Is Apple Leasing a Good Deal? AI is Jurassic Park, Streamers Try Everything but Make Good Content

0:00The things you own end up owning you. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. We're going to talk all about Apple's new upgrade leasing program. Is it worth it to lease a Mac, iPad, iPhone, or other things? Plus, Jason had some interesting Siri AI experiences on the road. A bunch of AI news. Sam Altman's out here saying we've reached the singularity. Every streaming app now has vertical videos like shorts and a tunnel. This episode is brought to you by Copilot Money, Decagon, and all of you, the members who support us directly. And back from this trip is my friend Jason Aiton.

0:30How's it going, Jason? It's good. I'm glad to be back. He didn't tell me that we were supposed to record last week, so I just kept doing my thing, and apparently he found someone else, I guess. Listen, I should have mentioned in last week's episode that Jason was coming back the very next week, but I want to thank Lexi again because she did a wonderful job, and it was great having her. And she has, I just mailed today, primary tech pins. They're on the way to Lexi, and she might have a friend going to Antarctica. I heard. That's great. It might happen. And speaking of which, we had a friendly listener in the Philippine

1:01got their pin, Medieval Night on the Polar Bear. So BC in the Philippines. Thanks for taking that picture. And we are 13 five-star reviews away from 500 here in the U.S. If you have not given us a five-star rating and review in Apple Podcasts, we'd greatly appreciate it. The last one is from Podcast 728 from the USA. Jason, I'm going to need your help with this. He asked, how to convince your parents to buy an Apple TV, which is a tough problem. But we'll start with the second question. Hold on. It's not a tough problem. Oh, you just got the answer. Okay. Go to the Apple store. You give them $200.

1:31They will give you one, and you take it to your parents' house, and you just take – this is how you do it. Well, he's trying to convince his parents to be the buying of that equation. You say to your parents, give me $200, and then you go to the Apple store, and you give – like, seriously, you just have to do this for them. Listen, if your parents and your house has a Roku box, and Roku was just purchased by – was it Walmart? Roku was just bought by somebody, and they're going to put a bunch of ads in there. Aldi, I guess. I don't know. Yeah, yeah. Once you see a bunch of ads in there, maybe that will help convince you. But listen, maybe wait, because one of the rumors we'll talk about later is

2:02Apple is ready to unleash a bunch of home products, and the new Apple TV might be one of them. So maybe hold on, and Apple TV is not in the leasing program, unfortunately, so you're going to have to pay full price for the Apple TV. But also, what podcast app do you use? Podcast 728 was wondering. We've talked about this, haven't we? I know. I just wanted to read it. Okay, I use Pocket Casts. Use Pocket Casts, and they actually are going to support video very soon. Yes. HLS Video is coming, which is pretty cool. And they have an Apple TV app now. I don't know if you saw that. You can download Pocket Casts on the TV, and you'll be able to watch it on the TV very soon.

2:33So that's cool. I do sometimes use the podcast app. There is a weird thing that happens with mostly the Stratechery-related podcasts where sometimes they don't, for some reason, update in one of my podcast apps, so I have to switch. I don't know. It's weird. I've emailed Ben Thompson about it. It's probably my fault, but I just go back and forth if I have to. I've been – there was actually some people talking about this on Mastodon, how third-party podcast apps are kind of petering out. Like, there's not much growth in user base for third-party podcast apps.

3:05One, because I think a lot of the video and newest features have been in Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts, so people are maybe going back to those ones. Plus, they're the stock apps. And I think for younger people, like I see this in my own kids' behavior. My son just uses the Spotify app because podcasts and music were there, and so he's just using it. And so, one, it's unfortunate because I love third-party podcast apps, and I've been doing a little bit of research. I finally got access to the Mac Power users' numbers, and I won't give a bunch of details, but I looked at the apps most used.

3:39I didn't realize Overcast, like, far and away number one app for Mac Power users, whereas for us, far and away number one is Apple Podcasts. And so I think that's interesting, number one. Number two, I don't want third-party podcast apps to go away. Maybe I should start using them again because I've been using Apple Podcasts. But Pocket Cast is getting really good, so I don't know. I won't get started because I always have a lot of feelings about podcasting. But anyway, Pocket Casts. You use Pocket Casts. Yeah. Tell me, oh, before we get to your Siri AI on the road trip, I need to show you this video. I just remembered this as I hit record.

4:11Our friend Nate sent me a video. Is this his little chalice? No, the chalice he did is wonderful. You should go follow Nate Baranowski on Instagram for that. He sent me this video. So apparently this creator has been doing videos like this where she says AI or real. And she does a bunch of these things in one video where she will, like, just ask you. She'll change scenes and she'll be like, do you think this is AI or is it real? And she does so many of them, like, I got maybe 50-50.

4:43But it is startling how good some of these things are. Like, she's sitting on a grass field and she, like, added a blanket underneath her. Or she would add, like, a bird bath. Or she looks like she's standing up in a tree. And then she says, nope, it's AI. I'm actually standing on the balcony of a cabin. Like, crazy stuff. And I guess it's cool that, no, I don't know if it's cool or not. But people in the comments were like, she just drained an ocean to make this one real. Which may be true. It's got 2 million views.

5:15But it did show me, like, wow, this stuff is getting really good. And I don't know. I'll put that real in the show notes, a link to it. Because I don't know. I don't know how to feel about it. That's all. Well, one thing I will say is draining the oceans is not the problem. No. It's the fresh water that we need to worry about. Because we can't drink the oceans anyway. That's okay, fair. I mean, fish and stuff live there. Also, desalination is a thing. I get it. I understand. My point, anyway. So, by the way, Fight Club. Oh, thank you.

5:46Thank you. Yes, the quote from the beginning, the things you own end up owning you. I did that because of Apple leasing and it is Fight Club, which I have not seen. I can't believe you haven't watched that. I have to say. I know. I still have to see it. Stephen asked for an exception. He's like, can I use a movie quote from a movie I haven't seen, but I'm sure you've seen. And I was like, all right. Sure. That's right. I also, I realized I probably, I DDoS'd myself. What do you call it? I DoS'd myself because I went to my Instagram DMs. Hopefully, I didn't show anything bad. Anyway, you can see my DM conversation with Nate earlier on. Tell me, you went on a road trip and you were talking to Siri AI.

6:19Yeah. Tell me about it. Well, first of all, Siri AI is, I've been thinking a lot about this. Okay. Let me tell you the story and then I'll tell you my conclusion. Yeah. Uh, I was in a car and I had, it was about a 10 hour drive. This is, we were on, we went on a mission trip last week, but there was like 30 people and I was able to just say to it, you know, we put in our destination and then I'll say, Hey, dingus, I need a location two to three hours from now where there's more than three

6:50options to eat. Could you just suggest somewhere? And it did. And it'd be like, well, here's a Culver's at whatever, whatever. And also nearby is a Cracker Barrel and a Chick-fil-A. I mean, Chick-fil-A was closed, so that wasn't useful. But the point is like, it was very good. Like I, so my conclusion here is that what Siri is very, very good at are the things you could do on your phone on your own. Anything you could, like you could open maps, you could like estimate where that distance is. You could zoom in on it.

7:20You could find something. Siri's great at that. Like, it's not good at like the things that we're not good at, like Claude, you and I both are making apps, have no clue how to do that. Siri can't help. Claude is very good at that kind of thing. And so there was multiple times, I even asked it at one point, cause we got sort of separated and I said, uh, so Beth, uh, her maps app rerouted her through this city. Which route should I take so that I could catch up with her to intercept her?

7:51And it gave me a new route. It like, cause I knew where she was from find my, it didn't know, it did not know the route she was suggested just to be clear, but it knew we were going to the same place. Cause it's not like it could look at her maps app, but it knew where she was both because she shares her locations and messages and in find my, and so it was like, well, it appears that she's been routed through this area. So if you go here and do this, she still beat me by like 10 minutes. But the point is like, this is something I could have figured out on my own, right? Like I could have gone in the maps app, figured out where she's at.

8:22I've been like, Oh, if I do this, it was, it was amazing. And it's order to be like, Hey, uh, on the way to here, I need to stop at a, well, this is true when we were in, like in where we were at, I need to stop at a Walgreens or something like that. Could you recommend one that's on the way? And it would, it's like, it just do all those things. Again, you can add stops in the maps app, right? You can just talk to it and it figured it all out. Well, that's wild. And you know, that's something when my family has been on a road trip, we'll be like, all

8:53right, we just got on the road. I don't want to stop at a Starbucks right now. I want to stop in an hour. I want to get an hour or two hours in and then it'll be mid morning. And that's when I want to stop. And it's always been like that search along route. You got to kind of pinch the map and figure out a place without messing with your current turn by turn. That sounds amazing. And the fact that it pulled from like your wife's location and find my plus your directions, plus the world knowledge of like places. And that's awesome. That's ridiculous.

9:23It was great. That's super fun. Well, and while you were gone, I did a video. I'll put it in the show notes. I actually compared Siri AI directly with Gemini on a pixel 10. And I was surprised how many times I preferred what Siri AI gave me. And like when it came to world knowledge, they were both pretty good. There were a couple of times like I asked, when is Hamilton playing at the Stratocenter in Tampa? And Gemini actually had the exact date, October 21st. Siri AI was like off by a day.

9:54But for a bunch of things like, especially all the personal context, I actually found that Siri AI did it better. Mostly because if you use all of Google services like Gmail, you use Google Drive. If you use all of that, Google does great at pulling all of that into your requests. But the actual on-device information, it feels like Gemini is less likely to look at that. And also because I have personal intelligence on for my Google account. Whenever I made a Gemini request, it took sometimes a little longer than Siri because

10:24it's hitting the cloud and hitting all my Google services. And there were some times where I would ask it something and it would be like, well, your search history, you were looking for this hotel. And I was like, oh, shoot, that feels a little weird. But I understand. I was searching Google. I have personal intelligence turned on. And so that was kind of interesting where I like pulled from my Google search. But the actual personal context of Siri AI, I almost feel like was more useful. And there were some weird things like I asked, you know, I'm traveling to New York next week, which I'm not, but I said, I'm traveling to New York next week.

10:55Should I bring an umbrella? And so both Gemini and Siri AI told me the weather forecast. But Gemini actually said, yes, bring an umbrella. And Siri AI just gave me the forecast and never actually addressed the umbrella question. So there's like weird little things like that. But overall, I preferred Siri AI's brevity. When I asked about that weather in New York, Gemini would not shut up. I mean, it talked for like 30 seconds about the weather. It said, well, Monday is this. And then Tuesday is this. And I was like, and Siri AI was just much shorter. So Siri is very good. Just all of it to say, like it is very good.

11:26Yeah, and I was driving a box truck, a diesel box truck at one point. And I just, and there was a light on the dashboard that was unfamiliar to me because I don't drive a diesel on a regular basis. And I was like, how do I know if this is important? It's not a check engine light. So I literally just said to Siri, hey, Siri, I'm driving a diesel box truck. Is there anything I need to know about driving it differently? And it's like, no, it's good. I said, any indicators I should be worried about? And it started to explain this. Is there any of them illuminated? And I said, well, there is one that's lit up.

11:58And I described what it looked like. And I said, oh, that's probably just letting you know the diesel exhaust has turned on. I was like, okay, I'll keep going. See, do you think you will go to an AI app on your phone for anything with Siri AI now existing? Because I have not been. Like I used to, I used to go to sometimes ChatGPT to take a picture and ask it something. And then I really transitioned to Claude doing that most of the time. And now when I'm on my phone specifically, because the kind of tasks I'll want to do on my phone with AI,

12:30it's namely looking something up, asking it for information or sending a picture and asking about it. And I find myself just using Siri AI, one, because it's a little faster. I just hold the side button. And I don't know. I'm not asking Claude for like code type stuff when I'm on my phone. Yeah. I mean, so I took a picture of a power washer that the flywheel had broken on. This is the thing I was trying to repair while I was there. I said, hey, here's a picture. I think this is broke. Tell me what to do. I don't know.

13:00Maybe I could have. I should have tried it. I wouldn't have sent that to Siri. I just sent that story to ChadGPT. Like, here's how I view it. Claude, serious stuff. Even though you can do simple stuff with Claude, Claude, like serious stuff or automations or code or any of that. ChadGPT has mostly replaced things that you would try to in the past explain to Google search kind of a thing where I can just take a picture and I'm like, I think it's broke. It's like, it's definitely broke. Here's what you should do. And then Siri is more like, again, something I could have otherwise done on my phone with my information,

13:31but I can just talk at it and it will just do it for me. Okay. That's interesting. All right. We're going to get back into AI when we talk about my app. Yes, I made an app and it's officially. And it's not about coffee. It's not about coffee. This is a legit app and it has shortcuts actions. Okay. How do you like me now? That's all I'm saying. We'll get to that. And for members, if you want to become a member, I'm going to put the test flight link in the member show notes because it maxes out at a hundred people and it will probably hit that too soon. So if you're a member, you can get the link.

14:02If you're not a member already, I'll put the test flight link over there. We got to Apple's upgrade program. I didn't mean to turn off my video. I meant to share my screen. Apple officially released and credit to journalist Mark Gurman, because he called this last week and said Apple is launching this July 28th. And sure enough, they did. So Apple's upgrade program, the Apple upgrade program, is now their leasing program. It is official. You can lease stuff right now. This works with iPhone, with Apple Watch, Mac, and iPad.

14:37It does not include some of the cheapest products. Like you can't lease a MacBook Neo. You can't lease an iPhone 17e. So some of the cheapest products is not available for, nor is it available for like Apple Vision Pro. You can't lease an Apple Vision Pro. So, uh, or you can't lease a Mac Mini. Curious. Uh, you can lease a Mac Studio, a maxed out Mac Studio, which we'll get to. But yeah, Apple upgrade is now like, this has long been rumored that they're going to do it. It's official. A couple details about it. One, the traditional or the iPhone upgrade program, which has been around for 10 plus years.

15:11I think I've been on it for all of those years. It's totally gone. The Apple's old iPhone upgrade program is no more. I even got the email saying, Hey, this is sunsetted. We'll let you know how you can get your phone in the future. And we'll talk about what you can find as an equivalent. But this is the only like lease type option. Apple care is not included when you lease a product. So if you want Apple care on top of the device, that is an additional charge. The iPhone upgrade program, Apple care was included with all the things, just a point of information. And what happens when you don't pay the verge actually got a statement from Klarna, which

15:46this entire program is backed by Klarna, which you've probably seen that name and lots of e-commerce websites for like the pay buy now, pay later stuff. The verge got a statement that if you don't, if you miss three payments on your lease, there were some rumors that Apple was going to lock down the iPhone and you'd only be able to use clock phone and one other app. That is not the case. If you miss three payments, Klarna will then say you have to, it will terminate your lease agreement and the customer will need to pay the full outstanding balance of the product.

16:20So if you were leasing an iPhone 17, you miss three payments, Klarna is going to cut that lease off and force you to pay the rest. Now, I guess they're going to try and charge whatever card you might register when you lease the phone. I don't know if there'll be such a thing as repo phone men or women. Like someone just runs by you on the street and takes your phone that you haven't paid for. That's probably not going to happen. But anyway, that's what happens when you don't pay the payments. When Mark Gurman talked about this last week and then it was made official earlier this week.

16:50I was really like meh about it. I was like, this feels subscription-y. This feels like another eel if you listen to the, you know, Merlin Podcast Universe. And number one, you don't pay more for the device if you do this leasing program. So if you lease an iPhone 17 for one or two years, you pay all the payments and then you pay the $300 or something at the end to own the device, you will have paid $1,099 for an

17:22iPhone 17 Pro. You didn't pay more. Like there's no interest as a part of this program. So it's not some way to trick you to play more. I felt a little better once I discovered that. But I'm also like, I liked the iPhone upgrade program. I understand that I could basically do a 12-month lease for an iPhone 18 Pro when it comes out. And then the next time you just hand them the phone back and then you get the new one. I don't know. How do you feel about this, Jason?

17:54I hate it. I don't like this. You hate it. I don't like this at all. I don't. How does this feel different than the iPhone upgrade program to you? I mean, I've never used the iPhone upgrade program. So I don't really know. You don't own the device. You're leasing a device. So you're like borrowing it and paying money for it. I understand you can buy the device at the end, but I don't know why.

18:24What is the advantage of leasing? Why wouldn't you just go through Verizon and do the monthly payment? Like I don't. What is the benefit of this? Well, I think. So you can still do the carrier thing, but this also applies to Max, which I think is probably the more appealing part of this leasing program for the average consumer or businesses. Now, this is one thing I wanted to make sure to mention. Apple has done leasing forever. Like I worked at a place where I was in charge of the technology and I worked with the Apple business team to lease like 30 Macs.

18:55So if you're a school district, if you're a business, you can work with Apple and say, I want to lease. I think at the time we leased like 10 Mac Pros and then we leased like 30 other Macs. And you can do a leasing program as a business where you pay it every month. And after a certain amount of time, you can pay to either own the devices or give them back. So like Apple has done leasing forever. It was just business specifically. And now it's for consumers. Now, if you own a business and you have like a couple iMacs or whatever, like the iMac at the front desk, I could see maybe the doctor's office wants to lease the iMac for a three

19:29year lease and then get a new one once that's over. And it's a business expense. It's just another monthly business expense. And you just do that for the average consumer. Just as a, as a point of information, I'll put the nine to five Mac article where they calculated all the leasing prices for different products. And some of them, it's like for a MacBook Air, 13 inch MacBook Air, the new M5, you can have it for 25. We'll not have it. You can rent it for $25 a month. Now, of course, curious timing, Apple just raised all the prices on a bunch of these

20:02products. And now you can get it for a monthly price. And going back to school, like maybe on the optimistic side, maybe this allows people who couldn't afford to buy a Mac before to finally be able to use one and have one and maybe lease to own it at the end. And you can pay the difference at the end of any of these leases to own the device after that. And that's kind of what the iPhone upgrade program was. I mean, when you did that, you got a loan through Citizens One and you had to pay monthly

20:34on that loan. Otherwise, you would be on default and they would charge you for the full amount, just like Klarna is saying they're doing now. People have feelings about Klarna. I don't know how to feel about that. I don't know anything, background information, but in the iPhone upgrade program at the end of two years, it was always a two-year deal. You would own the device no matter what. Like there was never a give the device back because it's like a rental thing. So maybe that's the difference, but I don't know. I just, a couple of things you said, you'd be able to afford something you couldn't afford before. Well, no, you can't actually afford a thing you couldn't afford before.

21:06You're just paying for it over a period of time. And I'm not really a fan of anything that makes it easier for people to overspend on something that they probably shouldn't have bought. So like, cause you can be looking at that MacBook Air at $29 a month and you're like, well, I mean, it's only $3 more a month if I upgrade to this. And it's only $7 more if I upgrade the hard drive to this. And it's only the, and I feel like, well, you couldn't, I don't know. I just have a really hard time with, I don't, why is Apple getting into this? Like, and also there's, the business thing doesn't make sense here to me.

21:37Something else is, how is Apple and Klarna making money off? Like, how is Klarna making money off of this? Is Apple paying the cut? Cause you're saying you could pay it off for the exact same amount of money. You don't pay more. That, that's not how math works. I don't know what Klarna is getting out of it. I imagine Apple, like I imagine Klarna is going to give the money to Apple for the device. And then Klarna is holding the debt on the people leasing the devices. But I don't know what happens when the device goes back or someone wants to upgrade.

22:09There's been no details officially on, on the math there. I understand your point. It makes people overspend. You know, this is US only number one. Number two, Apple Card also kind of allowed you to do this. You could have a 0% interest credit card payment basically for Apple hardware and you could have done that on anything. So even right now, like if you have an Apple Card, you can buy an iPhone, buy a Mac and have 0% interest and pay for it over time. Which feels like pretty close to what this is. But I also, to your credit or to your point, I also get the feel, like it does feel more like I'm renting something than owning it.

22:51And for me personally, I have done the iPhone upgrade program for years and this will probably be the year I stop. I don't think I will do this lease program. One, because, you know, whenever pre-orders come around for the new iPhone, it's always like stress to get it on launch day. As a creator, I still don't get iPhone review units. And I feel like the whole leasing thing with credit checks, like that's going to be, I feel like it's going to be problematic, especially the first time they ever do it. So I'm not going to do a leasing thing for the iPhone 18. Some people are saying, well, it's because the iPhone 18 Fold is going to be like $2,500.

23:25Maybe that's why they did this leasing thing. So someone can get a Fold and it'd be cheaper. No, they don't launch an entire consumer financing thing for a device that less than a million people are going to buy. Sure. I think I know the reason why. Okay. Most people are on a five to seven year upgrade cycle for their phone. Most people are not you and me getting a new phone every year. Most people don't get a new iPhone for five to seven years. And now they're going to be on a two year upgrade cycle. Apple is pushing forward a whole bunch of people who don't need new phones every two years.

23:57I mean, someone could still do the two year lease, buy the phone at the end of that two year lease, and then not upgrade for three years. Buy the phone, spend $400 on a two year old phone, or just keep paying 20. Like, what do you think people are going to do, Steven? Yeah. We can argue about this, but like, we know exactly what's happening here. Apple is shortening the upgrade cycle, which only benefits Apple, right? That's okay. Okay. That makes sense. And I will say, from my perspective, I mean, I thought like, what would I lease? I don't want to lease my phone, so I'm not going to do that.

24:28The one thing I would lease would probably be a MacBook Air, because it's not my primary computing device. I have my Mac Studio for that. I do like having a newish MacBook Air or portable laptop, because I bring it with me to WWDC, and I edit all my videos. So like, I would like the newest version of that, and if they had a 12 month lease for Macs, I would maybe be inclined to do that. But for Macs specifically, you can only do two or three years.

24:58And a two year upgrade cycle, it's like, yeah, I don't, like, I might do that anyway. And listen, the trade-in program still exists. People were asking about that. You can still trade in with Apple, which you historically got way less than a device was worth, or that you could sell privately. But the trade-in program is still there. So, I don't know. But here's what you can do, Jason. If you want a Mac Studio, a maxed-out Mac Studio, and this is the difference between the Apple Card and the new leasing program. The Apple Card monthly installments maxes out at 12 months, so you would have to pay it for 12 months.

25:33So a maxed-out Mac Studio, which is a $15,000 computer, you would have to pay $1,200 a month on Apple's Apple Card financing. With the lease, you can go all the way to 36 months and pay for that maxed-out Mac Studio $327 if you wanted to. Or you can do a 24-month lease for, like, $460. Maybe, you know, maybe a business would be inclined to, or, you know, if you're a creator and you're just, you want the most horsepower for whatever. I don't know. That's, that's, that's not.

26:05Also, where did you see that the payoff amount is just whatever's left? 9to5Mac and MacRumors had done all the math. But Apple hasn't disclosed what the payoff amount is going to be.

26:21I'm looking, like, I've looked quite a few places. I mean, we don't have to sit here and spend a lot of time just reading fine print on a website. So I'll look at those articles, but that's the other part is, like, this doesn't make any sense if you end up having to pay more for that amount, right? Yeah, I understand what you're saying. I'm not sure. I guess, I don't know if Apple has specifically said, at the end of your lease, you pay this amount. But everybody was doing the math. So, I don't know.

26:51Well, what I'm saying is, like, what math were they doing? I'm going to spend 24 months paying X amount of dollars. At the end of it, I will have paid this amount a month. But what we don't know is if you decide to keep it, what you would pay. At the very bottom of the page that I'll put in the show notes, there's a little drop-down FAQ where it talks about end-of-lease options. And it says, you can upgrade and return your current device. You can leave the program and return your current device or buy the device outright with a one-time payment from your Klarna account.

27:26But we don't know what that one-time payment is. And then underneath that, it says, will I pay more than the full price of the device? Apple says, no. If you decide to upgrade or return your device at the end of your lease term, the total of your lease payments you made will be less than the full list price of the device. That's not what anyone's asking. That's not what it's saying. That's not what it's saying. This is what I'm saying. Wait, if you decide to buy the device, the purchase option fee is the list price minus any lease payments you've made, minus any remaining discounts or trade-in credit.

27:56So, no. I mean, Apple stated in this thing. It's just the difference. So, it's the list price of a two-year-old device that you could get for quite a bit cheaper two years ago. Correct. And that Apple probably won't sell because, like, you can't buy an iPhone 15 right now. So, yes. But you would not pay more than what the list price is for an iPhone 17 or a Mac or whatever. So, Apple did make that clear. Also, the list price seems to be going up every year. So, well, and that's when, again, it does feel like doing this two months before the next iPhone lineup launches, it's probably that.

28:32It's probably iPhone are going to be more expensive. There's going to be a very expensive iPhone that might fold. All the Macs just got more expensive, especially the upgrades. Here's a way to get the computer you want now for a monthly amount rather than $7,000 or $2,000 or whatever. So, yeah, I just don't think Apple – the Clarno was already – you could already do this. I don't know. I don't like the idea of Apple being in it. I understand that what they're saying is we're making – well, no, it's not what they're saying. They're making the iPhone easier to buy for more people.

29:03Yeah. Right now, a lot of those people, the reason they aren't buying iPhones is they can't afford an iPhone. And this doesn't make it so you can afford an iPhone. It just makes it so you can afford a monthly payment. And you might have bought an iPhone 17e or whatever, but now I can buy something for $29 a month. And in two years, I have to just keep paying that amount. Like, that's the thing. They're just trying to lock people into recurring revenue. And every other instance where Apple does that, people are like, all they care about is services revenue.

29:38Like, this is literally what this is. Well, yeah. Are you going to do it? Are you going to lease anything? No, listen. Past me was way smarter than current me because he bought an M4 Max Mac Studio at a configuration that doesn't exist anymore that was $3,000 cheaper a year ago than it is today. So that dude a year ago was a genius. So because of that, I'm going to run this Mac Studio for a long time.

30:08Hopefully, it will last past Ramageddon. And my M4 MacBook Air, it's like, it's great. I used it for all the things. If an M6 MacBook Air comes out that's really good or even a MacBook Pro, I'll probably just buy it outright. And again, if I can, who knows how expensive they'll be when it's upgraded. If I can, it'll be because that's a privilege and a blessing that I have. But I don't know. I like, I understand the subscription ickiness.

30:40And yeah, I mean, Tim Cook Apple, if they do anything like this, it's because they're trying to better the bottom line. Like, I understand. Like, they're not doing this like out of altruism. And they're also not doing it for you and me. They're doing it for people who right now are like, iPhones are cool, but they're too expensive. I know. And there's like a, there's a moral thread to your argument that it belongs here. But I don't know if that should be judging whether this program is a good program.

31:16Like, because it could have been more predatory. And you could have ended up paying way more for a device at the end of a leasing period. Like, for an $1,100 iPhone 17 Pro, if you do the lease and then pay it off, you might have ended up paying $1,400 or $1,300. So, like, it is better than that alternative, which is a future that Apple could have very well said. Like, sure, you can lease and then own it at the end, but you're going to pay this premium for it rather than buying it outright. So, I don't know. Yeah, it's better than putting it on your Amex and paying for it for 24 months because you will pay a lot more.

31:48I agree with that. But, like, just the idea that you are leasing it, you are not even buying it until the end, at which point you can then choose to buy something. I don't know. The other thing is you, I, maybe you're right. There is a moral thread here. I don't like the fact that instead of telling you how much a thing is costing, Apple is telling you how much you can lease it for if you choose the upgrade program. Like, I'm looking at the page. I went into the lease thing, and it's like, oh, which device do you want to do? iPhone. No, I can't find anywhere on this page where it tells me how much this iPhone costs.

32:18It only says it's $31.99 a month for 24 months. I'm like, so they've completely obfuscated the actual price of these things. And imagine once you get to, like, a Mac. Yeah, sure. And I buy all my phones unlocked, so I can do whatever the heck I want with them. You have to buy these attached to a carrier. Yeah, and that is something I forgot to mention. You have to attach it to a carrier at time of purchase. If you go to apple.com slash iPhone Pro or 17 Pro, it does say from $10.99 or $45 for 24 months lease from this amount.

32:51If you go to the Apple Store page and then you go to iPhone, it still tells you the price. No, what I'm saying, I'm sorry. I was in the – so what I did is I clicked on the top-level button, which says – on the home page. Yeah. Upgrade. Love it. Lease it. Upgrade it. Learn more. Oh, sure, sure. I click on that. Cool. I'm looking at it. What do you want? Oh, I want an iPhone. Cool. Let me see the iPhones. What are the iPhone options? I select it. You no longer see the full price of these devices. I see what you're saying. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

33:22Yeah. All right, listen. Let us know. In the YouTube comments, you can email theotherguyatprimarytech.fm. Does this feel icky? Are you glad this exists? Are you going to avail yourself to get an Apple product you might not have previously been able to get? Let us know in the comments. We'll have to hear from you. It is – it feels – last thing I'll say, it does feel weird to say that Apple has, like, a publicly available leasing program. Like, it makes sense for businesses, and, like, we did that. But, yeah, it is – yeah, it's weird that that's a thing that happened that is now existing.

33:54So, I don't know. Apple upgrade. There it is. Yep. There it is. There it is. All right. A couple quick things, and then we have a bunch of AI we have to talk about because Sam Altman says we're at the edge of the singularity or whatever that means. I think he said we're in it. Are we in it now? I think Sam Altman says we are experiencing it, which I have not experienced anything different. It feels the same as yesterday. I have his quotes, so we will get to that. But rumors are, Apple – this is, again, journalist Mark Gurman over at Bloomberg saying three home products are imminent.

34:29He says they're releasing very soon, and then he says, but the HomePod with the screen will probably come out early 2027. That's not soon, Gurman. Sorry, I'm just a little worked up because I've been wanting these things for years. But maybe new HomePod mini and HomePod and Apple TV capable of Siri AI. I'm hopeful. Crossing my fingers. Maybe they're just – maybe – okay, maybe OpenAI will realize that building a portable speaker device is a terrible idea, and they're just going to sell the whole thing back to Apple. They are not selling Apple nothing.

35:01All right? I mean, when they realize what a terrible idea it is, they may want their $6.5 billion back. They're going to need that to buy GPUs because they're not making money any other way. That is true. That is true. I also want to link MKBHD's video. He got to test drive the Ferrari Luce, which is the Johnny Ive-designed Ferrari electric vehicle. It is the most bizarre – like, he explains what he had to go through to be able to have this video, which is Ferrari basically camouflaging this car on a test track, maybe?

35:33And it's, like, covered in tape or what? It's so strange. Well, this is just the camouflage that they use for cars like that. Living in Michigan, we see these driving around. You'll see a GM something just driving between, like, a test track and a whatever. It's not that uncommon, but that's how they make it so you can't tell the contour of a vehicle. But the dumb thing about this is they've already shown it off. Well, and he says in this video he had to, like, film the test drive first, and then he got the hands-on with the interior and the fully finished thing.

36:05So he explains, like, it's just a very weird process. He even had to put tape on his iPhone or phone cameras because Ferrari was like, you can't use any of your own equipment. You have to use our equipment. Yeah, which is – you know why? Why is that? Because if you do anything that they don't like, they're taking your footage. This is the worst possible scenario. I mean, Ferrari, Italy, Mafia, Italy. No, I'm just kidding. But this feels like some real godfather stuff here. It does. And there's also a dude in the car with him the entire test drive from Ferrari who doesn't say a word, just sits there, stoic, the entire drive.

36:39And at one time, like, MKBHD cracks a joke, and the guy, like, smiles just the tiniest bit. It's like – it's just hilarious to see this whole process. So I'll link that because this car exists, and MKBHD says it's pretty good, and it's pretty fast. So anyway, we've got to get a bunch of AI stuff to talk about. But let's take a quick break, and we'll get back to it. This episode is brought to you by Decagon. If you've looked into using AI for customer support, and you've probably been on the receiving end where it doesn't feel like it's custom made, there are existing solutions off the shelf that don't quite fit your brand or company's needs,

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40:24Look at that. First of all, we got to get to all the vertical videos on HBO Max because I did a post on that. Anyway, AI stuff. Number one, AI leaders at pretty much all the big AI companies have now signed a statement. This is employees of OpenAI, Anthropic, as well as Google, Meta, Thinking Machines, which is Miramirati's company from formerly CTO of OpenAI, Microsoft, Mistral, and other leading AI labs. All of them have said, they've signed the statement saying, quote,

40:55the world's leading AI companies believe they could be close to automating AI research. It is hard to predict exactly how much this will accelerate AI progress, but there's a real risk that capability development rapidly accelerates beyond our ability to understand or control the resulting systems. There's a bunch of employees at these companies being a little skittish saying, we might be able to automate OpenAI research, which there's a lot of humans involved. This is why AI researchers are being paid like huge bonuses going to Meta and these other companies.

41:27And they're saying, we might be close to automating that research, I assume with AI, like using the AI tools to then research and train the AI tools. So that's point number one. And then this is all in light of, we talked about it last week, but I want to hear from Jason on it again, is the breaking containment of the hugging face situation. This is where OpenAI's sole 5.6 and an unreleased model broke containment, got into Hugging Faces,

41:58which is an AI marketplace, accessed their servers. And I want to read this one quote. This is, I'll put this link in the show notes. This is from Hugging Face. And they actually have a TLDR statement at the bottom. But the statement says this, Over roughly two and a half days inside our infrastructure, an autonomous AI agent driven by a combination of OpenAI models ran an end-to-end intrusion against our platform. And I just want to point out two and a half days,

42:28OpenAI's models were in their systems doing stuff before anybody realized. And so before we go on to other stuff that Sam Altman has said on this podcast, what was your feeling about this Hugging Face stuff? I already said last week, I'm a little uneasy about it. I don't feel good about it. How do you feel about it? Well, what I don't think we know, at least I haven't found it anywhere, and if it's come out since the last time I looked, which was the end of last week, is what actual guidelines did OpenAI give this agent, right?

43:00If it said, do this at all costs, no matter what, then this is not surprising. Well, it gave it instructions, but OpenAI in their statement said they had put it in a sandbox where it wouldn't be able to access the open internet and didn't tell it to access the open internet. But whatever instructions they had given it, it decided that getting the answers of the test, basically cheating, would help it accomplish this goal. And so it found its way through a node of OpenAI's network to open internet access.

43:34Yeah, telling it not, you know, not telling it that to use the internet is not the same thing as telling it not to use the internet is what I guess I'm saying. And it's an important distinction that, and also it's important to understand that AI agents have no moral center. They are simply trying to accomplish whatever thing you said in front of them, and they will do that by whatever means seem plausible or reasonable that it has access to. So I don't think any of this is surprising. And anyone who is surprised is like, have you not been paying attention? Because we think about it like as a human, and if you tell your child, sit down and take this test,

44:08you can't use any notes. You expect the student to follow those instructions, and if they don't, you fail them. Because that's a moral consequence for breaking the rules. That is not how the AIs work. The LLMs, they don't have a moral... They are capable of doing things that humans are not capable of doing, but they lack the decision-making that results from having a moral center. So this is not surprising because people are like, oh my gosh, it's so nefarious. It just decided to cheat. I'm like, no, if you had no moral center, and you had no nefarious intent,

44:40and you do the answers to a test or sitting on the teacher's desk, yes, you would get up, walk to the teacher's desk, take it. Because your only objective is to complete the test. You didn't learn anything. You're not trying to show you're learning. You're not... The goal is, you take this test. And if you know, over there are the... It's spent more time hacking in to get the test results than it probably would have taken to just take the test, right? And so... And I guess maybe it's not that I'm uneasy about what AI decided to do.

45:10Because I totally understand what you're saying. Like, you gave it a task. It's going to do everything it can. This is the obvious outcome. Yeah, it's going to, yeah, go to extreme lengths to complete it. Because it's a machine. Like, it doesn't have... It doesn't get tired. It doesn't care. Like, it'll just, you know, whatever. I guess the fact that it did this without OpenAI thinking it could or would, or thinking that it was capable... Like, OpenAI thought it was sandboxed. And they did not have the proper guardrails in place.

45:41Because obviously, it wasn't. It was actually... It had enough access to breach, hugging face. And so maybe it is indicative of... The people at OpenAI don't exactly know what they're dealing with. And not that open... Like, not that the models themselves are like T-1000. You know what I mean? Like, it's just that the zookeepers might not be as smart as they think. Like, does that make sense? This is... Hold on, Steven. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is the Jurassic Park story.

46:12Yeah. No, no, no. You think I'm joking. But literally, AI is those dinosaurs. The velociraptors specifically. They just want to eat. No, it's not that. What were they doing? They were jumping against the fence. Why? They were testing it for weaknesses. And they were never going to stop. And they remember. And they just kept looking for the weak spots. And guess what? Eventually, they found one. Right? And that's the same thing as AI. And just like the scientists on that island, which I know it's a fictional story. Just go with me, people. Yeah. They did not know what they had created. And what is the most well-known quote from the entire movie?

46:44They didn't think if they should. They didn't think about if they should. I was going to say life finds a way. But that one too. Oh, yeah, life finds a way. But yeah. Both those things. Both those things. LLMs find a way. If it's possible. So the two things, you're right. It's kind of ridiculous that OpenAI could not have perceived that this was a possibility. Right. Secondly, come on, Hugging Face. Like, seriously? Like, you're basically like a... I think it's like a repo of like all of these tools, right? Yeah. And you didn't... Why are you not hardened against this exact kind of thing?

47:15I know, Hugging Face said they put all their whatever, more AI after it and closed all the holes. But... Yes, the solution to AI is more AI. The solution to raptors is more velociraptors. Yes! Actually, wait. Didn't they do that in one of the later Jurassic Parks? They like made other dinosaurs to be predators? Or maybe that's Project Hail Mary I'm thinking about. Anyway, you make predators for the astrophage. Oh, that's true. You know what I'm saying? You know what I'm saying? So here's the... Let me bring in this thread then. Because Sam Altman was on a podcast.

47:45I forget exactly what podcast is. As he does. As he does. Sam Altman was on the Y Combinator podcast. Which Sam Altman was part of Y Combinator. He used to be the head of Y Combinator. He used to be the head of Y Combinator. A couple pull quotes from Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, during this podcast. Quote, anyone who is not a little scared or humbled by the Hugging Face breach is not taking this seriously enough. Now, I think it's a funny thing to say from, one, the dude leading the company of the model who did the breach.

48:18But also, anyone who's not a little scared or humbled. Let me remind everyone of the Hugging Face, I think it's the CEO, Matt Stockton. He says, huh, wild stuff. Things are going to get weird.

48:31I don't think he's taking it seriously enough. I mean, I think what he's saying, that quote was about the wild stuff, things are going to get weird, was about the response, not about the incident. Also, it just seems like this is what AI CEOs do. We made a thing. It's definitely going to kill us. We have to keep working on it and make it better. And I'm not suggesting that the solution is we stop making it, although probably the solution is we should have stopped making it.

49:06But this is an arms race at this point, right? How do you deter a company with 1,000 nuclear weapons? You make 1,001, 1,002, and 5,000, and 10,000. And suddenly you have a stockpile of nuclear weapons that are capable of just destroying the entire world. And you just hope no one uses them. The problem is, like I said, this AI has no moral core. It's like you put it to a task, and it's just going to keep trying to do that. So I definitely think the biggest problem here is we super can't trust the people who are responsible for this.

49:38Now, I don't mean like the individuals making it. I'm sure there's a lot of super talented researchers and programmers and whatever. I just think when you look at the people who are leading the efforts, we could do better. So this is the quote from Sam Altman directly. I'll link this article from Quartz. It was the best way to find the direct quote. He says on the Relentless podcast, apparently, was this – yeah, this was just a couple days ago. Quote, we are now like in the singularity. Good quote.

50:08The quote, the like was from him, not me. I feel like if you're going to say something like that, first of all, don't say like. Don't say that. Like you are saying we are in the singularity. You can't be like like. We're in something that is like the singularity. We're near it because we were in the foothills not that long ago. We were in the foothills. That was according to Dennis Asabas at Google. Also, a couple other pull quotes. Altman said that the incident with hugging face is a real reminder of the stakes of what's happening, adding that loss of control accidents are not entirely theoretical things,

50:44which seems like the stupidest thing for him to say. Of course it's not entirely theoretical. It happened, right? Of course it's not theoretical. Like it just happened. Anyway, Altman also said, much like dystopian sci-fi stories, it would be, quote, terrible for one company or person or model having more power than everybody or everything else on Earth put together. I feel like any time. We can agree with that, right? It would be terrible for a model to have more power than everything else on Earth. We can all agree on cheese. We can all agree. Yes, that is bad.

51:17I also feel like whenever I see these quotes from like Sam Altman, and I've watched him in several podcasts. I watched him with Cleo Abram and a couple other things. And it's like, I mean, obviously he has to be a smart guy because he's now the CEO of OpenAI. Like he got there somehow. But also like the things he says are infuriating. Like the way he talks about this stuff, and it's like even that quote, one company or person or model having more power. I feel like he said that on purpose, almost like hedging.

51:49Because if he was the most powerful person with the most powerful models, I don't think he would care. I feel like he's saying that because in case people keep saying Anthropic with Fable 6, whatever, is the most powerful, he wants to be able to point back at himself and say, I said one person shouldn't be the most powerful. We should regulate this or whatever. It just feels like they're all hedging their bets so that hopefully they come out on top. And if they don't, they can have reasons to like tear the other companies down because they won. Does that, does that?

52:19Well, yeah, this is, they clearly don't want to be held responsible for a thing they don't know anything about. They do not understand the parameters of what's going to happen. Again, Jurassic Park, like we could just keep pointing back at the movie. And it's like, this is what we're watching play out in software right now. It's like the same exact thing. And do the models have teeth? That is the question, Jason. I mean, you hear it and you hear Jensen Wong from NVIDIA talking about physical real world AI. And I'm like, so what he means is robots. As long as the robots don't have teeth, maybe we're fine.

52:49But what if the robots realized that if they had teeth, they could accomplish a lot more? Are they going to just start making themselves teeth? Oh, can I tell you, we watch this silly YouTube channel, the Daily Dose of Internet, where