iOS ’26 Rebrand, Sky AI App on Mac, What Apple Intelligence Could’ve Been
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You see, sometimes a year just isn't long enough.

Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. This week, is Apple going to call the next version of iOS 26 instead of 19 following the year? Rumors about Studio Display 2.0. A Netflix co-founder is joining the Anthropic Board. We're going to talk about AI browsers and a bunch of other hodgepodge of news. Also, which apps we allow notifications on our phone. This episode is brought to you exclusively by you, the members who support us directly. I'm one of your hosts, Stephen Robles, and joining me as always...

My friend Jason Aten. How's it going, Jason? It's good. It's going good. You know that movie quote? It's a little general. You see, sometimes a year just isn't long enough. I did that because of the whole iOS 26 thing. I think you stumped me. Okay, well this is from the 2005 movie Pride and Prejudice.

Pride and prejudice. That's why I didn't. Not seen it? Not my thing. Not in your pantheon? Okay. I have a pretty good memory of movies I've seen. Oh, yeah. If you haven't seen it, you can't. And I've never read the book.

Okay. I was going to make a very derogatory term. I wanted to be like, I could have texted my daughter, my 16 year old daughter, and maybe she would have known. I want to start the show also by making an official prediction about the open AI Johnny Ive hardware, because I've been thinking about a lot after hearing a bunch of podcasts also pontificating about it. And I don't think I've heard anyone predict this thing before we do.

One five star review shout out. Tiaz the Apple guy from the UK. Not basic Apple guy. This is Tiaz the Apple guy.

It says battery percentage on, point for Jason. Apple Pencil tip pointing up, so we tied there. And then a phone in the right pocket. I think that's me, right? Well, if it's your dominant hand. Yeah, we don't actually know. You have to say dominant hand, right pocket, or whatever. But anyway, we appreciate the five-star review. Keep them coming. We're still a 4.9-star podcast here in the U.S. One day, one day we'll return to a five-star.

Have you been listening to some of the tech podcasts that have come out talking about the, I mean, every podcast talked about open AI, Johnny Ive and predicting about hardware. Have you had any more thoughts since our last recording? I mean, yes, this is like the marriage of the century, right? Like this is like Charles and Diana's wedding, like whatever many years ago, that's what this thing was. It was a very big deal. And I was actually just this morning. I finally got around to listening to, um,

Jason sell and Mike Hurley talk about an upgrade. And it was very interesting because they have very, very different opinions about it and they feel very strongly about those opinions. And so, I mean, I'm curious to hear yours. Yeah. So I've heard, you know, John Gruber and Brian or Ben Thompson on strategy. We're talking about it and a few other shows, the verge cast talked about it. And, you know, we have the previous AI devices, uh,

in our minds, like the Humane AI pin, the Rabbit R1, which I do think it was funny, Rabbit, like, they tweeted something the other day and they were like, if you're still basing your thoughts about Rabbit R1 on the early review videos, we've done a lot since then. We're still here. We still exist. We're like, yeah, okay, whatever. So,

After hearing all of that, and I think this was one of the rumors, two devices. I feel like they were going to do two devices. There's a lot of rumors and speculation. I think it was Ming-Chi Kuo also talking about a pendant-style device, much like Plod AI and some other ones that will basically just be a microphone and a camera that records. So I do think, yeah, a display-less device, maybe something you wear around your neck. But...

Johnny Ive and Sam Altman specifically said they're looking at a third device that you would put on your desk next to your phone and your MacBook. So it's something you put on a desk, and it would be like the third device. And so here's my prediction. I think it's going to be something with a display. And when you think about what is the category that has still been nebulous, that's not really like...

key to many people, but people love their Kindles. People really like iPad, but for a lot of people, it's like, well, what does it do? It's not a computer, whatever. I think it's going to be a small display tablet style device. And because Johnny Ive, supposedly, Sam Altman said that he's going to be doing design for both the software and hardware.

And what does, I mean, designing the chat box for chat GPT, I don't think, uh, that it matters, you know, it's a chat window. I don't think Johnny, I was going to be doing too much design on a compose window, but it

to design a UI on a small screen tablet type device where you could chat with it, but it could also display things, images, maybe even videos because you're searching or you ask it things. I would be, I think it's going to be a small display tablet type device. And so that's my official prediction to see if we're right. What do you think about that? You're not talking about the first thing they're going to read. No.

No, I think it'll be like the flagship thing they release. I think they'll release a pendant style thing or whatever, but I think, you know, cause the rabbit R one has a screen, but it's not a great screen and it's not a touch. Oh, is it a touch screen? I can't even remember. It's got that wheel, right? It's got the wheel, but anyway, that's not a good screen. I think this is going to be something that you might use to read. Like if you were doing deep research with chat GPT, imagine a displayed device where you

where you had that deep research and you would put it next to your MacBook because you're wanting to see what it's saying. It would probably have a web browser.

Whether it's a web browser that made by OpenAI. So whatever you search in it, you know, we'll talk about AI browsers in a little bit. I don't know. I feel like that's a device that makes sense. That would be a third device to the MacBook and the iPhone and would make sense for Johnny Ive to design both the hardware and the software. Okay. So I do think it's possible that there's a piece of this that you have over indexed on. Over indexed. Okay. Which is the idea that the metaphor of the desk, right?

Because they did talk about having a device that you have on your desk, but I don't think that they meant that that's a literal thing because no one thinks of the iPhone as a device you have on your desk. What they're saying is like, you might sit down, you have your MacBook, you have your iPhone and you're gonna have this one other thing. I,

be astonished if what they're building is like the google nest home hub max plus thing for chat gpt i i don't think that i think that because that has such a limited utility because it only exists in one space i think i'm not saying a stationary device i'm saying like an actual tablet yeah but even i've had many but my ipad can't see the world unless i take it out of my backpack

So I think, I think it has to be a wearable. I think there's a 0% chance that the things that they're building aren't going to be wearables. Will there be something down the road? Maybe because the truth is if you build a wearable, you're dependent on the phones, right? Like you just are, you're just going to be dependent on the phones. But I think that, you know, it's again, the way that they talked about it is ambiguous enough that you could be right. And also you could just like, it could be completely wrong. And they'd be like, no, this is what we said. Um,

it's just a very difficult also it's hard to know because they spent half of their video talking about San Francisco and I'm like have you been to San Francisco Steven like it's one of my favorite places in the world but the spot in San Francisco where they were is not necessarily what I remember from all of the times I've been to San Francisco so like it's there's a lot of there's a lot of um

reality distortion field happening here. I see. Well, I'm going to be in San Francisco for the first time very soon for Dub Dub, but...

To your point, if they do a pendant-style device, it's dependent on the phone. But if they had an iPad mini-style device that also connected to the pendant, then they wouldn't be dependent on some third-party software because it could be like, here's my little tablet and I have my pendant that's always listening, always watching. And now I can jump onto a screen and see like, oh yeah, give me a summary of my day.

and it will just show it. And if you don't have a tablet, you could probably use whatever app on the phone, but to have the bespoke device for that designed by Johnny, I have hardware software, and then you could do like tablety things. I don't know. I feel like that, that made the most sense of everything. Well, and so think about that for a minute though, a tablet has to run an operating system. Are they going to be building their own operating system? And if so, then will this tablet only run chat GPT? Because

Because that's like not a thing. People are not going to spend. I mean, listen, if Johnny Ive made Johnny Ive has made a tablet before, right? The iPad. He did. He's done it once. And it's the flagship version of that. It's like the best version of that product. I don't think that with someone else, he's going to make a better version of a tablet. And iOS on a tablet is awesome.

or iPad OS is infinitely superior to anything. Like it's infinitely superior to Android on a tablet, right? So except for the assistant that comes with it. Sure. But you can run chat TPT on your tab. I mean, it's fine. Like, sure. But I just, what I guess I'm saying is, is this tablet running Android or is it running some bespoke tablet?

you know, chat GPT OS type thing. And if that's the case, will other developers be able to develop for it? And who would do that for a device? Like you're already like, there are not even that many apps for Android on tablets. Yeah. But to that point, chat GPT has an entire custom GPT store already.

where people have made custom GPTs for various purposes. I understand it's not apps and such, but of any platform and hardened software maker, I think OpenAI would probably have some sway for not like millions of apps like the App Store, but...

Could they hit up Amazon to make a Kindle app? Probably for their tablet. And you could buy Amazon books and it happens all in it. I don't know. I feel like that. I don't make some sense. I think as a concept, we could all see Johnny. I'm building a thing that sits on your desk and the thing that you could take with you, whatever.

I just think when you actually start to pick it apart, like now you're basically in the same app store business that Apple's in, right? Like that becomes your business model if you're doing that. And I don't think that that's what chat GPT is. Cause they also said like, we just think that if you're subscribed to our thing, we're just going to send you a computer, right? Their business model is going to be subscriptions to chat GPT. And this is going to be a way to increase the amount of usage of chat GPT.

And so my sense is from listening to them and from reading, and especially Mark Gurman's report, which he basically got the tip and broke the story, that this is going to be maybe not a single function device, but this is a hardware device that allows you to interact with ChatGPT. And it has to be distinct because you can already do that on your iPad. You can already do that on your phone, right? There is a ChatGPT app and it's good.

So it has to be an even more tightly integrated thing. And I just don't think like people will have different set of expectations from a quote tablet. And again, it's Johnny, I've made that it's going to be a thousand dollars. So it has to do more than just talk to Chad GPT. Cause I can already do that. Like, and honestly, the they're talking about we're in the terminal phase of this and what they mean by that is just like, we're in the chat box phase. Um,

The chat box is actually a pretty good way to interact with chat GPT. Like it's, it's really, really good. By the way, Steven, other than the hour and a half that we spend doing this, how do you and I most of the time communicate by text fields, right? Like that's how I, sure. My children never call me literally. I mean, they live in my house, so they don't have a lot of reason, but they text me a hundred times a day. That is just the most natural way to interact with one of these things. And it's weird to me that the pushes are,

It should just be ambient voice communications. And I think that there's going to be a place for that. But honestly, I think it has to be better than opening the app and typing into it, which honestly is a pretty frictionless experience. Yeah. Well, I still stand by it because we're going to talk about some new tools like the Sky app that was shown off by Mac Stories, like AI for your Mac and AI browsers. I do think it would be a different slash better experience if you were browsing on a device that

that everything could be AI'd, for lack of a better word, as you were looking at it. So if you were browsing the New York Times and you were looking at a webpage, rather than having to send that link, like go over to the ChatGPT app, paste the link, ask it for a summary or whatever, that on a bespoke device, you could just tap one button. The summarize button just always lives there in the corner of the...

little tablet and you can just do that for anything you're looking at. Whether it's a web browser, whether it's a PDF document that someone emailed you, like whatever. It's like basically what Apple intelligence is trying to do with like summaries everywhere, but actually like built into that. So I don't know that I'm sticking to it. We'll see what happens in like two to three years. If I was right. All right. We'll go back to this markdown 77. I made the prediction. There's a bunch of Apple news ish, some rumor news and then some actual news, but this one might be the most, uh,

I don't know, divisive. Interesting. This was all the conversation on the internet yesterday. Instead of iOS 19 in a couple weeks, next week, we might get iOS 26. And this is from Mark Gurman at Bloomberg. So high likelihood that this is going to happen, that Apple is going to go with the year number rather than the arbitrary just numerical order for the OSs to streamline everything, to make it

more understandable for people who aren't like in the Apple world. I don't know how I feel about this. Now, I do like

systematizing the operating systems because right now we have iOS 18 Mac OS 15 Vision OS 2 tvOS something I don't even know watch OS 12 and home OS who knows those are our operating systems currently and so this would be streamlining it to just iOS Mac OS everything 26 and 26 is

assuming because you would use this operating system more in the year 2026 than 25. So it's a little bit like don't car dealers do this. Like you can buy the 2026 version of the Toyota Camry at the end of 2025. Yeah. I mean, definitely that's the impression from the brand that Apple wants to wear the car dealers. Oh,

No, they can't. They couldn't do a better. This is absurd, Steve. First of all, yeah, you buy an iPhone 16, it has iOS 18, and your Mac is running Mac OS 15. That's dumb. Nobody cares about the watch version. It's 11.5. That doesn't matter. The tvOS doesn't matter. What your HomePod is running doesn't matter.

Honestly, I don't know that it matters that much on your Mac and your iPhone because the number of times when I walk up to somebody and ask them, hey, what version are you running on that Mac? It's zero. Like I never ask someone that unless I'm trying to help them troubleshoot something. And then they're running a four-year-old version anyway. So like it doesn't make any difference.

And think about how weird it's going to be when people are like, I'm supposed to be running Mac OS 26. I'm only running Mac OS 14. I'm 12, like 12 versions out of dates, like a whole different set of conversations that we're going to have. But I think it'll be great to have them all unified. But Steven, it's 2025.

And 25 is a fantastic number to make this change. Why are they going to go to? This is one of those things where someone in there over indexing on the wrong problem. What they don't want is in January when most people have finally upgraded for the number to be smaller than the year. But it is ridiculous. Just do it by the year that it's released. Also, 25 is a better number than 26. Yeah.

objectively it's a much better number than 26 somebody's somebody sat in a meeting and was like we should super call this to ios 26 and they're like well it's 2025 like no this will be better and the person who was right just sat there quietly it's gonna look real funny seeing the number 26 and those little round wrecks every time uh they come up it's i don't know that that's kind of funny but i what if

because we've talked about iPhone numbering. Everybody's talking about iPhone numbering. And I know a lot of people used to say, like, would Apple actually do nines in like iPhone 19? Because it's a weird looking number. They did not do iPhone nine. If everybody remembers, they went from the seven to the eight and 10 in the same year. So there was never an iPhone nine. Now there will never be an iOS 19, I guess. What is it with the number nine? Is it something that's like,

Just visually, people are like, no. I mean, there was an iOS 9. There was an iOS 9. True. And there's Mac OS Classic, which was version 9. That's true. There could be, I'm going to throw a curveball. There could be, you know, instead of the iPhone 17, what if they just match it all? And like the Galaxy S25, which follows the year, Apple just makes the iPhone and iOS the same number. So it's just iPhone 26, iPhone.

And then running iOS 26. I think they're more likely to do what they did with the iPad, which is it's just iPad. And then in parentheses, it was like, well, I guess that wasn't even the year it was a 16 or whatever. It was like, it was just iPad, but yeah, iPhone, iPhone air, iPhone pro pro max, I guess the Mac books. Well, they use those. What are they using? Just the dates on. They do that with something. Don't they? Like,

Well, for Macs, they do like early 2025 or whatever. Yeah, but also they just call it the M4 MacBook Air. Yeah, and I think they just say the 13-inch MacBook Air, the 15-inch MacBook Air, the Mac Studio, the Mac Mini. You know, I think everything has like a moniker, a descriptor, basically. And I think the iPhone is in the Apple Watch. They call the Apple Watch Series 10, Series 11, which... Yeah, I guess I was thinking that with the Macs,

We identify those not by year or model version increment, but by the increment of the processor at this point, right? Like if you're like, I'm going to get a MacBook Air, get the M4 version or the M3 version. I think we do that and the press does that. I don't know if Apple does that. I think they just talk about MacBook Air and they'll say powered by M2 or whatever. And, you know, they'll talk about the processor, but I don't know. I feel like the title does say MacBook Air 13 and 15 inch with M4. Okay. Okay.

Yeah, I don't know. The 19 versus 26, what is your opinion? You're the writer. 26 with an apostrophe or without denoting me? No, because, well, the thing is, they're not denoting it as 2026. They're just saying it's iOS 26 and the number just matches the year. But yeah, you would not be using an apostrophe for that. What would your preference be? No apostrophe? I don't even think there's going to be a space.

right? Like they're not, there's where you're going to put the apostrophe. It's a very small Appley apostrophe. I don't know. I feel like no way. No, no, no. I don't know if they do. I quit. I'll quit the show.

I feel like the, I don't know, having it uniform across all operating systems, I'm down for that. It will be hilarious that we will gone from Vision OS 2 to Vision OS 26. This is how they get past, like, we've done it, folks. We're way into this now. This is not even a new platform. Nailed it. Nailed it. Well, we're going to literally see in a little over a week. But yeah, I was not expecting that. I was not expecting iOS 26 for my first dub dub. Anyway, we'll see.

All right. Some other hodgepodge of Apple news and then other news. But there was a new app shown off by Federico Vatici at Mac Stories. He got early access, an alpha version of this new app called Sky. So talking about AI on devices, Sky is going to be a Mac app and utility. And you can join a wait list right now if you want early access. They say it's supposedly coming out this summer. So who knows? I mean, probably July, August time. But what Sky is, is an AI little assistant that...

that lives on your Mac, and you would basically bring it up using a hotkey, like Command Space would bring up Spotlight, you'd bring up Sky using something like that, and there's also like a little floating window next to things. It does integrate with shortcuts and a bunch of things like that. You could see the interface here if you're watching on YouTube, I'll put it as the chapter art as well. But you could basically ask Sky to do a bunch of things. If you were, let's say, writing an email or a text message, and you wanted to say...

What are some good restaurants near this? It has contextual awareness of every window that's open on your Mac. So if you ask it a question and you have an email open or a text message open, or maybe there's an event that someone just kind of texted you, like it will be, it sees all that and then can take action on that. It also integrates with AI LLMs like ChatGPT. So you can ask it those, those general questions and just ask it, you know, summarize this webpage or whatever.

Kind of like what I was saying, a bespoke tablet from OpenAI would do. But the idea is that it's AI on anything, everywhere, all at once. Everything, everywhere, all at once. All once again. Federico Fatici says he's extremely impressed by it. He said this was like one of the moments that just shows the future of what a platform can be. He said he felt the same way about shortcuts. If you know Mac stories and Federico, he's huge into that. But this, it looks interesting. I feel like you,

You're really going to have to trust this app because it's literally looking at everything on your screen. You know, it has contextual awareness of everything. And so I'm curious, you know, the privacy implications of that. But looks pretty cool. I sent them a waitlist request, but I also emailed them and was like, hey, can I get some access here? Because I'd be really curious to try this. And yeah, this might be basically what an Apple intelligence type tool would have been or should have been.

Yeah. I don't know. You, there's a lot here. I don't, it does a lot. I mean, so the headline of the article is like from the creator of shortcuts. So it sounds like this is obviously a team of people who kind of know what they're doing. Shortcuts was like, was it, it was two people that was originally on the workflow team and shortcuts and now they've made this. Yeah. So cause they, Apple bought workflow, turned it into shortcuts and then those people have gone on to do other things. Um,

So that's great. I don't know that this is a thing that most people will ever experience because this is in the category to me, this is in the category of things like Alfred or Ray cat. Like I've never met a person who doesn't listen to a podcast or do a podcast that's ever installed one of those things. And that's like, I use bartender. I'm not saying I'm, I'm throwing a little bit of shade, but my point is like, this is a very niche thing for a very small audience. So I, I don't know. Um,

But the other thing is, I don't I would be super surprised how long the functionality of this lasts. Steven, this morning, I don't even I dismissed it so fast that I don't even know what it was.

But a pop-up, like a notification dialog box popped up on my Mac and it said that one of the apps on my Mac had recently updated. So we've turned off its privacy access. Like all the privacy settings that you had enabled before. It was like bartender or something. It's like all of the things you enabled for it, we've turned them off. You'll have to go in and re-enable them. Why is my Mac doing that?

why does my mac like if i enabled it once just because the app updated like this is a very new thing i don't know how this happened and i should have it was one of those things i should have screen taken a screenshot before i just was like i go away but i had to log on to our podcast so i was in a hurry but the same kind of thing like if this has full access to everything on your screen i'm pretty sure at some point there's going to be an update to your mac that changes the privacy settings that says yeah but i'm happening on the mac specifically i mean you're always going to

I think be able to request this kind of access. I mean, this is the Mac is still the one platform. Apple will allow this kind of stuff. Steven, it just turned off all of the things I had enabled on an app because they had updated their app. Like I'm not saying it's not going to be annoying. I'm saying you can probably go in and enable all that again and give it permissions. But you know, just another one single example. If you're looking at a website, you could do the hot key and say, send this link and a summary of,

to Jason Aten. And then it'll little pop up in a message window, your iMessage to that person, and it'll have the summary and the link, and then you can click send. So rather than clicking share sheet, clicking a person, and of course that's just sending the link, not a summary, you know, little things like that. I might try this on my MacBook Air. You know, I don't know if I'd put it on my Mac studio just yet, just to see how it works. And of course it's an alpha, but it's an interesting idea. And it works with like,

Apple Scripts and Shortcuts, and there's supposedly going to be a bunch of powerful automations you can do with it. So I'll try it out, even if just for the shortcuts thing, but

And I agree. This is probably what we should be able to do with Apple intelligence. Like if I hit command twice, which apparently I do a lot because the stupid Siri box just pops up randomly on my Mac all the time. But I should, this is the kind of thing I should be able to do. I should be able to hit command twice. It says type to Siri. I should be able to say, take this webpage and send it to Steven. And it should just do all that. It should be able to do that. But it's,

But it doesn't. It doesn't actually do anything. I can't even get the weather if I do that. What does this maybe iOS 26? I mean, it's going to be five versions newer. Maybe it'll do it. Maybe it'll do it. All right. Another quick hodgepodge stuff. We'll go through this. WhatsApp released an official iPad app. This was rumor like it was in test flight for months. So it's not like it was a rumor. Like we knew this was coming. It's officially out now. You can get WhatsApp for iPad and they're supposedly working. This is, of course, meta because WhatsApp is Facebook meta company.

that the Instagram iPad app should also be coming. Why do you think, Jason, I'm curious, it looks like Meta is putting an emphasis on actually putting their first-party apps on the iPad, which they're trying to do their own hardware thing. There was news this week that Meta might consider opening more retail store locations to be able to sell its hardware, like its VR goggles and other stuff. So curious that it's putting more effort into iPad apps, but why do you think they're doing that? I don't know why. I don't know.

Because of Meta AI. They're trying to have more surface area for their stupid AI thing so that you'll download WhatsApp and chat with the Meta AI bot instead of chatting with chat. You know what? That sounds about right. I mean, I think that's

I would love to know if there's a better answer for that, but I don't know. I have a, I do have a real time followup though. Yes. Yes. I hit command command on my phone, on my computer. Yeah. And I asked Siri, what is the weather? And first of all, it told me it couldn't tell me because it doesn't have access to my location. And,

Apparently that was one of the things that got turned off when I downloaded an app. I don't know. Why doesn't my Mac have location stuff set on? So I gave it the zip code of where I live. I said, what is the weather? I'm not going to say it out loud. Thank you. But it told me that there's a tropical cyclone because it thinks that that zip code is somewhere called Ahtlan Island.

What is wrong with this? Why is this so bad? It thinks that I'm living in, where does this, where is this? New Zealand? Auckland? Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Somewhere in Mexico by Guadalajara. It thinks that my zip code is in Guadalajara and there's a tropical cyclone coming. Steven. You're in Michigan. If our listeners don't know. Yeah. Steven, this is so broken. I don't know what's happening. I don't know what's happening. I'm sorry. Go on. You know, it's not broken.

One of the best games in Apple Arcade, Sneaky Sasquatch. This was news for our family because I know all three of my kids have played Sneaky Sasquatch and loved it. It was an Apple Arcade game. I didn't realize it was developed by just a two-person team at a studio called Rack 7. And now that two-person team in Rack 7 has been acquired by Apple.

They acquired them as a video game studio. Again, two people. And yeah, Stinky Sasquatch is going to be a first-party app. And I'm curious what they're going to do. My kids are very excited for this news. They're like, does that mean there's going to be more updates? And when I told them that, it was literally made by two dudes.

They were like, is that why there's only one update every like year or so? And I was like, yeah, it's a lot of work. And there's just two people working on it. And so maybe they'll get more development power behind it. But good for the sneaky Sasquatch guys. Yeah. I mean, it is a great game. I mean, Apple could have bought Nintendo, but instead they bought a sneaky Sasquatch. I'm going to buy Nintendo.

I'm saying they could have at one point in the past. Oh, sure. But they don't do it. But this seems to be a trend because they bought this, but they also didn't they buy what? Was it Pixelmator or whatever? Yeah, about Pixelmator. Earlier this year or whatever. So Apple seems to be... They're buying stuff. Yeah. And there was a rumor that they might finally release a standalone game app

or game store which honestly i would be totally for because when i if my kids ever search for games they'll send me like requests via screen time and i deny everything that's not an apple arcade game because i don't want them to deal with ads or in-app purchases but it's not easy to like search specifically like you can't filter for just apple arcade games that you can't search for snake and then only show me apple arcade games in the app store app so i'm

So I would be totally for like an arcade standalone app with all of Apple's arcade games. And then you can do all the game features in there. And some people said on social media, I'd be down for bringing back the green felt for the pool table. Remember game center, those little green felt. I mean, bring it back. Skeuomorphism. It's back. All right. Well, I mean, maybe Johnny Ive has a little extra time. That was, was he the skeuomorphism? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I thought that was Scott Forstall more so. Sure. You're probably right. You're right. iOS 7 was Johnny Ive was like, strip it bare. Hairline, hairline lines. What do you mean you can't read this font? Exactly. This was a new rumor. Apple Studio Display 2 might be in the works. Could be late this year or 2026. But Apple might revamp it. Still keep the same 27 inch size display, but

use mini LED and also maybe raise the refresh rate to 90 Hertz instead of the current 60 Hertz. Listen, I love my studio display. And if this is the update that comes out, I'll be getting it immediately. Well, here's the thing.

The current models of studio displays just have extra panels sitting around from when they discontinued the 27-inch iMac. And they haven't been making a 27-inch iMac for a long time. So that production line has finally been shut down. That's true. So Apple has to do something. Like that feels like what this is. Probably. The problem is, is this still going to be a $1,500 display? Because it is not worth a penny more than that. No, but...

I would say it's, I'm down for that. I mean, obviously I would like it to be cheaper, but my studio display, when I bought it at that full price, I mean, I love the display. Obviously I use it every day. It's great. Don't you use a studio display too? I'm looking at one right now, but I guess the thing about it is what are the 27 inch iMac start at?

Yeah, I know you could put a computer on it, but you know, you get the high quality webcam and the studio display. You get great speakers and you can visa. Well, I guess you could visa. Steven, the webcam is such high quality that I stick an iPhone above it to use to record this podcast. I was, I was, I was being sarcastic. I know, I know, I know. Uh, but I still love my studio display. So I, yeah, 90 Hertz, a little mini led. I'll take it. I'll take it.

Apple had its own newsroom article earlier this week. I think it was funny timing considering all the Epic and Fortnite and App Store shenanigans here in the US. But they basically were like, hey, listen, the App Store prevented more than $9 billion in fraudulent transactions over the last five years. Look at how much the App Store is doing. Also, this is a very interesting gif for an Apple newsroom article. I feel like this is not something you see very often. That is a very interesting thing. I think it's helpful to put this thing in context.

it says the app store prevented more than 9 billion in fraudulent transactions over the last five years. What that means is that Apple stopped $9 billion of transactions from leaving the app store and going to developers websites directly. Like that's basically what they're trying to say. It's like, no, because it's been stuck inside the app store. We've had complete control over it. No, no. So listen, listen, that said,

They said 146,000 developer accounts over fraud concerns were terminated, 139,000 developer enrollments. And there was like millions of customer account creations that they rejected and removed because it was fraudulent. So they're saying that they're doing the stuff. They're saying that, but also the first paragraph is very important to understand that.

It says the App Store has protected users by preventing over $9 billion in fraudulent transactions according to Apple's App Store fraud analysis. So they're doing their own math to decide how much because there's literally no way. It's not like $9 billion worth of fraudulent transactions occurred and then were reversed.

How do you, it's like, that would be like me saying I put a lock on my front door and prevented over 100 burglaries from happening at my house. How do you know? Well, but, but from the amount of accounts that they either rejected or removed, I don't know. I feel, I mean, I don't think they're making these numbers out of. Sure. I think you're, you're probably a hundred percent right.

Can we just agree that the only reason that this press release came out is because they're trying to make it seem like the app store is the way you should be going and not be doing this other linking out to other people. It is that it is that all, but also, okay. So last year, Apple identified nearly 4.7 million stolen credit cards. They're trying to transact on the app store and banned over 1.6 million accounts from transacting again. So, I mean, they're, listen, I'm not defending the app store. It looks like they're doing stuff. It looks like there is a lot of,

mal intent that they're trying to stop. But yeah, the timing is also just hilarious with, with all the app store stuff and the DOJ. So anyway, yeah, they did, they did stuff. They stopped the transactions. They kept away the burglars. They kept away the burglars, but that's not the only app store news because the EU still saying that Apple's app store is in violation of the DMA and they have 30 days to comply.

And this is a 500 million euro or they were originally fine. 500 million euro back in April for not complying. And the EU is saying they're still not in compliance. So maybe they'll pay another fine. What exactly do they have to change? Were you aware? Well, basically, Apple has is.

I believe that this was related to the whole anti-steering thing. Right, it was the steering thing. And they just felt like they weren't doing a good enough job, right? Because we need them to... Essentially, Europe just wants it to be a free-for-all, right? And so Apple, it's kind of the same thing that Judge Ivan Gonzalez smacked Apple down for, I think. This isn't actually a huge fine, right? I think that they could have fined them up to 10% of their...

global revenue and this is a relatively small fine i don't know where to change it more they just want them to do more i guess no they just want them to follow the spirit and not the letter of the law and which i don't mean i'm not i've been very critical of the european commission over this that statement is not meant to be critical what i am saying is that the european commission is not super great at writing these regulations because it feels like a bunch of people get into a room and they're like yep this is the thing how do we write that down they

They don't do a very good job of writing it down, but then they expect companies like Apple to follow what they were talking about in the room. And Apple's like, no, we'll literally do word for word what it says in this law. Sorry, that's not what you thought was going to happen. Like Apple has some very smart lawyers. Let's give them credit for that. And,

This is such a perfect example of both of these sides are wrong. Like I think what the European commission is trying to do is bonkers the way they're trying to do it. They're trying to dictate like the global tech industry based on a bunch of people in Brussels where there are no tech companies except for Spotify. Right. This is like the Spotify crusade. Let's just, let's just make it so that Spotify wins here.

But at the same time, Apple probably should just... Yeah, loosen the rein a little bit. Let Phil Schiller do something, okay? Whatever he suggests, maybe do what he's saying. He still has Apple's best interests in mind, but I think maybe he'll do something closer to what these courts will get off Apple's back. But anyway, our last little Apple bit of news. The tariffs that have been supposedly threatened to hit the iPhone and then just kidding, they're not going to hit Apple's products. Well, now...

The tariffs were Trump said he's going to tariff it again. But a federal judicial panel said that Trump has overstepped his bounds on some of these tariffs and they are stepping in to block the current ones. The Trump administration said they're going to appeal.

So the tariffs are still tariffing or not tariffing. It's like Schrodinger's tariff. Is it tariffing or is it not tariffing? We don't know. Except for then you get the bill and you have to pay the tariffs. This is bonkers. And this is, we knew that everything about this has been bonkers this entire time. But essentially the president said that there's this very old law and he declared an economic emergency and

The law doesn't say tariffs are one of the things you can do if you declare this particular type of emergency. And yet she just did it anyway to stop fentanyl. So it's like we want to impose a tax on iPhones coming in from India because of fentanyl. I don't understand how those things are connected. But that was what they did. And the court was like, yeah, I don't think that you did your math on this one. And so what the good news here is that the administration has said that they will appeal it to the Supreme Court.

which means we will actually find out whether this is legal, what we can actually do. But in the meantime, it's like just insane for companies who have had to try to figure out what, like I just saw a story. Best Buy is like reporting that prices are going to go up and their profits are going down because of tariffs on electronic devices. And it's like in Best Buy, like I actually used, like I have a lot of nostalgia for wandering through Best Buys, but like that is a company that,

That is like, gotta be super nervous because you don't need like there's, you can buy everything in a Best Buy on Amazon. Like, let's just be honest. There's a lot of smaller companies too. I know Neelai at the Verge interviewed someone who makes like a bespoke piece of hardware or whatever. And it's just like sourcing the materials or if you produced it in China, some of the businesses just won't be able to exist. Like they just won't be able to be profitable and have it continue. If these tariffs go into play at the levels that Trump was saying. And so it,

It's not only Best Buy in the big names, but it's also smaller names. And I even see messages from like iPhone accessory makers. Sometimes they'll send an email saying like, hey, just so everybody knows, like prices might be going up. We're not sure. And then a couple of weeks later, like we're still good for now, but who knows? So it's just very, it's up in the air. So yeah, maybe we'll get a final decision on this soon. Non-Apple news. The Netflix co-founder, previous co-CEO Reed Hastings said,

is joining the board of Anthropic, Anthropic AI, because of the approach to AI development.

It feels like an interesting move. Like, what does a Netflix co-founder want to do with AI? Although... I mean, Netflix just put OpenAI, like, put ChatGPT into Netflix. There is some... That is interesting. That's true. Yeah, well, it was the homepage, but they're running, like, AI, like, on the homepage. So when you open the Netflix app and what it serves you to get you to, like, watch something... Well, and it's going to power the search. So you can search for, like, natural language stuff. So you can be like, give me a movie that has...

uh ryan reynolds and duane de rock johnson they're like we have 60 of those let me show you lucky day that is what we do our specialty is our core competency so ryan reynolds like do you want a romance do you want action do you want spy thriller it's like we still have 40 yeah that's actually what they all are yeah anyway that's what they're doing with open ai but this is interesting like

I don't know if this is one of those things where, like, why... He doesn't really need anything to do, right? These guys just like to be on boards, I think. You know, just like to sit around and tell people what to do. Brainstorm. I mean, he could have kept doing that at Netflix, but he decided he didn't want to. I don't know. Whatever. Like, it's interesting. Anthropic is sort of like the...

they're kind of the underdog in the sense that they don't get nearly as much attention, but they definitely are doing some interesting things. I don't know. Maybe this helps them because, well, I guess maybe this should be the obvious reason. The problem with all of the AI companies right now is turning them into products. And chat GPT is a product.

And OpenAI has struggled with, like openly struggled with the conflict between the part of the company that was started in order to do this research and

And then all of a sudden it's like, we have the most popular product in the world. It's like, how did, and then we have the weirdest naming scheme for those products in the world. Like, so having somebody like, like, uh, Reed Hastings, who has a ton of product experience and say what you want about Netflix is movies. Netflix is a good product. Like, you know, right. And they're very good product people. Their tech stack is very good. They're everything about it is very good. So this probably helps the anthropic,

a lot and maybe he's getting paid. Netflix is incredible at making a business of mediocre movies. Yeah. I mean, their thing is there's always going to be something to watch. And if you're going to have that much stuff to watch, literally none of it can be good. It's probably very difficult to do that. Uh, one other AI thing. So the arc browser was a thing for a while and a lot of people really loved it. It was like an AI browser that,

Well, they're going to stop making the arc browser and it's now become or is part of Dia. They're going to, it's a new, that's a new one, right? Like they're going to release a new browser, a new browser. I don't know, man. I've not gotten into, I'm not getting into AI browsers per se. And I also don't feel like I naturally want, like I don't want, I don't know.

Do you use, or have you ever used an AI browser? I've used arc and I just can't get over the user interface. I just like, it's hard to name, which is sort of the thing here. Like I think that's part of the reason why,

that they're sort of making this change is because so like Gruber had a post with a quote from Scott or he had, it was about Scott Forstall who has been helping the browser company, which is who makes arc. And it says, uh, Scott Forstall told us arc felt like a saxophone powerful, but hard to learn. Then he challenged us, make it a piano, something anyone can sit down at and play. And actually the metaphor there is like spot,

because arc was super powerful and very confusing and everything about it was different than what you're used to from a browser. Like if you think about it, the user interface of a browser is extremely important, but it also has to be completely out of your way because you're using it to do something else. And arc felt like, no, you're using it to do arc. And it's like, I just want to look up like the times of the movie theater or something like whatever. So they're like scrapping the whole thing and introducing a new thing that

And I just love Gruber's quote, which was, Forstall's advice sounds perfect, but I don't know how they square this with the fact that people who went all in on ARC are now like, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. Because it's like, how do you, why would you use a new one from the company that just pulled out the rug on the one you started using? I did see someone post about that. I didn't realize the context. I saw someone post around this news. It's a good thing instruments were empowered by VC money. Otherwise the saxophone never would have made it. Yeah.

I forget who that was, but hilarious quote. And yeah, I'm very germane. Yep. All of this just reminds me that like, wow, Apple intelligence really could have like obfuscated all of these products if it had come out early enough, you know, like Google and Gemini, you know, after IO last week, and I listened to the interview with Sundar Pichai on decoder.com.

you know, Google's in a position that if you use the Chrome web browser and if they get to keep it, depending on the court case, like that will be an AI browser. Like there's not going to be a reason to have a third party AI browser or try and plug in a third party AI into it. Like Google has the browser and the AI, like Gemini is all over that. And so if you use that browser and use Google stuff, like you don't need to go anywhere else. And they're like far enough along to

where people are not going to seek an alternative because they just want a better AI. But for Apple, anyone who uses an iPhone and a Mac,

There is not Apple intelligence in Safari or in on your iPhone Safari or anything like that. And if they were even halfway to what Google is doing with Gemini and in their browser, I feel like all of this stuff, the arc browser, even the sky app. And listen, it's great that there's room for it right now. And these companies can experiment, but if Apple gets it right,

I feel like it would obfuscate the need for it. And whether that's good or not, like again, two big players, Apple and Google, they're doing the AI stuff in their browser and doing it everywhere. So there's no room for anything else. Maybe that's not as good, but it just goes to show that like this really, like they could have been several years ahead of,

Maybe it was the car project. Maybe it was whatever that distracted them for a long time, but they, they could have been doing all of this with Apple intelligence. If it was like, if they had started just a little earlier, I don't. And I just think, yes,

The only piece I guess I would push back on is I don't think the car project distracted them from Apple intelligence because until chat GPT came out, no one thought that this was going to be this type of a product. And so they were already behind at that point. Like the vision pro did not distract them. You can imagine if they started dreaming the vision pro now, they're

The fact that you would have a fully generative interface, right? You could just, you'd be using it and you'd be like, I want to be at Yosemite and it would just generate you an environment. Like, although by the way, Apple just do that. I mean, Yosemite is already in there, but like, let me just generate environments that I want to be in. Like I was watching, I was watching drive to survive on Netflix, which by the way,

It stinks that you can't have it on your, like one of the ways I use my vision pro is the Mac mirroring, right? It's fantastic for that. But if you then open something in Safari, like Netflix, it will not show it to you in the vision pro because of stupid DRM.

Like it's just, you can't see it. You cannot watch. It's just, it's playing. You can hear the audio, but the screen is just black. So you have to open it in Safari on your Mac. The problem is if I have Safari open on my Mac to watch Netflix, I, the only environments I can be are like Yosemite, Hakala. Like, why can't I be in a movie theater? Just let me be like summon, summon instantly, uh,

It would be amazing. Like Google VO plus Apple vision pro generating immersive environments. That would be sick. Yeah. That would be amazing. But I, like I listened to Ben Thompson talk about this, like the killer application for AI is going to be generative interfaces that it just, so like, for example, the, the, this is one of the things he talks about with things like Orion or with the

android xr glasses that like you don't build notifications or interfaces it's just that the device will will generate the interface you need based on what's happening so it's like a notification pops up so it generates the dismiss or okay you know what i mean and so like interesting why doesn't just build that into the vision pro let me just talk into the vision pro and be like just i want to be at the golden gate bridge or whatever like just make me an environment no that's good

All right, some other quick tidbits, then we'll get to personal tech, are notifications. Apple repair program expanded to cover iPads, but only the most recent. And so this is Apple's DIY self-service repair, where you can like order the tools and they'll send them to you in a Pelican briefcase and you can repair your own stuff. But it's only for the most recent devices like the M2 iPad Air, M3 versions of the iPad Air, and I think

Maybe it's just the M4 iPad Pro, the A16 iPad, and then the A17 iPad Mini. So yeah, it is basically the most recent version plus one generation previous iPad Air. Which I was a little upset because I literally have sitting here an M1 12.9 inch iPad Pro that doesn't work.

Because this iPad Pro was dropped on its sleep button. Yeah. And it's messed up. I've talked about this before, but it worked for a while without the sleep button. And we just used a shortcut in the dock to lock the screen. And that was working fine. And then it just stopped working. Like I can plug it in to a Mac and it'll show me on screen the little connect to your Mac.

But then it doesn't do anything after that. And so when I saw the news initially, I was like, you know what? I've never done a self-service repair direct with Apple. I'll do it with this because it's bringing, like, it's just sitting here doing nothing. And then it was just the latest versions. And I was like, yeah, I had a similar experience with a ninth generation iPad that one of our children dropped. And so the screen just kind of busted on it. And I was like, and so I saw this. I'm like, oh, great. Maybe I could just order. I'll give that a shot. Like, whatever. Do it all. The truth is, I think it's great.

I've been a fan and I've written several times about the self-service repair. I'm glad Apple's doing it.

It's almost pointless for most people because the cost of doing that is essentially the same as the out of warranty cost of taking it to the Apple store. So like if, if a screen replacement on your, let's say you could replace that or that button, let's say you could replace that. You need the same price as just taking into the Apple store and doing it. Well, I got it priced at the Apple store and the repair was going to be like $750, which was what it would cost you for them for the self-service repair. Cause all the costs are the same. Yep. Yep.

all if you look at the repair the replacement costs they are the same as the out of warranty cost of having apple do it so it's essentially you can do it yourself you can have apple do it the price is still basically the same i think i almost everything like it's i haven't found any that were different and so the difference is you have to put like a four thousand dollar hold on your credit card to get out get them to send you that pelican pelican well yeah yeah so so

Well, I just went to the page and it doesn't have the iPads there yet from the, you can't select it from the dropdown, but when it appears, I'll see. Well, it may not be the same because it's not the same device. Who knows? And that's the reason that this is true, that it's limited because it's

Apple has essentially, and I've asked Apple about this. It's because the newer devices were manufactured and designed with this in mind, right? With repairability. You can't retroactively go back to a five-year-old device and be like, what if it's repairable? We didn't, you didn't make it that way. Listen, I peeled many a display off of a 21 inch iMac. That's all I'm going to say.

I'm capable. Have you ever done that? No, I have a 21 inch iMac that I would like to put an SSD and a bunch more memory in it and just be like, have fun kids. But, uh, I have not worked up the courage to get out a blow dryer to heat up the glue and peel it off. No, no, you don't need a blow dryer. You buy the iFixit toolkit and you get the pizza cutter and

You pizza cutter around the edge. You do that like a bunch of times to make sure all the adhesive is. You get the little playing cards that they give you in the iFixit kit and you start wedging them in and you slowly peel the display off. And you got to be really careful because there's the connector at the top. But you disconnect that one connector and you just take that display off. Listen, I've done it probably...

eight or nine times successfully on the same iMac no no no once I figured out how to do it then they were like people were like hey can you do this to mine Stephen figured out how to do it he's just walking around I was like hey you've got an iMac can I borrow that I just want to do something well because when they when Apple updated in 2015 they updated the iMac to have a retina display which looked amazing and a bunch of people bought them around that time and

But the base model was still a spinning hard drive and it stunk. It was so slow. And I bought that iMac. It was the first iMac and desktop that I bought like for our, for the house. And I was like, this is just insufferably slow.

And so I wanted to upgrade it. Now, the very first one I did, I did mess it up because I don't know what it was with either me taking the display off or something, but I took the display off, swapped out the hard drive for an SSD, put everything back together, turned it on. And there was a green strip right down the display. It's just,

killed the middle of the display. And that was actually for a client, someone that was asking me to do it. I was like, okay, shoot. So I went on eBay, had to buy another display. That one was a wash. But after that first one, I figured out how to do it. And it is nerve wracking the first time, but now I could, I could do it. No problem. And I peel it off, swap the SSD, put more RAM in it. And then once you do that, those iMacs have like a new lease on life. They're like

Great. Yeah. I mean, there's still, this one still has an Intel I five or whatever in it from 2018, but there is a part of me that has thought like, I mean, that's fine. That chip should, should be fine for running, you know, brave. So I had my 2015 set up and then I realized because it won't update to the latest OS is certain things start to break, especially if you want to try to do any kind of screen time or if you're trying to sync your iCloud, uh,

There's some iCloud features like advanced data protection. You have to have every device signed into your iCloud account past a certain macOS, and those computers won't go past whatever it's necessary. So I had to take that iMac off my iCloud, off everybody's iCloud. Now, you could set it up as just like this is in a cumulatively sealed whatever, and it's not connected to any iCloud account that is also syncing to your other devices, and

And you can do screen time manually on device and not sync that to iCloud either. It's a little cumbersome, but you can do it. And it would work. Like you could still use it for stuff. In the meantime, I'm just using the Apple...

loaner M4 iMac that's just sitting down there. Same. Same. It's still sitting out here and I'm just hoping they send me an M5 when that comes out before I have to send it back. All right, last news before we get to personal tech. NVIDIA still making a ton of money because of those GPUs. They're the winners. I think, I mean, just all you need to know is the distinction between, so what they call is data center revenue, which is basically

The chips that get sold for AI, right? Okay. So there's a difference. So the total revenue for the quarter was 44.1 billion. Their data center revenue was 39.1 billion. Just think about this for a second. So $5 billion of their revenue is like whatever our T whatever the, you know,

the video cards that you could buy to put into like a gaming PC or whatever. That's like five. That was their whole business until like three years ago. This is a company that is like eight times bigger by market cap. It's, it's insane when you think about how much money is getting spent on, and that's why their stock price is huge. And they had had a problem because they were facing some export restrictions, uh, on like they, they created the H 20,

I think it is, which was essentially a chip designed for China. And so they were like expecting a pretty significant loss in their revenue because they can't send all these chips to China or whatever. But even still, yeah,

The stock market is very happy that NVIDIA is still making lots. Lots of money. And yeah, so there you go. The stock went up 6% after that news. All right, this was your personal tech last week. Great idea. What apps do we have notifications on for? And before we even do that, do you use focus modes in your life?

So yes. But let me give a tiny bit more context to this. I sometimes will be like near someone and you look at them and they pull down, like their screen is closed and you see the notification center. And I'm like... It's horrifying. Why do you have notifications for all of these things? Like what is even happening? Why? Why? Why are you getting so many notifications? And it made me think...

So and then someone asked me a question. Actually, I think it was my wife asked me, did you see the message about whatever? And it was like one of those apps like Team Reach or something, which is an app that like our kids' sports teams use. I'm like, I don't have notifications turned on because you can't tell it only send me notifications that I care about. It's just like you get everything.

And so I have, and I said, I don't have notifications on for that. Oh, well, do you have, I don't have notifications on for that. So it made me think like what notification, I turn almost everything off, Steven. I don't want notifications. I don't need notification. My life should not be governed by what pops up on the home, on the lock screen of my iPhone. And so I just thought it'd be interesting for us to talk about that. Now to answer your question, I do have a sleep focus mode because I haven't dug into this, but for some reason, I,

sleep plus plus the app on my watch will only track my sleep if my phone is in sleep focus mode okay or but i it but i reach that from apple health yeah so i have it set up i guess it's not it is a focus but it's set up through the health app where it's like what is your sleep routine i go to bed by this time my alarm sets for this time in the morning and then it it tracks the sleep so i have that one i also have um

basically a work one, which is essentially, I don't want any notifications, even the things that I have, except for text messages from my wife and our kids. But those are the ones that I use. Wait, like of all the notifications? No, I'm saying those are the only focus that I use. There's a sleep one and a work one. And other than that...

we'll talk about the notifications in a second but that was your question was what whether i focus and i use i mean if anybody watched my youtube channel i use a ton of focus modes i don't have a work focus i just kind of leave that as an open thing and then i have an evening focus which triggers at 6 p.m every day i have a weekend focus uh that triggers on all the weekends and then i have uh the sleep focus which happens automatically plus i have other things like filming focus so i'm

I have a home screen specifically for that. And that's one of the reasons why I use focus modes like on the evenings and weekends, because I do have a different home screen that it changes to during those times. Like I don't have slack on my home screen for the weekend and the evening, things like that. But I do allow some notifications. I don't know. Do you want, do you want to start? Yeah. So let me, I'll walk through the list of them. I mean, I don't know. I probably have 200 apps on my phone. I'm not going to. Yeah, no, no, no. The ones I have notifications on for are,

I have to scroll a while here. The App Store. But the only reason for that is, well, because if my kids want to request to download something, I have to be able to get that notification. But doesn't that come through messages? I get it. I actually get an App Store notification. Really? Yeah. Listen, let's not get started on screen time. Because sometimes I get requests on my watch and not my phone. And if I go to the phone to approve it in messages, it's not in there, but it is on the watch. And sometimes...

I probably, maybe I could turn that one off, but for a long time, that was how the, the app store requests came through. I have Apple TV keyboard notifications right now because like that, that's a useful one. Same thing with the Apple watch.

Then I scroll down here to... So the ChargePoint app, I do have notifications because it will tell me if my car is done charging if I'm at a third-party charger. Did you see that the Tesla app added a live activity for supercharging? Yeah. Normally, if I'm charging at a Tesla, I don't care because I know exactly how long I'm going to be there. But if I'm parked at something, like at a hotel or whatever, sometimes hotels are like, you have to move your car when it's done. So I just have it. But I almost never use that app, so I...

Almost never see notifications, so that's fine. The Circle app, which is what we host our membership with. I get notifications from that. I feel like I should because otherwise I would literally never respond to stuff in that. That's good. The FaceTime app, Find My...

The Fly Delta app, for obvious reasons, that's fairly important to me. I need that. The Google Home app, because our cameras are set up for notification if it sees a person come to the door or that kind of thing or a person in our backyard. So that is useful. Then I have to go to the Marriott app because you cannot get a key, like a phone key, without having notifications on. I don't understand why.

I don't know why those two things are connected. Then the messages app.

The smart HVAC thing that's in my office, I have a notification because it will tell me if it comes on because it got too cold in here. And I'm like, that seems like a thing. And then the phone app, which seems, I guess that's the point of having a phone. And then I have a couple that I have delivered quietly. So like the New York Times app, I have delivered quietly. And the same thing is true of the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, because I do want, I do like...

I sometimes need to know like that a thing happened cause I could write about it really quickly, but I don't need like, it just shows up in notification center. I don't see a banner for it or anything like that. Um, and then spark and think, Oh, and things, um,

Those would be the obvious ones, right? Like my mail and my to-do app. But in Spark, just to be clear, I only get priority notifications. So only the people that I've listed as priority. So in Spark, you can actually specify individuals for notifications? You can tag people as priority notifications.

Is that what it's called? Let me just double check that I'm saying the right thing. One of the reasons I keep not using third-party email apps is because I use the VIP feature in the stock mail app, and I love that it just syncs across all devices, and then I get to specify exactly who I can get the notification from, and you can specify a different sound for VIP emails. So that's

One of the reasons I like the stock stuff. Yeah. So in spark, you have the option to only have people. You only get this, the same thing essentially is VIP. So if I tag someone as a priority, um,

In Spark, I can then say only send me push notifications for messages from people in that list. The wording is a little bit different, but it's essentially the same. Okay, I didn't realize Spark got that granular because a lot of times email apps will say like just send priority notifications, but it doesn't allow you to specify exact contacts. And I don't want it trying to figure out what's priority or not. So basically...

The way that it, so I can tell it, I don't want to preview, but then for each of my email addresses, which I just gave away all my email addresses. I'll drop a marker and I'll put an overlays, but so no one can see what you just did. Why did I just do that? But anyway, we'll pretend that I didn't just do that. But yeah, in there you can choose. So for each email, do you want all notifications? Do you want smart notifications, which it decides? And I'm like, super, no, I'll tell you which ones. And then priority, which is notifications from priority senders and then threads related to those.

So I have that turned on for a couple of them. And then for several of them, like my Gmail address that I just use personally is what I put in for every newsletter that I sign up or everything. So I'm like, no notifications because there's never, I actually think Steven is literally the only human who emails me at that email address, that Gmail address, which is fine. What do you prefer? I email you. No, it's totally okay. I, it pops up into a different box and spark. So it's totally fine. My point is,

I don't like need notifications and Steven is never going to just email me something important. It's going to just be a text message. So it's fine. So, okay. So I have a couple more apps giving me notifications, but do you get notified for podcast episodes, new episodes or shit? You don't get notified for that. Okay. Do you have any kind of like grocery delivery or robotic vacuum type notifications? No,

We don't have a robotic vacuum. So no, that would be really weird if he had notifications. Um, but no, and I don't handle like Beth handles all of our household expenditure type things. And so like she'll get Walmart deliveries, but I'm not going to get a notification for that. I do have the Walmart app and we are signed into the same thing, but I don't get any notifications. And what about YouTube? You don't have like notifications for videos. I see how it is. No, but you know, one thing on the grocery, on the

On the grocery notification, I'm going to address that in a second. But in the grocery notifications, this is actually a huge pain point that just ticks me off. And I've actually been tempted to write about this. So like, for example, I don't actually, I must've skipped over it on the list. I'm sure I have Uber turned on. Right. Because yeah, so Uber, I do have turned on.

But I don't want it on because you know what Uber does? Hey, seems like a great time for you to order some more food. No, stop. I hate companies that do that. It's the worst.

I will literally turn on Uber if I'm traveling the notifications and then turn it off when I'm not because those promo notifications are because they're abusive. They are abusive. You should not be doing this. No company should do that. It is a gross violation of the spirit of why notification should even exist on YouTube, just to be fair. So I literally only subscribe on YouTube. Wow. It's talking to me now to, I think, let me look.

three two three four channels is all that i subscribe to on youtube and yes yours is one of them thank you and primary tech is one of the other ones um but i don't turn on notifications or anything for any of that stuff because yeah like well first of all the i don't know if we call this the for you screen but i think it does a pretty good job of serving up the new stuff anyway so right yeah yeah okay well

I have notifications for basically a lot of the things you said, although I don't use spark. I still use the stock mail app. I do the Instacart orders. If we ever do that, it's not like weekly, but we do them. And so I have Instacart turned on an Instacart app.

they do a pretty good job of not harassing you. And so like they don't send those promo notifications really. So, so that also my grocery app, any list, I have notifications for that because if I'm in the store and I'm going through the list, my wife will see that I'm checking off items. Cause you get notified, you get notified that whatever she'll have, she might add something that we've got to put on the list and,

And so I get a notification if something was added like in real time. So that's actually a really useful notification for me, especially around the store. I have the Apple vision pro app notifications on because I do like seeing if there's a new like immersive video or something. I don't even have the Apple vision pro app.

It's pretty slick. I mean, you get to see like what's the latest thing. So anyway, so I got that. The Chick-fil-A app, of course. So I have Instacart. Oh, my robot vacuum, which my current default is the Dream X50 Ultra. They sent it to me. It was a sponsored video, but I do really like it and it works well. So I get the notifications from Dream, which tells me if it's like stuck, which is not often, but it also tells me when it's finished and things like that.

I also have some notifications on that I'm like, but I do have a lot going to the summary, the daily summary that's either like noon or whatever. So I have that and I have a lot of things off. All the Google apps are off.

because I don't really, I don't use the Gmail app. I do have things like square invoices as a notification. So that will tell you when someone viewed an invoice that you sent and when someone pays it, which is really nice. So square invoices has been great. I do have my journal notifications on. And that's one of the things where I still use Apple Journal.

And I don't do it daily. And sometimes I forget that something big happened and I would want to put it in the journal. So I like getting that journal notification. It will basically suggest like, hey, do you want to write about this event? And it's usually pretty good at sometimes it's just like generic. And it's like, hey, you haven't written in a while. Do you want to write something? But other times it's like, do you want to write about your trip to the blank? And it's like, oh, yeah, I do want that. So I like that the notification is like specific. And it does kind of it does prompt me to do it more often.

I do have email, but just VIP senders as notifications. I do have this. I'm not crazy about. I do have Facebook Messenger.

notifications on only because no one messages me there and don't message me there because i'm not going to check it i my wife will send me stuff because that's like the only social media app that she uses and so she'll send me like a funny video and so i do want to know when that happens otherwise i would never open that app and so i actually have have that open uh and i have let's see

I have like some random like park apps, like park mobile. I have those on. I do have PayPal because I also send invoices through that and we'll get paid from that sometimes. And let's see Publix, which they're, they're pretty good at not sending anything crazy. Riverside, Riverside. If you recorded the Riverside app, you actually get a live activity of the upload progress, which is pretty slick. And I do have Slack. Do you have Slack notifications on, on your phone?

I realized I missed a couple of them. So Slack, I do have turned on, but I love the, the, like the flow chart of whether you're going to get a Slack notification or not in Slack. I, I only get notifications if I've been at mentioned. Yes, exactly. Or I get notifications for, there are two keywords, uh,

So like if I get a message in a thread, but I wasn't mentioned, but it says something about like when a time to publish is or something like that, I will get those push notifications. Other than that, I don't get notifications. Almost every channel in Slack is set to like mute for me. Never send me anything. Yeah, I don't ever want notifications.

I do the same thing, just DMs and app mentions. And that seems to work pretty well. And the Slack is really good with like the time off. Like, so if you schedule like only send me between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., it's really good that I have things for my to do list that's on. I also have what is it? Transloader. I'll explain that in a second. Transloader. I do have UPS on because they do pretty good at that. I have Google Voice on.

Because I use my Google Voice for everything, basically, like when I have to sign up for something. And there's services that won't do two-factor via a QR code or the six-digit. They'll text it to me. And so I have my Google Voice number attached to multiple services like that. And so I'll get the text message through that. Now that I have my bank send me notifications.

And I do have Wells Fargo sending, or not, I just put it in my bank. I do have YouTube for the few channels that I have notifications turned on for primary tech being one of them. Cause it also like lets me know, okay, I did publish that publicly. I did hit the channel. Totally. Yeah. Now transloader is funny. I've,

talked about what I use it for. I can't say it here because this is going to go up on YouTube and they'll take it down. But Translator, you can like send links to your Mac and then you can run automations there and whatever happens. So I like getting a notification that it tells me that the link was opened on the Mac mini that I have in a closet. So I know that if I share something using the share sheet to Translator, when I get the notification that it was opened on the Mac mini, I know that everything's running and

And it's going to do what I need it to do. So that's a weird notification that, but it is really useful to me. So, yeah, I do also, sorry, I did missed in before. So no one will like ask me, I do have reminders notifications turned on. Oh yeah, me too.

Because I use that. I use that all the time. That's like the only thing I ever use Siri for. It's just makes me a reminder. Like constantly. It's such a great... Anyway, it actually makes like having an Apple Watch pay for itself just because I can talk. I can pull my wrist up and just do the reminders. And then I do also have it on for the health app. Well, there's a couple of things. You get the noise notifications is a thing, although that's been a little oversensitive lately. Yeah.

Um, but also like I take a medication every day that I'm super bad at remembering and the health app will tell you like there's a notification about time to take your meds or whatever like that. So that's kind of nice. And then it also will send you sometimes notifications. It's if, if you're going to have a track, all that information and sometimes that this has never happened, but if you're like,

what if it detected a fib or if it detected your have a super fast heart this has happened one time we're like hiking it's like your heart rate's real fast right now like uh are you doing something are you good um or if you fall those kinds of things like all of those notifications that come from the health app it kind of seems counterproductive to have it doing something and then not yeah no no you do that and i have the health app as well and uh just side note

My mom got a, I got her a blood pressure reader from Withings that connects to the health app. Yep. We got that. And then you can share your health data with a trusted friend or family member. Yep. And so I started doing that and it's really cool. Like it works really well. Like I can just go in and see the blood pressure reading she's had. I can also go in and see like the medications she's taken throughout the day as she checks them off. So yeah, it's a cool feature. I agree. Yeah.

Those are notifications. It does. I do have that change in my different focus modes, specifically like Slack and all those other kind of things. But yeah, those are notifications.

That was good. Good personal time. That was good. All right, we're going to go to record a bonus episode. I wanted to do this suggestion from listener Jason Jelly on X. And he was asking also, do we have a place where someone can leave story suggestions? Honestly, the best place right now is go to social.primarytech.fm. If you join our community, leave comments on the episode posts. I make sure to always catch up on those. I'm not in there like every day, but I try to make sure to look there.

And so if you want to leave some story suggestions there, you could do that, or you can tag us on social media. But this was the latest generational divide, how you hold your phone. Like, do you turn it for videos and stuff like that? So I thought it'd be interesting. We're going to do that in the bonus episode. And you can support us.

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