‘Hot Tub’ Explicit iPhone App Hits EU, Apple's New Invites App, Sonos Making a Streaming Box
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Was it morally wrong for me to exploit my knowledge of the future for personal financial gain? Perhaps. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. Big news this week, Apple released a new app called Invites and Jason doesn't know why they did it. So we're going to discuss that. Sonos may be releasing a stream box this year amidst other layoffs. Google also has layoffs coming. ChatGPT Search is now free. You don't even have to sign in. And the first explicit app is now in the App Store, at least in the EU. And there's a bunch of controversy around that.

We're also going to talk about big game streaming in our personal tech segment. And I got some questions for Jason. This episode is brought to you by 1Password and you, the members who support us directly.

I'm one of your hosts, Steven Robles, and Jason is here with Ethernet now in his hut or shed or whatever you call it. Hey, Jason. Yeah. How's it going? It's good. I had Ethernet before, just to be clear. I just, you know, cut the cables. You cut the... We did a whole segment on the underwater cables being cut. This was just really cold weather and I just cut it in a door. So now my cable's not running across the floor. It actually has a proper jack in the wall and it's like... I feel so accomplished. That's amazing.

Now, I did a quote from a movie to start the show. I've never seen this movie, but it has to do with something we're talking about in the show. Do you have any wild guesses where that quote's from? Well, it talked about time travel, exploiting the knowledge of the future. So I start thinking about time travel in movies.

And the only one that relates to things we're going to talk about today is the John Cusack movie. What's it called? Hot Tub Time Machine. How do you do this? I just explained it to you. I just used my O1 reasoning model in my brain. And I even gave you the chain of thought right there. Honestly, that is... Have you seen that movie? Yeah. It's actually a funny movie. There's like three of them, aren't there? I'm pretty sure there's more than one. Anyway, yeah. I went to college. I watched a lot of movies.

Fair enough. I'm consistently impressed that you can guess these movies. Yes, it was from Hot Tub Time Machine. It's almost like I should be on your movie podcast. You were. That's true. I have been on your podcast. We'll argue about Wicked. But I do that because the app that's in the EU App Store now, the first explicit app that Apple approved, at least that's what Hot Tub will have you believe. The name of the app is Hot Tub, so that's why it was related. That's the only reason I got it, because I'm thinking it's about time travel, and one of the things in the rundown is Hot Tub.

So I use my contextual clues. Yeah, that's impressive. That's what they teach you in the SATs. You know what I mean? Use the context clues. Reading comprehension. It's been a real long time since I took the SATs. But yeah, that's exactly. It's very true.

All right, we have a five-star review shout-out. Forgive me, this is not how you pronounce your last name, but I think it's Ed Zucchini. That seems like exactly how it's spelled, so forgive me. That's not what it is, but he left us a five-star review. He says, we're an informative, fun, and enjoy the banter and opinions on the show. And then he just got on my bad side by saying, percentage on...

and then non-dominant front pocket for his phone but that's okay it's fine thanks for the five star rating leave us five star rating review our new goal 300 five star ratings we're like 25 or 30 away so if you would leave us a five star rating review an apple podcast and we'll give you a shout out on the show and last week last two weeks we talked about old tech if

If you have your old tech and send us pictures of it. And a bunch of you did, which is super fun. So I wanted to show off old tech. This is Rhymes with Stolen on Blue Sky. And this appears to be a MacBook. Is that a G3? Oh, man. Is that a MacBook or is that an old PowerBook? It said MacBook right here. You can see it on the screen. So this is an old style MacBook. I'll make this the chapter art so you can see it.

this is uh look at all the ports on this thing bring back there's firewire you got firewire 400 firewire 400 on there yeah it only has an s video port yep and and a vga and a rj whatever that is 45 like telephone yeah exactly ethernet and telephone jack

has a speaker headphone jack and a microphone headphone jack this is what i want to see on the m5 macbook pros right here it's a phone jack and an ethernet port that is just bananas amazing that's amazing and it doesn't look is that an apple logo on the bottom as well as the top uh that i don't know yeah i guess because that looks like the bottom with the feet you know what i mean and then

Apple logo on top and an Apple logo on the lid inside. They've gotten really stingy with those Apple logos. They don't even glow anymore. That's well, that's amazing. So we'll put that as a chapter art. So you can see that that's rhymes with stolen on blue sky. And then this is from Ryan via email, still rocking the 27 inch Apple Thunderbolt display as his primary. And then the 27 inch Apple cinema display vertically and a USB Apple keyboard hiding under the desk. But again,

Those displays have been around for a long time, Jason. Aside from the fact that they're not retina, they're still killer displays, to be honest with you. I have a 20-inch cinema display. I keep meaning to bring all this stuff up here, so we may have to do this one more week because I meant to bring up the old Apple TV, the 20-inch cinema display, a bunch of the old stuff that I still have. All of it still works. I just don't. I'm not using it, obviously. I mean, these displays look good. Yeah, other than the fact that they're not retina, those are actually really, really good displays. Yeah.

That's really good. So there's that. And then finally, Chris Peck in our community commented, this is an old Mac cube, which now serves as a stand for his old i7 Mac mini. He's got an old Mac on an old Mac, old

Old Mac's all the way down. So there you go. All right, keep sending us your stuff. This is really fun. So you can email us, podcast at primarytech.fm, comment on the episode. I'll actually start linking our community episode post in the show notes. So if you want to join the community and comment on the actual episode post, it'd be great to keep it all in one place. We can have a whole thread of old tech pictures. I'll put that link in the podcast show notes so it'll just be easier to find. But super fun seeing everybody's old tech.

And we got to get into the Apple invites app because Jason and I are about to argue about it. But I just have to say I finished silo season two. It was very good. That was very good. It's intense. Maddening ending. Of course. I mean, basically a cliffhanger, no spoilers, but it was very good. That was, it was a good season. You should all, you should all be watching. I'll be watching silo and Steven yesterday.

In honor of the post or the text you sent me that you finished silo season two, I started severance season one. So did you watch the first episode? I'm almost through the first episode because I, I can't, unless I'm traveling, there's no time when I can sit down and watch a 45 minute show. But I don't, I don't think that if I had watched this without a recommendation that I would keep going because I just have no idea what's happening.

just you have to watch so there's three episodes of the second season on that you have to watch the first three because it gets it's why but i gotta watch the whole first season first is what i'm saying

Oh, you never started? I never watched several. Oh, you're already in season one. Yeah, so I watched the first episode and I have no idea what's happening. And I'm like, all right, everyone likes this, so I'm going to keep going. Power through. By the end of the first season, it will blow your mind. What I'm just expecting to happen based on Silo, this is a minor spoiler from the beginning of season one, but if you haven't watched that yet, what I'm expecting is that none of the people who are in episode one will be in episode two because that seems to be what Apple decides to do because that's what happened in Silo. Okay.

None of the main characters are in episode one and all the people you think the show is going to be about are gone by the end of the first episode. It's like, what is, what's happening? That was kind of true. Yeah. There was a big, like all the advertising for the first season of silo was people who are not in the show anymore. But anyway, Apple released a new app earlier this week after a bunch of rumors, codename confetti app. Apple invites is now live on the app store. It's a free first party app.

specifically for creating, organizing, and inviting people in

for events. And so it has a bunch of interesting features, you know? So the first thing is this is an iCloud plus a feature basically, because in order to create events and actually invite people, you have to have an iCloud plus subscription. So you can join events and RSVP even without an Apple ID or iCloud plus subscription, you

But if you want to create the events, you have to have iCloud Plus. So any of the levels of iCloud Plus for that 99 cents and up. So this app,

It's pretty cool. So you can, uh, you title it, you have a date and time, you can put it in a location for event, and even it will automatically pull the weather, which then you can't remove from it, but it'll pull the weather for the event for that date and time. And then you can send out invites and people can RSVP. You can also do pretty cool things like create a shared photo album when you create an event and even a playlist, an Apple music playlist that

that then invite people who are invited in RSVP can contribute to that shared album and also access the music playlist for that event. Uh, they do have to have an Apple music subscription to listen to the playlist, but they can at least access it. Now there was a, it's, you know, you, then you can send notes and updates for the events. And I actually did a test where I created an event for like a shortcut stream. And I put the public link in my video description. Cause I was like, what is the maximum amount of people that,

that can respond to an invite. And very quickly, it started crashing for people. It turns out 100 guests is the max. And after that, it shuts down. So I actually have the event. There's 100 people listed. And it's like 58 going, 30 maybe. Some said no. I'm like, I don't even know why you RSVP'd to this just to say no. But anyway, once 100 people have RSVP'd, the event stops.

And it doesn't give an error like this event has been maxed out. It just says error. So you just get an error when someone tries to RSVP them, which is not a great experience. So 100 guests maximum. And also there was a lot of question. Me and Jason Snell actually went back and forth on Mastodon because he felt like the only way you could respond on a Mac is if you have an Apple ID, an Apple account.

And there's apparently a very weird behavior where if you want to respond to an invite that someone sends you from the new Apple invites app, you can respond with just an email, which is why if you have an Android phone or if you're just a Windows and Android user, you can respond in RSVP to events. It'll do it through your email. You basically put your email in. You'll get emails when there's changes to the events, like hosts can add notes. But apparently if your email is

is a part of Apple's Apple ID database. It then forces you to use the app.

Which is a really weird behavior. And so Jason Snell, we kept going back and forth. He was like, you have to have an Apple ID to RSVP. And I was like, no, you're not. You don't know. You don't. Here's a two screenshots of me doing it with two different email addresses. We kept going back and forth. And apparently if it's an Apple ID associated email address, they make you do the app thing, which is kind of silly, or at least log in with your Apple ID. So that's unfortunate, weird behavior. And,

It's also unfortunate this is iPhone only, and we're going to talk about several apps that Apple has released recently that is that. But what problem do you have with this app, Jason? Because you're very worked up about it. I don't know if I'm worked up about it. I tried to get worked up about it, and I just couldn't because I don't understand...

Like, I don't know. My job is when I see things like this. I mean, I think it's very well done. Although it does kind of look weird. Like even the, listen, anytime that you have to go to iCloud.com for something, it's a weird experience because that is such a weird website. Maybe it's because we're used to like

comparable Google experiences or Microsoft experiences where there's just about a trillion features happening all at the same time and everything's interconnected. And you go to iCloud.com and you're just like, is there anybody here? Hello? Like, does anyone know that this still exists? It's just very sparse. And so to incorporate it into that kind of feels weird. I understand like if you don't have an iPhone or you don't have an iCloud account, then you have to like do that. This does sort of feel like a...

I don't know, an Apple-sanctioned pyramid scheme because everything in here is like...

Oh, wait, your friend doesn't have iCloud account, so they can't do this. Oh, they're going to have to sign up for Apple Music to listen to the playlist. Oh, we're going to make a shared photo album, but you got to have an iCloud shared photos or whatever like that. It's like they're just trying to get you to evangelize all of your friends by inviting them to like a barbecue or something like that. It's like we're selling what is like the berry juices or something like that, where it's like literally you just have to like keep inviting your friends to do more. So I don't know. But I genuinely try to figure out like, why does this exist?

Why is this a feature that Apple decided to make out of all the things we would like Apple to do? I don't think on anybody's bingo card was let me invite people to a barbecue because you know, it works really well for doing that. Like group text messages. It does seem like a lot of people had the argument. Why wasn't this just built into the calendar as a feature, which I,

reasonable you know this is a feature that fantastical has where you can you know offer availability and schedule things like this but yes this also just kind of is a straight up like calendar invite like you could do that too you don't have the shared photo album and playlist thing or whatever but maybe it's a trojan horse for apple intelligence because you can create the image playgrounds as the backgrounds for your events like i'm showing here no probably not

But you can do that. That's actually not a... I mean, that's the thread I kept trying to pull on is how does this benefit Apple intelligence? And I'm like, well, maybe they need more personalized data because they don't want to make it so that you can expose third-party apps. I mean, they've talked about the app intense thing. That's supposed to be coming. But even...

But even that, I'm like, I still don't get it. This is a very long game that they're playing with this app. And then maybe it's just like clips. It's like somebody had an idea and you're like, whatever, you've got some, you got some 20% time. Go ahead and work on this thing. Like we're going to talk about clips in a second because that's one of the many apps that Apple has forgotten about. But anyway, I do think I would, I went to my, my daughter was invited to a birthday party recently.

And the family used a service to organize the information. I forgot what it was called. I'm trying to look for the link here, but it was basically like a web app that, you know, has all the information. Oh, here's what it was. It was called part of full.com. Have you heard this? Never part of all.com. So this is like, I guess a service where you can do exactly what Apple invites is doing. Um, I had not heard about it until this birthday party, but it's basically an app that you can download and,

create an event, and then you can invite people and then you can add the location for the event and all that kind of stuff. Now, like there's this, you have Eventbrite, you have Facebook events, and I will say most of the apps and services to do this kind of thing, planning an event that you might be inviting people not directly in your contacts. There's a lot of options. I think they're all kind of mediocre and stink and they're all kind of cumbersome to actually create an event and use.

And so the one pain point I think this does solve is making it easy to create and host the event. Like you have enough options in Apple invites, like allowing people to mark a plus one or a plus five, if they can, you know, bring someone to the event, adding the location easily, getting directions. And again, it all works better if you just have the app on your iPhone. But I do think it makes it easier and streamlines that process. You can also add notes. And when

And when you add a note to an event, people who have the app get a notification. People who signed up with just an email address, like an Android user, they would get an email that there's an update for the event and you can send that out. Rather than having to manage like a group text, that might be a combination of SMS and iMessage or trying to do a Facebook event, which I don't want to go to Facebook for anything. And I think that gets convoluted. So I do feel like there's a place for a good event management.

organizing app and maybe Apple did it. I don't know that that's, that's how I feel. It's for moms, like moms, like birthday parties, maybe field trips, that kind of stuff. Okay. What do you think there's a higher demand for in the Apple ecosystem? This app is,

or a good mesh Wi-Fi app or, you know, router. I understand like more people would probably buy the Wi-Fi router than this app. I just think the number of things that were like, why hasn't Apple done this yet? And then they're like, here's Calendly, but prettier because it has image playgrounds or whatever. Again, I think it's well done. I played around with it. I think that...

Of the options that exist. So this is probably the problem. One, I'm just not the, I just don't like people enough to want to invite them to things. So that's probably one of the problems. The second problem is that I just don't fully understand the problem that's trying to be solved.

by this and maybe there is a very real problem like i in our in our lifetime we've never used any service to invite kids people to our kids birthday parties we literally just send them a text i mean there was a time when they were really little that we made fancy cards and we sent them to people you know because whatever they're like babies but now it's just like yeah hey tomorrow we're gonna get together for this kid's birthday do you want to come like literally that's how it works i mean i do think there are times like

I think of kids field trips, those kinds of things that you do need a more organized system than just a group text because there's more information a part of that. And so I think there could be a place for it, but I don't know. I also think it was funny at the bottom of the newsroom, Apple news article where announced Apple invites, it talks about additional iCloud plus premium features and

And you probably know these already expanded storage, like be able to save your photos, private relay as a feature, hide my email. And I just want to point out Apple does still remember that HomeKit exists because it's in this newsroom article as a benefit for iCloud plus because HomeKit secure videos here. And it allows you to capture and review home security footage in an end to end encrypted format.

Now, in a second, we're going to talk about all the apps that Apple's forgotten about. And one of the things that also forgot about is that HomeKit secure video is still 1080p maximum. And also they never added controls for like pan and tilt cameras. So I have several cameras like my Aqara E1. I have a Topo 2K that if I want to pan and tilt, I have to go to those apps because HomeKit just doesn't support those actions. And 1080p maximum.

and it's been years two questions the first question is do you think that they remember it exists or do you think this is just a text expander snippet that they put at the bottom of press releases like this because i think it's probably the latter second question are you familiar with working genius like the it's like a one of those profile things where you can like find out this is the where your working genius is it's the things that give you energy when you work and then you have like a working i don't remember what it's like

or I can't remember what the one we're, but it's like the thing that exhausts you. And there's one of them called tenacity and tenacity is like the ability to see something through to the end. Right? So you start a project that's like, you're, you're good at ideation or you're good at whatever. And tenacity is the ability to, and Apple for things like this has zero tenacity. It's like, here's a great idea. Let's put it out into the world. If they're not quite like Google where Google will just ceremonially kill things off, right? Apple just,

puts them out there. And then if there's not enough energy out there in the world to sustain it, they just quietly reassign the people working on it to other projects. And then they just keep existing. And that is definitely HomeKit secure video and a bunch of other stuff.

Well, HomeKit Secure Video is even more maddening because if you log into iCloud.com, Apple Invites now has a nice little new app icon and you can do that in the iCloud website. But HomeKit Secure Video is in a menu drop down, but does nothing when you click it. And it's so annoying because I would love to just be able to access my recordings.

from the web so I can download them easily because downloading them in the app is super annoying but speaking of apps that Apple may have forgotten about and Sean Plattges pointed this out on Mastodon you know journal app that is still iPhone only and we're in its second year of existence sports app was launched iPhone only has not changed clips I mean I think it's just been forgotten about but that was iPhone only as well

why why jason like one of the things and this this was going on social too is like apple talks so much during like dub dub and to developers about like developing with swift and how you can write once and deliver everywhere like you can create an app that runs on iphone ipad and mac and because of all the you know reformatting ui just it just works apple's tagline just works why are there first party apps iphone only there's no mac journal app there's

There's no iPad journal app. And it's like, what's the deal? Yeah, there definitely should be a journal app on the Mac. That doesn't make any sense. Yeah, and iPad. I don't know about the iPad, whatever. Like that, I don't think you can get too worked up about. I don't think you can get that worked up about the journal app not being on the iPad. But it is sort of ridiculous that it's not available on the Mac.

Now, even if the journal UI was just still like this tall, skinny list of your entries and you just move the gradient, like put more gradient on either side, at least that it's in the native app. But I think they know, like, when are you likely to make a quick entry and take a photo of a thing that's happening? It's probably on your phone. And if you're going to do a longer thing, you're probably going to do it on your mic. That's the clips app. I kind of understand why it's only on the iPhone, because like that's what it's intended for. They're trying to fill a void on the iPhone.

to that extent I kind of get why the invite app is like you can access it on a computer but we're not going to build an app for it because it's really meant to be like a social and social is a thing people do on their phones but I in principle I absolutely agree with you but as you start to be like it just looks ridiculous it's like you went through the work of making the app

And the iPhone and the iPad are running the same set of, you know, it's the same software. It's the same SDK. It's the same API. Everything is just like make it work. If any company can make it work, I would think that they would be able to do that. That's why I just wonder like they don't see these as here is an Apple first party app. They see them as here's a way you could use your iPhone. Right. And I think that's an important distinction.

Okay. All right, Jason, I want to do some role playing. Not like that. We're not in the hot tub section yet. No, no, no. Not like that. You've been in a lot of Apple PR meetings and stuff. Sure. So I want you to pretend to be the Apple PR person, and I'm going to ask you a question, and I want you to answer as though Apple were answering it, okay? You'll be able to do this. You'll get it right away. Okay. So let's say we're in our little virtual meeting. I say, anybody have any questions? I click the little raise my hand button. I say, okay.

Yeah. How come Apple invites didn't get an iPad app? What do you say? We don't have it. We don't talk about future products. No, they wouldn't say that. No, they would make us. All right. Ask me. I'll be the probably would not say anything. They would probably say like we deliver products that we think our customers want to use and we don't have anything to say about that at this time. That's now I feel like they would have an even more flowery answer. Ask me. I'll be the person. Okay. Hey, Steven, whatever you said, what's your what's your answer?

we believe that people love using their iPhone for communication. It was one of the original points that even Steve Jobs said on stage, they probably wouldn't say that. But when it comes to being a communication device, we believe Apple invites, especially integrated with your shared photo albums and Apple music playlists, that the iPhone is just the great and ideal place for Apple invites to live. I mean, that was a really good audition for a job in their comms department.

Thank you. I'll look at the... Check your email, see if anyone can reach you. Yeah, check my email. Anyway, that's the Apple Invites app. I'll put a link to my walkthrough. I do the whole thing. I even send an invite to my Android device and see how that works and all that good stuff. So,

All right. A couple of the short news and we need to get to the hot tub. We have to get to the hot tub. We need to get to the hot tub soon. But some rumors of Sonos and unfortunate news about Sonos. And then I want to talk about Sonos just for a moment. But it looks like Sonos is readying its streaming box. This is from Chris Welch at The Verge. And he has a lot of scoops. Like over the last couple of years, he scooped.

I think the arc ultra and the sub gen four headphones. Yeah. The Sonos ACE headphones like, and the app, uh, I mean, Chris Welch has been covering this. He's the Mark Gurman of Sonos. That is exactly Mark Gurman. Yeah, it really is. He's the marker. So, uh, it looks like they're readying a streaming box. Seems like it's going to be expensive, like two to $400, uh,

but might do more than just streaming box because it'll be integrated into like their audio stuff. Could also be like an HDMI switcher type box, which would make sense for integration with their audio devices. So, you know, plug multiple devices into the streaming box, plus it will stream with its own UI and then it'll be integrated with your sound system. We'll see. It might be coming later this year.

I'm going to get one just more so to test and review. Of course. I really don't think this would replace an Apple TV in any input in any of my rooms, but we'll see. That's also the debacle that's gone on with their app and that design. Curious how well they do with the UI of a streaming box because most UIs are terrible. And that's one of the reasons why Apple TV is so popular in that space. But...

Also in light, unfortunately, Sonos lays off like 200 employees. That news came from Bloomberg. But yeah, they're still not doing well, but going to try and release some new stuff. Okay, when you get the box, you're going to be excited about it. I mean, you just are. But when you do the review...

I think it's important that you think about it from the context of somebody who already has an Apple TV and hasn't yet bought it and thought it's really cool because I think it's, I'm sure Sonos will do a good job. Although I don't know that that's as much of a given now as it was a year ago because this is a lot of software, right? But I think it's important to think about this from the context of like, should, I don't know. This is another thing why I absolutely know why Sonos thinks it should exist because they want to expand their ecosystem and,

and not be dependent on whatever other people's devices. But I don't understand why anyone who like, this feels like we already know what the market is for this. Is there really room for another one? Well, if it makes a play to be a home theater receiver rather than just a streaming box, because you know, to use a Sonos system right now, which again,

A couple people asked me on social media, like, why do you love Sonos? Because I said I was going to buy this box. It's like, I don't know if I love Sonos like that. I like their home theater solutions because the cost versus quality versus simplicity, like they do hit that Venn diagram better than most. Like their soundbars are some of the best soundbars in that price range and the ability to integrate rear speakers and a subwoofer.

And it pretty much just works. Most like once you have it set up, like it just works. That is valuable to me. Like the bedroom set up with a Sonos beam and a sub mini. It's perfect. Like I wouldn't want to do anything different. Now you could put a pair of home pods in there as well. That doesn't sound as good as a Sonos beam and a sub mini. I did a whole video where I compared like all these different setups, but that's why I like Sonos for that. I would not personally get Sonos just for like music listening.

Like if I wanted a pair of speakers in a room, I would probably just get a HomePod or a pair of HomePods, but it's nice for the home theater aspect of it. So if it can be, but to use it, you basically have to use the eARC

port like on a TV, not eARC, I'm sorry, the ARC channel, audio return channel. You have to go HDMI out of your TV into like the Sonos Beam or Sonos ARC soundbar. And so now if you have three HDMI inputs on your TV, that's taken up by one. And let's say you have your other two HDMIs, you want an Apple TV, your PS5, and literally anything else, a video game system, a Blu-ray player, if you have that. Now you're kind of up a creek, like what do I do with the HDMI inputs?

So I could see how a Sonos streaming box could solve that problem. If it has like four HDMI part ports and an out, well now your TV's HDMI port is open because you don't have to use the audio return channel. So now you have four inputs and the Sonos streaming box can be your receiver and also powers your audio home theater. So I,

I imagine that will be the angle that the Sonos box does, but it has to be really good at being a streaming box and really good at being a home theater receiver. And that's a tough line. So we'll see if they can do it. But anyway, you're going to have fun with more toys.

I mean, I'm so excited for you. I have three flare sitting next to me. I posted a picture before we started recording because one of the chargers broke and I didn't know what was wrong. So now I have three, I have three equal. I don't even know. I don't even know what that means. Oh, these are like these things. These, these are home, home. Speaking of home kit, these are okay. Yeah. I like putting them on my head and pretending I'm a stereo. Are they just lights? That's all they are.

Oh, you don't have to say just lights like that. Okay. I mean, yeah, they're, they're lights. They're not speakers. They're not going to like answer questions for you. If you shout into the void, they don't know. No, they're, they're rechargeable home kit lights. They use thread. So they usually respond pretty good. One of them's dead. So I can't even tell which one. So it responds really well.

this is okay here we go see look it's now lit up this is how I pretend I'm a stereo just like this but uh this in the background of all my videos there's one on the shelf gotcha and and uh it stopped working I think because the charger broke and uh it would look funny it looked too dark in the background of my video so I had to get another one anyway I have three of them now so

It's a long story. This is a saga. It's not a story anymore. Saga. All right. Real quick. You wrote an article about Google. Apparently, speaking of layoffs, Sonos laying off, it looks like Google might be laying off soon. They actually haven't done it yet, right? No, they've been offering buyouts. So their new CFO has said that everything's on the table and they're going to be looking for additional ways to reduce costs,

The most expensive thing at almost any company, except for maybe opening AI, is the people, right? And so it's been long expected that Google is going to do a round of layoffs. But before doing the round of layoffs, they actually have offered people in what they call the – it's basically the devices and platforms division. That's Android, Chrome, also Pixel, Nest, Apple.

Google Photos, all that stuff. They merged those two groups a little while ago under Rick Osterloh. And they are offering basically buyouts to get people to leave willingly. And I actually think that that's the way you should do this. Because it was a couple years ago Google laid off like

I don't know. Wasn't it like 15,000 people or 12,000 people or something like that? And everybody was real mad. And then a year later they laid off like a thousand more and it's more. And Google has a little bit of a cult, not a little bit. Google has a culture problem right now internally that people aren't super happy. And which is weird. Cause I mean, no shade against people who work at Google, but,

Most of the people who work at Google, if they were to get laid off and get some kind of severance would be fine for a little while because they probably make a pretty decent amount of money. But no, it's never a good deal to show up to work one day and find out that you're no longer going to have a check to pay your mortgage or whatever. So I think it's much better to give people control over their own destiny. Let them make that decision. So I don't know. We'll see how many people take the take the buyouts. This was actually a thing that the employees have been asking for. Like essentially, if you're going to do layoffs, you're going to have to pay for it.

would you please offer a voluntary buyout first and i don't know that the that doing this was in response to that but certainly it's it's a good luck for google that they're actually that they're actually doing it this way yeah the only thing i have to say is in your sub headline you say google will offer severance to employees and when i first saw it at a glance i thought wait yeah they're gonna cut up in their brain they're gonna sever employees

Is this the power of sevens? That word did exist before the television show. False. It originated with the television show. Anyway, and last... That's not true.

Last little bit of news. I just pulled the window out. So now I can't share it. What happened? Anyway, the last thing is open AI for chat GPT search. It used to have to be logged in to use chat GPT search, but now it's making it open for all. And so you can just go to chat.com if you want that, they have that domain and you don't even have to log in. You can just use chat GPT with search and get some results. And I was just curious. I know last time we talked about it, you were using it. Fairly.

fairly often. Do you still find this like in your workflow pretty often? I use it all the time. Really? It's still default. So in one of my browsers, so it's weird because I did an interview last week with NPR on the chat or on the search wars and stuff. And one of the questions was about like, why,

what is it most useful for and how often are you still using it? And I do find that in my unique situation, there are a couple of searches I do that Google is better at because I do like site searches. And most of the time that's like, I'm looking for my own articles, you know, cause you can type site colon and then any website and then you can type words after that. And Google will only search that website and chat to GPT doesn't do that very well.

at all. And so there are times when I start. So I have one browser where it's my default and I have one browser where it's not. But I actually find that I don't even bother to just use the browser. I just use the app now, the ChatGPT app. Interesting. A lot. Well, I'm still not in the habit of using it, to be honest, but I might start. The Google searches is still lackluster in my opinion. Although, unfortunately, the Google AI overviews, or maybe fortunately, I don't know. When I search Google now, I get the AI overview like 90% of the time.

And it does give me an answer. Like the answer I was looking for will be in that AI overview. And I do have to ask myself the question, do I just take this at face value or do I spend a few minutes to actually try and find this answer in an article? And honestly, I just, yeah, I just take the AI overview. So here's an interesting thing that just happened. You were talking about the Apple invites app and it's limited to a hundred people. And I thought there's a number.

So I searched Google and I said, why would...

Why would the Apple invites app be limited to a certain number of people? And it came up with the answer is called the Dunbar number, which is the maximum number of people that any human being can maintain social connection with. Right. But it's actually 150. The Dunbar number is 150. Like science says you can't have like you can only maintain a like a personal relationship with 150 people. So what's interesting about that is it got the answer half right. There is a number which is the math. Now, that's clearly not why Apple is doing this, by the way.

way like I was just but it got the actual number wrong so in that case you could have been like if you would have used that information and put it in your video it would have been completely didn't that just happen like some person like a news person totally said the wrong thing on the news about something because they just looked it up in chat GPT

Ah, it's so sticky. Anyway. All right. We have to talk about the hot tub app. The first explicit app. Steven, I don't know how I feel about the fact that you just keep wanting to talk about this app. Because it's a big deal. I mean, this is like the first app of its kind and the response from Apple about this app, I think is curious. I agree. We're not in the EU, so it's not like we can even download this app. But anyway, before we do, I'm going to thank our sponsor for this week's episode, which is 1Password, specifically 1Password.com.

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All lowercase. The link's in the show notes below. You can just click it there. But that's 1password.com slash primary tech. Now thanks to 1Password for sponsoring this episode. So I want to cover this app. I just want to tell the little story about what happened. And we were talking before the show. I like the whole, like people have said repeatedly recently, they appreciated deep dives into a topic. And so it's kind of what trying to frame, you know, like what's the one topic in a deep dive into. And so I think this

This warrants that because it's a big change for Apple. So AltStore is in the EU, and you can listen back to some of our episodes from last year because of the DMA, the Digital Markets Act, right? Mm-hmm, correct. And there can be third-party apps, either sideloaded or even third-party app marketplaces on the iPhone. This is just in the EU. AltStore is one of those marketplaces. And so they tweeted earlier this week

iPhone, I'm reading their tweet. iPhone turns 18 this year, which means it's finally old enough for some more mature apps. Introducing Hot Tub, the world's first Apple-approved explicit adult entertainment app. It's now in the alt store, pal. Now, one phrase in there I think really got in Apple's craw or whatever that phrase is. Apple-approved app. And

to say Apple approved in this context is very different than what you might think of as Apple approving an app for the app store because of being the, the DMA and the, uh,

policy changes in the EU, Apple is not approving apps based on content or whether or not it breaks some of their specific rules. It really just has to sign and approve an app just by letting it through as long as it meets whatever security requirements or it's very low bar. And so here in the US, Apple still has policies where explicit apps are not allowed in the App Store. So that's why you can't get this app

in the regular app store like here in the US. But in the EU, because of sideloading and these third-party app marketplaces, they can do that.

So Apple was not happy about this. They had a statement that they issued here and says, quote, we are deeply concerned about the safety risks that hardcore porn apps of this type create for EU users, especially kids. This app and others like it will undermine consumer trust and confidence in our ecosystem that we have worked for more than a decade to make best in the world. Contrary to the false statements made by the marketplace developer, we certainly do not approve of this app at

and would never offer it in our app store. The truth is that we are required by the European Commission to allow it to be distributed by marketplace operators like AltStore and Epic who may not share our concerns for user safety. So that was Apple's statement. They're clearly not happy about this. Specifically, AltStore saying Apple approved it, which I do think it is. They were not careful with their words. Maybe they were careful with their words and they just specifically wanted to be...

I don't know, inciting as in their announcement. Then Epic CEO Tim Sweeney, who, you know, he doesn't like the App Store either, nor Apple. They were in a whole court case several years ago. Tim Sweeney, when asked about this situation, said, this isn't, quote, this isn't how platforms should work. Windows, Mac and Linux developers can make and release apps without the platform maker adding junk fees and rendering moral judgments on their decisions.

On iOS, Apple forces its processes on developers against their wishes. We've argued to the European Union that Apple should be forced out of developers' way because when Apple are allowed to be the gatekeeper of competing apps in stores, they grossly misuse the power to disadvantage competition. Listen, Tim Sweeney just wants to be able to have a bunch of people pay for Fortnite skins on the iPhone and Apple not take 30%. That's it. That's the only thing he cares about. That's it.

I just want to be clear about that point. But he will exploit any situation that could lead to that end like he is here. And saying like this highfalutin, like taking this quote-unquote moral high ground, listen, he is just wanting people to be able to buy V-Bucks on the iPhone. That's literally it. Yeah, and Epic isn't hosting this app, by the way. It's worth mentioning that even Epic will not host this app. Exactly. Exactly.

So I last thing I wanted to point out, just following on the story, John Gruber had several articles about it. I'll link to this one in the show notes, but he actually recalled an email between a developer, MG Siegler reported on an email exchange between Steve jobs and customer Matthew Browing. And basically it was a disagreement on an app. There was a Mark Fiore's comic book app, uh,

was blocked initially from the app store this is back in 2010 you know so just a couple years into the app store uh because there might have been political satire and this email to steve jobs was like this should be allowed in the app store this does not break any of your rules and so this is steve jobs's response he responded to this email and steve jobs said fiora's app will be in the store shortly that was a mistake i want to just just sit there for a second

I think, and Gruber says like, man, Steve Jobs knew how to write an email. Just that simple like admission of like, yeah, this was a mistake. I don't know the last time Apple has really done that. Like just said, hey, we made a mistake. But Steve Jobs wasn't afraid to say that. So I think that's, I don't know, worth pointing out. He said, however, this is Steve Jobs now. We do believe we have a moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone. Folks who want that can buy an Android phone. Buy your mom a Pixel is what he just said.

I don't know if it would be your mom, but yeah, buy somebody a pixel. I'm just, that's where that, yeah. So I think it is interesting. Steve Jobs believed that Apple as a company had a moral responsibility to keep that content off the iPhone. I think that's interesting. That's a moral imperative from a tech company about blocking certain content to its users.

Not even profit or like money, like money is not part of the equation, at least to Steve Jobs here. Now this gets really sticky because in the 15 years since that was 2010. So in the 15 years since that time, it really felt like Apple has been pushing on its app store rules and pushing on developers and rejecting apps that even try to

Point people, you know, the anti-steering ruling that happened a couple of years ago, you know, you couldn't even link to your website from an app so users could buy and not have to. You want to have that 30 percent cut from Apple to developers like Apple was so stringent on those rules for such a long time. It feels like now, 15 years later, that when Apple rejects an app because of that or.

Some in app like hey.com. That was another huge situation where David Hennemeyer Hansen was very vocal to say Apple rejected our app because we just tried to let people create an account elsewhere and just log into the app. And Apple rejected it because they said the app doesn't do anything when you install it. Again, it just felt like a money play, like Apple was trying to get the 30%. And so when Apple has a statement now about this hot tub app in the EU, it

It now has mixed emotions because it feels like, well, every story I've heard about Apple and apps in the last 10 years, it has been money motivated that Apple just wanted its 30% cut. But now we have this situation. And at least Steve Jobs felt like it wasn't a money thing. That was a moral imperative. So I don't know. I'm curious, Jason, like, can we tease that out? Like, is does do you think Apple still feels like it is a moral imperative?

or like, I don't think it's money. I don't know. I'm curious your thoughts on it. You probably took a lot of notes. Cause I just, I had to take a lot of notes. This is why I keep it. Start wherever you want. The first thing I want to say is alt stores. This is super bad for alt store. Riley test it. No, I'm serious. You're, you're playing with a version of fire that you're, I mean, even Epic doesn't want this. So like, let's set aside for a second, the moral imperative part of it. I want to, I have some thoughts on that too, as a peer brand exercise, like,

Big mistake because the Delta emulator made him a hero. The fact that he was going to make an alt store that apps could go to made this guy a hero. And now he crossed the line of this is an Apple approved app. That's a, yeah, like you want to, like Apple would have just ignored the rest of it. Like,

They would have never issued a statement about this. Never wanted to talk about this. There's no scenario where Apple would have commented or anything. Ask me the question that they would have asked the PR person and the person would be like, not even a response. But you start to pretend like this thing was Apple approved.

And you have gone over a line where you are about to experience the wrath of fire of Tim Cook. And Phil Schiller. I mean, yeah, even worse than Tim Cook, Phil Schiller. He's probably on a plane over to EU right now. The guy is just... I mean, remember how they reacted to the whole Gizmodo thing with the phone? Wasn't that dude in jail for a night? This is like a hundred times worse than that for Alt Store. And what he thinks is...

I think it's just a gross miscalculation. He's like, well, I'm in the EU, whatever, whatever, this whole thing, like I'm protected by this digital market. But you cannot go around saying, and here's the reason that this is a huge problem. Until now, the big...

over Apple's notarization of apps in the EU was this, you can't use any judgment. You just have to notarize that the stuff's not malware or whatever. And clearly Steve Jobs essentially thought the stuff was malware, but the actual technical definition of it, it's not. And so you cannot have it both ways. You cannot...

like push apple to be hands-off on the notarization process because if i understand correctly on a mac the notarization process is just automated it's like literally you submit an app and it just notarizes it and it'll allow it to be installed so you cannot on the one hand say that's how notarization should be and then on the other hand say apple approved it because it notarized this app to be on right so you're you're playing with fire that i just don't think like i

Is it really worth that little marketing to be able to say that this is the first Apple? I don't know. And not only is it pretty bad judgment, it just says a lot about the character of somebody who you have to know that that is not the marketing tagline for this. You just have to know that. Even the image that Alt Store shared with the post. Yeah. I mean...

That's don't do that. I just don't, I don't understand that. And so that's the one thing now Apple doesn't look great either because of all of the different Apple app store, like all of that kind of stuff.

I think that probably Steve Jobs can get away with writing emails like that because he was the founder, right? He didn't have any... Apple emanated from his ethos, right? So he could speak on behalf of Apple in a way that nobody else could. And so that's a different... When he spoke, it was Apple speaking. Yeah, and when Apple spoke, it would be Steve Jobs. And so there's a big difference now. So as for...

I mean, the law in the EU is clear that these apps should be allowed. And the interesting thing is, I do think that there's still a money piece of it for it. I think Steve Jobs meant it when he said that this is a moral imperative. It's like, we want to offer a product and we just don't want this to be a part of it. But I also think that the reason for that is because in their mind would have degraded their product, right? I'd be less likely to want my kids to have an iPhone than...

If this type of stuff was there. Now, the truth is it's all available on the web. Like, let's not be like naive here. And that was actually Apple's point. It's like the app store is our curated list of the content we want on here and on the web, anything goes like whatever the internet is still available. So there's that kind of thing. But I just think that I don't think this makes anybody look good, but I almost see that and I cannot...

I can't believe that you'd be so naive to think that Apple was not going to come down on that sort of thing. Because again...

even if you read the response from Tim Sweeney, right? It's like, you know, we don't think that the, but we would never put the, it's like contrary to the false statements made by the marketplace developer. We certainly do not approve of this app is what Apple says. And in response, Tim Sweeney is like, yeah, it's not on our, it's not on our thing either. So I don't know why Apple like threw Epic in there is if they just saw it as an opportunity to take a dig at Epic as well. But Tim Sweeney is like,

we wouldn't allow it either. Well, so that was the other statement. It's in this nine to five matter article. It says Sweeney quote, contrary to Apple's false statement, the Epic game store doesn't carry this app, doesn't carry any porn apps and has never carried porn apps, which is just as funny, like switch from what he said a second ago about whatever Apple being so closed down. And Sweeney writes Apple's app store does carry those kinds of apps. For example, they host the Reddit app.

And you can make the argument that you will find explicit content there as well, which, okay. I mean, that is an argument. Yeah. And it's also one of the reasons that when Reddit was doing some crazy stuff, making everybody mad, it's like, how close to the sun do you want to fly right now? Because you could get shut down too. Yeah. So I just, it is interesting to see Apple's response to those kinds of things.

And if one day, I mean, we have the case, I don't know if it's this year or soon, but the Department of Justice here in the U.S., that there's still going to be a case about Apple's policies and whether or not laws are passed here that might allow third-party app marketplaces like this in the United States. It'll be something that we have to deal with as well. So, yeah.

Icarus. Yeah. Those wings. I'm surprised. I'm surprised that you'd be so brazen. Not you. Sorry. No, no, no. I know. It's like everyone eventually has their, what's just at this point called the Elon Musk moment, where you grossly overestimated your public reputation

persona and the amount of the world that was going to be behind you if you did a thing and i feel like this is the moment where it's like you could have touted this and as like the first time this is on an iphone like you could have just made the first one on an iphone you didn't have to go that other step because yeah right so do you think the the moral imperative that steve jobs stated 15 years ago you think that's still a part of the ethos at apple like is that

carried by someone or like Apple the brand or is that just less of a factor now like do you think it's still there if these apps listen this is I if these apps were available on the App Store Apple would be a 10 trillion dollar company

No, I'm not. Listen, I don't say that as an exaggeration. I know. It is so much of a larger industry than most people think because it lives in like the shadows and stuff. And if it was purely about the money, Apple would absolutely be taking 30% of whatever is going on in that kind of a situation. Like, right. You're saying they wouldn't hesitate to take the cut. If it was only about, right. If it wasn't, if they didn't also feel like there's a moral imperative. Now, maybe Apple's like,

The upside is simply not worth the hit to our brand. And maybe it's not purely a moral stance. Maybe there is some calculating going on. But I think that... I think it's pretty likely that they're like, no, we just don't want to go there. We just don't want to be involved in that. We don't want to be collecting 30% of whatever happens on these apps because it's just...

we're willing to get dirty in some ways with China or whatever, but we're just not, we're not going, we're not doing like, look at like, think about the fact that like TikTok is still not available in the app store because there's a law, right? They, they, they, they're, they are playing like in the big leagues here, right? They're just, it's just not worth it to them to have to be dealing with this sort of thing without certainty. So I do think just last thing I'll say about this, you know, talking about Apple's moral imperative, whatever,

When Apple TV Plus was first announced and Apple was going to say we're producing original content, I think even then I was curious, like how explicit, how in all kinds of ways, whether it was vulgarity or nudity, like how explicit will Apple TV Plus get? And obviously,

just taking vulgarity as a line. Like if you look at Ted Lasso or shrinking, I mean, it is very explicit, um, talking about cursing. And so I, that felt like whatever brand Apple was putting forth like that, that is now a part of it. Like Apple TV plus original content is like something that Apple created and has that level of profanity or vulgarity or whatever. So, uh,

I don't know. I wonder, maybe this is a silly question, but like Steve Jobs imperative back then in 2010, like, I guess that doesn't apply to TV. Is that just put in a different bucket for people? I don't know. I find that. I mean, but even their stuff is not,

yeah i don't know i think people view the things differently i think yeah yeah which yeah curious but anyway anyway it's it was a weird story and seeing apple's response i just want to know how many people phil schiller's gestapo is going to get with the with this but anyway some quick other quick stories and then i need to figure out how to stream the big game this weekend because i still don't know if i'm allowed to say super bowl on the podcast uh apple had its earnings last week made a

including they now have 2.35 billion active devices worldwide talking about playing in the big leagues they have a lot of devices out there they also had a record-breaking revenue for q1 2025 which includes like december in case you were wondering like i know a lot of you know companies do quarters differently but it's october november and december october november december is their q1 yes

And so that's why it is, you know, very, very high. And so I'll put a link to Jason Snell's Six Colors article. He does a lot of great charts with that. You know, iPhone is still a huge piece of the pie. 56% of Apple's revenue. Services, 21%. That is the second biggest piece of the pie. Wearables after that, which would be Apple Watch and AirPods. And then Mac and iPad, an even 7% of the revenue. Also, iPhone in general was actually down a little bit as far as

It was negative 1% year over year iPhone revenue. A little bit down. I think China markets affected that and not sure how tariffs will affect it. We haven't seen a, you know, tariffs are happening here in the U S not sure how that's going to affect Apple's profits, revenue versus cost of devices later this year. But yeah, they made a lot of money. They did make a lot of money, but they don't like talking about why.

So Jason had an article of it. This has shown us too. There's one number it doesn't want to talk about. Yeah. I mean, we know that Apple is making, you know, probably more at this point, 20 some billion. It was like in 2022 is 20 billion a year. And the only reason we know about that is the Google antitrust case and Apple. It's just, I find it sort of interesting. Apple will touted services and,

but it doesn't want to talk about where that money comes from. They did. They talked about Apple TV plus it's not coming. I promise you not that I love Apple TV plus, right? I love shrinking. I love Ted Lasso. I love silo. I'm going to eventually love severance. I hear like, right.

But that is not where this money is coming from. It is coming from App Store commissions and it's coming from the Google search deal. And you never hear anything about those. The only thing you hear about the App Store commissions part is there's like this coded language that they use every year where they say, you know, we now surpassed a billion subscriptions on Google.

And if you ask them like, what, what does that mean? That is like a billion people signed up for Apple TV plus and Apple iCloud and whatever. No, that's everyone who's paying for fantastic cow and like whatever else you're subscribed to. And so it's just highlighting all of that kind of stuff. And I, I do, I just think it's interesting that like,

There is a big risk to Apple. Apple was just denied. They asked to be included as essentially as a defendant in the remedies phase of the Google. Who has to be a defendant, by the way? Right.

Right. But they wanted to argue because it, the biggest, like Google's like fine. Tell us we can't pay for search deals anymore. Everyone's going to still use Google. We'll still make all the same money. It'll just be cheaper for us. Right. But Apple's like, no, you can't do like, don't do that. This is, this is a big part of our services in our, in the services is like 75% profit margin. Right.

And a lot of the reason why is that $20 billion is just free money. It's just, there's no, no cost, right? Even if you allocate as default, even if you, what is the cost of changing like one word in the code? I don't even know. It's probably a little more complicated than that. But even if you allocated all of the cost of development for safari,

It's still 99.9% profit, right? Like it's just, I mean, I don't know. It's a lot. So I just, I think it's interesting. Like, I think it's good that Apple is not entirely dependent on the iPhone. The reason the iPhone was down was largely because of China, like because of, you know, in the Chinese market is much more sensitive to form factor changes, right?

And so there'll be a surge in China. But the iPhone looks basically the same since the 12, right? Right. And so maybe it was... I mean, the 12, the 13, the 14, the 15, the 16, they're all basically the same thing. Square size. And so I think at some point we'll see another surge there. But right now...

That that's the same reason why they're likely to come out with the SC, whatever the SC four, but also the iPhone 17 air, which would be a new form factor. Yep. And could be a little bit lower price possibly like, I don't know. So we'll see. All right. A couple of the quick things, a new app came out called tapestry for the iPhone and

And this just feels reminiscent of like the Flipboard days. What Tapestry is doing now is you can basically aggregate a bunch of feeds. You can log into your Mastodon account, your Blue Sky account. You can add RSS feeds. You can add podcasts. This is from the Icon Factory, the makers of Twitterific. And so this app is basically aggregating everything. And you can have one timeline, one feed, and you see everything from all those sources. Or you can create custom feeds where you just see like your RSS stuff or just see

Blue Sky and Mastodon posts. And I downloaded it to try it out. I don't know if I would prefer seeing it all in one place like this, but I do like the idea of it. And I like that there are now social networks and platforms that are open like Blue Sky and Mastodon that even allow apps like this to exist. Because I don't know if you remember like first, second gen iPad days, Flipboard was kind of like this. Like you could log in with your Facebook account, your Twitter account,

You can add RSS feeds and Flipboard would like make it look like a magazine. You could basically see the posts and articles all in one place. And it was kind of fun. Like it was a nice, nice thing. And then all the platforms closed down. And so you couldn't see your tweets or your Facebook posts. And then Flipboard became something else. But this feels like an app like that. And I'm glad it exists. It's cool.

I mean, I'm happy that it exists. No desire to. I just haven't had time to play around with it. I have weird feelings about Flipboard. Flipboard used to be one of the largest sources of traffic for a lot of publishers other than Google and Facebook. It's just not anymore. It's not anymore. Yeah. And lastly, before we get to personal tech, Amazon announced an event. Amazon is having an event in February, February 26th. And it could be...

More a lot of AI stuff. Maybe Amazon's voice assistant gets AI infused or whatever.

So we'll see. We're trying to finagle our way to it. Yeah, we're trying to. I mean, at first I wasn't sure what the event was going to be about, but then apparently there were five invitations, and if you line them all up, they spell Alexa. So I think that they're going to talk about the voice assistant. Yeah, there you go. So I think there's a pretty decent chance at this point that that's what they're going to be talking about. And I am. I am trying to get invited because...

Only because they're going to be talking about the AI-powered. Well, we expect that they're going to talk about the improvements to the AI-powered voices. Right. Personal tech. How do I watch the big game? First of all, OpenAI is going to have a big ad, supposedly. OpenAI is going to have a Super Bowl ad debut, and we're going to see what that commercial is like. $500 billion they spent on the Super Bowl ad. Is that how much it is for an ad? No. $500 billion? No, I was making a joke. No, I'm sorry.

All that money they're raising, you thought it was going to go into cloud infrastructure and compute, but they're just making a Super Bowl ad. That's it. One Super Bowl ad. Wait, how much is a Super Bowl ad? It's like six or $7 million for, I think, a 30 second spot. Wait, so what is your guess? I'm saying it's $7 million for a 30 second spot. $7 million? Did you know that? How do you do this, Jason? I pay attention to the world around me. I know, but okay, yeah, it's supposedly $7, $8 million for a 30 second ad.

wild anyway so they're gonna have an ad but uh i was trying to figure out where i'm gonna stream it because i because i know with all the sports ball that i don't watch i do like watching the super bowl yes for the commercials but it does feel like you know i actually know a little bit i know the kansas city chiefs this could be their third super bowl win in three years that's a big deal right patrick mahone okay this isn't this is this is a super easy problem to solve i don't what it's on fox do you have television

Not where I'm going to be watching it now. I have to do it through my Apple TV somehow. Are you going into a closet somewhere? What do you mean you don't have a... I don't have a coax cable going to this TV. Okay, YouTube TV? Do you have YouTube TV? No, I don't pay for any of that. I don't have YouTube TV. I don't have Hulu Live TV. I don't have any of that. So do you not watch television programming?

not i mean unless it's like you know you don't like sports so this is explaining a lot this is what i'm saying like i don't pay for any of this stuff i mean i'm sure hulu with live tv has a free trial youtube tv free trial can you sign up for a free trial but it's so it's five seven days you can get a seven day youtube tv free trial that's what you're gonna do steven and you're gonna have the app on your iphone i mean at your iphone on your apple apparently to to be apparently to be is going to stream it for free

Just get a seven-day subscription free trial to YouTube TV. I shouldn't do Tubi? Do you know what Tubi is before you Googled that? No, I don't know. Then you should sign up for YouTube TV. I don't know. I'm just saying like just sign up for YouTube TV, but don't do it until tomorrow and then you get a seven-day free trial of YouTube TV. What about not the Fox Sports or whatever? It's not on Fox Sports. It's on Fox Broadcast.

which by the way, I'm pretty sure are owned by two different companies at this point. I might be wrong about that, but so confusing. I don't even know. Okay. So I just, yeah, just YouTube, YouTube TV. I want you to watch it. It's not going to be hard to find a place to watch it. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I know it's, it's always different. Cause I last year, I think it was like NBC sports and I had to like do weird things anyway.

All right. Well, I'll try to do that. Apparently, if you want to watch it for free, Tubi's out there. I mean, apparently you can also just watch it on NFL.com or NFL Plus app. There's probably a Fox app. I mean, there are some things, but just YouTube TV. Just download it or just sign up for a seven-day free trial. Free trial. Okay. All right. Anyway, and lastly, show me. You had a Mac Mini accessory. Oh, yeah. I want to see it. All right. Well, I can't see the actual...

You can't see the accessory, but I'll show you the box. The box. Yeah, the box. Yeah, so this is the Satechi. Does it say what it's called? Am I showing you the box? It's a dock, something or other. A hub. The stand and hub for Mac Mini. Here's the thing. I have mixed feelings about this, but I do think it's cool. The industrial design is great. It looks like it just belongs right there with the Mac Mini. It's fantastic. It's just the same shape. The Mac Mini sits in there, although it does move around a little bit.

But then again, it has even a little notch cut in the back of it right there. Yeah, it's for the power button. Fantastic. Oh, the power button. Yep, so you can still stick your fat finger in there. It even has like a little instructions. Like it explains why there's a little notch in there. So you can stick your finger in there to do that. But anyway, it has three USB-A ports on the front, which I don't care. I don't think I have any USB-A cables anymore. And it has an SD slot. But the killer feature of this thing is...

is you can stick an nvme ssd in it and have an additional storage and so i'm i'm i have i'm sticking a two terabyte yeah two terabyte in there and i'm gonna have an extra two terabytes of storage with this mac mini and because it's just it's not like a portable drive that you need to unmount and take away right like it's just gonna always be connected and uh i think it's pretty cool

That is, that is, I do think it's nice that they put those USB ports on the front, just to be clear, because the Mac mini itself only has USB-C ports on the front. Actually, I think it only has USB-C ports period at this point, or Thunderbolt and USB-C. But I only, I have a Cal digit sitting next to it on my desk. And if I ever need to plug in something USB-A, I just, that has one on the front too. That is very cool. I will put a link to it on the website, on our, in our show notes on the website. I mean, it's on primarytech.fm too, if you want to do that.

But the NVMe slot thing, that's pretty cool. It's really cool, and it's very easy to get to. There's just a little slide-off little door for it to install. You just stick it right in there, and you've got a nice little base station. And it's pretty low profile. It's about like... Yeah, there you go. That's perfect. It's like a...

a i don't know quarter the height of the mac mini it's pretty small i don't know why they put a bunch of a ports on the front though that is weird i think it's because there are already c ports on the front yeah but do one do two c's one a you know what i mean yeah i don't know the sd card slot on the front though that's that's nice too so if you wanted to you know get one of these for video editing actually this is perfect for that because you could do like a four terabyte ssd

Then you also have the SD card slot on the front. Did you get an M4 Pro version of these things? Absolutely. This could be a video editing machine. That's what I was thinking. But I mean, I don't do video editing, but still. I'm so excited. That's pretty cool. Yeah. No, that's very cool. $100. Not bad. Not bad. All right.

We're going to go to our bonus episode. I need to ask Jason about the MacBook Air and a chair. I didn't mean to rhyme, but it did. So I'm going to ask him those two questions. If you want to listen to our bonus episodes, you can go to primarytech.fm, click bonus episodes, or support us directly on Apple Podcasts. And just a little, I don't know, I'm going to share some numbers, if that's all right, Jason. I didn't talk to you about this before the show. All right. I'm going to write them down. I'm taking more notes. What are we talking about? Oh, sweet. We're about to hit a quarter million downloads for the show, which is amazing. Amazing.

241,000 audio only downloads right now. And our YouTube channel does pretty good too. We get, you know, around 700 to a thousand views are ironically just talking about the M4 Mac mini, our M4 Mac mini episode got 17,000 views somehow on YouTube, which is wild. That's cool. And a total, our channel has 225,000 views. So actually our,

Views on YouTube and our downloads are pretty close. Half a million. We're up to almost a half million. Oh, yeah. Altogether, yeah. Altogether, it's like a half million. I want to share those just because...

You, I mean, if you're still listening at this point in the episode, you're like, you're part of the family. You know what I mean? Like you're in the primary tech community and all that. But I want to share it because listen, we're still trying to grow, grow the show. We get about 2,500 to 3,000 downloads an episode, which is amazing for a podcast. That's only a year old. Like you look at the vast average of most podcasts, like that's amazing, but we still want to grow. And so you can help us by sharing the show when it comes out.

by word of mouth telling people who you think might enjoy the show uh you know reposting when i share the episode on social media and so get the word out there if you haven't left us a five star rating and review that'd be awesome it'd be cool to get to 2 000 subscribers on youtube we're like 1.8 something so we can get to 2 000 and uh yeah we're still trying to do it we i enjoy doing it's been a fun show people like the show scene so yeah share let's share the show get the word out there and

And if you support the show, which you can still do, let's go. We're going to record a bonus episode. Talk about that as well. I think we should start including features that you have to be listening to the show. Like iCloud, like Apple did with their Apple invites. Like, so you have to, so we're trying to create a pyramid scheme here. Tell your friends. I do. I do want to do, we should probably talk about this offline, but I do want to kind of do like an incentive of like, if you share the show on social media, maybe we can give you a shout out or something like that. I don't know. All right.

We did that for MOTS, and that was a much smaller podcast, but we had people sharing the show, and it was kind of fun. That's great. Anyway, we'll talk about it. Share the show. Get the word out. We appreciate you so much for listening and watching, and we'll catch you next time.