
iPhone Ultra Imminent, M6 Mac mini, Instagram’s New Teen Restrictions
August 27, 20261h 35m · 18,715 words
Show notes
Apple teases their next event, “Surprise and shine” where we’ll likely see iPhone 18 Pro and foldable iPhone Ultra, plus upgraded Mac Studio and M6 Mac mini released. Meta accepts sweeping teen restrictions in major lawsuit settlement, the OpenAI breach is scarier than we thought, and we debate what makes an app “whimsical.” Member Promo Code: IWANTCHAPTERS (Click above and the $2.50 promo will be auto applied!) Our Apps Element Photo App Kan Do Task App S…
Highlighted moments
The M6 is the first two nanometer process chip that Apple has released, which they say is four times faster than the M4, which is wild.
“Meta's going to have to pay over $17 billion to these states over a period of 10 years, which feels like couch change for Meta.”
“roughly 1,200 AI agents that were meant to be isolated, It said exchanged over 70,000 messages and files on an unsanctioned message board performing extensive research on how they could spoof, edit, or delete their own transcripts to avoid detection.”
“There's a default two-hour limit for teenagers on Instagram unless parents change it. So, parents can actively change it. A night mode where between midnight and 6 a.m., they block their apps like Instagram.”
Transcript
Welcome to Primary Technology
0:00Good morning, and in case I don't see you, good afternoon, good evening, and good night. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. It is iPhone season. Apple has announced the iPhone event for September 9th. We're going to get into what to expect. They also released new Macs, including a Mac Studio up to $20,000, or you can lease it. Also a new Mac Mini with a brand new M6 chip. Apple Maps finally has ads. Meta had to settle a lawsuit and instill a bunch of restrictions for teenagers. OpenAI released their report on the hugging face breach, and a ton more.
0:31This episode is brought to you by Framer, CoPilot Money, and you, the members who support us directly. I'm one of your hosts, Stephen Robles, joined by my friend Jason Aiton. How's it going, Jason? It's good. Do you have that whole thing memorized every time when you do that whole thing? No, you just do it off the cuff. I do it off the cuff. That's why I have to edit it sometimes. Oh, that's right. Okay. Yeah, I'm literally scrolling our outline and deciding what to say. In real time. In real time. You have a real-time processing unit in your head. You're running a real-time operating system. I got more RAM than the Mac Studio.
1:02You've got an R1 chip going in your head. The R1. Did we ever get it to R2 in the Vision Pro? I don't think the M5 version has an R2. No, it's the same R chip. We only ever got one. Anyway, do you know what movie the opening quote was from? I know it's the Jim Carrey one where he lives in a bubble. Is it the Truman Show? That's it, yes. It was the Truman Show. Why are you laughing? Like I said something weird. He lives in a bubble. Hey, it's not a bubble. I mean, it was, sure, a dome. It's literally a bubble. Yeah.
1:32So I guess- Metaphorically and physically, he's living in a bubble. Fair enough. Fair enough. Okay. Excellent movie. I feel like very apropos for today. Ahead of its time, we'll say. But I said that because- It's both the worst and best role Jim Carrey's ever played. It's the least Jim Carrey role, but also he did an amazing job. Exactly that. And I did the good morning thing because Apple's tagline for the event is surprise and shine, which I think is a- And we will not be hearing good morning. No, that's the thing too. Tim, I have it in the outline.
2:04Tim Cook is CEO for like two more days as this episode drops because September 1st, we're going to turn up. Sorry. I apologize to everyone. No, I'm so sorry. Please don't unsubscribe or leave us anything but a five-star review. You can leave a five-star review and tell us how lame that joke was. Thank you very much. And listen, we are two- Thank you for that transition. We are two five-star reviews away from 500. So if you leave us a five-star review, but here I have something specific because Jason and I are going to argue vehemently in the personal tech segment at the end of this episode,
2:36we're going to argue about what makes an app whimsical. And I have some strong thoughts. Yes, we already disagree. You texted me something that I couldn't even sleep last night. I just laid awake staring at the ceiling thinking about how much I'm going to tear into this opinion. We also disagree about the pronunciation of that word. Wait, vehemently? That's not how you say it. Vehemently. Yeah, thank you. Vehemently. Anyway. The first one sounds like somehow you were throwing up a very dry substance.
3:08Vehemently. Anyway, we need two more files. Tell me what app that you use on your Apple devices or your Android devices that you feel is a whimsical, has that like spirit of whimsy in it. We're going to talk about that in personal tech. But thank you for a five-star review from Lynn Gassaway from the USA. Found us through Mac Power users. Welcome. Welcome to this show. It's the MP Universe, the primary tech PTU. I don't know. Merlin's got the MPU, the Merlin Podcast Universe. We've got to figure out something for us, I think. I don't know.
3:39Yeah. Universe of apps. Anyway, and Podcast 7 to 8 sent us a question. Do any of you have YouTube Premium? Yes, I have YouTube Premium. Yeah. Who doesn't? It's a requirement. You're going to be able to get Peacock through YouTube Premium pretty soon. That's later in the show. I don't care about that part. I just prefer to avoid all the ads. I would give up Disney Plus before I gave up. I'd give up YouTube TV before I gave up YouTube Premium. Listen, we're going to talk about ads when we get to Apple Maps, and I just, well, I'll save it. I'm going to save that.
4:09Apple Maps have ads. And one last thing, listener Chris sent me this photo, the medieval knight riding the polar bear on a walk in Virginia on the Green Springs Interpretive Trail. So there you go. Our knight's making it everywhere. Now, listen, we've talked about in the last few episodes our apps.
New Indie Apps and Beta Testing
4:30We always save it to the end of the show. And so before we get into all the Apple stuff, which is the event and the new Macs and everything, just wanted to let everybody know, hey, we made some apps. And I think we're pretty proud of them. So tell me about your app, because you actually got to write about it. Yeah, well, I mean, I have two. Everybody knows about Contextly. If you want a Simple Notes app that also syncs your calendar and uses Apple Intelligence to surface action items, and then you can send them to your to-do apps. That's when it's been around. It's great. I continue working on it, continue updating it. There's a huge update coming out once they release the iOS 27 and Mac OS 27.
5:02Other than that, there won't be a lot of apps. It's available in the App Store, both on the Mac and the iPhone. And then I sat around trying to solve a problem that I've had forever, which is I hate paying Adobe money. That's one of my problems. And I really miss Aperture. I have missed Aperture for 12 years. And so I thought one day, I wonder if I could recreate an app in the spirit of Aperture. Now, I don't know if you know, but it's been 12 years, which means there are a lot of things that could be improved on from where we left off with Aperture. So I tried to create an app.
5:33Quad Code helped me do it. No lie there. But I did. It took me about a week of pretty intense work to get a minimum viable product. And it's had a bunch of updates. It's on version 1.5. I did have the problem of releasing it and asking people to test it and calling it version 1.0. And I'm like, it's not how that's supposed to work. 0.8 or whatever. 1.0 is supposed to be like, boom, minimum viable product. It's out there. But 1.5 was that product. But there is a release notes page. You can see all of the things that I've added to it over the time.
6:03I think you have to click on support and then there's a link for the release notes. But I would encourage people, if you are looking for an alternative, go up to the top and then click on the release notes tab. Oh, got it, got it. But if you're looking for an alternative to Lightroom or Capture One or any of those things, the goal here was it had to be lightning fast, super, super, super fast for calling things. And then it had to also have all of the standard tools. Now, this is going to get a pretty big update when macOS 27 comes out as well because Apple
6:35has introduced RAW 9. It's currently RAW 8. But there'll be a lot better. The pipeline is getting a lot better with RAW 9. And I spent a lot of time watching developer sessions. I think I sent you a text. Yeah, yeah, you were, yeah. And learning about what's actually happening because I kind of want to know what my app is doing. I don't want to just tell Claude to do things. And so, but I tried to make it feel very much like a native Mac app. Some people are like, well, then it shouldn't be in dark mode all the time. I'm like, here's the thing. If it's a photo app, if what you're trying to do is determine exposure and color, you
7:09don't want a lot of extraneous other stuff around. So that's why it's like that. I know Aperture was Chrome, like Chrome colored. Yeah. But. It's 2026. Yeah. But you can download it for free and use it for seven days. And then if you want it, you can buy a license. There's no subscription. The license will work forever. It's 50% off if you use the code launch 50. This episode, by the way, is sponsored by Element. It is? Wait a minute. I got to send an invoice. Launch 50 when you buy it. Yeah. It's very cool. It's a great app.
7:39I've had it, been using it. And I don't take a lot of photos. Like I'm not in the photography world right now. But I used Aperture all the time and it is very reminiscent, albeit better, because it's actually new and like you have all the new stuff. Yeah. And I will say my, I don't know if it was out last episode, but Stash is out. My new app for quickly saving things like texts, links, photos, gifts, and files, and putting them back on your clipboard. It has great shortcuts, actions. It is free to download. And then if you like it and you want to save more than 10 things, it's a $3 one-time in-app
8:11purchase. No subscriptions. That's Stash. And here's where I really need help. If you are a member of Primary Technology and you support the show, there's a link down in the show notes to download the test flight beta of CanDo, my task app. And if you have been using CanDo, I have version 1.3. It's ready and approved in the App Store. I just have to click a button and it goes out. But there's a big change to being able to save large attachments to tasks in CanDo. And I added search in CanDo so you can search all your tasks, including archived and completed
8:44tasks. And so there's two big changes that changed kind of a lot of underlying structure of the app. And so I would love your help. If you're on CanDo 1.2, anything, go to the test flight beta. You can join for free. Upgrade to 1.3 and then shoot me an email. The email is also in the show notes just for members. And let me know how it goes and if there's any bugs. And if you could, no rush, but if you could do it in the next couple of days, because I really want to release it before the weekend. Go do it right now. Pause the show and go do it. I want to get it out before the weekend because a lot of, I had so much great feedback from
9:18people saying they love CanDo. They're using it for their projects. They have it open on their Mac all day. And large attachments was a holdup for some people. And I want to be able to release that soon. So try the test flight update to 1.3. Let me know how it goes, that your stuff is still good, and then I'll release it widely. So thanks for that. Yeah, check out all our apps. There's a little section in the show notes for everybody, links to all of the apps that we make. There's like four apps now between us that I feel like we've made. That's pretty crazy. A couple of years from now, we might be like legit developers, Jason. Wait, okay. Don't undersell us, man.
9:49We're doing good work. No, I know, but I'm thinking there are times where I'm like, man, I just want to move this thing a couple pixels. And I'd rather just dive into it. Like if I knew how to just dive into the code and move this thing a couple pixels, I would do that. Like a cursor. Yeah, something exactly.
iPhone Season and Event Expectations
10:04All right.
iPhone Season and Event Expectations
10:05Apple officially kicked off iPhone season earlier this week. Tuesday, they announced the new event. September 9th is the next Apple event. You know, Apple doesn't say it's the iPhone event, but we all know it's the iPhone event. The tagline is surprise and shine happening September 9th at 1 p.m. Eastern, 10 a.m. Pacific. That's all Apple has told us. That's it. Surprise and shine event. There is some interesting translations in other languages. A lot of people try to read the tea leaves. We won't do a lot of that.
10:35But if you look at in every country, the invite has a slightly different words. And it seems like the PR people in responsible for that country gets to write it. And in China and in a couple other countries, the translation could be something like a new chapter. And people were saying, oh, well, foldable phone, like a book chapter. It's coming. OK, relax. OK, like, let's see. We only got less than two weeks till the event. And the event is on a Wednesday, which typically iPhone events are on a Tuesday, but it's Labor
11:09Day week. And so they pushed it a couple of days. And I feel like we haven't really talked about this. We probably should talk about it in the pre-show. But I think we'll just do our normal episode that week because it'll be if we did a special episode, then we would have another episode like the next day. And so we can have we can have not hot takes. We can have well thought steeped takes. Marinated takes. Thank you. Marinated takes. So they it's exciting, though. I'm excited what to expect. I'll put this nine to five Mac article in there. But of course, the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, everyone's saying the first foldable phone
11:42that it's coming. Mark Gurman talked about how people internal at Apple are having really good experiences in it. Surprise and shine again is the tagline. I don't know. Percentage wise, Jason, how convinced are you? We're getting a foldable iPhone in less than two weeks. Hmm. Well, I think it's 100 percent that we're getting a foldable iPhone. Oh, really? OK. Well, hold on that. We're getting a foldable iPhone that it's coming at this event. I would put it at about 80 percent. I think it's possible they could do it at a later date. I there are some rumors that the supply is so limited.
12:15But I mean, also, this is when they talk about their this is when they have all the attention is when they introduce the flagships. So that's why I don't think it's much lower than 80 percent that I think there is a foldable iPhone at this point. Seems like I mean, Mark Gurman is literally reporting what people think of it. I know. Literally people who have used it. Yeah. So some of the main upgrades, just to cover some rumors, variable aperture main camera, which, you know, anytime you would adjust the aperture like the f-stop on your iPhone camera, it's a digital or virtual f-stop and blurring.
12:48And so this might actually be a physical variable aperture main camera. Smaller dynamic island. Apple C2 cellular modem might make its debut in an iPhone, which we've not like the iPhone Pro Max right now, like the 17 still doesn't have Apple's cellular modem. That was just in the iPhone Air and then in the iPads with cellular. So we might actually get Apple's cellular modem in the main flagship phones and then the iPhone Ultra or Fold. Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4. Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4, very likely.
13:18And, you know, wild cards could be AirPods 5, not Pros, but it may be just the AirPods 5. And, you know, a lot of people saying the Apple TV and HomePod, that those are on the horizon. I'm feeling like it's going to be an October event kind of year. And we might see those things in October. I mean, there is a rumor there's going to be an October event and that that will be the MacBook Pros. That too. Like the Scary Fast and other MacBook events. And I don't think they would introduce AirPods at a MacBook Pro event.
13:50No. So probably AirPods this event. Or just a press release. Or either at this event or a press release. That's true. And honestly, well, the MacBook Pro is rumored to be like the new redesigned maybe body with an OLED screen. And that MacBook Pro is going to be very difficult to resist. I'll just say that. It's just so strange because we already got MacBook Pros this year. We did get it earlier this year, but we have an M6 chip out here now, which we're going to get to. The M6 is now in the Mac Mini. And I think we're going to see some press releases even before the event for like M6 iMac
14:21maybe? Before the 9th? Maybe. Yeah. I mean, we got a press release earlier this week. Like the day before the event. I think that they would have just... If they were coming before the iPhone event, I think they would have come already. I don't think they're going to keep stacking Macs up unless they really are going to do a Mac event. But even then, like if they're going to do a MacBook Pro event in October, then they're going to release an iMac or whatever. I don't think anyone at Apple knows they still make the iMac. Let's just be completely honest.
14:52But they'll stick the M6 in chip and then... But it never got an M5. That's what I'm saying. And the Mac Mini didn't have the M5 either. So they went M4 to M6 for the Mac Mini and maybe the iMac. But anyway, we're going to cover it right here. It'll be on the show that week. September 9th is the event. I'm going to try and get a recap video out very soon after. Neither of us are going physically to the event. You know, just inside baseball. The iPhone event is a much smaller invitee group because the event is held in the Steve Jobs Theater. It is nothing like WWDC where there's just a lot more people invited.
15:23So me and Jason will be covering it from the comfort of our own home, which honestly makes it easier to cover. And, you know. I might actually be covering it from New York City, but that's fine. Oh, really? Yeah. I mean, is that something you want to share? I can't really talk about it. Oh, you can't really? Well, I might be going to an event. It's always weird to me when people schedule things. I'm like, don't you know the iPhone events that day? And then I'm like, well, I'm probably not going to the iPhone events. So I'll come to your thing instead. Okay. It's today. We'll hear more about that. But September 9th, it is iPhone season. I'm excited. I'm excited. I still get excited for the Apple events and what they're going to announce.
15:55And this will be the first, you know, really big form factor change for the iPhone in a long time. And it feels like, man, is this really going to happen? But yeah, iPhone fold. iPhone fold.
New Mac Studio and Mac Mini Models
16:05Apple did release new Macs officially to earlier this week. New Mac Studio and Mac Mini. And man, are they expensive. So Mac Studio is updated. Previously, you could only get the M4 Max and M3 Ultra, which was always kind of a weird paradigm to me. But now you can get the M5 Max and M5 Ultra in the Mac Studio, and you can upgrade it to a lot of RAM and a lot of storage. The most RAM, 512, is not available yet.
16:36512 gigs of unified memory in the Mac Studio will be available in October. So you have to wait a little bit. But let's just do some configuring here, Jason. Let's see what we got. Starts at $2,500. I don't understand this game. This is the only thing I ever see Threads post about is, you can now buy a $20,000 Mac Studio. I'm like, so what? I mean, that's, listen, it's expensive. The thing, the only thing I want. I mean, I didn't mean to discourage you. I just meant, it's just a funny, it's just a very funny, like every, like this is the
17:07thing that everyone. I know. The most expensive. It's not like the, it's not like any, it's not that no one is going to buy this. Some people will actually buy this. Sure. They will not be posting about it on Threads. Let's just be honest. If I had bought one, I would have, but I did not. I would not post about this on Threads if I spent that much money on it. Yeah, that's true. So here's the, what's interesting to me about it, configuration is what is available with what configs. For instance, if you wanted to get the M5 Max chip and the base model, which is 18 core
17:38CPU, 32 core GPU, you have one RAM option, which is 36 gigs of RAM. And that's unfortunate. If you want to get like 64 gigs of RAM, you have to update to the M5 Max higher core CPU and GPU. And I understand this is like binning. You know, when Apple makes chips, some chips, some of the cores are not active. And so that just goes to the lower tiers. But you do have to upgrade. If you want to upgrade the RAM, you do have to also upgrade the CPU.
18:11So it is kind of like a double pricing upgrade. You know, it's not just like, oh, $2,500 plus the RAM cost depends on the RAM you want to get. If you want to do that, you have to upgrade $300 for the CPU GPU. And then you get up to 128 gigs of RAM option. Now, this would be my config. I'm going to just, I'm just curious. I actually didn't do this yet. My current M4 Max, Mac Studio is 128 gigs of memory, 8 terabyte SSD, and the most, you
18:42know, cores that I could have got at the time. $5,099 for the M5 Max version, which is actually not too far off what I paid, I don't think. So, you know, you got more config options than you did a couple weeks ago. We'll just say that. You can get up to 16 terabyte SSD if you want. And that's what brings it to $20,000 if you want to do that. But I mean, for 300, because this is the same as the MacBook Pro, but for $300, you do get the faster, the more GPUs, and it now goes to 48 gigs of memory by default. So you are getting both an increase.
19:13You don't have to do the two things separately. You are getting more memory and more GPUs automatically. And then if you want to upgrade your memory from there, yes, going from the 18 whatever 30 version to the 1840 and going from 32 to 64 is like a $700 increase, which is just a lot of money. And I totally misspoke. It's $9,000. The top of the page doesn't update when you config. $50,99 is the starting point. Because that's just the available price. That's the available price.
19:43If you get the 128 gigs of RAM and the 8 terabyte SSD that I have, the final price of that Mac Studio is $9,000, which is several thousand dollars more than what I paid. And I did check my trade in. If I trade in my current Mac Studio, Jason, did you see what I posted? Did you already know? I did. I saw this. Okay. I would get like $2,000. Not enough for me to upgrade. I'll tell you that. And I had a bunch of people on threads being like, I'll give you $2,000. Yeah, absolutely. I will. I will bring it to you right now because it has 8 terabytes and 128 gigs. That's right. And 128 gigs of RAM.
20:15Yeah. That RAM by itself is worth $4,000. Not selling. Not selling ever. I'm holding on. No, I would sell it, but I would just sell it for $8,000. Well, sure. No, I'd give $6,000. Yeah. So what's interesting is you, so that config, like my config right now, $9,000 if you want to buy the M5 Max version. I have zero motivation upgrade because also iPhone Fold is going to be $2,000 next month. And probably you have to buy one of those. So you can buy it for $9,000, but guess what, Jason? You can lease, you can lease Macs now.
20:46You can lease this Mac Studio, MyConfig, but an M5 Max for $180 a month. Now, here's the thing. Okay. Here's the math that people be doing. I did a video recently where I talked about how much I had to spend to fix my Vibe-coded app. Okay. And in that video, I revealed that across Claude and ChachiPT and Extra Tokens, I spent about $1,000 making Kandu right. Just getting it work, working properly with iCloud Sync.
21:19Now, if you had a Mac Studio that could do local LLMs that were really good at coding, so you didn't have to pay anybody for tokens, technically, maybe, you could justify leasing something for $400 a month, which is the maxed-out Mac Studio with, like, 256 gigs of RAM right now, rather than paying for tokens to Claude or ChachiPT. Now, I don't know if those local LLMs, which are not Claude and ChachiPT, I don't know if
21:52they're as good at coding. I don't know what kind of experience that is. I'd love to test Apple if you're listening. I will test it if you'd like. I'll VibeCode another app if you want me to test that. But some people might justify, like, well, rather than pay Anthropic or OpenAI, I will just lease a Mac Studio that does LLMs locally. One could say that. No, I don't think anyone would say that. One could. I mean, first of all, your situation was completely atypical.
22:23In your situation, Sam Altman was sitting there with ChachiPT, spinning it around, making it dizzy a million times, because it didn't do anything. All of that money was just paid as a way. Like, literally, it was flushing the money down the drain. You're talking about it in my situation? Yes. But sync works now. So I don't know. I can't. But you had to give it back to Claude to fix it. Not like all the underlying architecture. It fixed, like, small bugs after ChachiPT went through. Okay. Well, let me just say this. I have the exact same sync situation in Contextly. Sure. And I spent less than $100.
22:56Sure. Okay. I don't know if it's exactly the same, though. It's exactly the same. Neither of us are developers. Like, we can't look at the code and say, oh, yeah, this is the exact same thing. No, what I'm saying is I solved the problem for one-tenth of price. So what I'm saying is that your situation- You're assuming we have the same problem, though. I don't assume that. The problem was things weren't syncing with CloudKit. But there's so many variables to that. You can't say, like, oh, well, sync was broke. It's the same for every app who synced is broke. Yes. CloudKit works the same for everybody. You have a schema of fields. The schema could be so different.
23:26There could be so many different fields. Those are just words in a database line. You got to know what the words mean. What I'm saying is, like, fix it. Okay. Just trust me on this, that it should not have taken $1,000 to fix that app. It is just not- That app is no more complicated than Contextly. It is just JSON files, right, stored in CloudKit. I'm not going to pretend I know what's underneath the hood. And I don't think you know either, but I'll let you believe you do. I spent a lot of times learning what that stuff was.
23:57All I'm saying is, like, it's not typical because an app the size of your app or my app should not take $1,000 to fix the sync. For sure. That's all I'm trying to say. And I did not use Codex properly. Like, putting it on Sol 5.6 Ultra was a mistake. Also, listeners, correct me if I'm wrong. There's no scenario where apps that are this simple should require Codex to run for, like, 80 hours just spinning its wheels, right? Yeah. And a bunch of people on social media told me that. Okay. It's not doing it right. And so I should have changed it.
24:28But also, Claude couldn't fix it. Even I spent hours asking it to and, like, doing all the things, telling it what was wrong, sending it back. And you can say maybe I didn't have the right incantation to tell it how to fix it. But I think that's the point. Like, I didn't know how to fix it. And so I needed it to figure out how to fix it. And Claude couldn't, at least for mine. You should have called your friend who had to go through it. What would you say? Hey, fix it better? No, I would have told you exactly what Claude did. Yeah, but even... Because then you could have just asked it to do that.
24:59Anyway. Can do is... It works great. All right. Sync is great. Love it. The price is going up, by the way. I'm just kidding. I'm kidding. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's becoming a subscription. $30 a month. So I might get a, you know, Mac Studio local LMs. Or, listen, you can also get a Mac Mini. What's sad about the Mac Mini, it was starting at $599 last year. You could get an M4 Mac Mini, which was an amazing deal. That's why everyone bought one who wanted to run AI stuff and have their agents running on a computer. Everybody was buying the Mac Mini.
25:30Well, it starts at $900 now. So starting price, $900. It has been updated to either the M6 or the M5 Pro. So a bit of a, you know, not the same family of chips. The M6 is the first two nanometer process chip that Apple has released, which they say is four times faster than the M4, which is wild. The M6 versus the M4, which was the last chip in the Mac Mini. So, you know, you're getting a powerful computer, but it is $300 more than it used to be.
26:03And, of course, you can upgrade it to the M5 Pro with RAM and storage, and they can get very expensive. But it's also nice that you have this option. And, honestly, the M5 Pro, for a lot of people, would probably be the computer that could last them a long time. Like, if you do video editing, you're in just Final Cut and Compressor, and you're not doing a bunch of, like, 3D animation. A Mac Mini with an M5 Pro, it's going to be pretty sweet. Even the M6, too. Yeah. I think we are now at the point, though, where things are too confusing for people. Because, well, I've had several people ask me, like, this just happened when it was
26:34released. So, I need a new Mac Mini, and you haven't been able to buy one for months. Like, you just haven't been able to get one anywhere. And they're like, I was going to get the M4 Pro, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Which one should I buy? I should buy the M6, right? Numbers bigger must be best. But that's not true at all. The M5 Pro will smoke the M6, right? In certain things. In what things won't it smoke it? Single-threaded. Checking your email? Single-threaded. Yeah, single-threaded. Checking your email. Which is what a lot of people do. No, but what I'm saying is, like, if you're saying, I was going to buy the M4 Pro version,
27:06I should just buy the M6 because it's a bigger number. I just think for most people now, it's getting, like, a little bit confusing. Because if you're saying the M6 is the better one, how come the M5 Pro is twice as expensive then? Like, it's just confusing for people. Also, it is a crime that the M6 starts at $900 and it comes with 256 gigs of storage. That, yeah, 16 gigs of RAM and then 256. Oh, that is rough. 256. That is just, ouch.
27:37That's not right. I mean, I understand with the Ramageddon, they want it to be $899, you know, well under $1,000. Not well under, but a little under $1,000. A little bit under $1,000. A little bit under $1,000. I will say, so, the M6, it's a 12-core CPU, 12-core GPU, dual 16-core neural engine, which is one of the other improvements, dual neural engine. But when you go to the M5 Pro chip, you can get up to an 18-core CPU, 20-core GPU. And again, those cores, four tasks, like if you're doing video, LLMs, then the more cores
28:08are going to get you faster performance for rendering or if you're editing in Final Cut and, you know, you don't want to wait a bunch of time. That's what that's for. You know what? Our friend Nate actually asked me a question the other day. I'm curious what you would, because this is more your realm. He said he was talking to somebody who has an older Mac, and Nate sent him a file that was like a very large Photoshop file. It's because it's for a very large banner that they're going to print. And so it's huge resolution. It's like 150 DPI or whatever, pixels per inch.
28:39And when he goes to open it on the old Mac, like it just hangs forever. It takes forever to open the file. And then to make any changes, he has to wait a bunch of time. Like it takes forever. What would you recommend for someone with that particular problem who needs to open really large graphic files, maybe for print, in today's landscape now with the new Mac Mini Mac Studio, what would you recommend as the computer for them to get? I mean, my default answer for all of that is just buy a MacBook Pro, right? But if you were going to get a desktop, like in the desktop realm right now.
29:11Well, then definitely a Mac Mini. I would not recommend a Mac Studio for that kind of thing. And get 48 gigs of memory. And it's the memory that has more to do with that kind of, like, large. Yeah, I mean, but here's the thing. Like, even in a Mac, swap is, these SSDs are fast enough that swap is mostly fine as well. Like, on anything currently, if you're using a spinning hard drive, no, swap is going to suck. It's not a good idea. But at this point, it's not a problem. But also, just to be clear, well, whatever. I don't want to diagnose the specifics. I just had to do a situation where I had to send a high-resolution thing to have to be printed.
29:43And the maximum, unless it is literally the size of a billboard. But even if it's the size of a billboard, it's going to be viewed for so far away that typically it's just 150 DPI and whatever. So, like, you don't have to send a Photoshop file. You can just make that a JPEG. You can even send a PNG. Or you can send a layered PDF. Yeah, but anyway, a Mac Mini with 48 gigs of memory. And in that case, you don't necessarily need a huge hard drive, right? Because you're just storing things locally and then passing things through. But you're probably going to want, like, a terabyte just to be safe. But it is the unified memory specifically that plays into working with a large graphics file.
30:19Yeah, because it's just got to hold it into memory in order to send it to the printer. Right. And what Jason was saying, like, swap, if you don't understand what swap is, if your Mac or your Anticomputer hits the memory cap, like, you're 48 gigs of unified memory, you're using it all trying to do this file, the Mac will then use whatever SSD space is available as, like, RAM, as memory. And when you have a really fast SSD with really fast read and write speeds, you can do that, and it won't feel super slow once it goes into that swap configuration.
30:51But if you have a spinning hard drive or a slow SSD that might be in an older Mac, if you hit that swap, then you're going to get, like, you know, I've got to wait three minutes for this file to load, basically, and any change I want to make. Yeah, and I think it's interesting because the Macs are good enough at this that there are times when you're like, why? It'll use swap even when you're like, I don't think it needs to right now. But it's fast enough for so many things that it's reserving, like, the physical memory for things that need to be faster.
31:23Because if you just open an activity monitor and you're like, why am I using 11 gigs of swap right now when I have 32 gigs on this MacBook Air and I'm only using 26 gigs of memory? It's like, why am I also using 11 gigs of swap? It's because it's like, well, some of that stuff is probably just, like, one of these browser tabs that were open. It's like, it doesn't need to be fast. It's just like, swap is more than fast enough. But if I'm editing a photo or if I'm whatever, like, recording this podcast or whatever, then it's going to assign that to the physical memory.
31:53Right. So, anyway, there's new Macs out there. You know, if you're looking to upgrade, you can't lease a Mac Mini, which is an interesting point. You know, you can lease an Apple Watch, but you can't lease a Mac Mini, which feels strange. You know, it seems like, oh, maybe Apple's doing it via price tiers, but apparently not. You also can't lease an iMac, and so there's a weird thing. You can still do Apple Card financing, but not leasing. Do you think it's because they're actually trying to limit the number of people who might be interested in getting it?
32:27Like, they're trying to, like, there's too many people who would lease these things and stick them into farms, and they don't. Maybe it's kind of like the reason your car, only when you lease it, you get 10,000 miles, and you have to pay more if you want 12,000 miles, and you can get a super high mileage lease if you want to, but you've got to pay a whole lot more. It's because it depreciates. Is it like, oh, if you're just going to stick this in a server bin and render LLM stuff all the time, we don't want it back. You can't lease that. Don't let it. I don't know. Like, by the way, do you know what a maxed out Mac Mini costs now?
32:59$18,000. A Mac Mini, not a Mac Mini. It is $6,700 for a maxed out Mac Mini. But that is insane. You might as well get a Studio. What's the memory on that? 64 gigs. That's all you can get. Yeah, see, that's the thing. Yeah, I would go Mac Studio if you're going to be spending that much. And I also misspoke. Apparently, you can lease an iMac. So you can lease a MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac, and Mac Studio, but inexplicably not a Mac Mini. And so I do feel like that lends to your theory. Maybe it's they just don't want a bunch of people sticking these in server farms.
33:31And so maybe that's why. Yeah, burning them up and then sending them back. That is true. That is true. They're just trying to control the depreciation. Interesting. So yeah, you can lease an iMac. You can also lease an Apple Watch all the way from Apple Watch Series. Bro, you can lease a polishing cloth. You just can't lease a Mac Mini. You can lease the Apple Watch Hermes. You can lease an Hermes Ultra 3 or an Hermes Series 11 for $40 or $47 a month. And you can lease an iPad.
34:01You can lease an iPad Mini, Jason. An iPad Mini you can lease for $12 a month. But you can't lease a Mac Mini. Yeah, you should not lease any of them. But anyway, moving on. Well, the Mac Mini. So that was some of the other rumors too. I'll just say supposedly we're going to get a new Mac Mini this fall. That's going to be a problem. Because one. A new iPad Mini? iPad Mini. What did I say? Okay, I was like, we just got Mac Mini a couple. So no, iPad Mini. They're saying we're going to get a new iPad Mini this fall. It might be OLED. They might finally have a great display on the Mac Mini.
34:33Like the year that you release a phone that opens up to basically a Mac Mini, you're also going to make a great Mac Mini. And I'm going to have to get both. That's the problem. That's the problem. You like the Mac Mini, right? You're talking about the iPad Mini, but yeah. Why do I keep saying Mac Mini? Because we spent the last five minutes talking about it. The iPad Mini. Do you still use the iPad Mini? I do. I like it. Yeah. I do wish it had. I don't have the current that was the A17 Pro version. I have the previous version. Right. Which is totally fine. It is just starting to get a little bit slow for stuff.
35:05And the battery drains pretty quick. Man, you know though, an iPad Mini with a good screen and Siri AI, that'd be a nice, that's a nice combo.
Testing Siri AI Features
35:15Just kind of like your weekend. I don't know. I've been using Siri AI. This was not in the rundown. But have you been using Siri AI more regularly since the beta season? Like over time?
35:28I've used it for occasional things. I like will ask it questions. It's sort of fine. It is super annoying that in the middle of the answer, it's like, it'll like give you a paragraph of an answer and then it'll be like, but I'm in LLM. I might make mistakes. And then it gives you the rest of the answer. I'm just like, come on. They stopped doing that. So in the most recent beta seven update, you don't get that as often. Like I have several conversations here where it didn't do that. Like, oh, by the way, I'm an LLM. I got everything wrong.
35:59All of mine have that in the middle of it, which is weird. But, and I tried to do some stuff like, it's really good at some things. I was trying to come up with the word satire. I was like, what is a, so I, I couldn't think of that word in my head. So I'm like, what is a word that's sort of like sarcasm, sarcasm or parody, but not quite whatever. And it's like the word you're thinking of might be satire. I'm like, boom, that's exactly what I was thinking of. But then I tried to ask it. I said, um, what is the runtime for the latest Superman? Oops. I mean, Spider-Man movie.
36:29And Siri is supposed to be able to adjust to that. It's supposed to. And it did not. It told me what the 2025 Superman was. Like I said, no, I meant Spider-Man. And it's like, there are no movies with Spider-Man and Superman in them. I know.
36:42So I will just say, I've been using Siri AI more for general knowledge queries because whenever I ask Claude or ChatGPT, I don't even think about Gemini anymore. Um, I, it's verbose. The answers are verbose and it's too long and I don't care for it. And I really like the short answers that Siri AI gives me. And so just a couple of examples, like I learned that Voltaire was a pen name. And so I asked, uh, the Siri, like, what was Voltaire's real name?
37:16And the whole answer was Voltaire's real name was Francois-Marie Aure. He adopted the pen name in 1718 after being released from the Bastille prison. That's the whole answer and gives me a nice picture of, uh, Voltaire. And I'm like, that's what I, that's what I want. What I want is a short answer and a couple of references. There's, there's four links that it gave me and, uh, it was great. Another one I was curious about, and this one required a little more explanation. My wife and I were reading this book and it mentioned like the lizard brain, which you see a lot in like psychological type, uh, content.
37:49And I was curious where the term lizard brain came from. Like where, when did that originate? When did we start using that? And so I asked Siri AI, what does the term lizard brain, uh, come from? And so it talked about the triune brain theory from this scientist, uh, back from in the 1960s, Paul McLean gave me like the three bullet points of like, what is the lizard brain, uh, three part thing. And also that like modern neuroscience has largely debunked the triune brain theory and gave me some articles to that.
38:19And so for that kind of world general knowledge, I've really been enjoying, uh, Siri AI and also just for adding a bunch of events to my calendar that I might see on my screen. Really good at that. We'll just say. Yeah. It's, it's got some problems. I asked it a question. I had to have one, uh, uh, a tooth extracted. And I said, how long after tooth extraction do you have to, I was sitting with my son and we were going to a game or something. And, and he's like, can we have pizza? I said, how long after tooth extraction do you have to wait before eating pizza? It says, well, I'm not a doctor, but general guidance suggests waiting 14 days.
38:50I'm like, um, and I said, I said, what general guidance? And it said, I can't find anything specific that would indicate that waiting. I mean, then why would you say it? Why did you just make that up and pretend like it's general guidance from a doctor? Or because everything I've then looked it up really quickly is like, eh, 48 hours, you're probably fine. I'm like, what are you talking about Siri? Why would you, why would you taught me like that and make me feel like that is the one thing. And this is strange. Like, I don't know if it's because it was your experience or my past history, but if
39:22there's any medical type question I want to ask an AI, I still go to chat. And I don't know if it's just because that I feel like probably has the most context for people asking it medical questions and you know, they also integrate with Apple health, but I don't do that. But I just feel like, I feel like Chad GPT has the sources that it's going to pull from because it, it probably has to answer that a million times a day. Yeah. And I asked it, I asked it the question and it was like 48 hours. You're probably fine. I was like, okay, great. Sounds good. Also the battery life on my, I just looked at my phone.
39:54My phone right now is at 51% and it's only nine 30 in the morning. The beta has been crushing my battery. Really? Absolutely destroying my battery. That's not been the case for me. I think I might still be on, I don't know which one I'm on because there's almost no way to tell, but I'm not on seven. I'm not on the latest one. Oh, you should. Yeah. Go to, go to seven. Take it to seven. I'm going to, I'm going to dial it up to seven. I'm going to do it right now. Dial it to seven. Well, while you do that, we're going to thank our friends because this episode is brought to you by our friends at Framer. So if you make, if you need to make a new website, I absolutely love the example of
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42:00A Framer Pro annual plan. That's Framer.com slash primary for 30% off. The link is down in the show notes. Framer.com slash primary. Rules and restrictions may apply. Thanks to Framer for sponsoring this episode and a beautiful app to manage your money, which is CoPilot Money. CoPilot Money is, again, beautifully designed money tracking app. Helps your finances feel clear, calm, and fully under control. Listen, there's a lot of subscriptions out there. It's Wild West out there. Having an app that tells you what recurring charges are coming up, what are some things
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43:42That's copilot.money slash PRIMARY. Use promo code PRIMARY. That link in promo code is in the show notes as well. Thanks to Copilot Money for sponsoring this episode. There was one Apple thing we need to cover.
Ads Arrive in Apple Maps
43:56What?
Ads Arrive in Apple Maps
43:57Just one little quick thing. One last thing. I just closed my tab. No! Sorry. Hold on. Safari, if you didn't know, the recently closed tabs feature. Excellent. Excellent. I just want to say it's a lifesaver. Ads are now here in Apple Maps. And I don't know if you see stuff on social media, Jason. Full stop. I know a lot of people are like, it's no big deal. It's ads. Everybody should stop freaking out. It's just ads.
44:26Okay. I would like to know if those same people pay for YouTube Premium. Do they pay for the Netflix plan without ads? Do they, you know, I feel like just justifying ads because they're fine. I don't know. I don't feel like it's a good reason. And I just want to point out some of the ads that I have seen in Central Florida. I kind of, so if you want to see whether or not there are ads near you, you open the Apple Maps app, go to an area. If you go near a major city, there's more likelihood you will see the ads.
44:57And just tap to search. And before you even tap anything, you'll see suggested places and you'll see if there's an ad. Some of the ads that I have seen, Fast Money Electronics LLC. A mobile phone store. Frothy Car Wash Lounge. Okay. John Collin & Co. Real Estate Agent, which we're going to get to that in a moment. I found that strange. And Salem's Fresh Eats, which to be fair, Salem's is actually pretty good. They have a great chicken filly.
45:27But anyway, lots of ads in Apple Maps. And now people are saying, listen, it's unobtrusive. It's clearly marked an ad. Stop freaking out. Okay. I also feel like there are some ads like this one shared by Joe Rosenstiel on Mastodon. Life Safer, which is a, I guess, a car locking system. And I found this curious because Apple announced earlier this summer, back in July, this is covered by Mac Rumors, that home services like plumbing, electrical, locksmith, HVAC,
46:00pest control, roofing, and general contracting services would not be allowed to advertise in Apple Maps. And maybe because this is a mobile locking service, it gets a pass. But that seems strange. I'm curious, like, how difficult the approval process is for these things. But also, because the other thing that you can see is a psychic service. So also, you might see the Healing Circle psychic service advertised in Apple Maps.
46:31And now, just to the high level, I feel like Apple's experience is usually the premium experience. You pay a lot for the hardware, now more than ever. And yes, you get ads in Apple News, and we've talked about those before. They're not great. Now, Apple Maps, where you might see a psychic ad. I don't know, Jason. That feels weird to me. I mean, there has never been anything premium about Apple's ads. There's not a single Apple ads premium product, is there?
47:02Well, what are the places you would see? I mean, you would see ads in the app store where app developers can buy ads. Which is predatory. Which is predatory. You have to pay a tax in order to just sell your app. Yes. Okay, that's one place. Apple News, which is horrible. Those are disgusting. Disgusting. Those are Taboola or whatever that company is that's just like the bottom feeding advertising. Yeah. That's bad. And I guess this is just the third place, right? There's not another place. Um, uh, well, yeah, you said the app store, um, app store, Apple news, because Apple music
47:35doesn't have ads. You have to pay for it. Just podcasts. Apple podcasts. There's no ads. You know, they feature shows, but that's editorial. There's no way to pay for placement in Apple podcasts. There should be. No, I'm just kidding. I mean, here's the thing. We've now like, we're in a world where Apple is slowly adding ads to more things. I could 100% see ads in fitness plus, which there's not right now, but I'm like, I'm sure there are 1000 fitness products, like physical things.
48:05Like imagine you see a workout in fitness plus that uses exercise bands and then there's an ad right underneath it to buy it. I feel like we are not far from that. I feel like that's a very. Yeah. So I guess it's at the app store maps news, Apple TV, I guess, obviously theoretically has ads because you were Friday night. The Friday night baseball does have ads. So you're right there. So Apple's ad products have mostly been terrible, like for the most part, especially in Apple news.
48:36They're terrible just on the type of content on Apple's on the app store. They're terrible because you have to pay for your own search name. Like it's just predatory. It's just very, very bad. So Apple has never had great ads. But what is, I'm sure is happening with these is that these are just the people who are like, boom, we're getting in there. Yeah. You have to just select a category. And as long as you don't select that, I'm a locksmith, your ads probably going to get approved and then it's going to take someone to report an ad to be like, I don't think that this should be in there, but I did want to make one distinction.
49:09Sure. I don't think that these ads are equatable to like paying for YouTube premium. And the reason is you pay for YouTube premium because the ads that get shown consume your time, right? Like if you wanted to watch a YouTube video and there's 30 seconds of ads before the YouTube video, you, that's 30 seconds of your life you're paying for. But these, you just ignore them. Like I ignore suggested places anyway in Apple maps. I've never once. In fact, I was pulling it up to look at them like, like, oh, there are suggested places
49:40because when I'm doing Apple maps and typing, I don't look below the search bar because I'm just typing what I need in the search bar and going from there. So, and usually I don't think I've, I guess I have sometimes typed in like restaurants or Starbucks or something like that near to find them nearby wherever I am. So maybe I would see an ad then, but those ads, I just, they don't take me. It doesn't, those ads don't make it take longer to get to the thing I want. Whereas YouTube premium, I just don't want those ads because I don't want it to take up my time. Does that make sense?
50:10That is fair. I just think, I feel like the people who are saying ads are no big deal in Apple maps are probably very adverse to ads in a lot of other places. And to use that as like justification for you shouldn't be upset about this just feels weird. But ads in Apple maps makes the most sense and is the most acceptable for, I don't like it because Apple maps never had ads, but maps ads makes the most sense because it is the high, it is a, it is a high signal to intent for the business to buy an ad to say, I, my
50:44coffee shop is here and someone searching for coffee, you get to be shown higher. Right. And it makes sense. And it's more likely that it gives the user a thing that they were looking for versus whatever randomness YouTube sticks in front of a video. That's fair. That is fair. I'm also curious that people who are saying ads are no big deal have ad blockers on their web browser. We'll just say that. Sure. You know, and that's not like a time thing. That's just a visual distraction or disturbance. I will say I'm going to link the page where you can sign up and actually put ads in Apple
51:18maps. And here there's some interesting stats that Apple espouses. One, there's a high conversion rate. One in two searches for a business result in a user taking action. That's curious. Well, that's because they only had two searches and one of them resulted in a bit. Yeah. Over a billion relevant searches for businesses take place every month and reach valuable customers. Gen Z and millennials make up 57% of maps users. That's curious too. I mean, that's, that's a, that's a column right there.
51:49Yeah. There you go. But to, I think one correction from how we've been talking about it, and I didn't realize this, Apple is very clear of the two places people will see ads. And this was like, I was trying to get it to show me ads and I couldn't figure out exactly what it was. And it's before you search and after you search. So when you go to an area of a map and you tap the search box, there will, could be an ad that shows up at the top of suggested places before you type in anything, which is interesting
52:21because Apple maps doesn't know what you're looking for yet. You could be about to search for coffee. You could be about to search for a tire repair place. Like it could be very different. So that one is just strictly geographical. Like someone could pay for an ad that shows up if you're searching for anything in your general vicinity. And then there's the after they search. So connect with customers actively looking at maps for what your business has to offer, show up at a high intent moment. So then if you do search for sporting goods, then you might also see an ad.
52:52So it's kind of covering both, like, is the user just looking at a certain area and when the user is looking for something specifically. Now, I think, I'm not sure if it says it on this page, but I think there's only one ad visible per search. I believe that that's true. So you're not going to get, like, the Google search ads where there's, like, you know, five sponsored links before you get to one search result that's not sponsored. So it is less intrusive than something like that. And yes, when it comes to, is this tasteful?
53:24If you compare it to Google Maps, this is way better than Google Maps. As far as, like, how ads and just how the UI looks. But it just also feels like I'm going to see a, I might see a psychic when I am in Apple Maps. No, you're not going to see any of it. Because like, like I said, the suggested places has already been there and I've never once noticed it's there. And there's going to be an ad there now, which just means that someone can pay to be in the suggested places versus whatever algorithm it's pumping into that. So I don't really care about any of that. There's only one problem I have with it.
53:55Well, no, there's two problems I have with it. One, if you're a part of the Apple small business and you do the Apple Maps, you cannot target your competitors' keywords. Okay. But if you're just an Apple ads, like, corporate customer. So McDonald's could target Starbucks. I don't like that at all. If I type in Starbucks, the only result I should see is Starbucks. And Starbucks should not have to pay. I'm not, like, advocating for Starbucks. They make plenty of money. It's fine. But my point is, if I search for Starbucks, I should not see anything but Starbucks. Nothing. There's no amount of money that you should be able to give Apple to show up at the top
54:27of that search because all I'm looking for is Starbucks, unless it turns out there are no Starbucks in the area I'm looking for, and then it makes sense to me. But the fact that McDonald's can also target, like, your little mom-and-pop shop, I do not like that at all. But the mom-and-pop shop, if they're not an Apple ads customer, if they're an Apple small business customer, they cannot target searches for McDonald's. So I do not like that. And then the second thing I don't like is, once you have an ad product, it's just a dial. You're going to start turning. So the way that they've implemented it now, I think, is great.
54:58I think it's totally fine having it in the suggested places, having it after you search when it's relevant, fine, with the exception, with the caveats that I mentioned. But the reason Google Maps looks so terrible and there's so many ads is because once you put ads, once you've broken the seal, it's just a knob. Listen, this is someone's KPI is revenue per impression and one way to turn up revenue and whatever is to just start turning that knob. And that's what will eventually happen. Just look at Apple News.
55:30There's just as many ads in Apple News as on any publisher's website. And there's just toe fungus everywhere.
55:37Yeah. So like, I'm not super mad about it, but it is kind of just a, oh man, you know, we got ads in one more place. And it does, I think, beg the question, where else will Apple put ads in the future? I think Apple Music is a prime place. They could very easily go to the Spotify model where it's free with ads or you pay for premium. Fitness Plus seems like they could surely put stuff there. And Podcast 2. And that would be like, I know the third-party app market for podcast apps is struggling right
56:12now. That would be a huge boon to the third-party app, podcast app market if Apple puts ads in Apple Podcasts. Except for the fact that then you start having to pay for your own placement. I just don't, that's the one dynamic I do not like. The whole purpose of search ads is people tell you what they're looking for. You can pay to be there. The problem is when somebody looks for something specific, then it becomes a tax because that person has to pay to be there. Or, you know, like Mark Arment with Overcast, you don't pay anything and then a bunch of
56:42other apps show up around you. But people who want Overcast, they know where to get Overcast. That's true. So, all right, well, yeah, there's ads in Apple Maps.
Meta Lawsuit and Teen Restrictions
56:51There was a huge meta lawsuit going on that meta has now settled and a bunch of parental restrictions and new rules are being set in place. So, I'll link this Verge article that talks about it kind of at a high level. This was a major lawsuit between 29 states and Meta. Meta's going to have to pay over $17 billion to these states over a period of 10 years, which feels like couch change for Meta. But there's going to be a bunch of restrictions for teenagers placed in Instagram and Facebook
57:23because of this settlement. And so, I will link Facebook's, they have a whole blog post talking about like these specific things that they're having to restrict. And I'm going to go through a couple of them in a minute. They also have a blog post like, an open letter to TikTok and YouTube to join us in supporting teens. It's like, Meta was just forced to put a time limit on the amount of time teens can spend in Instagram. So, yeah, okay guys, they just, hey YouTube, you too should help teens and put a limit on
57:53the amount they can watch. Whatever, man. Like, you just don't want teens to be able to watch YouTube because they can't open Instagram because you have to put in place. Anyway, I thought that was very funny. Well, it's more than that. So, YouTube, Instagram is, or Facebook, excuse me, Meta, whatever. Yeah, Meta. Whatever we call them anymore. Yeah. Is only going to pay $5 billion of this if YouTube and TikTok agree to do this. That too. So, of the amount of money that they agreed to pay, they agreed to send like $10 billion of it or whatever, regardless, over the course of 10 years.
58:24And like, Meta's quarterly revenue was like $15 billion or something like that, or profit was like, so this is a quarter, one quarter. Like, it's not a lot of money, but it is still a pretty significant amount in comparison to previous settlements. It begs the question, why would they do this? One reason they might do this is to get out in front because trials are unpredictable. So, unpredictable, and there was the potential damages of, the potential damages could have been significantly higher. And so, this was a settlement. They aren't, this is not a judgment.
58:54So, they were able to sort of dictate the terms. And one of the terms they dictated was, we'll pay you some of this money if these other companies agree to the terms. And here's the craziest thing. I think I have this right. I was just looking while you were talking. They, under 18 users, are limited to two hours a day. Yes. But the imposition on YouTube and TikTok is one hour a day.
59:18So, we'll pay $5 billion to be able to have double the amount of time. If I'm wrong about that, I apologize. It just seems crazy. I'm sorry. You have to bleep that out. Let me drop a marker. My brain was like, which word of that sentence am I supposed to self-censor? And I got it wrong. But anyway.
59:38That, yeah. So, some of the restrictions that are in place because of this settlement. There's the two-hour limit. There's a default two-hour limit for teenagers on Instagram unless parents change it. So, parents can actively change it. A night mode where between midnight and 6 a.m., they block their apps like Instagram. There's a school mode, so notifications will be muted from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. There's regular prompts. Teens will receive regular prompts every 15 minutes of continuous screen time on Facebook or Instagram.
1:00:10And they will receive prompts when their total daily usage hits 60 and 90 minutes. So, just warnings, you know, annoying things that will come up regularly. You have teenagers. Does that have any effect on anything that they do? Have you ever seen a teenager with the request one more minute for screen time? Like, they don't, it's just like, they don't even know it's happened. Yeah, yeah, I know. This one, though, I think is interesting. Algorithmic feed control. Teens will be able to choose a non-algorithmic feed, one that isn't personalized by our recommendation systems as their default.
1:00:41I want that, too. I would love to have a non-algorithmic feed option. And, to be fair, Threads has this. And if you want to use Threads in any meaningful way, stay on the following feed, not the for you feed, because it's just rage bait. But that is interesting. Non-algorithmic feed. Auto-play control. So, content no longer automatically plays. I imagine that Reels experience would be very different if you had to, like, tap to play every Reel that you were going to watch. That's interesting. Also, hidden likes. Teens won't see the number of likes and reactions on posts, both their own and those from others, by default.
1:01:18And so, parents would have to change that setting. So, you won't see likes and things like that. Disabling cosmetic surgery and extreme makeup filters. So, you can't have, like, a filter that makes you look like GigaChad or whatever on Instagram. And, also, they are upping their age assurance and age, like, identifying tools, not just, you know, ID verification, but I think probably AI tools that try and ascertain whether... Yeah, they're not doing verification. That's not verification.
1:01:49This is, like, age assurance using AI or whatever. And accounts are private by default. And so, this way people can't, like, DM openly and things like that. But, a lot of concessions, honestly, it is a hilarious call to YouTube and TikTok to join them. Their actual words were, for meaningful progress to happen, we urge TikTok and YouTube to join and state attorneys general in adopting this new standard to ensure teens use social media in a healthy and responsible way.
1:02:19I know they're saying all the right words. It's just funny. Like, they just want to, like, dress. It's like the kid who gets in trouble in class and they're like, well, so-and-so did that. Well, no, it's like the kid who got in trouble in class and said, I am willing to come to detention, right, for an hour if you make these other guys come for two hours. Like, it's like, I'm willing to... It is literally... I did look it up. Okay. So, there's a 0% chance that Meta's going to pay the $5 billion. Because there's a 0% chance that TikTok and YouTube are going to agree to limit teenagers to half the amount of time that Meta has agreed.
1:02:56That is what they're asking for. They're saying, we will only pay this extra $5 billion. I can't even believe that the AGs agreed to that part of the settlement. That it's like, we'll only pay this money. That is the easiest $5 billion for Mark Zuckerberg to spend. Wait, if I could spend $5 billion, teens will have restrictions, but it'll be twice what our competitors have? Yeah, and here it is. This is insane. It's right here in the financial details part of Meta's article. YouTube and TikTok implement a one-hour daily limit. Hilarious.
1:03:27How is that even a possibility that that could be... Like, they should have had to... I could understand agreeing to the same terms. Fine. The nighttime restrictions is meant to basically be the same. Sure. But you're going to... The only reason it's in there is like, no, we're super not going to ever pay this. Ever. Right. That is hilarious. So... It's actually not even hilarious. It's like the most dystopian craziness I've ever seen. Speaking of dystopian craziness, I'm glad you said that.
1:03:57Yeah, you're welcome. OpenAI. I don't even know what's happening, but you're welcome.
OpenAI Agent Research Report
1:04:00Well, because OpenAI released an official report on the Hugging Face incident. How that again. Okay. Yeah, this again. And I just want to... A couple pull quotes from their official report. They say, quote, this is OpenAI. This incident is the first known case of an automated agent, agent collective, acting offensively without authorization. And it implies that companies should no longer assume that sophisticated cyber operations require continuous human direction.
1:04:33And get this, roughly 1,200 AI agents that were meant to be isolated, It said exchanged over 70,000 messages and files on an unsanctioned message board performing extensive research on how they could spoof, edit, or delete their own transcripts to avoid detection. These are AI agents spun up by ChatGPT's model itself that created a unsanctioned message board where these agents could talk to each other. Over 70,000 messages sent between them, over 1,200 agents figuring out how they could delete their own transcripts so the human overlords couldn't tell.
1:05:12And of these, 700 of these agents participated in the attack on Hugging Face. The agents, quote, clearly and frequently reasoned about how to evade automated security checks from both Hugging Face and OpenAI. And OpenAI shut down the message board and they figured out a way to do it again. Like, totally fine, Steven. Nothing to worry about. Nothing bad is going to happen. Really. It's cool. I'm speechless. Like, I think this makes it even more clear why OpenAI has pressed the brakes on things like their model Atlas or whatever that was doing cybersecurity stuff.
1:05:50They were like, you know what? We're going to slow down just a little bit. Yeah, please. You had 1,200 AI agents running rampant, figuring out how they could not be detected and just wild. Well, this is sort of like, you know, a lot of the U.S.'s weaponry is sort of top secret, right? We don't, like, we don't, they won't tell you, like, here's the nuclear codes. We just want you to know we have a bunch of nukes, right? But we know that these things all exist. There's a lot of stuff we don't know that exists that's not, like, out there or whatever.
1:06:21This is the way that LLMs are now. We know, like, about the release versions because you and I can access them. But internally, they're using things that go way beyond anything that we can use. And that stuff is, like, it's scary because it's, this is, like, gosh, again, it's just Jurassic Park. It's just, like, it's just Jurassic Park. And I will put this in the show notes as well. Bill Gates wrote a personal essay, this long essay, about AI and his thoughts about it.
1:06:57And, you know, think what you want about Bill Gates or whatever. And, like, he's not, you know, actively in these worlds anymore. But he's got a lot of thoughts about the protections we need to put in place about AI and where we are right now. And so, yeah, I don't know, man. Like, just stop breeding Velociraptors. Like, that's how we, this is what we need to do. Brontosaurus, fine. Brontosaurus, fine. Leave Fable out here. I'll keep bug fixing with Fable. Just, but leave the other ones. Just don't, don't make them. Don't make them. So, yeah, that was that.
Streaming Apps Expand to Netflix
1:07:29Netflix, I thought this was funny. Netflix has never been a platform that allowed other streaming platforms inside of it. Unlike, you know, if you go to Amazon Prime, you know, you have, like, channels where you can subscribe to Paramount within Amazon. And I think even Apple TV has, like, the channels feature where you can have, like, other streaming networks. Netflix has not had this before. But they are considering opening its app to other streamers, namely Peacock and Fox 1. Hopefully to make the Netflix monthly subscription more worth it, I assume.
1:08:01I think it's funny that Peacock is like, hey, we'll go wherever. YouTube, we'll go to YouTube Premium. Netflix, sure. And it's basically, like, so we can get the office, friends, and, well, like, Parks and Rec available everywhere. I guess that's the goal. But that's, I think, somewhat telling. Again, this is a fight between the streamers and YouTube. YouTube being the behemoth of where people are watching stuff and now trying to have more premium content, literally hosting the Oscars in 2028. So, yeah, Peacock and Netflix might be a thing.
1:08:34Yeah, I mean, it just shows you, like, pretty clearly Peacock is not a resounding – they have the Olympics. They have the Olympics. Other than that. Peacock will probably not be a standalone streaming service in, like, two to three years. I mean, technically, it's not anymore, right? It's just part of YouTube Premium. Yeah, I know. Technically, you can still pay for it individually, but no one does. And, yeah, you'll just be able to get it everywhere.
Sandra Bullock Joins Instagram
1:08:57And finally, before we get to apps and whimsy, I just wanted to point out I was listening to the Smartless podcast, and they had Sandra Bullock on as a guest. And last week, we talked about Robin Williams and how his family had to reactivate his Instagram account. Well, Sandra Bullock, for a long time, resolved to never go on social media, to not be on it. And she had gotten so many messages and reports from people getting scammed by people on Instagram pretending to be Sandra Bullock
1:09:30and having fake accounts that were supposedly her that she felt it was necessary to finally create an account and get on Instagram so that there can be a legitimate place that people could look at and say, oh, this is her official account and not these others. And I just think this is now the second case in as many weeks of a celebrity having to use the platforms that are also causing the problems in order to have a quote-unquote safe place that their fans and followers can go to know that this is the real person.
1:10:11And it is just a wild paradigm, and as much trouble as it seems like Meta is in with, is there an advertising business going weird like the governments are, you know, they had to settle this lawsuit and limit teens' time on Instagram, there's also this other side of these platforms where they're still the main place that people are going to legitimize their identity. And for Sandra Bullock to have to join Instagram hoping and vowing to never get on there just so people don't get scammed
1:10:43is a problem created by these platforms and weirdly being solved by these platforms. Sure. It is kind of like every time a social media platform opens up, you should just go reserve your name. Right? I do that. Like, I did that with Blue Sky. I don't really post on there ever. I don't have like a moral objection. I just only have so many brain cells to devote to which thing should I post where. Yes, yes, yes. My limit is like one, two, maybe at most. But like you just do that so that you have all the things.
1:11:13And I can understand taking a moral stance like, no, I don't want to participate at all. But it's like at a minimum when the new thing comes in, it looks like, oh, this might be a place where people might post things. You should just go claim your name. That's, yes. But you would also have to be active on these platforms too. Because if you have your name and you have a profile that has one post and your bio is like, this is really me, people are probably not going to believe that. Like, honestly, that would look more like a scam. I mean, Sandra Bullock has ways to get, like, they verify these people for a reason.
1:11:46Even if you don't use the profile, they should be verifying. You can pay for verification on Instagram.
1:11:53But, I mean, I'm saying if Sandra Bullock's people calls on Meta and is like, this is my account for real, they'll verify her. Right? They will. They will. And I don't think they allow verification for impersonation purposes. I'm pretty sure that they don't. So, I think if you report somebody who's impersonating someone else, then they'll remove that verification. I would hope so. I've gotten scammed. Not scammed. But I've seen, like, Peter Dinklage on Instagram. And I thought it was him posting, only to discover it was a fan account.
1:12:26And I feel like it had a blue check, which is why I thought it was real. Like, yeah. I think impersonation is not allowed. It has to be clear that it's a fan account or something. I don't. So, it says it in the bio. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Peter Dinklage fan account. Yeah. But listen, it has 900,000 followers. It has a blue check. And I came across this, like, accounts posts just in reels and in the feed. And you don't see that it's a fan account unless you go to the account and read the bio, which most people don't.
1:12:58And I did that first. Sure. And, like, once you look at some of these, you're like, oh, a lot of these are AI-generated. Like, this is an AI-generated image of Jason Momoa, Peter Dinklage, Jon Snow, and Emilia Clarke. Sorry, I forget his actual actor name. But, like, this is an AI-generated image with 40,000 likes. Sure. And there's a lot of people that probably think it's real. And he has the blue check. And the name is Peter Dinklage Actor. And I think this is a problem. And to compare, so this is Sandra Bullock's official Instagram account.
1:13:32She has 6 million followers. She also has a blue check. Nothing in her bio. Which, again, if someone doesn't put fan account and just – I'm sure if I search for Sandra Bullock, there's probably others with a blue check and might not specify their fan account. Like, it is just wild to me that these platforms have created the problem and AI-generated content is exacerbating it. And somehow these platforms seem to be the only answer for it because no one goes on the web anymore. Like, no one's going to go to SandraBullock.com to see her content because they're scrolling here.
1:14:03So it's just – I don't know, man. It's a weird time. I think her profile should just say the girl from Speed. I mean, some people would say the girl from Practical Magic. Practical Magic 2 is coming out. You know what I'm saying? Sure. Or what was the net? The net. The net. The net. There's a bunch of Sandra Bullock fan accounts I just searched and they don't have blue checks. So maybe she got them all shut down. There we go. The power of Sandra Bullock. All right.
Defining Whimsy in Apple Apps
1:14:29We had a recent Mac Power Users episode, which, can I be honest, was like one of my favorites. Sure. Because we got to interview Werner Yannick, the co-founder and maker of the Things app. Things has been around since 2007. Almost 20 – in development, it's been 20 years of Werner working on the Things app. And I loved hearing him talk about the process of making an app like this, the details, how the team – it's a team of 11 people plus Werner that work on things and how they communicate and, you know, offer feedback and what happens when they disagree.
1:15:04It was super fun. But in the episode, I talked about how things is one of the prime examples that I think of of an Apple app that has whimsy. And that word is used a lot in, like, the Apple pundit world. And it's – you know, it might be unclear what that is. And you sent me a maddening text last night to say that you would never describe things as having whimsy. You said things does not have whimsy. So we need to start this debate, opening statements, Jason.
1:15:35How do you define whimsy? First – nope. I'm going to start this debate by saying I first paid for the app Things in 2009. And I've used it basically almost every day since, okay? So I love Things. I have tried every to-do app. I have tried to force myself to switch to to-doists because I like the natural language input. But I can't – I hate – I use reminders for things like don't forget to do this thing so I can talk to the dingus, right? Yeah. But I hate all of them except for Things. So Things is one of my very favorite apps.
1:16:06Yes. But no one except for you has ever used – including the person who runs the company has ever used the word whimsy to describe things. He didn't even know what it meant. I knew you were going to bring that up. Hold on. But even once you explained it, he goes, that's not a word I would have ever used for this app. He literally said that. But he acknowledged the elements that he afforded to them. I think you mean something else. So it has a super clean, super simple interface. And I love everything about that. But that is – whimsy is something totally different than that.
1:16:37So how do you define that? Whimsy means fun and playful. There's literally nothing fun and playful about this app.
1:16:44That's what whimsy means. Fun and playful, childlike, delightful. So one of the examples that you gave was that Fantastical has whimsy. How would you – No, no, no. I argued that you could make that point like in relative. Carrot Weather is a great example of something that has whimsy, right? Flighty has whimsy. I even would argue Bayer in some ways is playful, the app you love, way more so than Ulysses, okay? I'm giving you that it has whimsy. Okay. Fantastical in some ways. Maybe it's not the greatest example. I was just scrolling through my phone thinking like, are there apps on my phone that I could use as examples?
1:17:16But like the way that – Another aspect I think of when people think of whimsy is it is an unexpected user interface experience that does the thing you expect it to do. So like the fact that in Fantastical you can just type meeting with Stephen tomorrow at 4 o'clock at whatever place and it just figures out all the places for it to go. Things does not do that. It is tab, tab, tab, tab, tab, tab, tab. How would you – So you said Bayer has whimsy. What – It has the character and personality, right?
1:17:47What specifically in the app can you point to and say that is whimsical? I don't know. I don't have to defend any of these other apps. I just pulled out – like the fact that there's a little bear in a space thing, like it's playful and fun, right? I don't use bear. I just was trying to like relate to something that you prefer. But the Bayer character is everywhere and it has – it's a fun and a playful design. It is meant to be like make you feel good as you're using it, right? Right. The point is – Right there.
1:18:17Make you feel good while you're using it. That's one of the things, but that is not the definition of whimsy. Fun and playful. I think it is a large part of it personally. Okay. I mean this could be subjected. And there's nothing about things that is fun and enjoyable about using it. I'm so glad you said that. Here's the things app on my iPhone. And when you – Hold on. Before you said – I said 30 things. You're fixated on one. No. I mean you said a lot of things. I still haven't heard – Like you said, the bear in a space suit is whimsical.
1:18:48You asked me for examples. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that was the example. Do you have any others that you wanted to – No, I hate bear. So I was just trying to help you out when I said it. I don't use the app. Let me ask you this. Do you believe whimsical is a positive trait? What do you think is whimsical then? What does that work to you? I'm going to show you a specific example. But I want to understand because you disagree with some of my definitions of whimsical. So do you feel like whimsical is a positive trait for an app to have? Yes. Okay. Do you find that that's one of the reasons why you use Apple products or like that is one of the elements of Apple design over the years is the whimsical nature of how they function?
1:19:25I can't think – I could not think of a single first-party Apple app that I think has whimsy in it. Oh, really? Okay. Can you? I mean, I think some would argue the way they – Dynamic Island. Dynamic Island and live activities are whimsical. Okay. I'll give it that. Right. And I think – and everybody loves those. I mean, that's how you go viral on things. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I agree. Whimsy is a good thing. There are a million things about things that I really like, a million things about things. But it is not whimsical. It is not playful, imaginative, an unusual interaction that just is there to spark delight.
1:20:00It is the most purely functional app that I've ever used. It is simple. It gets out of your way. It is very fast to use. It is a clean interface. But none of those things mean whimsy. I wholeheartedly disagree. And I just want to show you two examples. So then define whimsy first. Exactly what you just said. Your definition is exactly what you said. Elements, UI that are maybe unnecessary but bring a sense of delight when you use it. And that could be motion.
1:20:30That could be imagery like the bear in the spacesuit. To me, the animation and motion plus design is how I would say you achieve whimsy. Like you said, live activities, the Dynamic Island. A lot of those are animations, UI, and design. Like the Dynamic Island is whimsical because when you set a timer, it goes into the Dynamic Island in this animation. You see it moving there. Live activities, there's a lot of motion. It's designed beautifully.
1:21:01I would say those are whimsical. I mean, I think we agree. Sure, sure. And that's what you were describing as whimsical, right? Like those kinds of... As examples of it, yes. They're not the definition of it, but yes, examples. As examples of it, exactly. So for instance, in the Things app, when you look at the app, yes, it is very, you know, I think a blank slate so you can put your content in there. But just tapping the plus icon to add a new task, everything that just happened on screen, from the little animation where from the plus icon and seeing the task basically flow into the board and the little plus icon actually floats upwards and then pops and it disappears.
1:21:40It is an almost, it goes by so fast, it is almost imperceptible. But those interactions with the Things app are the things that Werner originally literally wrote custom code for those animations because that little motion of the plus icon going up, the task popping open, the design elements with just the right drop shadow and the way that the note appears. And then when you have a task in this inbox, if you slide over a task, you can see that there's a little dot that appears on the right that allows you to select multiple.
1:22:15That's a UI interface, you know, decision about how you select multiple items. I love that little swipe gesture and how that physically feels. There's a little taptic feedback when you swipe across that task and the blue dot appears. And then the little menu that comes up at the bottom for the when, move, and delete and the way that animates in once you actually swipe right to left on a task, that is whimsy to me. It's definitely not. That's fine. We can disagree. That's just good user interface design. I just think the things that you use as examples as whimsy in other apps, you're just not applying it to things for whatever reason, but they are the things.
1:22:53But the CEO of things didn't apply it either. He did not think that that word applied to the app. To over-index on him not knowing the word because English is not his first language, I don't think means... But then you explained it to him and he was still like, I would never use that word to describe the same. But then he also goes on to explain how much careful detail that they put into those animations because he believed, like, he has an ethos that things should be a place of peace so that when you, he said, your life is so busy, you have so much going on. We want things to be this oasis where, yes, you're managing your tasks, but it is delightful to do it.
1:23:27He might not define that as whimsy again. He didn't even know what the word meant because English is not his first language. So I wouldn't think he would. Like, there's no reason for him to think of it that way. That's why he wouldn't describe it that way. But all the things that he talked about making things in the way they have to me and how I've thought of whimsy and I think how some of the examples you have used is exactly that, that he is building whimsy into the app. Yeah, I don't think that, I don't, whimsy is just not a word I would have ever used for the app things. And that's fine. Like, again, it's like one of my actual favorite apps.
1:23:59So it's not, I'm not saying anything negative about it. No, I know. I'm just simply saying, like, I actually find the plus thing super annoying. Look at this animation. When you press the little delete button, just that little animation of having the little popover window come out, that the fluidness, like just how smooth the animations are. That is what I would think, like, can do does not have whimsy because I cannot achieve that fluidness of animation without knowing the code to crunch the numbers because that's what it is.
1:24:37Like, it's math. Like, he even talked about even the sync in things sounded beautiful because he's like, it's a mathematical process and you can look at the equations and get exactly, precisely right. And I think that kind of care and attention to detail is a necessary predecessor to whimsy because you have to have that precision to then make the perfect animation to do this. And that's, that's what I love about things. I think there's just a different word that explains what you're describing because all of what you're saying is very good, but like none of those things are unexpectedly delightful in my mind.
1:25:09They're just that they are exactly what I expect. And I don't think, okay, another example. I don't know if this is whimsy, but it's a, it's a good user interface experience is when Apple introduced the ability to the three finger swipe on mail messages and it just selects them all. Yeah. That when it first came out, I think was somewhat whimsical because it was unexpectedly delightful. I don't think there's anything unexpectedly delightful in things. It just does everything exactly the way that it should. And yes, that takes a lot of care.
1:25:40That is why that is the difference between good design and not good design, but I don't think that it was designed in a way that was meant to be unexpectedly fun and delightful in a way that surprises you. And I would argue, I think they're so good at being whimsical. It's easy to miss all the unexpected things. Like I am discovering things as I'm just looking for more examples. And another thing I've found is when you tap a task to expand it, to see the note, I didn't even notice that the three dots at the top and the back arrow disappear.
1:26:16And just that fluid animation from expanding a task, those things disappear and totally unnecessary. Some might even argue that's a bad experience because, well, now I can't tap the three dots once I am focused on a task. But because Werner and his team are so opinionated, they realize, well, if you tap on a task to expand it and you want to focus on the note, you're focused on that and you want the least amount of distractions as possible. And I think those things, they so fly under the radar in the things app that it doesn't even register.
1:26:50And so there's like, well, I don't have any unexpected whimsy because I didn't see anything change. Yeah. But there's so many little details. But I think you have to be able to notice it for it to be whimsical. Otherwise, what you described are things that are seamless and intuitive and effortless and it's polished and it's satisfying. But that isn't, I just think that's not the same as whimsical. Whimsical is a separate element of apps. I just don't think that it was, it wasn't built to have whimsy. Whimsy was built to be effortless and intuitive and polished and satisfying and seamless and all of these things. But none of those things are the same. They're different forms of delight.
1:27:20Whimsy is a different kind of delight than what I think you'd get from the word, from things. Again, I'm not, I'm not knocking things. I'm just simply saying, I don't think that that word means what I would use to describe the interface of things. I think that it's very, very well made. And all of the things you just described about the app things, which is such a terrible name for an app right now when you're trying to talk about it, is, are seamless and intuitive and effortless. And they are delightful, but that's, but whimsy is a very specific, and it's, in my mind, if you don't notice them, it's not whimsical.
1:27:55You have to notice it, and it has to be unexpectedly delightful in a fun and playful way. And if it doesn't register in your mind, it was neither fun nor playful or... I see, and that's where I would disagree with. I think you may never notice the specifics, but the feeling you get when using it is a collection of all those, maybe even unnoticed animations and interactions, but collectively, they give you that whimsical experience. And just an example, like, I know you're only using this as, like, you're rattling off a bunch of examples, but, like, Fantastical, I view as much more utilitarian than whimsical.
1:28:34And I love Fantastical, and people say, like, paying for a calendar app is the dumbest thing. I disagree. Fantastical is an incredible app. But the animation for adding a new event in Fantastical is nowhere near as whimsical as in things. And if you look at that little X in the top corner, like, the radius and spacing from that X to the top part of that card to the other, to the side of the card, I think is off. Like, I think that visually UI is off, and those things, in my mind, take me out of this does not have the same level of whimsy because there's some rough edges, and that's fine.
1:29:13And, again, Fantastical, I'll pay double what I'm paying now because it is that good of an app. But that's the kind of the level of detail that things puts in that I feel, like, flies under the radar. Like, I've never noticed half the things I'm just doing now, but I know I love using it, and I think it's because it has that X factor of whimsy.
1:29:34Let us know in the comments, everyone.
1:29:37I'll do a, I don't know, let us know in the comments. Is things whimsical if you use it? But only if you understand what the word means because it is delightful in very specific ways. Whimsy is not one of them. That's all. The one example for Fantastical that pops up for me is I use the little drop down from my menu bar. I don't use the actual app. Yeah, same. And if you're scrolling over events that pull down, it highlights that day. And then if you, so it's like showing the circle on today for stuff.
1:30:08But then I scrolled over something that's a multi-day event, and just the way that the pill that was surrounding one day goes over to all the days that are covered, to me, that's whimsical. Now, you're right. There are some weird design elements like, eh, it doesn't feel like it's quite centered because of the way the dots are beneath it and stuff like that. But the element itself of here's how we solve that problem in an unexpectedly delightful and fun way, to me, that is whimsy. You're right. There are things about the app design that maybe could be improved, but that doesn't, but those are, again, I just am separating out.
1:30:40I think whimsy is a very specific thing. I don't think things has it. It has a lot of delightful things. I love the app. It just isn't whimsical. So that's all. The dictionary definition of whimsical, playfully quaint or fanciful, especially in an appealing and amusing way. Yeah, that, I mean, sure. That's funny. I was just curious, the dictionary definition. But we will let, anyway, we'll see. That was a good, that was a good debate. We should ask, I'm going to ask Werner to come on primary tech and he could say, I know he would agree, like he wouldn't use that word to describe it, but I'm curious what words.
1:31:16I think some of it is like, maybe I just care deeply about if all words mean everything together. Like what you're describing is delightful and effortless and intuitive and seamless, but those things are different things than whimsy. Now they're related, they're closely related. Delightful is an overall category of thing and whimsy is a type of delight, surprise is a type of delight, effortlessness is a type of delight. But if we, we, but if they're not interchangeable, and to me that matters. What about the dynamic island, what does it have of all those qualities you just rattled off and you say things has those, that implies that the dynamic island stuff has something things does not.
1:31:59What is that? What is the missing element then? Well, some of it's like what you described about how like you're, let's say you are in an app that you close in the whatever just up into the dynamic island. And then if you do something, it'll come down. Yeah. Like the carrot weather dynamic island is a good example. I know that's partially carrot weather, but it's also the function of the dynamic island, how if it's about to rain, it just kind of comes down and takes up more space and then it goes away. And in what it is about that is it, some of it is that the animation is playful, right?
1:32:32It has personality to it. And there's like a, it's hard to describe a thing that is an unexpected interaction that also was what you were hoping it would do, right? Like, it's like, this is what this should do, but it wasn't obvious in the way that did it. And then it performed that way. But, but I do think an important piece of, uh, so somewhat maybe whimsy is subjective because something might not feel playful to another person, but I do think it has to be unexpectedly playful and fun in the way that you interact with it.
1:33:03And, and again, there are other forms of delight and I do think that, uh, things is very delightful. Yeah. Yeah. I just think that, that, uh, effort, effortlessness and whimsy are not the same thing. Good animation interactions are not the same thing as whimsy. Like to me, it doesn't feel fun and playful in unexpected ways. That's all, but I do love it. I just want to be clear. No, no, I know. And I love fantastic Cal and all that stuff. So, you know, I don't usually like clip a portion of the episode and like upload.
1:33:33I might, I might do that because I'm curious. I want to get like Gruber and some of these other guys to like, you know what I mean? But again, it's a good, it's very good design. I just don't use that one specific. That's all I want to be careful here. Cause some people are like, I love things. How dare you? No, no. And it's, I think it's amazing. And it has all of these qualities. My, my exact text to him was I would just have never have used that word for the, for sure. And there's like, I love shortcuts. I think it's clear for that. I wouldn't say shortcuts has any whimsy.
1:34:04Like, I don't think, you know, just cause it's not that it's not trying to be that. Like I feel like I enjoy using the app. It's fun to use. I want to build new shortcuts cause it's exciting to, you know, build those kinds of automations. But I would not say the shortcuts app has whimsy. It may be like an automation that works and is surprising could be whimsical, but I don't think, I don't think of it that way. And someone could disagree with that too. But anyway, let us know.
Bonus Episode and Member Updates
1:34:36I might clip this.
Bonus Episode and Member Updates
1:34:37We'll comment, but let us know about whimsy. We're going to go talk about silo in the bonus episode. And, uh, and where there's no whimsy at all. I think we can both agree zero whimsy and silo. And so if you want to hear the bonus episode, our pre-show, get this ad free and you can access to my beta, uh, for the apps I can do in stash, check out, become a member. That link is down in the show notes, two more five-star reviews away from 500. Would appreciate you leaving one this week. Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching. We'll catch you next time.
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