Apple Broke the Law, I Was Deepfaked, and Even the Beach Has Ads
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He chose poorly. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. Big week. Apple has ticked off a judge and literally broken the law. Means big changes coming to the App Store. And Fortnite is likely coming back to iOS next week. Plus, Apple launched a new Snapshot website. ChatGPT is getting into more shopping. Meta launched a standalone Llama AI chatbot app for the iPhone. And we have some wild stories for our personal tech segment.

This episode is exclusively brought to you by you, the members who support us directly. So thank you for that.

I'm one of your hosts, Stephen Robles, and joining me, who probably already knows the movie quote, Jason Aten. How's it going? It's good, but I mean, we just spent like 10 minutes talking about all of Harrison Ford's best roles, so Indiana Jones. Indiana Jones is it. Jason, Apple literally broke the law this week. Finally, the news broke before we recorded. I mean, technically, they broke the law before. They've been breaking the law, and well, it's a big deal. Stephen, I'm nervous, though. What's that? Because really, the biggest news of the week never drops.

before we record. And this dropped last night before we recorded. And I'm a little bit nervous about like leaving my office after this. Even bigger news might be coming. Well, we got to get into it. Very quick follow-ups. You drilled me on some sports ball teams last week, and we actually have a correction from Big

Broncos fan on thread said the Cleveland Indians, they're officially the Cleveland Guardians from back in 2022. So just wanted to correct you on a sports ball thing. This might be the last time ever. Yeah, I understand. This is going to be the section of the thing where you get to point out that I have bad takes. That's fine. I'm good with that. Go ahead. Carry on. There's that. Also, last week we asked how many HomeKit users versus Apple Vision Pro users, and I

I would say not about many, but there were several of you who emailed the other guy at primarytech.fm, which goes directly to Jason. And thank you all because yes. I want to say something in my defense, your honor. One, I admitted immediately in our member area that it might not have been my best take of all time for two reasons. One, it's probably just not true. And I don't care because I was really just trying to troll Steven. So the mistake that I made,

was inviting people to give me the feedback because I already knew that, yes, in the world, there's probably a lot more people who use HomeKit than Vision Pros because basically I'm the only person using a Vision Pro on a regular basis. But also the real mistake I made was people listening to tech podcasts, much higher percent, and people listening to the previous HomeKit Insider host podcast. Yeah, so that's on me. Well.

Well, thank you all for emailing Jason. That was a wonderful retribution. And finally, we have one five-star review shout-out

Alluier111 from the UK says we're one of their favorite podcasts now. And if you haven't yet, we'd appreciate a five-star rating and review in Apple Podcasts. You get a shout out at the top of the show. Let's get to a thousand ratings. I'm going to aim big. We're at like 300 something right now. One thousand. I've been looking in our data, our metrics too. We have well over a thousand people following us in Apple Podcasts and about that many listen in Apple Podcasts specifically and then many more in other apps. So

I'd leave that five star. We appreciate it. We would like that. Yes, we would like that. Epic V Apple. I'm going to try and do a quick recap because this is huge news that broke yesterday and Apple has ticked off a judge and it is one of the most incredible takedowns of Apple that I've seen. But,

If you remember back in 2020, I actually looked back, the court case began in 2020 where Epic took Apple to court saying that they have anti-competitive behaviors and the way they run the app store. It's just not right, yada, yada. So this court case went from 2020 to 2021 and Apple largely won that case because Epic is wanting lots of things like third party app stores here in the US, which it didn't get.

and a bunch of other things that it did not get. The one thing that Judge Yvonne Gonzalez, which I wanted to say, Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, which we're going to come back to her in a second. The one thing she said Apple had to do as a result of that case was allow developers to steer users to purchase outside of the App Store. So if you had an app, let's say...

Like the Hey.com debacle from several years ago. If you wanted to sign up for Hey.com but pay for it and Hey.com didn't want to offer an in-app purchase, they need to be allowed to have a link in their app for users to click it and then go sign up on the web. And that is the one thing Apple was required to do from that entire court case, Epic v. Apple, back in 2021. Well, the judge came back yesterday, just yesterday, and said...

you did not follow the law you did not follow the injunction that i set forth in 2021 so we're talking almost five years ago four years ago since september 2021 and she has now ruled that apple is in breach of the injunction and has to make some major changes and so the statement that

What do you call the actual document? Well, it was... So this was an order that she issued that says that Apple not just breached the agreement, that they are in contempt of court because they failed to file her injunction. Right. Right.

So is it another injunction? Like, is that what you call? It's not. Well, oh, contempt. Yeah, it's a contempt order because it is essentially saying you have to follow my injunction before. Right. And I'm gonna read a couple of quotes from the actual contempt order because judge Yvonne Gonzalez. And if you're watching on YouTube or I'll put, I'm gonna put her picture as the show art, at least for a few minutes. You could just see, I just want you to see what Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers looks like because she's,

Then imagine her literally tearing Apple a new one in this contempt order because she very eloquently talked about all the things Apple has done wrong. So top level, as a result of the contempt order that issued yesterday, Apple now has to not only allow developers to link out to the web to make purchases, but the malicious compliance that we talk about a lot is

Apple, back in 2021, said, okay, we'll let developers steer users to the web to make purchases, but on those purchases, we will still collect 27% commission, even though that purchase is happening on a website and it's not an in-app purchase in the App Store. Again, remember, 30% is the commission for an in-App Store purchase. Apple gets 30%, and this was, yeah, okay, we'll steer you to the web, but it's a 27% commission.

And that's really, I think, what ticked Judge Yvonne Gonzalez-Rogers off. And so she is now ordering Apple to allow developers to steer out and not collect that commission. So as part of the ruling, the judge says, and this is reading from the Verge article, Apple cannot impose any commission or any fee on purchases that consumers make outside an app, meaning on the web.

It cannot restrict the developer's style, formatting, or placement of links for purchases outside of an app, which Apple had some annoying rules about how those links could appear, couldn't look like a button or whatever, like silly things. Apple cannot block or limit the use of buttons or other calls to action, and Apple cannot interfere with consumers' choice to leave an app with anything beyond a neutral message apprising users that they are going to a third-party site, which Apple had made this like

full screen scare sheet when someone would click a link to make a purchase outside the app saying like you're leaving the app and it's not safe and the judge is saying like that's ridiculous as well so that's the new rules and apple said they will comply effective immediately but they of course do not agree and will appeal the decision that was apple's only statement yesterday

Now, just to read a couple lines from the judge's ruling, and also side note, Tim Sweeney tweeted, of course, that we will return Fortnite to the US iOS App Store next week. Epic puts forth a peace proposal. If Apple extends the court's friction-free, Apple tax-free framework worldwide, we'll return Fortnite to the App Store worldwide and drop current and future litigation on the topic.

Tim Sweeney is going for the victory lap on this one, which may be rightly so. John Gruber has a couple of the great pull quotes, but I'm going to read these quotes are actually from the contempt order that the judge issued yesterday. And so it talks about the 27% charge, the full page scare sheet, all of that.

But I think what is really telling is the internal communication between Apple VPs and Tim Cook and how that makes Apple look and why Phil Schiller might be the last voice of reason. Maybe before I read any of these, did you have any thoughts on just the facts first?

Yeah. Well, I want to just recap just a tiny bit, just to back up a little bit because right. This was Epic and Apple have been going at this now for almost five years because it was in 2020 in August. In fact, the longest thing I've ever written on the internet was on my blog. When, when this happened, I wrote about how,

you know, so as a recap, Epic dropped like this, whether they call them a hot update or whatever, uh, to their app where they just made it, made it so that you could order V bucks. I think that's what they're called in the app, bypassing Apple's app store. And they did it because they knew that they would get kicked off the app store. They knew it. Yeah. And Apple did kicked them off the app store. Right. And then they dropped a lawsuit like 10 minutes later. Right. Like, so this whole thing, they did the same thing with Google, uh,

Ironically, they won the case against Google. They lost most of the case against Apple. The Ninth Circuit affirmed the lower court's ruling and all the counts. And then the Supreme Court declined to hear the case. That's important because this has all been litigated. Everything about this has already been litigated all the way to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court's like, go away. We don't want to talk about this. Right? So...

Apple was required under the ruling to make it so the developers could link out to their own website in order for customers to make payments. And Apple found what the judge called the most anti-competitive way to do that, which is to charge a commission and make it. And this is the part that actually is worth mentioning because Apple has spent decades

positioning itself as sort of the most user-friendly tech company. Like we care about our users. We care about their privacy. We care about security. And they care about developers. They brag all the time. Well, hold on. We'll get to that. That's totally separate, right? We care about our users. We want to create the best experience possible for them. And yet what they did in this case is they tried as hard as they could to make it so that no user would ever be able to go outside of the app store to make a purchase.

because they they made the disincentivized the uh because if you think about it if i if netflix for example which does not offer in-app purchases could simply link out you could now go to the netflix app in your on your iphone tap a button sign up on the website come back in and use netflix and it'd be as seamless as possible and you wouldn't have to pay an extra fee right because they aren't charged a commission and

And then the other piece I think that's really worth mentioning, and this is I'm actually working on writing about this. I just could not get it out before we started recording is the amount of conversation that went into how terrifying they should make the scare sheet, which is this interstitial page that pops up when you click on one of these links. Side note, it is interesting that Phil Schiller was the one who wanted to make the links look just like hyperlinks on the Internet, because, of course, that's what people would recognize instead of allowing them to be buttons. Right.

That was an interesting side note. But when you click on one of those, a page pops up and it's like, warning, you are going out into the abyss. Are you sure you want to put your credit card number out there on the scary, scary internet? This is what, if you're watching, by the way, this was the scare sheet. Yes.

ridiculously sized font that Apple would not use anywhere else. Right. And so they, the goal here was to make it so that no one would ever do this. And the judge said, you may have technically complied with the injunction, but this is not what I meant. You have to stop behaving this way. And then she, then the reason she's so angry at them is they spent the last year having evidentiary hearings and Apple's

And Apple literally hid things from the court. Right. They wouldn't reveal certain things. They claimed attorney-client privilege. They were not willing to share the truth. And in fact, like the judge said, that one of the executives may have outright lied on the stand in this case. And so that is why she's so mad. But I just wanted to be clear. This is not actually a new ruling, meaning this is not a new injunction. She is just simply saying...

you have to follow what i said you have to do that and apple says it's going to appeal and there's a zero percent chance that it's going to win on appeal right because this has already been litigated all the way up and down right

So once again, here's Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers. I just want to say, Steven is not trying to dox this judge. He just wants you to have her picture in your mind when you hear what she had to say, because she does not seem, she seems like my piano teacher when I was in seventh grade. Yes. I'm sure she's a very sweet lady, not to Apple and not after they broke the law. She was mad.

I am reading now, quoting from Judge Yvonne Gonzalez's contempt order issued yesterday. Quote, This is the judge talking.

Internally, Philip Schiller had advocated that Apple comply with the injunction, but Tim Cook ignored Schiller and instead allowed Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri and his finance team to convince him otherwise. Cook chose poorly. Three-word sentence. Vicious. The

The real evidence detailed herein more than meets the clear and convincing standard to find a violation. The court refers the matter to the United States Attorney for the Northern District of California. Great. Next paragraph, quote, this is an injunction, not a negotiation. There are no do-overs once a party willfully disregards a court order. Time is of the essence. The court will not tolerate further delays. As previously ordered, Apple will not impede competition. The

The court enjoins Apple from implementing its new anti-competitive acts to avoid compliance with the injunction. Bold and italicized, it says, effective immediately, Apple will no longer impede developers' ability to communicate with users, nor will they levy or impose a new commission on off-app purchases. She is pissed. She also says that she will not entertain a request for a stay.

Meaning what normally happens after this is that Apple would be like, okay, well, we're going to appeal this. We'd like you to put a stay on your ruling until we have a chance for it to go through. She's like, nope, we're not tolerating any more delays at all. She says because of the repeated delays and severity of the conduct. So she has a quote about Phil Schiller, which we need to talk about him just by himself for in a second. But I want to read this other part where she is talking about Alex Roman.

who was the, what was his position? He was the executive or the vice president of finance. Vice president of finance. The judge quotes where Mr. Roman is on the stand. He testified that up until January 16, 2024, Apple had no idea what fee it would impose on linked out purchases. That's January, 2024. So that's like three years, or I guess maybe about two years after the initial injunction was, was taken into effect.

The question to him was, quote, and I take it that Apple decided to impose a 27% fee on linked purchases prior to January 16, 2024, correct? And Roman says the decision was made that day.

Question. It's your testimony that up until January 16, Apple had no idea what fee it's going to impose on link purchases. Roman says that is correct. And here's the judge in the contempt order saying another lie under oath. Contemporaneous business documents reveal that on the contrary, the main components of Apple's plan, including the 27% commission were determined in July, 2023, six months before that testimony. Dude,

Well, and the reason that the January 16th date is relevant is that that is the date that the Supreme Court denied Apple's motion or excuse me, its appeal, its request. I think it's technically a request for, you know, for the Supreme Court to hear it. And so that was the date that it denied that. And so what he's saying is because they had requested to stay up until that point. Right. So this had not gone into effect yet. So he's saying that under oath that they had not decided what they were going to do until the Supreme Court said, OK, you have to do this.

When in fact there was there, she has the receipts, right? That you had decided this long before. And it seems like such a stupid thing to lie about. I don't write of all the things. And then finally, before some thoughts, and then we get to Schiller, um,

Gonzalez-Rogers has closed out this contempt order. Quote, Apple willfully chose not to comply with the court's injunction. It did so with the express intent to create new anti-competitive barriers, which would, by design and in effect, maintain a valued revenue stream, a revenue stream previously found to be anti-competitive. That it thought this court would tolerate such insubordination was a gross miscalculation.

I love the way she writes. As always, the cover-up made it worse. For this court, there is no second bite at the apple.

She ends this contempt order. That's a pun, right? She ends this with a pun? Sure. Basically, yeah. And then, it is so ordered. Every word capitalized. One sentence. It is so ordered. Apple just got cooked. That is insane. Is that a pun too, basically? Yeah. There's so many puns as a part of this. But, okay. Thoughts on this. We knew that Apple was trying so hard to

Ever since these kinds of cases started entering the courts, the Digital Markets Act in Europe, the Epic v. Apple case here in the States, that Apple was trying to retain control and not lose that 30% commission from app developers. Apple has taken strides in past years, things like the small business 15% versus 30% for smaller developers. That was, what, five, six years ago, in an attempt to alleviate some of these pressures.

Developers have been vocal for years about all of this stuff. And so it has finally come to roost. I mean, it's now come back to bite them. And the stranglehold that Apple has tried to keep on the app store and in-app purchases, I think it's finally now bit them. I mean, to make another pun, it's now bit them. Now what's wild is Cook, Luca Maestri, who was the CFO, is no longer the CFO, which is interesting. He quote unquote, stepped down as CFO.

And Alex Roman, those three, one being the CEO of Apple, I think it is very clear they are the money guys. They want the money. They don't want to make decisions that make Apple not make as much money as they did in the past to Apple's own detriment.

And I find it amazing that Phil Schiller, who is technically just an Apple fellow, he's not an SVP anymore. No, but he does oversee the App Store and events. He oversees the App Store and events, but apparently does not have enough influence within the internal ranks of Apple

to get them to follow a court order. He told them they had the emails. Phil Schiller's like, hey, we should abide by this injunction and just relax, like this one thing. They won all the other things from that Epic v. Apple case. They don't have to have third-party app marketplaces here in the U.S. They don't have sideloading here in the U.S. yet. They could have just done this one thing. Phil Schiller was the advocate. And I think it's, I don't know, you tell me.

I think it's interesting. The one out of four guys making this decision, Phil Schiller, the not the money guy is one of the longest standing product people. Do you think it's accurate to say like, he's, he's like a product guy, like marketing, he's marketing, but yeah, he's marketing. I guess what I'm trying to say is like,

I still see Phil Schiller as like the OG Apple. He loves the product and believes the product is there for people. Sure. I don't know. You know, that's just what it feels like. And I remember Phil Schiller of all the people that got to announce the iPhone. Phil Schiller was the only one besides Steve Jobs in the early days. Steve Jobs announced, announced, and then Phil Schiller got to announce it. And I just think it's interesting that he's the only voice of reason seemingly amongst these four guys. It's like, Hey,

Let's just abide by this and we can move forward. I don't know. What do you think? I think that Tim Cook has been one of the most successful CEOs ever. If you just objectively look at Apple's

growth and stock price performance. And I know there's a lot of people who are like stock price performance should not be the prime, but if you're the CEO, it is the primary metric that the board will use to evaluate you. And from 2011 till now, Apple was like worth something like 350 to $400 billion. And there were 3 trillion now. Okay. Like, I don't think you can make an argument that he's not one of the most. And he had to follow Steve jobs.

Right? Like there are very few people who can follow a founder of a company and be as successful as Tim Cook has. And a lot of the things that made him successful has started to, I think cloud his judgment. I mean, the judge literally said he exercised poor judgment, right? He listened to the wrong people. He could have made a different decision, but he didn't. And I still think that Tim Cook is a great CEO. I just think that we've reached a point where,

Where Apple has lost sight of what it says really matters to Apple. Because you don't make this decision unless you are just terrified that you're going to open a floodgate. But game this thing out. Steven, like we offer memberships.

to our listeners in both Apple Podcasts and not Apple Podcasts. And the only reason we really still offer them in Apple Podcasts is because it's a lot more work for us. It's complicated. We want to offer more benefits. You have to MacGyver some sort of system. Do most of our listeners know who MacGyver is? It doesn't matter. I do. Anyway, you have to take some duct tape and whatever and just patch the whole thing together. But you know why we do it? Because it's so easy.

literally they can open our podcast and be like, boom, give us $5 or whatever the heck it is. And the same thing is true for apps. You could make it so that people could go out to the web to do it. But unless you're Netflix or Disney+,

or maybe fortnight or whatever no one's going to do it like people are just going to do the easy thing because it doesn't matter to them and even if it's like i could save two dollars if i went out to the web but if but apple already has my credit card i know apple i can just tap this button i'm going to do it like i don't think they would have lost that much well and the thing is there's a benefit on both sides to use apple's in-app purchase system like you just said yeah the in-app purchase for podcast subscription we have

I think about two times more people subscribe to this show as a member in Apple Podcasts than memberful, which is where you have to go out to a website, create an account and pay there. Two times more. So that is obviously enough for us to go through the effort to meet to deal with Apple Podcasts every week to offer that subscription. That is a competitive advantage, meaning it is advantageous to us to offer it there. And Apple gets a cut by all those things.

That is, that allows competition and there's a clear value to offer the Apple subscription.

And one could argue for many apps, like when I think about purchasing a subscription for an app, if there is an option to do an in-app purchase through Apple's system where I can have it in all my subscriptions in my iCloud account and I can easily cancel it and easily change my plans, there's benefits for me as a user to use Apple's in-app purchase system. And so there are times where I specifically choose to do that. The developer obviously has to pay a higher percentage, but they might get more conversions just like we do.

But to not allow the developer to offer that additional option of you can also purchase maybe for $3 less a month through my website. It's a little more annoying. It's a little more frustrating, whatever. You have to go to a website. But to still offer it, you need to be able to give users that choice. And it benefits the user because maybe they want to pay less. Maybe they don't care to go through a few more steps. And it benefits the developer or creator like us who might get more conversions. And for Apple to try to stifle that

I think it shows that they are scared because they don't think, I don't know if this is true, it seems like they don't think they offer enough benefit where people won't just jump ship. And they don't offer enough benefit to developers to offer both the in-app purchase and the web purchase. And they just think everyone's going to jump to the web. Now, the biggest players are going to jump to the web. Someone like Netflix. They have never offered an in-app subscription because they don't want to. Well, they did. They just stopped doing it a couple years ago. Okay, they stopped doing it.

Because they don't want to pay the 30%. Okay, so the big ones are going to do that. People are used to that anyways. People are going to go to Disney Plus and sign up there or whatever. But for the many developers, which Apple brags, many events we have. I remember when the iPhone first came out, it was like, there's a million apps. There's a billion apps or whatever it was. They always brag how many apps, how many developers, how much they've... Steve Jobs used to brag how much they paid developers. He used to show a number. We've paid developers X amount of million dollars this year.

uh because of they're in the app store and it just i don't know it just feels different now it feels anti-competitive and a little hostile well i think what happened was this and i mean this sincerely yeah apple was super mad at at epic right they were super mad that they and they should have been because what they did with tim listen tim sweeney not the hero in this story i just want to be clear just let's be clear

He's not the Dark Knight. He is not the hero in this story. Okay. He's not Commissioner Gordon either. They knew exactly what they were doing when they set all of this in motion. Because... But the difference... There's two things. The difference is...

Apple and Epic Games' incentives are pretty much aligned here. They both want to be the one collecting the fee, right? If you remember, the whole reason up front was Epic Games wants to offer its own store on the App Store, which they do now in the EU, where they collect a commission from developers who are selling things. It's not that they are morally opposed to it. They just want to be the ones that are doing it. And you know what the difference is? They're honest about it. That's true.

They're honest about what their motivation is. Apple is the one that is saying, no, no, no, we can't allow these types of things because privacy, yada, yada, yada. Right? And so that's the one thing. And I think that Apple was so angry that,

With Epic Games, and Tim Sweeney in particular, right? If Tim Cook has a hit list on his wall, it's like Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Sweeney, right? He's got a little flip notebook. He just does not like these guys at all. Tim Sweeney. Elon Musk, Tim Sweeney, Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg's on that list. Every time Tim Cook has to go to a meeting, he's like, make sure one of these guys is not there. Please, I'm not going. It's like, whatever. So, you know, it's like...

That's the deal. He was so mad. And the problem is he took that anger out on users.

He lost. He allowed it to. You know what happens when you get really mad? Have you ever gotten you've been in a car and you're driving and someone does something really stupid and you get so mad. And the next thing you realize is like my children just saw the worst side of their father. We are seeing. Or worse, you take it out on another driver. Yeah. Because you're so mad. Or then your kid asks you a question from the backseat and you're like, just shut up. Stop swerving in front of me. You're like, wait, I'm sorry, son. But I think. So I think Tim Cook is that dad.

And he is so angry at, at Epic games that he is just that he transferred that to both the judge. He's like, I'm going to maliciously comply with this thing because I do not want Tim Sweeney to win. And I'm going to penalize our users because they do not want Tim Sweeney to win. And that's a problem. And I think that maybe the difference that I was talking about Phil Schiller being a product guy. I think he also is the user guy that he is still thinking about the users and experience. And you

It seems like pie in the sky, but again, Steve Jobs would always talk about at the end of events, we're at the corner of technology and liberal arts. We want to make tools where people can create and be creative and do all this stuff. The one part that I forgot to read, but this is, again, part of the contempt order.

Talking about the decision, this is the judge talking, quote, Unlike Mr. Maestri and Mr. Roman, Mr. Schiller sat through the entire underlying trial and actually read the entire 100-page decision that Mrs. Maestri,

what i'm not sure what that is misters it's just a way of saying misters both of them yes the misters maestri and roman did neither does not shield apple of its knowledge actual constructive of the court's findings but the fact that i don't know how she knows that but to say that there he was in the trial like he's he was apple's representative to the trial uh right okay right right that i mean again scathing like

Phil Schiller seemed invested in this, whereas invested as far as he wanted to make sure Apple, you know, one as much as it could win, but comply with whatever it needed to comply with. And the other three guys, Maestri, Roman and Tim Cook wanted the money and wanted Epic to lose. I think it's not only that they want the money. I think that there's just this idea that we have to hold the wall. We have to keep the line here. And if we give anything, the whole thing comes crumbling down. Right.

And I think, one, I don't think that's necessarily true. I subscribe to the, I'm not sure who I first heard say this, but I subscribe to the philosophy that when this first started happening, Apple should have just bifurcated the app store and said, fine, apps, games, we have one set of rules. Everybody else, different set of rules. Everybody else, sell your stuff. Hey, you want to just sell some of the internet and then use an app? Fine, no big deal. Because

Apple doesn't make that much money. It's all candy crush, right? And these stupid games and it's like skins and stuff that they make so much free money. And yeah, Epic, it's a lot of money in there making a big fuss. But I think that Apple could have withstood a lot more scrutiny if they would have differentiated between those things at that time. But they didn't want to give even an inch. And it's like you are like putting up a billion dollar fight.

over pennies. And it's like, is that really worth it? So the ramification of this now contempt order, Apple has to comply now and allow developers to link out. Do we think this is going to somehow make a significant dent in their services business or revenue? Is this even matter? I would say no.

No, probably not. Even if a bunch of apps, including the big ones, start offering the steering link so users can subscribe outside and Apple stops getting 30% on a bunch of purchases...

It might hit their revenue a little bit, but I do not think this even has any long-term impact. Like, again, Apple makes the most money selling its hardware. Services isn't increasing business and in-app purchases and the Candy Crush or whatever is a big deal. But like, for Apple to make this fight over something that

In a few years is probably not going to matter to their bottom line. I don't know. Well, Kirk, do you think it matters to their bottom line? I don't think it's going to make a huge impact on their bottom line. I don't think, because if you think about the biggest players, Netflix doesn't offer, you know, purchases Fortnite right now is not even, it's not even there. Right. Like, so they're not, you're not losing any money from those people. Right. And so if they come back,

It's a zero impact on your revenue because they aren't paying you anything right now anyway. And I've heard people like, I'm pretty sure I've heard the ATP guys say like, I'm just using that purchase because it's just so much easier and I don't really want to deal with it. So like, I don't think it's going to make a material difference on their services revenue. I think it might actually net benefit them in the long run because you will have more innovative apps that are willing, people who are willing to build apps. The one thing I'm not sure on, and I wish I would have looked,

I don't know for sure based on the previous ruling or this one, because I did read most of the 80 pages, but I didn't have time to read all of the 80 pages. Yeah. Whether Apple can require that if you offer a link, you also have to offer in-app purchase. I don't think that they can make that requirement. I don't think they can require developers to offer in-app purchase if they're going to offer a link out. Honestly, I think that would be fair. I think it'd be fair to be like, give users a choice, but...

If that were the case, you're not going to see Netflix, for example, right? That's not, they're not going to come back if they, if there's that choice, but I don't think it's going to, I think what this is going to do is force Apple to sort of reconcile its view of developers and of users with the way everyone else views Apple right now. And I think that there's such a huge gap between,

And that I don't think it will change until Apple has another CEO. And I'm not like, again, I'm not throwing shade at Tim Cook. This is Tim Cook. He could have made this differently. And this is exactly, it is exactly the way he wanted it to be. Right. All of these decisions ultimately flew, uh, flowed.

They went up to him. All of them come from him. And so until we have a different CEO, I can't see this really being different, but it just feels like you have the kid who is throwing the tantrum and you just like leave them behind in the grocery store to throw the, and you just ignore them. Right. Like Tim Cook right now is throwing a tantrum over this may probably not literally, but

No, not literally, but I mean, they, they're appealing it. And the, the one statement they gave, they gave it to nine to five Mac and they gave it to the verge. Supposedly they didn't have any kind of official newsroom article or statement, but basically they're like, we will comply. We disagree. We will appeal. Like that's their entire statement.

Even though an appeal is not likely to change anything. And what we have not seen yet is how they will comply. The judge is like, you can't control this part of it. But you know that there will be App Store guidelines still, right? And you know we're going to hear about an app that got rejected because of a button or whatever. And I just...

I hope that doesn't happen because what the judge is basically saying is you lost this part, right? This is the anti-competitive part. And keep in mind, Apple's already facing a DOJ case, like not specifically over the app store necessarily, but that case hasn't started yet. And it's also about anti-competitive behavior. It's about different things like Apple watch interoperability and other wearables and a few other things. But

Anti-competitive behavior is the issue, both in this and the DOJ case. Also, John Gruber points this out, but I think that Tim Cook, Luca, and Alex Roman are probably less Tim Cook, but the other two are facing some real problems. Ramifications. Well, one, to lie under oath, isn't that a felony? Oh, yeah. Perjury? Perjury. So she says in the ruling that,

The penalty for a content for a finding of contempt has two purposes. It's to punish past behavior and it's to set an example so they don't mess around because the point is it's like it has to deter people from doing the same thing in the future. So they will make an example of you.

And the penalty for the past behavior in this case is that Apple has to pay all of Epic's legal fees for this part of the case. Right. That's the penalty. It's like you, we had to go, we should not have had to go through this process if you would have complied with my order in the first place. So you had to be, that's probably, I don't know, maybe 10 million, $20 million. That's nothing for Apple. But the penalty going forward is your vice president of finance could end up serving 30 days in jail or something. That would be insane. That news story would be insane.

Wow. All right. This is wild. I'm glad this broke the day before we recorded. That's all I'm going to say. I know. I texted you and I said, how is it possible that the biggest Apple news of the week happened before we record? We did say something on the last episode. Maybe, well, it's not Apple that listened. Maybe Judge Yvonne Gonzalez-Rod. Yeah.

Yeah. Can I just say again, she, uh, I want her on the Avengers team, whatever the new Avengers are. She needs to be on the team. I don't think the federal district court judges do podcasts, but if she does, we'd like to interview her a hundred percent, a hundred percent. I'd love, I'd love to hear it. All right.

So yeah, that's the Apple news. Listen, we just did a quick 35 minutes on that. Let's, uh, let's jam through some other stuff, which some of it seems trivial, but we'll talk about it. The chat GPT getting more into shopping. You can start seeing shopping results in your, uh, in your chats. Supposedly there's no, uh, commissions or whatever. Like there's,

I don't know, ChetGPT's not earning anything if you buy something. But they also are working through with quote-unquote partners to make sure pricing stays accurate and they're not revealing who those partners are. That's curious, but okay. I thought ChetGPT just uses Bing's search results. Yeah, but these are products like you're actually going to get the sidebar that looks exactly like the Google sidebar with the rating and the different places to buy a product and direct links to it. So, yeah.

Okay. I mean, but again, isn't that, I mean, if I go to bing.com and I do that, don't I see the same results basically? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Anyway, more places to buy things. That's always great. That's all we need is more places to buy things. That's always great. OpenEye also said that it rolled back an update to GPT-4.0 that could be seen as uncomfortable, unsettling, and cause distress. I guess it was...

becoming overly flattering and agreeable. Uh, so I don't know if it was in this verge or girl, but I saw somewhere where it was coming across. Oh yeah. Sycophantic, which is a great, great word. Uh, I didn't experience that. Uh, did you experience any weirdness from four? Oh,

Yeah, but it's the basic thing is sort of like I asked it. So we can talk about this later, but I had to get a tetanus shot this past week. That's going to be in personal tech. And I was confused about like, I was like, why do they give you a tetanus shot after you've been exposed? If it's a vaccination, which is usually a thing you have to get beforehand. Yeah.

And so I asked you at GPT for, oh, how does the tetanus... I thought you were going to say you asked the doctor. Sorry. Of course. I should have asked the doctor while I was there. No, no. I was thinking about other things at the time, which we'll get into. But I said, how does a tetanus shot work? Is it a vaccination? If so, why does it work even after you've stepped on a nail, for example? Which is not what I did. But it says, that's a great question. It's good that you're interested in such important information. I'm like, just...

No, it's not a good question. It's a terrifying question. And it's like... Great question. I'm glad you're showing us something, too. Also, you might have lockjaw and you're going to die. But, no, I'm just kidding. Did it say that? It did not say that. Oh, okay. It gave me a great example. And we can talk about that more. Like, it did. It gave me exactly what I needed to know. But, yeah, it was definitely kissing my butt while I did. Which is weird because typically that's where you get your tetanus shot. But... Oh, the... What?

You there, you did it. You did it. That's pretty. That's why I'm here. That was pretty good. Speaking of other AI apps, Meta has launched a standalone AI chat app based on Llama 4. So if you want another AI chat app on your iPhone, this one powered by Meta and Llama, you can get that. I'm going to be honest, Jason. I try a lot of the AI apps. I made a whole video on Perplexity versus Siri last week.

I didn't download this one. I did not need Lama four on my phone. No, I don't. I don't need another meta app and I don't need AI in meta apps. I'm not, I'm not here for it. And also the, uh, apparently there's like a social network component to this where you can see like other people's prompts and like maybe what they're doing with it. So all of that, I was like, you know what? Nah, I'm good. Yeah. There's a great, so I was just, I was telling you before there was an interview with,

that Ben Thompson did on Stratechery with Mark Zuckerberg, which is pretty, I mean, that's a good get, right? An in-person interview with Mark Zuckerberg and they were talking about all of this.

obviously Stratechery is a subscription thing. It was worth, it's worth it. It's a great article. It's a great interview. And they talk about this and, and Ben Thompson's take a little bit was like, I kind of feels like they're just throwing some things against the wall to see what sticks, but also medic can afford to do that. Right. They already have the distribution. They can just figure out what people want. Exactly. Which they did say their meta AI app, Mark Zuckerberg is planning a premium tier and ads for,

for the AI app, which ads recently came to threads. We covered that last week. Meta loves ads. Oh yeah. Mark Zuckerberg has never seen an ad that he wasn't like, how much did I make on that? He's driving down the street in his chauffeured, you know, whatever. And he's like, he sees billboards and he's like, we got something for that, right? That's all right. Can I, I just a quick story. Cause I was away for my anniversary earlier this week. We went to the beach and my wife and I were sitting on a beach watching stuff, you know, sitting in the sun and,

And I kid you not, a boat starts slowly motoring past and this boat has an LED wall

on the side basically running ads it is a digital billboard on a boat slowly going down the shore i wish i had taken a picture of it and i would have posted it with the caption where can i pay for beach premium because apparently not even here can you escape where's beach plus is there an earth premium do i need to pay for just can i just pay for no ads anywhere and i was like

It felt like a personal affront, honestly. Like, you know, billboards on the road. We've lived that for a while. Billboards in cities. Billboard in the water on a beach. Like, you can't even look out to the ocean without seeing it. What was the ad for? Was it Rent This Boat? No, it was multiple. It was like one of the digital billboards on the highway. It was rotating through multiple. One was Coppertone. So it was. It was at least relevant. Yeah, straight ad. And then there was another one. It was Coppertone and...

I think it was something like water sports rental, like down the beach, whatever, but like straight up just ads, just ads for sunscreen. I was like,

This is amazing. I really... LED wall at beach. See, I'm mostly jealous because for our last anniversary, we went to Barnes & Noble and had coffee because... Listen, I'd be all about it. I'd be all about it. I mean, it was December, so there was no beaches that... I mean, Michigan has a lot of beaches. None of them you can go to in December, so... Yeah, that's fair. This was what it looked like. This was like...

This was the boat. Oh my goodness. The LED wall just straight up adds. See, now I'm nervous because when we do go to the beach, it's near you and I'm really anxious that the next time we go to John's Pass, we're going to start seeing this kind of thing. Well, no spoilers. We were basically right there. Oh.

This boat goes up and down that boat goes up and down that exact coast. So depressing. So if you see it, please take a picture because it is, it is a little depressing. It does feel like we've crossed the Rubicon of like, just we can put ads anywhere your eyeballs may go. You know, I was thinking about a couple of weeks ago, we talked about Nvidia's technology to basically like,

generate video ads in real time based on your tracking you and we'll probably see those on social media and meta I'm sure comes soon and do you remember the scene from Minority Report he's like running through this train station and the ads basically are saying his name and looking at him and it's like we're there like we're actually there which is terrifying at least on the internet you can get an ad blocker for that boat you need a torpedo like that's your ad blocker ah

that's the ultimate ad blocker just weaponize get a torpedo that's oh my word anyway uh let's talk about something apple did i guess that's kind of fun uh apple launched a new web page it's called snapshot.apple.com and basically has a scrolling list of celebrities sports stars lionel messi lionel

Lionel Messi's on here, Dua Lipa, Maya Rudolph. And basically you can click one of these people like Cate Blanchett

and you can go there and then it basically aggregates all of the apple properties that she is a part of it has the latest release whether it's a movie or apple tv plus original show there's a discover more which again shows apple tv plus original content but also other movies like lord of the rings watch kate blanchett there apple music and there's her soundtrack from the movie tar and then also kate blanchett on apple podcast and honestly this is

This is the one feature that actually got me to talk about this. Cause I was like, I don't even know if this is worthy to talk about, but I do like that. You can actually see interviews with one of these people. Uh, and the links to the Apple podcast are right there. You can, this website is also infuriating because you can't manually scroll or search or just see a list. You just stare at the spaces go by. I just want to list. Like, I just want to live, I guess. Cause there's just not very many, uh, people on this thing, but you can't, you like when you hover your mouse over it, it just stops scrolling. Um,

And then you can't scroll left or right. And then there's, I just want a list. I just gave me a, but anyway, this is so strange. This is just straight influencer bait. Like really? Like it does feel like, yeah, it does feel like that a little bit, but like, here's a cold play. Let's see. So we explore cold play.

And I guess, I mean, it's just advertising for Apple services, right? Like it is, it's just advertising for Lionel Messi. MLS is on Apple TV plus, like that's all this is, but it's such a weird way to do it. It's a weird way to do it. I mean, if you're going to do it, just have more than having to be able to let me scroll. Let me certainly. Right.

Also, I volunteer to be on this page. Listen, if you need more names, you should just post Stephen Robles. I have stuff in Apple Music, I think. You can put stuff in there. Well, I'm not an Apple TV Plus, but...

You want to put me in an original, that's fine too. Yeah. We'll do that. Anyway. Now that What's-His-Name got a show, you can be next. Who's the, what's his, Ham? Jon Hamm? Oh, Jon Hamm, yeah. Wasn't he, the ad was like, they wouldn't put me in a show. Oh, yeah, that's right. Now he's in a show. That is right. So I just need to make a video. Oh, if I make a super cinematic video about

I got to tell you a story about cinematic mode, but we'll do it later. Also just listeners and viewers. You can comment on the YouTube. You can go to social dot primary tech dot FM, leave a five star rating and review and leave your answer here. What would be the Apple TV plus movie or TV show that I could star in? What would it, what would it be about? You're crowdsourcing your career. Do not say DJ Khaled's biopic. Please do not say that. You can just say literally anything else.

But let me know, what Apple TV Plus original could I do? Big Hero 7? Listen, I love Big Hero 6. I'll voice, I'll do a voiceover. It could be animated, it could be a cartoon, I'll do it. I'd love to do it. Okay. All right, a couple of the news bits, then we've got to get to some crazy personal tech stories. Amazon was about to display the pricing adjustments based on tariffs on their website. So if you were to have gone to Amazon, looked at a product, it would have said, here's the tariff pricing website.

because of it. And the white house was like, yeah, you can't do that. And so Amazon decided not to do that. So that was like, that was a full day of news. Well, it was weird because this was a punch bowl news who had sources at Amazon saying that they were considering doing this.

Right. And it turns out it was not on the main site. It was on a thing called Amazon haul, which is a thing that Apple or that Amazon created basically to highlight the fact that there's this thing called the diminished miss exception to the tariffs. And this is how she in, in what's the other one team who are like their, their whole business is based on, you can order cheap stuff from Amazon.

and they ship it over here directly to you and they don't have to pay an import tariff on it if it's less than $800, which sounds a lot like Amazon's business period, which is make a bunch of cheap stuff in China, ship it over here when you order it. So Amazon created this whole thing to sort of like call attention to it. And Timu actually started doing this. They actually started putting these prices next to it so you could buy like a $17 bathing suit and it would cost you like $1,000

and it would show you what the tariff price was or something like that. And so Amazon haul apparently was going to do that.

And the White House, President Trump was real mad and called Jeff Bezos and was like, this is an affront. You cannot do this. He's not the CEO of Amazon anymore. No, but he is the executive chairman. So he is technically still in charge. But what did the White House said? It is hostile. This is a hostile act to do this. Also, you know what else is hostile? Putting 145% tariff on all of the things that American consumers buy. Yeah. Also, when you said haul, I thought you meant like haul, like.

Like in a house? No. It's H-A-U-L. Hall. Because this is something influencers do. It's like, here's my Amazon hall or whatever. I did not realize there was an entire... I don't know if any Amazon people ever do this. I don't think anyone has ever bought anything from this. I think Amazon literally launched it. It's still in beta. Yeah.

They did this just to like raise the issue. Like they wanted to point out to the government that, Hey, by the way, this, this loophole that you guys made, look, there's these businesses. Wouldn't it be nice if you shut them down because they compete with us. I know. Listen, this might be a crazy idea. Crazy. I think I should do a full on Amazon hall video and I will do stuff like wear this shirt. I think what you should do is an Amazon hall hall video standing in the hall of your house.

That's pretty good. That's pretty good. I'll try on all the things. I'll get a cheap ring light that looks horrible and it reflects on my glasses. That'd be a great idea. Amazon haul. It's been a good run, Steven. It's been a good run.

We're losing it. No, no, no. We still got some great stuff to get to. First of all, Congress actually passed this bill. Trump is expected to sign it very soon. It's the Take It Down Act. And this was when there were several deep fakes going around the internet. I forgot exactly when, but I know it affected Taylor Swift and other actresses and actors. But basically, when there's inappropriate content on social networks, the networks are going to be required to take it down within 48 hours after someone reports it.

And this is like a law where they will are compelled to do it. They have to do it. And so again, Trump is expected to sign it. This is seemingly an overall good thing. Like this kind of content shouldn't be allowed, especially if it's like deep fake explicit content and yeah, it should be on social networks to take it down.

Is it weird for me to be like, yes, this is like, it's terrible that this is a thing that exists and it shouldn't exist. But also it's weird for the government to pass a law because like they should have done it already. Theoretic. No, theoretically, isn't this stuff still protected under the first amendment? I don't know. I'm not trying to start a controversy. Well, like what?

What the image. Okay. I cannot believe I'm about to just real briefly. Okay. If the imagery isn't illegal for another reason, then it should, then it would be protected by the first amendment. I don't think it should exist. And I don't. And I think the key here is that it's revenge. So it's like your girlfriend dumped you. So you made an AI fake of her and you posted it online. I agree. That's terrible stuff. I think this, the platform should just automatically be taking it down where it gets weird is for the government to be like,

you can't post this or support this or do this. And again, I'm not advocating for this particular type of content. I just, I always feel weird when the government starts to tell you like what you can and can't post because like what's to say, like, again, it's a slippery slope kind of thing. And do we have any laws about deep fakes though in general?

Because that seems like... And obviously, there were entire videos. I remember the Tom Cruise deepfake video that I think Vice did. And it basically showed how you can use deepfake technology. And they had an actor. And I remember they went viral on TikTok. It was very... This is Tom Cruise. It was almost indistinguishable. If you showed someone and they didn't know deepfakes were a thing, they would have been fooled. But, I mean...

I think the key here, I guess, and this is where I guess I come down on the side of, okay, this is a good thing, is this is content being used to harass people. Right. And so in that case, like, yeah, absolutely. It should come back. And again, there's a 0% like that I want to be clear. I think this stuff is garbage. It should not exist. And if you are someone who is making it, you need a better hobby. Like there's a lot of things here. I just always feel weird when the government passes laws about what you can and can't create or post just because it's like,

I don't know. On the other hand, I do think that the, that the social, the platforms should already be taking it down. And I think what was happening is it was like very difficult to get some platforms to take certain things down. And now they'll be required to, I'm going to take a slight devil's advocate approach here because I never posted or linked to this because I didn't want to give it any more exposure, but it's someone actually sent me a link to a tick tock.

That was a deep fake of me. And I did report it. I didn't really follow up to see if it got taken down or whatever. Like it was clearly a deep fake. Like it did not look great. Like it was weird. And I think anyone who watches my videos would know like this doesn't look right.

But it was me here in my studio saying things I didn't say. And that did kind of bother me because obviously they had to train something on my content. So they must have downloaded a bunch of my videos, trained the content, trained some AI on it, and then did that. And it did make me think like, this is a little scary to think someone could make a video of me saying something outlandish, something really bad that, you know, gets me canceled and

And that made me feel not great. And so I don't know whether that's illegal or not. And yeah, I mean, whatever, more rules and laws, maybe not the best, but for me in this case, and I think for a lot of people who are

you know, online, basically via video and audio, like my voice, you know, to be trained. And then if that was used in a way that I didn't want, I don't know, maybe I'm okay with like more laws be like, you know, that's not right. Like I would, I would almost say a deep fake of me without my permission should not be okay.

like it should not be a lot you know what i mean but i don't know i think it's tricky and i i agree with you this stuff shouldn't exist i mean i just want to i cannot be more clear that i don't think that there's anything there's no redeeming quality to any of those things yeah my only thing that makes me feel weird is once the government starts passing some kinds of laws because previously like the law was like you can't make

child sexual abuse material and there's no line there like we all agree like that's terrible but if i wanted to make a tiktok of steven doing his amazon haul haul i feel like maybe i should be allowed to do that really no i'm kidding i'm not going to do that steven i'd be no i know i know but but i understand like the implication of making it illegal

I don't know. I don't, I don't want to see any deep fakes of me. And I do, you know, and it's more concerning to think like now you can tell five years from now, maybe you won't be able to tell that it's an AI creation and that, and that's what maybe gets me. But is there a difference between, I can't believe we're still talking about, is there a difference between that though? And somebody just getting online and ranting about you even making stuff up in that's protected first amendment speech. I think so. I think so. Like if someone wants to do that, I can address it.

but if someone sees a video they think is me like 100 believes is me and if one person believes it means probably a lot of people would believe it and then i have to try and say like actually that wasn't me now it's almost like a he said he said but with an ai version of myself yeah we're definitely going to need like a court case that clarifies that you that someone has the first amendment right to say things about steven but you don't have a first amendment right to say things as steven that i like

I like that. I want that law. Like, yeah, of course. I want that law. I want the Steven law. Give me the Steven law. Say whatever you want about me and like plenty of people have, but to say something as me, that, that feels a toke over the line. Like, I don't know. We're talking about, but if I wrote an article and was like, Steven Robo said this, it would be defamation. It would be defamation, especially if I never said it. And I feel like if you claim that in an article, you would have to prove I said it.

and it could be just your personal testimony, but then it would be my testimony versus yours. And that's what we've had in courts for forever. But if it's like someone plays in a court, a video of me sitting in the studio saying something and the jury or judge can't distinguish, that's a problem. Like that, that feels like, cause then I could be on the stand and be like, that's not me. It's like, then you sound like every, you know, everyone who might be in a court like, wow, that's not my voice on the recording. It's like, Oh, I don't know.

I don't know. It gets sticky. Got it. Anyway, I'm sorry for spending so much time. No, no. I mean, it's, it's an increasing issue because I mean, obviously, you know, they're, they're having to pass laws against it, but anyway, I just want to say deep things, bad, deep things, bad. I want to talk about the Pope's kerning. Uh, but anyway,

Sorry. I just wanted to throw that in there. Oh, my goodness. It wasn't like the Pope was one of the first big deep fakes, right? With that big puffy jacket? Yeah, well, there was the image of the Pope in the puffy jacket. And honestly, I fell for that. I was like, that's a funny jacket. I showed people initially. I was like, hey, look at the Pope in this funny jacket. And then it was like, actually, this picture's fake. I was like, oh, shoot. You know, that stuff. All right. Should that have been illegal? I don't know. I just want to mention Raycast. Anytime I talk about TextExpander, Pufferfish,

clipboard managers everyone talks about raycast on the mac and they now have an ios app and so i downloaded it to try it out it it basically is like a funnel for a bunch of ai models like you can if you if you pay for the pro version you can use chat gpt you can use claude you can use perplexity like you can use all the ais in one app and i guess the main thing about raycast is like the notes feature and a lot of people use it for that obviously on the mac there's a bunch of other use cases but i

I looked, it does have a bunch of shortcuts actions, which kudos to Raycast. And you can use a shortcuts action to make calls to all these different AIs. So that's cool. I'm going to play around with it a little more, but I know there's a bunch of Raycast fans out there. So I thought I'd mention. I heard Christopher Lawley talking about this on the Mac Power Users podcast, which is a free podcast. It was a good conversation, but I don't like if I'm using Alfred, do I care about Raycast? Like, is it just too much? At some point, isn't it better to just like,

stick with the thing well yeah and i think people say you know i well i use a standalone clipboard manager and i use text expander and a lot of people are like you should just use one thing he will i use text expander paste bot and alfred and i'm super happy with all three of those but why do i care like wouldn't i have to reset everything up if i did that like yeah well that's the thing like i'm i can fiddle i will fall down the fiddle rabbit hole and be like

I'll just change settings for hours. I'm like, I don't need that. Stick to the trumpet. No more fiddle.

I want to talk about Pope's kerning. What I mean by this is I saw a group of share this and, uh, you know, the, the Pope passed away, Pope Francis, which is sad, but they have a tombstone now for Pope Francis and there's a whole story behind it. But I just want to talk about kerning. If you're not, if you're not aware, kerning is the space between letters when you're talking about topography. And we don't talk about a lot on the show, but I do love a good topography conversation.

conversation and I have strong feelings about fonts and I just want to say they got this kerning wrong and I would hope for the Pope that they would have gotten this right. I think they should redo it. I don't know what the ramifications are of that but I mean that A, that ain't like that's another word.

Like this, this word is F R space, a space, and then the other letters and that they shouldn't have done. And that's, isn't that a TV show on CBS? That's what I'm saying. And see, I mean, it looks more like a TV show than it doesn't. No, no, you should, you got to fix that kerning. Is there, are we sure there's not just some lens distortion happening here? No, no, because they did. There's other pictures of it on social media, like people on a thread saying that, like, how can this possible happen? How possibly happen?

I mean, there must have been some designer, right? Someone laid out this text topography design with the kerning and they messed it up.

I don't know how it got past all the way to the stonemason etching this into the stone. Cook chose poorly. I think this is Luca Maestri's decision. Chose poorly. Yeah, not good kerning. But anyway, all right. We have some personal tech stories we have to share. Jill Schiller would not have messed that up, I just want to say. 100%. 100%. Neither would Johnny Ive. It would have been real thin. It would have been real thin leather. And the whole thing would have been made out of aluminum. Aluminium. Aluminium.

Okay, a number of personal tech stories. I think yours is going to be the culmination. Okay. Can you hold up your finger so our viewers can see? Jason messed up his finger. I really messed it up, but it's fine now, so we'll talk about it. We'll talk about that. Two quick things for me. One, I did it.

I bought a Mac studio. I bought a Mac studio, but I got the funny thing is the sun has not yet come up here. I made that joke, but it's raining like crazy right now. I just realized that. So hopefully you can't hear it, but what does that have to do with the Mac studio? Because I, my joke was that it was about as surprising as the sun coming up tomorrow morning. Oh yeah. I mean, I said I was probably going to do it, but I got the M four. I got the M four max days and I didn't get the M three ultra. I understood my needs. You just need the highest number. That's why you couldn't, you could not bring yourself to,

To not have the highest number, even if intellectually you knew that it was the better chip, it's like, nope, I can't do it, which I understand. Honestly, yeah, that has something to do with it. I know. That wasn't even a joke. That's why I have an M4 Pro MacBook Pro instead of an M3 Max. It's because it's a higher number. It was a bit prohibitive, and also I wanted to upgrade everything else, which I did. Okay, so tell me about it. Well, it's maxed out.

I got all the things. 8 terabytes? Yeah. And what is it? 192 gigs of memory? 128. 128. Steven. Listen. Here's the thing. I'm going to do a video on it. Obviously. You're never going to pay off your house. I just want to say. No, no, no. It is fine. I paid my taxes. We're all good. Which is why I ordered it now. I pay my taxes. Don't come. Don't at me. I will finally be

be able to have a Mac in this house where my iCloud photo library is downloaded in full quality, the entire library. Honestly, that's like the main reason why, not the main reason, but it is a big reason why I wanted to upgrade and get more storage. I was between four and eight terabytes, but here's the thing, Jason,

honestly if this thing had more storage my m1 max max studio i probably would have kept it for years and that was my intention and so i am thinking i know this might be foolish but an eight terabyte ssd i should be good for many many years and hopefully this will be like my decade computer i'll just yeah stick with it i'm confused what you you you're saying that this is the first computer you've had that

You don't need eight terabytes though for your local iPhoto library. I needed like a terabyte. I needed like a terabyte. And so I have a two terabyte now.

which is basically half full. And so I can't download my, I call it on this. I could have done the four terabyte, but also you can't upgrade that ever. Like whatever you buy with it is the storage you're going to have. And I, I already use external drives for like final cut libraries. And I was like, I just want to, I can do it. I'm going to go all the way. That's true. So that I know I'm not going to take any issue with that. I just want to point out that,

that for $129, you can get a SSD just for your photo library and your computer's not going anywhere. So it's totally fine. Like that's what I'm doing right now. I have a Mac mini. I want it on my Mac. And then when I use time machine, it should get backed up. It should get backed up. That's all I'm saying. All right, one other quick one. I can say this because my son's birthday was yesterday. He turned 16 and we were going to get him a new iPhone. So I wanted to get a 15 Pro.

I wanted to get an iPhone 15 Pro. Apple doesn't sell the 15 Pro anymore, and Apple's refurbished store doesn't have any 15 Pros. The newest you can get is a 14 Pro.

So I went to Amazon renewed, which I have bought iPads, I believe in Amazon renewed and in past jobs, I bought different Apple products, Amazon renewed. So I bought an iPhone 15 pro and I'm sure you saw this picture when I posted it. I opened the box. This is what I got. I don't even know what I'm looking at. That's definitely not a pro anything. That's not a pro anything. It only has two cameras. And also I don't know what color this was supposed to be originally, but this thing is,

Sat in the sun for several days, I assume. I don't even know what color. It looks like it maybe is supposed to be the yellow, but it's like gross and...

This is what I was sent, Jason, after ordering a 15 Pro. This is not a refurbished thing. Because if you order a refurbished from Apple, it looks brand spanking new. Well, this is Amazon renewed. And so it's not through Apple. What does that even mean? I'm just saying like Amazon renewed is not the equivalent of Apple refurbished. It's not. Like Amazon renewed. Like when you search Amazon for iPhone 15 Pro.

You can, like it says refurbished, but it's something it's there. I'll just show you.

It says renewed. I'm going to show you the website right now. I'll even show you the thing that I bought, and it's definitely not what I got. That's definitely not an iPhone 15 Pro. Did Alex Roman sell that to you? Because I think he outright lied. So this was the one I got. iPhone 15 Pro 256 unlocked, renewed, premium is what it says. And this is what you get. I got the natural titanium and...

You know, it says visit the Amazon renewed store. It's not super clear like who the seller is, but it's clearly not Amazon nor Apple.

And that junk phone was what I got. And it was, I was really surprised. So I'm, I returned it. Obviously I'm hoping Amazon accepts the return because I don't want them to think that I tried scamming them. They're like, dude, this is not an iPhone 15 pro. And you're like, I know. And it was shrink wrap. Like the box was shrink wrap that it was in. So I'm like, someone must've looked at this. I don't know if it was mislabeled or whatever, but it,

Yeah. And you know, it's not cheap. You know, it was 700, you know, $800 after tax for a 15 pro renewed. And I was like, well,

Okay, well, I'm not going to do Amazon Renewed for the phone again. And so long story short, we got him a 16 Pro. Wow. Went all the way. Did it say iPhone 15 Pro on the outside? Like, was it just the wrong phone in the box or did somebody pick the wrong thing and send it to you? The box doesn't say anything. It just says Amazon Renewed. It's a white box. It says Amazon Renewed. You open it up and it's just the phone.

And there's no, you know, Amazon doesn't put paper in the box to say like, here's your order. You have the, you know, you can log into your account and see it. But anyways, I was just,

I always have said like, oh, you can get refurbished Apple stuff on Amazon. And I think I've done it for iPads and maybe even a Mac in the past. And it's been a good experience, but this was not a good experience. And yeah, I was really surprised. So be a little careful, I guess, for iPhones at least. And, uh, you know that I just wish there was 15 pro refurb through Apple, but there just wasn't. Anyway, tell me about, uh, tell me about your finger. What'd you do there?

Well, okay. The only reason to talk about this is I have spent the last week or this week learning all about Apple's accessibility features because I haven't been able to type with my left hand for the past week. So on Sunday morning, very early, I was holding two pieces of wood together as you do on Sundays. And I was drilling through the pieces of wood so that the hole would be lined up. And I just went straight through the top of my finger, through the knuckle.

And he can send me a photo and it's gross. And at first I was like, Ooh, that's going to be bad. But you know how like at first you're like, this doesn't hurt. That was my first clue that this is going to be bad is that it didn't hurt. Right. Cause your body is like, Whoa, what did happen? That's not drills, but not supposed to go there. And so I'm holding onto it and I'm like, I was actually at our church trying to put something together very early in the morning. And I start in a church that we attend has three venues and,

this particular one I'm not as familiar with and so I'm trying to find a first aid kit I can't find one anywhere and I'm so I'm just holding for those I'm just holding my finger and by the time I get to like the coffee bar area I look down and the blood has started to seep out of my hand so I just grab paper towel and wrap it around it yeah can't find anything else look down again and the paper towel is completely red so then I duct tape something I'm like I gotta get pressure on it

And then I'm like, you know what? It's like 6.45 in the morning. I'm like, I got to go. So I didn't even finish what I was doing. I left there. My wife met me and she like bandaged me up. But anyway, by the afternoon, I'm like, I probably should go get this looked at because I drilled through it. You waited for the afternoon? I had to do things. I had to play the guitar. You drilled through your finger, Jason. I had to play the guitar at our church. Wait, you played guitar after that? I sure did.

Jason, what in the world? I know. So anyway, I go to the urgent care place. And actually the best part of this, Stephen, was when I first get in there, it was no longer bleeding. Like it had been a while or whatever. So the guy's like, well, we should start getting it really cleaned out. I'm like, that's why I'm here. That seems like a good idea. I don't want whatever happens if you don't clean it out. So he gives me this little dish with some saline water and some iodine in it.

And he's like, here, put your finger in this. And iodine, you know, is like a rusty brown color, right? Right. So I put my finger in it and I'm sending the picture. And the physician's assistant walks into the room and all she sees is this picture. Basically, and she's like, wait a minute, that blood. She thought that that whole thing was full of blood. That would be a lot. It's like bleeding out of my thought or my. So anyway, they glued it all back together. I'm wearing a splint, but I can't.

I can't type with that finger and I really can't type with that hand because it's real hard. And so I have the articles I've written this week, which admittedly has not been very many because it's much difficult. I have used the F5 key, which has the little dictation button on it. Right. And I have been dictating articles, which is so cool that you can do. And it works better. It works very good. Like that dictation. Very, very good. Oh, very good.

The problem is it's not a good way to write things for someone who's used to being able to type. Cause I didn't realize how much I think literally with the physical connection to do it. And when you're writing a sentence, I can write like four words of a sentence and pause and think for a minute, like what the next word should be. But when you're dictating it, there's this like in, what is it like in this momentum? Like you have to feel like you, you feel like you have to keep going. Cause there's this little blinking blue thing waiting for you to talk.

And so I ended up spending a lot of time editing what I was doing. But for me, the thing I'm going to eventually write about is Apple, like they nail the accessibility stuff so, so well. In fact, like even on an iPhone, some of the best features –

either are accessibility features or start as accessibility features the number of things where like you can adjust the zoom like just universally across your device you the back taps for people who aren't you know couldn't use a the swipe up or whatever like just being able to tap the back two or three times to either go back to the home screen or to do stuff like there are so many incredible accessibility features that we never think about if you don't need them and it's like

it is amazing to me how much thought has gone into those types of things because most of us look at that little microphone like I'm never touching that I never want to do because if your other experience is talking to the assistant you're like well this can't be good I

I'm telling you like it's good. I was, because you can tap it in any text field. I can do it in Ulysses. I can do it in Safari or Brave or Notes app or anywhere text messaging. I mean, I'm so used to like talking to text message anyway, but I was doing it all on my Mac. And so I can't wait to be able to use my finger again. But,

In the meantime, kudos to Apple's accessibility features. That's awesome. And you always hear how the strides that Apple has gone to accessibility that other companies really don't match it. I know Google does a lot too, but I'm curious, not transcription, the dictation. Did you try any of other services like AI or...

like I remember dragon dictation used to be a big deal, but did you try any other service like that or just go straight to Apple? I just did straight to the microphone. Just a hundred percent. Just did that because one, I thought, well, it's there. I'm going to use it. And two, I really did want to have the experience of what it would be like for somebody who, if you just take a Mac out of the box and you need some of these features, like either you had your, you were like missing a limb or something like that. And so you just couldn't type that way or whatever. Um,

The real tricky thing for me was not only was I not able to type with this finger, but like it's in the way. So I couldn't even type without this finger. Like it was just such a cumbersome things. I'm like, I'm going to just try this. And it was pretty, pretty impressive. I know you had another question, but I just wanted to encourage our listeners to go to apple.com slash accessibility. I promise you there are a ton of things on that page. You had no idea.

No idea that we're there. But so like the live speech, which was basically what I was using was turning your typing or you can turn your typing into talking. So it'll talk back to you if you need to do that. But the dictation feature, it was, it was spot on. Like what was striking to me is I'm a pretty good typist because I do it a lot.

I don't make a lot of mistakes when I'm typing. I have typos and stuff, but I don't like type gibberish. I'm pretty good and pretty fast at it. Yeah. But when I was trying to type with this, I was making typos like left and right. Like it was just, I have grammarly on and my whole screen was just blood red. Right. Using this. Perfect. That's wild.

That's wild. And I always, sometimes in the videos, I'll include accessibility features just because it blows people's minds that you can do it. Right.

but for anything you say and you can program any vocal prompt, basically like you could have like a swipe up and just saying that will actually swipe up. So if like you were in like Instagram reels or Tik TOK, you could just say swipe up and you can program your phone to do the thing you just said, uh, times many, many things. And then personal voice, if you remember was Apple launched that where you can basically train it on your voice. You read like 150 statements and it'll try to create, uh,

what sounds like your voice. So then you can type and then it will make it into speech. It, it is way behind things like 11 labs, uh, AI text to speech and being trained on your voice, but it's cool that it's built into the phone. You do have to wait like 24 hours after you do it. I did it just so like it had my voice in case everyone to use it. But, but yeah, Steven, like they even made it now you can, you can,

You talked about the shortcuts to swipe, but you can do that with your eyes now on an iPad and an iPhone. Or the sound awareness where if you have loss of hearing and your smoke detector goes off, it will tell you that. Or a baby is crying. Or the music haptics. There is so much stuff built into your phone that people just don't even know. I did it in one of my shortcuts videos. I did it because if you enable sound recognition, like you said, it could be a fire alarm, baby crying, or even a door knock.

And so I programmed just to show off a door knock and it ran a home kit scene. So again, if you were a loss of hearing, someone knocks on the door, you can program it to like flash a light, like turn this light on or off. And then now you can have a visual representation of it. Plus you can have like a notification on your phone that says, you

you know, there was a knock at the door just, just because your phone heard it, not because any camera saw it or anything like that, just because of the audible thing. So yeah, very cool. Sorry about your finger. How long you got to keep that splint on? I think I can take it off tomorrow, which is good because I'm traveling to Florida tomorrow. I'm not coming to see, I'm not coming to see Steven. I'm going to the Miami grand Prix to see an F1 race. My first time. That's amazing. I'm excited. I was close to maybe meeting you there, but I just couldn't work it out. But that's a super fun.

And now I have an insane story to tell Jason. And that's going to be our bonus episode. I went to someone's house that everyone listening right now probably knows who it is, but I'm like, I can't say who it is. Would know the name is what you mean. We don't know who it is. Right, right, right. Exactly. And so I, I'm going to tell Jason this, this wild story. And so if you want to hear our bonus episode, you can subscribe directly in Apple podcast or at join.primarytech.fm. You get an ad free version of the show when there's ads and

And you get the bonus episode and you get the whole back catalog of bonus episodes so you can listen. And our poll, we had a bunch of people respond to what other member benefits you'd like to see. Right now, a daily, a short daily podcast with the top headlines just summarized is way in the lead of benefits. But we'd like to hear from more of you. So if you did not take that survey or little form yet, it's a two question survey. What benefit would you like to see? And are you currently a member or not?

That link is going to be at the top of the show notes. Would really appreciate if you take that and we'll be ready to launch some new benefits. I'm pretty excited about. So that forms there. Leave us a five-star rating and review an Apple podcast. We'd appreciate that. And subscribe to the YouTube channel. You can watch the show. Lots of visuals today. And you can do that at youtube.com slash at primary tech show. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. We'll catch you next time.