AirPods with Camera: Bad Idea? Claude Watermarking Explained, AI Slop Fight Intensifies

Welcome and College Drop-off

0:00No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. Apple apparently leaked their own stuff, including AirPods with a camera and a demo video. We're going to get into that, plus the Claude watermarking, more details and some personal experiences. Disney is suing the FCC, saying we're not going to take it. Robin Williams' family had to reactivate his Instagram account to fight AI-generated video and more. This episode is brought to you by Claude and you, the members who support us directly.

0:30I'm one of your hosts, Stephen Robles, and joined by my friend, Jason Aiton. How's it going, Jason? It's been a very disorienting week, Stephen, but I'm here. This is literally the only normal thing on my schedule this week, and we started like however many minutes late anyway. Well, I'm glad this show could be the rock in your week. I mean, can you tell our listeners what's been disorienting? Oh, yeah, we moved our daughter to college. If you follow me on socials, you already knew that, but our oldest daughter moved into her dorm on Tuesday.

1:01She had to go early because she's a soccer player. All right. Well, congratulations, first of all. Thank you. That's what you're saying, right? I mean, my condolences. Yeah, I think congratulations. You've gotten that one out of the house. We've launched that little bird out of the nest. Wild. So far, it seems like she can fly. You'll see. Remains to be seen. She's not falling out of the sky yet. Now, speaking of college, it's today's quote, no matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world. Any idea what movie that is from? Well, I was thinking it was probably going to be a Robin Williams quote. That's right. You're on the right track.

1:32It's definitely not Patch Adams. No, it's not. It's definitely not Mork and Mindy. Or Mrs. Doubtfire. It's not Mrs. Doubtfire. Or Jumanji. Or Jumanji. It's not any of those. Man, I've seen a lot of Robin Williams movies. But I think it's probably one of his early ones. I think it's Dead Poets Society. Bingo. You nailed it. I actually just saw it recently, a couple months ago. Like for the first time? For the first time. Okay. Yeah, yeah. I always, you know, you know the scenes. My captain, my captain. Yeah. You see him standing on the desk. But I actually watched the movie a few months ago. And so we're going to talk about Robin Williams later and AI-generated stuff.

2:05I want to do a couple five-star review shoutouts. Hog fan and cowboy fan. That's his entire username from the USA. He says, we rock. Thank you for that. And JP, the WSG from the USA. He enjoys the show and also enjoys our interactions. Thanks, Jason, for being that other guy. So there you go. There you go. Named you and called you by your other guy. Yeah. Pseudonym. So very cool. We talked about weird chairs in the pre-show. And so the first link you'll see in the show notes is a weird chair. But I'm not going to spoil it. And so if you want to hear that, if you're a member, you can listen to the unedited feed.

2:36And if you're not, you can become a member. Support the show for $2.50 a month or $25 a year. And you can hear what in the world this is. I just wanted to point that out. It's the Hag Capisco. And we talk about that in the pre-show. You only sit in it once because you'll never be able to get up. It's going to kill you. You will injure yourself no matter what when you sit in that chair.

Apple Leaks and AirPods with Cameras

2:57Let's talk about some Apple news real quick because a bunch of leaks happened. Mac OS 27 Beta 6. Well, this is not a leak. This is the window buttons. A lot of Mac traditionalists are very happy about the stoplight redesign in the latest beta. Mac OS 27 Beta 6. They have a little more volume, 3D-ness to them. They look more like what they used to, like aqua buttons, and people are very happy. Do you have strong feelings about the stoplight buttons, Jason? No, but I'm glad you explained it that way because I couldn't tell when I was on the 512 Pixel site

3:34if Stephen Hackett was happy about them or not, to be honest. Most people seem to be happy about them. This is what the last beta 5 looked like. They were kind of flat, and beta 6 gives it a little more, you know, a little more 3D-ness to it. And so people are very happy about that. People have strong feelings about the Mac OS design, you know. Yeah. So there's that. But also the leaks. Apple apparently leaked its own stuff. And so this was a video uncovered by Aaron P613, but Aaron at MacRumors.

4:06And in the article, you can see the video. Apparently this was embedded in the release candidate for 26.7, and it's a man with AirPods, seemingly AirPods Pro, holding up a book. And there's a voiceover throughout the video, sounds like the voice assistant on Apple devices, saying, just say, remember this, and we can add this, whatever, to presumably notes or reminders or something. And that the implication is the AirPods can see the book that the person is holding.

4:38And so this was long been rumored journalist Mark Gurman, who's actually on the latest Cortex episode with Mike Hurley. Listen to that. But this is the long rumored AirPods with maybe a camera, but not one for taking photos and video, just being able to see the world around you. And so that video came out, seemingly confirming this rumor. But then Mark Gurman was like, but it's not this year. These are actually coming still in 2027, even though that demo video leaked. This is not coming this fall. And so we'll have to see whether it's we have to wait or not.

5:08But yeah, AirPods that see stuff. That's a thing. I don't. Do you think that's a good idea? I know we've talked about it. I if I don't know how Apple is going to square the circle of saying these AirPods can see the world around you, but they don't have cameras or cameras that take photos and videos. I'm not sure how they're going to be able to square that with people. People have strong feelings about the metaglasses. And it's I don't know how it's not going to feel like that. But it's also going to cause all sorts of social problems.

5:42You're going to walk into like a building and people are going to make you have to take those out, man. You cannot wear those here. Your kids are going to be in class. I guess kids probably shouldn't be wearing AirPods in class anyway. Sure. But like I had this whole. Did you see my exchange on threads about AirPods? I don't know if I missed that. Somebody was like, you be a decent human when you walk into the coffee shop, take your AirPods out. Oh, I was like. So here's the thing. AirPods Pro are literally hearing aids.

6:12If I take my ear, I always wear my left ear pod. If I take it out and I walk into the coffee shop, I will have no idea what the barista is saying. So that's way more rude than just leaving it in. And my point was we should not stigmatize something that is useful as an accessibility tool. Sure. And a lot of people have lots of feelings about that. There are a lot of people who are like, yeah, I have a friend who's neurodivergent and wears them because they have white noise on all the time or whatever. The point is, yes, there are some who just are rude, but also like move on with your life and just don't spend any time with that person.

6:44That's fine. But once we put a camera in them, I feel like that changes things for everyone. Because what I mean by that is there will be super useful accessibility features that are involved with AirPods having a camera. But also most people are going to be like, get those AirPods out of my way. I don't want them anywhere near me. The same way people feel when they see the little light come out on your meta glasses. That one, that's the thing. They get that way even without the light. Just seeing the meta glasses with a camera looking at you. And that's going to be the interesting part of how discreet will this camera lens be?

7:19Is it so discreet that it's not visible? I don't know how that's possible. I didn't actually see the world in any meaningful way. And also, if it is discreet enough, people might not be able to distinguish between AirPods Pro 2, 3, and whatever these AirPods that come out. People aren't going to be able to distinguish through them anyway. So what I'm saying is all AirPods are now going to be, you have to take them out. But here's the thing, Jason. People love their AirPods. And so on the other hand, I do wonder if it is indistinguishable. There's enough people that are like, well, everybody wears AirPods, and I can't tell what's a camera and what's not, and so whatever.

7:57That might also be the sentiment. Except for that everyone loves their AirPods. And yet, as we've seen, everyone gets pissed when someone has their AirPods in at a time when they feel like they should be paying more attention to the humans around them. Like, you go to the grocery store and you wear your AirPods. And when you walk up to the cashier to check out, if you're not using the self-checkout, which probably you should be anyway, do you take your AirPods out? I do. Okay. Why? Well, I take them out like 60% of the time. But why? Because I want the person to not have any doubt that I'm hearing them.

8:30And I understand, sometimes I just put them in transparency because there's so many groceries that I have to do that I just don't have the moment to do it. But I don't know. I personally still feel like I take them out in most situations just because I don't want people to even have to think about it. Now, my- How will you feel about what they are thinking once you know you have AirPods that have a camera in? That's my point is, like, people, they don't have a camera now and you already feel like you need to take them out around other people for reasons.

9:05I don't think that the overwhelming practicality and usefulness of them is going to change that for people is what I'm trying to say. Yeah. And the other, on the third hand, like, from trying the Meta Glasses, like, I do see the benefit. Like, if you're walking somewhere, one, walking directions, like, trying to do walking directions on your phone is pretty good. But, man, it would be really cool if your AirPods could just say, with you not having to look down at your device, say, hey, turn left here. Yeah, you know what will do that for you?

9:37I understand. Your watch will not, like, talk to you, though. It'll tap you. It'll tap you. And I understand that. But I do feel like, again, there's going to be that you want to look at it because you want to make sure you're going the right direction. But if you have voice directions on already and you have an AirPod in, your phone will tell you and your watch will tap you. You already have this exact experience. Okay. All right. I'll give you that. But also being able to remember something that you see without having to pull out your phone, I think, is a thing. Yeah, like the person standing at the urinal. It's amazing. Well, that's the problematic one.

10:09That's what I'm saying. I'm just saying there's some benefit. Like, if you were walking down a city street and you see a billboard for a musical and you're like, oh, I want to see that, you can try to get out your phone and type it in. You can maybe try to ask Siri AI to set a reminder. Or you could just look up and say, hey, remember that. And if the AirPods could somehow capture that in a meaningful way, like, that would be useful. I guess the point I'm making is the utility of that is only for you. It's personal. There's no utility for the people around you. But the social pressure is coming from the people around you.

10:40And that's only going to increase. That's why I use the urinal example. I know. I mean, that's actually not that useful for you to have that remembered. But you are talking about all the benefits. Those benefits do not exist for anyone around you who will be creating the social pressure to get those things out of here. I don't want to be around people who have cameras in their AirPods. I don't want anything to do with that. I do not like that at all. Do you think, and I hear this sometimes, do you think Apple leaked this on purpose to see what the sentiment would be?

11:12See what we would say? Tim, listen, here's what we think. He's not the CEO. He's not going to be the CEO in like 10 days. He's only got 10 days left. It's going to be on Ternus whether or not to release these, which is wild to think. John. John. Johnny T, listen. Johnny T. I think I do. I do wonder because that is, I've heard that several times where Apple will see the statement or leak something on purpose to kind of see what people think about it. And maybe this is that. I mean, to leak that video.

11:42I mean, that is a very, I've never seen a leak like that where a first party Apple video is out there. But I mean, this is like, we, we moved our daughter into college and our other daughter wrote her this amazingly sweet letter and put it in one of the bins of things that was going, didn't hand it to her, didn't tell her, didn't anything. But it was just sitting on the top of one of the bins that for sure my daughter was going to open when we're, when she's packing and she finds it and she sets it aside. Cause she doesn't want to read it when everyone's around because she doesn't want another reason to cry in front of all of us.

12:13Sure. Sure. That's like a pretty, pretty easy, like hidden surprise. You, I mean, obviously people go through this code. So Apple would have known, should have known that someone would uncover it, but it's like that that's sort of a, it's not like my, younger daughter can be like, Oh, I didn't know. I had no idea how that got in there. Like you had to have done it intentionally, but I don't, I don't, I don't understand like the, the mental calculation of we could try that. Like, doesn't it seem easier to just be like, listen, dude, call your source, call Marky G and just like send him, send him.

12:48He's already been doing it. I mean, I like, I love that. We're calling him that from now on. Marky G. I do like, I didn't, I haven't listened to the whole thing yet, but the most recent episode of, of course, Texas with, with him and, and Mike Hurley was talking on, I think upgrade about, Hey, I did, we had this interview and it was really exciting to get to talk to him about how his work process is. And I'm just imagining before I listened to the article, I'm like, his work process is he stares at signal all day, waits for somebody to send him something.

13:19And then he goes over to the keyboard and he writes, I'm not undermining what he does. I'm just saying like, your work process. I mean, he's got to validate. He's got to work the sources. Yeah. He's got to, he's got to work and he's, he's signaling, I guess. But anyway, Marky G, we'd love to have you on the show too. Come on the show. Let's talk. I'm going to actually reach out to him. He used to reach out to me about shortcut stuff. You can even just randomly call us at any time you want. It's fine. People do that. Um, maybe I'll send him a signal.

13:49I'll be like, listen, I got a hot Apple take. Just kidding. Come on the podcast. It's just a little bait and switch for him. Uh, all right. A couple of those, uh, quick Apple things. In addition into that video leaking of the AirPods, apparently a ton of products have leaked. And so Mac rumors on covering it. It's all the things, all the things you could ever want. The iPhone 18, the iPhone fold, uh, MacBook and iPad mini with OLED displays and updated Siri remote and next generation Apple TV, new smart home hub. I've, I've, uh, it's like. This is just too much for me because I've, I've like gone through this so many times

14:21before where we've said like, it's all coming. This event is going to have it all. And it's going to have 18 different products. And then we walk away with like an iPhone and an Apple watch. And so I can't, I can't set myself up for failure, but supposedly Mac rumors is saying it's all coming this fall. But that doesn't mean it's coming on September or whatever. Right. I think it would be multiple events. There'll be September, October. Hey, I love a three event fall. I'd love something, you know, September, October, November, but yeah. Yeah. I did have another one of these walking through Starbucks moments because there are people who were not, I'm Mac rumors did not do this, but there are people who are like breaking

14:53news. Apple product roadmap just leaked. And I'm like, there's literally not one thing on this list that we haven't known about for at least six months or six years. Well, some of them. Yes, but at least six months we've known about these things. I mean, the Apple TV is like three years old already. So I do need an Apple TV. We had the one in our bedroom will not connect to internet. Really? It just stops. Is it a 4K version or older? I don't know. I have like four of them in my house and this is probably the oldest one. So it's fine. I took the one out of here and took it inside.

15:24We only have this problem once a week when we go to watch Ted Lasso. And then I'm like, oh, so then I have to go to the living room and I just pull that one and plug it in and this is madness. It's actually the easiest thing to swap in the entire universe. You pull two cords, plug two cords in. It is easy to swap, but no, no. You do have to remember to swap the audio. Otherwise, it's really weird when your show is playing the audio in a different room. Oh, because you do the HomePod thing. You do the HomePod. We don't do. We do the HomePod thing for the TV in the bedroom. We have HomePod minis in there.

15:55But in the living room, we have the Sonos. So that's actually going back by the HDMI or whatever. Arc, e-arc, yeah, all that kind of stuff. All right. Well, that's that. And then finally, the Apple Maps ads are open for business, meaning businesses can actually go and book their ads. They're not appearing in the app just yet, but it is coming very soon. And yeah, we're going to see what they look like. I mean, we kind of see what they look like. There's some screenshots. Yeah, we've seen them. They already told us what they're going to look like. They told us what they're going to look like. Well, you should see actual ads sometime soon.

16:25And if they book the Apple Maps, there might be a credit card payment by October 11th. So we might have a couple more months of ad-free Apple Maps still. But they are coming, everybody. And we'll see. We'll see what they do. Now, we've got a lot to talk about in the AI space.

Claude Text Watermarking Controversy

16:42But we need to do an early ad break, which will make sense to everybody in a moment. And so we want to thank our friends at Claude. Listen, Jason and I are no strangers to Claude. How many Vive apps have you now Vive coded, Jason? Technically, three, two of which are actual products. One is just my PodGPT app where it'll pull. This is actually a cool app. It'll just pull your RSS feed, download an episode, transcribe the whole thing, and then offload that episode.

17:14And then you can just search a transcript. Search every podcast that you like. That's pretty nice. With Apple Intelligence. And you built that with Claude. Yeah, I did. That was the first one I built. And it just sits on my computer, and I just use it. There you go. That's it. And I have built CanDo, which hit the number one app store. So you could say the number one productivity app for a little while was made by Claude. And my new app, Stash, which I'm actually watching be approved in App Store Connect as we record. Very excited. We'll talk about that at the end of the show. I was going to say, what is this? Yeah, I'll talk about it.

17:44I'll talk about it. So just Claude, I've been using it for a lot of things. I've been just running it on Fable 5. And he's done some incredible work building my own apps, building Jason's app. And Claude, listen, it's the AI for problem solvers. It's the collaborator that understands your entire workflow and thinks with you, not for you. Whether you're debugging code at midnight, which I have 100% done, building a financial model, or strategizing your next business move, Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter. Now, I've been living in Claude code, and if you're a developer, you want a bug fix.

18:14I've also been hearing Marco Armin talking about Claude Fable, helping him fix bugs and launch features. He's long planned. Well, there's also Claude Cowork, which I use a ton. It's an agentic power for everyone. No terminal required. You just point it at a folder on your computer or connect tools like Google Drive and Gmail. Describe what you need, and it handles the rest. I've actually connected Fastmail to Claude Cowork via the MCP. I have Bayer connected, and just being able to ask it questions across my knowledge base or whatever you want to call that, Claude Cowork has been incredibly helpful. And for simple things like renaming files, I will point it at a folder, look at the contents.

18:48It could be images. It could be text files, and just ask Claude Cowork to rename those things. It is the best at doing that. I have shortcuts that do it. Claude does it better, and so I just go with that. Claude Cowork is incredibly helpful. Claude Code. And here's what you can do. If you're ready to have AI that tackles real work, which I think Jason and I are doing real work, try Claude Cowork today on any paid plan at Claude.ai slash primary. That's Claude.ai slash primary. And if you want to get started with problems worth solving, maybe try Vibe Coding an app,

19:19you can get started with Claude at Claude.ai slash primary. Thanks to Claude for sponsoring this episode. Now, I wanted to do that first because now we're going to talk about Claude again in a different way. So, last week, we talked about how Claude is going to watermark text. And there's been a now blog post from Anthropic going into more detail about how it's going to do the watermarking. I explained last week that I wasn't sure.

19:51I wasn't sure if it was going to be some kind of imperceptible markings on the text because they said it would carry over through copy and pasting. It would carry over through the API or other things. And so, they've actually explained now in this blog post how Claude's text watermark works. And basically, what it's going to do is choose specific words that will be unique and to whatever you're generating. So, let's say you want to generate a paragraph of text.

20:23Claude is going to choose words and their placement in a certain way so Claude knows that it was made by Claude. That means it might use a synonym for words specifically or just phrase something. And that's why it carries through because it's not some kind of technical watermarking in the pixels or some kind of metadata behind the scenes. It is the actual text that it's writing and in the way that it's writing it. And remember, this is to comply with the EU AI Act and being able to tell what's AI generated or not.

20:57Yeah, hold on. Sorry. I think just to make sure. I think we don't actually know for sure how they're doing it, which is super annoying because they publish a blog post. This is how it's text watermark works and then they don't explain how it works. But I think the most commonly accepted theory is take all the words, divide them into two lists, red list, green list. And at any moment, in a normal tuning of an LLM, every token, it's actually not words, it's I guess tokens. But like at any point, what it's doing is just predicting what the most likely next word is.

21:31And it'll look at those two lists and it'll just it's random. OK, and so theoretically, any given body of text should be roughly 50 percent one or the other. And what they're doing is they're essentially just leaning it towards the green list more. So the way that you'll be able to tell is you'll be able to compare it to the red and green list and be like, oh, this particular body of text is 55 percent green. So it was generated by Claude because it should just be purely randomized, which in theory should be roughly 50 percent.

22:02Although if it's technically randomized, it could be like 80 percent, right? Because random means random. It could just choose it. But that's what it's essentially doing. And so you won't be able to tell word for word what's happening, right? There's not a specific phrase it's going to use. There's not what it's literally you'd have to do the counting in the math and know what those two lists were. But that is why it survives copy and paste, because it's actually the words, the tricky thing. Well, I'll let you continue because there's a couple of problems here. Well, I just want to mention that a lot of people have now strong feelings about it, including me, which we'll get to.

22:35But John Gruber at Daring Fireball wrote a lengthy post about why this is not good. And basically so much that to the way that this is being done, choosing the words as the watermark is just degrading the quality overall. Like if you're having to choose words to make it watermarkable, that that is sacrificing quality of words rather than some other method.

23:08And so he has a long blog post about it and then a follow up. I joked because as I've been in Claude a whole lot, debugging and building these apps, I've just the wording sometimes is very strange. And so I posted this just to be funny. And because Claude had told me it was debugging something and it was like, let me actually reproduce the paste bug on the simulator before I opine on it. That's cheap. And I'm like, opine, you're opining. And just little things like that, as you deal with the responses from Claude specifically, sometimes just feels weird.

23:44And that's one of the situations where I don't think they're doing this watermarking yet, supposedly. But that feels like, did you just put that word there? Like, I will be thinking that in the future. Okay. But the irony in this particular example is I think the word opine is completely fine there. It's the part after the M-dash that I think is the stupid Claude-ism, which is that's cheap. Let me actually reproduce the paste bug on the simulator before I opine on it. Fine. Maybe you shouldn't end the sentence and the word it, but whatever. Yeah. But then the, and I'm also on record, I'm fine with M-dashes.

24:16People get super scared about using M-dashes, read everything I've ever written, and there's just a ton of them. I use them all the time. They're great. They're the best piece of punctuation that exists in the human language. Yeah. That's not true. Anyway, the comma is probably better, but the, that's the part that drives me nuts. But I do get your point. You look at it and you're like, did you pick this? And I had this thought about code, like, cause the watermarks are, code is just text. Right. It could be. So does my app have a different word in a place in order to make it, you know, verifiable or, you know, whatever watermark.

24:50And I would have no way of fixing that. I could do a P, I could like do some research with Claude. I'm not going to copy and paste it into an article. Anyway, what I'm going to do is be like, okay, here's what I need to know. And then I'm going to write something. I wouldn't, I don't like the way Claude writes anyway. So I would never just copy and paste it stuff into, into stuff. Actually, to be fair, that's not entirely true. There are times when I ask it for exact quotes from a thing and I do just often copy and paste them. But is it going to change that? Okay.

25:20So I'm glad you said that. So I had a very specific real world example. And yesterday I wanted to do like a back to school tech deals newsletter and just send that out. I was going to do a video and I was like, I don't want to make a whole video on this. I'm just going to do a newsletter. So I, word for word, verbatim wrote the newsletter. Zero AI, nothing generated. I didn't ask any AI for any words. I wrote every word, my fingers on the keys.

25:50Okay. I wrote that newsletter. I did all the links. I sent the newsletter. And then I was like, you know, I also want this to be a blog post on my website just because. And so I figured I've asked Claude many times before, make a website of this. Like my bio page that I link in TikTok and Instagram, that was made by Claude. My smart homepage, Claude gave me the HTML for that. So I was like, well, maybe you can make a nice looking blog post. So I go to Claude. I give it the HTML from my email. And I say, Claude, I wrote this email.

26:22I want to make this exact thing a webpage. Can you do that? I gave it to Claude. Claude made the HTML. I pasted it in a code block in Squarespace. It did some very Claude-ism things like this call-out box with the line right here. I actually saw a reel the other day of this girl designer. And she was like, here's all the things Claude does everywhere and how I can tell a Claude website immediately. And like this bounding box with this font and this font and this line, like hard line on the left side of it is a Claude just thing it does all the time.

26:56And I'm fine with that visual. Like I'm not doing a design here. This is just a blog post. So I pasted the HTML and I was about to hit publish when I saw, Jason, an emdash. And I was like, wait a minute. I did not write a single emdash in my newsletter. Why is there an emdash on this page? And I went through and I started reading it verbatim. And Jason, it had just rewritten some of my text. So like the intro paragraph was different.

27:29It had reworded some things. And I was like, I gave you every single word verbatim. I just wanted the HTML to put it on a web page. And yet you rewrote my stuff. And like, I felt kind of strongly about that because I'm like, does this mean I cannot rely when I say just give me this back in HTML because I'm going to have to read over everything? And this was something like I wrote every word already. Like I don't know why it's rewriting it. And so I had to go through and read every word.

28:02I removed a bunch of emdashes. It added emdashes all throughout, even though there were none before. And honestly, it concerned me because it's like, I don't know if I can trust words from Claude now because even if I give it all the words that I want verbatim, it might change it like it did here. And this is a pre-existing problem though, because currently none of the models you're using include watermarking, right? They're going to eventually include it. But for now, they're just, they're going to be new models coming out.

28:35So just don't use any new models for a while. But this is actually just an LLM problem because they are probabilistic. Exact copying is the hardest thing for them to do. Because I will often be like, could you give me a quote? Could you find me like four quotes from the most recent earnings? Like I, you know what I mean? I'm like, I don't want to search this whole transcript, but I was listening and he was talking about this. Could you find me the whole quote? Right. And it will sometimes be like, oh yeah, Tim Cook talked about this, this. I'm like, no, I asked you to just give me the exact quote.

29:06Don't paraphrase. Don't do whatever. And it is very hard to get an LLM to do that. And the reason is every word is just a crap shoot. It's this one or this one or this one or this one. It's like, it's very hard for them to be bound that way. I mean, you can get them to do that. But when you said, I want you to take the exact words here and turn it into a webpage, like it's, it's off. It's off to the races. It's going to do its thing. And it's like, if you gave me a bunch of words, that's cool. Let me just see how I can make this. So yeah, I, yeah. So that was surprising to me because it was the first time that my words had just been,

29:40you know, I just put it in and expected the same words out and I did not get it. So in light of that and the coming watermark changes, I am going to be, I think, much more conservative in when I ask Claude for prose or text that I'm going to use somewhere versus the other things. Like if it watermarks the code and can do and stash, it's like, well, sure. I mean, you're writing all the code. Like, I don't know any code.

30:11Go for it. Do it all. But when it comes to something like I'm writing the title and description for this podcast, I will typically ask Claude for ideas on it. I don't know if I want to do that. And I, again, never really copy and paste what Claude gives me. I'll always massage it. But now it's like, I don't know what of these words it's going to give me were a result of the watermarking. Like, did it choose this word versus this word? And I wanted to link Gruber's main post.

30:43But you should also read his follow-up because he quotes this interview with, I think, a linguist talking about English is objectively one of the most expressive languages because it pulls from both the Latin and Germanic bases. And that's why we have words for different, like, words have different timbres. And it said, like, royal and kingly. Like, English is uniquely suited because each of those words come from a different base.

31:15And we have lots of those options. And when it comes to a human writer, and you are primarily a writer, I imagine there are times where you think very hard about the word you're about to use because it's going to have a slightly different tone than another. And that is a important, and I will say human aspect to the creative process. And that is something that I don't even want to now get close to that. Like, if the language is going to be affected by EU law having to watermark AI stuff, I want less of it, I think.

31:51Yeah, and on Dithering, I think it was on Dithering, they were having this conversation, and it was that, because I think, I could be wrong, listeners, I'm sure you'll correct me. That's great. I love it when you do that. That the law, that this is voluntary. They're not really compelled to do this, but that Claude was the first one to jump on it. And what they were saying on Dithering is, like, of course Anthropic was the first to jump on it, because in their mind, Claude deserves credit. And it's, like, this distinction between, I think it's Ben talks about ideation and substantiation, and it's, like, we've talked for a long time about how substantiation is the important part of it, and that's, like, taking the idea and actually executing on it.

32:35And what we've essentially done is saying, no, the ideas are not important anymore. Ideas are infinite, and you're not distinguished by your ideas. And it's, like, and I think the argument that Ben Thompson was making is, it's, like, no, these LLMs are stupid. They literally don't do anything without a prompt. The prompt came from a human idea. So the LLM doesn't get, that's no more than Photoshop getting credit for layers, or Microsoft getting Word for something you wrote, or I write everything in Ulysses. Should Ulysses get credit for that?

33:06No. Like, Ulysses, I love Ulysses. It's one of the tools I use the most every day. But it's, should I get credit for all the meetings that you have if you're using Contextly? Like, no. Or the summaries of those meetings? Like, no, the app is just a tool. And just like Photoshop made it so much faster to dodge and burn than standing in a Lightroom, you know, actually dodging and burning, you don't give Photoshop the credit for that. It's still the artist that gets the credit. Now, to be clear, what a lot of these LLMs doing is it feels more substantive than that because you're taking an idea and you're turning it into maybe 800 words.

33:43Right. Right? But it's still based on the prompt that you gave it. It's still based on that, the human idea. And so the part that's annoying about this is it feels like Anthropics, like, no, no, no, we want it to be recognizable that this came from Claude because we want everyone to see how much stuff, how much stuff they like, how much good stuff exists because of this. And it's like, no, no, no, man, you got this all wrong. That's not the way people want this to work. Right. Exactly.

34:13And the last thing I'll mention, this was a tool that Gruber linked to multiple times in his pieces, dclaude.org. I did not know this existed and I'm excited to try it, but you can paste the text Claude gives you in the left box and it will give you a, like, take out the AI flavoring and give you plain prose. And there's apparently API access as well. This is a free tool, you know, to pay for it. And I'm 100% going to see if I can use the API to work this into my shortcuts and, like, run it after all the times Claude is running.

34:48And so I'm very excited about this tool and stay tuned because I'm going to try that. Does it have a CLI or an MCP server so that you could, like, use Claude to send text to this to get talks back? See, but I wouldn't trust that. I know. I wouldn't trust, you know what I'm saying? Like, all right, Claude, give me your text and then I'm going to put it through, like, the biggest water filtration system I can. Like, this is going to be one of those, like, seven dingus things that you screw in. I call this LLM laundering, right? It's, like, because basically what you're doing is you're saying take something from Quad, then you put it into ChatGPT, and you're, like, rewrite this.

35:22And then it comes out one way, and then you give it to Gemini, and you're, like, could you rewrite this and make it sound more like whatever? And figure out how far you get away. And at some point, like, unfortunately, they're all going to be using some of this watermarking. So you're going to put this into a watermark, and it's just going to explode. It's going to be, like, I don't even know what's happening here. There are so many red lists and green lists. This is extraterrestrial pros. Yeah. So I don't know if we'll get in trouble for putting this segment right after the sponsorship. So support the show by clicking the link down below to become a member.

35:52Well, okay. Just to be clear, I think it's totally reasonable for us to say we both love using Claude. Yeah. It's been super useful as a tool. I have several. The way you started using Shortcut, not the way you started. What am I even saying? The way you use Shortcuts, I have a number of Claude Cowork automation set up every week that save me hours of time. And it just, I get it. I come to my computer on a Monday morning, and there's, like, five things that I used to have to do that are just done for me. Right. My Notion database is updated with any articles I've written in the last week.

36:23From the previous articles, the traffic numbers are updated. I send out this email every week that is, it's like a, it's not a newsletter or something. It's, like, literally an important piece of, series of information that goes out to a certain number of people, and it figures out which people that week need to get it and which information that they need. It's doing all that kind of stuff. I absolutely love it. I just hate this. I hate this so much. This part of it is just, and it does reek of software brain, and it reeks of people who don't understand how the world perceives the tools that they've created.

36:53There it is. That's it. It wasn't this law written, like, five years ago? Something like that, too. The AI laws from five years ago should be reconsidered today. Agreed. Agreed. So, anyway, declaw.org. I'm going to try it out. I'll put that link in the show notes. And, by the way, if they're a sponsoring podcast, we may need a new one.

37:12No, just kidding. Love Claw for Vibe Coding. Using it all the time. We're going to talk about it more later. Yeah, we're going to talk about it more later. OpenAI finally put the brakes on some of its models, because after the hugging face incident, they've been working, one of the models behind the scenes, not public yet, but Astra, OpenAI has put the brakes on it, saying it could have critical cybersecurity capabilities. The company says it instituted a two-week pause in reinforcement learning training on those latest models intended for deployment.

37:42And I just want to point this out, because, hey, we've kind of been calling for this the last couple weeks, couple months, and it seems like OpenAI is actually putting the brakes, not because of maybe what we said, but just in general, seeing what has happened, namely breaking containment, these different models doing nefarious things, and they're putting the brakes. So, we'll see how long that lasts and what that means long-term, but that's good. So, they put another fence around the velociraptors. That's right. Another fence.

EU Pricing Changes for Developers

38:09Hey, if it slows them down a little bit, less likely they'll eat me, I guess. Life finds a way. Life finds a way. I can't believe I said the wrong quote when you asked me the other week. I was listening back to that episode. I was like, ah, I should have done that. Anyway. Also, Apple, oh, this is nice. How did this Apple Newsroom article get formatted? Well, anyway, Apple had to announce changes. These are the changes that they've announced. These are the changes they announced. I don't know what happened here. What if I go into reader mode? Oh, there you go. Okay. I don't know what that rendering was.

38:40But Apple did have to change some of its pricing structure in the EU. You know, Apple's both in court here in the States with Judge Yvonne Gonzalez-Rogers and all of that. But the EU is also forcing them to make changes. If you remember before, even with third-party app marketplaces and apps downloaded outside of the App Store, Apple had instituted some pretty heavy percentage fees even on those things. Well, they've had to adjust those. Now, apps with alternative payment processing the commission will be 20%.

39:13And developers in things like the small business program will be down to 10%. So they're lowering the percentages, especially if you use third-party payment processors. And even if you remember the core technology fee, there was this convoluted system where Apple was charging like a per device flat fee for transactions and a percentage on top. But now they've had to change that. And so for apps distributed even via third-party app marketplaces or the web in the EU, there's just a 5% core technology commission.

39:46And so they will still get at least 5% from those apps outside of the App Store. But they're having to lower their percentages to abide by an EU law. And hey, Siri AI, they still got to figure that out too, because it's not going to launch in the EU. Well, and this is essentially them saying, here's the value of each of the things that we make. What they're saying is their core APIs and frameworks are worth 5%. The technology you use to build the app is worth 5%. And then using the App Store distribution is worth 10%, right?

40:17Because you add that on top of it. So using the App Store and that distribution is worth 10%. Then using the... That's because you're linking out. You're just using the App Store. But if you're sending alternate payment processing within the App Store, it's worth a different amount because you're still using the workflow. It's just being processed somewhere else. And then if you're using it all, it's 26% or 15% after that. So the most interesting thing here is Apple has sort of said what it perceives the value of each of those pieces are, right?

40:48I think they just view it all as 30%. It's all worth 30%. Just give us 30%. But if we have to... And this makes sense because their argument was, well, the stuff is... We think that it's necessary for all of this money. But if you're going to make us itemize it, here's the way we do it. Here's the way we split it out. Yeah.

Disney Sues the FCC

41:08We've talked a lot about recently the FCC doing things and Brendan Carr at the FCC. And they were holding the broadcast license over Disney's head saying, you know, wanting them to make content changes basically or they wouldn't renew their broadcast license, which again, only affects broadcast television, not streaming, not any of that. But Disney is finally fighting back. They're going to say, no, we're not going to take it. And so this is a quote from Disney. Disney is suing the FCC over this license review that Brendan Carr has threatened to

41:41hold over their head. And Disney says, quote, again and again, the administration has attacked ABC's speech, the stories its journalists report, and the viewpoints its network programs air. Over time, those attacks have escalated into express demands that ABC be stripped of its broadcast licenses because of its speech. And so in this lawsuit, ABC is asking the court for a temporary restraining order, a preliminary injunction to halt the FCC's license renewal process, and a hearing from the D.C. Circuit

42:11Court. The FCC finally pushed too far. And Disney is like, no, we're not going to continue to capitulate about the content we do. And so we will see. You know, I'm curious. I don't know how this plays out when the FCC and the administration are kind of on the same side. Like, I don't know what court they're going to appeal to where they can make a case that convinces otherwise. But Disney, pretty big name fighting back finally. Well, and what happened was that the FCC put its license up for renewal early.

42:43It wasn't just that their license had come up, right? They put it up for review early and it's sort of, it's just the whole, it's a nice, that's a nice TV station you got there. Wouldn't it be a shame if something happened to it while you're holding the thing that could happen to it in your hand, right? And I, you know, Neil I Patel has made the point many, many, many times. The reason that the first amendment is absolute in its prohibition from the government interfering with it is because even the perception that something bad could happen to you is enough

43:16to just chill speech, right? Even the threat that you might put up a license like this for renewal will make other stations behave differently. And that's the problem. That's the entire point. If you are going to have a first amendment that protects free speech, you cannot have a government that is making companies even subversively or even passively making them behave differently than they otherwise would because you have chilled speech, which means you have infringed on their right to free speech. And this is just dumb. I think Disney comes, I think Disney wins this.

43:48I'm not a lawyer. I don't know anything, but if I, it feels like Disney's right. Well, they clearly are. They're clearly right. And this is all over the view, right? Which is, they're just basically saying, no, they don't get an, they don't get an equal time exemption.

44:03It's just dumb. I also, but I also feel like the judge they get in front of might also have a lot to do with how it goes. So, I mean, there's a lot of judges. And there's a lot of steps in these processes. And really all they're asking for at this point is a restraining order or a preliminary injunction, which typically I believe like the standard for that is, is what are the chances that you might prevail, you know, on the case. And if, if a judge looks at it and is like, this seems like a pretty patent violation of the first amendment, then they're gonna be like, yeah. And also putting a preliminary injunction on the idea to, to halt its renewal process does

44:40not harm the FCC in any way, because this license wasn't supposed to be up for renewal right now anyway. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And you know, we talked about the FCC last week about the banning robots and stuff and even power inverters. And I just, I thought it was interesting that they're spending a lot of time on that.

Comcast Turns Routers Into Motion Sensors

44:58Meanwhile, Comcast right here in the States is turning wifi routers into motion detectors in people's homes. No, thank you. And I was like, I saw this come up and apparently Comcast is activating in wifi routers that are already in people's homes, the ability for them to be motion sensors, which will measure when the wifi signal between the router and devices in a home, when it is interrupted and when that signal changes. And so these can then become motion detectors. They're saying it could be like you can, it is an opt-in to be clear.

45:32It's not an opt-out. So users do have to actually turn this on. I am sure Comcast will send thousands of notifications and emails to users talking about the benefit and why they should turn this on, which the benefits might be like security and you can get like energy reports, or you can see like measure like home away and home modes. You can now measure that with your wifi routers, but it's like, we're concerned about companies having data on us citizens.

46:05Comcast is here. Just turn on motion detectors in people's homes on not unbeknownst to them, but it feels like, I don't know. This feels so weird to me. And it just feels like counterintuitive to, we need to protect the security of people. And it's like, nah, we're going to see how they move around in their homes. I don't know. This is nope. No, just no, no to this. No, no to this. No, thank you. I use a, I use Ubiquity wifi routers. So, so there you go. I think, uh, I think I'm good, but yeah, most people, that's the thing.

46:35Most people just use the wifi router that comes with their internet service and then don't think about it. And so that's the thing, but anyway, I wanted to get to this because I thought this was sad

Robin Williams Family Fights AI Abuse

46:47and also telling of, of the time we're in right now. So Robin Williams kids, Zach, Zelda, and Cody, they had to reactivate his Instagram account or felt like they had to reactivate it because they wanted it to be a place that people could trust what they're seeing was actually real. And so this was a quote, uh, from one of his children. I think this is Zelda or it's a joint statement, but they said, I'm sorry if anyone found dad's

47:20old page posting again to be triggering. Believe me, I know it's a little strange making that space into one where people can find authentic clips and photos of him is one of the best ways we've now found to fight back against rampant AI abuse of his voice and likeness on here. And what I find that really sad because I love Robin Williams. I grew up, he was the genie in Aladdin, Miss Doubtfire, Patch Adams, all the things. And anytime I see a clip of Robin Williams on social media, I come across a reel or whatever,

47:52like I a hundred percent watch it. Like I could, I could like recount to you the clip of him on inside the actor's studio playing with the crowd and doing that. Or the clips of him with Martha Stewart and there's like cooking in the thing. And like, I know those clips are real because I've seen them for years and they were actual events. And apparently there's just been a, and not apparently, I'm sure this is happening with many actors. There's just AI generated video and audio of these famous actors. And many of them, those clips could be portraying what looks like a real event, maybe on a talk

48:28show, maybe in a stage play, but they are AI generated. They are fake. And so Robin Williams's family is trying to say, listen, there's a lot of stuff out there. A lot of it is AI generated. It's fake. So we want to do this as a measure to say, if you want to see clips of Robin Williams, go to his official page. And one, I think this shows the failure of platforms not being able to label this kind of content properly.

48:58You know, if it was clear to viewers that the clips they're seeing are AI generated, maybe this wouldn't have, you know, preempted this move to reactivate his account. So that's one. Two, I've talked about before, like when I mentioned how I was deep faked, you know, you can't control that kind of stuff, especially when you have the amount of content out there like Robin Williams, like all the creators who make YouTube videos, this podcast, like you and I, like there's hours and hours of our faces and voices out there that could be trained on an LLM and be made into think clips of us not, you know, saying things that

49:32we never said. And so the importance of having places that you can say, if you want to see my authentic made content, go here, like go to my YouTube channel. It's this channel linked here or go to my website or go to this podcast RSS feed because there is no AI generated content here. It is all us. I think it's very clear that as we move into the proliferation, like I see the backlash

50:02on social media, especially young people just really don't like AI generated content, but also it is some becoming increasingly difficult to tell what's real and what's fake. And especially someone like Robin Williams, where a lot of his clips are older because he passed away years ago. And so the clips that people share look old, that kind of AI generated content, I think is almost more difficult to parse because it looks old and grainy and it's like, is this real? Is this not? And so it is just, it is sad to me, but also telling about what the future is probably going

50:35to hold for where does someone go to, you know, say this is the definitive real content. And right now today it's Instagram, like they activated his Instagram account. That's where they're saying, go to look for the real stuff. And that's also so problematic because that's also where all the generated stuff is. It's like, go here because it's real, but also there's a bunch of junk here, but there's not another place to say, go here. Like, I guess they could have started a YouTube channel or whatever, but they reactivated an

51:06account because it already has probably millions of followers. So I don't know. I just talked for a while. I mean, the problem is that Gen Z hates AI, but the boomers just keep sharing it on Facebook. Yeah. Right. Like, so it's just, and so the signal that people get is like, they're just constantly consuming all this. The more slop, the better, because it's just a dial that we can turn and it keeps people engaged and you don't know, you know, and just, if you think about the math, yes, there's a very vocal generation that just hates it, but it hasn't really changed their behavior

51:39yet. And I think it's going to be a generation before these, this, I think you and I are basically just host. I think AI will. No, I mean, I think AI content will overrun the current state of things at some point in the future. And then people will just hate it so much that eventually it'll get back more. But everything you just said, I don't, at some point, I don't think it's going to matter. I don't think having your own place where you can, this is really me. Just no one will be able to distinguish. People will be able to distinguish if they're paying attention to the content.

52:14People don't do that for the most part. Right. And I don't know what the, what the, what the math will be, but at some point it's going to be like a YouTube channel with the channel with a million subscribers will have like 15,000 who, who fully, uh, understand and care about the authentic person. And then the rest are just bots anyway. So it's just going to be a, it's just going to be a cycle. And I just think, I think it will be way, way, way, way worse before it ever gets better.

52:45And I think that the consequences of that worse are going to be not great for, especially no, like for creators, because the incentive of the plot, it's already bad for writers. Let's just be honest because Google zero is already a thing. Right. Right. But for video creators, it's going to get way, way worse because the incentive of the platform. I mean, Google, Google is like building these AI tools, right? Like the incentives of the platforms is just more content and they have all just been, the

53:17platforms have been built entirely on free content. They don't pay for this content. And so how do you get more free content? AI, right? Like, and how do you get more people to make more free content, make it easier for them to do that with AI?

53:35I saw a video shared by, uh, Tyler Stallman. He like posted it on his story on Instagram. I was trying to see if I could pull it up again. Um, it was two guys talking about AI generated content and the perception of it. And at the end of the video, it said this entire thing was AI generated. And Jason, it was terrifying because I did not know. I thought these two guys were actually talking and, you know, Tyler, I messaged Tyler and he was like, yeah, the guy who made this is very, very good at prompting these AIs to create

54:09hyper-realistic, uh, videos like this. And it was a little scary to me. I was like, I don't like, I just consumed that whole thing and I couldn't tell. And I like to think of myself as pretty discerning. And I just went to try and find the clip. And so I just typed into Google searching, like, you know, details about the clip to try and find it. And Jason, you know what Google did? The first thing it showed me, it created the scene and gave me a script for the video that I was trying to describe. It didn't even show me search results.

54:39This is what I saw. I, sorry, that just. This is why Google talks about a billion users using Gemini. I just used Gemini. I did not intend to use Gemini, but it just did. I, I'm a little more optimistic than you. I think yes, it's going to get worse before it gets better. But I do think people, like I just posted a video last weekend about my son and how he uses his iPhone and the title was like how Gen Alpha uses a phone is wild.

55:12And we did a really fun video. And the response in the comments was extremely positive. People love the video. So, but I, and the video did well like view wise, but I think it, it again reiterated to me, even in this landscape of slop, people I think will still seek out the most real they can get. And being a video creator who makes a lot of real stuff every week and people know where to go to find that stuff.

55:44Like, yes, the vertical scrolling platforms, like people aren't doing that there. Like people are not going to Instagram and going to a person's profile, going to reels and then watching that creator's reels. People aren't doing that. I know people are just clicking the reel tab and just scrolling. And then whatever comes up, comes up. And I think, yes, that's going to be rough on the platforms, but I do think people are like, I see so many, I've been seeing more and more YouTube videos and reels talking about how to stop scrolling reels. Like it's just that like part of the content and it's a bit meta cause it pun not intended.

56:19It's a bit meta to like put that on reels while people are watching reels. But I do think like people talk about long form YouTube videos as the reprieve from this content. They'll say like, stop doom scrolling, go watch a 20 minute YouTube video. Like that's the perception of young people's minds now. It's like, if I watch that, I am, I am better off for it. And I do think, I mean, I'm partial, but I do think you're better off for it because it's probably about, you know, a single topic. Like I think watching a, a Kyrgyzat or a Cleo Abram video is probably more worthwhile and

56:52better for every, every part of you than scrolling for 20 minutes on a vertical feed. So I don't, I don't know. That's just, that's how I feel. Yeah. I just think it's going to get worse before it gets better. That's all. I, and I agree to that. I think it's gonna be worse before it gets better. The, the, the realistic nature of what can be generated today is scary. And I can just imagine unless these platforms, not, not just meta and TikTok, but the platforms that let you create this stuff, unless these platforms do something to make it so clear

57:28what's AI generated and not, it is definitely going to get worse before it gets better. But why would they do that? I know. No, I know. There's no motivation to do that. There's no incentive. And there's, I think there are three types of creators. I think there are creators who will just continue doing what they're doing and eventually they will no longer be creators because that market will just cease to exist. Then I think that there are some creators who are like, this is all going to just change. So I am going to milk every penny out of what I can before the ship goes down. And that's going to have a dramatic change on the types of content, right?

58:01Because it's going to, your incentive has completely changed. If you're like, I see the end of it, what I need to do now is maximize every dollar I can get out of this platform before it goes down. The types of content you're going to produce is very, very different than if what you're focused on is building a long-term audience and building affinity and affection, whatever, all that kind of stuff. And then the third type of creator are the people who are right now thinking about how is this changing and what do I need to do differently so that when I get, when we get to the other side, and I don't think that there are a lot of creators in that third group. I think there are, most of them are in that first group I talked about.

58:31So there's some opportunistic people in the second group. And there's a very, very, very, very small group in that of the third type that I described. But I think that in order to succeed on the other side of this, you have to be in the third one. So start thinking, Steven. Well, and that's honestly why I'm so thankful that the most important part of my business is my shortcuts community, because it's like very direct relationship with the people that follow me there and that have joined there, free or members.

59:03And I think podcasting is still, like, it'll be one of the last bastions to fall to this like AI encroachment. Because, I mean, I don't think anytime in the near future, anybody's going to want to listen to an hour and a half AI-generated podcast. Like a 15 to 30 second Instagram reel? Sure. People will watch that now and share it. An hour and a half generated AI podcast? I think we're farther off from that, if maybe ever, from seeing two people, like two people

59:36like us, for an hour and a half talking about stuff AI-generated? I don't think so. So I am hopefully trying to be in that third category by putting my eggs in the podcast basket. And even more so, here's a closed community where there's no question about what's AI-generated or not. We're all just here. Like, we're just here. I'm like literally live streaming weekly. Like, we're interacting live. And, you know, maybe that's why Twitch streamers have become such a large part of the creator

1:00:07community. Because it's like, this person is live right now reacting to what I am saying. There is no AI-generated stuff. And, I don't know, maybe you could argue that the AI stuff will get so good that it could be instantaneously generated. But I think we're far enough from that, that, I don't know. I don't know. I think we're all right. So it's scary, though. I'll be honest. It's a little scary.

1:00:29I mean, do you feel that as a writer primarily? Like you just said, writers are hoes. It's already dead. Like, there's no zero traffic on the internet coming from the places that it used to come from. So where are you getting traffic from? I mean, at this point, it's just like most publications. That's why they're moving to paywalls, which people hate, right? Sure. But yeah, that's one of the reasons why I start thinking about like, okay, so just like you, just writing for a publication, hoping you can get enough traffic to make it worthwhile,

1:00:59that has just been dead for a long time. So it's, yeah, I mean, I'm not quite ready to talk about some of my ideas publicly yet. Okay, okay. But I'll talk to you. Yeah. But like, it's just, you do have to be thinking, okay, so the platform, that's why, that's why a lot of YouTubers like make Ridge wallets or whatever, because at some point, like you might, you know, you build enough, big enough audience to sell those. Yeah. You know, you need a shortcuts charger. I don't know. You plug it in and it runs a shortcut.

1:01:30I don't know. Well, and honestly, one of the things that- Merch. We need merch, Steven. We have merch. You can go to beardfm.store. We need real merch, Steven. We need to be selling like Apple mice that plug in the right way or something. I don't know. Well, here's, here's what, this was instructive to me. Like we both made apps and put them in the app store and I made a paid app. It wasn't even free to download, $3. And it hit number one in the app store because a large amount of people went ahead and bought

1:02:00and downloaded it, the only reason that happened is because there are people who follow me on YouTube, in podcasts, and on social media where I posted about it. Yeah. So you leveraged that audience to something completely different. Right. And they cared about it because they trust me as a creator and feel like I probably did something good here. Like I'm not gaslighting them. It was $3, which meant it's low risk. It's low risk, but it's so, I feel for the many developers that reach out, that don't

1:02:34have a marketing budget. Like I didn't have to spend anything on marketing because I already had the marketing channels. YouTube, my YouTube channel is a marketing channel where if I make something like an app, I can tell thousands of people about it right there. Someone who is just making, and not just as in lessening what they're doing, but if they don't have a YouTube channel, an audience on social media, they might've made the best app in the world, but they're going to have to spend money marketing that because they don't have a built-in audience that they could say, hey, I made an app. You know, the ATP guys, like they have the perfect audience for if they make an app, they

1:03:09will all buy it. Like I'm sure 80% of listeners use Overcast that listen to Accidental Tech Podcast. And that is a unfair, not unfair, but it feels like an unfair advantage that a creator or a podcaster would have versus someone who might've made the best app in the world, but they just can't get it out there. That's why I feel so bad.

YouTube Updates View Count Metrics

1:03:29There's still developers, I get a dozen messages every day who are getting scammed by someone impersonating me and writing them emails and saying, for $100, I'll feature you on my YouTube channel. And some of them fall for it. Many of them figure out how to reach out to me, like through my website or whatever. And I tell them it's a scam. I'm sorry. I feel so bad because it's got to be so hard to get the word out on an app if you don't already have that audience. And so it's just a weird ecosystem where the things that I think are like an app or merch

1:04:02or a private community, those things only work if you have the reach. And if you don't have your own reach via a YouTube channel or podcast or other means, it is so hard to get it. And the discovery platforms like Instagram and YouTube are kind of the cheapest ways to do it. And that's why everyone keeps making content for them. So I don't know. I'm trying to be more optimistic than you, but I don't know. We'll see. Well, I think it's good. You can be positive, which I think is good for you. And I think that I am positive about the work that a lot of creators are doing, right?

1:04:37I'm just not optimistic about the platforms and the direction that these things are going right now. And I'm not a doomsdayer in that sense. I'm just saying we have to be super smart and strategic because we, I just see, and maybe it's because as a writer, I've seen this already happen, right? Publications are having to very much adapt to how they can survive. And in a lot of publications, there are publications that the literal publishing of words on the internet is only a small part of what they do.

1:05:09They do live events. They do other types of things. That's why you see all these, like the New York Times has mastered this. They've got games. They've got recipes. They've got all this stuff. You just have to be thinking about, okay, what is my stool? And what are the different legs that are holding it up? And if one of them goes out, how do I replace that? And can the other two do that? So, and that's the last thing I'll say that I listened to the decoder with a semaphore founder. I forget his name. Ben Smith. Ben Smith. He wrote the book Traffic, which was a great book. I read that. But semaphore, as he was talking to Neelai on that decoder, it's like they are pushing

1:05:39into live events and they are also trying to appeal their news to like the most influential high income people, not because they don't care, but because that's the only sustainable business model that they can picture. Like the information. Like the information that doesn't even have gift links or previews or whatever. Talk about the harshest paywall in existence. Oh my goodness. The most, the most predatory. It is a, like, I can't even think, like the walls of Troy, basically. It's like our words are so precious.

1:06:10We can't even tell you they exist unless you pay us $400 a year. That's it. You get to see the headline. That's it. That is it. And then you see our paywall. And speaking of platforms, I did want to, just to be clear about this, YouTube announced several updates to their platform. They announced some visual updates to their apps or whatever, but they announced how they're changing views. Last week, we talked about how the bar to reach the YouTube partner program, which is to be monetized, got to 8,000 watch hours. And we kind of explained what, why that is not as big of a deal.

1:06:41This is they're changing how they count views on YouTube. And previously, or up until now, a view only counted, and it wasn't exactly clear. It was kind of a black box of, we're not exactly sure how YouTube calculates this, but someone had to stick around for a few seconds, maybe up to 30 seconds for it to count as a view on YouTube long form videos. So if you just like click my video and immediately X out the window, that didn't count as a view, but you had to stick around for at least 30 seconds ish.

1:07:11Well, on August 24th, I believe they're changing this. Yeah. And if the view is going to count, even if just the first frame of a video loads. Now, what that will mean is the view counts you see publicly on long form YouTube videos, they're just going to go up. How much they buy a lot. I would think by a lot, but also this is the same mechanism that Instagram Reels, TikTok and YouTube Shorts use.

1:07:43So YouTube Shorts was already doing this. The first frame of a video counted as a view. So I think YouTube is doing that, making this change. One, because they probably want the vanity metric of the long form views being as much as these other platforms. And there's this joke amongst creator world where, you know, 100,000 TikTok followers is equal to 20,000 Instagram followers, which is equal to a thousand YouTube subscribers.

1:08:14And the joke there is that the vanity metric of followers on TikTok and even millions and millions of views on TikTok doesn't mean as much because TikTok tunes their numbers to reflect even a momentary engagement of the content. And YouTube long form views has long time been the like gold standard of, okay, if you have this many views on a YouTube video, this many subscribers on your YouTube channel, those are like the best audience because they're the actual most engaged and they actually watch.

1:08:46Now, the subscriber thing that isn't changing, this is not changing any of that. But the view counts like, yes, there will be an initial view bump. I think this is not affecting anything about monetization because YouTube only pays based on like ad views and stuff like that, which I would be curious. I don't know if that that first frame view counts if it's an ad, you know what I mean? Like if someone watches a 30 second ad, does that count as a view if they never see your actual video? But this is, I think, mainly a vanity metric. YouTube is trying to be competitive in the space against TikTok and Instagram.

1:09:19And so people see millions of views on reels. I think YouTube is trying to level that playing field and make it look like they also get millions of views on different content. But yeah. Yeah. And the thing, the reason they have to talk about this ahead of time is that all of the advertisers and sponsors have to figure out how they readjust what they will pay based on the size of views. That's exactly right. And that's something where a sponsorship in a YouTube video, you know, if you say you get 10,000 views on a YouTube video, that means something to a sponsor right now.

1:09:50Whereas after August 24th. I have no idea what it's going to mean after August 24th. They don't. And YouTube said the metric will still be available in YouTube studio for creators as an engaged viewer metric. So you can go to the creator, go to your analytics and say, here's the total views. Here's the engaged views. Meaning people who stick around for longer than 30 seconds or a minute. And this is funny because this is actually how podcast metrics work in Spotify and Apple podcasts. They give you a plays number, which is huge. Like if I gave a sponsor our play count, they'd be like, we'll buy all the ads.

1:10:24Please. But yeah, please. But that is very different from the engaged listener metric, which is you have to listen to at least 20 minutes or 50% of an episode versus people who finish the episode kind of thing. So yes, it is 100% going to change and creators will likely have to go to their analytics, go to their engaged views and send that to a sponsor so they have better data of like, do we actually want to sponsor this channel? So yeah, that's a change. That's a change. Uh, and we, I want to get to your daughter's tech loadout for college. I just want to mention real quick.

1:10:54We talked about Mark Zuckerberg a lot last week and his manifesto talking about super intelligence. And I had this thought over the week as I listened to the last episode, I was like, Mark Zuckerberg might be syndrome from the Incredibles where syndrome was like, when everybody's super, no one is. And it feels a little bit like that's what Mark Zuckerberg was talking about. If everybody has super intelligence, then everybody's cool and it's no problem. And so I don't know. I just wanted to put that out there. Maybe Mark Zuckerberg is syndrome.

1:11:27Maybe. Maybe. Also, Meta is releasing an AI app for the Mac and I just want to, I'm sure not a soul cares. Not a soul will download this unless they work at Meta. And this is why Meta unfollowed me after my glasses video. That's all. All right.

Daughter's College Tech Loadout

1:11:44Tell us about your, your daughter's off to college. You sent her with a tech loadout. Tell me all about it. Well, yeah. Let me just real quickly talk about the philosophy here, which was how do I make my 18 year old who has never really thought about technology a day in her life, other than her iPhone and her AirPods. How do I make her tech self-sufficient for the next several years? Or at least until Thanksgiving, which comes home and we can reevaluate, right? Revaluate. So it's like, okay, well she needs, and just also like for context are until she moved out, all of our kids, the rest of them still do, you know, we charge all the devices in

1:12:17a central place. She does charge her laptop in her room, whatever. But like they, so she didn't have like just all of the things that she might need. So, whoops. So I was trying to think about this and the beautiful thing was I, we didn't have to really buy very many things. Right. In fact, we bought her an M5 MacBook Air. That's what she got for graduating. It's just a 16 gig 512. It'll get her through college. It'll be fantastic. She's going to love it. She's got an incredible device and sent her with like a couple of charging devices. She has the Nomad 65 watt dual charger, USB-C charging, which is like super, she can charge

1:12:52her phone and her laptop at the same time. Then I sent her with, but the, that was a thing I had and I just didn't need it. And she had been using it anyway. Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what it is. The one thing I didn't put a link to is the charging stand she's using. Cause Steven would have quit the podcast because literally the charging stand that I gave her was one that Google sent me. It's like the Google G2 charging stand. Like for the Pixel? Probably. But here's the thing. She doesn't, she's never used a stand before. So I was like, here's the deal.

1:13:24If you have this, you can just put it on there next to your bed at night and it'll work as a clock. Again, this is someone who's never charged her phone or her other devices in her room with her, but obviously she has to do that now. And it was just one I had around before I buy her one of these three in ones or before Steven sends me some kind of a three in one charging device. I thought, let's find out if this is a thing she actually wants to do. And this one was just laying around. So I sent it with her. It doesn't even charge your AirPods or your, or your Apple watch because it's made by Google,

1:13:55right? It's just a super simple Jason. Is it this thing? Basically. The pixel snap charge. It's basically that I think probably. I'm so mad right now. But it's fast charging. This is a fast charging cheat to charger. It works perfect for her phone. Listen, we'll get her something different for Christmas if she cares, but I was not going to send her with like, if she doesn't care with this one, which I only use it when I'm traveling, but I'm not going to like give this up. Right. And so anyway, I'm sure. Okay. Okay. I just, we sent that with her. Well, I sent her with, Oh, and then other nice thing is that pixel snap thing comes with

1:14:29the two USB-C charger. So she plugs that thing into it and then she plugs an Apple watch charging device into it. Sure. Um, sent her with two batteries. One is the eco flow, 27,000 milliamp hour battery. That's actually fantastic. Anchor makes one, but, um, I just gave her one that eco flow sent me and it's amazing. It's, it's, it's like a 140, 300 watt total max output, right? 140 watt on that cable. So the built-in cable is the key though. That is amazing. Love it. And what she loved about it is she's like, wait, so I could plug this in if I was studying

1:15:03with a couple of people and everybody could plug it down. Like, absolutely. You can be the coolest kid on campus. Yeah. It's perfect for that. And even if you don't have something to plug it into three, people could plug a MacBook air into this thing and it would last them all day. Yeah. All three of them and stuff. So she has that, she has the small anchor, like whatever they call that thing that you can plug directly into the power bank. Yep. You can plug it in directly, which is nice. And then it has that cable. Um, and then we bought her a nightstand. Well, I didn't, this was, I'm taking credit for this as part of the tech loadout, but I had nothing to do with her requiring this.

1:15:33Her and her roommate both just decided they wanted the same thing, but this has two USB is like maybe a USB, a USB, C and it has a power in it. So that's right next to the bed. So she's got the little charging stand plugged into there. She's also got two little outlets right there. Nice. It's, it's great. It's a nice little setup for her. So yeah. Anyway, it was just, I'm sure there are other things that she'll need. She'll call. We just had to buy her a new, well, she actually bought them herself. This is the other thing, Steven. What's that? It's like, Oh, okay. Well, we need to set you up as a additional user on our Amazon prime.

1:16:05There's an Amazon locker on campus. And, uh, so we, so she can order stuff. She can, but it's like, Oh, we have to get you into like the, she had $75 worth of Starbucks cards. I think you should sign up for a Starbucks app now. Right? Like it's all these things she's never needed in her life. She had a Taco Bell gift card. She's like, do I need to sign up for that one? I'm like, I don't think you need to sign up for that one. Just take the gift card in there. It's fine. But the Starbucks one, it's worth having them load them all in the app. It's fine. Exactly. But just going through all of that stuff, I had to show her how to use her, show her

1:16:37how to add her debit card to Apple pay. So now it's in her wallet. So she doesn't have her phone. I mean, her wallet with her. She would just tap to pay. Also now she can use it to order. Like if she's buying stuff on her phone, she can do that. I gave her one. Oh, I didn't even include this. I gave her one of the MagSafe wallets. Nice. The Apple ones. Very good. I was like, listen, if you're leaving and you just need your student ID and your debit card, just use, just take this. That's it. So anyway, like that, did she like that idea? Yeah, she did. I don't know if she's going to use it or not, but she carries around this contraption of like, there's a wallet and then there's something else that I don't know what is in it.

1:17:09And then there's like a key and her AirPods cases on it. And it's like six pounds of stuff she carries with her. I'm like, here's the thing. If you're just leaving the house to go to soccer practice and you just need your student ID and your debit card, just use this. Do that, do that. So, well, I don't know if she would be comfortable about it, but maybe at Thanksgiving break or after she could do like a little bonus segment and come on the show and talk about her. I'll see what she wants to do. Because people like to know how young people use their tech. At least my video with my son, it was very, yeah, it was very funny. I think the ATP guys actually talked about it on the bonus episode, but well, that's very

1:17:40cool.

Element Photo App Launch

1:17:41And that was personal tech, but we're going to hit app corner because you launched a new app. I did. As did I. So you launched Element, which is a great name for an app, by the way. Yeah. Well, the thesis here was one, I was tired of paying a subscription for Lightroom. Two, I loved Aperture so much and I just hate that it's gone. And then three, I have a use case where I commonly need to be able to share libraries with someone else for photos. And you can't really do that in Lightroom. Like you could be logged in as the same user, but I don't want that.

1:18:12I wanted to be able to, let's say you were, let's say you were storing all your photos and what I wanted to do without a cloud subscription. Like what if you just store your photos in Dropbox or iCloud or iCloud drive? Not yeah. Or, or, or Google drive. I wanted to be able to point the app at a set of images on a drive, leave them there, create all my stuff, my album, all my edits and stuff, and then say, share this album, send you a link. And when you open that album, it's pointed already at that folder in Google drive and

1:18:42you get all my edits. And if you decide you want to make different edits, now we have versions. So it's like Steven's edits, Jason's edits. You can toggle between them and see how we did it differently. It also links directly to photos. So you can import your photo library. It's going to let you import your old Aperture libraries. Really? Oh yeah, absolutely. Yep. I'm still testing that because I don't know if you know this, but it's been 11 years since anyone had an Aperture library that they could open. Right. So there's a lot of debugging happening, but you can just point, I don't recommend this

1:19:13because this is a thing that was really interesting in the process was people are like, I have 600,000 photos and it's taking a while to import. I'm like, yes, because I didn't envision that you would just, while you're testing a brand new app, try to import all 600,000 or like, I just want to point it at my photos library. I'm like, that's weird because I think of my photos library as stuff I take on my iPhone and I used, I've been using Lightroom for everything else. I didn't realize that maybe some people, those two things are the same, but you can one click publish to your photos, like create an album in photos and it'll just sync to iCloud photos.

1:19:48Right. Or same thing for Flickr. Same thing for Google photos. Same thing for, uh, uh, Pixie is same thing for like, uh, uh, smug mug, which is a huge one that photographers use, uh, photo shelter, all of those services. You can just literally publish directly to those from here. So you don't have to export them and do that. So, uh, anyway, the goal was just to stop paying for Lightroom and be able to collaborate for it really well with the sort of organizational philosophy of aperture.

1:20:19And to me, the thing that was the best, like Lightroom classic makes you go through like different modes, right? There's a library, there's developed, there's whatever that never made sense. To me, the way aperture has it, it's all just in one. So I, we're using that same model. There are three tabs, library, adjust and info. Um, but I wanted it to be fast. That's what aperture was for me is I could import 5,000 photos. I could call them very fast. And so my goal of making this, uh, a pretty much an intuitive Mac app is that you, everything

1:20:51you think should work. We'll just work. You want to add keywords, just hit command K start typing and it'll put it into the keyword. Then when you hit enter and you start arrowing, it keeps going through the thing like in the, but you, but then when you pause, you can just start, it's still on the keyword. You can just add another keyword to another photo. So it's meant to, and I, I, I explained this on the website, but the other piece of this is the reason it had to be fast is I have been stress testing photo apps, shooting F1 races when you're shooting five sessions a weekend and you need to be able to get through them fast. And you, and I've, I was a pretty disciplined wedding photographer shooting an F1 race.

1:21:25You're going to take a lot of photos because things are moving very fast. And so you have to have 50 of a given thing and being able to get through them and call them and tag them. That stuff was so hard for me in Lightroom. Photo mechanic is better. Capture one is better, but I just wanted something really simple. So I built it and I have never gotten more response about anything than this. The number of people who have downloaded it already and are using it, just the free, it's just, you can download it right now. Free trial, seven days, right? Yeah. The number of people who have done that just blows me away.

1:21:58And the amount of feedback I've gotten has been super useful. People are like, I pointed it at my NAS. Why didn't it work? I'm like, cause I don't have a NAS. I don't even know what you're talking about. It's not that I know what you're talking about, but like, let me explore this and figure it out. And there's so many variables to a net could be that you're connected on a slow connection. It could be like, there's, there's a lot of different pieces there, but I think we've mostly figured it out. The biggest complaint I got, I'll just be super upfront is this doesn't look like a Mac app. It was entirely built in Swift UI. It does now. I need to update the screenshots on the website, but it's like what you talked about.

1:22:31Claude seems to just do this when it makes a thing and like some of the font choices, some of the things. And so I have Macified it. I mean, it looks like a Mac app. I mean, it already behaved the way a Mac app should behave, but I have a, I have changed all of the places where people are like, this feels like some weird vibe coded app. I'm like, but what I didn't want is for people to question its ability to actually do the job just because of the way that it looked. And so anyway, there you go. That is very cool. You made the aperture element photo dot app. I'm sorry, I'm going to put that link in the show notes.

1:23:05Yeah, I'll put all the apps up in the show notes, but element photo dot app. I downloaded it, tried it out. It is awesome. It blows my mind that this was able to be vibe coded, but obviously you knew very much what you wanted. And I think we're going to talk about vibe coding in the bonus episode and just kind of like the general reception of how people feel about it. But it's a great app. It's a one-time purchase, not a subscription. No subscription. Never. No subscription ever. No subscription ever. I really like the no subscription model just for my own stuff. Steven, it even uses the Apple vision framework, which means it will suggest keywords for your

1:23:39apps based on what's in the photo. That's amazing. See, that's very cool. So you should check out element photo, especially if you loved aperture. Like I loved aperture and I used it when I was working at the travel company with photography and I still miss it. And so element photo scratches that itch. It's a great app. Use it for seven days for free. If you like it, you can, you can pay 99 bucks one time and never pay again. That's it. And I just want to say I have finally, I feel like nailed down can do.

1:24:12If you had tried it before and it was buggy for you or it was crashing or sync wasn't working, a hundred percent correct. You were, you were correct. And I, you know, people send me a lot of feedback was figuring it out. I had spent many hours and many dollars on the, on codecs and I had soul 5.6. I just, I just did a bunch of things. I talked about on Mac power users.

1:24:42We actually have, um, Werner, the CEO of things. He's actually our guest this Sunday and it's a great conversation. We talk a little bit about AI and vibe coding and, and what they have done in things. But short, long story short, Condu 1.2.2 is out, uh, just came out yesterday and it is working how I had always hoped sync works. It is not crashing. The bugs are gone. It works on all the devices. And, you know, there's a moment where I wanted to get the app to a place where I could trust

1:25:19it. And because I feel like that's one of the key parts of an app, like you have to trust it's going to like be safe with your data and that you can open it and trust it's not going to do weird things. And, you know, when I think about an app like fantastical or things or bear, I trust those apps explicitly is one of the reasons why I still use many of those apps. And I still use things for a certain task management, but can do is finally at a place where I trusted with my own stuff and I stopped going to reminders to keep track of videos and I can keep track

1:25:51of them here. I had so much, a wonderful feedback, people saying the app works, how they, how their brain works. And so anyway, you can get it right now, $3. We'll put a link to that. And I do have another app coming out. This one is going to be free to download and use to a certain extent. And then there'll be a $3 in-app purchase to unlock for all the things. And I think I'm going to save it. It's called Stash. If you're in my shortcuts community, there's a TestFlight beta. You can actually download it right now. And so I'll just, I'll link my shortcuts community down in the show notes if you really want to

1:26:23try it. But it is in review right now in App Store Connect and I'm very excited about it. The Vision OS version was approved. So hopefully that's a good sign that the other versions will be approved soon. But yeah, it's going to be, it's a little utility for all your Apple devices that I think will be worthwhile. Are you, you can also need the TestFlight beta. You can, you can try it. Okay. That'd be great. Let me know what you like. So anyway, let's go around. I want to talk a little bit about Vibe Coding in the bonus episode again. You can get access to that by supporting the show, becoming a member. Link is down in the show notes. $2.50 a month or $25 a year.

1:26:54And we would love for, if you could support the show. Thank you to everyone who does that. And if you could leave us a five-star rating and review in Apple Podcasts. I think we're like three reviews away from 400 reviews. Let me check real quick. We are four reviews away from 500 five-star reviews. And so we would love if you could help us get there this week. Leave us a five-star rating and review in Apple Podcasts, no matter where you listen. And we're going to go record a bonus episode. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. We'll catch you next time.