actually gets better in 2025, but I think it's gonna be a big year. I'm excited to see a CES and record from there, but we're going to go record a bonus episode. I'm going to ask Jason about his new year's Eve. That's going to be a big year.

festivities and what he does there. If you'd like to hear our bonus episodes, you can go to primary tech.fm and click bonus episodes. When you support us there, you get an ad free version, which we have sponsors already through January, which is amazing. And that is a testament to you guys actually listening and enjoying the show. So thank you for that. But if you want an ad free version of the show, you go to primary tech.fm, click bonus episodes, support us, get ad free and all the bonus episodes and the back catalog.

And you can also do it in Apple Podcasts if you'd like. You don't get chapters there. It's an Apple Podcast thing anyway. But we'd appreciate your support. And you can leave us a five-star rating and review. Let us know. iOS 18, best or worst update in years. But let's go record a bonus episode. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching this whole year. We'll see you next time.