Apple 2024 Tier List, ChatGPT Gets 1-800 Number, Foldable iPad Rumors, TikTok Ban Implications
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The audacity. The unmitigated gulf.

Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. This week, OpenAI has released a 1-800 number where you can literally call and talk to ChatGPT. The immersive camera from Blackmagic is going to go on sale early next year, and if enough of you support, you can see this show in immersive video. Is the algorithm hiding something? Oh, and we're also going to go through all of Apple's announcements over the last year and put it in the tier list. I already did this in a video. Jason's going to tell me how wrong I am.

This episode is brought to you by the Data Citizens Dialogues Podcast. Hello, Fresh, and you, the members who support us directly. But I'm one of your hosts, Stephen Robles, and joining me as always...

A good friend, Jason Aiton. How's it going? It's good. I'm a little bit annoyed because you had to choose a quote from what I've already told you is my least favorite Christmas movie. That's actually not my least least favorite. It's my second least favorite. That's right. It's my least favorite version of a very popular Christmas movie. It is the most fun quote to say that. That's true. It's obviously the Grinch. Obviously the Grinch. But it's the Jim Carrey version, which is super not my favorite version of that. It's traumatizing. Let's be honest.

Listen, I'm going to let our listeners and viewers know you're going to see something special pop up in the feed in a couple days.

Because Jason joined me and my other co-host Nate Baranowski on Movies on the Side to talk about our top five Christmas movies. We thought it would be fun to kind of drop that in as a bonus episode. It will be available to everyone, but you might see that drop over the weekend. So just giving you a heads up if you want to listen to a festive top five Christmas movie show. It's going to be coming up. It was a very spirited conversation. I see what you did there. I see what you did.

I'm so excited because Jason told me he actually called chat GPT that 1-800 number and recorded the conversation. I did not expect this. So I'm very excited to hear how this conversation went and the implications of other people calling this number. But anyway, three five-star review shout outs. Thank you to everyone leaving five-star reviews and supporting the show. Cooler FM from the USA. Dots on. Percentage on. Dominant hand or dominant pocket. So dots on. Thumbs up.

Makai from USA or McSci. He said the deep dives hook them from the show. We appreciate that. And finally Trapper's Hat Stu from the USA. He

He said back button focus on. That might be another one for our photographers. That's right. Back button focus on. There you go. All right, let's jump right into it because OpenAI in their 12 days of ship miss, which I think we're nearing the end of these 12 days. I think that was day 10. Was it day 10? Yesterday was day 10. I think yesterday was day 10. Okay, well, they announced that ChatGPT is now available via phone and via text, but the text is via WhatsApp. So you can call a 1-800 number, 1-800-CHATGPT,

and you get 15 minutes of access per month to talk to the large language model. And you can also message the number via WhatsApp, though it seemed unclear how many messages a month you would get. I imagine it would be the same as if you had a free ChatGPT account and didn't pay for ChatGPT Plus. But you can literally call and talk to ChatGPT for 15 minutes a month. I'm so excited. I had no idea you were going to do this, Jason, but you actually called this number. You do

You do this yesterday. No, I did this this morning. Yeah. So early to be talking to an LLM. I got to tell you.

Yeah. It was a surreal experience, but I am going to write about this. I have not formed all my thoughts because I literally did this not that long ago. And one, I was like, well, I could just write about the fact that this happened, but it happened yesterday. So I'm a little late for that. So I'm like, I'm going to call. I'm going to see what... Listen, Steven, I don't think I've called an 800 number that wasn't an airline. Right.

in 10 years like it's been a very long time since i've called the 1-800 number i and i thought i was thinking through through this like the one of the big stories earlier this year was how they spent 15 million dollars or whatever on chat.com right and i wonder how much they had to pay to get chat gpt as their vanity h 800 number yeah i'm like it's got to be way cheaper than a domain

I imagine. I'm sure that's true, but someone probably had that combination of numbers already. So they had to figure out who that was. And I was just thinking, like, when is the last time a new 800 number was even, like, confirmed?

Companies don't even, like at this point, the whole reason 800 numbers existed is so you didn't have to pay long distance. Right, right, right. When is the last time you've made a long distance call? I don't even know. It's been a very long time. I feel like maybe the last time I dialed an 800 number was to upgrade my internet. I called my internet service provider, which is going to be our personal tech segment because I upgraded my speed once again. All right.

But Steven, you know me well enough to know that there are a few things in the world I hate more than talking on the phone to anything. Like I had to call you the other day and I want you to know like it was a really high bar to be like, Steven, can we talk on the phone for a minute? I also didn't pick up the first time.

Well, and also I'm sure you were terrified because when does that, when you know, like why would I be texting you saying, do you have a minute for a phone call? That was ominous. Shows over, shows over. It was ominous. Next time you just, you should just say tech support needed. 1-800-TECH-SUPPORT-BEARD-FM. You know what? I'm going to say, can I get the 800 number? 1-800-BEARD-FM. Let's see if I can get it. You should try it. I'm going to get it.

Okay, so anyway, so I did call this morning and this is also the first time I've called an 800 number in years. It's also the first time I've used iOS 18.2's new feature. I don't know if it came in. I think it was iOS 18 regular. Sure, where you can record phone calls now.

The best part of the whole thing. I wonder if I can play some of this for you. Can you hear this? What are some common things that kids do to try to have a snow day? Kids have some classic snow day rituals. They might wear their pajamas inside out, flush ice cubes down the toilet, or even sleep with a spoon under their pillow.

All in the hopes of a snow day miracle. What? First of all, all those things are true. That's exactly what kids do. You live in Florida, Steven. You have no idea. I grew up in New York, Jason. We had snow days all the time. It was a long time ago.

What are you talking about? A spoon under the pillow. Literally, my children have done all of these things in the last couple of weeks. And by the way, it worked because they've had two snow days so far. But the flushing ice cubes on the toilet, 100% a thing. And all those things are true. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Hold on a second. I'm going to need this. Here it is. The next debate. Because I grew up in New York. It wasn't that long ago. I mean, I understand it was like 20 years ago. Well, yeah.

No, it was more than that. But here's the thing. I didn't ask you at GPT what us old people used to do when we were kids. I asked what kids do now and your children don't even know what snow day means. No, they don't know. It's very sad. What do we do for hurricane days? You might ask that. Do not flush anything down the toilet. You just get in a car and go. That's right. I need to know from our listeners and viewers, have you ever heard of any of those practices of flushing ice cubes down the toilet?

Spoon under the pillow. I need to know. But anyway. But only if you have children in school right now. Right. Because if you're like our age and you just. Then you didn't hear. Trust me. Anyway. So, okay. That was bizarre. Although the best part of this. Just. But the best part of this call though was actually when I. It said, hi, this is ChatGPT. And then I hit the record thing. Right. It took me a second to figure out how to do that.

So then it says, it's going to tell you that it's going to, I'm going to announce that it's recording in three seconds. So it says three, two, one. It says this call will be recorded. And chat GPT responded. Great. Let's talk. I love to be on the record. She's so excited about me recording. Exactly. I've never, yeah, I've never called and interviewed anyone and had them be like, great. Anyway, so I talked to chat GPT for about 15 minutes. It actually, most of the 15 minutes was me thinking in between like, wow.

what now can I do with the rest of my time? Because honestly that I understand that Steven doesn't believe me. Literally. If you ask one of my children, that is exactly the answer that they would give you like word for word. So it like hit it out of the park. But I then did the same thing with just voice mode on the app. I did the same thing with voice mode on the bridge chat.com on the browser. I did the same thing with Siri, pushing the thing down on Siri. Although honestly,

The Siri interaction with ChatGPT, I'm sorry. Did you start by saying using ChatGPT? I didn't have to because it did it. Okay. But it completely mangled what I was asking because the first time I asked the exact same question every single time and the first time Siri's, I'm sorry, Dingus's interaction told me things that kids like to do on a snow day. Oh, I see. Right? Like they might go outside and build a snowman. I'm like, no, no, you misunderstood. You did not understand this. Anyway, the...

I started thinking like there are definitely easier ways to interact with ChatGPT. Like there's clearly easier ways. Like all of the things I just mentioned, voice mode on the app,

I think the easiest way to interact with chat GPT is to push the Siri button on the side of your phone. Like that's how my kids think that this is a walkie talkie now. Cause I just walk around like asking questions, holding the button down. Right. And getting responses from chat GPT. Although that's the least useful in the long run, meaning the interaction with the voice assistant on your iPhone, because like you can't really do anything with that. You can't follow up. I think, can you copy and paste? Maybe I don't even know if you can do that out of the interface. I haven't tried that. What I've discovered is,

Like the newer Siri is so hypersensitive to you saying anything after your request. And this is probably a setting that I could turn off. I don't, I don't know if you know for sure, but like when I'll, I'll hold it, I'll do a request. And if I'm like with my kids and I asked the dingus a question and if my kids start saying something, Siri will just start listening again and it never completes the initial request because it's now added multiple things. Is there a setting for this?

I forget. I don't know, like continue listening or something, but you can't tap out of the Siri interaction because then it just stops doing anything. So it's, it is kind of annoying while you find the setting. I'll just, I'll just tell you my theory. I, so chat GPT is doing this because they are trying to make it familiar. Like they're trying to offer channels to interact with chat GPT in ways that are familiar to people. And again, again,

We don't call 800 numbers. So who are they trying to make it familiar to? It's like boomers, right? Like they are trying to expose people who still make phone calls with the ability to talk to chat GPT. I think it's pretty cool. It's very limited in what you could do because you,

Right. Most of the things I'm doing is like summarize this or explain this or whatever. You can't do any of those things on the phone because you can't like, it just says it to you. I recorded the conversation, but if I hadn't recorded the conversation, it's like ephemeral. I couldn't do anything with that information later. So,

The WhatsApp thing is also interesting. They've made it really easy. There's a QR code. You just scan it and it opens a chat in WhatsApp with ChatGPT. And it's basically the same experience as chatting with the app. The difference is, again, if you use WhatsApp, but you don't want to download the ChatGPT app or go to chat.com...

everyone knows how to send a text message and now you can just send a text message to chat GPT, which is basically what you're doing when you're using the app, but they're just, so I actually think it's really brilliant that they're exposing it. The other thing, Steven, last thing on this is it occurred to me as I was talking to open AI says that they are not going to use these conversations to, uh,

train their large language model. However, they did. I, I, I did a service to our listeners and I dug through all of the terms and conditions on about how they're using it and they do review them. And I, I think it's almost a guarantee that they're going to use it not to train the LLM, but just to improve the experience. But if you want to have a good voice assistant, you need your voice assistant constantly listening to real people talking, right? Yeah.

deducing what they're saying. Cause what it essentially has to do is speech, text, text analysis, feed that into the LLM, give you back a response and then say it. And the trickiest part of that, as we know from our friend on the iPhone is the listening to what someone's saying, understanding what that is, turning it into a query and then providing an answer. So I, like I, in that sense, I think it's brilliant.

Also, the people who are likely to use this are the demographic of people that they probably have the least experience with interacting with because it's like my parents. Right. Although I will say I don't think there is zero chance my mom will call 1-800-CHAT-GPT and talk to it. But it was just bizarre to hear you play that recording though because…

I mean, honestly, it sounds like one of those automated phone trees that you get, but it's actually... Except you could ask it anything and it will understand it and come up with information. So it is 100% like that, except for it. I hate those phone trees because...

Because they never do a good job of like giving you information outside of a set response, set of responses. Whereas with chat GPT, that set of responses is essentially infinite. So while you were talking, I did look up the settings for Siri. If you, Oh, the dingus, excuse me. So if you go to Apple intelligence and dingus, there's no setting there that appears to, to affect this. But if you go to accessibility and then dingus by dingus, I mean, S I R I, there is a setting called request,

require quote dingus for interruptions and I think that's the newer feature where you can interrupt while like during the request which is you know what all these large language models do so I just turned on that toggle and I'm going to try something I'm going to say I'm holding the side button instead of saying dingus generate an image of a medieval knight riding a polar bear now I stopped holding the side button and it's not listening to me anymore I don't think it's still glowing which is confusing

Oh, no, it is still listening to me. Yeah, because if the glow changes as you're talking, it's listening to me. So that's not even an interruption, but maybe it'll figure that out. I don't know. I'm not crazy about the new dingus. I'm really hoping the smartest dingus comes soon. You have to walk into your cone of silence to use the stereo integration. You ever see that chamber that supposedly has zero...

decibel like reverb and echo yeah an anechoic yeah yeah the one that apple has it has all like the point i actually think it's a death chamber because it's got all those pointy things that are like pointed at you and you're just like i don't want to try it people are saying like oh people can't last 45 minutes i'm like i think i could last i think i could do it but that's my talk isn't that from that is the steve carell movie what's not originally a steve carell movie but what is it get smart where they have the cone of silence oh do you ever see that movie what's

Wasn't it like Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway or something like that? It's a funny movie. That's for movies on the side, Jason. I'm confused because we recorded an episode. Yeah, I'm sorry. Well, thank you for doing the Lord's work and calling the 1-800-CHAT-GPT and having that conversation.

anyone else calls it yeah let us know what what kind of conversation you have if i can get it published soon enough i will send you a link and you can include it now what's exciting is if we have enough supporters in 2025 you can have primary tech in immersive video because black magic's vision pro immersive camera is going on sale in early 2025 next year for a measly pittance of thirty thousand dollars

But now we need two. So we need $60,000. So that means divided by five, we need 12,000 of you to support the show, which is more than less than every week, but we'll figure it out. I mean, theoretically, what is it? $5 a month? That's right. So we actually only need a thousand. Oh, for the year. Oh, that's true. We're not going to buy one of these every month.

We're going to continually add angles. This is going to be the most immersive podcast you've ever seen. Wow. Please do not send me 12 of these cameras. Nobody wants that. But this was Apple announces in, I think it was DubDub, the keynote. I think that's true. I don't remember, but I remember seeing this. Yeah, so it's going to be specifically for recording immersive content. Listen, we'll see if the Vimeo app, we talked about that a few months ago. You can actually...

post-spatial video just that you capture with your iPhone or Vision Pro to Vimeo and then use the Vimeo app in Apple Vision Pro to experience that immersive video, which is interesting. There's still no first-party way to do it. So I imagine maybe Apple will announce something early next year where you can... They would have to have... You can watch spatial video in the Photos app. You do it, but I mean, are you going to capture something on a $30,000 camera just to watch it in the Photos app? I'm saying you have to distribute it. You're saying...

okay so you're not talking about like to do it for yourself you're saying if you have the three friends you have want to watch the thing you would be dad of the year i guess if you buy this just for family videos uh no you should definitely not do it's weird enough to walk around with a vision pro on your face to take videos instead you're walking around with this like droid on your shoulder like come on crazy it looks crazy it looks like it has a tape door too

It doesn't look like it has a door for pulling out a cassette tape or something. Yeah. I don't know what that is. Wouldn't that be amazing if they're recording spatial video and a $30,000 thing and you pull out like a, you get one of those mini seconds, you get two seconds of recording mini DV, mini DV tape. Anyway, I'm just hoping for more immersive content. Oh, which I should mention. I didn't even put this in the notes, but now it jogged my memory. I finally updated division OS 2.2 cause it's publicly available for everyone and

And I tried the ultra wide Mac virtual display.

Jason, that thing is pretty cool. I'm not going to lie. It is. It's really good. I was sitting in my car editing a shortcuts video while my kids are at dance practice. And I was like, I don't care. I'll look like a crazy person. So I put the Vision Pro on and sitting in my car. And I mean, ultra wide max screen. Because that was the one thing where I don't like editing on my laptop because it's a smaller screen. And I'm used to the studio display. So I'm like, okay, bigger screen. But previously, the bigger screen, it was still...

like the aspect ratio and everything was still confined to like with a computer but being able to do an a wide display from my macbook pro and edit and final cut and still have other windows open and then i even went to the ultra ultra wide display whatever that that biggest setting is and it was like this this is too much this is too much display for one person to handle i couldn't do it but uh it's very compelling do you prefer the ultra ultra wide or the just the

so most of the time if i'm using it i'm not using my mac but if i'm using right if i'm using the vision pro but if i am i do i do like the ultra wide it's i like being able to have lots of room for activities you know you have to like you have to literally turn your head to see the whole display like it wraps around well i mean it doesn't have to be floor to ceiling you could size it in a way that you can see it and stuff but yeah yeah it was very cool though and i might uh i might

I might keep it charged and actually use it again. So we'll see. Yeah. But more immersive content next year because of a new camera. That'd be cool. More immersive content that you don't have to make yourself for $30,000 is what you're saying. Exactly. And this was one of the rumors. This was from Mark Gurman from Bloomberg. This is The Verge reporting on it, but that Apple might be working the first foldable. I feel like that Gurman is rumoring an 18.8 inch creaseless iPad by 2028. Wow.

This would be three-something years from now. But a super big iPad that actually folds. I don't know if I'll be into this. I actually went from the 12.9-inch iPad down to the 11-inch because I like the more portable size. But I guess this means maybe you could have the best of both worlds. Portable iPad. And it's so thin now. I mean, you could put two iPad Pro, M4 iPad Pros together, and it's barely more than a piece of paper thickness. I guess fold...

That was a joke. I mean, it's more than a piece of paper, but you know what I mean? It's super thin. But, you know, have two of those sandwiched together and then open up to a big screen? I don't know. It might be compelling. I still am... It's hard for me to imagine Apple doing a foldable device. I don't know why. It just doesn't feel Apple-y just yet.

I think it's inevitable that Apple will do a foldable device. I think they are trying to figure out, they're like looking at the market and they're like, well, that's what they're doing. We have to do it different and more complicated. Like this is exactly what happened with the vision pro, right? The quest exists.

And people like it and people buy lots of them and they're $400 or whatever, $500 for those things. And Apple is like, hold my beer. Here's a $3,500 device with zero specific content in like 13 apps. And it doesn't stay charged if you leave it on your desk for more than an hour and a half. It's like...

Just make the thing. If they would have made a $500, it probably would have been $800, but essentially Quest competitor, they would have sold a lot of them. Imagine if they just had positioned it as... Because if you think about what are the best things about using the Vision Pro...

For the most part, it is not the pass-through. The pass-through is good, but you don't need it. It's irrelevant. You don't need pass-through for the Mac virtual display. You can be sitting at Yosemite. You don't need it to be playing games. If you're watching a movie, you probably are turning on an environment, like the theater or something like that. So this, to me, I think it's inevitable they're going to make one, and I think...

I think they are way overthinking it. Just put two of these phones together. Boom. And it's, it's perfect. It's like, I just, I don't know. I just, no one needs an 18.8 inch iPad. Like, right. The 13 inch iPad is great. If you want to. And I have thought about this a lot, Steven, because I've been trying to figure out,

what the right ipad size is oh is it the 13 or the 11 i personally am a big fan of the 11s but that's because i use a laptop almost all the time and i don't need to replace my laptop so i need a different device if you don't have a laptop and your main device is a computer then 13 inch is perfect because you can slap it in a magic keyboard and now you basically have an ipad and a laptop right the 11 inch is not great as a laptop let's just be honest it's just not it is not

So I'm going to actually put a link to this because Federico Vatici over at Mac stories just did his final story of the year.

which is his, I feel like, lifelong quest to be all in on iPad Pro and never use a Mac again. And he says he seemingly has achieved it. And so his whole article is how he uses the new 11-inch iPad for everything. And he went from the 12.9-inch down to the 11-inch. Now he uses it with an external monitor when he's doing desk work and stuff. But he said he's achieved it. He's doing everything on iPad, including podcasting, including all of his work,

And nothing else. Using the external monitor when he's there. I think, because I literally have it right here.

I feel like the 11-inch iPad is the perfect size iPad to be an iPad, to both be a tablet and to be a quasi-laptop when you want it. Not better than a laptop, but better at being both. Because I feel like a 13-inch iPad is better at being a laptop, but it's not as good as being a tablet. And I feel like the 11-inch, stay with me, the 11-inch is being better

is better at being a quasi-laptop than the 13 inches at being a tablet. Like, I feel like this Magic Keyboard on the 11 inch, I would rather deal with doing laptop things with this size than try to do tablet things where I actually hold it and use the Apple Pencil with the 13 inch.

because it's too big you know what i mean does that make sense yeah i just think is you just have to figure out what's your primary use case and if your primary use case is i want to hold something in my hand and read watch edit podcasts right the 11 inch is great if the primary use is like i want to sit down with the keyboard right do stuff like that get the 13 inch because you can still pull it off of the stand and use it it's just if it's not as ideal for that kind of a thing sure but if you could do both if you could have an 11 inch and then have i guess an 18 inch i

iPad for the big things. I don't know.

I don't know. That's terrible. I mean, and also Federico Vigigi was known to rip the head off of a Mac to use. He has been on a journey. And so I'm glad he feels like he's finally figured out what he's doing on a spirit quest to, to find the final form. But anyway, I'll put a link to that article at all. And one other aptly related thing before we get to his tick tock going to get banned. I saw this yesterday. Someone on social media sent it to me. Sorry. I forgot who it was and I immediately bought it. I'm a sucker for these kinds of things.

This is from the company Elevation Lab, and they have made something called the Time Capsule for AirTag. And what this is, basically an enclosure where you can take the back off an AirTag, which is typically a CR2032 battery. You take that out, and this Time Capsule mimics that battery, the 2032 battery, so the AirTag thinks it's powered.

But then you could put two double A's in this enclosure and Elevation Lab is claiming 10 year battery for the AirTag. So if you basically want a decade of AirTag tracking and never have to think about the battery for those 10 years, you can get these time capsules. You can get a two pack for $30. That's what I did. And I'm like, I want to try this. I want to see like, hey, does it still work? Like, does it really fool the AirTag into doing it? And I imagine so.

And if this, I mean, 10 years, nothing about it. Now I will say AirTag batteries are pretty great. Like I think I've only changed minds after like the two year mark. That's when I get the low battery warning. So they do last a while, but a 10 year AirTag, I don't know. Is this, is this an attractive idea to you? No, this is dumb. Okay.

No, it's a Tiki AirTag. I just feel like it's a $29 thing. You just have to double the price to use it with AA batteries and you're saying it'll last. But I just... The whole point of an AirTag is how small it is and you can just stick it into things. You want to carry that thing around your luggage? For things like your keychain, but for your check-in luggage that...

You know, the one time you don't check luggage, dude, what's wrong? Oh, not to, sorry. Carry on the carry on luggage, you know, something like that. I don't know. But I mean, if you're carrying it on, how far away from you it is ever going to be. I like this idea. I think it's brilliant. Well, I don't know if it's brilliant yet, but I got a couple. And so I'll let you know. You're starting to sound like me. It's brilliant. The best idea I've ever heard. I don't know. I'm actually going to try it. But there's also rumor that Apple's going to update AirTag next year in 2025 with an updated ultra wideband chip.

Because the latest iPhones and Apple watches actually have the ultra wideband chip like version two, but air tag is still on the first version. So there might actually be an improved air tag and you might want to wait before to see if this would actually work. But speaking of air tags, I do, I did want to just mention, I only want to mention this because this is hilarious. Um,

But Apple did finally roll out their little Find My partnership with United Airlines, and they're going to make it available to other airlines. They released that. That went live this week. And the best part about it is that I was sent the release, and I clicked on the link to read the page on United's newsroom post.

And it was page not found, which is just super ironic for a story about airtight compatibility. The page was not found. They didn't do that on purpose. Literally, they gave me the wrong link or something. Well played. But I do think Apple is...

I would not be surprised if we do see some more AirTag advance. That to me is a rumor that makes more sense. Yeah, and the AirTag was announced three, four years ago. Yeah, and I don't think there's a lot you need to do to it. And I think the concept of make the battery user replaceable, probably the right choice. Yeah, absolutely. Right?

because the only other way you could do it to make that thing useful is to make it rechargeable like usbc but that just dramatically changes the the form factor of what you could have and i have some find my devices like from esr that are rechargeable but it uses this weird like contact based recharging thing instead of usbc and like i don't want to keep track of a different charger you know like just right now i don't want to do that right all right one last uh story before we have some exciting stuff we're going to talk about

The short form social apocalypse and my Apple tier list.

But we are getting closer to possibly seeing TikTok get banned here in the U.S. There's an impending ban. Supposedly on Friday, January 10th, there's going to be one last time where TikTok can appeal to the Supreme Court to stay the ban further. But if not, it's looking like it might be happening. And again, we kind of go through these waves where like last year, it seemed to get very close. Again, it seems like it might get banned.

Here's my question to you, Jason, because I was asked this by a group of people the other day. They were like, is TikTok really going to get banned here in the US? I was like, okay, well, what does it mean if it gets banned? It means Apple and Google will have to remove it from its app stores. So you won't be able to download it if you didn't already have it. If you already have the app downloaded, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's probably still going to work. Like the app is not going to be removed from your device. Well, those two things are not the same. Right, I know, yeah.

I don't think it will work. You don't think it will work? Because ISPs will not be allowed to...

host the services that are associated with that. So you may have a dead shell app on your thing. And if you had cached video and stuff, it should continue to work. But like the ban is not on TikTok, the app existing in the United States. It's the onus is on the app stores and the service providers who are doing that. And they're basically saying, you can't have this app on there anymore. Well, here's my theory. If it does go through...

I think the United States teenage population will become immediately familiar with VPN apps. Like, like many countries already do like places where certain apps are banned or services are banned and people quickly learn about VPN apps and being able to obfuscate where they appear from and in what countries I think that will happen.

I do think TikTok will lose some momentum if this does go through because there will be a segment of users that just don't want to deal with that and don't want to like figure it out. But, and I've seen all the creators like already kind of bemoaning this because they've built one entire big platform on a single app, namely TikTok.

I see a lot of TikTok creators try to move that audience off to other platforms like YouTube for monetization and just more stability. And typically it is harder to move that audience because they're on TikTok and they don't really care to like go to YouTube and subscribe to your channel. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see, but it's getting close. Do you think this is going to happen? So I think that the... Okay.

I think the most likely scenario is that the Supreme Court delays the implementation so that it has enough time to consider things. But I don't think that the Supreme Court is going to... I don't think it's going to outweigh the... Okay, the argument that TikTok has been... I'm sorry. This is multi-layered. This is an onion that we have to peel back without crying.

The TikTok is trying to argue that banning this is an infringement on the First Amendment rights, not of TikTok, but of the people who use the platform. That argument is not going to go anywhere because they can just make their they can just publish their content in other places.

So you're not restricting their First Amendment rights. No one has a First Amendment right to use TikTok. The government just can't punish you for saying things on TikTok. Those are two very different things. And again, I'm not an attorney, but this doesn't seem complicated to me. So that's one piece of it. I don't think that that will outweigh the national security implications because the Sixth Circuit, I can't remember which court of appeals,

essentially upheld the law because they are saying that Congress using its discretion considered the national security implications and decided that it was a threat. And that's why they passed this law. And the court should not be over, like shouldn't is not in a position to second guess whether or not those reasons were legitimate, that they should defer to Congress to say, you all are the ones who have the information and you're the ones that make the argument and to make these decisions. So,

So I don't think that that's going to happen. I think it's possible that it could get delayed. And if that happens, I think it's possible that either the law could get repealed because President Trump has decided that TikTok is what helped get him elected this time, which is weird because last time it was what helped the other guy get elected. It's very fluid. It's a very fluid situation. So I think it's possible that if the Supreme Court does stay this, that Congress might

act differently to, to reverse it. I think, I mean, the most logical situation is like sell this thing to Walmart. Like, I mean, so seriously, they would buy it. They would buy it in a heartbeat. They get all that Vizio ad stuff. Listen, Walmart would buy this. Like, just tell us a dollar amount. We'll write you a check. Like,

In a heartbeat that they would because it is literally like the home shopping network. That's what TikTok is now. And so they would absolutely buy it. I feel like ByteDance, the owners of TikTok, they're not going to do that. No, they absolutely don't want to. That's what they're saying. But this is sort of like, you know how every, well, what's about to happen right now, how every time when they're like, we have to raise the debt limit or like the world will end or whatever. And there's like some compromise that can be made, but no one's willing to compromise because they're just trying to, like they're making a bluff.

I don't know if ByteDance is bluffing or not here, if they really are refusing to sell or if they've had some. I feel like they've had conversations with Walmart or Amazon. Those are the two most obvious people. Or possibly Microsoft because Microsoft apparently will buy any feral social network that's available on the market. And they almost tried to do it before. Literally, they tried to get them to buy it before. Satya Nadella has already said it was the weirdest three days of his life. That was before Sam Altman got fired and rehired in a week. Oh, my goodness.

Anyway, so I just think like, I think that it will not disappear on the 19th. I think that it's likely that the Supreme Court will stay. Now, if the Supreme Court is like, nope, like they issue, they refuse to issue an injunction on it. I think things get really interesting and I think it will get turned off for a while. Interesting. Okay. Well, we'll see early next year. I'm thankful I did not build my platform on TikTok. That's all I'm saying. And I want to say this.

I am somewhat sympathetic to, I don't use TikTok. I mean, I'm aware of what it is, right? But Instagram Reels gives me more than enough of that, right? So I understand TikTok. I understand that people use it for search. I get all of that. I'm not, but I do think like,

If you, I don't know that it's a compelling argument. No, it's just, it's not a compelling argument that we can't close this thing down because creators have built their entire businesses on it. Think about like, that's not the, there have been times when it's like, we need to build a

minor league baseball stadium. So we're going to raise all these buildings and the small business owners who have all the shops in those buildings are like, Hey, but you're taking away our livelihood and they get compensated for it. But they literally invested in a physical infrastructure and hiring employees. If your entire business is, I stand in front of a mirror with a video with an iPhone and I do a dance and I publish it and I get 3 million likes. And so brands come along and want to pay me to make other videos. I feel like

you'll be fine you should be able to find something else to do with your time don't you think like i don't think that's a compelling argument i mean you're a creator you are on youtube i understand you have a different perspective i am more sympathetic to the creators because while they might not have invested money in a physical brick and mortar location they have invested years of their lives making content for a platform that promised monetization and opportunity like yeah not only did brand deals come along but tick

TikTok, even though this is like a joke that TikTok creator fund and monetization is not good and doesn't pay very much. There was the promise that you could build a platform here and sustain yourself as an individual creator. And I'm on TikTok. I do enjoy watching it. There's a lot of funny stuff on there. I save funny TikToks to show to my kids and I find more content that I would enjoy on TikTok than Instagram reels and Facebook reels and even YouTube shorts.

So I do think there is a value there. And it is a shame because I do think there are creators. I think of Straw Hat Goofy. He's a movie reviewer.

And he is one of the creators where he built a platform on TikTok. I think he's got like 3 million followers. But that did translate to where he's now invited to movie premieres and comic cons and he's speaking at events. And so for him specifically, he was able to translate that, I think, into more of a long term career move because now like he's at the red carpet, like he's he's now kind of crossed into he's outside of the bubble of

of the social media platform. But there's other creators. I think of the guy, he talks about like historical events, but like he basically acts them out in dramatic ways. And it's very compelling and he's really entertaining. And he's like, he's, you know, sharing history in an interesting way. And he has not crossed over because by the nature of his content, there's not really a place for him to go except to try to go to YouTube or Instagram or whatever. And so if TikTok were to shut down, like,

a creator like that, and there's probably thousands, tens of thousands, that would not have a sustainable work, basically. And so I'm sympathetic to that. I also think it is just more proof that, and we're going to talk about algorithmic platforms in a moment, that if you base your business on one of these platforms, you cannot depend on it long term.

Like even YouTube, where I feel like is probably the most stable of the platforms, at least for me, it is the most consistent monetarily, the most consistent in audience, where I know that if I do the right things according to the algorithm, I will get people to watch the content, is the most predictable. I still don't feel like I'm going to trust it for the next 10 years. Like I don't know what it means. So I do think...

Maybe this will be a rude awakening for a lot of creators, but you do have to think about where can I...

What other place can I have on the internet? We talked about this last week. Is it a website? Is it a newsletter? Can I have another part of my platform that is owned by me and not an algorithmic? And I'm not beholden to this algorithmic platform where if the app goes away or if the algorithm changes, all of a sudden I don't have an audience. And that is, I mean, you have a few choices. The email newsletter list,

Podcast is kind of in one of them, although it's a little more like nebulous. It's not like I have an email list of people I can just contact everyone who listens to this podcast directly, but it's less algorithmically driven. People who visit your website every day, which is things like what The Verge is basically banking on, but also a subscription base there, or membership communities like Patreon or Circle like we have for this, which is social.primarytech.fm.

Um, so I do think creators are going to have to, especially on Tik TOK, like again, start thinking about that, but it's hard to move him and a platform like Tik TOK. If you mention the word YouTube, or if you say, go to my Instagram or go to my website, um,

Every creator already knows like TikTok is going to derank that video and not show it to a huge swath of your audience, even if you have millions of followers. So you are at the disadvantage of like, I, especially TikTok, I can't mention these other places for people to find me because then TikTok won't show that video to anyone. But I have to do that in order to sustain my creator focused business. And so I am sympathetic to TikTok creators in that sense.

that they've kind of had their hands tied in a certain way. And I'm thankful that a platform like YouTube, they will let me put links in the video description and call it out and not, like, the algorithm's not going to shove that video in a closet. Like, it will still be seen by thousands of people. So...

That's how I feel. Okay. Counterpoint. I'm not sympathetic at all. If you build your business on someone else's platform, you have to play by their rules and you can't complain about it because you chose. I don't mean you personally, but I'm not like, think about that. You just said, TikTok is a terrible place to try to build an audience because it's not your audience. So I'm sympathetic to the people who have decided that they're going to monetize their inability to build their own audience. Like that just seems like super bad business to me. I understand. But also like,

For again, let's say you were on TikTok and for the first year you grew an audience and your videos that mention your email list gets shown to your followers. And then they change the algorithm on the backend that you have no control over. And it's like, there was a,

Now that there was a promise, but that there was an expectation that it worked this way for a year or two. And now it suddenly changed without notice or warning. It's like, isn't that? Yeah. Why would you want to put all of your eggs in that basket where they could just change it? So like, I'm just saying that's a terrible, like as a rational person, that's not a great place to build your entire business.

The other thing I was going to say though, is that none of that's an argument for the government shouldn't ban it. No. That would be like saying, that would be like saying, listen, I spent five years trying

peddling weed for this guy and suddenly the government's gonna come along and throw him in jail. You can't throw him in jail. I built a business on this. If the government is, and I'm not suggesting that people who are using TikTok are doing something illegal, but what I'm trying to say is like, if the government decides this is a national security threat, the argument can't be yes, but people who built their business on that platform will lose their ability, especially because like you can just do that on Instagram, right?

That, see, that is what I'm not sure is right, because you would think, you would think, but as a creator who is on multiple platforms, it is different.

Like you can post the same exact video on TikTok, Instagram reels and YouTube shorts, and it will perform differently. Not just because of the algorithm, but the audience is actually different. You said it yourself. Sure. Don't use TikTok, but you do use Instagram reels. So that TikTok creator who built an audience on TikTok, their videos, like you're probably not going to care for them because they're not geared toward Instagram reels because that audience is different. Sure.

Just like if someone's gets Facebook real views, that's definitely a different audience than the one on Tik TOK. So it is not the same as like, I can just do the same thing on a different platform. I dare say it is different. Just like my long form YouTube videos. I could post those somewhere else, even like Tik TOK or whatever, or Instagram. I think you do like 10 minute videos, but they're not going to perform the same there because it's not made for that platform and that audience.

So I do think it's not like just copy paste. It is a different you would have to become a different kind of creator. So I'm not saying this has anything to do with the government or the ban, but only that that is why I'm sympathetic towards the creators who now kind of have to figure out what to do.

And I don't think it's wholly that they made a bad decision to build an audience on TikTok. Maybe it was, they should have like, you know, had contingencies or redundancies, but yeah. Well, to be clear, I don't think they made a bad decision. I think they made an uninformed decision because most of the, and this is not a, this is not an insult to, to anyone who is a creator on any of the platforms, but most of them did not start out thinking that,

How could I create a business plan that would allow me to make a lot of money by making videos? They just started making videos, attracted an audience, and then realized that it was a thing that they could monetize. So it does make sense to me that it wasn't really a super thought out, super whatever. I get that. Then you get to the point where you're like, wait a minute, I don't actually have full control over my audience. I really should be able to...

port this audience somewhere else, but I can't do that because of the platform restrictions. And you're so invested in it at that point that it does make it very difficult. All I'm saying is that looking at it from the outside, objectively, um,

All of the fact that it's so difficult means like maybe that's not the best place to be building a long-term business. I don't know what the career lifespan of somebody on TikTok is anyway. There's no way to know because it's so new. Right. So the last thing I'll say, I do think if you were a creator on a platform like TikTok, you do have to kind of shift your mindset. Not that you're a TikTok creator, but that what is it that you are actually doing that is of value to your audience? Right.

Are you entertaining people? Are you informing people? Are you inspiring people? Like what is the thing that you are doing in your videos? And then you do have to think, how can I translate that to a different form factor? Whether that is longer form videos on YouTube where you might have to shift how you create your content or the style, but what you're good at and what you do is translatable like to your argument. Like you can't, if you succeeded on Tik TOK,

and you have a million followers, you do have the ability to succeed somewhere else.

You just might have to translate the end product a little bit to actually tailor it to the platform. But that's also the game of now being a content creator, what works on different platforms. See, I knew we would have no problem having a full length episode today, Jason, because the people like the deep dive. This is a deep dive. This was a deep dive. All right. Well, we're going to have another deep dive. I want Jason to tell me where I was wrong for the Apple tier list of 2024. And we're already talking about our short form social apocalypse. And so we're going to get to that too.

But before we do, we want to thank two good friends. The first is the Data Citizens Dialogues podcast. This is an incredible show talking about data and security from just with fascinating interviews. It's an listen data and how we use it's an ever shifting landscape. And as a listener of this show, Primary Technology, you understand how important it is to stay informed and up to date. That's why you need to listen to Data Citizens Dialogues podcast today.

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And so if you like deep dives, like from this show, this is another show to get into. One of the last episodes that I heard Ruben Messin was talking about data decentralization and how you can make it accessible in more places to more people, but still maintaining security and privacy, which is a tough challenge for any company and brand. That's a fascinating conversation. Highly recommend.

So be part of the data conversation and start listening to the Data Citizens Dialogues podcast today. You can follow Data Citizens Dialogues on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcast. And that link is in the show notes as well. Thanks to Data Citizens Dialogues for sponsoring this episode and our good friends at HelloFresh. Every time I load this website, my eye just snaps to that everything bagel.

with cream cheese because I'm from New York, Jason, and I know what snow is. Okay. That's, that's why I go over there, but hello fresh. It's America's number one meal kit. Skip the trips to the grocery store. Listen, it's the holidays. Grocery stores are insane right now. You literally get into a fist fight just trying to get a pie crust or some vanilla extract or whatever. No, you don't have to deal with that. Count on hello fresh to make home cooking easy, fun and affordable.

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Typically I struggle to cut an onion. Jason knows we talked about this on the movies on side podcast, but hello fresh. I feel empowered. Like I can actually cook a meal and it's wonderful. Jason has been, he cooked several meals. What was the burger that you enjoyed? It's like a bourbon bacon cheddar burger. It sounds so good. Burgers, tacos, home cooked meals for the whole family. You can do it all with hello fresh. So get 10 free meals at hello, fresh.com slash free primary.com.

that applies across seven boxes. New subscribers only varies by plan, but that's 10 free HelloFresh meals. Just go to HelloFresh.com slash free primary and HelloFresh is America's number one meal kit. Thanks to HelloFresh for sponsoring this episode. Well, let's continue our death of the social media algorithms and platforms. I'm just going to throw this in here. This is such a happy pre-Christmas episode. We're going to get to the Apple tier list. Don't you worry. I,

I wanted to just include this New York times video. I thought it was pretty interesting talking about how all the algorithms across social media feels like there's just a sameness of content, which if you just follow the biggest names, the biggest accounts, it does feel like there's a, you know, a sameness as you look across the landscape. And this video, I think thankfully is encouraging people to find like smaller outlets, independent shows like primary technology. We are an independent show. We're not part of any network.

We don't have any person telling us what to do. I don't think. I mean, Steven tells me what to do because he just writes it in that order. And we talk about it. I just put links in a doc. Anyway, but it was an interesting video. But talking about the sameness in algorithm.

Now, like right now on my computer, we've talked about this problem before. I have all the social media and apps open. I got Blue Sky over here. I got Threads. I got Mastodon. I cross-post to all these things. I use the Croissant app. It is, I feel, not sustainable. I think we are in a short-form socialpocalypse. I just can't imagine this lasting. Now, the Fediverse and, what is it, ActivityPub is the other framework that supposedly will democratize social media where you can post things

where you want and then everybody else on the internet could supposedly follow where they want.

I am less and less optimistic because I feel like we're just getting, I don't know, farther and farther away from that dream. But Threads over here is supposedly doing well. This was Zuck a couple days ago saying, Threads' strong momentum continues. Now 300 plus million active users monthly and 100 million plus daily active users. But Jason was very mad at this statistic because it's like,

you can find threads post anywhere you open your microwave what there's a thread post in yeah you start your car well no what there is is there's an instagram post yes there's a thread post that looks like an instagram post in your microwave it's like they're just blatantly like yeah i mean like listen i get it they bootstrap the whole thing on the instagram social graft that was brilliant i understand but now it's like they're like this was the this was for me the um the the

Straw that broke Threads' back or whatever. Sure. Where I am now in my little Instagram notifications getting Threads posts. Like, you know, you get the little, you get the little, uh,

red badge on the heart telling you like, Oh, someone followed you or someone replied or someone liked your thing. Nope. Just here's a threads post from someone I don't know. And I do not follow that you might be interested in. It was one thing when they were putting them in the feed. Okay. Like that to me was garbage. I hated it. I hated it. I hated it. Now they're trying to stuff them into your notifications. And I think, I think it may have been on the verge. I don't know for sure. It may have been on, um, either, uh,

no, not decoder. It could have been on dithering or it could have been on sharp tech. I listened to a lot of podcasts. I don't remember who said it, but a hundred percent agree. The problem is, and this is especially true at meta. The, it, it was definitely Ben Thompson. And it's a, I'm narrowing down the podcast. It could be on. He's like, I don't use Facebook anymore. And the reason is they started shoving everything into the notifications. So I eventually, I just turned off notifications, which meant I never opened the app anymore. Yeah.

And so that is becoming the case with Instagram and with threads. And the problem is that someone's, you know, KPI is engagement through notification sent. And so they just keep turning that knob up and now they're turning it up for threads. And it tells you how scared they are of like blue sky, which is ridiculously small. And by comparison, but they're like, Nope, maybe not scared, but they're like trying to cut it off before it could become any kind of competitor. And I just, but I feel like,

You hate your users. You don't think of them as people using a service. You see them as numbers. Oh, yeah.

that eventually you're going to monetize and you want to make sure that they don't slip out or leak to something else. And so you're doing, I'm going to write about this. You got to write. It's not going to make a difference. No one cares. So after Zuck posted that two days ago, Hank Green, big YouTuber creator said, honest question to seeing a threads post on your Instagram feed count as a daily active user. I've seen fishier things in this world. Like when Google counted YouTube as Google plus usage,

I remember Google Plus. I'm old enough. Yeah. And Mark Zuckerberg replied to him, said, no, you have to tap on the post and open threads while logged in to be counted as a daily active user. But to your point, oh, and look, there's Nate Corby, listener of the show. But this is to your point, like, yes, Meta is trying to get people to click on these threads in Instagram. So they go over to the threads app and they count as a daily active user. And it's basically Meta leveraging that.

their Instagram base, which is huge. I mean, Instagram is what the second biggest social media network in the world after Facebook, which is all meta, all the same. And so they're just trying to leverage that to keep threads growing. And you can tell, like you're saying, I do think Zuck and Mosseri and Meta are a little concerned about blue sky because they are like threads is trying to basically match blue sky shot for shot as blue sky launches features.

And so like, if you follow Mosseri on threads, who's the Instagram CEO, but Megan means he's also over threads, a weird conflation of like, what is, what is what? And technically he's not the CEO. He's just the head because they, they only give the CEO title to people who actually founded the businesses that they buy. That's right. Right. That's right. Not see. It's true. Like that's for real. Unlike Microsoft that has 72 CEOs. And like, there was basically a lull in like threads feature launches, I would say, uh,

until Blue Sky really started ramping up after the election. And now Mosseri's like, you could soon be able to use an image from another post without even quoting it or reposting it. Like, well, that's weird. You'll be able to schedule threads posts. That was a day before he's bragging about the active users. Oh, and guess what? We're going to find a way where you can do a collection of profiles and then follow everyone in that collection, which is...

exactly how blue sky starter packs for blue sky which is exactly also you can set your default feed that you see when you log in if you're part of the test yeah so you could just you could just tell that like they're they want to make sure you don't have a feature reason to go to blue sky like if there's a feature you like on blue sky whether it's starter packs or scheduling posts or whatever that threads will have it we'll have to see because it is annoying still to me like as a creator you

if I want to post a link to my YouTube video, blue sky, I can post the link in the regular, like just in the post. And it's not going to be shown to less people or less followers because I put a link, but on threads, right? If I put a link in a post, it's going to be seen by less people. And so I started doing a little experiment recently where I do the thing. I didn't want to do this, or I just post with my thumbnail, no link. And then I put the link in the reply. And sure enough, yes, it gets way more engagement. It gets way more views.

And it's annoying that like you have to game the system because threads doesn't want you to leave the platform. So that I like blue sky, but also there's just not the user base just yet. Also, the question is how much engagement did the actual link post get? Probably almost zero. There was one video recently where it was actually like threads actually showed up in the YouTube analytics as a source, nowhere near a main. So it was like single digit percentage source.

Oh, it was the shortcuts video I posted recently, four days ago.

where it actually has like 147 likes for the threads post and that link actually got a little more traction which never before had a link got traction if i put it in the actual first threads post when i mentioned the video so negligible yes but it is a noticeable difference uh which is just annoying because that the algorithm just deprioritizes that so anyway it's social apocalypse it is terrible i want you to read this terrible i want you to tell me where i'm wrong jason

I did a video. Oh, this is your tier list. Hold on. I have to open a link to a YouTube video. So I'm showing you, I'm showing you the tier list right here. Cause it's going to probably like blast. No, no, no. I got a tier list right here. I'll put a link to the, put a link to this video in the show notes. This was my tier list, which basic Apple guy actually designed this and then he made it downloadable. So anybody can go to basic Apple guy.com and just do your own tier list. So I did, I did the tier list. I ranked all the things, the operating system updates, the,

The hardware releases. And there's a lot of devices we could talk about, but I want to see if you would have rated anything differently, especially the one device I gave an F, which was the AirPods Max update. I don't think that actually qualifies as even being on here, but if you're going to put it on here, it should get an F. That's what I said. I was like, I don't even know this is a new product, but it gets an F either way. Like, yeah.

I think you rated Apple intelligence too high. I think Apple intelligence is, I gave it a C for the record. It's too high. I don't know if it'd be an F, but maybe a D, but I feel like if, if iPad was 18 is a DC, I would put that as like a C because it's like, whatever it's there. It's calculated. Yeah.

But it didn't get worse. It didn't get worse. What would you have rated iPadOS 17? It's not worse than that. They didn't break a bunch of stuff. They just forgot about it and it just released. It's just there. So I don't think that's a problem. But I feel like

Yeah, the AirPods Max, what are they even doing? But I think Apple Intelligence is at best a D because the only good thing about it is the chat GPT integration. It's like your best feature is someone else's feature. And I can do it easier if I just open their app. So that to me, and it just, I think the Genmoji are fine.

I'm never going to use it. Image Playgrounds is just a horror show. It's just weird. The writing tools, I think the writing tools could be interesting for people. First of all, the suggested responses in text messages, ridiculous. Like,

I would never respond that way. It's like my son will send me a message saying I just got home and the suggested response is like, great exclamation point. Glad to hear it. I'm like in my life, I've never sent that. Like, why do you not read my text messages and just know that my response is going to be like, okay, or thumbs up or whatever. Like, I don't even understand that. So, and also Steven, I don't know if you saw this.

But I've been on this thing about the notification summaries because I feel like they're just terrible. And recently, the worst possible notification summary that you could send a parent showed up on my phone. It said...

I don't know if you can even read that. Someone injured himself. Substitute needed for second game. Invasion at school. Now, I'm sorry. There should be like a hard filter that says you don't send a parent a message that says invasion at school.

And then there was the follow-up. So I did notice that as new messages come in, it'll update the summary and it'll even update parts that were previously like summarized. It like, it takes it into some context. So this is the one I got like the next day. Invasion left container and treats were left behind. So I'm like,

I posted about this. I'm like, so it's like the purge, except for instead of killing your family, they bring you baked goods. Like what are these now? Just so you know, what it was summarizing was someone left an Invisalign at an event. Oh my goodness. And it summarized that. And it didn't just summarize the message. It actually, it actually summarized the word Invisalign into invasion. It's like, you can't do that. You should not be changing. Very different things.

Yes. And so I'm like, this is not good. Now, whatever. Maybe for text threads, it should not be on. For the news stuff, it's fine because if you've got five news articles and it's like, you know, South Korean president has been impeached and this has happened and this has happened. So I think Apple Intelligence should be a D at best. The rest of them are fine. I do agree. The M4 iPad Pro is definitely S tier. I can't like think of anything else that would be S tier. I think that the... Let me ask you this. So...

I think you're right. I did have a couple of comments on that video. Apple intelligence, probably to be a D Apple vision pro. I put it as, as a C tier. Do you agree or disagree? Yeah. If we had been doing this together, which would have been fun, but we didn't. So that would have been a good idea. Um, I, I would have probably taken it at either B or C. Okay. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah, I think I don't struggle with the fact that there's not as much content because that's not really how I use it. Right. And this is the guy who uses it almost every day. Not me. Except for when I'm on a plane. So so I think I'm still more bullish on it than the typical person, I think. But I should say this. Anyone who paid for the Vision Pro probably ranks it a C. I am still using a review unit. Yeah.

So my perspective is clouded a little bit. I get way more utility value out of it than what I paid for it because I paid zero. Right. Okay. Well, anything else that you hardly... I was trying to think of anything else that should have been an S tier. I do think maybe the M4 MacBook Pro, the base model, is deserving. It is probably the best base model MacBook Pro that they've ever released. It's got the 16 gigs of memory and that M4 is like...

ridiculous i don't know m4 imac is it an a tier i don't know it's the same i don't know maybe well it's it's one of the first newer imacs that i have i have a review unit of that and it's actually been great it's like a family computer my kids have been like on it my son started doing logic pro on it it's it's a great family computer if they had made it so that

You don't have the Mac mini on here. It's a mass tier. No, it's not. That's the Mac. Wait, am I looking at the wrong? Oh, I'm looking at, I'm sorry. You got to, I was looking at, I was looking at a version of it that apparently didn't. Okay. Yeah. I would definitely put the Mac mini, but I was going to say, I think the M four I Mac is probably a B had they made an M four pro version of it. Then I probably would have put it in a, that would have been nice. Yeah. That would be nice. But so there you go. Okay. Yeah. I agree with your S tier for sure. Okay. Okay. Very good. Very good.

And yeah, the AirPods Max. What are you doing? Anyway, last thing I want to say, Jason, I don't know if you saw my recent Threads post, speaking of adpocalypse, although I put it on all the social media networks because I did. Your posts are everywhere. I did. It's ridiculous. My latest speed test, I upgraded my internet yet again, and now I'm getting over three gigs on...

Ethernet down and up on my Mac studio. That's right. Look at that. And I'm, uh, I'm going to do a video on this. I think.

Because the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro have Wi-Fi 7. I don't know if you know that. I heard someone tell me. I guess the guy on a podcast told me that. That's right. I have a Wi-Fi 7 router. I swapped out one of my UniFi access points. I'm getting over a gig over Wi-Fi. So I don't know what I'm going to do with it, but I got it. Literally nothing. But I got it. Very fast. You're going to do nothing. I want to tell our listeners, though, this is a pro tip for you. It's

Steven's running this speed test in this video. If you are on a device and you have metered data in any way, never, ever run a speed test.

Because that thing uses up a lot of your data. Oh, yeah. Like for like I did it on a review unit one time and I just popped in a prepaid like T-Mobile thing or whatever. They had like 30 gigs for 30 days. It's like 1.7 gigs used just for speed test. I'm like, I ran one test.

for like 13 seconds and it used a 1.7 i'm like where's all that data go is it on the phone so like what is it sending me yeah anyway don't do that if you have metered data because it uses a whole lot hopefully i don't i don't know frontier gonna eventually cap me no no i mean if you're on your home wi-fi you're fine i'm talking about like if you're on a cellular plan somewhere where you only get a certain amount of like yeah data each month but anyway so yeah i i don't know why you are so fascinated with

Listen, I will say, because a lot of people are like, well, you're still, you know, depending on what the CDN speed is for the website you're trying to access or use. All I know is I upload YouTube videos almost every day.

And those things upload fast. And whenever I'm not home and I have to upload a 4K YouTube video that's 10 gigs, it is a problem. But I mean, CounterPoint, I'm out here in my office, which we all know is like 30 yards from the house. Uphill both ways. And when we get done recording, what did you say? Uphill both ways.

When we get done recording, I move my Audio Hijack file, former sponsor of the show. They didn't sponsor it. Not this episode. No, former sponsor of the show. But I really do use them. And I move it into Dropbox. And by the time I get to the back door, it's already uploaded. It's like a 1.5 gig file. Audio is fine. I'm just saying video.

It's been, I know I'm saying the size of the fight, it's a 1.5 file and it takes me like a 30 yard walk to upload so that you can get it. So I'm just saying like, I not only have, I only have a measly one gig, but,

you know both ways so anyway I enjoy my fast speed even if just to run a speed test and just admire it and I'm only using and that's your wired speed isn't it I'm running Stephen doesn't want to know this but I'm actually running a speed test right now while we're recording and I have 780 up and down on Wi-Fi yeah that's great that's

That's the Google, that's the Google. And I'm 30 yards from the house. But the wifi, do you have a wifi router in the, yeah, I was going to say, it's not going through walls or something. Remember I buried an ethernet cable in my backyard. That's right. I need to do that actually. I know there's a lot of smart people that listen to our show and I'm, I'm trying to get internet to a barn that we have out in the backyard. I'm trying to figure out the most economical, but also reliable way to do that.

Yes, I could run an Ethernet cable and bury it, but it would be very, very long and it'd be very laborious. It's not hard though. I understand that, but I also would, I would need to find out where in, like you have to go in the attic. Someone has to go up there, punch it through. Or I also know this is going to have, someone's got to go in the attic either way, but ubiquity makes the point to point microwave things where you can like put it on the one side and then, you know, it

You know? You're not going to do that, Stephen. Why not? You want to know why? Because they're limited to like 100 megabytes. Like, there's no way you're going to do that. They got them now where they're doing like 60 hertz or 60 gig. I don't know. It's not going to. You're not going to do that. You'd spend $700 on that. Plus, you have to have a Ubiquiti server point or something inside to connect it to.

you you're gonna spend like what 1400 bucks on all of this stuff you're gonna put it up you're gonna run one speed test in the barn and be like no this cannot stand and then you're gonna end up burying an ethernet cable anyway which is actually the easiest possible thing to bury because you only have to bury it four inches deep yes they probably tell you you should bury it deeper but it doesn't interfere with anything and as long as you're not gonna like bury it deep enough to not mow over like you know what i mean like it's it'll be fine

All right. Well, if this is really the best way to do it, the listeners, you can let me know. If anybody does microwave point to point on the building. How far are the two buildings apart? It's like...

120 feet maybe. Yeah, you don't want to do the mic. I mean, I almost did that because I don't, I'm not as upset. I think it's a good solution. I just think that you're going to end up ripping it out because you're like, no. It's not for me to use. It's for my kids and whoever else is in the barn to be able to just get text messages because the barn like is metal and so the cell service doesn't even get through. There's like no internet. So anyway, all right. Well, let me know listeners. Also, I forgot what I was thinking when I said at the beginning to let us know what,

I forgot what it was. Anyway, leave us a five-star rating and review. You all remember because you've already heard it. You've heard it. So leave us a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. And also, if you want to support the show, $5 a month, all we need is 1,000 of you for the entire next year. We can get an immersive, well, one immersive, yeah, two immersive cameras. And you can watch us on Apple Vision Pro. No, we're not going to do that. But we would appreciate your support of the show, either by the rating or you can listen to all of our bonus episodes and get an ad-free version if you support us on Apple Podcasts or

If you want all the chapters and the good stuff, the best way to support us is to go to primarytech.fm and click bonus episodes and you can support us there. Now we're going to record a bonus episode that we have not talked about yet. I actually have no idea what we're going to talk about. You're going to know what it is because it's already in the feed. We're going to record that bonus episode. And thank you for listening. Thank you for watching. Oh, and also, just so you know, next week,

Normal episode. It's going to be our big year in review. Jason and I, we used to do that annually, so we're going to do it again. That's going to be next week. We'll come out on Thursday. And the week after, January 2nd, we're going to have a normal episode, too. We're just going for it. We're here for you during the holiday. We're doing it. That's our tagline. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. Catch you next time.