Apple’s Privacy Battle with UK, TV+ App on Android, OpenAI’s GPT-5 and Beyond
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A good agent doesn't need gadgets. The only gadgets I've ever needed are a sharp eye, sensitive hearing, and a whole bunch of bigger brains. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. Big news this week, the UK is trying to make Apple take away advanced data protection and iCloud encryption there and maybe worldwide. We're going to get in deep on that. Plus, OpenAI is going to be

changing up their models, trying to simplify. Apple TV app is now on Android and Apple released a new health study. Plus Powerbeats Pro 2 are out and people think they're better than AirPods Pro 2. This episode is brought to you by HelloFresh and you, the members who support us directly.

I'm one of your hosts, Stephen Robles, and trudging through the snow is my friend Jason Aten, just to be on this show. How's it going, Jason? I know. Well, see, you'd think it doesn't take much for me since we both work from home, but this is like the week of the year when having a shed in the backyard as your studio is a problem because I've shoveled three times since yesterday because we got a lot of snow. Yes. This is the evidence, if you're watching on YouTube, that this is Jason's snowy boots from the shovel. Yeah.

Oh, that's wild. I've never had to do that here in Florida. I've done it in New York. I know what it's like. Steven, you don't have to put boots on to go to your studio. You barely have to put pants on to go to your studio. I'm wearing shorts right now, I'll be honest. Which you can't do that in Michigan right now either. No. It's too cold. The movie quote today, it's apropos to the big topic we're going to be talking about, the UK and Apple's data. Do you know what movie that might be from? I actually don't know. I feel like I've heard that quote before.

And even with that additional hint, I don't know. I think Jason's sandbagging because someone accused him of using Chachapiti to figure out the movie quotes. Hold on, let's see how long would it take me to search that in Google. You said something about a good... The only gadgets I've ever needed are a sharp eye, sensitive hearing, and a whole bunch of bigger brains. Okay, so I just typed in movie quote, a good agent doesn't need gadgets. And it says Johnny English. Exactly right. Well, I mean, I hope Google could get it. Come on. I was like, the number one search is like,

IMDb. But anyway, I've never seen that movie, so...

Okay, well there you go. The first time that Jason did not get it. Well, if you pick movies I haven't seen, there are probably infinity movies I haven't seen. You just tend to pick ones that I have seen. That's true. But Johnny English, it's apropos because the UK is doing some unsavory things. But we're going to get to that. That's going to be our deep dive. We have some amazing five-star reviews. Although, I feel like I saw yesterday, we're now a 4.9-star podcast. We lost our five. And I don't see...

a lower rating. I think someone just clicked a star. If you made the mistake, like I think my mom did once, where you think you have to click each star to fill it in to give us five stars, don't do that because then it's going to give us a single star. Yeah, super don't do that. That is an interesting... We should unpack that sometime. Not now, but who thinks you have to type in every star? It's like a building thing.

I don't know. But we need to get back to a five-star podcast now. We're at 277 ratings and reviews. So if you could do that, we would appreciate it. But we have some five-star shout-outs. Jeffrey with a G. Jeffrey. Like Joffrey. Who's the actor? Jeffrey. Goldblum?

Never mind. Jeffrey Goldblum. I don't know. Jeffrey with a G says his new favorite show, which we appreciate, but battery percentage on non-dominant back pocket is where he puts his phone. So, okay. Jason wins on that one. Travis 865 from the USA, battery percentage on. Jason wins again. Luca Aesthetics from the UK, DSR Jarman from the UK, and he left a list of wonderful, nice things to say, but also battery percentage off. He said, don't need the extra stress.

Thank you. And nothing on my desktop if I can help it. No drives, folders, files. And we're going to talk about what's on our desktop.

in our personal tech segment in a little bit. And then Dave in PGH from the USA, and he complimented our audio quality. Thank you very much. Thank you for those five-star reviews. Not our content, just the audio quality. He just falls asleep. I hate everything you say, but I love listening to it. No, no, he said he likes the show too. And one old tech shout out, because we've been showing off old tech, and we'll keep doing it if you send it. This is from our community. You can go to social.primarytech.fm and join.

But Rodney, he sent a picture of his Newton, the message pad 120. That's some old tech. That is impressive.

I don't know for sure. He didn't say that he uses it every day, but I still think it's very cool to have. There was really two different questions we asked people. What's the oldest tech that you still use on a regular basis? And then what is literally just the oldest Apple product that you have? That's it. So that's pretty good. If anybody can beat that Newton, let us know. That's pretty good. That's a pretty good one. Yeah. We've got a bunch of things. I want to hopefully do an early lightning round, go through this stuff fast, which never works, but we're going to try it anyways. You had some thoughts.

Because the big game was last weekend, which I will say I streamed on Tubi. I created a free Tubi account the day, like an hour before the game started. I downloaded the app on my Apple TV. And I have to say, worked great. Upscale 4K, not a problem.

Played great on my Apple TV. Is that how did you watch it through a YouTube TV or two? Yeah, that's how we get TV is through YouTube TV. I wasn't about to try to download some janky Fox app to watch the free game. I'm just kidding. Sorry, Tubi. Tubi was good. I mean, Tubi did a great job of like, they knew everyone was only downloading this for the Super Bowl. So as soon as you open the app anywhere, it was like Super Bowl and you just click it. And so it worked out. But you had a big problem about the, uh, about Fox's broadcast.

namely, the score bug.

You said it made everyone mad, and I'm curious why you think that, because Jason Snell liked it. He liked how this thing worked. You're right. You found the two people who liked it. Jason Snell and John Gruber. And I think Ben Thompson also liked it. And I said it was ugly. They said it was functional, which both of those things can be true. My biggest beef with it was the fact that when the...

Well, first of all, if you just look at it, the Kansas City is not centered. The KC is not even centered in that red box. And then when they would add an extension to the side, which I actually think was a good idea, it was a different color and it didn't line up. It just was like, what is happening? And I think I included a screenshot of a quote from someone who's like, Fox paid Tom Brady $375 million and they only had $25 left to spend on the scoreboard design. And that is what it felt like, right? I know that Jason Snell and John Gruber and some people...

They did like it in comparison to some of the past, but I think that it was, I think they could have done better. Let me just say that there was something in, in even in the people who liked it, they're like, yes, but then the, the, the play clock was in a weird spot. It should have like, so I just think it felt like, uh, we, we could, we could do something different. So let's just do something different for the sake of doing something different. And I'm never a fan of that. Well, I, again, if, if you listen to the show for any length of time, you know, I'm, I'm not big into sports ball, so I can't speak to it.

It was very legible for me. I could always tell what the score was. And that left number was zero for a long time. I know. You know, and actually, I think it was Ben Thompson on dithering made a good point, which was, well, it was either him or John Gruber. I can't remember which, but I thought it was Ben. That what they managed to accomplish, and I have to give them credit for this, is that they came up with a design that looked good on both a very large TV and on your iPhone. That's interesting.

That's a good point. Cause again, actually you could, it was very legible in both of those scenarios. And so in that case, all right, I ain't got to give you credit for that. That's true. And you know, so you know what else you could see clear as day on any size screen was Tom Brady's watch. Cause I will say when he came up on screen,

I said it's real men of honor vibes because it was like this very big gold thing. And I'm not a watch person. I don't know about it. Apparently it was a $740,000 Jacob and co watch. Yeah. Did you call that? Cause I tweeted about it. Then you, you. Yeah. I mean, I've actually seen that.

their style before. I do like watches. I don't have any better stuff than 140,000 bucks. You have a collection of any dollar watches? I do not. My children joke though. One time I showed them an interview and it was with...

our friend Tony Fidel. He's not actually our friend, but he's, you know, the guy who invented the iPod, the guy who invented the iPad or iPod, excuse me. And had a lot to do with the iPhone as well. But he is a watch collector. And I think it was when he sold Nest, which is what he did after Apple to Google. He went and bought a Patek watch.

uh like grand complication which is like a 1.2 million dollar watch or whatever and i was showing it to my kids one day so now the joke at our house is that that's permanently on all of my christmas and birthday lists is a patuck in just in imperturbably and yeah that's not the word my children are imperturb yes still not a word what is the word i was looking for in in in perpetuity in perpetuity i think that was what i was going for yeah that's it

And one other sports ball news, because this, and again, you'll have to tell me if there's a cool Apple vision pro, the NBA app on Apple vision pro. I think it's like, you need a league pass to be able to stream the games. They just launched what they call this new tabletop view. And so basically if you use the app in Apple vision pro, you can watch the game stream, like just the video kind of in front of you. And now there's like a basketball court that,

as like a tabletop like a coffee table in front of you and you actually see the players running around the court like you're watching a lot this is a live game and you're watching them go around the court you have the scoreboard plus then you can have the the tv feed above that a lot of people saying like this is super cool again i i'm gonna actually ask my father-in-law to don the vision pro and tell me what he thinks because he's huge into the nba and

and he liked the couple immersive videos that he watched in Apple Vision Pro. So I'm curious what he would think of this, but it seems like a cool idea, and people are saying it's fun. Wasn't there a Vision Pro F1 app that was similar to this, I feel like? Or maybe it was like a Porsche app where the people in the pit can see the 3D. So, I mean, this is novel. I don't...

The one piece that feels like it's missing, again, unless you're in a hotel by yourself or traveling or something like that, is most people, I know you're not familiar with this because you don't watch. I mean, do you even know? You know that that team is the Bulls, right? Are you kidding, Jason? I'm just making sure. Are you kidding? There's a huge bull on the court. I understand. I just wanted to establish the baseline here for us. Yes, yes. But most people like to watch sports with other people, right? And so the Vision Pro is not generally the way you do that because then they laugh at you. Right.

Well, that's, yeah. And my father-in-law watches basketball by himself, though, so that might be appealing to him. There you go. So anyway, I think it's cool. If anybody out there, both have, this Venn diagram is probably very small, but has Vision Pro, also loves NBA and has the League Pass, let me know if you've tried it. I think I might try it just because. But now, moving from the Super Bowl, but still tangentially connected, OpenAI had their first major ad during the Super Bowl. I saw it.

It was this kind of dot matrix history of humanity going all the way up to AI. It cost them $14 million, but I thought it was a pretty cool ad and also amazing. I saw a lot of people commenting on this that OpenAI has somehow branded a black dot on a white background.

Like for some, like somehow they've made it recognizable that that is open AI. I don't know how they've done it, but that is a pretty amazing ability to just say like, like black dot, that's us. And then, you know, the ad goes through and actually has a bunch of imagery and video all made up of these dots. And it was actually really cool. And it was, it was pretty effective. And you wrote an article about it as well, but do you like it?

I thought it was good. And so when it, I mean, I knew opening, I was doing an ad. And so as soon as it came up, yeah, the, but the black dot, I was like, Oh, this is an opening. I add funny thing was then there's a point in the ad where there's a, where there's, it starts to show the voice, uh,

like talking to it and it has a little glyph. And the funny thing is that's, it was basically the Cisco logo when it, when it first comes up. Yeah. Right there. It's basically like the Cisco logo. And so I thought, Oh, well maybe this is a Cisco ad. And then I'm like, no, it's definitely chat GPT.

But then I talked to two other people who were like, I really thought that was about to be a Cisco ad because of that image that came up. I think there's two things that are notable about this ad. One, it is notable that OpenAI says that they actually used humans to make it. So that's great. Good job. I'm really thankful that the people that make ChatGPT and Sora did not use them to create the ad. So that's good. They said they used it for some of the conceptualization and that kind of thing, but they actually had humans create it. And then the second thing is, and the reason I wrote it is,

It seems as though chat GPT or open AI has done a thing that Google can't, which is talk about AI in a way that doesn't seem weird. Now I should clarify Google's ad this year at the Superbowl was actually really good. I don't know if you caught it. It was like a dad kind of thing. I thought that was really good.

but if you remember that ad and a pixel ad, was there a Google and a pixel ad? Well, it was like a Google assistant ad where he was, where he's helped using it to help him prepare for a job. Talk about, talk about the best job you ever had or something like that. And it was like reminiscing about being a dad. I thought it was great.

But if you remember the Paris Olympics ad where Google had an ad where it was a father using Google Gemini to help write a letter to his daughter's favorite athlete. And it was just widely panned because it's like, no, the whole point of you writing a letter to someone is like it should be done by a human. And OpenAI sort of skipped out on the here are some practical things you could do with a human.

with AI and sort of pinned it to the progression of human innovation, right? That ad that you showed starts with, you know, humans, you throwing a spear, right? And then there's fire and then there's crops and then there's farming and then there's like the internet and then there's like personal computers. And it's like, it's basically saying AI is the next logical progression of this. And I actually think that from a big picture perspective, that it did a really good job of sort of, of, of doing that. And I,

And so I thought it was a good ad. I think, I mean, we now know why open AI is raising all that money. We thought it was to build cloud computing. It's actually just to run Superbowl ads. No, but it was a good ad. I mean, I think it was probably better than the Google one, but I did like this Google ad for the pixel and Gemini. And I think they did better, like playing to the emotion. It almost felt more like an Apple ad. Well,

Well, it actually felt more like an old school Google ad. So I referenced, if you remember the Parisian love, which was the 2012, I think Superbowl maybe, which was literally just a series of shots of someone doing a search and it starts with study abroad in Paris. And then how do you say you're really pretty?

looking for cafes, looking for this. And then it ends with like, how do you assemble a baby? Yeah, that was good. Fantastic ad. And it was literally just a bunch of blue links. It was like so creative and such good storytelling. And Google has done a really good job of that. And then they sort of like, like really lost their way. This ad was much better. But I think in terms of

I still don't think that in that example, who's going to use their Google Pixel phone to help them prepare for a job interview. That still just doesn't feel like the kind of thing someone's actually going to do. I mean, maybe. I mean, I guess you can ask it for like sample interview questions and what would be good responses or how do you phrase. I mean.

I can see it. Maybe. Yeah. But are we at a point where the assistant can then listen to your answer and give you feedback? I don't feel like we're there yet. I'd be curious. I haven't tried that. I'd be curious if, well, I don't know about Gemini, but see how chat GPT voice does, but I don't know. That's interesting. Yeah. Maybe chat GPT five will, which Sam Altman is out here saying that his plans for chat GPT 4.5 and five. But I would say, thankfully they're actually going to look at streamlining their models because they're,

There's a lot of models out there between the three O's and the O ones and the fours and all that. So they're going to streamline supposedly no specific timeline on the next release of chat GPT. He said weeks to months, which could be December for all we know. Uh, but yeah, so that's more coming. Chat GPT five is coming. And also Elon Musk offered to buy open AI for the nonprofit arm. And, uh, they said no.

Well, yeah. Okay. Can I say two things about this? So the first one, I just want to suggest there, it would be easy to miss this. ChaiGBD5 is probably going to get a lot of the headline buzz, but OpenAI also released something called Deep Research recently. Yes.

And I want to say it's ridiculous how amazing it is. Now, Google also has a thing called deep research. Not confusing at all, right? That's an internal thing, right? No, you can use it. If you have Gemini Advanced, you can use Gemini 1.5 with deep research. So, ChadGPT's is a little bit better on the analysis side. But you could literally say...

Research the history of smartphones and explain why the iPhone has an advantage and how it became the dominant thing. And it'll spend 15 minutes. It'll show you all the websites it's reading. It'll go through all this and then it'll prepare a report for you and it'll do all of this. It is actually pretty, pretty amazing. I would recommend people if they're, if they're interesting, Ben Thompson did this where he actually told it to, uh,

write a report on Apple's most recent earnings. And then he literally just posted what it came up with. He actually did it twice and then he talked about it and stuff when

When I say he just posted it, I mean, he posted it in the context of an article explaining that that's what he did. I don't mean he just like published it. So I feel like that is the thing we should be paying attention to because that is where... And I've used Gemini a couple times now to do certain things. And it's very good. It's like having a research assistant. It is... Check GPT-5. I don't really know what we should be expecting to be different about that from what we currently have.

But this deep research thing is what's, that's where we start looking like we're closer to AGI because it's, it's able to actually do things on your behalf. It like goes out and it'll show, it's like reading 73 websites and it's like going through all of them and then it's forming opinions and it's organizing them and it's, it's pretty cool. So I just didn't want to pass that part of it by the other thing about the naming is

it's like, it's the calling card of AI that we have to name them really weird, stupid thing. Cause I guarantee you, if you talk to the average person and you're like, are you, you know, there's chat GPT five and then there's Oh one and then there's Oh one mini. And there's also Oh three. And the reason there's no Oh two is because in the, in Europe, there's a phone carrier called Oh two and they didn't want to get sued by them. So they named it something. I'm like, this is all for real. Like it's just bananas. It's like, and then even Google has Gemini and they have Gemini 1.5 and then they have 1.5 flash and then they have two and they have two pro. And it's like,

How am I supposed to even know what the difference of this? And there are differences. It's like the more simple, the task you have, you should use like the smaller models because they will be much faster. And then you don't need that. It's, it's just really hard for people to parse out what's actually happening. Well, one of the things Sam Almond said, and it's in that verge article is that,

ideally down the road that when you make a request of chat GPT, it should be smart enough to figure out which model to use. So if you're asking it something simple that it would use a faster model. And then if you're asking a deeper question, it would use, you know, which makes sense. Like this, these, uh, these models, the LLM should be able to parse how deep is this question. And, and what is the depth of information that the user is requesting? But,

Anyway, now deep research, isn't that part of the chat GPT pro subscription? Yes. So it is currently only available to pro users. I am not a pro user. I'm not paying $200 a month. However, I think the, I think you could make an argument that deep research might be worth it because if you were in a situation where you were going to hire a research assistant or someone to compile stuff for you, you're not going to get that for $200 a month.

Yeah. Right. Like there's just no way. And it's going to do it. And you, the other thing that's nice about it is you're not paying for, for its time. Right. If it would take somebody three hours to do this, like this is just 200 bucks a month. And now you are limited to a hundred queries. And again, Ben Thompson was saying he's anxious. He's going to run out. Okay.

He's like, I just want to make it do all this kind of stuff. So I did want to say one thing about the Elon thing too. Sorry. Because I do think this is what's interesting about that. I don't know if you had more to go on. But yes, Elon Musk has offered, what, $97.5 billion to acquire the nonprofit. And most people are like, he's just trying to take over open AI. And I think the important thing to know here is,

I think Elon Musk would very much like to own OpenAI. He tried to own it. He was one of the founders. He asked them to just let him be in charge and run the whole thing. They're like, no, and so he left. And he's hated the whole situation ever since then. He has a much smaller competitor, Grok or XAI or whatever. What he's really doing is just screwing with them because they're trying to become a public company. And the nonprofit, which currently owns the for-profit subsidiary,

Their estimation is that they are that there's so they will get a stake. Right. The nonprofit OpenAI will get a stake in whatever public company there is. And they're estimating that it'll be about 25 percent of the for profit subsidiary. So that will spin out on its own, become a company. The nonprofit will still own a quarter of it. And at the valuation that OpenAI is talking about going public.

That valuation is somewhere between like 60 and $70 billion. So Elon Musk just came in and offered $97 billion for the nonprofit. So what he's really doing is just screwing with this process of them becoming public because he doesn't want to, because he just made the valuation much more complicated for potential investors because Elon,

you're only going to be able to raise so much money. And if a quarter of it is $97 billion and goes to the nonprofit, what that just means is that the rest of it becomes a lot more of a less valuable for everybody else. Right? So he doesn't care about buying this company necessarily. Again, I think he would like to, I think he'd love to own it. And he, he seems to have the backing of people who,

potentially would actually put up real money. I mean, the one thing Elon Musk does is create chaos and somehow increase shareholder value. Like those two things don't usually go together, but they historically have for Elon Musk. And so, but I just think it's important. I don't think Elon Musk is really trying to buy it. He's really just trying to make it more complicated for them to go public. Interesting.

Okay. Do you still think the over-under going public this year, 2025? Yeah, I think they have to. Because they can't keep raising money like this. Right. Because all of those investors, like think about Microsoft. They want a return on what they've put into it. And right now, if all the profits are going...

in theory into the nonprofit, they can't have, there's no return for them. They either need to sell their shares or they need to have like, you know, profit sharing. They need to have like a dividend or whatever. And so, yeah. Our one last piece of AI news before we get to Apple and Apple TV coming to Android, which I think is a bigger topic than, than just a new app. But Scarlett Johansson is calling for a deep fake ban because there was an AI generated video that,

This is so complicated. I don't even want to describe it because anyway, I'll just say the deep fake video is kind of crazy because it features famous people like Scarlett Johansson, Jerry Seinfeld,

The deep fake is very convincing. Steven Spielberg is in this and Mark Zuckerberg, like it's very realistic. Zuckerberg is not convincing because he doesn't have a chain on, but the rest of them, yes. The rest of them are like friends. And so like if you watch the whole video, it does like, oh, this feels a little weird. And honestly, the AI video stuff is becoming more problematic. I was sitting with my wife and she saw a video on social media and she was like, look at this. And I was like, that's an AI video.

And it was just some weird thing about like a dog kind of like rescuing a child from falling. Like it wasn't a huge, you know, there wasn't famous people. There wasn't actually like adults in it, but like she was watching it and she knew something was weird about it. And when I saw it, I was like, immediately I was like, that's an AI video. Like I could just see it, but I am seeing more and more just AI generated stuff on Instagram, uh, on Facebook sometimes. And this is another, uh,

you know, just another point, like Scarlett Johansson is like, can we outlaw deep fakes, please? Which I don't know how you can do that. I mean, this is like content that'll just be out there, but they are becoming more and more convincing. And this deep fake had some pretty offensive imagery. And I could understand why she would not want it out there.

But it is. And I think as time goes on, it's going to be confusing more and more people. And there's going to be an increasing number of people that believe that that this was real. And they're going to tell their friends, oh, Scarlett Johansson, blah, blah, blah, did this. And so I think it is a real problem. I don't know what kind of laws can be passed, but yeah, it's an issue.

I agree. I think the alternative is that if we outlaw motion smoothing on regular videos, then we'll always be able to identify the AI videos because that does seem to be the tell is that they all feel just a little bit too cinematic and like perfectly motion. They're all like 120 frames per second, it feels like. And so if we could just make it so that no one else ever does that, then we'll at least be able to identify the fake ones. That is a great idea. I think...

Outlawing motion smoothing. 100% behind that. Just a good idea, period. Good idea, period. That's going to be my platform. I'm going to run for president in 2028. And I'm going to, is that what next time? Yeah. Vote for Robles. Robles A10.

I'm happy to be your VP. I hear the VP doesn't have to do anything, so I'm happy. I can keep podcasting. Okay, great. All right. I want to talk about Apple TV coming to Android. So the Apple TV app is now officially on Android, and you can watch Apple TV Plus original content through that app. It's unfortunate because there was actually an Apple TV app previously on Android, but it was like...

the what you would use on Google TVs or Android TVs and it has like 1.7 stars and so there's like this it's unfortunate because now everyone's like going to the Google Play Store and they're like oh does this app stink because the ratings are like the previous app was bad this is new this is the new Apple TV app and that means you can subscribe to Apple TV plus watch the content on Android that also includes things like Android tablets and

And Dan Seifert had a good tweet saying that the app is actually good on Android, meaning it supports foldables. It'll have like picture in picture support. Like they actually did a good job of making a solid app on Android, which is which is great. And so I went through and found all the apps available, all the Apple apps that are on Android right now. And basically you have Apple Music and Apple Music Classical. Both of those are Apple apps that are available on Android now.

Now you have Apple TV plus, and you also have, what was the other one that I forgot? They have the beats app. They have like the, the air tag tracker, um,

What was the other one? Hold on. Android apps by Apple on Google play. Here it is. I will put this in the show notes. This is like the link to Google's play store. Apple music club beats. Oh, move to iOS. It was the, it was a small thing. It was the app to help you. My small thing to Tim cook. That's the biggest, but this was the, these are all the apps. So what I wanted to talk about was I find this. It's interesting what they choose. I understand why they want this on Android because a, it might,

spur new subscriptions i mean with shows like severance and um slow horses shrinking popular shows they were missing an entire audience who might not be able to have it although the apple tv plus is on a lot of smart tvs and stuff being on android devices natively is a big deal so i totally get why that's there apple music i kind of get to my point is i would love to see

more Apple apps on Android, specifically Apple Podcasts. And there was a couple people on social media that also commented. Number one, James Cridland, he's the writer of PodNews. PodNews.net is a great website for podcast information, like one of the

biggest sources for that. He actually has a page on his website called How to Install Apple Podcasts on Android, which is just the Apple Podcasts website, which launched last year, and adding it to the home screen on your Android phone. And you can basically listen to Apple Podcasts that way, but it's missing major features like downloads, variable speeds, and things like that. And James Cridland said, and his website gets a lot of hits, that

For interest, the number of hits that that page on his website gets, how to install Apple Podcasts on Android, would be indicative that Apple Podcasts on Android would be a massive winner for Apple. And so I think that's an interesting point of information. But even in addition to Apple Podcasts, which I'll get to, Neil Hughes, friend of the show, he was with me on the Apple Insider Show years ago, Apple Books for Android, I think that would actually make sense because you buy a book online.

to be on Android. Now you can use the Books Palma or whatever other Android e-reader you want to use, and you could do that there. And then MacFan2410 on X said, Apple Cash on Android. I actually think that would be a great idea too. Sending Apple Cash between Apple devices is super easy, and it'd be great if that would work cross-platform, 100%. So I think it's interesting. Apple Podcasts, the reason why I think that would be beneficial is one, Google Podcasts no longer exists.

And so if you want a stock podcast app on Android, it's YouTube Music, which not everybody is crazy about. And I would say it's not really...

a good dedicated podcast listening app it's kind of like spotify shoehorning podcasting an app it's kind of how youtube music does it then the alternative is pocketcast which is an incredible app probably one of the best apps for it but it's not free for all the features and so you do end up having to pay a subscription so if apple podcast was on android it would be one of the best and free apps for podcast listening i think podcast discovery and apple podcast is still great

But it could also be revenue for Apple because there is that revenue share with subscriptions. And like our subscription for supporting this show to get it ad free and get our bonus episodes, it would be great if someone on an Android device can just do the same thing. And the more they add Apple TV, Apple Music, it means more Android users have an Apple ID and an Apple account already, have a credit card attached to that account.

And if they're going to do Apple Music and Apple TV+, I imagine an Apple One subscription bundle could be available in the future too. And, you know, people were saying even like, sure, iCloud Drive or whatever, if someone wanted to pay for that as just a cloud storage service instead of OneDrive. So I'm in favor of more Apple apps coming to Android, and I think it's a good step.

with steven well two things one i was just disappointed that in the official press release they don't list silo as a hit that is an or for all mankind i was very i was upset by that i was very and i think maybe the reason is they're not currently showing new episodes of silo so it would be frustrating well that's a fair point or masters of the air i don't know what that is or i believe you okay or hijack all right well my point was i'm like

My favorite show on Apple TV plus right now is not even on that list. But anyway, although shrinking is very good. But anyway, the other thing is, if you look at your list, there's something interesting about that list. Like, let me just put it this way. Apple cash never coming to Android because Apple does not want to be able to think about all of the different devices that you would have to be able to negotiate that, like figure that out because it's using like, like such a,

I don't even know how those types of things work, but like you're not going to be able to use Apple pay with Apple cash on an Android device. And you're not going to use tap to pay on some weird Android third party device that Apple doesn't have control of the entire stack. But if there was just an Apple cash app, like a standalone app, not that it would work in the text messages side, but just like square cash on an Android device or Venmo,

that you could use that service to send the money and it goes through that just to have the Apple Cash app

And then you can, yeah, I don't think that's ever going to happen. And then the same thing is true. If you like think about podcasts, well, if podcast is available on, on Android, they can't sell subscriptions because they're not going to pay Google. They're not going to pay Google 30%. Are you kidding me? That will go. So you think, so for this, like for Apple TV plus, if someone signs up and pays for it, they have to pay Google 30%. Yes, I think they do, but that's a one time, right? That's like, that's, Oh, actually, but here's the thing. I have a theory about this.

I don't think, I think the reason that this has come to Android has more to do with the fact that I think there are way more households that are multi-device, multi-platform, where you have like, it actually boggles my mind when I'll talk to a couple and one of them has an iPhone and one of them has a Pixel or something. I'm like,

How did you two get together? I think that's David Pierce. David Pierce at the verge. How did you even text each other when you were dating? Like, I don't even understand. How did you even get? How did you organize anything? I don't understand how this happens, but there are lots of people, like, I know some people very well who that's the case, and I'm just like, anyway. And so you're less likely to sign up for Apple TV Plus if not everyone has a device that can use that kind of thing. And so I think that there's, this is just sort of like a logical, and I think Apple's willing to pay the 30%

on this side sort of thing is like a loss leader to continue to build up Apple TV Plus, right? To build up that ecosystem. I don't think podcasts is going to be worth it for them because they only make money off of the podcast app when people do in-app subscriptions and they have to pay 30% every time they'd have to do that kind of thing. And the same thing is true for some of like the books app.

Same kind of thing. Are they going to pay for that? Like, I just think if you look at the apps that they do offer with, you know, Apple Music, yes, they'll pay it on the one-time subscription, but you can't go and download like individual tracks where they're paying 30% every single time. I just think it gets really fuzzy and really weird. And I think that, I think that that, like, of course they're going to have a switch to iPhone app because if you're switching from Android to iPhone, and in fairness, you can switch from iPhone back to Android too, the same kind of thing. Like they make those types of things. So I just think that's probably part of it.

Well, I'm still going to hold out hope. I think, you know, Google Podcasts wasn't a great app, but I think a- But there's Spotify. That was the other podcast app. I'm sorry. The most obvious. It's the biggest podcast app at this point. Yes, it is. It's disappointing, but it's true. Listen, if you're on Android-

A and you listen to the show. Thank you. But B use pocket gas. Yeah, I agree. It's just a way it's, it's the best podcast app on Android right now. But, and I do think that I want to give credit to the, the pod news, that article, the SEO of that headline is amazing.

like insane, like masterclass, like he fantastic. You nailed it. James Cridland. He's been in the game a while. Well, I will just say that he's a good dude. I've, I've spoke to him at, uh, I was on a panel with him actually at a podcast movement last year. But anyway, a couple of the quick things, and then we've got to get to the big news of the UK and Apple privacy. But Apple finally earlier this week now has opened up and allowed users to migrate Apple account purchases to

Basically, if you had like an old Apple ID, you can now merge whatever you bought from over there, your apps, music, movies, and combine it with a primary Apple account. Now, you do need to have access to both of the accounts. You need to be able to access the email addresses for both accounts and all of that. But you can now migrate and combine those two.

I've only ever had one account. And this is why I tell people when they create an Apple ID or if they get an Apple device for the first time, just use the stock Apple iCloud email and just use that as your main account so you never have to worry about combining whatever. But I will say this would have been really useful

For my wife, because she had an old Hotmail email address where she had purchases and like playlists and Apple music and all that kind of stuff. And for some reason, like can't get into the Hotmail anymore. We knew the password for whatever reason, just stopped working.

And so she has a new Apple ID she's been using for years now, but it would have been nice to be able to migrate all that stuff to the new Apple ID. But you still need access to that old email address, I believe, to confirm this stuff. It wouldn't work for anyways. But anyway, there's a lot of people very excited about this. If you do this, please reach out and let us know how it goes. Sebastian DeWitt said that he's been wanting this for years. He's going to do it, but was scared, which I totally understand. I would be scared, too.

But just let us know. If you do this, let us know how that process goes. Do you have an old one that you would do this with? No, I don't have an old one. But I do think it's interesting that it's not available in the EU, the UK. And I feel like of the people that I'm aware of that this would be the most beneficial for, it's people who live in the

EU but have a US Apple ID so that they can do things that come to the US like podcasters like I think about Federico Vittici right who's been talking about his saga of going back and forth and being able to merge the two would be amazing but it's like nope sorry we can't do this can't do it

So there's that. And last thing, Apple-wise, and then we get to, well, more Apple, I actually have to, but different things. Apple released a new holistic Apple health study. Apple's doing like all these tiny little things and not releasing the iPhone SE 4 or the iOS 18.4 beta. I don't know why. I know why. They're just trying to make it like so that,

we can cast some doubt on Mark Gurman's. They are trolling. They're literally trolling Mark Gurman. Cause Mark Gurman was like, this week, my phone is C4. And I was like, I think they're just sitting there waiting there. Like Tim Cook has his finger on a button and he's just waiting. And then he'll be like, no, Tim Cook. He's a, he's gonna look it over at Craig, but he's like, Hey, what else can we put out there? That's not the iPhone. I see. Oh, we got this Apple research app.

I totally forgot about it. Oh, yeah, let's do that. We got the Apple TV Plus app on Android. We got this research we could do. I think we have some new watch bands. Let's just put it all out. I love and fully believe that this is just trolling Mark Kerman. Absolutely.

but yeah so there's this new holistic health study and what's interesting is that anyone can participate in this so this is a collaboration between Brigham and Women's Hospital and they're going to be doing this long term research study through health but it's actually through Apple's research app and I apparently had never downloaded this before I mean there was never a reason to I guess but you can actually download the Apple research app for free it will connect to all your Apple health data and you can participate in these long in this long term study and

Um, uh, they're measuring a bunch of different things. You can take surveys, ask about, you know, ask about your health and all that, but it's pretty amazing because Apple is one of the few, uh,

I mean, I would assume Google could do this as well. I don't know how it would work across all the Android devices and different Apple, you know, Pixel watches or Android watches, but Apple as a single source of health data with the pairing of Apple watch and all the models and then the iPhone and just as pervasive nature. I mean, you could gather a lot of data. And so I'm, this is, I'm curious what, you know, it'll be years from now before we see what comes from this, but I'm sure it's going to be pretty,

amazing to see what does it look like to aggregate that much health data from so many people and see what kind of results you can pull from that. So it'd be, yeah, interesting. There it is. Research app.

Yeah, I'm just waiting for them. Do they ever add shoveling as a fitness plus workout? Basic Apple guy. He makes the fun Apple Watch workouts like wrapping holiday gifts. So basic Apple guy, we need a shovel. I think he had a shoveling one, actually. I'm looking on here and honestly, I don't understand. Oh, high intensity interval training is right there. Never mind. I don't know if shoveling snow. Maybe. Maybe it is. It's not on there, but I really wish it was. Snow is heavy.

I did. I've shoveled snow. Oh, yeah. Snow shovels, show snuffles down by the seashore. I've done a lot. It's actually a dangerous thing. Like, I'm not kidding you. When I go out to shovel, I make sure that my wife knows I'm going outside. I went out this morning and everyone was still asleep. And I was like, I'm going out to shovel so you'll know where to look for me if I don't come back. Listen, it's slippery. I've seen a lot of fail videos where people just take that one step. Do you have steps out of your house?

Yes. Do they ever get slippery? We don't live underground. We're not in a silo. No, no, but it could be flat. But are there steps to go down when you go out your front door? I mean, I go out the garage to shovel. But yeah, we actually never go out our front door. Right, that's the trick. That's how you do it. But anyway, there's all these failed videos people have fallen down the stairs. Anyway, anyway, we got to talk about privacy, Apple in the UK. But before we do, we want to thank this week's sponsor, which is HelloFresh. Listen, I don't know why I just shared the PDF. Yeah.

you're watching on youtube you saw me just share the pdf of the hat free so there you go but i'll tell you what i'm not even gonna read so if y'all would just read it please yeah yeah just read it down i'll just leave it on screen for 60 seconds no listen i've i'm not a chef but i've cooked recently because i've gotten some hello fresh boxes and i feel empowered i can actually do it and it actually tastes good that's the difference because you could you could cook stuff on your own it's not always good but with

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And I made two meals recently. One was a chicken sausage and like pasta thing. This is why I'm not a chef. I don't know what it's called, but it was chicken sausage pasta. HelloFresh. It made it easy to do all the ingredients. It was like a single pan recipe. Great. And then I also did the, it was like a pork taco thing. I love anything taco, you know, but it was

It was great and it tasted great. Did you make anything recently? HelloFresh wise? I think since the last time we talked about it, we made these. It was actually a meatloaf sandwich, which sounds weird. So good. It was very, very good. I don't know that I would say I'm a fan of meatloaf, but I was a fan of this. I'm like a toasted...

Ciabatta bread. It was like, it was, it was very good. There you go. And I will say with my pasta dish, they actually included like a bread and garlic butter. And I put in toast oven and it was like,

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And if you can go back on the YouTube and just, you can watch that PDF if you'd like to. Just freeze it. Just pause it right there. Just read the whole thing. Real quick, neither of us have these in hand to really talk about, but I do want to mention the Powerbeats Pro 2 are out. This is Beats like pro line of headphones, noise canceling, all of that. People have been freaking out about these saying they're great, even better than AirPods Pro 2 with quotes. I think I'm gonna have to get a pair to actually see like, are these really that good?

Uh, they're about 250 bucks. So like the same price as AirPods pro two, but supposedly longer battery life. Uh, this is actually a nine to five Mac article. I'll put in the show notes. This is Ryan Christoffel talking about five ways. It beats out AirPods pro two. The biggest thing, it has a heart rate sensor built in. And that's, I think the interesting thing that,

One day I imagine AirPods Pro will also have this kind of technology, but heart rate built in. If you don't like wearing an Apple watch or a fitness band, but you're going to wear headphones, you could do that. Better fit, like it has a little thing that goes behind the ear, so it's probably more secure. Actual color options. AirPods are still white only. Didn't Apple do like white or black headphones at one point, even if it was wired? Did they do that with the in-ear ones that you talked about? I don't think I've ever seen black. No? No.

You might be right. Well, they need to do colors. I'll just say that. I mean, if you think about the marketing campaign, it was always like the bright colors with the white earbuds. So if you want colors, you have to go AirPods max.

Well, that's being generous. And better Android support. So, I mean, people are saying this is really cool. I don't know if it has fine my support. It does have the H2 chip, which is what AirPods Pro 2, what the AirPods Max don't have. The new AirPods Max with the USB-C still has the H1 chip. But, yeah, they look cool. I'm curious. I wasn't going to get them or try them because, I don't know, I like my AirPods Pro 2, but I don't know. People like them. We'll see.

Anyway. Yeah, I'm not going to buy them, but thank you for your service. We have to talk about the UK and Apple privacy. This was a big deal. Jason's article, I kept this Google search up. If you search for Apple privacy, UK, Jason's Inc article is like second official result. You got like the Washington post up here. Well, you have the Apple's privacy page is number one, Washington post.com.

And then if you go past the top stories, a little Google thing, Inc.com articles in the top stories to there, just to be clear. Oh, it is. Look at that. Look at that. And just to be fair, that Washington Post article is the original article that first reported about this. I'm cool with that. Right. Right. That makes sense. Yeah, that's that's pretty good. That's pretty good SEO. So here's the deal. The UK is trying to demand or petition Apple to.

to create a backdoor for the end-to-end encryption via iCloud, which this came out last, a couple of years ago, the Advanced Data Protection, which is what you can, it's a manual enable, it's not on by default, but this is something you can enable on your iPhone and it will encrypt your iCloud data where even Apple cannot decrypt it. And this is the idea of having a backdoor to the encryption where if you decrypt

don't enable advanced data protection, Apple could technically access that data for something like law enforcement, although they often refuse to do that due to user privacy. But the UK, under their Investigative Powers Act, is wanting Apple to provide access to that encrypted data, even through advanced data protection. Now, Apple stands as always privacy first.

And what is the ramifications of, we'll talk about that in a second, but this might also apply not just to the UK, but worldwide. Apparently this investigative powers act is applies to companies that not only offer services or not only exist in the UK, but any company that does business with the UK. So even though Apple is an American business, it could,

force them to do it. Which, I'm curious, one of the things I'd love to hear from you, how does the UK even have that jurisdiction to, like, I don't know what, like, if Apple just says no, I don't know the ramifications. But this is, again, would be a massive deal. One, the Salt Typhoon hack, which happened recently, we talked about it on the show, where Chinese hackers infiltrated US mobile carriers. That was because of backdoors that carriers have, according to data.

And so that's what the UK is trying to do. And I will say just this morning, uh, the U S several members of Congress are asking the national intelligence director, Tulsi Gabbard, uh, to tell the UK to no, like to tell the UK to rescind this demand. And, uh,

The UK here is, I'm reading this quote from the Mac Stories article, I think it's quoting the Washington Post article, which is behind a paywall. The US government must not permit what is effectively a foreign cyber attack waged through political means. If the UK does not immediately reverse this dangerous effort, we urge you to reevaluate US-UK cybersecurity arrangements and programs as well as US intelligence sharing with the UK. That's a big deal.

So I know you wrote the article. Tell me what are your thoughts on this? Okay. I want to, if you don't mind, I want to clarify, I feel like bad for doing it this way, but I'm gonna clarify a couple of things. First of all, the UK is not trying to do a thing. They sent Apple a demand saying you have to do this. Okay. And they, this is under what's called the investigative powers act. I believe it's called. And an Apple over the summer was trying very hard to dissuade them from expanding the scope of what they could require under that. And, and,

Apple has received from the UK government from like MI5 or whatever their domestic, their version of the, not the CIA, but like the NSA. NSA, National Security. And so they have received that and they're not allowed to talk about it. It's illegal to even mention that this demand has been received and yet we still know about it. So that's cool. But...

And I actually wanted to write a whole article just about that because it means one of two things. Someone at Apple talked to the Washington Post or someone in the UK government who knew about this did because they think that there's a problem. That's the only two options. There's not that many people that could have possibly known about this. It's not like someone accidentally posted the document on Twitter, right? Right.

Someone on one side. And so they have actually done it. Now, the other thing I wanted to just clarify before I talk about it is Apple has never refused to provide iCloud data.

Okay. Okay. What they have refused to do. And the only reason they refused is because they literally cannot is to unlock locked devices that law enforcement has asked them for access to. Right. There's like, they were asked a couple of times to write software that would allow them to bypass the passcode. Then they've refused to do that because it would break encryption.

For everyone, and in other cases, they've simply said, we can't help you access this. If you don't have the passcode, you don't. And there are some tools that will essentially trick the phone into, you know...

This happened to me on the way out to my office where my phone, I looked at my phone and it's like, you have to wait a minute before entering your passcode again because if you enter your passcode wrong enough times, it puts you in timeout. Yeah. And if you keep doing it long, that timeout will be like 793 hours or something stupid like that, right? Parents know about this all too well when their toddler is like, beep, beep, beep, beep,

I suggest if you have a toddler, it's probably worth turning that feature off just to help you out. You can even wipe your device if it's like 10 failed passwords. That's what I was going to say. After enough time, it will wipe out the device. You can have that set to do that. And there is very expensive hardware made by...

I believe it's an Israeli company that will trick the phone into not triggering that so they can just continuously enter passcodes, right? So anyway, that's the one thing. So Apple though has always responded to search warrants for data that's hosted on iCloud because Apple has been able to access that information. And the reason Apple does it is super simple because

Because the number of times someone walks into the Genius Bar and says, I don't have my password and I cannot get all of my photos or any of my stuff. And Apple's like, okay, so what we can do is send a reset code to whatever that allows you to recreate a password. Because Apple just, the customer service burden of telling people, sorry, all the photos of your baby are gone. It was just too high. And that's why this is an optional feature. But if you turn on advanced data protection, it's,

there's only one key and your device has that only the only key and it's only accessible when you enter the passcode for your Apple account. Apple has no way of recovering that. That's why you have to jump through a couple of hoops in order to turn it on. I have it turned on. And in fact, I had to remove devices from my account that were too old to be updated and

So they could not be considered like a key, right? Like a key device. And so I had to remove some device. Thankfully we weren't using any of those devices. So it's totally fine. So you have to jump through those hoops to do that.

The problem is, and this is what I wrote about, there is no such thing as a backdoor that lets the government access the information for bad guys that doesn't also just make everyone's information vulnerable. And that's the problem with the Salt Typhoon hack, which was essentially they took advantage of the backdoor, like the wiretapping. Like they just took advantage of what already existed and they were able to get in. And if you create a backdoor, someone will figure out how to get in and it won't just be the government.

And the debate here, the reason this is like complicated for people is I don't think anybody's on the side of let's make it easier for people who do bad things to hide what they're doing. I don't think anybody believes that. But I do think that in this country, any of the people who wrote the Constitution decided it should be a little bit hard for the government to get access to your stuff. Right. And just because they've proven to a judge that they can have a warrant doesn't

That legally entitles them to have access to that information. But that does not negate the fact that companies building encryption, for example, should have to stop doing that for everyone just because there's a war. Like in the cases where Apple has refused to unlock a phone, like they literally refused a judge's order to unlock a device because they couldn't. They're like, it's encrypted. There's nothing we can do. We can't like we literally can't comply with this. And the FBI found other means to get into it. Great.

Great, whatever. So I think that it's important. And I wonder if anyone in the UK government has thought about the fact, well, I'm sorry, let me, I'll share that thought in a second. The important thing about this law is that it applies to companies who do business in the UK, but it applies to user data for citizens anywhere. So the UK could say, we think Apple, that there's someone in the US living in Georgia right now that might be planning an attack. So we want all of their iCloud data.

And Apple would have to comply with that even though that government has no jurisdiction over that individual, right? I mean, they could charge the person with a crime if they ever came to like the UK or they plotted something in the UK, but that person is a citizen of a different country and is currently residing in a different country. And it feels like that is a bridge too far. And the point I was going to make is, did anybody in the UK government think about the fact that now China has no reason not to demand the same thing of British citizens data, right?

Because China already requires Apple to store iCloud data of Chinese citizens on servers managed in China. - Right. - Right? But they don't have any business talking to anybody about anybody else's data, right? And this sets a very weird and dangerous precedent. And obviously,

Last thing I'll say, this is why they made it illegal to talk about it. Like not for us to talk about it, but for companies to say it because they did not want anybody raising those questions because they were just hoping if no one knows and it's fine. Right. We'll just keep doing our business. And I don't think that it's I don't think it's wrong for the government to have as many tools as possible to stop people who do bad things, to punish people who do bad things. I think we can all agree on that.

But I don't think that it's also wrong to think that it's okay if that's a little bit hard, right? It's okay if there's some barriers to that. And I think it's because, like, I don't think the people who wrote the, well, first of all, the people who wrote the Constitution had no idea what's, they could not have foreseen smartphones. They didn't pay for iCloud.

Or I don't think Ben, right. I don't, they only had five gigs of free storage, so they weren't worried about it. There's only so much you can store there, but I don't think Ben Franklin, Ben Franklin was thinking about encryption algorithms. I just don't think that that's like exactly what they're thinking about. So they didn't foresee this, but I think that they wanted it to be a little bit harder for the government because I think that they believe that if we were going to air on one side,

we're going to err on the side of allowing people to protect their data and their personal freedom. So what could possibly be the ramification? Like, I don't know. I, this is cause I don't understand the UK law, but like I understood what the digital markets to act in the EU, like Apple had to open up otherwise, uh,

I guess they wouldn't like Apple wouldn't be able to sell devices maybe in the EU. I'm not exactly sure what the ramification was there, but for this in the UK, especially the far reaching aspect of it, like wanting data from citizens that are not UK citizens. Is it just that Apple could not sell iPhones in the UK or like they would fine Apple somehow? Like, do we know what the ramification would be or is that kind of shrouded?

So it's a little bit shrouded. I think that both the BBC, so the BBC also did some followup reporting on this and both the BBC article and the Washington post says that it would require Apple to like Apple's only real option would be to no longer be in the UK. Right. So that would mean Apple would no longer sell devices, that beautiful Battersea station office that they have in London. Like they wouldn't have employees there anymore. I actually started thinking about this in retrospect. I'm like,

Tim Cook had spent a lot of time doing some stuff in London and in the UK recently. He was with the King. The King, you know, King Charles toured the thing. And I'm like, it's interesting to me. And it didn't make sense. Why is there so much effort right now to...

get in good with the UK. And I'm like, Oh, there's something happening. Like we didn't know what it was at the time, but there's some relationship building going on. Tim cook is one of the best non-governmental diplomats you're ever going to see anywhere. He's super diplomatic about these things. And so I'm sure that was an intentional effort, but I think, I don't think it's unforeseeable.

That Apple will no longer do business in the UK. Because then they would. That's the only way that they would not be subject to this law. There's some talk that they're going to like withdraw advanced data protection. But I don't. Then that's fine. But that doesn't.

them from what about you and I who have advanced data protection turned on and we live here in the United States? Like this law still would compel Apple to allow them to have access to our information if they had a warrant, if they had the right kind of thing. And so the only way around that is to not do business. I think a more likely outcome

is that quietly this gets changed and goes a little bit more away because I don't think that, well, one, can you imagine being the person who decides, all right, fine, let's push them out. Like there's no more iPhones in the UK. Like, can you imagine being the government person responsible for that? Mass riots. No. That's right. William Gallagher. I'd be so sorry. I don't know what he would do. We'd have to get him on the show. Yeah. That's it.

It just seems like a wild precedent. So one of the things recently in the news has been like Mark Zuckerberg asking the United States to take a bigger role in pushing on foreign governments who are trying to, you know, enact laws that put restrictions on tech companies over there, whatever his motivation, whatever. But,

I'm, I think I'm glad that the U S is like stepping in and saying like, Hey, actually don't, don't demand this. Like it's actually not a good idea. Even if just for the ramification, like you said, China could then ask for the same thing. And I don't think anybody wants that. I would also be curious if they turn off advanced data protection for UK citizens, like do those that haven't already enabled, I don't imagine Apple can turn it off for them. I think it might be just be, they can't offer it anymore. Like,

the toggle to turn it on gets removed for, I don't know. It's, it's strange, but yeah, I will keep an eye on it. And the implications is actually significant because anyone that you send messages to in the UK would no longer have the ability to have those backups encrypted. That's like such an interesting loophole. It's like, okay, all of your iMessages are encrypted in transit.

and they are encrypted at both ends. Like, so only your device, but if you back them up to iCloud, you could have your backup completely encrypted. Right. All of the messages you sent to somebody else, if theirs aren't, are just completely accessible. Right.

The last thing I'll say is that this reminded me of the CSAM technology that Apple had announced and even said would be implemented. And this, I think, would be two years ago, maybe even longer. And they did enact some of those safety measures, things like if nude images are sent in iMessage to a child,

that, you know, you could apparently get a notification or at least the child's iMessage app would like say, do you really want to see this? So they enacted some of those laws, but the CSAM in particular, which everyone talked about scanning their photos for whatever, which was an oversimplification of the technology. And Apple went to great lengths, like Craig Federighi even talked to Joanna Stern about the whole technology that they were using to try and protect users' privacy, but also get the bad guys, for lack of better words.

But that never rolled out. They did not choose to implement that because of the backlash of what it might mean for user data. Even though it was, again, I feel like from what I understood of it, they took every precaution necessary to not have it be invasive or whatever. And so, you know, Apple does those things. And I think, I don't know, for whatever, there's a million scenarios for what a bad actor might do on an Apple device and what kind of data might need to be gotten from it.

But I would say the answer is not this. The answer is not make a bunch of back doors for all this data. So yeah, hopefully. Yeah. Well, and the thing about the C, I don't think there's a single Apple product feature or anything that I've had more briefings on than that whole CCM thing because of how it changed multiple times over, over a very short period of time before they decided they weren't going to roll it out. Right. And the problem is encryption is just math, right?

It's just math. There's no nuance.

to math, right? Like it's like you either have the key to decrypt it or you don't like there is no like, but what if the person's really bad? Can we then like, nope, it's still math, right? What if the person has, you know, child pornography or sexually abusive material stored in their iCloud? It's still just math. Now that doesn't make that any better or worse or it's like, but the point is you either have it or you don't, you can't like, there's no negotiating the

Should we have it in this case or should we not have it in this case? Or should we be able to get into this or should we be able to do this? It's just, it's like math is binary, right? It's like a yes or no situation. And so that's why this gets so complicated because especially during the CSAM conversation, it's,

There were so many people who were disappointed that Apple wasn't going to take those steps because it was already known the amount of not the full scope of it, but it was already known that it was being used in this way. People were storing this type of content or whatever, and they weren't going to have this access to detect it.

And yet the reason for that was because people simply wouldn't stand for the idea that their content was just going to get scanned before it was uploaded to iCloud. And so it's like you either do that or you don't. There's no scale there. Like, it's just very complicated. Yeah.

I'm still curious if they will ever try to implement that again or they just let it go. Maybe they did and we just don't know. I'm just kidding. That's not the way Apple does it and that's actually the most ironic point of all of this is that when Apple puts features in like this, they just talk about it. Right. Whereas then the UK government is like, shit's illegal to talk about this. That's wild. That's wild.

You know you're on the wrong side of the conversation when you make it illegal to do the thing that you probably shouldn't have done. If you start the conversation with a,

don't tell anybody don't talk about number one rule you know you're doing something wrong all right we'll be following this all right i want to get to a personal attack where we talk about what's on our desktop on the mac but i did want to mention briefly smart home is a small corner on this show but i'm going to have some more devices to talk about soon but i do want to mention if you're into home kit and or matter and or thread akara akara just a lot yeah yeah release some new switches

These are exciting for a couple reasons. One, it's thread and matter, which there's not a ton of light switches out there with both of those technologies that work with HomeKit. There's also multiple options like two and even four button ones. So you can like run scenes through this button, but you can install it even if you don't have a neutral wire. And I know back when I was trying to do smart home stuff in my 1940s house, it was very difficult because we didn't have neutral wires anywhere.

And there weren't a lot of great options for it. Lutron being one of the few. But now, yeah, there's some new car switches out there. You can buy them now here in the US. I believe in the UK too. But there's going to be some other devices that I can talk about very soon. I can't talk about them right now. Very mysterious. I might have tweeted a picture of it. I don't know. Maybe I broke an embargo. I don't know. But I have some power over Ethernet.

that work with HomeKit that I'm pretty excited about that I've been trying. And so I'll be able to talk about those probably next week. But if you want to hear more smart home stuff, let us know. Should I buy some of those switches? Do you have any smart switches right now? The Lutron Caseta is in my office. That's it. I mean, I have to try them. I'm getting one to try. So let me try it first. I'm just happy to hear that Thread still matters. Anyway, you should definitely...

like the problem is Lutron is so solid it's hard to recommend anything else if you never want to think about it again well it's because they have their own router because you have to have a hub that is why they are so solid but these because they use thread I assume they just connect to your pom-pom mini or whatever the thread should be more reliable and faster I will say the power over ethernet stuff I got one is a smart shade

If you've ever added a device to HomeKit, you know it takes forever to scan the code and then it thinks about it for several minutes. And then you have to do it again twice a week. The shades that have power over Ethernet and I paired, it was instantaneous. And it was like, I didn't believe it. I thought it was messed up. I was like, you're not really there. I don't believe it. You're just running a demo. This is not real. Yeah, I was like, yeah. But it actually worked. Anyway, back to... This is our personal tech segment about our desktop. So this is back to...

dsr jarman from the uk talking about what's on his desktop i'll love for this to be the next the next conspiracy not conspiracy the next uh debate how we do what we do anyway next thing we talk about the next thing we talk about as far as our preferences what's on our desktop but before you tell me like what's like on it maybe files and folders wise if you go to the finder settings and there's the in the general section there's the show these items on the desktop

And the four options are hard disks, external disks, CDs, DVDs, and iPods. It's a checkbox. And connected servers, those four checkbox options. Jason, of those four, which do you have checked? Hold on. In the Finder. You got to go to Finder, Settings. And then it's right there under the General tab.

Hard disks, external disks, which are the same. No, no, no. Hard disk is your Macintosh HD. It's your built-in drive. That's not what that means, though. A hard disk? I mean, I have a hard disk sitting right here. It's a spinning hard disk. It's the distinction between internal and external. Hard disks, external disks, and iPods.

You don't have connected servers checked? No, I don't have connected servers. Oh, okay. Well, that's interesting. So hard disks and external disks I have unchecked because I don't need to see Macintosh HD on my desktop. But you want to see the dots in your dock, but you don't want to see what drives it. Steven, this is heresy. I also have three external SSDs connected to my Mac at all times for my various video editing, and I don't want to see those on my desktop.

I don't know. I have those unchecked. What is the purpose? Okay. This is opening such a cannibal. What is the purpose of your desktop? Is it just to be a pretty picture to look at? Well, we're going to get to that. We're going to get to that. I do have CDs and DVDs checked, which came in handy the other day because I was ripping the matrix Blu-ray. Cut that part out. Oh, sorry. Yeah, I'm not doing that. And then to have connected servers checked because I have a Synology, which I move stuff to all the time.

And so I like to make sure that it's connected and quick access. And I do that all the time. So I have my connected servers checked. What's the distinction between the Synology and an SSD that you plug in? Why one and not the other? Because the SSDs are only Final Cut libraries. So I only just edit footage off of it. I never actually dive into those SSDs to manage files. I just, they just power Final Cut when I open it.

That's it. Yeah. Uh-huh. That's right. That's right. You get it. All right. So that's. I don't understand what you think the desktop is for. Well, okay. Now let's talk about what's on it. So besides those things, desks, external, or, you know, your Macintosh HD, external drives, whatever. What else is on your desktop? Your Mac desktop? I don't have very much, but I have, there are one, two, there are two SSDs and one non-SSD, like spinning hard drive.

um one of those ssds because i'm using this mac mini that only has a one terabyte hard drive is an additional one that has my just has my icloud photo library that's the only thing in that ssd it's on an external drive my iphone library is on this mac mini because i have the whole thing downloaded i have all the files downloaded so it's like 800 gigs and it's just but it's on the built-in ssd no no no it's on a s it's a it's on a lc ssd externally now is it syncing live like is it your

It's a Thunderbolt drive. Wait, how did you do that? You just...

put the drive on you just put the library on the on whatever drive you want and you just say make this my primary library so when i did that i tried to do that recently and it threw up a warning saying it turns off icloud photos and then you have to go and turn it back on and i don't know why there's that step and that's it and you can just do it yep oh i need to do that now i copied my it took me like three days i copied my whole library to my sonology and then i went to make it my primary photo library and it was like and

Now, because it's a network drive, I can't say anything about its technology. I don't know. But I just had this LaCie Porsche one terabyte drive that I bought one time when I was at the Apple store because I thought it looked cool and I thought I would need it someday. And it's just super reliable, but it was ridiculously overpriced for a one terabyte drive. And I'm like, what should I do with this? And I'm like, oh, you know what? Now, the irony is I don't actually need it anymore because I now have two extra terabytes in this Satechi thing.

that it would be perfect for this purpose. Right. Like just automatically connected. So anyway, uh, and then I have, and then one of those SSDs is the time or the other. So there's two SSDs. The other one is a time machine. Okay. And then I have a 10 terabyte G drive. One of those, whatever those things were. And that just has like, there's a backup of my drop box. The whole thing. It has, do you access that stuff often? Like that G drive? Uh,

I access it occasionally, but here's the reason why I want to see it on my desk because it's a spinning drive. So the potential for no, but the potential for failure is greater. Right. So just knowing it's there tells me that my stuff is there and it backs up to backblaze. So that's great. But like, that's why I want it to like, to be there. Okay. But my dad, so then I also have my Dropbox, an alias to my Dropbox is on my, my home. And then I have a full, the only other folder I have is a folder called this week and

which is literally just where I put things. I don't like to have clutter on my desktop, but it's functional to me. So I use a folder called this week, which is where, okay, I downloaded these four images from Getty to put into articles. And so they just go in there until I have a time to put them in the place where I'm going to save them or, Hey, I downloaded this video and then I downloaded,

rip the audio so that I could transcribe just the audio and those files go in there until I decide, should I trash them? Should I keep them? Did it all work? But I, so I just put them in a folder called this week and then I just move that stuff and or trash it. Or sometimes it accumulates and it's three works weeks worth of stuff, but at least, but my desktop is not precious. I don't like clutter on it.

But I want to see the things I'm worth. It's where I go to see the things because I use, what is it called? Mission Control or Expose now, where you just move your cursor to the corner and I can see my desktop instantly. And I do that a hundred bajillion times a day just to find stuff on my desktop. And anytime I download something from anywhere, it goes to my desktop, not to the downloads folder. My downloads folder has zero things in it.

That I disagree with. I think it should go to the downloads folder. That's fine. But I put it on the desktop because I can find it instantly no matter what. And then I just know that it's there and I either have to deal with it or get rid of it. You put, listen, you put how many things you probably have 37,000 things in your download folder. No, no. Well, cause I clean it out regularly. Like my downloads folder. I think I treat it as your this week folder.

So, but the other thing is too, I download a lot of videos. And so I don't want those videos syncing to my iCloud drive and then I forget about them. And so I like having those bigger files in the downloads folder because it's not syncing anywhere. It's just on my local machine. I don't need it on my iCloud drive. So I just leave it there. But see, I want it to sync because I want it to also be on my, both my Mac mini and my laptop. That's fair. I get it. So on my desktop, you have my Synology.

I have the picture of your snow boots. Cause I, cause I just dragged that over from iMessage and I needed to open it up in a Safari. I have a screenshot of something in our podcast sponsor page. Cause I have to ask him what I'm supposed to do with this. And so I have a screenshot of that. Cause it's kind of like a to-do item. And I just took it before we recorded. So I couldn't do anything about it. And then I have a folder. It's exactly like yours. It's like,

files I'm currently dealing with. It's just called working. So the folder is just called working. And I didn't use to have that, but, and then what I would do is I would keep these files in the downloads folder and that would be my working folder. But I didn't like that. I like keeping my downloads folder.

more clean. And it's like right now my downloads folder has one file. It has the hell, the hello fresh PDF. Uh, and then I'm gonna delete that as soon as we're done recording. So I just, I had that one folder. Um, I liked for a very long time. I had absolutely nothing on my desktop. I just had this analogy and nothing else, but the working folder, uh,

I just have some stuff. I just don't know what else to do with. And so that that's just there. Uh, and I do have two widgets on my desktop. I finally have two widgets. One is my battery widget. Cause I could see my magic mouse and my magic keyboard. So I know what I need to charge it finally. And I have a home kit, uh, block, uh,

And it's basically all devices here in the studio that I can control. I used to open the home app all the time and just leave it open. But now I have this little widget where I can open my shades, turn the fan on or off. And I have those just two widgets in the top right corner. And that's it. I do have two widgets as well. I have a things widget and I have a Fantastical widget. The two things.

And I'm sorry, I also have a carrot weather widget, but I learned that it's actually an iPhone widget. So I kind of hate that because I have the carrot widget.

app on my Mac, but the widget, I'm sorry, I have the carrot weather app on my Mac, but the widget is for the iPhone. So every time I click on it, it wants to open in iPhone mirroring. And I'm like, no, no, no, you did not understand the assignment. I just wanted, I just wanted to have you open the app, but it doesn't do that. Now the things, the things widget, I just immediately put it on my desktop because I just realized I leave the things app open like almost all day.

But it's just to see the to-dos. And I think I like the widget. I'm just going to leave it there. And it's great because you can actually just check things off without it. It doesn't help in the app. Brilliant. All right. Well, I just added my third widget. Do you use the things keyboard shortcuts? No. Really? What is that? So like you're just going along. So like there's a great like you can actually map to whatever you want.

So as you're going along, you can just click the keyboard shortcut and type in a thing for things. But there are two of them. The second one, and I think I have a shift control space. Yeah. So right now I just clicked it. And what it did is it pulled up the window and it says Riverside Studio Primary Tech with a link back to what we're doing. So you can do that from your email, from a webpage, from anything you're in, and it'll add a link to it. So when you add it to do, you could be like,

you know, respond to this email or remember to read this website or whatever, like whatever you want to do. And it pulls the context from whatever window you're looking at, which is great. And it puts the URL or whatever in the right inside of the, yep, exactly. Well, I will be doing that now. That's amazing. It's amazing. It's the best. It's the single reason why I haven't switched to like to do list or something like is that would that, that keyboard shortcut. That's pretty good. It will make you just warning when you go to enable it.

you go into the settings for things and you can enable it. It'll make you download like a small little helper app. Because I think it's because I downloaded things from the app store, Mac app store. So it's not able to interact with different things. So download a third party like thing. And anyway, just so you know. This is great tips. This was a valuable session. I disagree with all the external drives on your desktop, but that's okay.

That's all right. It helps me to know that everything is the way it's supposed to be. Oh, yeah, I get it. Even though I don't have to go back and forth between those things very often. In fact, I don't think there's anything I have to go back and forth between on those. And the other reason is before I was using the Mac Mini, I needed to see that they were mounted if I had a laptop sitting here. So I didn't walk off and unplug them and not unmount everything. That is true. Yeah, I totally get it.

All right, that's good. Well, listen, let us know. We're going to go record a bonus episode about what's on our physical desk, which is going to be quite a mess, but we're going to talk about it. This is terrifying. So we're going to go record that. If you want to listen to our bonus episode, you can go to primarytech.fm, click bonus episodes, support the show, and you get an ad-free version plus access to all the back catalog and future bonus episodes. If you would, we would appreciate a five-star rating and review in Apple Podcasts, or you could do it in Spotify. We want to get back to a five-star Apple Podcast show, though. And when you do it, A, tell us,

On your desktop, what are those checkboxes do you have checked? Do you have external drives, network drives? We'd love to know. Or I'm really curious about this. And maybe if you're in the community, let us know. If you have a partner with an Android phone and you are an iPhone user, how'd that work?

How's that going? Please tell us. We want to hear your origin story. Yeah, we want to hear the origin story and how it's going. So you can let us know in your five-star review. You can type a whole paragraph there. We read every review. Or you can go to the community, social.primarytech.fm. We're going to go record a bonus episode. Thanks for watching. Oh, and people are asking, people who support the show, we're wanting an ad-free version of the video. I don't know how to deliver that yet, but I'll try and figure it out. And we will do that as well. And, um...

Yeah, stay tuned. We'll try to let you know. All right. All right. We'll go record a business episode. Catch you next week.