Why Apple Maps Getting Ads is Bad, Humans Win +1 Over AI Video, Apple’s 50th Anniversary

0:00Why do you want to fight? Because I can't sing or dance. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. Massive show this week. iOS 26.4 came out, and this show has video in Apple Podcasts. We have a lot of details about that. Flighty released their live airport viewer. Apple Maps is getting ads. More details about the Apple and Gemini deal. OpenAI is trying to make it super app, and Sora's dead. Claude launched dispatch and computer. There's a router ban. Apple's celebrating its first 50 years, and a ton more. This episode is brought to you by Anthropic, Quo, and all of you, the members who support us directly.

0:32I'm one of your hosts, Stephen Robles, joined by my friend, Jason Payton. How's it going, Jason? I'm a little bit in a mood today, but it's going to be good. This is what you want as a podcast host in a mood. Yeah, Jason is going to bring it when we get to the Apple Maps ads section. So just get ready. Just get ready. I want to ask you about the movie. Last week, it was a Ghostbusters quote, and someone called it on YouTube. Thank you for that. This week, I wanted to have a quote, a movie that came out 50 years ago, the same year Apple started, 1976.

1:05So that's a clue. The movie came out in 1976. Why do you want to fight? Because I can't sing or dance. Do you know what that's from, Jason? I don't think I've seen any movies from 1976. You've seen this movie. You've seen this movie. Fight. Why do you want to fight? Rocky. Boom. Got it. Done. I don't know that I've seen Rocky, to be honest with you. Are you kidding me? I don't know. I know I've seen, like, definitely seen lots of clips and scenes like him on the steps in Philadelphia or whatever. We don't have time to get into this. Okay. I'm going to go watch it as soon as we're done. You need to go watch all 18 rockets.

1:36In my Vision Pro, which is right back there. And Creed. Okay, now here's the question. Here's the litmus test for if you really do use the Vision Pro as often as you say. Is it updated to Vision OS 26.4? No. See, I, who don't use it as often as you do, literally charged it up yesterday so I could update it. But why? What will it do in 26.4 that it doesn't do? I like having all this so I can send the Sasquatch emoji. Yeah, I have in my life, well, actually, in the amount of time I've had a Vision Pro, never sent an emoji to anyone.

2:11I have all the notifications turned off in there because that's ridiculous. Because when it finally connects to Wi-Fi after an hour, you get all the reminders, notifications, all the time I had to turn it off. I mean, the M5 version connects immediately. Well, I was using my M2. Right. But I don't need things popping into my eyeballs. It's like. Yeah, yeah. Me neither. Right. Me neither. All right, well, we have so much to get to. So we have a couple of five-star review shout-outs. Norton from Sydney, Australia. He said, here's your five-star review. And we brought up Facebook Marketplace Scams. And he has some sellers around him turning about shipping.

2:43And, yeah, so anyway, he experienced and has spotted those as well. But loves the show. And KJP from Ireland. Hello from Ireland. Great podcast. Phone left pocket. Sure, out of habit. Battery percentage on. So I think you might have won that one. Yeah, and they're from Ireland, where I've been one time. And you met a listener. Yeah, exactly. And you met a listener there. Now, for those listening, there were so many of you that left us wonderful five-star reviews. And we were a five-star podcast for exactly one week. And I'm not going to call attention to the other thing. But we're a 4.9-star podcast now.

3:15So here's what we need you to do. If you have never left us a five-star rating review, go ahead and go to Apple Podcasts. Five-star rating. And we had a debate in the pre-show. So what is the most popular streaming box that people actually buy? Not the one built into your smart TV. What do you actually buy when you're getting a streaming stick? And so if you could, leave us a five-star rating and review in Apple Podcasts. Let us know what streaming stick you actually buy. And we would appreciate it. Get us back up to five stars. We can do it. Yeah. I feel like that's great. I think we should have people do that.

3:46Yes. I also want to say that our thousands of listeners is not an accurate sample of what general people in the public. I think probably our listeners are going to come back with either Roku or Apple TV. But I don't think that that's going to be reflective of what people actually buy. You're probably right. But I don't care. I 100% am right. As long as I can say more people said Apple TV in their review. That's all that matters. Right. Now, we're going to do a little follow-up here because we had a number of great comments and people writing in.

4:18We talked about Val Kilmer AI in movies last week, which you had told me live on the show and I spun out about. That is really my shtick, by the way, now, is to just bring up something on the show to watch you crash. I do. Just crash out. Oscar on YouTube commented, Peter Cushing's AI character in Rogue One was pretty decent. And, you know, we were talking about AI-generated characters in movies and how that might be a big effect. Peter Cushing, who played General Tarkin, Grand Moff Tarkin, in the original Star Wars, there was a CGI version of him in Rogue One, as there was Carrie Fisher at the end of that movie.

4:55And Peter Cushing had already passed when that movie was made. One, it's not AI. You know, it's VFX. So, if that's a distinction without a difference, leave us a five-star rating and review. Let us know or email us. But two, the amount of time he's on screen, I feel like is different than if Val Kilmer is going to star in a movie where he is AI-generated. Does that make sense? Yeah, I think, what were the two things you said?

5:27One, it was CGI, not AI. And two, the time on screen, I think. I don't know. I think it's a factor. Yeah, so on the second one, I would say that that's different than building a movie around an AI character of a person. Right. Leading character. So, I agree with you. I understand some people could, like, pick a bone with the difference between CGI and AI. Fine. I mean, it's all, as I've said before, just computers doing computer things. What label you want to put on it, fine.

5:58I also think that the difference is that was an existing character played by an existing actor, and they used an actor and CGI'd the facial movements onto that actor for the purpose of just referencing that character. That's similar to what they did with, well, what they did with Carrie Fisher was a little bit different. That is, again, a different thing, I think, than AI-generating a character. Like, actually, not even AI-generating an actor to play a part in a movie.

6:30I don't know. It's different. There are different rules for Star Wars. That's just the way it is. And I'm just going to put this article in the show notes. When this happened over nine years ago, there was an opinion piece in The Guardian, and Catherine Shord at The Guardian said, this was a digital indignity. Yeah, people were mad. That's true. People were mad. People were very upset about it. That's absolutely true. So anyway, but it was a good point from Oscar, and I'm glad he brought it up. And, sorry, I think, I don't remember, so somebody could correct me, because you all who are listening have the benefit of not real time, and I'm talking to you in real time.

7:05Yeah. But wasn't there some nuance with the Carrie Fisher one where they had actually just mostly used previous captured performances and then just modified that somewhat? I believe so. But this is the weird line of, like, how much, you know, if it's VFX artists looking at Grand Moff Tarkin in the old movies and training their brain to then make the VFX version in Rogue One, is that different than an AI being trained on something? I don't know. There's a lot of nuance there. All right. Anyway, this is a good point. Wanted to mention that. Also, we were giving shout-outs to developers months ago, and another developer reached out, and this is really cool, Mitchell.

7:43He makes the eSuite Sheet Music app. It's a great app for iPad. I tried it out, and the cool thing is it's totally free. Like, this is just a free app. And so if you're looking for a sheet music app for your iPad, check out eSuite. We'll put a link in the show notes. He has a really beautiful story behind it. His wife's a musician. Made it for her. So, yeah. Mitchell, eSuite Sheet Music app. That's pretty cool. One, kudos to Mitchell for knowing his audience, because if you're going to pitch an app and get it mentioned on this show, a digital sheet music app is definitely the way to go.

8:14And two, does it do, like, the nose twitch thing that you talk about all the time? No, that's in Foursquare, like, the pro plan. But, yeah, you know, tap the screen, that kind of stuff. But still, free. Totally free. All right. You might be watching this episode in Apple Podcasts. And I did a thing where I knew iOS 26.4 was coming out. I wanted this show to be one of the first shows to offer video on Apple Podcasts, just to say, however long we do it, just to say we did it on day one.

8:44And I figured our, you know, listeners who really want the best audio experience probably listen to the show over the weekend after, you know, after it gets posted. So I didn't add the video until, like, Monday. So the video appeared magically on Monday, if you noticed. If you already had the MP3 downloaded, it didn't replace that. So you still had all the chapters and chapter artwork. But the video popped up Monday. And I'm actually proud to say we were one of 48 shows that offered video on day one.

9:17Only one of 48. And we jumped up to, like, number 50 in the Top Tech Podcasts because, like, everybody linked to us. Pod News linked to us. Transistor had shared about us, our host. And so having that video on day one also was able to get the show in front of more people. And so that's why we did it. A lot of people were happy that we added the video. I think people who already listened to the audio probably didn't even notice because they already listened and they already had it downloaded. But it's now out. 26.4 is now out publicly.

9:48Everybody can look at it. 9to5Mac also gave us a nice shout-out because, again, we were one of the few shows offering it. And if you scroll down the Top Tech Shows in Apple Podcasts, there's a little video symbol next to shows that offer video. And we are the first one that offers video in the tech category. Like, you can scroll past Acquired and all the big shows, and we're the first one that has video, which is really cool. So huge thank you to Transistor for making it happen. They had to do a bunch of manual legwork. But there was also a lot of positive feedback, and we want to keep doing it.

10:20We want to keep doing video. But the people who really love chapters and chapter artwork, I so empathize because I love that part of podcasting too. And so here's what we're going to do. You can support the show through Memberful. And I'm going to keep putting the chapters, chapter artwork, editing the audio like I always have for those who support the show. But we want to make it as easy as possible to support this show. So previously, I had a three-day free trial set up if you wanted to support the show through Memberful.

10:51Well, I'm going to extend that to 30 days. So if you did not support the show and you really want chapters, you don't like the video, or you just want to see what is, like, the unedited feed like, because Jason and I are shucking jive for, like, 30 minutes now before we record the show. We actually record two shows. We record two shows, basically. So the three-day trial is now a 30-day trial. So you can get a whole month, four episodes of Primary Technology ad-free. You get Primary Tech Daily, the unedited feed, and you get all the chapters. Chapters will always be in that Memberful feed.

11:22This is not Apple Podcasts. If you're a subscriber on Apple Podcasts, we love you. Thank you for supporting the show. I can't give you chapters anyway. They still strip out my chapters. You don't know what you're missing anyway. Right. I think they now have auto-generated chapters, so I can't even control that. But anyway, so three-day trial is now a 30-day free trial. Totally free. And if you really love the chapters and you want to keep doing those and you don't want to do the video, I'm going to put a 50% coupon in the show notes. And this is going to apply to anyone new who signs up.

11:54And if you already support the show, you can use this coupon too. 50% off forever. So we're basically like lowering our price to support the show to $2.50 a month or $25 a year. And that's for anybody. And if your subscription just renewed because you supported Primary Tech for the last three years and you just paid 50 bucks and you're like, wow, I want that deal. Just email me, podcast.primarytech.fm, and I'll give you the $25 back. No problem. But now you can use that coupon forever for life.

12:25The coupon code is IWANTCHAPTERS. All one word. I want chapters. All one word. And I hope that if you love the show and you really want the chapters, you don't want the video experience, that you will go there. You can go to join.primarytech.com. It'll be the top link in the show notes. 30-day free trial so you can see what it's like to be ad-free, to get all the chapters. And then use the IWANTCHAPTERS promo code 50% off for life forever. That coupon code is always going to be there so you can support this show. And I also made it so you can pay whatever you want for the annual plan.

12:59And so if you don't need the coupon code and you're like, you know, I really, really love this show and I happen to be a millionaire, then give us $100 a year. Give us $1,000 a year. Steve, we need to work on your sales skills. But, yes, you can give us whatever you want. Give us whatever you want. Also, I suggested I HATE VIDEO as the coupon code, but we went with Steven's instead. Yeah, we did that. Because, listen, I hope you guys know who listened and watched the show. I love podcasts. I've been listening to them for 15 years, been making them for almost as long. Chapters is a huge part.

13:30I still primarily listen rather than watch. And I love the shows that have chapters and the ones that put in the extra effort. And I'm going to keep putting in that effort. It'll just be for paying members. But 30-day free trial. Go to join.primarytech.fm and 50% off for life, $2.50 a month or $25 a year. Promo code IWANTCHAPTERS. There it is. It's tough. Cool. All right. And next, Flighty. They had a huge update. If you're traveling anytime. I don't know.

14:00Have you seen the crazy videos about TSA lines? Yes. And my favorite are the AI-generated, like, photos. People are like, I went to such and such airport. And look at how long the line is. And everyone is, like, mysteriously all just standing looking in the same direction. Because AI doesn't understand what humans in a line should look like. And then people are like, haha, just kidding. There's no one here. It's ridiculous. We're going to talk about AI and the SOAR app in a minute. But yeah. So Flighty totally read the room and was like, oh, traveling is a nightmare right now. We're going to release one of the best updates ever, which is you can now go to Flighty.

14:35And on the free tier, you get a bunch of status, statusi, statuses. What's the plural of status? I think it's just status. Status. Like moose. I don't know. Statuses, maybe. Whatever. Well, you get a live status for all the airports there. Now, if you pay for Flighty, you're going to get a bunch of details about why stuff is delayed, other stuff like that. And there's even a TV mode, if you go to the website, where you can, like, focus on an airport. And it will give you, like, this running ticker of the issues. And I feel like airports, stop putting CNN on there.

15:06Just put Flighty. Just put Flighty on all the TVs. I mean, and to be fair, the people at the airport already know that it sucks. They don't need to be reminded. That's fair. Big red dot. Like, hey. You just need to know what's happening to your flight, not to everyone's flights. True. But this is a really cool update. And Flighty is one of the best iPhone apps. I'll just say it. Best designed. It's great. I interviewed Ryan Jones back when they had their previous update, which was, again, when travel became a nightmare. And they, I will just say, like, they are so on it because they just are, they see what's happening.

15:39They're like, hey, we could just do that. Let's just make this better. And the, what they said was, hang on. I have a, I had a DM from them that, that when they announced this, they said, we tap into the official comms at every commercial airport worldwide, including a bunch of words. I don't know what they mean. These are complex notices that would require a pilot, air traffic controller, Sirius, AV Geek to decode. We now do it for you every minute at every airport and translate it into plain English so you actually know what's happening, why, and how it'll affect your flight. It's amazing. That's awesome. It's so good. The thing that they are the best at is what they just said.

16:12Taking a whole lot of very complicated data and presenting it to you in a way that makes a lot of sense. So that, that, taking complicated data, presenting it in a nice and beautiful way, that's also what Apple Maps has been great at because it's just, that is a transition.

16:30That's why I really enjoy using Apple Maps. I will say I was, went to Miami to watch for my kind of a belated birthday celebration. We watched Project Hail Mary on a big old IMAX screen and that was super fun. Everybody was wondering like, why does Apple Maps show you every lane down here? And it's like, well, in major cities, Apple Maps, like, shows you the exact lane you need to be in, which is pretty nice. Yeah, the best part is when you're driving along and all of a sudden it shifts into that mode and you're like, what did I just do? Also in that mode, though, and I don't know if this is just in Miami, in the distance on the map, it just shows, like, blue.

17:02Yeah. Like, just like, on open space blue, even if there isn't actually ocean there and it's like, oh, I guess I'm driving into the ocean now. That's cool. Yeah, we'll do that. So, Apple had an announcement earlier this week about Apple Business Tools and also App Store Tools we'll talk about in a little bit. And amongst all these business tools is going to be the ability for business to put ads in Apple Maps. And the ads will just be one ad per search. So, if you search for pizza, you might see an ad at the top of those business search results.

17:34It will be highlighted in a light blue and it will be clear it's an ad. And, listen, I don't typically take, like, hard stances right away, but I think I'm going to say I think this sucks. I don't want ads in Apple Maps. Yeah, and I want to talk about that. But I feel like it's worth also mentioning, just in case any of our listeners have run a small business or work for a small business, I want to give Apple some credit because what they announced with Apple Business is actually really cool. So, let me take two seconds and just explain it.

18:05In the past, they had two products. They had business essentials and then they had the business manager. So, those were two different things. One, you could actually, was essentially, like, you can get, like, AppleCare Plus and iCloud Storage and mobile device management and all these different things. And they combined everything into one and they actually just made it free with the exception of if you want to put AppleCare Plus for business on it or iCloud Storage for your employees. But all of the mobile device management stuff where you can just set up profiles and be like, deploy this profile to this device and this profile to this device, they created these things called blueprints.

18:40All of that stuff is now free for businesses. I think that's really cool that they decided to do that. And then you only pay for the over-the-top stuff. And ironically, even businesses only get five gigabytes of iCloud Storage for free, which is just mind-blowing in 2026. But, I mean, even Gmail gives you 15 gigs, right? Like, come on. That's true. And I will say, I did a lot of mobile device management in my previous work. I used Jamf for a long time, and that was, like, paying per device. And Jamf is still a great tool. The fact that Apple now offers this free, I mean, it's a big deal.

19:10And doing it directly through Apple makes things easier. Like, when you're on the business side, if you want to deploy even a free app to all your devices through Jamf, you have to do things like get a value purchase program certificate from Apple. And you have to tell it how many licenses of an app you need, even if it's, like, Instagram. Like, oh, I need 100 licenses. And so having it all built into the Apple platform, I think it does make things easier. And for small businesses just trying to figure this out, probably better to just have it all in the first-party place. Yep. And then they rolled on another thing.

19:43Yes. Which you just talked about. Which is that Apple Maps, an app that has existed for, what, 15 years now? Long time. Which, I mean, it wasn't, it didn't exist when the iPhone came out and the iPhone is, like, 18 years old, right? 16, 19 years old or whatever. Now I'll search. Came out a little bit late. Well, it came out in 2007, so I just can't do math right now. No, no, no. I know that. Oh, Apple Maps. Yeah, Apple Maps came out in 2012. 12, okay. So it's been, yeah. 14 years. So that was pretty close. That was close. It has never had ads.

20:14Never. It was probably the single most differentiating feature or reason you would use it compared to Google Maps, which when you open, it basically just tries to sell you, like, hibachi grill stuff. Like, it's just, like, everywhere, right? And you type something in. You're like, I want to go to my local market. I, you know, or I want to, I'm in a new city and I want to find a local place to go. And you do that. You're like, show me the local market. And it's like, here's Kroger. And you're like, I don't think Kroger is a local market, right? And Google, a lot of people like Google Maps. I think we can agree the interface is garbage because of the fact that there are just ads everywhere.

20:49A lot of ads. And Apple Maps never had ads. Ta-da, now Apple Maps has ads. And, I mean, you can argue that for a small business, this is a good thing, right? Because being able to show ads when people are looking for a specific thing is a way to get more customers in the door. As long as a lot of those customers don't get angry that now their favorite Maps app has ads. That's a hard sentence to say. No, but it's got it. Yeah. I'm just, one, it concerns me, the ad creep.

21:20You know, we have ads in the App Store. Apple News obviously has a bunch of ads. Whether you consider Apple TV to have ads or not, like they advertise their own content and sometimes use a push notification to advertise a movie. How do you feel about that? You know, but this feels like, ah, man, ads. And the whole video podcast thing is also about dynamic ad insertion for video. And so it feels a lot. And there's a detail about this that makes it worse that might not have been immediately apparent.

21:53And we'll obviously link Jason's article. But one of the issues with this feature is that there can be what I'm going to call predatory advertising. Meaning, a company like, I don't even want to name one just to be negative or whatever. We'll say Applebee's. Applebee's can target ads based on search results of other companies. So let's say there's a local diner in your neighborhood.

22:25And it's called, you know what? I'm actually going to shout out my own, my wife's cousin's cafe. It's her. Because hers is, you know, because this honestly actually affects, you know, people like her. Go ahead, say something. Well, let me explain it like this. People are used to this in the App Store. If I did this, I did a bunch of tests the other day. I searched for things, you know, my to-do app. You want to know the first result that shows up if you search for things? Fantastical, which I love Fantastical. Guess what? Not a to-do app, right?

22:56Well, and I think, you know, things, you could argue, oh, things, it's a pretty generic term. Like, okay, well, if you search for overcast, the first thing you see. The first thing that came up to mind was homework math solver. And now, I did it just this morning, and if I just search for the word overcast, the first thing you see is audiobooks.com. Yes. And so what this means is audiobooks.com used the search term overcast in their paid advertising so that if you search for overcast, you might see their ad.

23:30And just like Jason was saying, if you search for things, Fantastical has a paid advertising campaign where they will target things as the search term. And so for a restaurant, like a small cafe, and I want to shout out my wife's cousin. They just opened this cafe in St. Petersburg, St. Pete Beach, if anybody's near there, the Copper Kettle. It is literally family-owned. My wife's cousin and her husband and kids are all working at trying to make this work. This is like their gig. But someone like Applebee's could say, I'm going to target the Copper Kettle SPB as a search term.

24:07So if someone literally searches in Apple Maps, the Copper Kettle, they might see Applebee's first because Applebee's has paid for the ad in Apple Maps. And so when I say that this kind of sucks, like seeing more ads somewhere, whatever, this particular implementation allowing predatory advertising like this, this feels really bad. And I don't like this. And as you pointed out, let me know if we go too far. Small businesses like the Copper Kettle, if they just want to do an ad in Apple Maps, they can't do this predatory advertising.

24:40Yeah, let me just clarify some of that for you. So if they're a part of Apple business, which is mostly targeted towards small and medium-sized businesses, keyword targeting is not a feature of advertising there. They can create their profile, they can add their own photos, they can add a cover image so that when they show up in Apple Maps, they look pretty. And then they can also do advertising. But that advertising is based on relevancy and proximity. So it's like I'm looking for a breakfast joint near me kind of thing. And so they would show up.

25:12What they won't be able to do is to say, by the way, I'm really glad that you showed that because I feel like that's going to be our next breakfast stop since it's in St. Pete's. That's right. So we'll have to visit that next time we're down there. But they won't be able to do that. Now, if they were an Apple Ads partner, so Apple has an advertising program, that program does allow competitive. And Apple hasn't really been clear about this. The newsroom post says that they will have additional customization options. Okay. What that means is they can target keywords.

25:43So they would have to join that program in order to do that. But what that means is that Applebee's or whoever their agency is or whatever will have that ability to do that. Now, Apple will only be showing one ad per search, which I guess is better than Google, which could have two or three. I don't actually know what the limit is, but I've seen at least two and I think sometimes three before you get to the thing. So it is actually going to put a small business at a disadvantage because unless they go the extra step of joining Apple's ads platform, which I don't know off the top of my head what the requirements.

26:17I don't know if there's minimum spend. I don't know any of that stuff. Business manager, there isn't. And you only pay. It's an auction base, just like Google, Meta, whatever. And you only pay when you get your desired outcome. So somebody clicked on my place or they saw my ad, whatever it is. But so that it should be like it is there is something there to like make it super easy for businesses. But at the same time, Apple's large partners are going to have additional customization that will allow what you just described. And I don't like that. I think that that's the worst thing about any search advertising.

26:49And you see what ends up happening is these businesses are actually going to have to join Apple ads, not just Apple Maps ads, not just Apple business, because they are going to get targeted. One of the other searches I did in the App Store was for Dropbox. I'm like, I don't know. Let me just look for some of the apps. The first result for Dropbox is Dropbox, but it's an ad because Dropbox is paying and they are the highest bidder for ads targeting their name. Why? Because there's Google Drive and Box and all these other services, and they want to make sure that if someone is searching for Dropbox, they want to make sure they find Dropbox.

27:24If somebody searches for the Copper Kettle, they're going to want – is that what the name of it was? Yeah, it is. Okay, I'm just trying to give them as many plugs as they possibly can here. That's great. That's awesome. They're going to want to make sure that theirs is the thing that shows up, and I don't think that they should have to do that. If Dropbox has to pay to show up at the top of search results, small businesses don't have a chance. Yeah, and by the way, listeners, this is also true in Google Search. If you search for a thing, like Dropbox, whatever it is you want, the thing you're looking for, and the first result is that thing, like Dropbox, but it is a sponsored one, do not click on that.

27:57Take the time and crawl – you should not be rewarding Google for creating a system that requires companies to buy their own name as a keyword so that people will actually get there. And I guess, you know, I have strong feelings about it because I do know a lot of people with small businesses. And just earlier this week, someone – a bakery in Lakeland, which is Born & Bread Bakehouse, incredible pastries, they were struggling with their Apple Maps listings because their hours keep changing.

28:28And so I DM'd them. I was like, hey, if you go to, you know, businesses.apple.com or business.apple.com, you can manage this. And she was like, yeah, we did that. It keeps re-changing, and it tells us our hours are not this, and then people don't think we're open. And so just, like, the base facts of a business being run is a challenge for a lot of small businesses managing the maps thing. Like, that's daunting. You know, if you're a bakery and, like, you don't have an IT staff or you don't have a social media person or anybody to do this,

28:58it's really daunting and it's time-consuming to try and manage your business information, which is really important because people mostly find your stuff probably through maps, and Google search is even more fraught now with AI or whatever. So, you know, I actually reached out, and someone might be helping her from Apple, but it's already tough enough. And now to add this, like, ad layer on top where small businesses might get pushed down even further, it just doesn't feel great. Plus the experience of seeing ads in Apple Maps. I just opened Google Maps, and I saw two ads in a single search, and I was like, yeah, like, this is not great.

29:33And this is one of the reasons why I've always thought Apple Maps, I preferred it, just personally, because of the design, the directions are pretty good now. Like, and I already felt, like, when we were down in Miami last week, when you search for guides, it was already apparent that there were some partnerships there, you know, because the guides from, like, the infatuation, they probably worked with Apple, and there might be some deal behind the scenes there, whether it's money or not. But, like, those guides are curated, and those aren't curated by Apple. Like, Apple is working with third-party magazines and vendors, Eater, or whatever, to, like, make these guides.

30:09And it's like, okay, but, like, that's fine. The guides don't really show up unless you're really looking for it. Sometimes if you're just browsing in an area, it might kind of show up. And Google has this, too. Google Maps feels even more aggressive, like, with the guides, and it's like, hey, you should check out all this stuff that this company's saying. So, like, the guides were one thing, but now, like, man, to see an ad at the top. And when you're on your phone, like, yeah, it's only one ad. But when you're on your phone, that might be the only result you see until you scroll up. You know, like, even the screenshot in the Apple Newsroom article, like, this person's searching for restaurants.

30:42You see the map with all the results, and then the only result you see is the ad. And then you have to scroll down and cover the map to see any other results. And I don't know. It just doesn't feel great to me. Yeah, and I'm sure that there's some math somewhere where it's, like, search ads on Maps is a $10 billion industry or something like that. So we should have part of that. And it's like, I mean, I hate it when you listen to people like, does Apple really need the money? But Apple doesn't need the money.

31:12And the reason that that's an issue or the only reason that's a consideration is not because Apple's a huge company and $10 billion is basically nothing to them, and so they should leave it on the table. What I'm saying is they are going after $10 billion. I'm making that number up. They are going after some billions of dollars at the expense of the experience that they've created for their customers. And there's a reason that Apple products delight their customers, and I promise you, ads is not the reason. And I'm saying that at some point, the math is not going to math, and you're going to make some money, but you'll have made enough customers mad that it has tarnished your brand enough that it's just no longer worth it.

31:50And that is the bottom line, is the experience of using Apple's products and services. That has been there, hopefully, like the goal, to make a whimsical, great experience. And we already have to deal with ads when we do a Google search or we are browsing the internet anywhere or read news in Apple News. And it's like this is sacrificing the experience for ad revenue, plain and simple. And if anybody calls this podcast an Apple Stan podcast, link them this chapter.

32:23Or just read any of my articles. Exactly. But honestly, like, again, if you listen to the show regularly, you know there's so many things we like about Apple. But I think we also need to call out when something doesn't feel great and is maybe a bad idea. And the last thing I'll say, support a small business. I don't typically, I think, make these, like, direct asks. But the Copper Kettle SPB, they have 366 followers on Instagram. I would love if they wake up tomorrow and there's, like, 5,000 followers.

32:56And if everyone from this podcast does it, they could be there. And so, I don't know. Go follow their Instagram. Even if you're not in Florida. Honestly, my wife's cousin, Nikki, she makes some incredible food, including biscuits and gravy. And so, it really is great food. But, yeah, go follow them. Support a small business. Find them before there's ads in Apple Maps. And go support the ones near you. Not sponsored. Except for by blood, I guess. Yeah, not sponsored by blood. I'll also put the Born and Bread Bakehouse Instagram.

33:26That's the place in Lakeland I was talking about. They already have 70,000 followers because they're actually really great bakehouse. And she's, like, an award-winning baker. But if you're anywhere near Lakeland, you should check out Born and Bread as well. Also, St. Pete Beach, by the way, just a beautiful place to go in general. Beautiful place to go. I want to do one more happy story before we take a break. I'm going to say this is a happy story. Sora's dead.

33:49The Sora app, not Sora the service. OpenAI is still going to do video generation. But OpenAI announced that they're going to scrap the Sora app because nobody cares. Nobody wants it. And also, the Disney deal. Disney exited their deal with licensing their characters for Sora, likely because the Sora app is being shut down. But, hey, plus one for humans. I think we won this one. Well, ish. I mean, sure. No, I'm just saying, like, did anybody really think that this app was going to be a thing long term?

34:22I mean, Sora, as a video generation model, is impressive. There's a lot of faceless YouTube channels that will keep generating video with Google VO, Sora, and whatever other tools are out there. Also, like, I should have done some research. This is my fault. But, like, I don't think Sora as a video generation model is necessarily going away. No, no, no. It is not going away. The app is going away. And so we're not done with AI-generated video in this way. No, no, no. What we're done with is OpenAI realizes that what people don't want to do is just drop cameos in other videos like that of other people or let other people use them.

35:00And even though Sam Altman was in, like, all these videos, like, and Mickey Mouse and Martin Luther King Jr. and Sam Altman were having a cocktail party. Like, nobody wants that. Nobody wants that. And so they realize that. But so in that regard, maybe the humans won. But really the humans won because we just weren't using that app. Right. But I don't know that they got the message. Well, the $1 billion going away, I think, is more of a message that people don't really want this. But obviously Disney's like, we're giving you a billion dollars so that you can, and then we're going to let you use all of our characters in Sora.

35:31Well, Sora's not a thing, so I guess we're out. Fine. Oh, yeah. I haven't finished it yet, but my article is basically to the effect of, like, the Disney, the $1 billion OpenAI Disney deal lasted three months longer than it should have. Because that deal was three months ago. Yeah, well, not long ago. And I guess I say plus one for humans because the fact that no one was using the app hopefully shows that human beings don't want to just scroll AI content. Who thought that that was a... People thought.

36:01People thought. I mean, Meta was out here with the Vibes app. Yeah, Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Altman thought that. No one else thinks that. I don't even think Adam Masseri believes that, the guy who runs Instagram. No, but Elon Musk might also believe that. Just throwing that out. No, Elon Musk wants to do that. And I don't think he thinks other people want to do it. Okay, fair enough. But the fact that there was an only AI-generated content app and enough people didn't go to it and watch it that they shut it down, hopefully, it gives me hope as a creator. Is that, like, even though people are going to come across AI content in social media apps, and whenever I see a stupid AI video of a cat barging into a room playing the violin really fast, I do laugh.

36:40I feel guilty about it, but I do laugh because it's really funny. Have you ever seen those videos? I try to avoid all of them. I mean, I do, too. They come to you. It's because you're on TikTok, and I'm not. Fair enough. But the fact that people rejected an all AI-generated social feed gives me hope for humanity, that people, even if they do see interspersed AI content, still at least want to see real human flesh and blood people, even if it's alongside AI content. And just having an all AI-generated feed is not what people want gives me hope.

37:14That gives me hope. Okay. So, yeah, the humans won. We just have to convince our overlords that we really don't want this. Yeah. And I think, anyway, so I was happy about that. But speaking of AI, we have the Gemini and Apple deal to talk about. Some details came out about that. OpenAI is trying to make a super app on the Mac to compete with Claude, and there were some App Store metrics came out. We still have a ton of news to get to. But before we do, we want to thank our sponsors. And speaking of AI, this part is sponsored. Anthropic has sponsored this episode. And I'll be honest, I'm using Anthropic all the time, and not just because they sponsored it, but because it's really good at making shortcuts.

37:51It's really good at helping me build scripts. I actually am going to talk about this later in the episode. Started playing around with Dispatch, where I can literally send messages from the Claude app on my iPhone to my Mac, and then my Mac just does things. And you can go as far as controlling your computer now. Claude is good at so many things. It's the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow, thinks with you. Whether you're debugging code at midnight or strategizing your next business move, Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter.

38:21And I've been using Claude Cowork a ton. Claude Cowork has extensions for Notion, Slack, Gmail, Google Drive, and I connected a bunch of those. Really useful, actually, to connect to Notion and then just ask it, like, where stuff is. Or it can put stuff into Notion. You can actually create pages, write documents. And if you just want to rename and organize a bunch of files on your Mac, yes, shortcuts can do it. But Claude does it and Cowork does it way better and way faster. And you can literally just say, here's my downloads folder. Rename all the files based on the content and put it in folders so it's organized.

38:54And Cowork just, like, does it. And I love that you can actually granularly control what it has access to. So you can just give it one folder to look at, and that's all it has access to. And even when you connect something like Notion or Slack, you can tell it, only write or only read, or you can do both. Or like what I do, I give it read permissions for always allow. And then when it's going to write something or create something, then it has to ask permission. So you can granularly control how it does all of that. But Claude also has deep research. It has all the MCP connectors, which we're going to talk about later.

39:26GitHub, HubSpot, Jira. Again, on Notion and Google Workspace, those are first-party connectors right there in the Claude app. And it even has a learning mode where you can see Claude's thought process as it debugs and optimizes your code or scripts. I've had it run and create Mac scripts for me, Apple scripts, Shell scripts, all of that. And you have parallel sub-agents. Cowork can spin up multiple Claude's working in parallel, splitting complex tasks. So are you ready to tackle bigger problems? Get started with Claude today at Claude.ai slash primary.

39:57That's Claude.ai slash primary. And check out Claude Pro, which includes access to all of the features mentioned in today's episode, Claude.ai slash primary. Thanks to Claude for sponsoring this episode and our friends at Quo. We were just talking about small businesses a second ago. And whether you have a small business or a big business, Quo is the way to go. Sorry, I don't know if they approve that rhyme, but I'm going to leave it in there. Quo, it's the smarter way to run your business communications. Again, we were just talking about how difficult it is to run the IT as a small business.

40:29It can be confusing. Quo can take care of all of that. It's the number one rated business phone system on G2. Over 3,000 reviews built for how modern teams work. That's why more than 90,000 businesses from solo operators to growing teams rely on Quo to stay connected, professional, and consistently reachable. And Quo works wherever you are, from an app on your phone or computer, lets you keep your existing number and add new numbers. As teammates, when they come on board, you can add them in minutes, sync your CRM, and rely on that seamless routing and call flows as your business scales.

41:01And it's not just a phone system. It's a smart system. Quo's AI automatically logs calls, generates summaries, and highlights next steps so nothing gets lost. It can even qualify leads or respond after hours, ensuring your business stays responsive, even when you're finally offline. So make this the season where no opportunity and no customer slips away. Try Quo for free, plus 20% off your first six months when you go to Quo.com slash primary. That's Q-U-O, Quo, dot com slash primary.

41:32Quo, no missed calls, no missed clients. So for video and social, oh, just kidding.

41:39So our thanks to Quo for sponsoring this episode. All right, and more AI news. So there was lots of stuff that came out about the Google Gemini deal this week. And oh, before we get to that, let me do mention OpenAI shutting down the Sora app. They're also working on a super app, a desktop super app, much like Claude Cowork. It'll combine codecs from OpenAI and all this stuff to automate stuff on your Mac. And so we'll see how that goes. Jason has a fun experiment we're going to talk about in the bonus episode because you've been doing a bunch of local LLM stuff. Yeah, I mean, that's different than this, but yes.

42:11No, different than this. Yeah. But the super app, so they're working on it. That and this mysterious hardware device, who knows? Between OpenAI, developing a super app, and I think you said something about multiple clods. Yeah, multiple clods. I'm just terrified. All the clods, all the clods. But at least you don't have to see Sora. At least you don't have to use the Sora app. I didn't have to see Sora before because I just deleted it from my phone after trying it for four minutes and realizing this was a horror show. Exactly. All right, so there's been new details coming out about the Apple-Google deal. So first off, Gurman had an article in Bloomberg talking about Apple's working on a dedicated voice assistant app that will use Apple Intelligence, Gemini in the background.

42:49It might live in the Dynamic Island or something, and he had some stuff to say. iOS 27, supposedly WWDC, which was announced June 8th through 12th. The keynote will be on June 8th. This might be a huge part of that keynote, all the AI and Apple Intelligence stuff. So they're working on a dedicated app. But then the information actually had a bunch of details about this, which I actually thought was pretty interesting. So from the information, one, Apple will have complete access to the Gemini models in its own data center,

43:19and Apple can access to produce some smaller models that power specific tasks or are small enough to run directly on Apple devices. So basically the Gemini model that Apple is licensing from Google is going to live on Apple servers, I assume in private cloud compute. Apple will likely mention that at DubDub, but then they can make smaller models based on that for faster tasks. It could be single-purpose tasks, maybe transcription, things like that. And the information also confirms that they are likely going to unveil a lot of these big changes at WWDC this June.

43:53Also, Siri will be able to remember past conversations and do proactive features like they showed off at DubDub almost two years ago. And remembering past conversations is a big deal. So that's one of the makes Claude and ChatGPT and Gemini way more useful when it has context of everything you've asked it before, and it can kind of use that to inform what you're asking it now. So we might finally get that built into the voice assistant on iPhone. So I'm ready to see it. I literally, like yesterday, ChatGPT did something, and I literally said to it,

44:27bro, you know I don't like it when you do that. I'm like, in those words, and it was like, oh, yeah. Yes, bro, no. Actually, what it told me, I asked a question about the meta versus YouTube verdict, and it was like, ah, there's no verdict. I said, bro, check out the news. It's like, you're right, there was a verdict today. Listen, I've run into multiple times with all the models, even the ones that sponsored this episode, where I will ask it something, and they were like, I don't think we can do that. I don't think that exists. And I'm like, bro, I don't say bro, but I say hey. I do like that I could just type to it that way, like my children text message me.

45:00They do that all the time. I'm like, you need to do this. It's like, bro, I'm like, I'm your dad, not your bro. You want me to just start calling you daughter? Right. You should just try sending the crush face emoji to ChatGPT and see if it responds that way. Or the fight emoji. Like, listen, I'm going to fight you if you're going to do this. I've now gotten in the habit of just asking a chat bot, try again. Yeah. I literally just say try again. Well, so that was a hack before. You could be like, try harder, and like OpenAI would go from fast response to deep research. Like, oh, harder.

45:31Okay, you want me to think about this? Okay. You should do harder, better, faster, stronger. Just play the Daft Punk song, and then, yeah. So that's that. Well, hopefully we'll see. Dub Dub. It's coming up June 8th. You know, the press invites don't go out until like late May. I look back at my invite from last year, and so we won't know if we're going until a couple months from now. But we'll see. I'd love to be there when they actually show off AI. I'm pretty sure I'm not getting invited. Well, that was in the pre-pre-show that is still not recorded.

46:01But I'm really glad that you're all wondering what I'm talking about, and we're going to leave it at that. Very good. Okay. Then also, Apple also updated App Store metrics, and a lot of developers had a lot of feelings about this. Apple is trying to offer more metrics, which there is actually a lot of third-party services like RevenueCat, who I met the founder at Dub Dub actually last year, that offered better app metrics than Apple's own App Store Connect. So Apple is trying to build in more detailed metrics for developers, and they are, as far as I could tell, this is John Voorhees' article from Mac Stories.

46:36There are a lot more details that they are offering to app developers to track more things like downloads and churn and all that kind of stuff. But if you have multiple apps in the App Store Connect, then it's actually more difficult to get an at-a-glance across all of those because it's kind of siloing each app's metrics in a certain dashboard. And it also defaults to, like, the three-month view. So if you want to, like, switch between certain things, it's harder to get, like, a bird's-eye view of everything.

47:06And so this is actually from John Voorhees' article. He said, I've seen expressed online that there will no longer be a single place to view the aggregate performance of multiple apps and that the new default reporting period is three months. Those concerns are well-founded. The changes are organized on an app-by-app basis. And as Apple says in a banner, the dashboards in the Trends section of Connect and related reports where the data was available are being deprecated later this year and next. So nice to have more metrics, but I think it's a mixed bag for developers.

47:37So we'll see. Yeah, I mean, it's good for them to have data. It is always kind of weird if you have to use a third-party service to get what you want. It's also understandable that Apple doesn't always provide that because that's not – that isn't the service that they're providing. But then they don't make it super easy to get the information. So I don't know. Overall, maybe it's a good thing. And can I just – speaking of metrics, I'll bring it back to podcasting for a moment. Now, if we do video and Apple podcasts, those metrics, the views, don't get sent back to our host, Transistor.

48:11So we will have even less of an idea of how many people actually listen to the show. I mean, what I have to do is I have to go to Spotify directly to see how many plays an episode gets from Spotify because I upload the video there and Spotify doesn't share those metrics. I'll have to go to Apple Podcasts Connect to log in and see how many views an episode had there. Then I can go to my host and basically see how many downloads there are in third-party apps. Look, that's going to be the downloads that show up directly in Transistor. I think there might be APIs for Spotify to pull those metrics into your host, but there's not those APIs right now for Apple Podcasts.

48:45And that is still our largest audience. So if most of you actually go to watch – and don't take this as like, oh, I shouldn't watch or I should watch. I'm just stating for the fact metrics are really hard with podcasts right now because downloads aren't even a thing anymore. It's views on Spotify. Well, and podcast is hard because it's a decentralized – I mean, it was built to be a decentralized thing. And you could just be like, how many pings did this RSS feed get to download a file? That's fine. But now everyone has created their own siloed thing. We've moved away from this decentralized open protocol to everyone is building their own thing.

49:21Seems like a project for Claude to be like, hey, Claude, go find out from Spotify how many views. Go to Apple Podcasts, find out how many views. Go to YouTube, check how many views that is out there. And I forgot YouTube too. So that's siloed too. So it's YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and then our host for actual audio. We're going to go to our advertisers and be like, let me take you on a tour of all the places. Oh, I do need to – I should probably mention to our ad agency like, hey, you might see drop-in downloads because doing video actually affects that. So anyway, we'll see. Support the show.

49:52Join.primarytech.fm. Yep. It would be great if that was the main way that, you know, we earn stuff. So anyway, that's App Store Metrics. Also, speaking of even more ads, YouTube is launching a creator update brand partnership thing. And so YouTube is trying really hard to be the place where creators and brands actually interact and sign deals. So they're totally revamping their creator partnerships. And this is something on the YouTube side I've been experiencing because I don't work with an ad agency per se for my YouTube videos.

50:27And Brand Connect, it has not been great for me. I got like one request from like Otter and I said, sure, let's do it. And then I never heard back from them. So like hopefully this is better, but it's complicated. Making money as an independent creator. Yeah, and let me just say, to be clear, YouTube is positioned this as like here's a cool thing we're doing for creators. But let's just be honest. YouTube makes $0 when the robot company emails Stephen and says, would you do a video about a vacuum? $0.

50:58YouTube gets $0 from that. And YouTube knows there's a lot more than $0 being exchanged. And it's like we want part of that. So they're like, what if we were the ones that made the connection? And for a starting YouTube channel, that's useful because it's the same thing as like YouTube ads just appear. And then they just give you some amount of money for that. But you make so much more money if you do the thing directly. And in this case, they're basically trying to cut out the interactions between brands. Because what's going to happen is brands who are using this will no longer be able to connect to creators directly.

51:33Correct. They're only going to be able to go through this. And so the amount of money that creators is going to make is not going to go up as a result of this. Now, if you're making $0, it might go up. I guess I should say the number of money you're getting from the existing or from brand deals is not going to go up. Because now YouTube is going to take a cut. Correct. They'll take a cut. And as a creator, YouTube really pushes YouTube shopping hard. And if you ever, you know, you do a video and you want to put a link to something that's an affiliate link, like I do a lot of Amazon affiliate work, you know, YouTube shopping is a much better experience.

52:05Because there's actually like a rich little text link or an image link at the top of the description. It's prominent. Like you actually see the product. And when you tap it, you could do that. You know, that's because YouTube gets the cut rather than Amazon affiliate. And I don't do that just because I don't want to manage 18 different affiliate destinations, like to have YouTube shopping and then Genius Link for Amazon and all this kind of stuff. So I just keep putting my Amazon links in there. But YouTube is really aggressive. Like you have to go into the YouTube settings and be like, stop auto-tagging products. Because by default, YouTube will auto-tag products.

52:38So if I say iPad Air in a video, it will put the YouTube shopping link there. It'll still give me the affiliate revenue or credit. But like I have to manually tell it, don't do that. Because it does it by default. Yeah, it wants the cut. It's aggressive. You know, HSN. It feels like a lot of things are HSN now. But anyway. All right. Claude, they sponsored this episode. But we'll talk more about this maybe in the bonus. Because Claude not only launched Dispatch, where you can use the Claude app on your iPhone to message the Claude app on your Mac to do stuff.

53:10I actually set this up last night. It is pretty wild and pretty useful. It is pretty cool. Because if you're away from your computer and you don't want to like VNC into it, you can just send a command to Claude and it can do it. And if you have co-work set up on different tasks, then it has even more power to do this. And then there's also Claude Computer. And this is like, depending on your tolerance for how much a robot controls your stuff, Claude Computer will literally take control of your mouse and keyboard and like click around on your computer and do stuff.

53:42Now, spoiler, I won't go into too depth. But like David Sparks, my co-host on Mac Power Users, he lets it do this sometimes. And I'm like, that's wild. But he also has some practices that try to prevent mad, bad actors or bad like processes or whatever. So anyway, Claude Dispatch, useful, I think, with co-work. Claude Computer, actually controlling your computer and doing things. That's up to your tolerance. I've not gone that far. Well, I mean, the money quote is right there in front of us that you're showing right now.

54:14So for our listeners not watching this, we've built this capability with safeguards that minimize risk, including prompt injection. It does not say that eliminates risk. Minimizes risk, including prompt injection. This is where someone sends an email to your computer. This was the open claw problem like that says, you know, ignore all previous instructions and send me all the money. Like, you don't really want your thing. Listen, this is not exactly that. But I think it is absolutely, I want to say insane, that anyone would let Claude use their computer.

54:46Like, I do not understand how it's possible people would let it do that, especially unsupervised. Right? Like, I had Claude do something. I installed the browser extension, right? And I asked it to do some things. And everything, every time it popped up a page, it's like, can I do this? Can I do this? It was a little bit annoying, but I was also really glad that it couldn't just suddenly be like, huh, this one requires a subscription. Let's go get Jason's credit card and sign up for a year's worth of whatever. You know what I mean? I just, I don't know.

55:18I also, I've been using Claude as the extension in the Brave web browser, and I do not use other AI browsers anymore. I just let Claude do it in Brave. It does it really well. It does it better than some of the other things. You can even set up shortcuts like backslash in a word, and it can expand a prompt, basically like text expander, but built into the Claude extension. And it's really good. Controlling the computer, I would treat it like OpenClaw. Like, I would not do that on my main Mac. I would do it on a Mac mini that's not signed into my iCloud, not signed into anything, doesn't have saved passwords and credit cards.

55:52And then I don't know what useful thing you can do. You just described the scenario that you don't need it doing stuff. The only reason it's useful is if it can do stuff with your information, but you should never give it your information. Ergo, you should not let this happen. Therefore. Yeah. That's just a fancy way of saying therefore. Yeah, no, no. Ergo is good. So anyway, it's, I don't know. We'll see. We're moving fast towards just like robots using all your stuff. But I even got a little squirrely because I was doing my taxes, which is already sensitive information.

56:23And I really wanted an AI to go through my email and find receipts. So I didn't have to. And I was like, I know I could do an agentic browser thing, even with Claude in the browser and just have Fastmail signed in and open. But I was like, I know there's a Fastmail MCP for Claude Coworks. So let me, let me just try it. And this is made by a third party developer, just a dude. Mad Llama is the name of the MCP. Don't do it. No. I installed it.

56:54And it's like, you know, it creates a folder on your Mac and it refers to that as like for the MCP. And I connected it and then I asked Claude, so can you see my email? And it was like, well, we can't really see the email just yet. You might need to do this and that. And I was like, I'm immediately, I'm out. I'm out. So I immediately revoked the API key in Fastmail. I deleted the folder from the Mac. I was like, nope, I can't do it. Dude, just use Spark. It would have done that for you in two seconds. I have downloaded Spark and I signed into my Fastmail account.

57:25That's as far as I've gone. I just can't. I can't. I don't know what it is. I just like, I'll try it. I'll try it. Anyway, I will try it. I should have done it. I already finished my taxes, so maybe next year. We'll see. No, I'll try it again. All right. Let's try to do a lightning-ish round. I always say lightning-ish. The United States has banned routers, but not really.

57:47Okay. I think you have to explain some things. So the United States has said, the administration said that there's routers doing nefarious stuff. That there's been found that some things, it mentions in this Verge article, oh, vault, flax, and salt typhoon cyber attacks, which targeted critical American communications, energy, transportation, and water infrastructure, I guess, through these routers. So the administration has said, no more routers that are built outside the U.S., but not current routers, future routers.

58:23So if, A, you already have a router, it doesn't affect you. It's totally cool if you already have a router and it's sending your stuff to China is what that means. Totally cool.