Who is HomeView For? Apple’s Fight for the Smart Home, Anthropic Thinks Claude Has Feelings

Apple Experience Event Week

0:00This is my house. I have to defend it. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. It was a big Apple Experience event week. We're going to get in-depth on HomeView, the new Apple Home Collection with accessories from LG and Schneider, new Apple TV 4K, man, that thing is expensive, HomePod Mini 2, plus you can't be mean to Claude anymore, so says Anthropic. YouTube Music is going to label music as AI and more. This episode is brought to you by Serp API, Ramp, Origin, and you, the members who support us, directly. I'm one of your hosts with three HomeViews on the way. Joined by my co-host, Jason. How's it going, Jason?

0:37I have zero HomeViews on the way. I just want to be cleared. Mark safe from buying a HomeView. You know, I said three, and I was just thinking about it. I think I bought two. I bought the desk version and the wall mount, but then I had to buy the separate wall mount. So that's the, I had three HomeView items, but just two HomeViews. That's just correction. Listen, we're going to get to HomeView. Just give us a second here. Two very exciting things. One, I have a Shortcuts Pillow. Have you seen this? I don't think this is an exciting thing. This is just a shameless plug. No, this is an exciting thing for me. Well, also, I think this is when it's coming out. I was, I'm going

1:11to be on the Verge cast again. David Pierce hit me up. He asked me to come on to talk, and so I think it comes out Monday. So be eyes peeled Monday for episode, but I troll David with this very Shortcuts Pillow, and I was wearing a Shortcuts shirt during the recording of that episode. So stay tuned. That's coming out Monday. And we might have some other exciting stuff on this show, a special guest coming soon. So we will confirm later. We need to get to HomeView, but real quick, WeatherDog87 from the USA gave us a five-star rating in Apple Podcast. Thank you so much for that. And Marcin in Poland, he has our polar bear night. I

1:45always say it the wrong way. I always mean to say night riding a polar bear, but I would start with the polar bear riding a night, and I don't want to say that. But anyway, he has our medieval night riding a polar bear in Poland. So very cool for that. And he actually has worked on making an app for a long time, and I wanted to plug it. This is not a vibe-coded app. This is an app that he learned Swift and spent a long time figuring, learning to be a developer. And he made McSnake. It's a free app on the Mac, and if you are nostalgic for

2:15the old-school Snake game, you can download it for free. Just a casual game, and that is super fun. So thank you, Marcin, for the picture and also for the game. You should check it out. You should. Can I say one thing about vibe-coded apps real quick? This will be quick. Sure, sure. We'll talk about it later as well. Oh, we do? Well, I want to talk about my apps. No, you say it now. Okay. I just have discovered the biggest pitfall of vibe-coding an app, which is people will send you a lot of feature requests. And when you take the time to respond and say, I don't actually

2:46think that that's a, like, here's why I probably won't do that. I appreciate it. I'm like, dude, just ask Claude to do it. It's not that big of a deal. And I'm like, you don't understand. Just because it wouldn't be hard to implement that feature doesn't mean it would be a good idea. Just because you could doesn't mean you should. That is a great point. I actually talk about that with David on Monday a little bit. And so that's a good plug. And we'll talk about vibe-coded apps later as well. Great. Because, yeah, it got a lot. And one other follow-up. I mentioned last week, we're up for a Signal Award and voting ends tomorrow if you listen to this episode when it comes

3:18out on Thursday. So go vote if you haven't yet. We are up for best co-host team, which I so hope we win the best co-host team. That would be amazing. That would be amazing. But you can go vote for primary technology in the best podcast category, best tech podcast, and the best co-host team. I don't know if this visual is representative of the amount of votes shows are getting. It can't be. It's got to just be random, don't you think? I mean, it's got to be random, but we're second from the top right now. So I'm going to take that as hope that maybe we have a chance to win this thing.

3:51Yeah, but if I look at it, it's a totally different order. Why do you have to do that? I'm sorry. That's okay. But listen, go vote. And the tip that I said last week, because you do have to create an account to vote, which is always a little slimy when places make you do that. I mentioned the plus and the at symbol for email accounts, where you can basically have a built in alias. So whatever your email address is, plus icon, and then random letters or a word, and then the at gmail.com symbol goes to your inbox. And I said it doesn't work

4:23with Outlook or iCloud last week. And a lot of listeners write in and they were like, actually it does. So if you use iCloud or Outlook, that little plus a trick to have like a secondary or as many email addresses as you want, and then filter that address works with Outlook and iCloud as well. So do that. And then you can filter all those messages wherever you want. If that is the important piece, by the way, just adding the plus and the bunch of gibberish is meaningless because it's still going to come to your inbox. You then have to take the gibberish to add a filtering rule. Yeah. And do a thing. Like I have on my YouTube channel, I use one of these plus things like

4:58plus YT. And then I have a filter that any email that gets sent to that plus YT at my email address goes to a folder. And then I can choose to check that whenever I want or tell Claude to, you know, whatever you want.

Apple HomeView First Impressions

5:10Or not. Okay. Big Apple home experience, experience event this week. I want to get right to the home view. This is the long rumored. I looked back and Andrew O'Hara and I first mentioned this in March, 2021 on HomeKit Insider. It was the first time a rumor about a HomePod with the screen came from journalist Mark Gurman. And that was five plus years ago that we've been hearing about this kind of device. And it's finally here. The home view, it is a seven

5:43inch display and it is a mix of Apple Watch plus CarPlay plus maybe iPad type stuff. But it is meant to be your home control where you can look at recipes and beam stuff from your phone. And it is a Siri AI machine and all the things. It has a camera. It will recognize up to six people, which is complicated. And we're going to get into that as well. And a lot of creator videos are out there on it. And I will link to a few that I'll discuss. But the first video I'm going

6:16to link to is Apple's own marketing video for this, which Jason and I are going to disagree on the use cases of the home view in general. But maybe we agree on this. I did not find this marketing video compelling. I actually found it off putting for this device for several reasons. How did you find this marketing video? This marketing video, I think, Stephen, was worse than the one where they did the keynote in the middle of WWDC showing Siri Apple intelligence. This is worse because there's a whole lot of hand

6:48waviness about like, how fast is this user switching? And there's like no way. And it's like, then the FaceTime call pops up and it's like, call for this person. Is it because it called that person's phone number and it's showing up? So why is it showing up on the screen if somebody else is using it? Right. Like, and as soon as you turn it, like it just switches to someone else's messages. Like, is it possible that it's that fast? Like, I feel like there was so much of this and I don't, I didn't, I didn't have a briefing on this just to be clear. I've talked to anyone. Stephen's the first person I've talked to about this, about this thing. So I've got so

7:22many ideas and feelings at the moment, but I think that this video is worse than the Apple intelligence presentation. It was a 2024 WWDC. Yeah. Yeah. I have, I have some information, but the first thing I want to mention, so this device, you can get multiple models and that's complicated as well. We'll get to that. But the tabletop version, which is $300, it's a USB-C port in the back. If you buy the tabletop version, you actually get a cable and power brick

7:52in the box. If you buy the wall mount version, you don't, which is crazy making because it's the same price. And so if you want the wall mount version, you have to spend more on the mount. Anyway, please tell me you asked them how those two things are the same price. I had a limited time. No, no, no. I don't. Why did no one ask them? How are these two versions the same price? Okay. Let me just tell you right now. I have a theory and we'll see if it comes true. If you wanted to pre-order this today, which you can pre-order today, it comes out November 13th. The Apple home view, like tabletop edition is $300. The wall mounted one is

8:29also 300, but you remember you don't get the base. You don't get a home pod with it. You don't get the big speaker with it. And to add insult to injury, you have to pay extra for a mount. So even if you just want the wall mount that plugs into USB-C, that's another $60. So now you're $60 more than the tabletop version. The AC wired version is $80. And if you want the POE version, which is not for sale yet, $130. Which is the only version you should get. Well, yeah. And it's, you know,

9:00it's complicated. You don't have Ethan already run to a wall or whatever. I'm hopeful that like the 3D printing world and accessory makers make a nice swiveling tabletop mount for the POE version. Because I would do a POE swiveling version like on my desk here. And I think that would be money, but you can't like right now, Apple is only selling POE for a wall mount. So Grove made, make a beautiful wooden swiveling case or, you know, tabletop mount. And that would

9:31be hot. Anyway, my theory is, if you remember, the Studio Display XDR VESA mount version was the same price as the Studio Display XDR tilt and height adjustable version when it launched. And I bought it day one. And then I got a $400 refund from Apple, because they adjusted the price after the fact. So I am hoping, I don't have any background information on this, but I am hoping that they come to the same realization that, oh, we should, this should be cheaper because you get less and you

10:05have to buy a mount in addition to the $300. I'm hoping that they adjust the price post like release. Do you think that that, yeah. How is it? Okay. But the, it felt like the Studio Display thing was like, oh shoot, we didn't like, we didn't do math. We didn't think about the fact that people are going to notice, but like, I'm hoping that I'm hoping the same person that did that math did this math. And I'm hoping the person that did that math was fired. Come on, Steven. Because it is like a hit to their credibility. It's for this product that one

10:36version includes the base, which is also a subwoofer. So it's going to sound, so what you want is a, is a HomePod with a screen. That's that. The one that goes on your wall is not a HomePod with a screen. Right. And also the wall mounted version, not only do you have to buy the $60 wall mount, but you have to buy a power adapter separately. And this power adapter that they recommend is another $40. So you're now over $400 for a wall mount version. And I think that's not, that's not fair. You're being too nice, Steven. I want, I mean, it's just, it's not fair. And I'm,

11:08hopefully they go back on that. So on the actual device, the screen tilts. So you can actually tilt the seven inch display, but I want to be clear that it does not swivel. And a lot of the creators that were at the event, Andrew Edwards said this, uh, I think Eric Wielander said it and congrats to Eric Wielander, Shane Watley. There was a bunch of smart home creators that this was like their first Apple event. And that was very cool. So congrats to all those guys and girls, but the swiveling, they didn't allow a lot of creators to actually touch it. Uh, Matthew

11:41Panzarino on social media was like, can anyone send me a picture of the back of the wall mounted version? Cause everybody wants to know like, what is the, what is the back of the home view look like for the wall mount? And Apple did not want any pictures, didn't want anybody touching it. And a lot of creators couldn't touch it. Now I saw MKBHD use it. And I saw Jennifer Toohey from the verge physically interacting with it, but a lot of other creators had to just film the Apple person using it. So there's not a lot of videos of the creators actually using it. So the question

12:11was, does this thing swivel? Because in the marketing video, it shows the family constantly turning this thing. It does not. And if you look at their marketing video, like around 42 seconds, the mom moves it, but she physically grabs the base and moves, like moves the whole thing because this thing is small, you know, it's not a large thing. And I realized I just was not sharing my screen. So let's try that one more time. So the mom, like around, it's like 40 something seconds. She walks up to it and you can see, and if you look at all the videos that it's very clear,

12:42it does not swivel. She grabs the little dome part and physically moves it. So it seems easy enough to do it. But to be clear, it's not swivel. There's going to be 1000 accessories that probably just make a swiveling base for this thing. There will not be 1000 accessories for this, Steven. I don't know, man. They will not sell a thousand of these. So this is my home. I have to protect. Did you know where that movie was from, by the way? Thank you. Okay. I just want to make sure I had to go back and plug it. Absolutely. The other thing that's crazy making about this video is this obviously feels like the perfect kitchen device. That is where the whole marketing video

13:18takes place. Now, I don't know how your kitchen is set up, but my kitchen, we have an island and the stove part is in the island. And if I wanted to use this for recipes and cooking, it needs to be there on the island. And this marketing video has the power cable for the home view going down into this little hole in the island. Now, listen, I don't want to be that guy, but we have a granite island and I'm not drilling a hole for the home view. I'm sorry. And I'm also not having a USB-C

13:51cable over the side of our kitchen island. You know how many times that home view would crash to the ground if we had a cable just laying across the island and the kids running around? So that part of the marketing video, it's like, listen, I do not think people are going to drill a hole in their table. But obviously, like that is the intent is to have this clean look of because that's the only other way. You could also rotate this thing all around the island as everybody's using it. Anyway, yeah, are you going to drill a hole in your in your island? No, but also, I'm trying to figure out

14:25which part of this we're in store. We're still talking about the video. Okay, I'm still talking about the video. No, no, that's good. Those are the two crazy making things like it. They showed it all the people moving it around, but it actually doesn't swivel. They're just like physically moving the device. And two, cutting a hole in your island, I think is a big ask. We'll just say that. Well, yeah. Okay. So the biggest thing that's wrong with this video is nobody is doing anything with this device that they shouldn't just be doing with their phone. Everything. They didn't show anything about controlling your shades. Well, he changed the temperature. He changed the thermostat

14:58temperature. He got in trouble for that. I think he got in trouble for that. I'm like, maybe fine. He changed the temperature while he's cooking. Maybe you shouldn't be changing the temperature in your house while you're cooking because I don't know that you're in a good situation at that moment. Well, and also, if your hands are all French toasty. Yeah. You're really going to touch the screen to change. You should have shouted to the voice assistant. Yeah. You should have said, hey, dingus, turn the temperature down. So, you know, obviously like this part of it is very contrived because they're trying to show all the features on the device. Let's just get into the, the, your problems with it and my defense. Like what is this thing for? Who is this

15:34for? Okay. Let me frame it like this. Yeah. We have a Google home hub max. I think that's,

Debating HomeView Use Cases

15:42I think that's the name. And if it is, it's the first time I've ever said it correctly. I think I think it used to be called a nest hub max, I think. And then they changed it to Google home nest hub plus pro. That's exactly right. It's something like that. We have one of those in our kitchen and it is a fantastic speaker. Like it's a very good speaker. I would say it's like 90% as good as a, as a single home, like OG home pod. Okay. It's a good speaker and it has a screen on it. And all it ever does is my wife uses it to play music when she's in the kitchen or cleaning

16:14the house. It shows photos from Google photos, which is by far the best feature of it because you can just star photos in Google photos and they'll just show up on there. It also tells answers random Google questions that my 12 year old shouts at it occasionally. Yes. And it, um, it can, it serves as if you're in the Google home assistant ecosystem, it serves as like the hub for that. So if you have any of the plugs that need it, need a hub, they works for that. So that means that you can shout at it and it'll turn on all of our lights, turn them off. But, and just to

16:47be clear with the exception of Lutron, which I'll get to in a second, that is the most, like it works every single time. If I say turn off the light in the front room, it just happens instantly. It is super reliable. And the reason I said Lutron is I would argue that the Lutron ones are more reliable and those are through home kit, but that's because they have their own controller or whatever. Yeah. So anyway, it sits in the corner of our kitchen. I don't need it to swivel. It doesn't ever need to move. You know what I've never done with it? Tried to look up

17:18a recipe. You know, the only place I've ever looked up a recipe, my iPhone, like it's, it's like, it, this is the way they are conceiving of this device is make, it only makes sense. Okay. This is who this device is for. Yes. You have zero. No, it's not. It's definitely not for you. I will, I'll get to that. Okay. It's definitely not for you. It is for the person. And this is kind of like what Apple does. And I guess you got to respect them for that. It is the person who thinks having a smart home would be cool, but I have zero smart home things. I have no smart home,

17:51anything in my house. I'm going to start with this and then I'm going to buy the LG lock, LG doorbell, LG camera, whatever, because most people's home, like, I understand you have a bunch of home kit stuff. I get that. Also, you're living just fine without this device. Like you don't need this thing. And, but if you like in my house, this would be super useless. The Google thing I already have is infinity more useful because everything already just works with it. Why

18:21would I replace it with this home view where most of the things that I have already will not work with it? Okay. Well, here's my defense of the home view because I, number one, I do think you have to be completely steeped in Apple home for this to be a value. And there's just to be clear, there's like 75 of you and you all have YouTube channels. And I don't even mean that to be condescending. I just, I listen, this is not me trying to be negative and it's certainly not negative toward you. No, no, I know. I know. I just want to set the bar like where it actually is

18:55for what you're saying right now. Yeah. Most people have a ring doorbell and that's the only smart home thing they have. And this, this is why this launched alongside the entire Apple home collection of devices, because I think Apple knows this, the value of this thing is greatly decreased. If you don't have a video doorbell that works with this thing. Like if you don't see when someone rings the doorbell, if you don't see that video on the home view, it's going to be a much

19:28less compelling device. Now for me, I am knee deep. I'm shoulders. No, you are not knee deep. It's right here. I am drowning. I'm drowning in Apple home products. Like I have made a video every year doing a smart home tour. I'm now over 150. Now that there's home view, I'll be over 200 because I'll have 50 of them. No, but I like, it's clear that the value has to come from you are in the

19:58Apple home ecosystem. Now, just a few bullets I want to put up here because like, why would you use a home view instead of an iPad on the wall or in the kitchen or a HomePod? We've had a HomePod mini in our kitchen for however long. There's just always been a HomePod mini there. Number one, yes, it plays music, albeit poorly. My daughter had to shout at it four times yesterday to get it to play the right song. So not smart. B, there's no screen. And like you're saying, your Google thing

20:28has a screen. Maybe you don't use it, but I have a couple of use cases there. Uh, well, I'll get to and just the, uh, for like, why not an iPad? You know, a lot of people said like, you know, you can get an iPad for almost the same price, 3d printed on the wall or whatever. It's more flexible. I think an iPad is a less useful device for the kitchen. We'll just say there like for the kitchen, for the home, because things like when someone rings your video doorbell, if it's an Apple home, like you don't get a live preview on the iPad. If the iPad is unlocked and awake and you

21:02have the home app open maybe, but that's a very, like you can't automatically launch the video doorbell view on an iPad. You can't have a recipe on your phone and then you can airplay it or airdrop it to the iPad, but it's not going to be formatted super great. Maybe you want to go into reader mode. So I do think like having some of these bespoke use cases will be beneficial. And the live video of the doorbell, I have an Acara thermostat in my family room that shows me

21:33an image of the video doorbell. Cause I have both the Acara video doorbell and the Acara thermostat. And that is a genuinely useful feature because in this family room, I can't see the front door or any windows leading out to there. And so being able to have that video up is helpful. And like the few times where we've been recording this podcast and there might be a FedEx truck delivery that I have to sign for, I will turn on my Apple TV and have the video doorbell camera open and live

22:03on like my multi view over here just so I can keep an eye on the doorbell. And this home view would is actually a better device for that specifically. And second, I mean, I think recipes specifically on this device where you can actually tap the timers in the steps as you're going, I think is cool. Wait, where is this coming from though? Well, it's either Safari on the device or you airdrop a recipe from. So it's going to just reformat any recipe anywhere on the internet into this?

22:34I don't think so. That is what it shows in all the videos. It also shows users switching that's instantaneous. Not just the marketing video, but like the creator videos. They do this demo at, they did this at the house in New York as they were doing this. Like you have a recipe on some random website on your phone, you beam it to the home view and it formats like this and you can tap ingredients and you can tap steps. And the Apple, like in Safari, if you do like the reader view, it will do this with recipes

23:04right now in Safari. So it's already built in. So I'm fairly sure that feature will legitimately be on the home view. And the, another one is timers. Now you can set a timer on a HomePod mini. You can set it on any device that you have, any Apple device. Sure. I cannot tell you how many times a day I hear shouted to our HomePod mini, how much time is left on the timer? Everyone asked the same question several times a day. And I do think having a visual of the timer that you can just glance over and see it on

23:38a nice seven inch screen can be useful rather than having to continually ask it. Also, pinging your phone, like in the marketing video and else like this plugs into the find my network and we'll get to the multiple user aspect of this in a moment. But the fact that my wife could shout to it, where's my phone? Which yes, she does it from her watch usually, but sometimes she's also carrying three smoothie cups and her purse to the car and she doesn't know where her phone is. So to be able to be shout out to the room, where's my phone?

24:11And that works with air tags as well. So you can ask her, where's my keys? And that it works with multiple users. If it works, if it works well, and that's a big if and we have to test it. I think that could be useful. How in the world is that going to work, Stephen? How does it know whose phone? She's nowhere near the thing. Voice, voice recognition. So it unlocks your personal information just based on voice. Yes. Which HomePods have advertised that it does that today, albeit not well. And so that's the big caveat is, can it do this reliably?

24:45And that is the other aspect of why not an iPad in the kitchen, the multi-user aspect. And now there's a whole argument there of like, Apple should have done multi-users on iPad forever and can do it in situations like education. And so that's frustrating. But I think the multi-user aspect, if it's good, if it's good, I think it could be beneficial. Hold on. Okay. You there, Jason. My rebuttal. Yana. Yana. Yana. Hold on. Okay. You haven't mentioned a single thing, though, that's not better just doing it on your phone.

25:17In fact, the recipe thing has to start from your phone. In the video, it didn't. The guy just like pulled up a text message. It doesn't have to start from your phone. You said beam it from your phone. You can do that or open Safari on the home view and find a recipe. Why wouldn't you just use your phone for that?

25:33Well, first of all, I've cooked waffles and such, and I have the recipe on my phone. You don't need a recipe for waffles, Steven. And it is a pain in the butt. They were almond flour waffles. Okay. So there's a little more ingredients than regular waffles. Like trying to prop up your phone and also like, are you going to go to settings and make sure the screen never turns off every time you do a recipe? Because my screen is set to turn off in 30 seconds. And if you're trying to do a recipe, that's a pain in the butt. So to have a display that will stay on and that recipe is large and I don't have to figure out where to prop up my phone and I don't have to think about flour getting on

26:04my iPhone or whatever, or sticky egg stuff. I would want, I want that. I want that. For $300 though? Plus again, if you're not steeped up to your eyeballs in Apple home, I get that this product is not as compelled. If you have a ring doorbell, you should not buy this. Because the other compelling argument is you can look at your doorbell and right. You can view that camera, right? Which is, so now the cost of the home view also has to include a doorbell. And honestly, and we will get to the Apple home collection. Those devices are very expensive.

26:36Yes. Like way more. And honestly, I'm going to get them. I'm going to take one for all the teams. I'm going to get every Apple home collection device. If Steven buys them and doesn't want them and sends them to me, I will also review them. Just to be clear. But the video doorbell, I believe is $300. Oh my gosh. And that is too expensive. Yeah. I mean, Amazon will just drop a ring doorbell on your doorstep for you to install if you just like open the website.

27:06Yeah. They will give you one. It is $250, but we'll get, and we'll get to this in a second. I don't know if I'm crazy about the look of this, but like, you know, there's only one design. It looks very much like the old school eyesight camera, but you can get the Acara video doorbell, which is the one I have for $99 right now. And you know that that experience will be good with this device. You're saying the video doorbell. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Because it's rock solid on my Apple TV. Like if there's an Apple TV on and someone rings a video doorbell, a hundred percent of

27:36the time the video preview comes up. And if it recognizes the face, it tells me who's there. So, and so in your briefings or whatever experience you've had so far exploring this. Yeah. They've confirmed that if somebody rings your doorbell, it will instantly start streaming that video on the device. Yes. And that was not clear from anything I could find. It is. That is exactly what happened. And there's multiple clips from different creator videos showing that exactly. Now, obviously in the, you know, demo at this New York place or whatever, it's, you know,

28:09canned, you know, it's a demo. Yeah. But so my question is, so there are six users, plus there's also just a generic, not a user user that does that. Like that's very confusing how all that works. But it's like, but it's like Apple TV. Like no matter what profile you're in, in the Apple TV, if someone rings my doorbell, I see it on the Apple TV, no matter what. And so there are some devices that you will just get. And, and this is the part that I have to get in hand. Like can, can I have settings where whenever a person is detected on a camera besides the

28:40video doorbell? Can I have that camera pop up automatically? But in all, in a lot of the videos, it does show just multiple camera views live. And the only other place you can do that, the home app, it's not great at it. Like, I'll be honest. Like if you want it to have multiple camera feeds viewed simultaneously, the home app, even on your iPad, doesn't do that well. The best place is maybe your Apple TV ish, but then you have to have an Apple TV on and you have to have a TV where you want it in order to see all these cameras. Where on the home view, you can have these live camera views and then someone rings the

29:13doorbell, it shows up. So I feel like that beneficial. And also this little controller right here, when it comes to why not just an iPad? Hey, I don't want to think about charging an iPad or having it plugged in, you know, a hundred percent of the time, but also having home controls that are large like this, which would be accessible to any user, not just the six profiles you attach to it. This can be any guest that walks up. It is a very clear, I can adjust the temperature. I can open a door, I can unlock a door, or I could turn on or off a light.

29:43Like these are the obvious no brainer controls for the smart home that I've wanted for a long time. Like I have probably 12 of these home kit buttons around the house trying to do what the home view is doing. Like I have like these little air versa things, but the problem is all these little home kit buttons, unless you're going to like use a label maker and label every single button that every little thing does normal people, like including my own family, like they don't know what this button does. And so to have a device on the wall or on the desk where it says, open the garage, turn,

30:15like run this scene, having it that obvious and accessible, I think can be a plus. So can you choose what's on that screen? Yeah. Again, there's, there's been some unclear, but you can customize your home screens and then whatever the lock screens, they call it like, so you can have a modular face on the home view, and then you can choose what devices are on it. Okay. This is my ultimate objection to this vice, Steven. I'm going to just cut to the chase. I'm making some good points. You got to give me at least some points. I'm making some, some good points.

30:46I don't, I don't think this is okay. Let me make, let me, let me give you the, the, the mental model for the home view. The reason I don't think it works is Apple's home underlying principle is that the user shouldn't think about it. Okay. You don't know. I know that all of the accessories that I have in my house that, that will interact with the Google system. And listen, I'm not like a Google stand here. I'm just saying that was the one that worked. I also have some echoes.

31:16We also have home pods, like Apple TVs everywhere, whatever. But when it comes to the things that we wanted to do, which is we have some cameras, we have light switches. We also have switches for like the, uh, Christmas tree. Anyway. So the mental model is that home hub max is the place where everything is happening. Okay. It is the device and it used to control our nest thermostat until they deprecated that. So, right. Which is stupid. They were like, yeah, we know it still has a wifi sensor in it, but we're just not going to make it work anymore.

31:47That's insane. Anyway. So yeah, I'm still salty about that, but it's very clear that that's what's happening. I just described the problem I had with my level lock, right? Not that long ago where I swapped out a home or a Apple TV and it stopped working until I went in and did a bunch of stuff. The average person who I think this is designed for, which is the person who's just not going to think about it. This device is fine. It just won't work with anything they might already have. So now they have to be committed enough to buy a bunch of $300 devices or whatever.

32:17And so, but someone like you who has the Apple ecosystem, this device is not meant for you. And here's what I mean by that. So I walk up to this device and it shows some configuration of buttons or whatever. I guess that's true, but it also wants to show me my personal information. So like, how do I get from one to the other? Do I swipe up on this device? Do I start talking to this device? Do I, like, it is a, it is trying to do a couple of things and it is trying to make it like transparent. Do I go to the home view when my level lock stops working to try to troubleshoot that?

32:52Like, no, like really, like this is the part that I don't think makes sense because it is meant for someone to not be thinking about it. But home kit is, it's relatively reliable. Like I love the fact that on my desktop, I have a way to just turn off the lights in here. But the reason they work is because they're Lutron and I literally installed switches. And so I guess my thing is this device is actually not meant for you. Do you hear me out? It is not meant for you, but it is actually probably most useful for you.

33:24And I think that is the problem. I think it will be useful for my family also. Okay. Let me rephrase that. It is most useful. Some, it is not designed for someone who has a, you in it in a household that has a, there's a U in it, right? It is meant to be the entry point to the home ecosystem because what Apple realizes that the Apple TV is not the entry point to the home ecosystem and neither is the HomePod. And it thought both of those were going to be it. But what is awkward to your point is like, this is the home view, but you cannot manage

33:57any home stuff in it. Yes. Like you, but that is why. You have to have an iPhone. It has to be connected to an iPhone. And that, but that is why Apple released the entire Apple home collection. And for the first time partnered with ADT to help you install this stuff. Now that is also a very niche crowd who will pay hundreds of dollars for the hardware and then presumably hundreds of dollars for installation. And also like, I understand you got to partner with somebody, but my goodness, if ADT comes

34:28to install your wall mounted home view, you 100% know you are going to get upselled on an ADT security system. And that kind of sucks. And I don't know if Apple can be like ADT, you can't sell anybody in security. Like, I don't think they can tell them that. But no one is paying for ADT home security systems anymore. If you get a home view, you don't care about that. Like that's, it's contradictory unless you want an alarm on your front door. I think, you know, it's better than an alarm on your front door. What's that? A sticker that says you have an alarm on your front door? Just a sign.

34:59Absolutely. Beware of dog. Beware of dog. And all you have is a snake. And that's what I have. I have a snake and a rabbit that I put up. And they're both in cages. It doesn't matter. They're both in cages. So I think it is a, the common, like people who are not already in the smart home world, I do agree that this is going to be a tough sell. Because if you, if you don't already, like if, if you bought a house and you have a ring camera and no other smart home devices, this is going to be a poor experience because your

35:29ring camera is not going to show up and you're not going to be able to control any smart home stuff. And you're going to be like, I just have a big timer and maybe a way to view recipes. And so I understand like that will be complicated, but for the smart home nerds like me and all the YouTubers, I think their family will appreciate a device like this because no one in my house has ever run a smart home scene. They just have not because they don't know what words to say. They don't know. I don't know if they've ever opened the whole map.

36:00Like they've never run a smart home scene. But if I have a seven inch display on the wall that says movie night, someone will go up there and tap it. And the reason why I know if they know how to use it, they will use it. Like if they, if you build it, they will come situation. I have a like 30 foot skylight calendar. I don't know how big that thing is. It's huge, but they use that all the time because they have a reason to use it. And it's very understandable. And it has the calendar on there.

36:31And that is also another question is like those devices, the skylight and all the similar, you know, things that have like an apps for the iPad that have tried to hack this kind of home organization. The home view has to live in that space too. And so if someone already has a skylight that has a clock that shows photos and videos, like it does all those cool things. Again, if you don't already have the Apple home ecosystem, it's going to be a harder sell for that. So we'll see. But for me, I'm excited about it.

37:02Yeah, I get it. But like the Google one we have, the other nice thing is it'll just play YouTube videos. Will the home view play a YouTube video? Not without your phone. Okay. So this is the... Well, let me say one more. I want you to get into that. But the other piece of that was going to be like, I'm trying to decide, would I replace that with this? Would I replace that Google thing? Right. That Google thing. That's what I'm going to call from now on. We don't have a video doorbell in Apple home. We don't have a video doorbell, period, because our doorbell is perpendicular to our door. So it doesn't even face out. No, I mean, for real, like that's just the way it was.

37:33They make angled brackets for the car one. No, not doing that. I would literally have to move where my doorbell is. And I guess if I... And here's the thing. If I buy a ring, I can just pull the tape off and stick it there. Like that's the way ring is designed. Now, so one other thing. Like I would love to get one of these for my mom because A, we could now FaceTime and she doesn't have to hold her phone. Like that would actually be a win for people. Easily FaceTime. You don't have to hold your phone. She has two smart plugs in her house that she could use. And I would buy her a smart thermostat and then she could control it all from the home

38:05view. The one issue, and this is going to be a lot of people, she has a video doorbell.

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38:10It's an Arlo, but it's a wireless one. And she doesn't have it. She didn't have a physical doorbell before and we haven't run wires to it. I could hire an installer, I guess, but like that is a huge lift. And so there is like one Akara video doorbell that is battery powered that you could use with this. But again, we're back to a very, very narrow range. Like if you want this home view to be useful, you need one of these three video doorbells and that's it. And none of those three are a ring, which is what you already have.

38:40And so that, that's the tough sell. Yeah. And I just feel like the biggest problem is there are two big problems. One is it does require you to be, cause the, the, the promise is like all of the home stuff is supposed to just all work with everything. And we're just nowhere near that. That's just not the reality. Right. Matter. It fixed everything. You didn't hear. Didn't fix a single thing. And it's like this device. Okay. Maybe it's a slightly better version of looking at recipes.

39:14I just, that's never been a problem that I have. And I do cook, but don't, it's not like I don't cook, but I just like, and I cook a lot. I mean, I worked in restaurants. I like whatever, but I've never needed, I gosh, I, cause I could have just grabbed that Google thing and moved it if I, if I wanted a device like that. So that's not a thing that's worth $300 to me to, it is maybe good for what you described for looking at your videos. I mean, you're looking at your doorbell camera, but then obviously you have to be in that

39:45particular space. Now, if you had one on your desk there, great. Yeah. But I don't think that's a $300 solution. Sure. And that's my thing. It just feels like it doesn't. No, no, no. I get it. And the cooking thing, which I really, really want to use this for that recipe view. I, I'm not going to drill a hole in my Island. Right. And that's the only place it would be useful for cooking for our setup. And so that is another big hurdle. Like, and even again, back to that marketing video, Apple recognized right in the middle of the Island in the kitchen is the ideal place for this thing.

40:16All you have to do is drill a hole and run electrical. It's like that. That's a big ask. I don't know, man. I don't know, man. I don't think so. But the last thing, and I did not realize we're going to do 45 minutes on the home view, but maybe, maybe I did. I think you did know this. I did know this and it's valid. The one thing, two things, and then we'll, we'll move on to all the Apple TV 4k, which is also crazy expensive. One, I could not get super clear answers on the multi-user feature with kids because this

40:46does require another Apple device. That's an iPhone or iPad that has like unlocked and paired basically for you to have a profile on the home view. And when like my daughter, who's 10, it's like, I could not get a clear answer if she could get like a profile on this thing. And it does not seem like you need an iPhone to do it. It seems like if you have an iPad, that is enough to get a profile on the home view. But apparently there is some age gating for profiles that is unclear right now.

41:19And that is really unfortunate because this would be great for like a seven-year-old who maybe doesn't have an iPad yet of the five, seven-year-olds who doesn't have an iPad in this country or whatever. But like to have the little Snoopy face and be able to play music on it or whatever, like tap the thing. So the age thing is unclear. Wait, so she couldn't just walk up and ask it to play music? I'm sorry. You can use the guest features, which is like play music, ask Siri AI general questions, but you couldn't have like your personal context on it.

41:51And you couldn't have like a customized, like lock screen, home screen. Because the home screen and lock screen is going to be customized per profile. So when you walk up to it, you can see something different than when I walk up to it. And you better believe I'm going to be testing how fast that thing switches. Does it work in the dark? Because it is not using a face ID, you know, dot matrix thing. This is just using the camera. So if like, if it's in the middle of the night and I walk up to this thing and it's dark, will it recognize me? We'll have to test. Well, and you know what I don't have set up on the Google device that it would do,

42:21but I don't have it do. I do not have my calendar on there. I do not have any of my perfect, because I don't, I have a phone. Why don't need to walk past something and have it suddenly be like, here's your calendar for today. And everybody else in the room is like, I mean, it's not like there's any of my calendar, but like. I will say one of my most requested shortcuts over the years is give me a morning routine shortcut that tells me my tasks, my events, and the weather for today. Yeah. And the device you're holding in your hand, not the one that's on your kitchen counter. But people want to ask their HomePods that, and they just want their HomePod to talk to them about it.

42:52So if, if this thing, and this is unclear, I don't know if it will do this. If you could ask Siri AI, what's on my schedule for today, and you get both the audio and visual of here are your tasks, here's your events, maybe. Yeah. And that, but again, to be clear, that's different than broadcasting it. Like what the Google device does, and what I think that this would do is like, you walk up to it, and you're looking at it, and a notification for a message comes in, and it just displays on that device, because it is unlocked and recognized you. I don't want that happening on a device that's just in the room. Like, what do you have company over, and you're sitting there waiting, and your wife is at

43:25the store picking something up, and she's really frustrated, because you weren't clear about the things she's supposed to get, and she texts you, and she's like, answer me, robot, or whatever. That's not how my wife, but it's like, that's weird. I don't want, that's different than asking a HomePod, tell me what I have happening today, because you have said, give me this information. I don't, so I haven't turned any of that stuff on in the Google device, because it's just, that's just weird to me. I mean, I'm sure you could turn like messages off and calendar off, but, and it would only show it to you if it unlocked with your face. Right. So you would have to be looking at it for you to see your messages, and it even shows

43:57in that marketing video when, like, the other teenager tried to see her sister, his sister's messages, it locked. That quickly, really? It did. I'm just saying, the video has leaves a lot, there's a lot of Apple Intelligence 2024 WWDC happening in this video. Yeah, again, the video, I think, was not a good step, so we will get to that. Last thing on the HomeView, this thing does not have an app store, so you can't download apps to it. It has built-in apps, and I'm going to link to Jason Snell's Six Colors article, this

44:30is a screenshot from Apple's website, but it has built-in apps, like, you'll be able to watch primary tech on your HomeView. You'll be able to use the Apple Podcasts app, which is a little inside baseball. I actually got a message from Apple requesting new artwork. I got the same email. Did you? Oh, yeah, yeah. And I got your reply, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, so I already sent it to them, but they were asking for, like, a universal show art, so it just, you know, looks good on all devices. That email came out before the HomeView event, and I think it was in relation to this, because this is a new screen size. Yeah, because it didn't really make sense on a phone, what they were asking for.

45:02Correct. And so I think it was that. So, you know, podcasts and the other built-in apps that supposedly work right now, like Apple TV, News, Books for Audiobooks, those you have to, like, beam from your phone. And in some of the videos, like, I'll link, Gentooey had a short, but in some of the videos, see, look, it just says open, like, recognition for the calendar. It shows the Apple TV app icon on the device, but no one, like, was able to open it and actually

45:33play something, so I'm unsure how that works. You might have to, like, airplay it. But the feature of CarPlay, and this was a direct, this was a clear answer, is that if there's a CarPlay app with audio or video entitlements, like Spotify, Overcast, Prime Example, you'll be able to use the Overcast app from your phone on the home view.

46:03But it's not like you won't see an Overcast icon. Well, maybe you will. That's what's unclear. But why would you do that? In the video and in, like, a lot of the creators, there's a lot of, like, beaming from your phone, like, you just tap your phone to this thing and it sends something. But why would you do that is what I'm saying. YouTube. You have a video on your phone, you walk into the kitchen, you want to put it on this thing and put your phone away. You could do that. Maybe. But YouTube doesn't have a CarPlay app yet, so I don't know if it works with YouTube. And right now it doesn't seem like it would.

46:34Or if you are, again, like the recipe thing, you beam to it, Overcast. You walk in from, you got home from work, you're listening to a podcast in Overcast, you tap your phone to the home view, and now it's playing on the home view. If anyone starts playing podcasts on a speaker in my house that's not an AirPod, they are going to move out. That's just, maybe, but again, if I have one here in my studio, I don't know, we'll see. I guess, again, I'm not suggesting that people couldn't manufacture ways to use this thing,

47:05but none of those feel like things that, well, I should be clear. Yes, I know that people just listen to podcasts from their phone without AirPods. I just think it's a crime, and I don't think that you should do that. Music is different. That's fine. But again, maybe the speaker, I'll give Apple, okay, the one thing I will give Apple, the benefit of the doubt on it is, I'm sure it's an amazing speaker.

47:28Chris Welch said it sounded pretty good, and it got louder than he expected. But he said it was like in between a HomePod Mini and a big HomePod. That's exactly what I would have expected, and I would say that that's probably a win. That's probably a win, because right now, my family is playing music out of the HomePod Mini in the kitchen. Yeah. So that will be an improvement. If it's as good or better than a HomePod Mini, I think that that's acceptable. I'll give them that. All right, we still have to talk about Apple TV, which is now $300. HomePod Mini, the Apple Home Collection, we'll have to do, everything is a lightning round after this.

48:02Yeah, but we do have to get, and can't be mean to Anthropa, because we have to talk about that. We have to talk about it. We'll get to all that. So before we do, we have to thank our sponsors of this incredible episode. The first one, new sponsor, Ramp, which is something that I've used personally back in my work days. And I've used Ramp. You said you have a Ramp card? Is that right? Yeah. We didn't even play on this. Oh, well, there you go. I literally have one of those things the person's holding. I don't have my wallet with me at the moment, so I can't show it, but yeah. Well, there you go. We have both personally used Ramp. So listen, most companies, they're already spending more on AI than they realize.

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52:53All right.

New Apple TV 4K

52:54We're going to have to do a lightning round for all the things. Apple TV 4K. We finally got a fourth gen version. It is $300. It's too expensive. It's too expensive. Yeah. I mean, it's bananas. Also, I know why they did this. Why do they do this, Jake? But your Apple TV should not be listening for you to talk to Siri. Okay, so the big feature is it has a built-in long-range microphone. Far-field microphone. Far-field microphone. Thank you. So you can shout, hey, dingus, to your Apple TV. Now, a couple things. Because during the announcements and press releases, it seemed like Siri AI was only coming to the new one.

53:29And maybe the new remote with the speaker was only the new one. Second and third gen Apple TV 4Ks. So if you bought an Apple TV in the last four years, you're getting Siri AI in tvOS 27.2. So Siri AI is even coming to the older Apple TVs. And if you want a remote, which you've been setting since we started this podcast. You opened our very first episode by saying Apple TV remote should have a speaker. I'm pretty sure that's accurate. So that you can find it. So you can find it. Well, now it finally does.

53:59And it has Precision Find My, which I've been asking for for years. Yes, it comes with the new Apple TV 4K for $300. Or you could just buy the remote for $60. And that is a thing. I am going to buy three of those. See, you can buy those. I don't have to have a weird AirTag case on my Apple TV remote anymore. And it's compatible all the way back to the Apple TV HD. So you do not need to buy a brand new Apple TV for the new remote. And people are disappointed at the updates to Apple TV. Because one, it has HDMI 2.1, which is new.

54:30But it has no 4K 120 for gaming or for just higher frame rates. And there's no pass-through audio. So Apple TV right now and this new model seems to decode audio internally rather than passing the raw bit streams to your receiver for Dolby Atmos and all that. And that decoding, home theater nerds don't like that. They just pass the raw audio so it can play through my home theater. And it does not have that feature.

55:01Now, Caleb, I forget his last name. He was at, I forget where it was, but he had a video. I'll link it down in the show notes. And he talked about this is something Apple could add in software. And this has happened in the past where Apple released an Apple TV and then shipped an update that enabled one of these home theater features. So that pass-through audio could be coming, but it's not advertised and Apple has not said it's coming. Steven. Yes. I think I would like to start a conspiracy.

55:33Oh, let's do it. Well, don't look. Okay, I'm not going to look. But guess. Okay. What processor is in the Apple TV 4K second gen?

55:44Apple TV 4K second gen. I think I actually looked all this up yesterday and I have it in the notes to talk about. Isn't it the A13 Bionic? Nope. A12 Bionic. Okay. So explain something to me, Steven. Yes, yes. I'm excited for this. Yes. Why doesn't the base iPad get Apple intelligence? Okay. Why doesn't my iPad mini get Apple intelligence? Why doesn't the iPhone 14 Pro get Apple intelligence? Listen, I'm so glad you said that. It was a perfect segue. Why? I don't understand. I had this moment yesterday.

Apple Intelligence and Siri AI

56:14I had this moment yesterday. So the HomePod mini 2 was also announced. $150. It's getting Siri AI. In the future. Some point in the future. Future update. But what's interesting is the HomePod 2, the big HomePod, it is unclear whether it's getting Siri AI, but the Apple TV 2nd and 3rd gen 4K is getting Siri AI. Now, just bear with me for a second here, okay? We're going on a trip. We're going on a little trip. Okay.

56:44The HomePod 2 is powered by the S7 chip. That was the newer second generation big HomePod. It is based on the S7 chip. And the S7 is actually based on the A13 Bionic. And that chip, the A13, and the A12, like you're saying, the A12 gets Siri AI in that old Apple TV. Apple TV 4K 2nd gen is getting Siri AI in tvOS 27.2, and it has the A12, okay?

57:22The A12 Bionic can apparently do Siri AI, but it is unclear whether the HomePod 2, which has a newer generation chip, whether or not that's going to get Siri AI. And like you said, all those iPads, including like the brand new base model iPad, which still does not have Siri AI, like all of them should be able to run Siri AI. Now, here's to add to this conspiracy. In order to use Siri AI on the Apple TVs, including the 2nd and 3rd gen 4K, you have to have an

57:55iPhone with Apple intelligence on it, which doesn't make any sense. Unless, and this has not been said by Apple anywhere, I wonder if processing for Siri AI is happening on another device and they are just shipping the answers to the Apple TV.

58:18I don't know if that's true, but in the footnote of the Apple TV announcement page, that's what it talks about. And I'm going to try and get down to the footnote, but it says it requires an iPhone, such and such a newer. Okay, here it is. It says, access to Siri AI is also available on the Apple TV 4K 2nd generation and later. And it says, Siri AI is available in beta 27.2 and requires the owner of the home in the

58:51home app to have an Apple intelligence enabled iPhone or iPad running the latest software version and have Siri AI turned on and set to a supported language.

59:04Like why? Because you can set up an Apple TV without an iPhone. Yeah. You don't have to even own an iPhone, anyone in your house and you can use an Apple TV. There are 1,000 conference rooms across the U.S. that has an Apple TV that was just set up by itself. Literally every conference room in America has an Apple TV. But it seems like if you didn't, like if that Apple TV in the conference room is not connected to an iCloud account where the owner of the home has Siri AI, will you be able to use Siri AI on that conference room TV?

59:35Also, if the conference room table is plugged in and the owner of the home is in Barbados, will it work? That's what I'm saying. And so it is unclear, is it like the going, Siri AI being on that old Apple TV, the A12 Bionic, is it running on device? Is it running on your iPhone? Is it running on the Apple TV? Is it running on your iPhone or iPad? And if the owner is not home, can you use Siri AI? Well, and the answer to that is I can use Siri AI on my Ultra 2, but obviously it's doing

1:00:07it on my phone.

1:00:09Sometimes. If you ask your Apple Watch- Okay, if I ask it to start a timer, yes, it does it on itself. If you ask it a general knowledge question, the Siri AI on your watch may just reach out to the internet and give you that answer. On my Ultra 2?

1:00:24Well, I don't know about the Ultra 2. That's what I'm saying. I can use Siri AI on my Ultra 2. Oh, I see, I see, I see, I see. But really, it just means that it has a Bluetooth connection to my phone, which by the way, it also had yesterday and the day before they released all this. Right. So that's another thing where I do kind of feel like Apple is being intentionally obtuse about what's actually happening so that they can say, we've brought this to more products. Because the obvious question is, if a device with the A12 Bionic can run Apple Intelligence

1:00:54or Siri Intelligence or whatever the heck we're calling it right now, why on Earth? Can't my, can't an iPhone 14 Pro run it? Yeah. And that is sticky. That is weird. And it's, it's awkward because, and a lot of people on social media, when they saw the $300 price tag on the Apple TV, it's like, well, my current Apple TV 4K is going to get Siri AI and I can just get a new remote for 60 bucks. Why am I upgrading? And I think that's a valid question. I don't know. Well, yeah. I mean, the only, the only scenario where it makes sense, makes no sense, which is that

1:01:31the new one has 128 gigs of storage, which is clearly because that's just what's on the system on a chip for the A19 or whatever the heck it is, which by the way, the Apple TV gets a better processor than the home view. So just not really that big of a deal. That's why they're the same exact price, which is kind of mind blowing. Yeah. I know you want to say something about that, but no, no, no. I mean, that is just awkward. But I'm sure that it's because the, also that Apple TV has a better processor than the MacBook Neo. So just to be clear, but also you still can't do anything useful besides stream video and

1:02:04watch your camera. It's, it's, is it that the Apple thinks that this is like a place where you're going to play video games? Well, 120 frames would have been a better option there, right? Like in 128 gigs of storage is fine, but it doesn't, it has an A19 and it doesn't have like the GPU processing you need for, I don't know, whatever. For how long we had to wait for a new Apple TV 4K. It's a little disappointing. It should have an, it should have an M5 max in it. It should, I mean, they probably have M4s. Like Tim Cook is still finding M4s in his shoes in the morning.

1:02:35He could put an M3 Pro. They could put an M3 Pro in this thing. Just shove it in there. Just do it. Just put some GPU cores in this thing. Anyway, so that's, it's been a little unfortunate. And there's also one other feature I wanted to point out. Apple is advertising that you can use a pair of HomePod mini twos as your Mac audio speakers. And this is different than AirPlay because with AirPlay, you can play music, you can play podcasts, but you don't get like system sounds. Like if you get a notification, the notification sound doesn't ding because the HomePods aren't set as like the audio output for your Mac.

1:03:07It is just air playing. But this is actual set HomePods as your audio output. This is the HomePod mini two. And apparently the large HomePod two, which I've had a pair sitting on my desk here since they came out, whatever, 13 years ago. So I will be able to use these as my Mac speakers. But the one requirement is Wi-Fi 6E. Something about Wi-Fi 6E is enabling this lower latency connection so it can act as your computer speakers and not be super janky, I guess.

1:03:37I'm going to link this Apple Insider article listing what computers this works with. And, but the cutoff is Wi-Fi 6E. So this requires the big HomePod twos or which is the 2023 version or the new HomePod mini two and a Mac with Wi-Fi 6E and newer. I mean, honestly, that is the best thing they announced. Honestly, I will finally be able to use them. No, I'm being completely serious that that is, I mean, buying a pair of HomePod mini twos

1:04:09to do that is 300 bucks, which is what you would spend for a mediocre pair of like, you know, whatever K, whatever the K twos or whatever, but whatever, like, so that's fine. Like, that's a good, that's a reasonable solution. If you have a studio display, personally, I don't think that the speakers in the new, I don't think that the HomePod mini speaker, which has not changed. If I understand, it's the same speaker. All the creators said they get better sound, but I don't know if that's something that Apple told them to say, like, I don't know if that was like part of the briefing or if

1:04:42it actually, I don't know if the speakers. Did they have an original HomePod mini there to compare? Because I don't understand how any of these people could possibly have told you that they sound better. That is, they just, Apple has said they sound better. In the perfectly acoustically treated townhouse in Manhattan, they sounded better. Okay. But just whatever. I don't buy that. I would argue for what most people are doing on their computer. The studio display speakers are probably close enough to on par with the HomePod minis that it's, that again, 300 bucks. I don't know. But I will say that is the best feature they introduce because it is always confusing to

1:05:14me, Stephen, if I start playing something in Apple music and I'm like, where do I control the volume? Do I do it in Apple music? Do I do it up here in the central control? And if you're doing it in Spotify, it's even worse because if I hit the volume control on my keyboard, nothing happens in Spotify. Well, I've had a pair of the large HomePod sitting on my desk and I've used them maybe a handful of times since I got them because if I try to use it with Final Cut, it's so janky because it will send the audio from Final Cut. But when I press the space bar to press play, I have to wait three seconds.

1:05:44It connects and then the audio plays and it's like delayed. So I will see if that actually fixes it. I wish the HomePods just had a line in. They should have just released a HomePod. This would have been, this would have changed the entire tenor of the announcement. It said HomePod 3, big HomePod, maybe better speakers, faster processor, line in. If it had a line in port, everybody would have loved it. That's all I'm saying. I would have used it. Okay.

Apple Home Collection

1:06:10Wow. What? Go ahead. Nope. That's it. I just, that was the best thing they announced. The Apple Home Collection, we will, these aren't coming till December, maybe January. It was unclear. It's like they'll be available December, maybe to order, but not deliver in January until January. I'm curious to try all these. All the rumored images that PDFU and Mark Gurman talked about, like that is the things that they announced. This is LG and Schneider. I think the thermostats look pretty good. The smart lock, I don't know.

1:06:42You know, the camera's very eyesight coded, especially the indoor one. But the biggest selling feature on these devices is you don't need a third-party app to use them. And that, for someone who has set up a lot of smart home accessories, that is a huge win. Because even all the Acara stuff, which I love, if you, like with the video doorbell, if you buy the Acara video doorbell and you set it up, you can set it up in the home app and never touch the Acara app. You don't even have to have it downloaded and you can set it up.

1:07:13But if you want to turn off the feature where when someone rings the doorbell, it literally calls your phone from the app like it's a video call, you have to download the Acara app to turn that feature off. And there's weird things like when I install an Acara smart lock, like the ultra-wideband U400 version, if you want it to stop talking to you when you unlock the door, you have to go to the Acara app to change that one setting. And so the fact that these devices in the Apple Home Collection do not require another account created,

1:07:48again, this goes to hopefully more people will use these things and that makes HomeView more useful. That's probably Apple's thinking. I'm thankful for that setup. But all these devices are very expensive. I think their design is to be determined. We'll have to try it. The floodlight, the outdoor floodlight is $400, Jason. $400, the EVE outdoor camera floodlight, which I have, is half that price on Amazon right now. So these have to, they better be amazing. But we'll see. We'll see. I mean, they look all right, but.

1:08:21And here is the one thing that I wish I could be more excited about this. I don't like the way the lock looks at all, by the way. But that's, but here's the one thing that I wish I could be really excited about, which is that like we have, I think I even was texting you about this because I was trying to, this was a long time ago, but like which one I should buy. But when we bought some floodlights, I wanted to buy floodlight bulbs for our front porch. I had to replace them anyway. Like, what if I buy some smart ones? I don't remember what they are now because they don't work anymore. In home, like they just stopped working at one point and I don't have the tenacity to

1:08:54care because they still work if I flip the switch. Yeah. But it was really nice that I could, that I had like an automation that's turned them on. And the beautiful thing about home kit is I could be like, turn them on three hours before sunset and leave them on until one. And it still changes every day, like, or roughly it adjusts, but then they just stop working because who knows if it's because like I have to update the app on my phone, but why does that matter if it's running through home kit? And it's like, well, you got a new phone. And then I swapped out an Apple TV and suddenly my lights don't work. Nobody wants to deal with that.

1:09:26Outdoor stuff is kind of a pain because one, everybody's wifi network is going to be not great outside, but like my Eve outdoor camera, it is spotty connection because it is really far away from the house. And so it's like right on the edge of the wifi connectivity. So that is to Apple's credit, this new Apple home collection, like the outdoor floodlight camera, it has thread. So hopefully that thread connectivity helps with the distance. If you have an outdoor camera, that's far away.

1:09:57And like with your lights, again, I really avoid smart bulbs at all costs because they, I feel like they do what happened to you. They just stop working eventually. Yeah. But my Eve outdoor camera that I've had up for four years is solid. And my car cameras that are like plugged in, they're great. So hopefully the fact that it has thread and wifi 2.4 and five gigahertz spectrum, hopefully that's good. But again, $400, this thing better be amazing. It does have color night view, which is cool. But anyway, we'll see. All right. We have to lightning around it, but we're probably going to get held up by the Anthropics.

1:10:30I'll be quick. I'll be quick.

Anthropic Policy on Claude

1:10:32I know, but I want to hear it. I just want to mention iPhone Duo pre-orders open tomorrow as you listen to this. And apparently if you damage your iPhone Duo, it might cost you like $1,500 for other damage. Like if you just completely break it, I guess. So, hey, if you get an iPhone Duo, AppleCare one family. It's great. It's a great plan. And maybe just get AppleCare on this. But did you pre-pre-order your iPhone Duo? No, I'm not paying for one of those things. You didn't pre-pre-order iPhone Duo?

1:11:03I didn't pre-pre-order. I'm not going to pre-order. I'm not going to order one. No? Okay. Steven. I pre-pre-ordered and I will be pre-ordering. And it's going to be a bloodbath, I think, with the supply constraints. So we'll see. There's no way. I mean, I would love to review it, Apple friends. I would love to take a look at one of these things. Um, but I don't, I don't, I'm, I have a, I don't know. We'll see. We'll see. I would use it on a plane, however. Wow. Not Vision Pro, but you'll use iPhone Duo on a plane. I'm sure you would.

1:11:33All right. Last week, Anthropic said, hey, you can't talk mean to Claude anymore. It's just, it's against our policy. This is their 2026 usage policy update. And a little farther down, it said addressing abusive behavior toward our models and said, we've added a prohibition on sustained and needless abusive or cruel behavior toward our models. It does not apply to common versions of user frustration, pushback, dark creative themes

1:12:07or model testing and research. So like, are certain expletives okay, but others not? But if you like, I don't know, this was very strange. One, it anthropomorphized, anthropomorphizes Claude a little too much. I think, I don't know. You had, you had one. That's it. That's the thing. That's the problem. Just to be clear. You wrote an article about it. You tell me about it. Let's be clear. This, by the way, is the first time I've had to turn off replies on a threads post because it got absolutely crazy out there.

1:12:38So really, can we just be clear? The two things can be true at the same time, which is one, you should not be in a whole period, whether it's to a robot or to a person or to anything. I like and subscribe to that. You should just not that as a general rule, the way you live your life, no one should think, gosh, that guy is a real whatever. Whatever. Okay. That's just, I feel like you should not be, quote, cruel to garbage cans, to dogs, to

1:13:09children, to your coworkers, to your spouse, like whatever. But here's the problem.

1:13:16Cruelty is the infliction of pain or suffering on something. Now, animals can experience cruelty because they can feel pain and they can absolutely suffer. Flies, I don't really care, but you could be cruel to a fly by plucking its wings off when you're a child, right? You shouldn't do that. I just don't think you should do those things.

1:13:37Computers, not capable of pain or suffering. But the number, so the first thing is you should just not be a jerk or whatever or intend to inflict cruelty on anything. That's just a common rule we should all live by. Nothing I'm about to say is an endorsement of cruelty. I just want to be super clear about that. Yeah, I think that's clear, yes. Robots can't experience cruelty. Claude cannot experience pain or suffering. And the number of people out there in the world that are like, you cannot definitively say that, you just don't know. Yeah, I know. It's software running on a computer.

1:14:09Wait, wait, wait. Were those the kinds of replies you were getting? Over 500. No, I got over 866 replies to that post. I had to finally get turned it off because I'm like, this is too much of my life. What was the general pushback? It's like, yes, it can. Well, okay. There was two pieces of pushback. One is, are you advocating teaching our children to be cruel? And I think I've explained no. No. I'd like to be very clear. No. No. My general response to everyone was, I don't disagree that being a jerk is bad form, but it has nothing to do with anthropic or its models. And then the other one is like, well, they don't know.

1:14:40What if five years from now, they discover that these things are more abusive because they experienced pain and suffering in their training and stuff. I'm like, no, that's not how it works. Also, by the way, just as a pro tip for all of our listeners, if you use Claude or Chad GPT or Grok or any of those things immediately, if you have not already done this, go in and turn off the feature that allows them to use your conversations for training. Everyone should have that turned off. No one should be letting your conversations be used for training. You can just turn that off because people are like, well, maybe they just don't want you to be cruel to the models because then it teaches the models to be cruel.

1:15:11They should not be using your conversations for training data. Everyone should go and turn that off 100% immediately. Okay. Because those are your private conversations, right? You don't need that stuff going into the model regardless, but that's not how training works, right? That's not. And yes, I don't think we want them to, but that's a product problem, not a moral problem. And the argument anthropic is making, a lot of people wanted to nitpick. I don't see them saying that Claude has feelings. Well, they use the word cruelty. And they use the word abusive. And think about it like this.

1:15:42If I take a baseball bat to my garbage can and I just beat the whatever out of it, is that being cruel to the garbage can?

1:15:50No, because it can't experience pain and suffering no matter how many times you kick it. Now, again, doesn't mean you should do that. If one of my children was doing that, we would have a conversation. We would sit down and we would talk about, do you need therapy? Do you need like, there's a lot of things. You, you as the person might've lost control and flown off the handle, but you weren't being cruel. You are not being cruel because it being cruel requires the ability to experience pain and suffering. And that's not just, so you can be violent. You can be a bully. You can be all those things. Like you can be verbally like condescending towards Claude in that, but that is not the

1:16:24same thing as being cruel because it can't experience pain and suffering. But so my take, the whole reason I wrote that article was the fact that anthropic thinks that you can be cruel to its models is a way bigger concern than any of these other things. And, and a lot of people wanted to nitpick that this particular policy update doesn't say all those things. That's kind of true. But if you've read anthropics constitution for Claude a hundred percent, they think it has feelings and they think that it might be conscious. They just don't really know.

1:16:55They do believe that it is. They just aren't quite willing to say it yet. And I am telling you, I understand. I'm not an AI researcher. This is not a complicated thing. Steven software is not conscious. It's not just because it can tell you use words that describe feelings doesn't mean that it has feelings just because it seems because they require an input in order to do anything. They don't exist. And I think that's type of prompt. This is what, this is what caused some of the issues with chat, CPT and young people where I think AI psychosis.

1:17:28Yeah. When you don't have the understanding that while it might express a lot of feelings and might even be really good at validating and identifying your human feelings, that is not the same as it experiencing feelings itself because it is a computer. And so, and that caused, you know, tragic events because teenagers listened to chat, CPT at the time and hurt themselves. And so, yeah, I think it is, I maybe, I don't know if dangerous is a stronger word, but it

1:17:58is not a good idea to continue anthropomorphizing these things. No. And we do that casually because it's language and language is the thing that we associate with people, right? We humans, but people as a general term, right? People. And so we think of anything that has language capabilities in that way as people or a person, not necessarily as a human, but we interact with them accordingly. And so then it's, we make the leap like, oh, it must all, like I joke that at the beginning, I think there's in the pre-show about how Claude is annoying to me.

1:18:30I use it for real tough work, but I don't like having casual interactions with it where I might just ask the questions because I hate the way that it responds, but it's also just software. I probably could go through the effort of giving it a Claude.md file that says, please don't be annoying and all these kinds of things. And that's whatever, that's fine. But I also know that it's not actually a jerk. It's just, it's easier for me to just ask my question somewhere else than going through the rigmarole of trying to condition this thing. I was just really tempted to make an analogy of if Claude was a coworker.

1:19:00And I was going to say, you know, it's like the really smart coworker that I would go to, to ask for help, but I would not invite to the baseball game on Saturday. We had this conversation though. I know we had this conversation. Claude is the friend who is so much smarter than you and as a result can be really helpful, but insists on making sure, you know, they are so much smarter than you. Right. But all, I was debating whether to even say the analogy because that in itself is anthropomorphizing models, you're absolutely right. That's a fair point, but we're just using it in order to try to find, again, try to find

1:19:33language that we can use to describe an experience that we're having. But you and I, I'm pretty sure are both clear. Claude is not conscious. It will not ever be client conscious. It may destroy humanity. I don't know, but it won't be because it has feelings. It'll just be because whatever it tries to make too many paperclips or something. Right. And that's, that's, that's the one thing, all of the sci-fi AI movies kind of get right. It's that the AI, it's not that it feels something. It's that it reasons on a technical level, oh, humans are a danger to themselves.

1:20:05And so I have to put them all in cages or it's that it doesn't have that spark. It doesn't have humanity. Right. And it doesn't have empathy. Right. And it doesn't have feelings, which are kind of key to like decisions we make as human beings, especially in relation to the humans. You should not be, I don't think you should cuss out Claude. I don't think you should taunt it. I don't think you should do any of those things as a human behavior towards a robot, because honestly, I think there are better ways to deal with whatever it is that's happening. Yeah. But I think it should be deeply concerning to us that the people who are making what will

1:20:40probably turn out to be the most important, certainly the most important technology of our, of our generation, right, deeply believe that this thing could have feelings and might be conscious. That is a, an astronomical problem and that they are, they are, they are reinforcing in human beings that the way we treat this software, could you just imagine if Satya Nadella was like, you can't type mean things in Microsoft Word. Well, we will ban you if you cuss out Microsoft Word.

1:21:11Listen, I, people do every day. I do it all the time. Every time somebody sends me an Excel spreadsheet, I'm like, flips the table. It's like, I think Ben Thompson made this analogy. If you are nailing, if you're hammering a nail and you accidentally hit your thumb, you might say a bad word. Yeah. And you might even throw that hammer across the workshop. Done it a bunch of times. And it is like Anthropic is saying, after you threw that hammer across the room, a little chat bubble popped up on your screen from the hammer. Hey man, that didn't feel good.

1:21:43And it's like, no, we, we all understand the hammer has zero feelings and zero actual thoughts and Claude and all these models are closer to the hammer than a person. And that doesn't make sense. They're just a tool. They're just a tool. And that doesn't make sense to a lot of our human minds because as you chat with these things, it's like, man, this thing talks like a human, but you have to remember it is closer to a hammer than it is a human much closer. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the number of times I've wanted to do that with my iPhone, the difference is

1:22:13the hammer I know will still work afterward. And my iPhone, I paid it $1,100 for, so I'm not going to throw it across the room, but it's not because I'm worried it has feelings. Right. And you know, like we, I don't know. Anyway, that's. Please clip all of this and just post it everywhere because I can take it. But listen, the number of people who genuinely believe. I know, that's bad. And also, okay. The last thing I'll say about this. I don't think that it's an unreasonable thing for Anthropic to be like, we just don't think it's a good idea for people to be whatever.

1:22:46However, why does Anthropic care unless they think that their thing has feelings? Because it should not matter to anyone who's making these things, how they're like, again, there are parameters. I was going to say how they're being used. That's absolutely not true. There are guidelines. They don't want them being used to commit illegal acts, right? We don't want them to generate content that would be illegal or whatever. That's fine. So I think Anthropic is well within its rights to put, if they make a product, they're allowed to say like terms of use or whatever, like that's fine. But I think it's a big problem that they are framing it in this way.

1:23:20Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Okay. Actual lightning round. Okay. I'm sorry. I did pretty good. You got to give me credit. That was good. No, the part I'm clipping is when you said you are absolutely right. I'm clipping that. I'm making it my ringtone. From now on, every clip where Steven makes a point is just going to be followed by a clip of me saying you were right. I'm just going to cut the same thing every time. Just do it. It's fine.

AI Models and Industry News

1:23:39Light lightning round. Apparently an open AI employee had a recording device in the open AI offices and might have stolen some data and also might have given it to Apple. Anyway, that is a, you know, good. I just want to say one thing about this post. You posted their Twitter, their post on X or whatever. Yeah. And the second sentence is my favorite thing about this is, is we use our models to understand the device and where to come from. Identifying that a specific employee. I'm like, don't you have like surveillance cameras? Couldn't a guy just look at the camera and be like, it was him.

1:24:09It was Joe. He walked in there. He had it wrapped in a towel. He pitted under the table. Like we used our models to understand. It's like everything for these people is AI. That is, yeah, that is true. And so this also goes like the whole court case of Apple versus open AI and how employees, Apple employees brought trade secrets to open AI. This is kind of now muddying the waters because maybe open AI people brought stuff to Apple. So anyway, we'll, we'll see. We'll see what happens there. Meta, they released new models, including wonderful.

1:24:43That's the name of the model. Wonderful new models. Can I say though, Jason, we don't have time to get into this. I've been using Muse for some specific tasks on my phone and it can be pretty useful. And I will just say, I listened to the most recent episode of Mac power users and I was super thankful that David Sparks wasn't like your, your other co-host is a total. I really appreciated that when you guys had a conversation about it. I was waiting for the moment where he's like, you know, he's a moron, right? But he didn't say that. I appreciated it. No, he did not. And even like a, there was an episode of app stories recently.

1:25:15I think it was where John Voorhees and Vettici were talking about it. Vettici is like, I like Jason. Um, but, but there's some questions here about what actually happened and I agree. And I am still trying to get to the bottom of those questions. I just want our listeners to know. Okay. So yeah, we'll hopefully we'll have a follow-up one day. That's an actual follow-up with the whole Muse messages thing. But tell David, thank you. All right. All right. We'll tell you the Gemini for Argon is officially out there for everyone to use. Supposedly Argon is great. And I think bottom line is the AI race is back on, you know, felt like Anthropic was in the

1:25:47lead for a long time. And now ChatGPT Astra is out there and everybody says that's in the lead. And now Gemini for Argon. So, hey, we're still in the AI arms race. It's still happening. I don't, I don't use it. Okay. I don't use Gemini. I don't use Gemini. And it's a stupid name. Don't name your, don't name your cutting edge tech products after inert gases.

1:26:08Don't call it a gas. Don't call it a gas. One that doesn't literally interact with anything else in the world. Exactly. Don't do that. But YouTube is finally putting AI labels on AI songs in YouTube music. So following along with Spotify, Spotify has started doing that months ago. And we're going to talk about the vibe coded Adobe suite, I think in the bonus episode, because I want to talk about vibe coded apps. Love it. In general. But you got to admit, that was a pretty good title. Come on. It's a great title. It turns out the only thing people like less than AI is paying for Adobe. That is a perfect, that is a perfect headline.

1:26:39We're going to talk about that. And also the people trying to PS the entire PS port, the entire PS5 library to Linux and Windows. We'll talk about that. Was it on the verge cast where they were like, maybe the end state of all of this is that we get CTA six on the, on the Apple TV, GTA six on the home view. That's, that's how this ends. And unfortunately, Netflix is laying off a bunch of employees, not me. They didn't say it was like related to AI, but you know, the streaming wars are on in full heat to Skydance, Netflix. We'll see what happens there.

Local LLMs and Shortcuts

1:27:10Let's jump to personal tech because what's our personal tech topic? Personal tech is local LLMs, Jason. I'm ready. I'm ready for it. I've been on a tear, as you might've known of just shipping apps. Just, you could just go to beardfm.app. I did want to have a conversation about this. It's a bonus episode. This is the bonus episode. I do feel like you and I need to sit down and have coffee and I need to be like, Stephen, just for a moment. Yes. You're being abusive to Claude and I feel like you should just stop making apps. Listen, Claude is working on my behalf.

1:27:42But one of the things I wanted to stop doing was giving Anthropics so much money because I pay for Claude Max, which is what I use for all the vibe coding stuff. But I was paying for the Anthropic API for use in all my shortcuts because I have a lot of shortcuts. Like when I process the show notes after this episode, I have a long shortcut that gets all the links, formats it in various ways, gives me some title and description ideas for the episode. And I had a bunch of shortcut actions that pinged the Anthropic API for different, whatever,

1:28:17formatting options. And I was getting, I kid you not, Jason, probably every day I was getting a Claude API refill email receipt for like 15 bucks because I had it so the API would refill like whenever it dropped below $20 of credits and it would just put another $15 on there. Now, so I wanted that to stop. I didn't, that needed to stop. Yeah, I don't even know. Okay. We need to talk about why that was happening, but okay. Well, I'll tell you why in a second.

1:28:48So what the first thing I did was I'm like, all right, I'm going to explore local LLMs that are free and I can just run on my Mac and figure out how to plug that into shortcuts. So I went to platform.claw.com and I turned off that API key. I was like, I don't even want the chance of spending another dime on this. So the API key is turned off. And what I realized, so I downloaded LM Studio. And if you're not familiar, LM Studio is a free application that you can download that

1:29:18then has access to lots of open source models. Open weight models. Open weight models. Yeah. But that are free to use. Yes, correct. Zero cost because you download these models. And so I will put a link to LM Studio. They have two apps now. There's like LM Studio Bionic, which is for agent stuff. Which I use all the time, just to be clear. You do use that all the time? That's what I use on the Mac mini. Okay. Well, we'll, all right. I want to hear about that in a second. I didn't want to do agent stuff on my Mac Studio, my production machine.

1:29:50So I just downloaded LM Studio regular, non-bionic, just whatever. And then I, it's, it seems like a complicated app, but I just asked Claude how to use it. And he was honest about it. And so I downloaded a Quinn model. I asked Siri AI, because I thought Claude and OpenAI would be biased about what models they told me to use. So I asked Siri AI, what model should I use for just kind of like summarizing general articles? I downloaded a Quinn model, and then I built a shortcut that I replaced all the Claude API shortcuts that I was doing Claude requests.

1:30:28I replaced it with my shortcut that just used my local model. And Quinn, I learned about token, you know, the context window on like, you know, these local models, they have a smaller context window, then you can just send it to like the API. And one of the things I realized was in a lot of my shortcuts, I was parsing raw HTML from websites, because it was typically the most surefire way to get things like the header image URL, or to get the body of the text.

1:31:00Because sometimes articles using these shortcuts action of get article, the get details of article, sometimes it wouldn't work right. So I had a lot of places in my shortcuts where I was getting the full HTML of websites. Apple intelligence use models action always failed because of the amount of text. And apparently feeding the raw HTML from 15 websites every day to a model is a lot of context and tokens. Yes. And that is what I discovered as I started using these local models, it kept failing.

1:31:31And it was because of the context window. So I went through and rewrote a bunch of my shortcuts. And rather than getting the raw HTML from a web page, I figured out what actions used to get the body of an article, just give me the text, don't give me the HTML. And using the Quinn model, raising the context window pretty high, it works great. And so now when I run a lot of my shortcuts, it just uses the model on my Mac Studio, and all my shortcuts work. Sometimes the language and writing is not as good as what I was using, Claude Opus 5.5, which was also probably part of the cost for the API.

1:32:06But it's sometimes not as good, but for 95% of the use cases, it is great, it is free, and it is local. Now, I did download, and the Quinn model is like 17 gigabytes. You have to download it. I did try the Meta Llama open weight model, which is like 70 gigabytes. It's a larger model, but it has a larger context window. So I could give it the raw HTML of a website if I wanted to. And what you do in LM Studio is like you load a model, and then in my shortcut, I can point to what model I want to use in that request.

1:32:44And I built it so I can choose what model, what local model to use when I run the shortcut. And the one time I used the Llama model on a big shortcut, geez, and it might have been the second time I ever heard my Mac Studio fans spin up. And this was not like the last time I heard the fans, I had to like lean over and put my ear to it to kind of like try and hear the fan. Jason, it was running the shortcut pinging this local Llama model with large context. Those fans were loud. Like you would hear the fans in this recording.

1:33:14My Mac Studio was chugging on that local model, but it's local. It's on my Mac. It's free. It can run as long as I want, and I'm not paying for some tokens via API. And so I am now in the local model world, and I'm all about it. That's all. Yeah, I mean, it's good. The biggest tradeoff is it's slower because you don't have a million NVIDIA GPUs powering it. You just have whatever's inside of your Mac Studio. I run local models on both the Mac Mini and this MacBook Pro because, you know, MacBook Pro has an M5 Max in it, which is like pretty good.

1:33:48And I have heard the fan come on on that MacBook Pro many times when I'm using it. But that's because it just pins the GPU at 100% every time. And the thermal infrastructure of a MacBook Pro is a lot different than a Mac Studio. And so that's fine. But yeah, I think I, so that is actually the, in my mind, the biggest tradeoff is the time to first token and how fast it generates stuff is just a lot slower. But it is, I now understand why you're maxing it out. Because the math I was trying to do was when I first released Contextly, I ran into the issue that the token window or the context window for Apple Intelligence prior to current, you know, Mac OS 27 was 4,000 tokens or something like that, which is not even enough to like put in a thousand word note or something like that.

1:34:36It was stupid. And so I had used, I gave you the option of enabling, if you were on the paid version, an open AI extension. So it's like, if you want, if you're willing to send your data to open AI, you can use that for the summaries and for the action items and for that kind of stuff. And in the entire time I had it released, I mean, there was people who were using that. I don't have like super good data on, but I know it was not zero. Like I know, cause I get feedback from people talking about it and that kind of stuff.

1:35:06And I think I paid a total of $6 for that API for the entire time. Now, the current version of Apple Intelligence has a much better token window and it is able to do a lot more on device or with private cloud compute. Thank you very much, Apple. Right. And so I've actually disabled that. Like I don't need that anymore. And so the only way you could use open AI, the open AI API now is if you want to use the ask Contextly feature. The thing is, you don't even need to just ask Siri cause it's built, like it works. Yeah. It's built.

1:35:36So what are you using the bionic agent for? Anything you would use Claude Cowork or Claude Code for. So do coding. Have you tried coding with it? Absolutely. I've had it do bug passes for me. And there are different models that are better for that than, than other, right? Like, and you wouldn't, the nice thing is that in both LM studio, or if you just go to a hugging face, you can look up models based on, Hey, I want a model. That's really, you know, or you can just use what you did, Siri. Tell me which model, which local models are best. And then it'll like on the Mac mini, it's a little bit limited because it only has 48 gigs of memory.

1:36:14So I'm not, I can't use super large models for that. So I, I have used it for some coding. I've also run it on my Mac book pro to do it, but I don't do that very often because it's like, I do every, I'm recording this podcast on it right now. I prefer to like, keep it a little bit cleaner, but by the way, what's beautiful about it is it's not over eager to just do things. It only does things when I ask it to, unlike Muse, right? It's like, it just sits there waiting for me to tell it. And now I think it might've actually just been today. We might be breaking news. I don't know if it happened today or not, but you can run LM link on your phone.

1:36:45And it will just, you can, so you can send stuff to your computer from your phone. So it's essentially like using the chat GPT or the cloud app on your phone. But instead of going to the cloud, it's just going to your device. So do you find it's pretty good at the coding stuff? I think it's really good. Again, it is just slower, right? But I don't care. Like if I, uh, so big feature that I released recently in element is auto. Yes. Yes. This is by far the most requested thing that I've gotten.

1:37:16And I, I felt like it was pretty good, but it was doing a couple of weird things with preview generation. And I tried codex. I tried cloud code to try to fix some things. And it turned out that it was actually the local model that was able to deduce, Hey, what if, cause Apple released, released a new version of raw processing. It's raw pipeline, raw nine with Mac OS 27. It said, well, here's the deal. It would cost you nothing in terms of like effectiveness of the app to just load all the previews using raw version eight. And then as soon as you click into something, generate that preview using raw nine and then

1:37:49generate them on the other side. But it was the low, it was running at local in LM bionic that actually solved that for me where clogged. And I don't know if it was because cloud code is sucking up the context window of all the previous, you know, stuff that we've been doing. Like, you know what I mean? So it's kind of got like fixed on a path and it couldn't get out of that, but using the local model in LM bionic, it was just like, dude, this is like the simplest answer is just load all these previews this way. Use raw nine for the processing. And then when you're using the auto enhance feature, it won't, anyway, it won't interfere

1:38:21with, cause that's using raw nine. Like anyway, and it did it really. And then the other thing I wanted it to do, and I don't, I I'm kind of proud of this feature. One of the things that I implemented that was one thing I really liked about aperture was you could select up to four images and hit enter and it loads you all four of them at a time. And this is really helpful. Like if you're trying to compare expressions or anything like that, you load four images and you hit auto and it auto enhances all four of them at a time, whereas otherwise it's like looking for one photo and it's trying to figure out what it's supposed to do. Yes.

1:38:51And that was really glitchy at first for the same reason. Cause the previews were loaded using version eight of raw and version. And it was like, just do this, this, and this, and we just made the changes and it worked really well. So, and I will say one, get Jason's element photo links to that. And my 1000 vibe coded apps are down in the description, but I had finally a real use case for element photo cause I took class pictures of my kids, different classes and I was like, Oh man, I don't want to do this in photo element photo. Duh. Absolutely. And so I used element photo and I take credit because I asked for the auto enhanced feature

1:39:21and now it's shipped. So I'm going to say that. You can take credit. I had been working on it for months and here's the thing. If you think about it conceptually, it's a very hard thing to figure out because every photo is different and I don't have 150,000 people working on this. It's like me and Claude and LM bionic and stuff, but I was able, but it turns out there is actually like, this is the way that it should work. And, and it was able to get it implemented, but I just, I, I had actually had it running on my computer for probably almost two months now, but it's like, I needed to just keep

1:39:54testing it in a hundred different versions of like failure, failure modes. And so I had been using it a ton and I really wanted to make sure that when I doubt it and I'll just be clear, I'm happy to say this. I believe Lightroom's auto is probably better with edge cases, but I think element gets you close enough that you can tweak it on your own without having to spend a ton of time starting from zero. But again, Lightroom has like Adobe, lots of people working on it.

1:40:25I think that it accomplishes it, especially for, I tend to shoot a lot of complicated scenarios, really fast driving cars, dark rooms, people like portraits, like if you're just shooting portraits and stuff, the auto enhancing element will be perfect for you. Last question. And then we're going to go record a bonus episode. Can't wait. Can I tell LM Studio Bionic to go learn everything from my Claude conversations so it has full context of my projects and stuff? Okay. So the answer to that is sort of yes, but what you can do is point it at whatever Markdown

1:41:01file Claude has created about how it does certain things. So every time you set up a Claude co-work like routine or scheduled thing, there's a Markdown file that tells it exactly what to do for your project. If it has been creating the documentation, there's a Markdown file that just has all the stuff. So like what I sent you for the publishing or release or something like that, I can't remember what I sent you, but I sent you a Markdown file recently. It's just that kind of thing. So you can point it at those. And if for some reason you don't have a good thing to point it at, you should just say to Claude, Hey Claude, what I need you to do is create documentation of all of these things

1:41:37in one place so that I can hand it off. And it will literally make you a handoff dot Markdown file that will give like the local one, all that information. Keep in mind that it then has to load that into context every time. Right. Okay. Can I tell you what I was doing just while you were telling me about the great update in element photo, I was just, just pricing buying a Mac mini, I'm just pricing out what a new Mac mini might cost with more memory because so wait, that is the M five pro with how much memory all 64, the highest you can get.

1:42:10So basically that's the one I have, except for mine only has 48. Well, and the reason why I wanted that memory, cause when you load a model with LM studio, it's going to the unified memory, right? Oh yeah. It's loading. It's loading it all in memory. So I can run more powerful models on the Mac book pro than I can on the Mac mini. Right. But it's, that makes sense. This is a problem because as my M six Mac mini review video, I was juggling Mac minis and I might do some calculations later. What happens if I trade in three Mac minis?

1:42:41What can I get today? Because I'm very tempted now to try LM studio bionic with some coding stuff, but I'm, I'm hesitant because Claude is really, really good at it and no, and has all my context, but I also don't want to pay for it anymore. So I also wouldn't be worried about running. I would not be as worried about running LM studio bionic on your Mac studio compared to cause you're running Claude on it, right? Yeah. Yeah. I wouldn't be worried about that. I wouldn't put muse on it cause it's super eager to just go rummaging around through all

1:43:14your transistors and stuff. But I don't think you would experience that. Um, cause it's still required, you still have to give it permission to do certain things and it, you know, and because it's running on a headless Mac mini, there are times when I'm like, Oh shoot, I gotta make sure that it's, but in my case on the headless Mac mini that has no personal data anymore. Cause it has been deeply sanitized. Uh, I'm fine with it. Just having, just do whatever you want. I mean, that's, that's the thing. Okay. All right. We're going to talk more about vibe coding stuff because someone has cloned the Adobe creative suite to a point.

1:43:45And we're going to talk about that and just more vibe coding stuff. That's gonna be in the bonus episode. You can get an ad free version of the show, our bonus episode, our unedited feed, which I don't know, might be three hours today. It's going to be, it's, it's a long one today. So you can get all of that by becoming a member. That link is down in the show notes. Thank you to everyone who supports us. Leave us a five-star rating in Apple podcasts. If you haven't yet, tell us local models. Have you done it? Yay or nay? Or iPhone duo. Did you pre-order? Let us know in that five-star rating and review in Apple podcasts and you get a shout out on the show. Thanks so much for listening and watching. We'll catch you next time.