CES 2025, Apple Intelligence False Headlines, Siri Privacy Concerns, Meta Removes Fact-Checkers
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Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. Big show this week. There's a bunch of stuff at CES, and we're going to be covering that in the second half of the show, but also big news from Apple addressing privacy in Syria because

concerns, Apple intelligence summaries, might be making a video doorbell, and Delta had some big announcements and a partnership with YouTube as well. This episode is brought to you by HelloFresh and you, members who support us directly. I'm one of your hosts, Stephen Robles, and joining me live from his typical recording location, my friend Jason Aten. How's it going, Jason? Hey, listen, I am basically on the show floor because I have my Las Vegas Starbucks You Are Here mug. There it is. Okay, listen.

We're sorry, everyone. Do we have to explain some things before we start? This episode was supposed to begin live from the show floor at CES. I have the personal things happen, and I canceled my trip last minute. Everything's fine.

But I was like, well, it's okay, because one half of Primary Tech is going to be live from the show floor, and it's going to be great. And Jason texts me Tuesday morning when he was supposed to leave. And listen, I was following the winter storm Blair news or whatever, and I'm like, I know Jason's in Michigan, and that's pretty high up there. This might affect him. We didn't get the storm. My problem was that Steven wasn't going, and it wasn't worth it. No, I'm just kidding.

That's not actually true. That's not actually true. Um, the main reason that I was going to CES was the big Delta keynote on Tuesday night and my flights were delayed enough that I wasn't going to make it. And it was like, well, this just isn't worth it. If,

if the main thing I was going to go for, I don't need to go to Vegas. I've been to... Listen, every person in our kind of situation should go to CES exactly at least once. And I've done it multiple times. And so there wasn't enough other compelling things. And actually, the other big thing I would have liked to have gone for was the NVIDIA keynote, which was on Monday. And I had already...

couldn't make that work for scheduling purposes and so right i just like you know what all the other things i can just cover from home so yeah and well we're going to talk about things that were announced at ces but it was like yeah the delta thing was probably the biggest thing and then if you were going to make that but listen we're sorry live from the show floor it's going to happen this year one way or another either i get invited to wwdc and we get to podcast from apple park

or i break in like oceans 11 and we we do a sneak no just kidding apple i'm not gonna break down i'm just listen if you break in i don't think we should have any recorded footage of it just no it's probably right it's probably a good idea but this just means apple really needs to invite me to dub dub this year and so i'll be sending emails to uh my contact starting now i'll just hit them up every week between this is you sending it hello any of you who are listening hello

Listen, you know who you are. If you work at Apple, please. So this way we can finally be live from the show floor, but it extends the bit a little longer.

But we do have some news, and there's actually a bunch of Apple news I want to talk about, especially they released a Newsroom article just last night addressing the Syrian privacy concerns after a big settlement. So anyway, we're going to get into all that. One five-star review shout-out for the second episode of 2025, which is Jon Fah from the USA. So thank you, Jon. And don't forget, you can leave us a five-star rating and review in Apple Podcasts. Let us know, do you put the dots on in your Mac dock?

Do you put your phone in your, I don't even know how many things there are anymore. You can just look at past reviews. If you need inspiration for telling us your preferences. We need a wiki just to let people know the things that they're supposed to like tell us. Oh, that's pretty good. Okay. I might create, I'll create a page on primary tech data fam or something. That's great. Instructing people.

All right, so let's do some Apple news, talk about Delta, and then we'll talk about all the random CES stuff that has been announced. But the first thing is Apple Intelligence summaries, which you, Jason, have been talking about for months and how it's very problematic when summaries misrepresent the news. Apple actually released a statement saying that they're going to address these summaries. This is actually Jason Snell's article on Six Colors, and the lead image, I think,

Kind of sums up what the issue is. This is an Apple intelligence summary and it says BBC news, Luigi Mangione, who was the suspect in the murder of the United healthcare CEO says Luigi Mangione shoots himself, uh, which did not happen. And that's a problem. That's a problem. If you get a notification that says it's from the BBC news, but has a, you know, pretty big headline that is not true.

And so the public response from Apple talking about these Apple intelligence summaries, and I quote, Apple has said it will update rather than pause new artificial. Wait, is this a quote from Apple?

Let's see. This is a public... Right. They got a response from Apple. Okay. So this isn't... I'm not going to say quote, but this is the response from Apple through the BBC because the BBC was reporting on this. So Jason Snell is quoting the BBC, which is referring to a statement they got from Apple. You could have clicked on the link and read it from the BBC. I know, but... It's fine. Jason Snell has some good thoughts on it. Anyway, this is what Apple said.

about this. Rather than pause, a new artificial intelligence feature that has generated inaccurate news alerts on its latest iPhones, the company Apple, in its first acknowledgement of the concerns on Monday, said it was working on a software change to quote, further clarify when the notifications are summaries that have been generated by the Apple intelligence system.

Which, there was already a symbol letting you know when a notification was a summary. That's what that little two lines with the weird arrow is. But I guess they're going to make this more clear. And Jason Snell was saying it's still not enough and that maybe news headlines needs to just be omitted from Apple Intelligence summaries entirely. And I will even say I have summaries turned on for everything. All my notifications go through Apple Intelligence summaries. And

even the email chain summaries really are confusing because if I have a long email chain, like one of the email chains I have is with the dream robot vacuum. And we had this very long email chain because they sponsored a video like several months ago and we're going to work together again this year. And the, the summary is basically unusable.

Because it's taking things from like months ago all the way till today. And it's just not, it's not helpful. It's not giving me good information. And so I, it seems to be more and more of a serious issue. And have you turned them off? Have you turned any of the summaries off? I have turned them off for some things. I have them on for other things. And that's actually an interesting like point because it does seem like one of the most useful things that notification summaries can do is take, say a text thread and,

and like give you a summary of here's the four things that happened. Like we have a WhatsApp group for our daughter's soccer team and it'll just summarize and it's like, so-and-so is confirmed. So-and-so can't make it because of this. And the time has been moved. Like that's actually really useful. Cause I can be like, okay, great. I wanted to, cause if I had just seen six notifications, I might've just ignored it and been like, I don't have time for this. But when I see what the summary of it is, I'm like, okay, let me click through and see what, you know, time's been moved. I should probably know what that means and stuff.

So I think that's useful, but not all notifications or groups of notifications are the same, right? Those WhatsApp notifications were a continuous conversation and it just summarized the continuous conversation. But news headlines are different, right? News headlines are completely, and I have thought about this a lot. Obviously, I've had plenty of thoughts that I've shared on this show about notification summaries, period. And I actually have been trying for two days now to get an article published about

it's my own reasons that it's not yet, but I feel like Apple is missing a really important point here, which is not the letting people know that the summary was generated by AI. I think they feel like that's sort of the get out of jail free card, but I don't think that that's true because people don't look at things that way. They just look at the summary and they just treat it as if it's true, regardless of what the case is. And you can, you mentioned the one that, so the BBC has complained twice now about,

The first one was the one you showed because it showed that the suspect had shot himself, which was not true. But I feel as though like, what if that, what if that summary, like the BBC had published three articles in a row? That's like, you know, president Biden visits Jerusalem, uh,

plane crash in south korea and what some well-known celebrity just died you could just imagine what the summary could have ended up being right and this was this was the other article which was that uh apple intelligence summary claimed that luke littler had already won the darts final yeah and this is the bbc has screenshots of what it is says luke littler won pdc world championship which was not the case it hadn't even happened yet hadn't even happened yet yeah

And so, yeah. And so I feel like, but this is the kind of thing that could affect like world markets, right? World market events or national security. If the summary came through and it's like president Biden in a plane crash over Jerusalem and has passed away or what? It's like, right. Right. What? And that seems like that seems plausible. Like that doesn't seem like an audacious Apple intelligence summary. No, this is a hundred percent. I think that could actually happen. And it feels like you shouldn't have shipped this. That's,

that i i wonder if the fact that apple intelligence is only 15 pro and newer has somehow lessened its effect because there would be a lot more like if this was available on all iphones right now i feel like the problem would be even more uh not only widespread but just obvious and people would be making more of a stink because it's just iphone 16 and 15 pro users right now but like this

That's a problem. Oh, and also because the sign up, like when you upgrade to iOS 18, I guess this would have been that one with Apple intelligence, you know, anytime there's a splash screen on an iOS update, uh,

I mean, I will look at what it's saying, but it's like the terms of service agreements for anything you sign up for. I think 99% of iPhone users, when they update their phone and they see any splash screen, they're just trying to like get through. They're just trying to get through to actually use their phone. And so most people will have this enabled likely and not even know like that it's happening. Like they, maybe they know it's Apple intelligence, maybe not. Maybe they read the splash screen, but yeah,

to then just have notifications for news out news apps that you were once following closely or headlines now telling you things that are not true. It's, it's a problem. Yeah. And I feel like,

there's honestly two issues here. One is they should not have shipped it yet. This kind of thing. And, and I don't know, like, look, I feel like as an idea, these notification summaries are fantastic. Right. I think that the, I like the things that I described being able to summarize some group chats. Also, like if they got it wrong in the WhatsApp thing, like I'm not basing my, my,

like whether we go to a soccer game based on a notification summary, I'm always going to like look, right? And so it's pretty low stakes. So that's great, but that's different. Like, so for those types of things, I think that this is actually a really great feature and I'm glad that someone had this idea, but there's a pretty big gap between the idea and the execution. And so one, I don't think it was ready for them to ship. I just don't think that, you know, I have to imagine someone thought that this was possible and,

And then they still shipped it anyway. And then the second thing is I think Apple's response is pretty bad here. Right. Just to say, well, the, we, it's almost like they're saying this is a fundamental nature of LLMs. They're just going to make crap up. So we're just going to let you know that this key feature that we created is probably going to just make things up. So we'll just tell you it's possible that the summer, it's like, why even do the summary then? Like what, what is even the point you're if it, and, uh,

How many people are going to pay attention to that? I just don't think it's worth the hassle. Yeah, it's not great. And again, Apple is saying these features are in beta. All of Apple intelligence is still in beta, but I don't think that...

gives them a pass, especially when it comes to news headlines specifically and what the BBC has been reporting on. And especially when Snoop Dogg is on commercials for T-Mobile talking about how this is the first phone built for Apple intelligence. That's true. You don't hear Snoop Dogg say the word beta anywhere. If we did fun titles.

You don't hear Snoop Dogg saying the word beta. You just don't hear it. You don't hear it. So the other case where Apple's in a little bit of, they felt the need to release a newsroom article addressing it. First part of the story is that Apple paid up to, is going to pay up to $95 million in settlements to users whose conversations were inadvertently captured by the voice assistant on devices. And this is not, and then those conversations were heard by human employees.

So this might have been a thing where I don't know about you, but this happens to me all the time where you look down at your watch and you see that it's been listening for the last whatever 10, 20 seconds. And it's this massive block of text. And it's like, I sure hope it doesn't think I want to text this to someone. But it's that inadvertent listening. And then it was eventually heard by human people. So Apple decided it needed to release this statement. This was just last night at 830 p.m., which is.

You know a company is not like super proud of a press release if they're releasing it on a Wednesday night at 8.30 p.m.

But the title is Our Longstanding Privacy Commitment with the Voice Assistant. And basically they're saying Apple, this is a quote from the Apple Newsroom article, Apple has never used Siri data to build marketing profiles, never made it available for advertising, and never sold it to anyone for any purpose. We are constantly developing technologies to make Voice Assistant even more private and will continue to do so. And then it goes on to several articles

paragraphs talking about why the voice assistant is secure, they use on-device processing where possible, and Apple minimizes the amount of data collected for voice assistant requests. So, great. I mean, I get it. I will say, if you're not aware, I actually did a video on this a number of months ago about privacy in Apple.

There actually is a place in settings on your iPhone. I think this is on iPad as well. But if you go to your settings and you go to privacy, I'm not sure, or privacy and security, there is a place where you can see the profile that Apple has built based on your activity on the device.

to then customize ads like in the app store or somewhere else. And so I think it is, I'll have to try and find it. I don't know if it's, oh, Apple Advertising. Yep, and then you can click on View Ad Targeting Information. Yeah, so Settings, Privacy and Security,

go down to Apple advertising and then view ad targeting information and it says obviously it uses your birth year gender and location by zip code and then you can look under content categories and like for movies it'll talk about like what

What are the kinds of movies Apple thinks you enjoy? Which apparently it's all of them in my case. I mean, you do have a movies podcast, so that's good. That is true. So yeah, that makes sense. But like books is maybe more of a better thing. It says books. There's three categories that it puts me in arts and entertainment, business and personal finance and nonfiction. And so these profiles that Apple has created for you, they talk about what these are based on.

And they say this following information may be used to deliver more relevant ads to you on Apple apps, namely Apple News, maybe ads in the App Store. It says your personal data is not provided to third parties. And it says you're included in segments based on, I'm reading from the settings page. You're included in segments based on your account information and interactions with Apple services. These segments may be used to serve you relevant ads on the App Store, Apple News, and stocks. So that's the other place you might see it.

So Apple is clear that this is not the voice assistant data. And I think that's, you know, I don't know if you get this a lot from family and friends, but so many people feel like they see something on a Facebook ad that they talked about to a friend and they're like, my phone's listening to me. And I hear this as like a pervasive belief with people with smartphones. They're just like, I know my phone's listening to me. I know my iPad. I know everything's listening to me.

And I think that's what Apple is trying to address here. I don't think it's going to change anybody's mindset. If you already think that, then this is not going to change your mindset. But Apple is trying to explicitly state that it does not use voice assistant data. It will use your profile data, birth year, gender, your purchase history for books and movies to build a profile, but not what you say to the voice assistant. And I think I've said this in a past episode.

But if you ever read the book, The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, have you ever read that book? No. I feel like I mentioned it before.

fascinating book and he talks about advertising in the book and basically to listen to the words you say like if your devices were actually listening to you the words you say is far less useful to target market you than your purchase behavior your browsing behavior all the things you do on your devices and on the internet that's actually not connected to what you say and he tells several stories with marketing and targeting and

that target used like target the store and other companies and basically all the different connections they have across the credit card companies your bank accounts like all this other data that is available to add networks and how that data can target you so precisely that hearing what you say it really doesn't mean anything like they don't and they don't have access to that and apple stated specifically in this newsroom article that they don't use it for that that doesn't go anywhere all that kind of stuff so

They tried to address it. I don't know. Tell me how you feel about this. Well, I think... I mean, they are paying $95 million to settle this. I think one of the reasons that they felt the need to also so forcefully reiterate their privacy stance is that there were... I think that the plaintiffs in the case had said that they...

had talked about specific, it was like Air Jordans or something like that. And then there was like a restaurant. They had talked about these specific things and then it triggered ads for those products. Now, first of all, you listed off the places where Apple shows ads, right? Apple News, Stocks.

apple app store the app store but the app store is ads for apps you don't get olive garden ads in the app store unless they have an app that would be something hospitaliano i don't know like it's just like unlimited breadsticks buy them here we'll get 30 just do it please order them but i download pocketcast how about some breadsticks anyway you're gonna be you're gonna need some coffee while you can watch some starbucks with your podcast anyway so like

first of all like that to me feels weird that like you were talking about the olive garden and where did you see this ad like maybe apple news is the most likely place because i don't think that many people use the stocks app law and certainly not long enough to see ads like anyway apple's not a huge advertiser is what i'm trying to say but back in 2019 you'll remember that all of the all of the big companies amazon uh google and apple

had been having humans listening to the conversations for quality. And I had written about it. And even Apple had said, yes, we had been using human reviewers to review the quality. And then they agreed that they wouldn't do that and stuff. So this is not... It's not unprecedented that the information you say to one of these voice assistants is used in different ways. But what Apple wants to be clear is that we're not using your conversations to show you ads. So what's hard to figure out is...

Think about this. Apple's saying we didn't do the thing that we got sued over, but we're going to settle it. And you only settle something like that if you think it's going to cost you more to defend it or...

or if you'd like to avoid discovery about the particular thing, right? So you settle this, you make it go away and you don't have to spend a couple of years in court fighting a case where who knows like what might come out. And again, I'm not, just to be clear, I'm not accusing Apple of anything nefarious. I'm just saying companies don't particularly want the secrets of how they operate these types of things to come out if they can avoid it, especially if they can make it go away for $95 million. Like this is not Massimo or Epic who are like, nope, we're not doing this for a settle for cheap.

Last thing I wanted to say, sorry, who knew we were going to have this much of a conversation about this, is I went into that setting and I click on view ad targeting information and get the best answer of all, which is you've turned off personalized ads. So they don't have any information that they can use to show me ads. So if you go back to the screen before that and you just turn off the personalized ads, they won't collect any of that information about you. And guess what? Ads in Apple News are garbage anyway. So who cares if they're more relevant? It's the difference between getting an ad for...

I don't know something that might be relevant and getting an ad for toe fungus. I just ignore them all. Right? Like I'm just waiting. Seriously, Steven, I'm just waiting for Apple to add the high distracting elements to

to the news app to the news app because it's the worst offender I know but they're not going to do that that's they got to get so we'll block your ads that you serve Inc magazine on your own website but if you somebody reads your article we're going to replace those ads with our own and they're going to be for toe fungus removal cream have you actually seen toe fungus ads all the time because I have personalized ads turned off

are you sure you didn't just turn that off are you sure i'm sure i'm just yes you keep talking and i'm gonna find out what the what the most and the thing is it's always the exact same ads like through an entire article it's like right right your inventory is so low but you just keep showing the same ads it's like sometimes i've seen these memes on like tiktok and stuff where people are like

When someone discovers you don't pay for YouTube premium and they see an ad on your TV and they're like, what are they? But I know I've, I've sometimes, uh,

watched Hulu on an account that has ads. I forget what the context was. And it was like literally the same ad twice in a row. And I'm like, this is not good for the advertiser because it just becomes more annoying. This makes me less want to interact with this ad or whatever. Anyway. So yeah. Let me know when you see a ToeFungus ad. But the next thing, a couple Apple rumors actually

This was actually this week, iOS 18.3, the public beta came out. And in that public beta, there were hints at a new quote invites app from Apple that might be coming a standalone app to help you manage invites and maybe events. And on the face of it, this might seem very like, well, wait a minute, the calendar app exists. You can send meeting invites that way. What's the deal? And I, there's not a lot of information. Again, this is very early. All it is is like possible invites app.

But maybe Apple is trying to create a Calendly type competition.

where an app that lets you either reveal open times and dates for someone to book a meeting with you or maybe this is like the facebook like to kind of replace the facebook group event organization which i feel like a lot of segments of society just kind of default to like we're going to plan an event and so it's going to be on a facebook event and we're just going to invite people that way maybe this is trying to like obfuscate that and so it almost be like a

buy invite only or large event people who are not in your contacts or whatever like your class you know your kids class or whatever you're trying to organize a birthday party and maybe you send invites to the classmates maybe it's something like that so interesting another standalone app from apple hopefully this will be on more than just the iphone because the journal app isn't yeah still there's still no journal app on ipad neither is the email priority prioritization categories it's not on the iphone weird

Listen, iOS 19 coming this year at DubDub. When we're there in person reporting live from the show floor, just make a bug fix year. Okay, Apple? Just make the keynote like 30 minutes. Just say we're going to fix all the bugs and maybe like one new feature. That's what we need. That's what I think we need. But I don't know. Does that maybe make sense? I have no thoughts. I have no idea what this means. Zero thoughts. I don't understand what this means. You said the only important thing, which is you can already do this.

the calendar exists uh okay and then apple video doorbell last thing and we're going to talk about meta mark german over at bloomberg saying that apple is working on a face id doorbell video lock device in a hopeful smart home push uh this is just a rumor again this is german just talking about things that might be coming this year i am hopeful that apple does more

Well, full stop. I hope Apple does more. Does more in the software. You hope Apple does. I hope Apple does things to screen time, to fix Apple intelligence, all of that. But when it comes to like, what are two areas I really wish Apple would push forward in so that maybe the whole industry would follow as is wants to do when Apple gets behind a thing. Smart home is one of those areas and also podcasting. I'll just throw that out there.

Not because the industry needs to follow them, but because they need to follow the industry. Like tools for creators, video and Apple Podcasts app, all that kind of stuff. That's a side note. But when it comes to the smart home, Apple, I feel like for several years, championed smart home. Things like the HomePod Mini, when it announced Matter integration coming to iOS, and having lots of partners for things. But...

Like right now, if you wanted to get a video doorbell that worked in Apple Home, you have two options. You have the Logitech Circle View that uses HomeKit Secure Video. That's the one I use. And the Wemo video doorbell, which, side note, Belkin's not really focusing on smart home in the future, so that one's probably going to go away. So you have one choice for a HomeKit Secure Video doorbell. And for a company that is trying to say, we do smart home,

that might be releasing a dedicated home pod with a screen device this year or the smart home, they should do more with the smart home. And so sometimes that's making your own stuff or working with a very close partner to make something like a video doorbell and stuff like that. But, and if it has face ID, that'd be kind of sweet. So I'm down for that. Yeah. I, the smart home is so weird because I mean, just also, yeah, it's like there's a different. So I think,

you have like these tiered levels of people's desire to like, most people just want to be able to turn their lights on by shouting out into the void. Like that's probably the thing most people care about. That's like base level. And you can do that by replacing some light bulbs or putting in like the Lutron switches type stuff like that. So that's fine. People understand that. And then if you, you can basically control those with any of the options. That's great. Like that, that kind of thing is like anything beyond that though, you're, you're in a system. Yeah.

Right. You have to choose a system and you know, like we have all three in our home. We have some things that are home kit, like our Christmas lights come on from home kit. All

Our children wake up in the morning because of their Echo Dots. I thought you were going to say because of HomeKit. You have an automation, wake children up. We have a prodding device that just pokes them to get them out of bed. And then all of our cameras that we have are Nest cameras. So that's all part of the Google ecosystem and stuff. And it works fine because I just don't care that much. But it is weird because every once in a while I'm like, well, I could create an automation. And then I'm like...

Where? Which one of the three systems would I have to go into to figure out how do I turn on the... And actually, the Christmas tree thing is great because I can just set up that automation in HomeKit. But it is like every time I have to think like, where do I want to attach this? It would be nice if it actually where they all work together.

I don't think it's going to happen. Matter was supposed to do that. It's not happening. I think matter is closer to going away than it is to fulfilling its promise. No, it's not going to go away. I think it'll just...

be what it is now and not help anything more. Okay, so that's what I'm saying. It is closer to the time when it just didn't exist than it's going to be to ever fulfilling its promise. Okay, that's fair. I also say I was actually planning a HomeKit style video for the YouTube channel and I bought a HomePod mini and I was just curious. That thing's old, right? And so I went to the MacRumors Buyer's Guide and

The HomePod mini, there's only been one generation, just to be clear. No, they released a new color. Oh, sorry. They released a new color. Right. Well, the internals have been the same for 1,549 days. It came out in October 2020 and has not been touched since, except for the new color.

And, uh, just like, you can't even get it on sale on Amazon. You can't buy a HomePod mini on Amazon. You can buy it from like Best Buy or Target or whatever, but they rarely have like sales on the HomePod mini, which it's still an okay value at a hundred dollars, but to be 1,549 days old, still for $99, still no improvements. That's wild. Even just updating the chip. The problem with them is that they're not actually that great of a speaker, but

They are better as a listening to your voice assistant name device than the big ones are and have ever been. They're better. But again, number one rule of smart home is turn off listening on everything except for your watch. That's like my rule. That is my rule. I will say there's a pair of HomePod minis in my kid's bathroom because they like to play music there.

and uh my one of my sons been listening to defying gravity every day in the bathroom when he takes a shower and i will say those homepod minis can pump some volume because it's loud even outside the bathroom but they don't sound great that's the thing they don't sound great but they sound better than most hundred dollar speakers and that's probably why i can just keep them at 100 bucks i mean the echoes like i've had a couple echoes that are in like that 50 to 70 dollar range not great sounds like it's

playing through aluminum foil. That's because Amazon's goal is not for you to listen to anything. It's to provide a device with a microphone. Those are just microphones. That's all they are. Those are listening for anything you might want to order and we'll just add it to your cart. Instantly, you don't even have to know that. It's like you just could be in the kitchen talking about, honey, I think we really need some more, you know, planters, dry roasted peanuts. And all of a sudden, a guy shows up at your

doorbell and then you get a notification summary that's like six people are at your door with peanuts you can hear like the last paper towel off the roll and just immediately add it to your cart that's just that's how quick that works

All right. We have to talk about the meta changes and Mark Zuckerberg announcing big changes to like threads and Facebook and the big Delta announcements and all the CES stuff. But before we do, I actually wanted to show this. I forgot to show the screenshot of this very interesting meeting invite that you sent your son. Can you explain what this is? Well, we were talking about invites, I guess. Maybe an app would be helpful. My 10-year-old and I have this

weird form of trash talk that's happening through calendar invites where he wanted to play a game of war with

And so I said, we could do that tomorrow. This was on like Tuesday. Do you want me to send you a calendar invite? And the only reason I said that was because I wanted him to feel more like it was a sure thing. I wanted him to feel like I have a date with dad kind of thing. So of course I'm going to just destroy Mason. My son's name is Mason. So my favorite thing about this was that he accepted the invitation. First of all,

He's like, yep. And then we did that. And then it was time for bed last night and he wanted to know if we could play another game. I said, we're going to have to push that to tomorrow. And about a minute later, I got an invitation from him saying,

This is Destroy Dad. And of course, I accepted it. That's amazing. Trash talking calendar invites. And the best part about this is my son only has an Apple Watch. And yet... He's doing it from his Apple Watch. He is so committed to this that he is like, yep. That's dedication. Good on you, Mason. He probably doesn't listen to the show. But nice job. All right. And before we get to all the meta and changes that Zuckerberg announced, I want to thank our sponsor for today, which is...

HelloFresh. I'm so excited. I got a box yesterday and I even brought the recipes so I can share them on camera. But HelloFresh, it's America's number one meal kit. It makes cooking fun, easy. I'm just so excited I can't even speak. That's the problem because I'm excited about the recipes I just got. That's what it is. Listen, the holidays may be over, but going to the grocery store, it's still a wartime proposition. All right, you got to fight through the aisles. You got to fight people for pie crust, all that kind of stuff. Listen, let HelloFresh do the shopping for you. It's

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but I wanted to share the three meals I got in the box yesterday. I got a creamy chicken sausage and tortellini soup. I'm very excited for that one. That looks pretty good. The chimichurri chicken grain bowls. I actually love chimichurri stuff. I don't know how they knew. Maybe it was because my voice assistant sent it to me. They've been listening. They were listening. Love chimichurri, so I'm very excited for that grain bowl. I think I'm going to make that for lunch today. And you have mentioned pork tacos. Maybe these might have been the ones you got, but one pan Santa Fe pork tacos.

Actually, maybe I'll make that for lunch. I don't even know. This is a tough choice. But anyway, I'm excited for all of these because I know everything from HelloFresh tastes great. And now I got three meals and you can even get it for individuals, families, or get the family size. And then you have leftovers for a couple of days. It's great. So here's what you do. You can get up to 10 free meals and a free high protein item for life at HelloFresh.com slash primary 10 FM. Different link this time. And so I'll put that link in the show notes.

One item per box with active subscription. Free meals applied as a discount on the first box. New subscribers only. Varies by plan. But that's up to 10 free HelloFresh meals. Just go to HelloFresh.com slash primary, the number 10, FM. The links in the show notes. It's just easier to click it there. But that's HelloFresh, America's number one meal kit. HelloFresh. Excited for those tacos for lunch. So Mark Zuckerberg had some big announcements that he announced over Threads, as you do, as a meta product.

And so I just want to read some of these changes that Zuckerberg is making and meta in general. He said, it's time to get back to our roots, is quoting Mark Zuckerberg in his threads post around free expression and giving people voice on our platforms. Here's what we're going to do. And number one, this is a thread. Replace fact checkers with community notes starting in the US, meaning maybe you can tell me, is this algorithmic human fact checkers or both?

They actually outsource it to a third party content moderation experts or whatever. So they're replacing those fact checkers with community notes a la X style. If you're still on X, you've probably seen community notes where basically users can make a community note on a post saying if it's not true or providing context. So they're going to be doing threads and meta

Probably on Instagram too, plans to do that. Number two, simplify our content policies and remove restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are out of touch with mainstream discourse. Number three, change how we enforce our policies to remove the vast majority of censorship mistakes by focusing our filters on tackling illegal and high severity violations and requiring higher confidence for our filters to take action. Number four, bring back civic content like politics.

We're getting feedback that people want to see this content again, so we'll phase it back into Facebook, Instagram, and threads while working to keep communities friendly and positive. Five, move our trust and safety and content moderation teams out of California and our U.S. content review to Texas. This will help remove the concern that biased employees are overly censoring content.

I feel like that wouldn't, but anyway. Number six, work with President Trump to push back against foreign governments going after American companies to censor more. And there's a bunch of replies and yeah, just wild stuff. So basically, Zuckerberg is saying that meta, including threads, Instagram, and Facebook,

They're going to allow more civic content, politics, news, things that Adam Mosseri, since Threads has launched, has said that they're not really interested in that. They're going to be putting more of that content on the platform, allowing more of that content. They're going to move to community notes rather than fact-checking systems and focusing on quote-unquote illegal content, which then really widens the...

funnel for the kind of content you might see on a platform especially content that might not be great or nice but if it's not illegal it seems like threads is going to allow more of that this seems in a response which this seems weird like maybe it's a response to be more like x i mean that's this is what that's this sounds like it's like these policy changes makes it more like x is today and

But also, maybe it's a response to Blue Sky, which Adam Mosseri and Threads have been doing many things in response to Blue Sky. Things like adding the starter packs for who to follow, changing things about the features in Threads to match some of the things Blue Sky is doing. So I guess it's in response to that, but I don't know. This was not well-received. Most people on Threads are like, hey, go follow me on Blue Sky because it's going to get bad here real soon.

I don't know. What do you think about these things? Well, I mean, of Mark Zuckerberg's superpower is to look and see which direction the wind is blowing and then just start running as fast as he can in that direction. Like, you know, like he, this has been true with, I mean,

Instagram stories, Instagram reels, Instagram shopping, right? Like all of that is true. Instagram stories came from Snapchat. Threads as an app was just a response to, it was an opportunity to like try to take some share from what was sort of, I think it was still Twitter at the time. I don't even remember. It doesn't matter. So I think that this is another example of that. And honestly, whatever, that's fine. Like, yeah,

I mean, okay. But I do think that the reason they're getting so much pushback... So if you read through not just that particular thread on threads, but if you read the meta's press release about this, there's a sentence in there that says, over time we ended up with too much content being fact-checked that people would understand to be legitimate political speech and debate. And I think the problem with that statement is no one agrees... Like the fundamental issue is that no one agrees...

What legitimate what is legitimate political speech and debate right people don't like and that's what he in the list that you talked about he's like about immigration and gender issues that might be out of step with mainstream discourse or something like that what is the point is like there are on both sides like this is not even I'm not taking a political position here there are people who believe that anyone who disagrees with them is

is violent or is being like, is like, there's no agreement. Like that's the problem with the state of free speech right now is like the whole idea of free speech is that the government can't come in and force you to not share your opinion about something, even if it's unpopular. But we don't actually all agree that that's true. We don't actually agree that the government should allow people. Now we're, I know we're talking about meta here, but I'm just saying fundamentally, like we don't even agree that people who say certain things shouldn't be punished because they're like,

Right. We've gotten to that point. And that's true on what, regardless of what your political leanings are. And so I think that for Mike meta, this is not surprising, like, no, but I think the bigger thing you should, people should be thinking about is like, why? Well, Mark Zuckerberg is probably tired of being a punching bag for Donald Trump. And look, I don't think there's anything in the world that Mark Zuckerberg would like more than,

Then to be able to call up President Trump and say, hey, you know that thing where they're supposed to be banning TikTok and you're trying to stop it? Maybe don't. Right? Like there's nothing. TikTok is not.

Facebook's or meta's biggest competitor, but it is one of its biggest threats and it could, and it could solve that problem real easily if it gets banned. Right. And so how do they like, he's being political. Like this is, and that's fine. People are like surprised by that. But again, like has the literally the whole reason they got into the problem in the first place is because they were responding to at the time that

Okay, so people argue like you're becoming conservative, you're MAGA, whatever. Whatever you want to say about that, the whole reason they got there is because when Trump was elected the first time, there was so much blowback because it's like you influenced the election, you did this, you did that. So they went in a different direction. And I just think the problem with attaching your policy to whatever the political winds is, is people no longer will believe that you're acting in good faith, right? And so just don't be surprised when people accuse you of being blatantly political. And also like if...

If that's the case, then just own it and don't like you're talking about free speech. There was an, there was a line in there about, um, I'm going to try to find it. So you can, you can, you can blather on for a couple of minutes. That's not what you do. I'm blathering. What I should have said is I'm blathering on at this point. So you go ahead and try to find this quote. It is, it feels not great, uh, right now because, uh,

However you feel about President-elect Donald Trump, it is clear that the tech companies and CEOs are doing things to...

saddle up, make sure they're good, basically, which we didn't really talk about this in the Apple section, but Apple CEO Tim Cook donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration. Him personally, not Apple, but obviously it is because he needs Apple and Trump to be able to play ball. And the Zuckerberg announcement was also rumored to come after Zuckerberg being at Mar-a-Lago with Trump, meeting him and all this kind of stuff. And so

Again, however you feel about it, whatever. It's just unfortunate that it seems clear that these tech CEOs and companies are making decisions specifically with the intent that they can be in a better position for the next four years rather than thinking about the user base, the user experience. And I have more...

Well, I don't want I'm trying to think of a word to say. I don't want to say trust or faith or whatever, but I feel like meta when it comes to moderation will likely side on a more reasonable stance when it comes to moderation than X has. And I'm not even talking about specific topic moderation. I'm talking about just spam.

Like I will go to X still sometimes. And it's like the replies, the posts, it feels spammy.

Because there is just not as good. And I'm not talking about moderation on what is being said, just moderation of like this account is not a real person. Like, like I can see that. Does X not have the wherewithal to see that this account is a fake AI bot? And we can can we not ban this account like that level of just what are we doing? That's what's happening on X right now.

I do feel like meta will not get that far out of the gate. Like they won't, they won't be that loose. I think, I don't think you'll see more bots on threads or Instagram.

But I am curious how far they'll let it go, because you can go really far in what is being posted, even things that are mean or possibly hateful, without it technically being illegal. And that's, again, if you ever hear Nila talk about free speech on the Verge cast, like that is just such the most nebulous area of like illegal versus hate speech and discrimination like

Basically, Mark Zuckerberg has now framed it where he can, like, you can basically see a lot of stuff on threads now, and, like, their policy is they're not going to take it down unless it is blatantly, quote-unquote, illegal. And which, what is illegal with free speech here in the U.S.? So, I don't know.

Yeah. It was actually funny that Mark Zuckerberg specifically called out the EU and said that it's hard to build things there because they have too much, too many censorship laws. And the users, the EU's response was simply, we only make laws to prohibit illegal content essentially. And it's like,

isn't the definition of censorship when you make certain types of content illegal? Like, is that literally the definition of censorship? We can, there may be some cases where we all agree. Yes, that's bad. It shouldn't be allowed, but you're, that's still technically censorship. We, people think of like censorship is unfair oppression of certain types of content, but literally like the definition of censorship is when you make certain types of content illegal. And the EU has absolutely done that. And so Mark Zuckerberg's point is correct. It's like,

It is harder to navigate those waters because of the framework that they have. They just have a much different interpretation of what types of, for example, like in Germany, it is illegal to post certain things that are supportive of Nazis. You can understand why in Germany that might be the case, but that's literally censorship. And in the United States, we can all agree that that kind of content is abhorrent and terrible because,

But under the First Amendment, it should not be illegal. Well, and I feel like, I'm glad you explained it that way because the word censorship, at least here in the US, in our parlance, now basically means the algorithms are suppressing this. Because most of the feeds are algorithmic, when people feel like they have posted something and it doesn't get the same amount of views or likes or comments as their other content,

they will say the algorithm is suppressing or censoring this topic or me specifically and there are some people on threads that are very vocal about that but how quote unquote i can't post about x y and z and it's like well i just saw this post about x y and z and i don't care to interact with it and i think maybe a lot of people feel that way too and so like

It's a shame that the word censorship is now synonymous with like the algorithm doesn't favor this content. Right. And that gets super messy because it might just be that your followers or your

the users of threads just don't care to interact with that content. And that doesn't mean that threads is doing anything algorithmically to suppress your content. I just mean that people don't like it. Yeah. When Steven talks about pointing his Apple pencil up towards the top, it's not that the algorithm is, is oppressing those views. It's just, you're wrong. You have a bad take buddy. It is worth also mentioning everything I was talking about was like the government illegal. Um,

even content that's illegal, we can all agree that like that abhorrent certain types of like talking about Nazis or whatever, like you can say those things and they should not be illegal. But that also doesn't mean that a platform has to provide that a platform for you to post those things. Like medic could simply say like, we don't want that on our platform. It may be perfectly legal, but,

We just don't want to be that kind of a community. That has been sort of like the debate. And that is not a free speech thing because like meta, like you can build a blog, Steven, or you can like choose to moderate the contents on your posts or whatever, like any way you want. You can just be like, I don't want to talk about the dots on the doc anymore. Just stop. You can't talk about that here.

Right? I'm censoring the conversation. You can. It's because you're an individual and you have that right to do that. And so it does get very messy because people just feel like, yeah. Well, and it is no clear.

clearer than when you go onto Facebook, which I don't recommend, but if you go on Facebook and you see, yeah, I don't see this as much anymore, but I do see it when people will have this long post and they were like on this date and such and such, I do not, uh, provide permission for Facebook to use my whatever. And, and this is illegal, whatever. And it's like,

You really have no idea. Yeah. I just want to drive over to those people's houses, knock on the door and be like, listen, please, you're embarrassing yourself. Take it down. I like, and it, there's no use commenting or whatever, but it's like people still believe that that works. And I know maybe that's just, you know, different generation or whatever, but it's fundamentally people don't understand the difference between, uh,

free public speech verse posting on threads or Facebook. That is a privately, uh, it's a company like they can decide how they, what they do. And when you click agree on those terms and services that no one reads, uh,

Like that obfuscates any future you saying, don't use my thing. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, the way to get Facebook to not use your content is just don't post any content on Facebook. And by the way, Steven, here's the thing. This is actually really interesting to me because I imagine that the circle of people who post that and also the circle of people who believe intently that Facebook is listening to them are probably basically one circle. And so really they should stop posting it and they should just shout it at their phone so that Facebook will hear them talking to

You just got to be like, you can't use my content and Facebook will be listening.

ah the problem with posting that is that facebook can't hear you when you post it in space no one can hear you post on facebook that's that'd be glorious anyway okay i don't get worked up anymore so that that's the changes in meta we'll see we'll see how threads and instagram does now with more political content and uh anyway let's get to ces because there's a bunch of big announcements oh my gosh we're an hour into the show in the middle of ces listen uh this is big big news

The biggest announcement that you were almost going to be there for, but then not, was the Delta keynote in the sphere, which they had a plane slowly pull up. I saw the video where it kind of slowly pulled up. Anyway, Delta made some big announcements in relation to their entertainment screens on the CPACs, 4K HDR in the future. OLEDs. OLEDs, amazing. A partnership with YouTube, which...

specifically interesting for me you might be able to watch primary technology on a delta seat back one day ad free basically premium youtube premium uh in flight on delta flights they said there was going to be like select uh content so i'm just saying if anyone's listening you have well you have connections with the ceo didn't haven't you interviewed him i have interviewed him not about this he's been listen just send him a text go down to his villa and say make sure primary tech is on the first screen

Whatever. I should see what I can do. Maybe we can get some placement there. This is what I'm saying. Anyway, but I know you're the Delta guy. So tell me about the announcement. Yeah. I noticed you didn't bring up my article, which is totally fine. Where's the link? I just gave it to you.

So it's fine. So, okay. They do have the partnership with YouTube, which I think is really smart. And I do actually want to write about that. I have not written about it yet, but I will. But they did... One of their other big things is they have rolled out what they call Delta Concierge, which is sort of this personalized...

AI powered experience that will use your travel information and other data that Delta has about you to send you information, but then you can also interact with it by just talking in natural language. So it's,

in the beginning, it'll, they showed the whole, a whole video of like a person's journey to the airport and it'll like send them a notification. It's like, travel's really busy. You should consider leaving at this time. Or in this particular case, it's like, you should take a Joby air taxi, which is actually not a thing you can do yet, but yeah,

delta has a partnership with them so of course that's what they're going to show off right like it's like you're trying to get to la guardia or whatever jfk and traffic is so bad you're going to miss your flight so you should take an air taxi instead and you get you get to the airport and it's like you should take this security lane because the line is the shortest and then it's like it has an augmented reality like navigation through airports and stuff so all that stuff is really cool if you scroll down like it even extends to the seat back

Um, it'll, it'll, so that's an example of one of the, yup. It'll send you notifications. Um, but it's like, you could actually, if you're logged into the seat back, you can make a reservation at a nearby restaurant when you land that kind of thing. It'll tell you where your baggage is. So it's trying to do personalized interactions and allow you to interact with it the way you might like with chat GPT, where you talk to it and just normal language, instead of trying to guess like what's the magic word to pull up my reservation.

in the future and i did ask about this that there's that they talk about like the ability for this to help for concierge to help people when their flight gets delayed which would have been great this week or to get rebooked because you know if i was canceled or whatever to just be able to simply say to it and this is me interpreting what would be wonderful is to be able to say like hey it looks like my flight's canceled can you show me the other flights that get in

roughly at the same time today and not have to like navigate through six screens and type in like my destination and my origin and the dates and the time, like all this stuff and just be able to talk to it and have it pull up those options for you. To be fair, Delta already does a pretty good job if your flights are delayed or canceled of giving you proactive options, but to just be able to say it like, or I need to change my flight for tomorrow.

Right. Like, and just have it know what that means. Pull up your information and do that. So I think, I think it's really interesting Delta, like before this, before CES really even started, stole the whole show because I mean, if you throw a party for a couple thousand people at sphere, like, and you have Tom Brady and Viola Davis on stage at different times, they had a, they had a motorcycle come in from Uber and deliver them coffee. Like that's the CEO of the Dara. I can't say his name right now. Yeah.

i'm so sorry i apologize costa costa shawley i think is how you say yeah but anyway i still probably said it wrong so i apologize but anyway brought in a coffee order like because they uh for a long time delta their their ride share partner has been lyft and they've ended that partnership and now it's uber and so anyway it was a big deal like i mean it was a pretty well produced thing it also happens to be delta's 100th

We talked about this, I think, before. Like, this year is their 100th birthday. And so they wanted to throw a big party. And so I feel like the stakes are pretty high because a lot of these companies just do small press releases from the show floor. And Ed Bastion was like, hold my latte.

I mean, it was impressive. I saw a lot of YouTubers were at the event. Renee Ritchie, the creator liaison for YouTube, was at the sphere for the Delta announcement, obviously because of the partnership with YouTube announcement. But that's, yeah, pretty wild. I mean, Delta. Okay. Doing it. Doing it. All right. And there was a bunch of other CES announcements. I'm just like, let's jam through these because now the lightning round. You actually put a wearable one, which I can't wait to blow your mind in a second. But yeah.

This was more AI wearables where they will listen to everything all the time. Jason, let me tell you right now. I already got something like this. Okay. You must have not seen this video on my channel. See this thing right here? I've been busy this week. I'm sorry. Is that that? No, this was a couple weeks ago. Okay. This is the Plod AI pin. Okay.

Now listen. That's not a pin though. It's not a rope. I don't know why they call it the pin. They should have called it the pendant. Yeah. Except that was probably already a trademark name. Rewind AI people make a pendant. Anyway, this is the kind of wearable that the article was talking about, but this can record audio, sends it to the app on your phone, transcribes it, summarizes it, does all the kind of stuff with it. Listen, of all the AI gadgets, and I have many sitting around me,

I actually like this idea and not even for like, there are like work use cases. Like if you're going for a walk and you just want to talk some ideas or whatever, and this might sound a little weird, but just hear me out.

I like recording audio at family gatherings, especially when there's like, listen, I know that sounds, listen, listen. Especially when my brother-in-law, the stockbroker, is talking about how to record those conversations. I actually just looked up the Martha Stewart insider trading story last night for my wife to tell her why she went to jail. Anyway, listen.

I did this with a voice memos app on my iPhone usually. But when you have a family gathering, especially with older relatives, like grandparents, in our case, my kids have great grandparents who are very much alive and tell wild stories.

There is a personal thing that photos and videos are great, but it changes the dynamic when you pull up your phone and like you're going to record a video. And so one of the things I had done in the past was start a voice memo on my iPhone and just leave it on the table. And I recorded many things over the years and not to ever post or use anywhere. But like I have recordings of my son when he was like seven years old reading a Dr. Seuss book.

And like that is a cherished memory and a really awesome thing to hear. And it's a different medium when you're just listening to it as opposed to seeing it. And so I've liked doing that over the years. And whenever we have like Thanksgiving or Christmas or whatever, everyone sits around the table telling wild stories. Who knows what's true or what's not, but everyone's telling wild stories.

And so recording those for just memories, I find to be worthwhile. And so I actually used this on Thanksgiving. Everybody knows using it. You know, it's not like I'm posting this somewhere without their knowledge. And it was kind of a nice way, like just a person, like a personal memory box of the audio that's happening with relatives and stuff. So this will be the one AI gadget, not that I defend.

But then I will say it might actually have a use case. That's all. You know, over the holidays, I was having a conversation with someone and they said to me, you're not going to use this for a podcast, are you? They were like, are you recording this? These questions seem very... And you just did.

No, no, no. The question and answer. I know, I know. No, no, no. It is only for personal use, but it's worthwhile. And I've talked about it before, but like I have audio recordings of my dad just telling stories. There was actually one time when, so it was my grandmother who passed away and we went to the funeral in New York and it was my dad, his brother who lives in California. We never see. It was like one of the few times that,

he and his brother and sisters were all together in one place and we were at like this pizza parlor in New York City and I just threw my iPhone down recorded a voice memo and like I had that conversation like saved and that is that's meaningful so anyway there's you I think there's use cases but anyway let's not get sappy let's talk about NVIDIA

Because NVIDIA... Let's talk about graphics cards. Because they had a big keynote, I believe this was Monday night of CES, announcing a $3,000 AI supercomputer called Digits. And this is huge. I mean, NVIDIA has been killing it on the graphics processor game because of all the large language models. They're basically powering the AI bubble right now. But now they might make a computer. And this is actually the verge...

All the CES coverage is basically going to be from The Verge because that's the one subscription I pay for. And they have really good CES coverage. But this is what the little mini computer looks like. Powered by an NVIDIA chip. It'll be a Windows PC. But yeah, NVIDIA making a computer maybe?

I guess so. I mean, it's interesting. There's a lot going on here. I mean, video definitely had a lot of stuff that they announced. And one of the things that it's kind of like, well, I mean, they introduced new actual, like not just the supercomputer graphics cards that are now used exclusively for AI. Like they actually updated the RTX, whatever line of, you can tell, like we're both PC gamers here. So we know a lot about this stuff.

But I feel like it's interesting. I mean, they're in an interesting position because they have become one of the largest companies in the world as a result of the fact that every company is so dependent on AI and AI is so dependent on NVIDIA at this point. And so they now have to sort of do what they can to extend that because...

I don't think there's any debate that AI is simultaneously going to get a lot bigger and also still be a bubble at the same time. It's precarious.

At any moment, it could be like, oh, wait, actually, we can't scale these things. Oh, wait, we can't avoid the fact that they just soak up all your information and then lie to you. There are a lot of things that could go wrong. But also, before that happens, they're going to take all the money they can. Right, exactly. So that was NVIDIA. All right, we'll go quickly. So LG, they have another wild TV. They used to have a briefcase TV. Now they have a Stand By Me sequel, which is a portable TV with like a strap.

Just walk around with the TV, I guess. I guess so. I mean, I've seen a lot. That's the only thing I was really sad about.

not being in Vegas was the fact that there are a lot of TV completely wild. Yeah. Well, this is one of those. That's the weird TV. But in addition to this was LG, right? The stand by me. Yeah. LG also announced a new ultra fine monitor, which if you remember the ultra fine monitors were like the Apple blessed monitor before they made the studio display and pro display XDR. And so this is a new 32 inch monitor.

6K ultra fine monitor with Thunderbolt 5 looks really nice. I mean, it looks very much like a studio display stand, but ultra thin stand monitor looks great. 6K. Uh, it's going to be expensive. $2,500, but could be an alternative.

to Apple's displays. Well, I mean, actually, just to be clear, the price you, I don't think they've announced their price. That was the price of a comparable Dell monitor. So they're just guessing that it could be, but here's the thing. If it's less than $6,000, it's a pretty good deal because this thing is really not competing with the studio display. It's really competing with like the pro display XDR at this point, right? Cause it's a six K display. Yeah. But I don't know if it's an HDR display. I don't see that.

So just because it's Thunderbolt 5, I don't know about the HDR nature, but it looks great. Yeah, but I mean, the Pro Display XDR is not actually like a real HDR anyway. Isn't it? Really? Well, I mean, it probably is capable of the dynamic range, but it's still only, it's not even mini LED. Like it's not an OLED. It's not mini LED. It does have a lot of,

dimming zones, but it's, I don't know. I don't know. I think that that's why they don't call it an HDR. That's what they call it. Gotcha. I don't, I don't own an XDR in case I don't actually either. No. Uh, I'm always excited about chargers. And so,

basis has some new chargers uh with retractable usbc cables but this was the one i was actually really interested in it's a car charger with two retractable usbc cables and it plugs directly into your um what do you call that i i call it a cigarette lighter adapter and then people yell at me because they were like it's not that i mean it super is like what do you mean it's not that people get upset they say it's like the uh it's the auxiliary something

auxiliary power outlet it's outdated to call it a cigarette lighter adapter but i when i was growing up it was literally a cigarette lighter and i remember pushing it in popping it out and looking at how hot it was and debating whether or not i wanted to touch it anyway uh this that looks cool and i also realized anchor has one of these but with only one cable out now so i ordered one as you do there's that

This one, Lenovo's rollable laptop is a $3,500 laptop that looks like a normal size laptop, but then the screen extends. How do you like that? I mean, this is, yeah, I'm not even surprised by any of this. This is what CES is. It's a bunch of weird gadgets that people just throw against the wall to see like, is it David Pierce's? Is this a thing? Is this a thing? That's a thing. Another thing, Anchor.

This one looks pretty cool. This one I can get behind. You need this for your iMac on the beach. Wait, never mind. It wasn't on the beach. I didn't go on the beach. I'm sorry. We'll talk about this again. Anyway, Anker has a solar umbrella. The umbrella is solar panels, and then there's a USB-C connection at the bottom, and it can produce up to 100 watts of total output. And yeah, while you're on the beach, charge your stuff with an umbrella. Come on. That's pretty cool.

I mean...

It is kind of cool, but listen, it's okay. This is a cool idea. Cool idea. The guy that shows up to the beach with this, not at all. Cool. No, no, he is cool. Now, if you show up to the beach with that huge anchor, like battery on wheels and the umbrella, that's too much. Not cool at all. Yeah. I guess if you just stuck the umbrella in the sand and then you plug in your phone, maybe. Okay. That's fine. You'd be, you'd be popular on the beach. People, I think people would hit you up for that. I don't want to be popular on the beach. I want to be left alone.

Fair enough. Fair enough. Anchor also had some other new chargers, like 140 watt wall chargers. I just want, I want chargers like this, but with no USB. Why, why are we still putting USB-A on anything? I think it's because like it can't sustain for USB-C output, whatever may, maybe that's the deal, but this is an anchor charger. 140 watts has a screen on it, which is cool, but three USB-C ports, one USB-A just take the USB-A out. Like I don't want this with the USB-A.

Steven, without looking, what year was USBA introduced? Shoot. 1987. 1987.

No. That's not right, right? 1996. Oh, 96. But still. I mean, it's like, what, almost 30 years ago. 31 years old. Yeah. It's not. I mean. Stop. Stop it. It's 29 years old. I'll do the math for you, but that's okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. My point is, why are we still putting USB-A on anything? Stop it. Just don't do it. And all of you smart home stuff, listen, all the new smart home gadgets that are coming out this year,

If I see a USB-A cable in any of those boxes, throwing it out. Not even going to set it. Steven, do you want to know? Hold on. This is fun. Do you want to know what is newer than USB-A? Firewire. Okay, that makes sense. The 30-pin adapter. Yeah, that makes sense. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. All of these things that have come and died came after USB-A. I love the shirts where it's like USB-A.

It shows like one orientation. It says wrong. Flip it over. It says wrong. Flip it over again. Right. And listen, pro tip, not that anyone needs this because USB-A should be dead. But if you see the USB-A and the holes are on top, like you can actually see into the holes of the connector, that's supposed to be pointed up. Like if that's pointed up, then it goes in. Anyway, USB-A should die. Roborock, there's a bunch of robot vacuums and...

I'll be covering them on my channel for sure. Of course. But the Roborock, uh, Soros Z 70, uh, now has an arm. Did you see this? It has an arm to pick up clothes. Yeah, this is, this is, I mean, now I can pick up your socks and stuff with the little robotic arm and I guess pile them somewhere.

No, you have to just carry them around for the rest of the day until you come home and take them. It's a little tiny grabber arm that will pick up your clothes. That is actually terrifying. A little grabber arm? This is why you should watch the show at youtube.com slash fmrtechshow. Apparently, you can only pick up socks, though. This whole video is just picking up socks. Sometimes not picking up socks because you can't grab it. I can't imagine it's going to do a shirt or a pair of pants. You know what I mean?

I don't know if Roborock has seen my kid's bedroom. It's going to throw out its back. If this were to work in my kid's bedroom, it would need to be able to pick up probably 50 pounds of clothes quickly. Yeah. So, Steven, here's a parenting pro tip. I mean, I've heard that the problem with stuff like this, if it would actually do that and clean up your kids' room, is then your children will never clean their room because they don't have to because now this thing will. And so it's like...

If what you really want is to get to decide, do you really just want your kids's room clean?

or are you trying to grow well-rounded, developed, responsible people that are growing to human beings that can hold down a job and take care of themselves? This is some logical fallacy. Let's be honest, most of the time we just want the room clean, right? Most of the time we just want the room clean. I feel like there's some logical fallacy here, either a red herring or a straw man or an ad hominem or something, because the fact is the room is just not clean. No matter what happens, and we impress upon our kids many times to clean said room,

And it's a battle. It's a constant battle. I'm like, why are there 18 Zevia cans on your desk? It's like, well, I'm still drinking this one. I'm like, yeah, that's one. It's one of 18. Anyway, I drink a lot of Zevia here. All right, real quick, last couple things. Aqara unveiled a bunch of smart home gear. We'll be working with Apple Home. And the one that I'm really interested in, they have some light switches, updated video doorbell, things like that. But they have this big panel, Panel Hub S1+. This will be coming to the U.S.,

and you'll replace a light switch, and then you'll also be able to control your smart home from the panel. This is similar to what Brilliant tried doing, and if you remember Brilliant, they were going to go away. I think they went bankrupt. I'm not sure if you can even get their stuff anymore, but Aqara, they're pretty established, and it would be cool to have a screen like this to control your smart home. We'll see who wins. Will Apple make a screen for your home to control your smart home, or will Aqara do

beat them to the punch. And so I'm gonna try and get a review unit. That looks pretty cool. I would like that. I know you would. Our last, last smart home thing. Schlage. Schlage.

I don't know how to say that. They announced another HomeKit lock, which if you're not, I've done a lot of HomeKit lock reviews on my channel, and the Schlage Encode Plus is the only one that had thread built in, like right now, of smart locks that you can get that work with HomeKey, and it works really good because it has thread, so it responds quickly. Well, Schlage announced the Sense Pro with an ultra-wideband chip, and this will be the first time that it'll be ultra-wideband where you can actually just walk up

to the lock and it will unlock using the express mode which you might see in the apple home app if you have a smart lock about turning on express mode but no lock supports it right now like you can't do it some will do it with the third party app so like level lock you can give the app permission to unlock the lock and using bluetooth when you approach it will unlock it that way that's not the built-in apple feature that requires an ultra wide band chip this is the first one i'm

ever that will actually have a ultra wideband chip and will use Apple's built-in smart home protocol to unlock as you approach. And so I'm excited to try that. That looks cool. So does, okay. So I'm, this is a real question. It's going to sound like I'm trolling you, but I'm not. Okay. I want to establish that. But like, does ultra wide band solve the problem that Bluetooth has that

that if you had a Bluetooth lock that would unlock with proximity, if you walked up to it and someone who you did not want at your front door comes to the door and rings the doorbell and you walk up to the door and realize, I don't want to open my door for this person. And now Bluetooth just unlocked it. That is a good question.

I feel like it would probably not solve that. And you might need to leave your phone away. Leave your phone somewhere else. Because this feels like the biggest problem with these proximity locks is that like...

You don't only walk up to your door from the outside. In fact, our front door, I walk past it 10 times a day because we have a, we have like a, it's like a family room. And then our main bedroom are on opposite ends of our foyer right there. So we walk, I walk, I don't want to be locking my door, unlocking my door every time I go by there. So I'm just curious. That's a good point. I don't know. Ideally there would be some automations that you can only be active sometimes. Like maybe when I leave,

activate express mode. And then when I return, like deactivated five minutes after I return or something like that. Gotcha. But that is one of the improvements Apple needs to make in the smart home. Cause there's not a lot of automation options like that. So anyway, those are the stuff I saw at CES. That was cool. If there's anything else we'll cover it next week, but for our personal tech real quick, we're going to get to, I have some screen time questions for Jason. We're going to get to that in the bonus episode.

But you have a new Apple Vision Pro take. I do, but hold on. I have one CES question. Oh, yeah, yeah. I only contributed like three things to this entire thing. So what is the one thing that you heard about from CES that you most wish you had been able to see in person if you'd attended? The people. And I know that's kind of cheating. That is not the right answer. I know that's not the question. But like all the smart home creators like Eric Wielander and Shane Watley, I

They were all there and I would have loved to meet them in person. Fernando Silva. He, I think he listens to this show from nine to five Mac. He was there and Renee Ritchie was there. Brandon Butch, YouTube guy was there. That's what, that's what I most miss not having gone when it comes to the tech side. I mean, I would have been excited to like go to the smart home booths and like do a little selfie videos and be like, Hey, look at this. But honestly, from afar, I,

Even all the announcements I just said, which were the most exciting, you know, that's how I feel. Okay. Hopefully I articulated that well. I think you can't wait to go next year. Listen, I still want to go. Like you said, I want to go one time.

I don't know if it'll ever be in a place besides Las Vegas. It would have been like, it'll always be in Vegas. Is it because of like the companies coming from Asia that it has to be on the West coast? Is that part of the reason why? Or just the size? Also there is there, are there any cities in the world with more hotel rooms in Las Vegas? I don't think Orlando, Florida, you think has more hotel rooms in Vegas. Listen, I went to Vegas for a podcast conference and like, I see the strip and all the hotels. I also drive through Orlando and like Orlando,

Orlando has unlimited theme parks with tons of hotels. There are tons of hotels out there. Okay. Hold on. Hold on. I'm trying to find out which one has the... But like all five of the top five hotels, largest hotels in the world are all in Vegas. Las Vegas has 154,000 hotel rooms. Okay. That's not the article I'm looking at, but okay. This one...

All these articles are old. Why is this... Did you say 164,000? 154,000. How many hotel rooms? It's outpacing Orlando, Florida. Orlando is next. Orlando is 130,000. Okay. So I will say that that's fair. Orlando had significantly more... The reason is most people might not think... Like all of the hotels... Like the Venetian is...

6,000 hotels rooms or something like that. It doesn't look like it's that big, but all these hotels are enormous. And there's probably like seven or eight convention centers in Vegas. I know there's not seven or eight convention centers. No, there's a few. Because every one of those resorts has a convention center of sorts, right? And then there is the convention center, which I don't know which convention center is the largest. I mean, it might be McCormick Place in Chicago, but I'm pretty sure that the Las Vegas Convention Center is one of the biggest. So.

So that's why. Yeah. You were right. McCormick Place in Chicago, 2.6 million square feet. That is the largest convention center. And then Orlando is after that. Orlando's second. The Orange County Convention Center, 2.1 million square feet. Gotcha. And then third is the Las Vegas Convention Center at 2.5. Wait. Wait. I think that's bigger than 2.1. What in the world?

Never mind. Las Vegas is still big. Orlando is third. And then Atlanta, Georgia World Congress Center is fourth. And it looks like Vegas and McCormick Place are almost exactly the same size. Yeah, yeah. Okay, I see. I see. Okay, very good. So, okay, but your Vision Pro take. Oh, yeah, my Vision Pro take. So I... You still have it, by the way, right? You haven't sent it back? No, it's right here. Yep.

Whoops. The light seal just fell off. It's just magnetic. That's how it does. Totally fine. That's how it do. It's designed to come apart into seven pieces. So here's my take. First of all, and this part of my take is not new. The improved Mac mirroring in the Vision Pro is killer. Like absolutely killer. So good that there are times when I...

so I had been using the vision pro still using it every day, but it was mostly using vision pro apps to do things. Okay. But now I almost exclusively just use the Mac and then I might have something else over in the corner. Like if I'm like, Oh wow, I'm just opening the music app over here, whatever. Um, and, uh,

I think the Vision Pro is actually a pretty good deal if you are someone who needs a big display. Because here's, think about my math this way. A studio display is like what? $1,600, $1,700 if you get the adjustable. $1,600 with stand, yeah. But isn't it like $1,700 with the adjustable stand or whatever? Yes. Okay. So that's $1,700. So now you're down to $1,800 for a Vision Pro. Sure. For all of the Vision Pro stuff.

I'm telling you right now, like if you are seriously considering like you bought a Mac, getting a setup, you have a laptop, but you're thinking like, I need something to look just by vision pro because it is. Yes. A studio display or a pro display XDR is a better display for a computer just by itself. Right. Right.

But the Vision Pro as a work display for a MacBook Pro or a MacBook Air or whatever, it's actually really good. I'm not even joking. It's my favorite way to work. I think I look like an idiot if people look out into my office from the house to see what I'm doing and they're like, why is dad sitting there staring at a wall with his Vision Pro on?

what is he even doing? Nose against the wall. What is he even doing in there? But it's, it's so, it's so good, Steven. Like it makes the price of all of the vision pro things come down significantly. It's like, huh? I could get a vision pro and a display for this computer. Hmm. Yeah. That's pretty good deal. So that's interesting. If you were to get a nano texture, uh,

studio display with the tilt and height adjustable stand you are looking at 2300 which you shouldn't spend that much on a studio display but yeah that's yeah so apple is helping me out with this math by making the studio display ridiculously overpriced right right

And you never have to worry about glare with Vision Pro because you're literally in a headset. Right. Zero glare. It is amazing. Although I told you about the time when I couldn't figure out how to get the smudge off of the lens. I have the lens inserts, obviously, because I don't have my glasses on. I could not figure it out. And I'm looking at it. I take them out. I'm looking at them. I'm wiping them down. I put them back in. I'm like, what is going on? And then I finally realized it's because the smudge was on one of the cameras for the past few videos. Oh, interesting. And so everything looks smudged. But that's because I never got to the point where I opened it.

And then the reason I realized that is I opened a Vision Pro app and it looked perfect. There was no smudge. But then if you moved it, it's like, oh, it's just the camera for the pass through video.

Did you, have you ever wiped the actual displays inside the vision pro? Oh no, you can't, you can't touch it. That's like, you're not supposed to touch this. It's like crossing the lightsabers or whatever. The stream crossing the streams and ghostbusters. Yeah. I don't. Okay. I've never done that. I wiped the inserts. Oh yeah, sure. All the time. I was over the holidays. My sister-in-law, she had never tried a vision pro and my brother-in-law. So I let them try it. I let them, this is a good question.

If you're going to have a friend or family member try Vision Pro for the first time, what's the piece of immersive content that you play for them? A high wire? No, I'm just kidding. Well, that's actually the one I played for my sister-in-law. No, the dinosaurs. I'd still show them the dinosaurs. The original dinosaur thing where it comes out from the wall. Your brain is rotted out. You don't know what it's like to not know what it's like. That was really profound. But start someone with something simple. Don't put them in submerged.

No, not some merch. So what I showed my brother-in-law was the Super Bowl recap. Okay. And I like that one as a first experience because it kind of eases you in. You know, you start looking around, you're on the field, you're like, this feels really interesting. People come nearby. But then when you get to the end where there's like parties in the locker room, the celebrations at the end of the game, those feel very like unnerving.

oh shoot i'm right here like i'm looking at this press person holding their iphone trying to capture the champagne bottle like that feels very like i'm there in the moment and so i play the super bowl recap and then for my sister-in-law she likes travel and stuff like that and so i knew she would like the fjords or whatever so i played the highline one uh for that and if you don't like the person you should show them the beginning of the weekend's music video because that's

Have you watched that? I'm not crazy about that one. I did watch it. I don't like it. It was not a good use of this technology. No one wants to be that close to the weekend. No.

the literal weekend yes with an e but i'm just saying no one wants to be and then those shadowy characters i'm like i don't want this i don't want any of this did you watch though there was another like concert for one the concert for one that's pretty good that is pretty good and like it's not super immersive but it does feel like oh this artist is right in front of me i can look over to the horns because i play trumpet and i get to see them playing over here like that was kind of cool

But the Alicia Keys rehearsal room, I still feel like is a good example too. Cause you feel like you're there. But the thing I like about the dinosaur one, and I know that I'm like, again, it's easy to forget how cool that was when that was like the only thing that you do is that it was a great use of the pass through in the AR. Right. Because all the things you described you could do in the, in like the quest. Yeah.

They're just immersive. Right. But the quality of the vision pro, I feel like makes it feel. Sure. But better could make a better quest. I'm just saying like, right, right, right. But the path anyway. Yeah. So, all right, so here's what we're going to do. Uh, if you haven't yet leave us a five-star rating and review an Apple podcast and tell us if you know, if you've done the demo, what is the most compelling, uh,

Apple Vision Pro experience, like immersive content. If you haven't yet, you can go on an assignment. Just go to an Apple store, try it out. You can do the demos. And I still think it's good to do the demo, even if you have zero intention of buying it. Maybe there'll be a cheaper version this year of Vision Air or something, but we'll see.

So leave us a five-star rating and review. Tell us what immersive content you really enjoy. And then we're going to go talk. I have a nanotexture thought for Jason I need to share in the bonus episode. Hold on. You have a thought about nanotexture or you have a nanotexture thought? Okay, I just wanted to clarify what you mean by that. Yes to both. My thoughts are in nanotexture, not glossy. Wow.

razor sharp there's no light reflecting up of those thoughts no glare no glare to my thought so we're going to talk about that and I have a question about screen time if you want to listen to the bonus episode you go to primarytech.fm click bonus episodes you get the whole back catalog plus ad free version of the show and you're supporting the show as well start 2025 off right by supporting primary technology you can also watch the show on YouTube that links in the show notes as well thanks for watching thanks for listening we'll catch you next time