Apple’s AI Strategy at WWDC, Apple Park Impressions, Hidden iOS 26 Features
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Don't think, just do. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. This week, we're going back into the WWDC keynote. I'm going to give more of my personal impressions now that I'm not in Apple Podcast Studios. Overall, what do we think? And also some details that have come out from the different operating systems. Interesting tidbit about the clipboard manager that's now built into Spotlight and a bunch of other details. This episode is brought to you by Surfshark and you, the members who support us directly. I'm one of your hosts, Steven Robles, now coming to you from the hotel room.

And joining me again, my friend Jason Aiton. How's it going, Jason? It's good. I'm really glad to see you're no longer a hostage, Steven. Listen, listen. Zach Kahn, if you're listening, I'm not a hostage. Did you know the movie quote? You probably know what that was. Top Gun. Top Gun. Yeah. The reason why, last night, I went to the F1 movie premiere at Apple Park in Steve Jobs' theater.

and jerry breckheimer did a little interview with eddie q before the preview and it was pretty funny so i want to talk about all these things there's there's so much like behind the scenes stuff the last episode we recorded earlier this week was kind of a special recap episode but i was in apple podcast studios and like there's six or seven just apple people just like standing in the room like managing all the thing so as you're recording a podcast it's like

I don't want to say things too negative and I don't also want to like say things that might be too revealing like I don't know exactly what to say so there's a little bit of like a filter that was on at least me in that episode and I don't know who could hear you so I'm not sure well that was an interesting dynamic I'm like can they hear what I'm saying are they just going to cut off no because we're not and we are I think we are uh skeptically friendly

I don't know if that's a word combination that actually makes sense, but like, I think we're pretty friendly to Apple in general, but because we care, we're also not afraid to be like iOS 26 is a stupid name.

Like we're willing to say that. I didn't say that in the last one, but I wanted to very badly, but I was really afraid that it would be bad for my friend, Steven, who was stuck there. And I think we talked last year afterward somewhat about that podcast studio experience as well, because I was there last year. So I definitely am interested in your perspective on some of that, but it is weird because there's like seven people in the room with you. It is weird. So we'll get to that quick to five-star review shout outs.

Mike MCS from the USA mail categories off downloads to desktop. He's on your team on that one and battery percentage on. So you got all the points on that one. And then are you for reals with a Z and the USA gives a five-star review. He had a long question about a screen time bug and like, listen, yes, yes. Jason and I experienced all the screen time, but screen time is actually the name of a bug in iOS. Exactly. Exactly. Now listen,

We're not just an Apple podcast, and so I feel like we can't do two episodes in a row just talking about Apple. So just right here at the top, I just want to mention Meta announced that Threads is getting DMs. We did not just talk about Apple this episode.

Now we're moving on. Hold on. I only have one thing to say about this because they have not appeared in my threads yet. How long do we think it will be before the DMs and threads just move to the Facebook Messenger app? Because it feels like that's where everything else moves. And two, the best part about this story was someone tweeting at Zuck saying something about it. And Zuck's response was, Maseri, should we tell them? And then Maseri was like,

We are actually adding DMs to threads. I feel like they want those interactions to come across as in the moment and off the cuff. Right. But I also feel like they probably plan those. Also, a million percent, there's some intern whose job it was to just wait for someone to ask Zuck that directly so that they could post that response. I can just see Zuck being like, hey, Moesera, you think this is a cool idea? Yeah.

where somebody will say something and then I say that. I just feel like that. Also, it's possible that Zuck had no idea any of it was happening and someone just posts in his account. I think he probably posts quite a bit on his own, but I also think it's possible that it was literally someone's job making $385,000 a year just to watch for that particular post. You might be right. Did you see the thing where like...

I'm sorry, Steven. This is not even in the rundown, I don't think. But since we're briefly talking about this, did you see the story that Meta is hiring? They're hiring the guy who's the head of what? Was it not Perplexity? One of the other AI companies? No, it's one of the AI companies. I'll find it here in a second. But the point is, it says that they're hiring for their AI lab to

With seven to nine figure salaries. Oh my goodness. Or compensation packages, I guess I should say. So it's like,

Whoa, do the math there. That's like $100 million as a nine-figure salary? I'm sorry, but that is insane. Listen, hold on. I got to go find a Skillshare on Amazon. I'll be right back. Something. Exactly. To your question, though, I'm hopeful that the DMs are not rolled into the Facebook Messenger app because Instagram still has it separate. It's in the Instagram app.

And Meta has been public about, and I've heard from many sources that DMs in Instagram is actually a key engagement point for Instagram users. And that's why things like ManyChat, which is a service where creators can say, hey, comment on this post and I'll DM you a link to my course or whatever. Right.

And those kinds of services show like that DM ecosystem and Instagram is very important. So I think it'll stay in threads, you know, whether it'll get updated or whatever, but I'm just glad it's there because having to follow somebody at Instagram just to DM them, or if I want someone to DM me and then it gets lost in like the requests bin in the Instagram app, it can be a mess. So anyway, scale AI is the name of the company just because someone's going to,

All right. Never heard of it. We didn't just do Apple News this show, but now we're going to talk about Apple. So here's my shot of

Tim Cook and Craig Federighi on stage in person at the keynote. We didn't talk. I didn't, again, want to mention this in Apple Podcast Studios, but there was actually a protester that started shouting. Yeah, I was looking for the protester in this photo. I don't see him. No, he was like off to the left. So as soon as Craig Federighi started, or no, I think as soon as Tim Cook started talking, he said, good morning, good morning, good morning. And then he started talking and a protester began shouting. It was hard to understand what he was saying. He was saying something about people are dying.

And kudos to Craig Federighi just hammered straight through, just kept talking, just ignored, and they ushered them out. So that was awkward. And then, you know, because I had heard the Microsoft Build Conference, I think had two protesters who were Microsoft employees. So I was like, is this going to happen again? But it didn't. But there was protests at the very beginning. I wanted to step back just about the keynote in general. And I want to talk about kind of my briefings and the other stuff I've experienced this week. But looking back,

Thinking about dub dub last year where Apple intelligence was literally announced dub dub the year before when vision pro was announced. Is it safe to say like this was a smaller year in the announcement? Now the, the redesign is, is big, but,

But when it comes to major announcements, the length of the keynote was shorter. There was no hardware. Did you think this was a smaller year for DubDub? It was definitely a less high profile in terms of the headline event, the headline features at the event. I think objectively the UI redesign is a big deal because even Apple isn't going to do that kind of thing lightly because it's been years, decades.

It's been a while, but certainly none of the features alone were of the same. I don't know. They just don't feel the same as Apple intelligence or the vision pro. Right. Without. And if you, if you take, cause a redesign is not necessarily a feature. It's a visual feature.

- Sure. - If you take that out of the equation, I was on Andrew Edwards' podcast yesterday in Apple Podcast Studios and he was like, "What do you think is the best feature "that normal people are gonna appreciate the most?" And there was four of us on this podcast and we were racking our brain because aside from the Apple Intelligence shortcut actions, Spotlight, which is more of a power user type feature, and updated control center that you can now customize on Mac OS,

I don't think there's a lot of features that the general public, again, aside from the redesign, everyone's going to see the redesign and have thoughts about that. But from features specifically, I don't know if it's very consumer-facing features. And what I came up with is call screening and hold assist will probably be the most appreciated features in iOS 26 by the most people. And Andrew basically asked the question, the non-techie person in your family or your mom lives

what feature are they going to notice in this update? And as I thought to myself, I was like, well, she has to hold a lot when she's like calling doctor's offices and like government people. And so she's probably going to love hold assist. And that's, you know, it feels kind of weird that that's like the standout feature, but,

I would disagree. I think that people care about the most. Yeah. This is going to seem silly, but you got to be in touch with the team, Steven. It's in UK. I don't think it's fair to say that the redesign is not a feature because for normal people, that is a feature. And the thing that they're going to care about the most is that you can now appropriately tint your icons. And what I mean is like both of my daughters, their home screens are all just like widget Smith, like,

shortcut things like we know they're like the like how you can assign a custom icon to stuff so they can make these aesthetic home screens and the old tint was terrible because it was like dark mode plus some kind of a color i think this is going to be the thing that people care about this is what you're going to see everywhere is that you can actually just set it to a color any any way you want i'm sure that honestly the music the lock screen animated music

visual is actually really beautiful. And I think a lot of people will notice that and appreciate that. Again, like I understand it is features, visual representation. I just think function wise, you know, what new is there. But on the flip side, we were talking about AI and how Apple is compared with the other companies like Google, Gemini and Meta. And Joanna Stern did an interview. We're going to get to that in a second with Craig and Jaws.

But I think that Apple actually sneakily kind of opened the doors for developers to start taking the lead on AI because of the model framework APIs and tools. And they announced it right at the top of the keynote when Craig said, personalized Siri, not going to be until next year. And they clarified in an interview, it's like 2026. We're not going to see it in 2025 at all.

But giving that model frameworks to developers where their apps can now use the on-device models that Apple provides through Apple Intelligence, I think Apple is trying to push and say, let's make the third-party apps the AI tools that people see and use, and let's empower that while we get our stuff together for the voice assistant and personalized Siri and all that. So I think...

I do think they made announcements that opens the door to exciting stuff to happen on the developer side, even things like live translate in third-party apps. But it's just not as many like Apple forward besides, again, redesign is there, but Apple forward like features per se. Power users, spotlight on the Mac is awesome. And I'm going to talk about it a little bit in a second.

And the shortcuts actions are awesome. I just think general public wise, they're not going to be using that. You know, I think one of the interesting things about this, Steven, is that the general public, those are features that like, I don't know, if you stack people into a pyramid, there's a really small group of power users that care about, let's be honest, the shortcuts thing. I'm not saying nobody, but I'm just saying like,

It takes a little bit of mental work to get yourself in the mindset of doing shortcuts. And then there's going to be a group of people for whom Spotlight is amazing. And we'll talk about that. I've been using it a lot on the MacBook Air that I have it on. But I think...

I don't say this dismissively, but really, like the fact that you'll be able to add backgrounds to messages, which is a feature that you could do in WhatsApp for a decade now. Like that is a thing that average users are going to care about. And we're like, who cares if you just make your messages prettier or uglier? But the things that people really do care about, I think that that's a bigger deal than we think that it is. Okay. All right. Well, I will... We'll see. We'll see.

I know when I was in the hype of the keynote, I was like, this is amazing. But it was just because I was there in person. And just thinking back to dub dubs of recent years, of the years, it felt like one with just less stuff, less announcements. And the sheer length of it was that too. There was one thing you mentioned, though, that was interesting in this.

For our listeners, I feel like this is like an interesting piece of understanding the way Apple does things. Because in the keynote, Federighi was very careful with his words. And what he said is that these features will be coming in the coming year. And it's really what they meant was...

The next year that's coming, which is 2026, which is what you just said. And they clarified that in a briefing, but most people didn't get a briefing. Most people just heard him say that. And in your mind, the reason that he's, that's a very specific way of talking about it because what people heard was that

From now till 12 months from now. So it could happen in 2025 and it gives the, it's just a weird, weird PR speak way of saying a thing that makes, gives people anticipation. But later when it doesn't ship until November of 2026, they're like, no, this is exactly what we told you. And I just think it's, we should be listened really carefully to,

And it helps to understand what they actually mean when they say these things. So I'm glad you went to a briefing so you could clarify for our listeners who might be thinking, no, coming year from today is June now in June 10th of 2026. Nope, that's not what that means. I want to talk a little bit about briefings and my experience there. But before I go, did you need to do any venting about...

iOS 26 and all the 26 names. I think it's stupid. I still think it's stupid. I actually don't know very many people who think it's a good idea. I think it's like, well, they're doing it because it's the way they do cars. And I'm like, Apple doesn't sell cars. In fact, they famously killed their project to sell cars. Maybe somebody who was on the marketing team was so ramped up to be selling cars that they're like, well, instead we'll just call the operating systems 26. I don't, I just, I listen, I'm not going to die on this hill. I'm not going to die on this hill.

but it does pain me to know, no fail that like they could have done a thing so much better. And I just, I don't know. I, I, I feel a little bit let down. I feel like Apple could rise above it and just, I don't know. I mean, I think longterm it's fine. It's uniform across all the operating systems. It should have been. I mean, if it was, I was 25 when we got to next May, uh,

May 2026 and we're on Iowa's 20, 20, Iowa's 25.

I don't know. I feel like it might have felt a little strange. Steven, what operating system is on your main phone right now? iOS 18. Gosh, that's like seven years old. I cannot even believe it. If you're specifically saying the names are based on the year, do you think people will know that? Other than the people who listen to the keynote? I asked my wife. I said, what operating system is on your phone? She's like, I have no idea. When did you update it? No one knows or cares. And at WWDC25.com,

They didn't introduce iOS 25. It still just doesn't make sense. Although I will say when I posted our last episode on social media, I had a Freudian slip because I was trying to do everything so fast. And I put, we talk about iOS 16.

Because in my mind, iOS doesn't start with a two. We went back in time. It was like an hour later and I saw someone on Mastodon. Did you mean iOS 26? I was like, shoot. No, Stephen had some real feelings about the iOS that came out two years ago. He really wanted to talk about it. Strong feelings. Briefings are interesting. I thought being here that I would...

in between briefings or in between scheduled events, I'd be able to just kind of like hang out at Apple Park and like go to the middle of the ring and see the rainbow stage. It's not like that. And I don't know if it was the same for you, but basically anytime you have a briefing,

You have to go through the security gate. You get escorted to your briefing. As soon as the briefing is over, you get escorted out and you're not in Apple Park anymore. And it doesn't matter if there's like 45 minutes till your next briefing, you're going out and then you have to go back in. And I was like, oh man, so I don't. Okay. Which I understand you don't want random people hanging around Apple Park. Sure.

Even though every door is locked, like every door, you know, people need to ding you in. But I was like, the one time I got a little flexibility was after the episode we recorded from Apple Podcast Studios. I was trying really hard to like get it published before I left because I knew once I left, I was gonna have to walk all the way at Apple Park, go back to my hotel, do all this stuff.

And so I asked my contact, I was like, can I sit in here for just 20 minutes? I'll just stay in this room. I just want to publish this episode. And they let me stay there like in the little, uh, green room. Yeah. Which I also discovered Apple podcast studios is not like a permanent thing. No, it's like conference room 7175 in the North ring. Yeah, exactly. It's just conference rooms that they changed for dub dub. And I guess other events where they let people record podcasts.

Also, that hallway, I don't know if this was the same hallway when you were here. Every conference room is like a spacey type name. Yeah. Like there's like Cosmos. Yeah. And there's like, I don't know if there's a black hole room, but there was one room, I took a picture of the label, and it said anti-matter.

there's an antimatter room and so as my contact was walking me out i was like you guys got antimatter in there i was like that i thought it was funny jokes probably cheesy but anyway why don't you tell us about what your experience was getting there i think that would be interesting i think we talked about i'm sure we've talked about my experiences of doing that before but i would be interested like what your impression and we actually haven't talked about this really but what your impressions were you arrived on monday morning yes and what that experience was like for you

it was wild. I got there super early. They said, check in. You can go through security at 8am. I got there at seven 30. And when I, when I arrived, there's like, there's a very specific place you had to pull your car in. I guess this is, this was even different than last year. Did you check in at the visitor center or were you on the other side? You're on the other side. They did that last year. Yep. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So media had to go to the other side and,

And so I had to tell my Uber, who spoke Spanish and not English, I had to use the little Spanish I still remember from high school. I'm like, derecha, stay at derecha. You got to stay in the far right lane because the security is very intense. And if you're not media, they assume you're a developer and you have to go to another place. And Andrew O'Hara, who I met for the first time from HomeKit Insider, I hosted with him.

He went to the wrong place because they made him go there. So I arrived. I stood next to Lance Ulinoff while I was waiting for security. So that was fun. Did the security check-in. And because I was so early, I mean, I was in at like 8 a.m. I had a lot of time. I filmed some B-roll, but I walked over to the keynote area. And it's very surreal. Everything is just surreal. The building...

is massive and you know people you'll hear people talk about the huge glass doors and the look and I'll show one of the pictures I took walking there this was actually I took this at one of the briefings I was going to but there was just there was nobody there when I was walking because I was like so early

but it was super fun. Like, I mean, I went in, I did the cafe max thing. Um, and they had cafe max was on the first floor. Like you, you weren't supposed to go upstairs. At least that's what they told me. So I got a cafe max thing. They like a lot of fish. I got scrambled eggs with salmon, something on it. Like everything has some kind of fish, seafood on it. So I did that. And then I sat down and eat and, and,

I won't say their name, but someone from Mastodon who actually recently retired from Apple who follows the show and follows me on there. He sat down next to me and he was like, great to meet you and all this kind of stuff. And, you know, I will just say, well, one of the coolest things was the saying goes, never meet your heroes because the implication is that they will disappoint you. And I feel like the exact opposite is, is true of like the tech bubble that we are in because when it got closer to the keynote time,

I did my selfie rounds and I said hi to as many people as I, and got selfies. And so I, I Justine, MKBHD, Joanna Stern, Nilay Patel, like I got to meet all these people and it was super fun and they were all super nice. And, uh, Varon, I feel like I'm not exactly sure how to pronounce it. Varon. How do you say it? Varon. Yeah. Varon from The Verge, right? Yeah. From The Verge. He's the video guy. He does, he does a lot of drone stuff.

He was also early. He was saving seats for the whole Verge team. And I wanted to say hi because I recognized him and I love his work. And he was so nice. He talked to me for like 15 minutes because there was nothing else going on. And so we talked about YouTube and we talked about his work. And so he was super nice. And then Allison Johnson. Yep. She was at the F1 movie premiere last night.

And they usher you in like, I'm going to talk about that, I think, in our bonus episode in a few minutes. But I was ushered into the row behind her and I was obviously by myself. I wasn't with anybody. And she was like, you want to sit on my sofa? And she has like the double seat in Apple in the Steve Jobs Theater. And I was like, and then I talked to her before the thing and I was like, man, everybody is so nice. Like it was just, it was such a wonderful experience. Yeah.

And so the keynote I talked a little bit about in the last episode was super intense and frantic. And then after the keynote, it's like a mad dash to the visitor center and everyone's trying to make videos. But I loved every minute of it. It was the experience I was hoping for. So it was really fun. It was really fun. Yeah. What was your first impression when you actually... So did you...

If I recall last year, they actually shuttled people from the media entrance around, but I could be, that might've just been because of our briefings. But my question is just, what is your first impression when you first get on the grounds and there's the ring and then you see the big giant doors for Cafe Max? I mean, it's, it's just impressive. And I was, you know, I was debating, do I,

just stand there and stare at stuff or do I take pictures and video? And so when I was first arriving, I was just capturing stuff. And so I didn't take it in, but,

because I was so early, I did all that. I talked to Viren and then I sat down and there was still like an hour before the keynote. It was like 9 a.m. And so I just stood there and just like stared at everything. And I was like, this is wild. This is wild. And for the briefings, it was even more surreal just seeing some of the buildings. So I got to go to Steve Jobs Theater for a briefing, just see the outside. And then for the movie last night, I actually went into the theater, which was awesome.

But then I had a briefing in what Apple calls the observatory.

And so that's, this is all you see from the outside. It looks like silo. Yeah. You know? And so there was a briefing here and the only picture you're allowed to take inside is of this hello sign. It's like this glass hello in the lobby is this, there's a skylight that's beautiful. And inside it's that window that you see from the outside. It's actually massive. And so that briefing area and there's just totally natural light and

just beautiful architecture. And, you know, Apple Park, just that name, the fact that it is like, it is literally a park. Like as you walk the paths, you walk to the different buildings, it is straight up a park, just the trees, the plants, the foliage. And it is a beautiful experience to walk around. I was like, man, if you were to work here, this would seem really cool. Like just to be able to walk around here every day and,

you know, do lunches on the grounds and walk to the different buildings. And there's people who ride bikes up and down the paths and Apple employees. So,

everything it was it was all impressive and it was all beautiful and i was so thankful to be here well and i would just point so for our our listeners if you when you they filmed quite a bit of the sections in the observatory so like when federighi is talking about ils he's standing on the other side of that window that you can see in the picture that steven just shared uh if you're watching this on youtube if you're not i would just go back and like

If you just kind of scroll through, if you want to know what that area looks like, since Steven wasn't allowed to take photos and we're glad that because the kidnapping thing would have been or the hostage thing would have been a lot different. But when Federighi is standing there talking about it, he's in that space. And I have to say that when I was waiting in that podcast studios or when I was working on the last episode in the podcast studio waiting room, I was sitting there and

And Craig Federighi and Greg Joswiak were walking out. They were like 10 feet away from me. And it took everything in me to not bolt out of the room and try to get a selfie with them. And I was like, if I do this, I will probably be tackled. And the scene is trying. Also, this is the only WWDC you're ever going to get invited to. Exactly. So I didn't do it. But then it happened a second time when I was there for Andrew Edwards' podcast. We're in the little waiting room.

And Craig walks by for an interview. And I was like,

Wow. Twice. But I did not. I refrained from doing that. So that's been my experience. It's been awesome. Because we have limited time, I actually have another briefing to get to in a little bit. I want to jump to kind of the interviews that have been happening between Craig and Jaws and then some of the tidbits I've learned from briefings and then talk about my Waymo ride and talk show. But before we do, I want to thank today's sponsor, which is Surf Shark.

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Secure your privacy with Surfshark. You can go to surfshark.com/roblez. Sorry, these are my last name as a primary tech. - That's fine. At least they didn't say the other guy. - Yeah, that, honestly, that'd be hilarious. Surfshark.com/roblez. You get four extra months of Surfshark when you sign up. But internet security is more crucial than ever and you can protect your online life with military grade encryption and enjoy secure, unrestricted internet experience.

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So I actually saw, I should have pulled this picture up. When I was going to one of my briefings, we were standing outside the Steve Jobs theater and I looked into the distance and I was like, I recognize that hair. That's Craig Federighi.

And it was actually the interview he and Jaws were doing with Joanna Stern. They were like on this precipice that you could see from the Steve Jobs Theater. So I 5X camera and like got a shot. So that was as close as I got to a selfie with Craig. Were they in the TV studio? They set up a TV studio by the Steve Jobs Theater. It's like a tented thing. It's a tented thing. Yeah, that's the TV. That's where like CNBC and the TV stuff. Yep. They did that.

And so the reason I want to talk about just kind of the interviews that have been happening, obviously no Apple executives went to John Gruber's talk show, which was also last night. Instead, he had Nilay Patel and Joanna Stern, which are always fun guests to have with Gruber. But it was interesting, you know, when Gruber announced that he was not going to get Apple executives on his show, it seemed to maybe imply in the communications to him that it's because they were stepping back from doing as many public

interviews or appearances or whatever. Uh, but now that we're here at dub dub week, that is clearly not the case because they have given tons of interviews, namely to Joanna Stern at the wall street journal where they actually addressed the personalized Siri directly. And she asked them about that. Also tech radar got an interview with them. Tom's guide. I justine did an interview and I know there's other venues that are still going to come out. Uh,

but that I know were actually recorded already from people I've talked to here. So they clearly did not step back from doing interviews. They seem to just have stepped back from doing interviews with John Gruber, which...

It feels really weird, Jason. Well, first of all, I think we have to now say friend of the show, John Gruber. Friend of the show, John. He's actually been on our show. And I met him in person too. And I'm super bummed that we didn't ask him. So who are you going to have at the talk show this year at WWDC? Because we could have broken all of this news. But I... Well, you know, they...

Joanna Stern has typically done interviews and I give her credit. Like she has some hard questions. And honestly, I've never seen Craig, Craig Federighi squirm more and cry really hard. You could just see his brain, his very large brain, like trying to figure out what I'm supposed to say and get it into there. And I like, listen, I think Federighi is a pretty authentic and trustworthy person and

It is. You just have to wonder like, cause he, cause he is on the record now disputing what Gruber has said, which is that they didn't have this stuff working and that the demo was basically faked. And he's like, Oh no, no. Yeah.

When Gruber wrote his piece, There's Something Rotten in Cupertino, he stated that the demos they did last year at DubDub, specifically about the semantic index and personalized Siri, were basically concept videos and that those features were not even working at the time. And that was, I think, a large part of John Gruber's criticism and maybe why live demos should return because it was just videos that we saw last year.

Craig Federighi addressed that directly in that Joanna Stern interview. I'll link it in the show notes that those features were active. Any of the features they showed in the keynote were

had been working or at least were live in their testing. They just weren't ready. So that's an interesting discrepancy. I'd be curious Gruber's source, which might have been lower level employees, but maybe ones that actually had more hands-on experience with the personalized Siri. But it was clear that Craig really wanted to shape the conversation as that Apple is not behind on AI. They just have a different approach to AI.

and that their approach doesn't match Google Gemini or Meta, but that they are no farther behind. It's just that they're doing it differently. And there may be some truth to that. Again, back to giving developers the keys to on-device models. You can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that is unique to what Apple is doing. I don't

Don't know if developers get like on-device Gemini access for their apps on an Android phone.

And then the live translation API. So maybe there are some legitimate differences in Apple's approach, but it does feel like a bit hand-wavy to say, we're just doing it differently and we're not behind. I think it is unequivocal that in the... And one of the things they talk down about is chatbots. They're like, people don't want to just deal with chatbots. And it's like, well...

No, people actually love the chatbots. That's why ChatGPT is popular. Yeah, Stephen, I use ChatGPT a hundred times a day for everything. So does every college student in America now. Well, for different reasons. But still, popularity. Yeah, but I basically have stopped. There are very few things that I Google anymore.

Almost everything, I just open the ChatGPT app on my phone. I don't even know. I should just assign it to the action button at this point. I don't know why I actually go through the hassle of swiping up to unlock my phone and then tapping on ChatGPT. But one of the reasons, by the way, that it's amazing compared to Google is I have a log. I can go back to the thing and later on I can ask it another question about that same conference. You can't do that with Google. You start from zero every single time. And...

Yes, they're taking a different approach. Ben Thompson had a really interesting take on this. And that is the idea that what Apple is really, really good at is delivering finished products, right? They are very in a UI overhaul is a finished product. Someone sits down and thinks about what should this be? How do we build this? Let's test it. Let's ship it to customers. And obviously some things change over the beta. But like the point is, once they ship it, it's a finished product, right?

AI doesn't work like that, right? These models, they're like Google, open AI, meta, perplexity, anthropic. They're releasing new variations on their models on a constant basis. And it's being used for different things on a constant basis. And Apple's just, that's not their strength. They're just not good at that. They are culturally and sort of structurally bad.

That is not, and I think the perfect example is Apple intelligence, right? They, they don't, they don't want to ship an iterative thing. They don't want to ship something that has unexpected outcomes. And that is literally what AI is. I mean, even Apple, like you saw, I don't know if you saw the report when it was talking about the large reasoning models and it's like, they're not actually reasoning.

We don't actually know what they're doing. And Apple is not going to ship a thing to... And actually, it's kind of what Federighi said to Joanna Stern. We needed more time because once you start to build these features and you start to game out and see what they do, sometimes they do unexpected things. And so we didn't want to release it yet. That is the opposite of what Google is doing. That is the opposite of what Meta is doing. And I think that that's why Apple is behind because they are just super, super conservative about how they think about product launches. 100%.

I also think Apple intelligence has not allowed you to like give it a prompt directly since it, since it launched, you know, writing tools, you can just select text and summarize what you have selected. You have to call out to chat GPT if you want to do anything else, but the shortcuts actions that are available now, I did a whole video on it. I'll link it in the show notes. Now for the first time you can directly prompt Apple intelligence to

both private cloud compute models and local on-device models. But the only way to do it, the only interface for it, is the shortcuts. A shortcuts action. There's no, like you can't do it in Spotlight. You can't do it using the voice assistant. There's no Apple intelligence app on your Mac or your iPhone where you can just open a chat window. You can only do it through that shortcuts action. And so it's clear that Apple is wanting to definitely highly limit that. But,

This is going to take a long time and they're behind the curve, but I imagine that's going to help train their models as those shortcuts users are like prompting it and training it. And an example of that in one of the briefings I had yesterday was,

The text message spam filtering is actually getting an upgrade behind the scenes in iOS 26. And when you, like there's a new filtering option, that is another feature that most people are going to really like. In messages, the different views where you can go to known senders, filtered, spam, it's much clearer and it makes a lot more sense. But in messages, it's

If you mark a sender as spam, where now you can kind of do that, you know, when you delete a conversation that you don't recognize, it'll say delete and report junk. Well, once you start doing that in iOS 26, Apple said that's actually going to be training their spam filter model. Oh.

that will then be applied to all iPhone users. And so that number or that source of the spam, there's now a model being trained to improve it over time. And so it seems like Apple is incorporating more of those, like, how do we get our users to do things that helps our model be better? The shortcuts action, the spam filtering, phone calls, maybe like with the call or...

not hold assist, but call screening. And so the models would be trained, but it's still clear like Apple doesn't just want to give you a chat window. Like how wild would it be if in the messages app, there could just be an Apple intelligence conversation and you can just talk to it like a chat bot. Like that would be Apple trying to do chat GPT, but they don't want to do that. They don't want to give users that direct access. They don't want to do that. And they are saying, okay,

that they don't think that that's what people want. Correct. But all people do all day long is send text messages and get responses. It is the, that is the interface. I, I understand that like there's the next level of like the voice talking to things, but I think we've shown that people are super cool with just typing things to these chat bots to get the reactions that they want. Like I was, I, I asked chat GPT a question and,

related to like some kind of food or something like that and it was like if you tell me what else you ate i can give you like a thing and i just took a screenshot because i had been for for various reasons my doctor had asked me to to keep track so i was using an app to do that and i just took a screenshot of the log gave it to chat gpt in a you know text thing and it's like oh great here's this this this and this is like people love doing that like i have a little friend um

I can message photos too. And it gives me back information or send text messages too. And so for, it does still seem like Apple, Apple is being kind of stubborn. And I wonder, and I'd be super interested if you could dig this up for us, figure this out, do some on the ground reporting and all of your behind the scenes briefings. Are they, do they feel that way because they can't deliver it yet? Right. Because that is the promise of like better Siri. Right. Or,

Or do they actually feel that way? And the reason that Syria hasn't gotten to the same level as these other assistants is because fundamentally they don't think that that's the interface people want.

And that's interesting because sometimes Apple is really good at introducing interactions that no one else has been able to deliver on. Right. Like pulled on to refresh, for example. I mean, actually, that didn't come from Apple. Apple just like they sort of took it. Yes, they did that. Or but even like the bounce, like when you when you scroll in a bounce like these different things that people they're good at that. But at the same time, I'm wondering if.

Their preconceived notions about things? Are they informing the product decisions or is the fact that they can't deliver it

informing the marketing message. It does feel like they're a little stubborn on the chatbot interface that they just don't want to do that. And I wonder if they'll have to concede in the next couple of years and say, okay, everyone's using ChatGPT or Anthropic or Perplexity and people want this. We'll see. I also don't think they, maybe they want to stay really far away from hallucinations because that is, you know, it's a joke, but,

And if people who use ChatGPT a lot just understand, like, if I'm going to ask it for legitimate information, I have to be ready to vet it and see if this is a hallucination. And maybe they're just really averse to having that kind of hallucinated content on an Apple device where someone thought they were talking to the Apple intelligence chatbot and it told them, yeah, Abraham Lincoln died in 1954, and they just don't want that kind of thing. And that's why they punt you to ChatGPT

And they could be like, hey, that's not Apple Intelligence. That's ChatGPT. Maybe. Maybe that's part of it.

But that just makes Ben Thompson's point though, that they're very averse to unknown outcomes and they won't ship a product until they feel like they know what all four corners of that product experience are going to be. And that's just not the way AI works. Right, right. So we'll have to see. All right. I want to jump to just a couple of tidbits I've learned from my briefing. So you've been using spotlight on the Mac, Mac OS Tahoe clipboard history. I don't know. Let me know if you knew this already.

Clipboard history is not a snippet. It doesn't have a memory of the amount of snippets you save. It is an eight-hour time limit. So the clipboard history in Spotlight times out at eight hours, and then past clippings get removed. And there's no settings for that. You can't say, save my last 100 or 500 clippings. And I discovered that someone told me in a briefing yesterday, and

And I was like, okay, well, third-party clipboard managers, they still have some life left in there. Because personally, I'm going to keep using Pastebot because I like saving 500 clippings so I can search it because I want to search. All of them. Just save everything I've ever put on the clipboard. Yeah. But so I thought it was interesting that it was time-based and also universal clipboard. So if you copy something on your iPhone, you can paste it on your Mac. It doesn't automatically get put in the clipboard history from universal clipboard.

So copying things on your iPhone and your iPad, it's not that like you can just go to spotlight on your Mac and see those clippings. You actually have to like paste it on your Mac and then it will go into that clipboard history. So just some interesting points. Did you know about that? Did you figure out how you call it up in spotlight? I'm trying command. So command space calls up spotlight and then you hit the right arrow key and

And then you can go to the actions apps or clipboard history. How was I supposed to know that? Can you type? I think you could just type clipboard too. It just was looking for files and folders that say clipboard. It is very hidden. And that might be a UI that changes because when you just do command space now in Mac OS Tahoe, you just get the straight spotlight bar, nothing else. And then if you hit the right key, like the right arrow key, then these new options appear to open apps, to run the quick keys actions, like send a message and,

And then the clipboard history is there. That's how you do it. Also, you have to enable clipboard history. So if you just go in and try to do that, it does nothing. Good to know. I just tried. This is real time. I'm doing this. It still says no results found, even though I copied two things. It's beta. It's a beta. It's a beta. It's a beta. iPadOS, all the windowing features, it's wild that all iPads get it, even iPad mini, which

which Apple previously said it couldn't do stage manager because it didn't have an M1 or whatever, but it can do windowing. And also, again, it's a beta, but if you tile two apps 50-50 on the iPad screen, when you pull down the menu bar, which is new on the iPad,

The menu bar applies to the foremost app, whatever app is in the foreground. So even if you have two side-by-side apps, one is active. Whatever you've selected or whatever you have. Right. But the visual, the menu bar goes across both apps in the middle, and it looks really weird. And it's like, doesn't, yeah. So they probably got to fix that. I would just have the menu bar come down over the active app rather than across the whole screen. But anyway. Okay.

And speaking of little features here and there that have been coming out, 9to5Mac and MacRumors have been doing a great job sussing out little things. The Wallet app in iOS 26 will let you track all your packages now, not just shop orders and things you order with Apple Pay. Curious how they're going to get around the FedEx UPS stuff. That's why delivery apps, deliveries couldn't live anymore. So I'm curious how they get around that. I wonder if it will... I mean, because...

Yeah. Either it's a thing where you'd have to sign into those accounts. Cause like I have an account with both of them and both of them will tell you like expected delivery stuff, or is it just sniffing in your email for the tracking numbers? It does say email. It does work with the, so it's orders in your mail app. So you probably have to use the stock mail app and, you know, let it do that. But so there's that, but I'm excited, more package tracking built in.

The back swipe, you don't have to go back a screen. You have to swipe from the very left edge and that can be a little cumbersome. In iOS 26, you can actually swipe from anywhere now. If you just swipe left to right, it'll go back easier. So if you struggle to get that back thing active, you can do that. That'll be interesting though because a lot of people use gestures and things like mail in different mail apps where they're swiping back and forth and

Could create some interesting. I'm sure that, I mean, in fairness, these are the people that created the keyboard, right? Like recreative selection. They figured out how to like identify your intent. So I'm sure that they're thinking about that, but it would just be really a bummer if you like try to like swipe a message and maybe it doesn't matter because in the mail app, what would you be going back to? So like maybe it only works in apps or you go back to your inboxes view.

Sure, that's not all that. Yeah, you're right. I do that. Well, anyway, we'll see how it actually works. And maybe when there's swipe actions, it's a little more sensitive. And then one I was actually kind of excited about in tvOS 16.

you'll be able to actually pick and choose what aerials actually show up on the screen saver. So if there's an aerial you're just kind of sick of or you don't want to see anymore, you can now deselect it and it won't show it anymore. I don't have to look at the view of LAX anymore. That's great. Right. Exactly. And then, of course, I did a video on the shortcuts actions already. I'll link that with Apple Intelligence. It's really exciting. They're really powerful actions. You can even pass images and variables through them. So I'll talk about more in depth. But

Um, only because we're short on time. I want to do a quick personal tech and then talk to do a bonus episode. But Jason full self driving. Yeah. You got an upgrade on your Tesla. It's the future. No. Okay. No, I did the Waymo ride. I did. I did, uh, three actually. I did three Waymo rides because the first time I did it, I, I had so much fun and it felt safer than the Uber drivers. Cause they're just flying around here in San Francisco. Um,

I was blown away by the Waymo experience. It was awesome. It took me, I think when the car pulls up, just like an Uber, you know, you hail it in the Waymo app, the car pulls up, you have to unlock the doors through the app. I didn't realize that. And so I stood there for a second, like, how do I get in? And then I, yeah. And then you, you start the run and,

I mean, they're good drivers, Jason. I mean, they, the non-existent robots. But it navigated pedestrians, stopping and giving other cars right of way, left turns that don't have an arrow. It did it all. And I want to do all automated driving everywhere. And I would say if I had a car that had quote unquote full self-driving, I feel like I would trust it. Because if it's anything like this, which...

It's not because the Waymo cars look insane because there's 80 cameras that are like huge and there's all these sensors. So maybe that's what you need for it to be that good. But I don't care what my car looks like. I drove a Kia Soul for 10 years. I'll drive away. I'll let the Waymo drive me around. It looks totally insane. I enjoy it. Have you ever done a Waymo ride? I have not done a Waymo ride. Wait. No, I did an early Waymo ride in, I think it was Phoenix. So, but it was several years ago. Like, yeah, it was a while ago, but...

I want you to just include for our readers, listeners, for our listeners, my article about my 250 mile road trip to Chicago with Tesla's full self-driving. And I'd like you to rent a Tesla that has full self-driving and just compare the two because I think the way Mo does it, because you just said, I want full self-driving on a car. And I'm just telling you right now,

Tesla's full self-driving is not at the same level as Waymo. Right, right. And again, just seeing the sensors on the Waymo car, it makes total sense. Explains it, yeah. They have like 25 LiDAR sensors and your Tesla has...

Zero. It's cameras. Yeah, it just has cameras. And the LiDARs would work in rain, different weather. I don't know. I imagine cameras would not be as good. They have to actually be able to see. I mean, there are times in my Tesla when I lose cruise control because the cameras can't see. See, that's the thing. And so real quick, just for the YouTube viewers, let me go. And so you can do it in San Francisco, Austin, Texas, and Atlanta.

And Phoenix. And Phoenix. In Austin, Atlanta, they partnered with Uber. But here, like in San Francisco, you have to use the Waymo app. But there's the Waymo car. Look, it looks insane. Totally fine. It's just a Jaguar F-Pace. Like, it's just a Jaguar midsize SUV. Yeah. But, I mean, it's wild to see this just steering wheel turning by itself to just...

Yeah, it just goes. And the assistant's very nice. When you get out, it says, don't forget your phone, your keys, your bag. If you don't put your belt on in the back, though, it yells at you. It was like, put on your seatbelt. And then as I started driving, it was like, ding, ding, ding, seatbelt. It was not happy about that. Anyway, I enjoyed my Waymo rides. I would do more if I could. That's awesome. All right, so I want to talk about...

my decision whether to go to the talk show or the F1 premiere last night. That's going to be our bonus episode for today. So if you want to listen to the bonus episode, you can support the show. Join.primarytech.fm. You can also support us directly on Apple Podcasts. You get our daily show when you support the show Monday through Friday, the top news headlines.

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