Apple’s Legacy and Future After 50 Years, Mac Pro is Dead, Claude Code Leak

0:00With all due respect, sir, I believe this is going to be our finest hour. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. It's Apple's 50th anniversary. It was a behind-the-scenes look where the Wall Street Journal got to see early prototypes in an interview with Tim Cook. We'll talk about that, plus Jason's article, my video about Apple's 50th. The Mac Pro officially discontinued. You can change that weird Gmail address you might have created in college finally. Claude leaked a bunch of code. The Studio Display XDR got a price drop. AirPods Max 2 reviews are out, and a ton more.

0:30This episode is brought to you by Granola, Framer, and all of you, the members who support us directly, which increased a lot last week. We'll get into that. And I'm one of your hosts, Steven Robles. And joining me, my friend Jason Aiton. How's it going, Jason? I'm pushing through, Steven. I'm pushing through for our audience. It's touch and go, but I'm pushing through. We're a mess this week. Number one, I got a little bit cold. Jason's got a tooth thing going on. Do you have your ice pack there? I have my ice pack. I probably need a root canal, but my dentist won't see me until after Easter. And so in the meantime, drugs and ice.

1:02Right before we started recording, I took this thing off my face, and my face was like red. I might make that a thumbnail. I'm going to make that a thumbnail. No, don't do that to me, Steven. Don't do that to me. All right, I won't do that. But I do think that you're not supposed to apply this directly to your skin. Like, it's a little cold. But I don't care. I needed to numb my face as fast as possible. Listen, numb your face. But I am obviously not in my studio. And so if you're watching this or if you're listening, we're going to get into that too in a minute, watching, listening, and all of that. I am in Titusville because yesterday I witnessed the Artemis II launch with my own eyeballs.

1:36And I have something else tonight that I'm going to in relation to NASA. And so that's today's bonus episode. And so you can go to join.primarytech.fm. Use promo code IWANTCHAPTERS. And we're going to talk about that at 2. Don't worry. But yeah, we're going to talk about me being here in the Artemis II launch. But we have a ton of stuff to get to. Do you know what quote the Artemis II launch is a clue? Wait, what was it? What was the quote? With all due respect, sir, I believe this is going to be our finest hour. Oh, that's Apollo 13. Nailed it. Of course. Yeah, come on. I had to do a space movie.

2:07We had to do a space movie. All right, we have a ton of five-star reviews. Thank you all for that. So I'm going to go jam through them real quickly. NNJCompGuy from the USA. Loving video on Apple Podcasts. Okay, again, we're going to talk about that. Ike Golden from USA. Found us from a 9to5Mac article about video podcasts. I thanked Zach Hall and Chance specifically for including us in their article. Jamie Huffman from the USA. She's a rock star in my Shortcuts community. Thanks for that. Harry Ford from the USA. One of his favorite shows. And subscribed. Supported the show. Enjoyable show listener from the USA.

2:37Traveling between Bellevue and Palo Alto. So he listens to us and also asks us to do a Linux shout-out. And I don't know if we've ever mentioned Linux on the show. I'll be honest. I think we've listed it as a thing that exists. It is a product in our lineup. Not really. It's a thing that exists. My son keeps asking me about Linux. And I'm like, I don't know, macOS. Well, because he's reading stuff. And I was like, that's what all the servers use. And he's like, okay, well, do we have any servers? I'm like, stop. We're done. I showed you my PowerBook G4 Titanium. And this is as far back as we go.

3:09That's it. We're not going any further. I did used to work with an XServe. Did you ever deal with an XServe? I mean, yeah. Sure. Yeah? It wasn't running Linux. Well, no, no, no. It was running macOS server. It was a server. The thing was so heavy. Anyway, the French Menace from the USA. And we did get some streaming stick things here from our listeners. So we'll be going into that. But the French Menace uses Apple TV. But isn't happy about it. Feels like it's one of the worst products in Apple's lineup. But we'll say it has not been upgraded in a while. And he has an experience.

3:39What does it need to be upgraded? I want it upgraded. It can always be faster. What does it need to be faster? Do you want the Netflix shows to stream faster? Do you want to get to the ending of Shrinking Series 3 faster? What do you mean faster? It's Apple's job to figure out how to innovate this stuff. What does it need to be faster? Can't innovate anymore. Anyway, let's go to the next one. Got a A16 Pro in it or something stupid like that. Put an M4 in there. Put an M4 in there, cowards. It will melt your wall. They could put an M4 in an iPad. They could put it in an Apple TV.

4:09It's thicker. Anyway. Also, he uses iPhone Air with battery percentage off. I feel like that's like the promo. That's like you know you don't have anxiety because he uses an iPhone Air and no battery percentage. No offense, but also you don't leave the house. Let's just be honest. Oh, man. Lost under a mind from the USA. Had fire built into his TV. So had Amazon Fire, but then got an Apple TV. Alexa still gets confused, they said, because they'll talk to the TV and sometimes it'll just go to the Fire TV, which is probably just Amazon doing that, you know, on purpose.

4:39Duck King 7 said, five stars, flawless, greater than great. He said, I think it's a quote. I forget what he said that was from, but Apple TV 4K, of course. Mgerm 89 from the USA, Apple TV. The Pi 13, he gave us four stars, but he had thoughtful comments on the chapter situation. And so I appreciated the four star. And usually we only give shout outs to five star reviews, but thank you for your comments. And we're going to get into that in a second. Horizon Flyer from the USA. Danny Caldwell from the UK. We're a feel good tech show.

5:10We're a feel good tech show, Jason. There you go. I don't feel very good right now, but it's going to be a good show. No, no, no, no, but we make other people feel good. That's right. Matt from Semaphore, Australia. And so we have lots of Australia listeners, which is awesome. But he says, spatialized stereo toggled on or off with AirPods. Is that a setting for AirPods? Yes, but definitely off. Yeah, I think I turned that off too. I think you mean spatialized like audio, right? You can, there are like three different settings. Off, which is the only acceptable setting. There's the, there's like the head tracking. And then there's like the fixed one, which is I think maybe what this is referring to.

5:41And I hate all of them, except for off. Do you turn, so do you have head tracking on or off? No, no, I don't use any of the spatial stuff. You don't even use, you don't even do spatial audio? Absolutely not. Even for like watching movies and stuff? No, that's not the way that the thing was made. I mean, if it's Dolby Atmos with surround sound. That's not what spatial audio is giving you. Come on. Okay. All right. Yeah. I mean, I could understand it if you're watching a movie. Fine. Yeah, yeah. With AirPods on. But if what you really want is a surround experience with it, you should probably be using something

6:12other than AirPods. I know, but if you have, like, if it's late at night, if I'm watching something. Yeah. I'm sleeping late at night. It's fine. I know, I do not have head tracking on. I leave head tracking off. I don't like the idea of, like, if I'm listening to a podcast and I, like, turn my head and then all of a sudden both people are in my right ear or whatever. So, yeah, I don't do that. All right. So, last week was our first official video episode in Apple Podcasts. And we had a bunch of people sign up to support the show because we're running a crazy deal. Many people just wanted to support the show, which is kind.

6:43Some people didn't take the coupon, but then started supporting the show. So, signups were through the roof. And so, we really appreciate that support. And back to the four-star review from the Pi13. You know, he had a good point saying that chapters is something we've had for a long time and now seems like we're putting that behind a paywall. And one of the mistakes, I did make a mistake last week. One of the mistakes was when I create a new episode now for our podcast host, I can still embed chapters in the MP3 file that's distributed to third-party apps.

7:16It's like Overcast and Pocket Cast. And I forgot to do that. I didn't think to do that because I'm having to work with Transistor on, like, the video side. And it's a very manual process. So, I added those chapters, like, a few days later. And I will make sure that those are there right now. So, if you listen to the show in Pocket Cast, Overcast, Castro, all those third-party apps, get the MP3 file that I will include. And you will have chapters. And so, that's number one. Number two, I have no option in Apple Podcasts to do that same thing as far as having the chapters that you can actually navigate like you're used to.

7:55But I have one concession. In the bottom of the episode show notes, I'm placing timestamps. And those appear in Apple Podcasts. They don't cut off my show notes anymore. And those are actually clickable. They're tappable. So, even if you're on iOS 26.4 in Apple Podcasts and you're seeing the video but you don't want the video and so you turn it off and you're listening to us, if you go to the show notes for this episode, you'll see all the chapters down there in the notes with the timestamps.

8:27And if you tap any of the timestamps, you can tap play and it will jump to that point even in the video. It is not as good of an experience. It is not like how chapters were. I've heard that chapters should be coming to even the video side in the future. I don't know how long that is. But I will, that is, I'm literally doing everything I can to put the chapters there. So, they'll be in the description. You'll be able to tap it there. And there were a lot of people who reached out who support the show directly in Apple Podcasts using Apple Podcasts subscriptions.

8:57And they're like, hey, I didn't see video. Yes. Because Apple has not given me a way to deliver video to paying subscribers. So, unfortunately, those who support our show directly in Apple Podcasts have the worst experience of anyone. Because they don't get chapters or video. They don't get chapters or video. And I'm really sorry about that. I literally can do nothing about that. Apple has no way to upload video for subscribers. And I've included chapters in my MP3 for subscribers forever. But Apple strips those out. And there's nothing I can do about that.

9:28So, I apologize. If you support us in Apple Podcasts and you at least want the chapters and chapter art that I do. I know a lot of people like all their subscriptions in one place. And so, they keep it in Apple. Totally get that. But if you want to cancel that subscription and then sign up for half the price at the link that's at the top of the episode description using promo code IWANTCHAPTERS, you'll actually get legitimate chapters. And I do want to mention, you can add our memberful feeds, which is how you support the show outside of Apple, to the Apple Podcasts app. You don't have to use a third-party player or some weird player.

10:01Like, you can literally, you'll get a link to add our subscriber show to Apple Podcasts. And you'll get to listen with the chapters and everything. And, like, for the Pi 13, anyone who's really upset about the chapters in Apple Podcasts, please reach out to me via email, podcast at primarytech.fm. But the chapter timestamps will be in the episode description, even on iOS 26.4 via video. So, you can tap those there. Third-party podcast players will get the chapters still because I can put it in the MP3 file. And the promo is still going on forever.

10:33And to be clear, when you click the link in the show notes for this episode, anyone can do it. And you support the show. So, it's $2.50 a month or $25 a year forever. That coupon code is applied forever. It's never going to go away. It's weird. The sign-up process, it shows $50 as the price. And it's like the renewal price is confusing. But trust me, it's $25 a year, $2.50 a month forever. But you had a thought. I just wonder if anyone at Apple on the podcast team uses the app or listens to podcasts because their incentives seem very different.

11:08They have created a thing they think is great, but it only is great if the thing you are being measured on is let's get some dynamic ads inserted into these podcasts so that we can be taking a rate. And they're just making it terrible for everybody else. And that's unfortunate, but it makes me think they don't use this stuff. Well, the unfortunate part is the biggest shows who they're trying to cater to, like Paul Her Daddy or the comedy shows. I think it's telling that if you go to the Apple Podcasts video feature section, they have a whole section of shows they're featuring.

11:41This show wasn't featured, but Movies on the Side was. It was hilarious. This show, which is one of the first big, reasonably, no offense to Movies on the Side, but this was a little bit. A little bit bigger. And we also produced an episode every week. Movies on the Side is a fraction of the audience of this show. But I did wonder if because our last episode was titled, Here's Why Apple Maps Ads Are Bad. Maybe that's why they didn't feature us because they didn't want that episode showing in their video featured section. But anyway, the shows that they are highlighting and the shows that are doing video are the biggest shows who, one, never did chapters to begin with.

12:16Two, probably came from YouTube and other platforms. And those, like, they're just not. They're not podcasts also, just to be clear. We don't have to get into that. But they're YouTube shows. I'm just being, like, it's just, it's fine. It's like Apple. But I just, I mean it sincerely. Apple has been, in general, very good to the podcast industry by basically doing nothing. Exactly. And as soon as they start doing things, they're making it worse. Like, I think you can make that argument.

12:47And I think, like, I'm glad we were able to take advantage of it. But the point that was made where it's like, we now basically put chapters behind a paywall. Not exactly the case. But we didn't put them, like, we wanted to add a feature for people who would enjoy doing that. And Apple is making it impossible to continue to provide the same kind of great experience. It is insane that you'd have to go to, like, one app if you want chapters and artwork. And then a totally different app if you want to switch between the video and the audio. I don't know. It's just kind of wild. I apologize if this is really upsetting.

13:20Again, email me and I will try to do something for you. But at the very least, timestamps are in the episode description. Tap them there. Third-party apps get chapters or support the show with that deal at the top link. All right. We want to get to some content. But I do want to show off just a couple more images because we had wonderful listeners write in. We ask where you listen and where do you watch the show. And let's see. This first one was from Jason in the community at social.primarytech. listening to us on CarPlay. Look how wide that screen is. That is wild. I'll put that.

13:51Yeah, that's pretty cool. So Jason listens to us in the car and on his drive. It has a three-and-a-half-hour drive each Monday morning and Friday afternoon. That's quite a commute. But listens to us. That's fun. Thank you for doing that. Craig listens to us walking in the Hollywood Hills. And that's the pretty view there with the mountains in the background. Super fun. And then Chris P watches us on his 77-inch LG TV. We might have the same model. And can I just say the feet on those TV are dangerously close to the edges. Yeah, you got to take that picture down. Take it down. Take it down.

14:21Take it down. I can't get to the window. I do like the little HomePod stand over there. HomePod stand is nice. Yeah, a little like bamboo. I have one of those. Is that a HomePod or is that an Alexa dot? I don't even know now. I'm not sure. It looks cool. Whatever that stand is. Send us a message. Tell us what that is. Chris P, tell us what that is. Also uses Apple TV, obviously. Oh, and has another picture here. Look, our Medieval Knight Riding a Polar Bear got it to the Interpretive Trail. Green Springs Interpretive Trail. So there you go. Making around the world. And we also got some other streaming sticks from Theo.

14:54Said he uses his PS5 as a streaming stick. So there you go. We have one not Apple TV.

15:01PS5. Yeah, just to be clear, this is what I predicted. I agree. Apple TV by far the best. There's no way it's the most popular. It probably is among our audience. That's what you would expect. But it's definitely not the most popular. Fair enough. Fair enough. All right. And last two things. I wanted to mention a really nice email from Brandon S. He sent it to us about the show. Thank you for that. And then two apps. We've been shouting out apps from developers who reached out. One, this is Haptic. It's a Haptic app by developer Olivier. He actually discovered an accelerometer in some MacBooks.

15:37And so he's built this app that you can actually mimic key sounds by velocity. And the intensity and the sound will change depending on how hard you're typing. And so you can try out that app. That's pretty cool. I also put some promo codes that he included in the show notes. First five who get there, then those promo codes will be gone. So if they don't work, it's probably because somebody reused them. And then Henrik, a developer from London, listens of this show. And he made Beam Browser. And this was featured by, I think, Christopher Lawley and others.

16:08And it looks like a pretty great browser. Six bucks. And you said you downloaded it to try it? Yeah, I downloaded it. I've been using it. I got to a point. I did this last night when I saw that this was in here. It's great. It's nice. It does do the thing where your tabs are all vertical, which I do actually like. When I use Brave, I use two different profiles. One, I have horizontal tabs. One, I have vertical tabs. And the reason I do that is, well, one, the profile with the vertical tabs is way more. There's so many more tabs. And if you have a lot of tabs open and you need them open for whatever reason, it's so much nicer.

16:39And then it also is easy for me to be like, oh, yeah, which group am I in? Which kind of work am I doing? And this is nice that it does that. The only thing I realized that's a bummer is that while this is a great browser on the iPad, everything else about the iPad really just wants you to open an app. Because you like type in Asana.com and it tries to open the Asana app. You type in Google Docs and it's like, don't you think you should be using this in the app? And I'm like, the iPad, man. The iPad. We're going to talk about the iPad. Anyway, Beam Browser, we'll link to that in the show notes. Can I just say, I literally delete apps when it's something that I want to open in the iPad browser.

17:13So, like, I deleted the Google Docs sheets and slides app from my iPad. And every time at the bottom, it'll say, don't you want to download this app? And you're like, no, Google, I'm good. Thank you. And then it also, like, hijacks some of the clicks. Like, if you or if you tried to, like, I don't know, Google Docs on the iPad browser. It won't let you do certain things. Like, when it shows the thing at the bottom and says, wouldn't you rather do this in the app? You can't tap on it. Or you can't, like, there are certain things you can't do. It's like, what? Well, there are certain things you can't click with the trackpad because you're forced.

17:45Yeah, that's what it is. You're right. You have to tap with your finger because it's weird. But anyway, it was Apple's 50th birthday yesterday as we record, April 1st. Unfortunately, it's like April Fool's Day and companies are still trying to do weird things. Which I thought we were done with this, Jason. I thought companies would be done with April Fool's stuff, but apparently not. But no, I didn't see anything super egregious. But being Apple's 50th, you wrote an article. I'll include it in the show notes. I also did a video about Apple's 50th. And I even talked about the Knowledge Navigator.

18:17I also went through a bunch of, like, old keynotes. And I have clips from Steve Jobs' announcements and different things like that. So, of course, the 1984 ad. We will include the video and then Jason's article about Apple turning 50 here. But one interesting thing, we'll talk about the Mac Pro dying in a second because that is also part of this. There was a Wall Street Journal interview where Tim Cook was interviewed by columnist Ben Cohen. And it was, like, a behind-the-scenes video. I use the term behind-the-scenes loosely because it's like this was very much a scene.

18:51Like, this was very much staged and set up. But Tim Cook actually showed some early prototypes of things like the iPod, the iPhone, the Apple Watch. Prototypes that have not really been seen before, which is pretty cool. Also, Ben Cohen brought the article of the first time Apple Computer Inc. was mentioned, which is really cool. And also the first time Tim Cook, I think, was mentioned in a Wall Street Journal article. So, he brought some cool stuff. I encourage you to watch it for the prototype specifically. And we're going to celebrate Apple and its 50th in a minute.

19:22But I just have to say this interview juxtaposed with all the clips that I had just watched of Steve Jobs getting my video together for this week. It was such a stark difference of charisma and, like, Steve Jobs on stage just bringing so much oeuvre to Apple and everything he announced. And Tim Cook in this interview, you know, it is very canned responses, as you might expect. But I feel like Jobs did not give canned answers.

19:54And he was able to deal with questions on the fly. He was very adept at that. And there were a couple times where they asked Tim Cook, Apple's had a lot of great successes over the years. What were Apple's biggest failures? Or what was Apple's most important failures? And Tim Cook gives the answer of, like, you know, we have failures. But the important thing is with that, we get up again. And it's like, is this a Smash Mouth song or whatever that is? Like, just be real. Well, and then at one point, he asked Tim Cook about going, looking to the future, Apple's next 50 years.

20:30And Tim Cook gives the answer of, we always want to be at the center of the technologies. And he almost said primary technology, because that's, you know, where we get our name. But he says, we want to be at the intersection of hardware, software, and services. And when I heard him say that, it was like, when Steve Jobs would talk about that, he would talk about the intersection or at the corner of liberal arts and technology. And I mentioned that in my video, which I feel like is Apple's ethos. And when you say to be at the intersection of hardware, software, and services, it sounds like the accounting and business answer, not the creative answer that Jobs used to lean on.

21:11And whether you, you know, I heard Jason Snell talk about Apple on the Verge cast. Jason Snell was on a special episode of that with David Pierce. You know, Jason Snell's like, listen, Apple has always been a company, publicly traded, focused on profit. And you have to think of it that way. And like, totally get that. Like, yes, it is. But I also, whether it was trickery or the reality distortion field of Steve Jobs or whatever it was, when I watched these old keynotes of Jobs, when I was getting my video ready, and he talked about liberal arts and technology, or he talked about that the Mac is for empowering people to be creative.

21:46You believe it. I believe it. And it sounds like it is the ethos of the company. And that's why they're making these products. And they made the first, not the first, but they popularized the graphical user interface with the first Mac. So it would be more accessible to more people. And I was like, this is such a stark difference. And it also felt like Tim Cook had never seen these things before. Like, Tim Cook had never seen these prototypes. Well, he said he'd never seen some of them before. And it's funny because he's like, we don't have a museum here of this stuff at Apple. I'm like, you're literally, it looks like you're literally walking through a museum right now.

22:16Like, I've been to the Lego corporate museum, and it's like this. Well, it's actually, it's a little more Lego than this is. But I'm like, you are walking through a showroom of a thing. I would just, this is the thought that I have. You put this in here, you're like, Tim Cook is not charismatic or whatever. And I'm like, he just watched the Wall Street Journal video because I had just watched it. And I almost texted you. I was like, I'll save it for the show. Tim Cook's response to so many of these things is exactly what ChatGPT would tell you. Like, Tim Cook, the reason I think in some ways we're like, oh, where's your charisma?

22:49Is it's like, no, you sound like a walking LLM. You have a lot of nothing. Like, he said, do you remember the first song you listened to? And he was, oh, it was probably something from the Beatles. Probably something from the Beatles. Maybe, hey, Jude. I'm like, first of all, I don't want to say this definitively, but like, I am pretty sure no one remembers the first song that they listened to on their iPod. I know, yeah. That just feels like it's the answer he should give, right? It's like, I remember getting an original iPod. I remember a lot of things about those devices. I remember, like, the joy of loading songs on there and being able to go out for, like, a run and have them or a bike ride.

23:25Like, I just, but I don't remember the first song I loaded onto my iPod and listened to it. Are you kidding? Like, it also, how did he get Hey Jude on his iPod? Because it was a long time before the, he had to rip it into iTunes for that to be possible. Because you couldn't, you couldn't, like, the Beatles and Apple didn't get along for a very long time. Right. Which, Paul McCartney was at the Apple 50th celebration at Apple Park on Tuesday evening, I think. Yeah. I don't know that it was ever Paul McCartney that had the problem. I think maybe it was some of the, some other people involved with the Beatles.

23:57But, but it was also like the, the questions that Ben Cohen would ask him about like the iPhone. It's revolutionary. What is the lasting change? Or, you know, about the Apple watch. As they ask him all these like deep questions, there just wasn't anything inspiring. I think I would say. And I feel like anytime someone asked Steve Jobs a question, even if it was a pointed question, I still remember there was a clip of Steve Jobs and like a, he was speaking to some crowd and someone stood up. I don't know if it was about JavaScript or something, but some guy asked a pretty like, uh, altercation type question, really challenging Jobs on it.

24:31And Jobs turns it around, makes the audience laugh, actually says an answer that addresses the question, but also like points to a higher ideal. And I'm like, I mean, I missed that. That's all. Yeah. When I was at, uh, two times now that I've been at NVIDIA keynotes with Jensen Wong, he keeps talking about physical. That was a weird sound. He keeps talking about physical AI. And what he means is autonomous driving and robots. And to me, he's talking about Tim Cook.

25:02Like Tim Cook is a physical manifestation of AI. And I'm not trying to be mean. What I'm trying to say is like, there was no, even when he tried. To be like joyful. And he talks about it. You don't feel like he has a connection in the same way products. He has a tertiary connection because he's leading the company that produced those things. And to be fair at the time, like he, he was involved in making them be made, but he wasn't involved in the design part of them. Right. He was the iPod, the iPhone, uh, obviously like the, the entire supply chain for the iPhone, but he wasn't intimately involved in the decision.

25:37So when he talked about how the prototype versions were getting scratched up because they had a plastic screen and they decided to put them, do a man on the moon initiative to change it over to glass. And they had to do that in six months or whatever. You feel like he didn't feel that from a perspective of the feel and the experience of the product. It was like, crap, I got to call corning. And then I got to get a bunch of stuff shipped over to like, you know what I mean? It's like, it's a very different experience. And that's like, I don't begrudge the success that Tim Cook has had, but it does just feel like these are the most down the middle, like neutral.

26:10I'm going to just say words with a smile that make you feel like good about it, but I'm not actually saying anything. And Tim, I mean, to be fair, Steve jobs could do that. He could, but you felt like he said something he didn't, but you felt like he did. He would make you feel like he'd given some kind of an answer, but like, yeah, it was, it's just a very different experience. And obviously he's a genius business and operations. And that's why Apple's the three to $4 trillion company now, but watching the past keynotes of jobs, like during the iPhone keynote, when he does the slide to unlock on stage for the first time.

26:44And then he literally says like, let's do it again. Cause that's just super, that's so cool. Yeah. Like you genuinely believe that he thinks it's cool and he knows, and this is why, you know, months ago we talked about what is a product CEO. And I tried to explain it. And that moment I think also exemplifies that Steve jobs was a product CEO. Like he knew that people doing that slide to unlock that tactile feel of the sliding across screen would resonate with people. And people would immediately form a connection to this device. And he knew that.

27:14And he knew how people would connect to this stuff. And so moving on from that interview, I, in my video, I kind of had a thesis and it's, I started from here. And then this video kind of is not doing well. So it's like, whatever, but maybe I didn't package it well. But my thesis was that the iPad is the most Apple-y device because for reasons, but I'll mention there's a video from this is E great tech YouTube channel. He talked about how the iPad is like Steve jobs, oldest story or whatever.

27:46And so he kind of agrees that the iPad is the most Apple-y product. And even John Syracuse on the latest ATP, they talked about Apple's 50th. Even he mentioned that the iPad is kind of like the device that jobs wanted to make, the computer that resonated with people the most and was most accessible. And so that was my, my thesis and I'll hear if you, you're taking issue with it in a, in a moment, but I, not only do I, I love the iPad as a device, but I do think one, what Steve jobs did in so many keynotes was explain why things were whimsical and why they would be delightful to the user.

28:24And I feel like the iPad still has that element. You know, Macs are great. They're beautiful in their own way, but they're very utilitarian. You know, maybe AirTags and AirPods also have that. But when you hold an iPad pro that feels impossibly thin and it's impossibly powerful, it still feels like there's this whimsy and delight to that device. It is accessible. It can be used by all ages, kids to the elderly. And while that does cause some issues like with the browser, because when you're a power user, you're like, why doesn't this browser do it?

28:59My Mac does, even though Apple says this is a quote desktop class browser. That does not mean a desktop browser, by the way. Right. It does not. I know. I know. But it's clearly not, not desktop. But then also it's that whimsy is the accessibility and it's for, I forgot what my third point was. But anyway, I feel like the iPad is the most Apple-y device. And I, in my video, I actually refer to David Pogue's book, and this is common knowledge. Well, a lot of people might know it, that Apple was working on a tablet before the iPhone.

29:30And it wasn't, it was because that the iPhones or phones in general started exploding in popularity that Apple chose to switch to focus on the phone and release that first. But the tablet was there first. And then in my video, I found, did you know what the knowledge navigator was? Yes, Steven. I had not, I had not, I didn't know what this was. Okay. Yeah. And I saw it in the David Pogue book. And there's a video on YouTube. I included a clip in my video and I linked to the full video. This was actually dreamt up by John Scully, who ousted Steve Jobs back in the day.

30:01But he wrote a book called The Odyssey. It was his memoir. And he talks about the knowledge navigator. And then there was a video made when he was speaking at some conference and they played this video. And the knowledge navigator is like, it's an iPad and it is a multi-touch device. He takes a video call on it. It's multi-touch. There's a voice assistant. Basically, like if you were talking to ChatGPT or Claude today, it has a voice assistant. And it just seems wild, like that thread from like, that was 1987 that that video was released. Super old, super cheesy, but I think it was very salient for like the devices we see today and now with the rise of AI.

30:38And so, I don't know. I still think, I think the iPad is the most Apple-y device, but what do you take issue with that? Okay, the issue I only, the issue I had with your video didn't have anything to do with the Apple, with the iPad. Although, I don't, I don't think I agree with that. But, I think AirPods are the most Apple-y device. Sure. Because they are the best manifestation of just works. And that is the thing that makes an Apple device, an Apple device. And I know you gave AirPods a different award, but that, which leads to my only qualm with your video. I gave a thing, it just works award. Yeah, I know.

31:08But that is what makes something the most Apple-y device, is that, anyway, those are the same award you should have. But here's the beef I had with your entire video, which is simply, it felt a lot like high school seniors are like, let's just make up a bunch of awards so we can pick the five big categories of Apple devices and find an award for each of them. No, no, what I'm saying is like, what I'm saying is it's like, iPad, what award should I give the iPad? What award should I give the AirPods? Because you had the Mac, the iPhone, the iPad, the AirPods. Yeah, but there were devices I didn't include, too, like Apple Vision Pro.

31:39Yeah, what award were you going to give the Vision Pro? Come on. There's no award. Least likely to succeed. AirTag. AirTag. I actually forgot the AirTag, and I should have maybe put that somewhere in the video, because I do think that's another it-just-works product. I think the AirTag is the most stalky, you get the word for the most stalky, no. But it works really well, it works really well. Yeah, but the AirPods are by far the most, so I'm not quibbling, like, overall, yes, all those, but I do think you did it, okay, here's why.

32:10You pick categories instead of individual products, so, like, if you would have been, like, the iPhone 5S was the best ever, whatever, Apple-y product, like, to me, I get it. It's a short video, but if you want to explore why it didn't do as well as you thought it would, I'm just trying to give you some-I'm just kidding. Oh, I see. Okay, no, no, no, you're probably right. No, but I think- I should have just made it about the iPad. Like, this is-his video is really excellent, and it's just about the iPad, and he goes really into depth. He talks about sales numbers, he has clips of the iPad launch.

32:41Side note, have you seen the iPad keynote recently? Like, did you see that clip in my video at all, or do you remember it? Are you talking about the one where he sits down in the chair? Yeah. Yeah, that's a great keynote. Do you remember what color the chair? Do you remember what color the chair was? It's not brown. So, I literally said as I was recording the video, I remember him sitting down in the red chair, because I remembered it as red for some reason. But it's definitely a black leather chair. Okay. And I just- that was just a weird, like, Mandela effect moment of, like, I thought I remembered this keynote so clearly.

33:13Well, he has sat in Kara Swisher's red chair on a couple of- That's what it is. The all things D conference. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So, it was Apple at 50. Read Jason's article. Yours was about Apple's best at version 2. Yeah, well, I kept seeing people talk about, like, here are the best Apple products. These are the ones we most fondly remember. The Verge even has, like, a ranker, which is kind of fun. You can go in and rank the different things. And the last time I checked, the things that were at the top of this were, like, original iPod, original iPhone. I get why people think those were not good products.

33:46Neither of them was very good. So, I went to their ranker, and you're shown two random Apple products. Totally random, but you have to choose which is better. I got iPhone 5S and Apple Pay. What would you choose from those two? The iPhone, for sure. The iPhone 5S?

34:04Better product than Apple Pay? Really? I don't know. You don't think so? The only difference between the iPhone 5S and 5 was Touch. Not the 5C, the 5S. The 5S, the Touch ID was the big story with the 5S, but that was it. The 5 had the actual new form factor, the larger screen. The 6 is when we actually got bigger screens and Apple Pay. And Apple Pay has become, like, ubiquitous. Like, it's become, like, how you could pay everywhere. I chose Apple Pay. Yeah. It was, anyway.

34:35So, I just was, like, the MacBook Air, in general, category, amazing. Original MacBook Air sucked. It was $1,800, and it had, like, one year. It's, like, not good. So, my point was just, like, Apple sees a vision, makes a product, and then they get it right on the second try. Except AirTag. Like, AirTag was right on the first try. They did it right. Some of them are. Yeah, I mean, that's fair. Some of them are. AirPods were right the first time. Right. But then, like, I think I said in my video, AirPods 3 and AirPods Pro 2, those were like, all right, these things are great.

35:06You know, this is great. I agree. But, yeah, and, I mean, Apple Silicon, the M1, they didn't need to wait to the M2 for the M1 to be good. But, of course, they'd been making A-series chips for, whatever, 10 years at that point. So, they were pretty good. So, my point was just, like, there were, I mean, even, I didn't mention this in there, but even, like, the Apple 1 versus the Apple 2, right? The Apple 1 was a hobbyist thing. The Apple 2 was a product. I just, it was like, we so fondly remember some of these original things. The original iPhone, compared to what came after it, was not good.

35:36Yeah. No, Edge. It was Edge. It was Edge data. Yeah, it didn't have an App Store. Edge cellular data. No App Store. No. Web Apps. Steve Jobs said Web Apps could be a feature. They were going to be a thing. They're going to be a thing. Can I tell you, it took me forever. And now, today, we live in a world where everything is Web Apps, Steven. It's so terrible, except we're not on the iPhone. That is, well, yeah, that is funny. I remember, I didn't have the original iPhone. Did you have the original iPhone? Yeah, that's right, Steven. It's right. But did you get it? Like, did you get it when it came out? I got it in, I think, October or November, so a couple months later.

36:09Because it went on sale in June or July, right? But the original iPhone, it came out in June. But you used the original iPhone, and that was your phone. But yeah, that one right there is my phone. Yep. I think it's right there. See, I did not. My first iPhone was Apple. You want me to go get it? I'll show it to you. No, no, no. It's fine. Okay, go ahead. You can go. You can go. I'm going to go get it. Hold on. All right, you can go get it. He has to unplug this. He's not going to hear what I'm saying. And all I'm going to say is, I cannot believe that Jason... No, I'm just kidding. Jason's camera's shaking like crazy. What'd you say? I said your camera's shaking like crazy.

36:40It's hilarious. It's fine. Okay. All right, hold up the original iPhone right here. Jealous. I am jealous. There's a nice patina on the back there. Yes. I don't know why this particular spot is especially... It looks like a pair of eyes. But I mean, honestly, it's held up pretty well. I saw my son when we were showing him the... He's like, does the iPhone work? I'm like, eh. I mean, it's got a cracked screen. It probably won't connect to your Wi-Fi. I definitely will not. And I don't... I have a 30-pin connector, but I don't have anything that would recognize this if I plugged

37:11it in because I don't know that it would even mount into Finder. The battery is completely shot on this. So for the most part, no. He was like... Because the conversation he wanted to have is like, you know how sometimes old tech is like really valuable and that kind of stuff. He's like, how much do you think this PowerBook is worth? I'm like, zero. The only person on the planet who cares about it is mine. And that's just because it's my original one. Right. And the same thing is true with his iPhone. If this was unopened, apparently people will pay $50,000 for it. Well, MKBHD literally bought one a couple of years ago and it was $30,000 and he unboxed

37:43it. That's a video. But I did not have the original iPhone. Still don't. The iPhone 4 was my first one. I had the original iPod Touch. I got the iPod Touch Christmas of that year. One, because I was on Sprint. Two, because I was in college. I didn't have the money for an iPhone. I wish I would have just gotten it anyways. But anyway, I had a friend with the iPhone and I was super jealous. But the original iPod Touch, I had that. And I remember it took me forever to figure out how to do a web app. Like I didn't know what a web app was.

38:14And I remember I would like go to apple.com and it would say like web apps. And I'm like, okay, okay, how? Where do I get them? And I don't remember if it was that first year or shortly after, but I did jailbreak my iPod Touch several times. And I downloaded like the Cydia store and got random apps that you weren't supposed to get. But yeah, web apps. I still have my original iPod Touch for what it's worth. And it does still turn on. It doesn't connect to Wi-Fi because it has like Wi-Fi B or whatever. It doesn't, you know, can't broadcast on it, but I saw that.

38:45All right. We have to talk about the Mac Pro being discontinued. I want to talk about our little histories with the Mac Pro. But before we do, I want to thank our friends. And this is a new sponsor. Excited for this. I want to thank our friends at Granola. Granola is the way where you can take notes, have AI, do all the summary for you. And it's your AI-powered notepad built for the way real people actually meet. Now, I have to do meetings on all the different platforms. WebEx, Google Meets, Zoom.

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42:05So learn how you can get more out of your .com from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at Framer.com slash primary for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's Framer.com slash primary for 30% off. Link is also in the episode description below. You can click it there, Framer.com slash primary. Rules and restrictions may apply. Our thanks to Framer sponsoring this episode. Now, right as we were done recording, and I believe it was Apple timed this specifically for after the Accidental Tech Podcast episode dropped.

42:38They announced in a statement, you know what I mean? It came out right after that, suspiciously. But they actually gave the statement to 9to5Mac that the Mac Pro is officially, it's gone. Not going to make it anymore. Apple's like, don't wait for an update. Don't wait for anything. The Mac Pro is over. And the last Mac Pro, the one that they were still selling up till, I guess it was last Thursday morning, which you can't buy it anymore. It's not on the website. They have some refurb Mac Pros. But it was still the M2 Ultra, which was a slower chip than you could get in the Mac

43:13Studio. You can get an M3 Ultra in the Mac Studio now. But it's gone. No more is the Mac Pro. And I don't know. I thought about, I have some experience with the Mac Pro. Do you have any, did you ever own a Mac Pro personally? No. No. Why would I own a Mac Pro? I did have a Power Mac G5, which is the closest thing to the Mac Pro I ever owned. It's not the same thing. I don't, this isn't sad though. It's, well. It's sad for like five people. This is not a product. And John Syracuse.

43:44He's one of the five. He's actually most of the five. He's most of the five. This is, what, who, this is like, I don't, I really don't understand why there's a product that does this. It's the Mac Studio. You have it sitting on your desk at home. Like, I don't understand why anyone cares about this. And John Syracuse, no offense, but he only cares about this because he wants to play Windows games on his Mac. And he could put a GPU, a third-party GPU in the Intel one, and Apple's never going to

44:14allow that to happen. And now that we're in the Apple Silicon age, it's, the Mac Studio is legitimately the, I think one of his things was like, and again, like, how far be it for me to begrudge someone else, a man who wants his computer. That's fine. But like, if the thing you want is the greatest, most powerful computer you can buy, the M3 Ultra Mac Studio is that, like, I don't know, why do you need it to say pro on it? Well, as he, did you, I don't know if you listened to the last ATP, which I did.

44:45It came out like yesterday, right? Well, I was listening to it as I was waiting for the shuttle to launch. But as John Sarcusis says in that episode, the thermal ceiling for the Mac Studio, just by the nature of how big the case is and being enclosed in there, is obviously limited, as opposed to the Mac Pro, where if Apple chose to, and they're not, they're choosing not to because it's just not worth it for them, if Apple chose to make an even more powerful chip than the Ultra, if it was possible, you know, all the silicon processes aside, then

45:21they would need a case that would be able to move more air because thermal-wise, the Mac Pro would get better performance because of that thermal ceiling, as opposed to something like the Mac Studio, which is a little box and it's going to get hot. And while it does have good cooling, it is, you know, it's not the Mac Pro. It's not going to have the same cooling power. Yeah, but, okay, again, so what? Like, I don't understand why, is the M3 Ultra being held back by something that we need?

45:51Like, is there some reason? No, no, no, it's not the, what is the thing? They're going to make an M5 Ultra probably. I know, but what I'm saying is what more? Like, what would people want to do? Are we gene sequencing? Is that the, I mean, I'm trying to think of the use cases that actually anyone cares about. Local LLM training, fine. Well, local LLMs, and this was the point Syracuse makes on the episode, is like, we're actually in a time now where the local AIs will use as much computing power that you are

46:23willing to throw at it, which is something that, you know, gaming was probably the use case that would use the most GPU, CPU, and just, like, use all the resources as possible. And now we have, like, local AIs. And there's our, Apple actually sent a bunch of YouTubers a stack of four Mac Studios in, like, a rack. And they were running local models on this Mac Studio array. And it's like, yeah, okay, you could do a Mac Studio array, but imagine if you could have a Mac Pro that has, like, infinite RAM or whatever, you know, and be able to do that.

46:58So I think there, the point Syracuse makes, which I think is salient, is that there is a space where a Mac Pro could do something more than the Mac Studio. Apple just didn't make that Mac Pro. Apple didn't make the Mac Pro. Maybe it's because they can't make a chip bigger than the Ultra, or that they can't, you know, stack the chips or whatever. Like, I don't know. Can you put five M3 Ultra chips in one case and then have it work like a computer? Or do you have to do, like, this weird tower thing with the Mac Studios? I don't know. I just don't think Apple cares about making a computer or a chip for 100,000 people.

47:36And it's not going to be even that. They just don't care. It's just not, there's not, because anybody who, like, training LLM models is not a thing you need to be doing locally, right? Like, there is a really good resource for that. It's called Infinity in the Cloud, right? Like, it's like the most powerful computing that we have access to. This is, I wrote a whole article about this. You have the access to the greatest computing in the entire world from the MacBook Neo. Yes, the cloud computing. I will just mention, I want to go down a little bit of memory lane of my experience with the Mac Pro.

48:07And I was working in a place where our use case was we had to ingest two streams of HD video, recording both streams in sync, video and audio, and be able to play back those two channels of video and audio in real time. So, we needed a computer that had four video channels, two in and two out, and a computer powerful enough to do that.

48:39Now, sure, the Mac Studio today would be powerful enough to do that. Like, it has the horsepower to do it. But what I'm showing right now, and I will put a link in the show notes, even if it's not chapter artwork. And if you see the domain OakTreePixels, just know it's mine. I'm hosting the pictures. I'm putting those on my cloud R2 bucket. Anyway, we had a 2009 Mac Pro, which is on the right. And that was actually an incredibly good machine because it did, like, it never failed.

49:10We did this multiple times every weekend, and it would record. But how we got those video signals in there, as you will see here, were these specialized PCI cards. And these cables that are going to the cards, that's actually SDI video. It's not the typical SDI connector, which looks kind of like a weird coax, the SDI connector. These are kind of like specialized SDI whatever. But you'll see there's four of those cables going into that card and out. Now, if you were to do this today with a Mac Studio, it would take a Thunderbolt capture card or whatever.