TWiT 1107: Spicy Hinges - Apple's 1st Foldable, GM Forward 2026, & PHP Vulnerabilities

iPhone Duo hands-on impressions

0:00Coming up on This Week in Tech, I, Micah Sargent, I'm subbing in for Leo Laporte. Glenn Fleischman is here, Sam Edwold Salmon is here, and so is Allison Johnson of The Verge. We kick off the show by talking about the iPhone Duo and some hacks you might want if you've got one in hand. Then, of course, with our car guy here, we talk about how, well, AVs, those automated vehicles, may very well get a special cyan light to let you know they're operating independently. Plus, how could we change the infrastructure of our roads to make self-driving vehicles operate even better?

0:35We, of course, have to cover the PHP issues and dig deep into that, and then we round things out by talking about how, turns out, the iTunes store is still around and pop stars are taking advantage of it. All that and more coming up on This Week in Tech.

0:54Podcasts you love. From people you trust. This is Twit.

1:06This is Twit. This Week in Tech. Episode 1107. Recorded Sunday, October 25th, 2026. Spicy hinges. Hello and welcome to This Week in Tech, the podcast where we talk about the week's tech news at the end or the beginning of the week, depending on what you consider Sunday to be. I am Micah Sargent, subbing in today for Leo Laporte, and I am joined by a cast of wonderful characters.

1:36Sam Abul Samad. Hello. Hey, Micah. It's good to be with you again. Good to have you here. We're also joined by Allison Johnson. Hello, Allison. Hello. Good to be here. Good to have you. And last but certainly not least, the hilarious Glenn Fleischman. Oh, no. I have something to live up to now. Thank you.

1:59So, I'll work on it. I'll work on it. I promise. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Yeah. I am very pleased to get to bring you all together today to chat about the week's tech news. And, well, frankly, I think we need to start by talking about something that has been unfolding this week in the Apple world, and that's part of why I'm very excited to have Allison here because the duo shipped this week for some people, not me.

2:30Mine doesn't come until November, like, 13th or something. But what's great is that my younger brother somehow got his on day one, and so he's been sending me lots of photos and thoughts about it, which has been fun. But, Allison, you actually got to go hands-on and do a review over at The Verge. Tell us about your kind of first thoughts, first takes, surprises, delights, etc. Yeah. It was a real fun one. Like, I have to admit, you know, there's a sameness to phones these days, you know, for better and worse.

3:05And this was just exciting to kind of, like, learn how to use an iPhone again. Like, you open it up and you turn it, and all of a sudden the buttons are in weird places. It's just, like, the tech reviewer urged to be, like, oh, my gosh, something new to, like, figure out here. It's been fun, yeah. And the broad takeaway, I think anybody who's read our reviewer or caught it on YouTube, is, like, if you are into that kind of thing,

3:36if you're excited by the idea of the iPhone buttons suddenly, like, volume buttons suddenly being somewhere else, then this is the phone for you. If not, wait. Let's wait for the second-gen Duo. I've been waiting to see how much of a replacement it could be. I did not leap. I'm not in any queue for it yet. And I just got an iPhone 18 Pro. And I've got an iPad Mini. But I like to take the iPad Mini with me when I go on the road for shorter trips,

4:06if I know I don't need to do a lot of or any writing. And I'm like, you know, maybe my next phone is I sell both those things and upgrade to a Duo. But maybe it's the Duo 2 or the Trio or whatever they're going to call it. Yeah. And I would say, like, especially if the camera was part of the package for you on the 18 Pro, you're in very good hands. The 18 Pro camera, especially having that telephoto, which is not on the Duo, I missed it a lot when I've – and I'm still using the Duo as my day-to-day.

4:37But, yeah, you don't get that on the $2,000 phone, unfortunately. Did either of you – well, I guess you just shared, Glenn. Sam, are you considering it? Do you use an iPhone regularly or are you an Android camp? I'm in the Android camp. I am still rocking my Pixel 10 Pro XL. And so I don't have any – I keep an iPhone around, an older iPhone around just for testing, testing CarPlay updates and things like that in the vehicles I'm driving.

5:11But I don't typically drive – or I don't typically use an iPhone. So – and I haven't felt any really compelling reason to spend $2,000 on a phone. You know, I've played around with a few of the Samsung Folds. You know, I've tried them, you know, from other people I know who have them. And, you know, they're fine. But, like I said, I'm fine with, you know, 6.7 inches or whatever this one is and good cameras.

5:41That's the thing, too, right? That was one of – that's been one of the early kind of fears that people have had about this is that because of the lack of space, then the camera isn't going to be as high quality, isn't going to take pictures that are as good. And it was interesting the way that it's already, at least anecdotally, seems to be primed in people because as my brother was kind of sharing his thoughts on everything, one of the first things he said to me was, oh, and I'm not worried about the photos. It's fine.

6:12I didn't say anything yet. I just was asking. And so I wanted to ask you, Allison, because we talked a little bit about this on Tech News Weekly, where things were and you took some photos. Like, do you think for someone moving from, let's say, two generations ago, they're going to notice that this is not up to snuff? Or is it just a matter of people who are upgrading every single year where obviously the loss of the telephoto, but the other cameras, do they kind of – do they match what you'd expect?

6:49Yeah, it's sort of a story of like the Duo gets an iPhone camera from a couple generations ago, it feels like, which is the good news and the bad news. You know, it's fine. iPhone cameras have been fine for a long time, I think. I do see a difference when I go side by side with the 18 Pro, which had sort of an all-new imaging pipeline. You know, obviously the moving aperture was a whole thing.

7:21But putting the photos side by side, the Duo main camera, the 18 Pro main camera, the Duo is definitely doing like some oversharpening, which I think is a look in phone photos that people have really developed a distaste for. And, you know, I agree. I don't love it. So, you do get a little more of that telltale kind of, oh, yeah, this is a phone camera. But, you know, you've just got night mode, you have great video recording, you have the ultra-wide, which is just fine.

7:57Portrait mode, it does the trick for me. So, it kind of checks all the boxes of like, this is a fine baseline iPhone camera. You can certainly do better and fancier in the 18 Pro, but it's like a minimum viable product, I think, on the Duo. How do you feel about the lack of telephoto? Because personally, I find myself using telephoto a lot more than I use ultra-wide. Yeah, it was a tough one to give up.

8:28And every time I would switch back to the 18 Pro and use the camera, I was like, oh, the telephoto is here again. I love this. I would personally have a much harder time, yeah, giving up that telephoto. And I think it's something that someone moving from a pro iPhone to the Duo will feel. And you just kind of have to decide if you're going to be cool with that or not. The digital Zoom on the Duo is no great shakes, I will say.

9:01Yeah, so that was a tough, tough loss when I was using it. The other thing that I think is still going to kind of bear out over time, right, is something that obviously you've got the sites that always will bend the phones and will throw the phones and do all of these things with the phones. What I'm curious about is how these phones are going to feel over time. And if there, because I think it was iFixit who put together, you know, their first initial impressions and were sharing on Instagram.

9:37And I saw them using a special kind of dust that it lights up under UV light and they were kind of moving the hinge and they're like, oh, yeah, it's getting crunchy in there. And again, with my brother, because that's the person that I have to bother at any time to say, hey, how's it going today? He was talking about how he's kind of and I asked I know I remember I actually asked you about this. How much preciousness do you feel sort of subconsciously about closing and opening the device?

10:08And for him, he felt a lot of preciousness. Could you tell us what you had felt about that and whether you thought like, oh, this is something I'm not bringing with me to the beach, for example? Yeah, I think it's been a long time since I felt nervous about using a slab phone in any kind of weird circumstances. Like I am so rough on those things. A foldable, I think even, you know, generations of foldables that other companies have been working on, like Samsung, you are, I think, a little more cautious about like, okay, I am not going to bring it to the beach or that kind of thing.

10:46I will say the duo feels, it feels very solid, you know, apart from just being like kind of heavy. It gives you a reassuring, you know, sense of like, this thing is pretty well put together. I will share one thing that happened this morning. I was making this like slow cooker chili recipe and my child, my five-year-old wanted to help out. I was like, sure, come on over here. And we're measuring out the chili powder and he grabs the thing and just sneezes.

11:21Like I had the phones propped up to do, to have the recipe and everything. I was like, we're going to find out how much chili powder ends up in that hinge. But so far, so good, you know. Ooh, yeah. IP68 rating, right? I was just looking that up. So hopefully, I don't know if eight means that it can prevent child sneezes. And finally ground us that chili powder. Yeah, right. Exactly. We'll find out. That's actually an incredible accidental test, isn't it? Right, yeah. We didn't mean to, but.

11:52I saw a lot of reviewers mentioning the Touch ID issue as being irritating or requiring retraining. I've got an iPad mini. I don't have a pro, so I'm constantly doing Touch ID with it. And so I'm in the routine. Did you find that problematic? Do you think users will really see that? I mean, I felt like it was hard to find certain pain points. And the camera was one, and the Touch ID, I felt, got referenced a lot because I think a lot of reviewers are using only Face ID on all their devices or except their Mac. Yeah.

12:22Yeah, it does feel kind of like taking a step backwards where you're like, I shared this with Micah, but I kept just staring at the phone, forgetting that it didn't have Face ID. And then nothing happens. I'm like, oh, okay. It's, it's a, I got in the habit over the week and it was less painful. The thing that's really helped is, and it's not a solution for everybody by any means, but using the Apple Watch to unlock it, which you can enable, has, has just been a game changer.

12:56So I think people will adjust to it. There is a, an adjustment period where you're just staring at your phone or you're, you're looking for the, the sensor because you moved it. Um, it's, yeah, it's a different iPhone experience for sure. So I hadn't thought about the fact that obviously they have to put, it's a cost thing, right? If they put Face ID and it has to be on both sides, because otherwise what are you doing? Right. And so Touch ID is a way around that. And that these, when all the things you're talking about is fascinating. It's like, well, here's the wishlist for Duo 2, the 2027, late 2027 model.

13:30It's like, well, it's going to have three cameras and well, it's going to do this and it's going to have Face ID or maybe that's 2028, but it does sound like a, like a working wishlist that all of a sudden you're looking at a $3,000 starting price. Right. That's going to be between inflation and components and all that. I'm like, yes, are they going to be able to hold the price at two grand for future models? Will they retire a Touch ID model and only sell a newer one? Given how thin it is when it's opened up, do you think it's possible to potentially do an underscreen fingerprint sensor as opposed to the one on the side?

14:05Because I mean, again, you know, as a Pixel user, it works great for me, the underscreen fingerprint sensor. Yeah. I don't know. That would be, that would be intriguing. I think this just feels more obvious, like where it is and you can see it working. There's a little bit of mysteriousness when I'm putting my finger on the Touch ID sensor. I do think it's like, it's kind of maxed out at how thick it can be. Um, cause we used it quite a bit side by side with the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8, um, which

14:38is, you know, kind of the same size and shape. Um, but it is that bit thinner and it's a lot more comfortable to use one handed and just scroll, um, put in your pocket. Uh, so I, I would personally vote for anything that's going to make the phone thicker. Like, don't, don't do it, Apple. Let's go the other direction. Yeah. Uh, one of the, one of, cause there've also been a lot of these little tips and tricks that I've seen a lot of folks getting into early, early days.

15:11And, uh, quickly, a lot of people are now setting shortcuts because the phone gives you the ability to, uh, use whether it's open or closed as an input. And so people are saying, when I close my phone, if there's not an app open on the screen, then lock it automatically. And then I also saw, and I again sent to my brother, I said, some people have been enrolling this part of their finger into, uh, touch ID.

15:44And for people who are listening, it's sort of the, the segment closest to the palm and, uh, and are using that as a means of, of setting touch ID. I said, I don't know if it's possible, but maybe you could try it. And he said, it is, it is possible. And so now he's got squeeze grip as one of his touch ID and fingerprints. And he's using that to get into the phone now too. So I'm kind of loving these little hacks that people are figuring out as time goes on. And you had mentioned too, that, um, you know, Apple had said to journalists, uh, and roll

16:19multiple fingers. Were there other kind of guidelines that they provided that, uh, because to me that read as we know, we know. So, and then there's, now they're talking about Safari having a whole bunch of blank space on the side and that's another, we know, we know, are those cropping up as time goes on or were you kind of warned about that ahead of time? As much as you can tell us, of course. Yeah. Um, as far as like things we were sort of looking out for, there was a lot of back and

16:54forth where we were kind of like, you know, is there a right way and a wrong way to turn the thing? And it feels to us like there's a right way, but you know, they wouldn't comment on it or anything like that. Um, there's a lot of trial and error. It feels like, which again is so wild for an iPhone, like an iPhone has just been an iPhone forever. Um, so I think it's, it's fascinating to see people develop these like little tricks that

17:24they're doing. Um, enrolling multiple fingers was the one that, uh, I was like, there's just not a thing I would have thought, but, um, it does help you when you're, when you're using the phone. So, um, and as apps are develop, um, updating to like fully support, uh, iOS 27 and 27.1, um, I think we're going to see a little more, um, settling down, you know, it's, it's sort of a wild west right now of like, some apps are in this bucket and they open up in the

18:00middle of the screen and it looks awful. Some apps look great and they have all the controls in the place where you're going to see your, you're being taught to look for them, which is on the side. Um, so I think there is a bit of, of roughness right now, which is either exciting or annoying. Um, so by the time you get yours, Micah, it's, it's going to be smooth sailing, I think. Yay. It'll be all ironed out by the time. It's odd that my home view has a delivery date before.

18:31Oh my gosh. Yeah. I like three days before. And I'm just, I don't know where it is now. Cause I've tried to put it out of line of sight. So I don't have to get sad. I've got the case for it, uh, for the, for the, the one that you said reminded you of like, uh, dollar store, uh, shoes or something like that. Uh-oh, guilty. Yeah. Yeah. I have it right here. I have the case and not the, the duo right now, but this, um, yeah, it's the, called the folio case. It's Apple's, um, dollar store shoes.

19:01I don't know the references. I can't remember exactly what you had called them, but it's, is it the texture of it that gave you that? Is it, it is a texture. It's a color thing. Um, it's so funny. Yeah. It just, it does have the kickstand, which I appreciate. I had it up on the kickstand when we were making chili, um, this morning. Um, so I've been using it for that because I, I like having the kickstand kind of built in, um, but it does, it covers the, the front of the screen.

19:32So you have to kind of get used to like opening the phone and then using the phone and then, yeah, I, I don't know. I don't love it. Yeah, no, that's fair. Especially the fact that it's hiding some of the device that you would otherwise be using. I'm curious with the, because the kickstand is only on one side. How stable is it with, when it's on the kickstand? It's fine in landscape. Um, it's actually pretty, it's pretty, um, solid. You know, it look, it sort of looks and feels a little flimsy, but it, it does a good job

20:03when you're in that landscape orientation. There is, it doesn't do anything for a portrait. If you want to flip it, um, and use it that way, you're just out of luck. So I've been interested in how Apple has, uh, I mean, you have the Apple vision pro, we have the home view and we have the iPhone duo. And like, it's talk about three different, like, what is this for kind of, you know, scenarios. It's like Apple vision pro, I felt like they introduced without answering that question. And they don't know if they've still answered it. Like, but that was sort of the Apple watch. They didn't know what it was for precisely.

20:34They just knew they could make one. And now it's evolved into a thing that makes a lot of sense. And, and, you know, I just bought my, I bought a series 12. I was like, yeah, I've got a series eight. It's time to upgrade. I want the newer features. And I know what I'm using it for, for exercise and fitness tracking and tracking, you know, tracking, uh, heart and things like that. But the home view kind of like, uh, and the iPhone duo feels like it's got a very sharp focus. It's, it's got, uh, several different purposes, uh, people who know they want it, have a reason to do it. And they're releasing something that from, you know, your description and all the others out there, the hardware sounds like it is right snapped into place.

21:06And it's more an issue of, you know, hardware choices. What can they put in this device at this price point and manufacture at this point? And, and then third-party software, but also, you know, the system software and kind of the Apple apps, it sounds like they were ready to go also. So I felt like, felt reading your review and, and many others that there's a polish to this that a lot of Apple's new categories of devices haven't necessarily come with. Yeah, I, I think that like the tablet-ness of it, when you open it up, you're, you immediately

21:42are like, oh, okay, this is great. I can watch shows. I can do X, Y, Z. I had, I had our like Amazon grocery order on one side of the screen and my, my recipe, my shopping list on the other side. And you're like, this is just genuinely nice and helpful. And it's sort of like, how, how many of those things do you have where you're like, oh, I read a lot of PDFs on my phone in a car. Like, I would love that. So those things are, are, yeah, sort of baked in.

22:16And then there's, it has been fun watching all the, the kind of novelty apps come up too. It was like, developers got real excited and it's like, it makes grilled cheese or you can play battleship on it. And it's like those, it's a fun moment to have those things pop up. And I think it's going to settle down to like ordering your groceries and reading PDFs. When, one of the things that, uh, I saw people, well, again, reviewers kind of complaining about, and this is where it's an odd moment because part of what has always sold the iPhone,

22:52at least that's what Apple has always leaned into is the fact that there is a developer community that's making apps for it. And the app store is part of the appeal of the device. Most of the apps that I use are third party apps. Um, and so with that reviewers, not having access to duo supported apps, I think has led to some, uh, complaints, not even some, many complaints about the, the lack of, of apps that

23:24have been updated. And I wanted to get your take on that in particular, but also were there any apps that stood out to you, um, as you kind of wishing that, that it was updated. And the last thing that I'll say before I, uh, take it over to you is again, for me with my brother, who's not, I mean, he's obviously an enthusiast enough to want to buy one of these, but he's not like super steeped in tech every day. And so for him, and I was surprised by this. I didn't realize that this app wasn't updated. He said, I opened up Snapchat and it looks so

23:55stupid. I said, Oh, I said, they didn't up. Like I was shocked that Snapchat didn't have an update day one. And he's like, and I just feel like the design that they did for the apps that don't have support, it just looks bad. Like somebody should have designed that better. And I said, you know, now I'm starting to feel like maybe if, if it looks bad, what if that's not just a little bit of a way to pressure the developers into hopping on board as quick as Apple would never do something like that. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It was fascinating over the week that we had the phone and we were

24:31working on the review to see app updates come in, you know, stuff we had, we had sort of formed an opinion on and had a, had some video shot about it. It was like, well, we got to throw that all away and, and reshoot it now. So just for anyone who's, who's not paying attention to iPhone do 24 hours a day, like I am, there's like three categories that apps fit into right now. There's apps that are updated to iOS 26. And those are the ugly ones. They open up on the inner screen, just with giant

25:06black bars on either side. When an app is updated to iOS 27, it'll have the support for the dynamic resizing. So it'll take up the whole inner screen and stretch out, but it doesn't have controls that are specific to the duo. So when an app is updated to 27.1, that's when you get, you know, on the cover screen, it'll have controls along the side. You open it up and you'll have some of those controls on the side and a more thoughtful layout, you know, quote unquote. In a lot of

25:41cases, it was a good thing. We saw Slack, we do all everything in Slack. And that went from a iOS 27 stretched out app that was like, okay, this is, this is just really big and not very helpful to, you know, it gives you like columns now and the controls and that just felt like, oh, okay, this feels so much more functional. I'm actually seeing more information on this screen, not just what I was saying before, but bigger. The one I am desperate for is Google Docs.

26:17And like, not surprising that Google has not been in a giant hurry to update. It's iOS apps, but I am just like the day that that comes because it's a 26 app right now. So it's so tiny on the screen. Um, I have a habit. I like to get a foldable keyboard, like a little Bluetooth portable keyboard, prop up the folding phone, you know, the duo, and then just kind of write my blogs at the coffee shop.

26:49It's like a fun, fun little hack, I guess. Um, just, it's just not really possible on the duo right now. So just Google, if you can hear me. Didn't it take Google like four or five years before they finally made, um, Google Docs, uh, work properly on iPads? I think that's... Oh gosh, yeah. And some would argue it still has some issues, but it's odd because at the same time, I think their design team and their UX team work at different paces because they were quick to get

27:19onto liquid glass. Um, but yeah, I, I just, the way that I'm surviving through all of this is just by each day going into the app store and, uh, looking at my updates and seeing, oh, that one's been updated for the, oh, that's got a duo update. And, uh, thinking about the apps that are getting updates that are still not saying updated for duo. And then I'm just kind of going, okay, now I've got a note for that. Micah Vigil Day. What are we in now? It's the, uh, keep lighting virtual candles for you.

27:53Um, I wanted to also ask the other thing. Um, I just saw Apple really, I was surprised. I didn't think that the duo was going to get Apple's, um, uh, what is the word I'm looking for? You can fix it, uh, treatment so quick. And yeah, you, you saw the, uh, DIY fixing documentation and, uh, I just watched a video from the documentation that shows someone peeling off as part of the

28:28process and reinstalling the nano, uh, coating cover on top of the display. And first and foremost, I thought that was interesting that it's a, it is literally a coating or a film and it's not just the screen itself etched, but also, unless this was a deep fake, I should be clear. I, I don't know. Um, but yeah, the sort of repairability of this duo, that caught me off guard. Um, have you all,

29:00as The Verge kind of looked into the, uh, costs of, you know, if you break it, uh, what needs to be done and also then just repairability overall? Yeah, it's something I keep an eye on and really, um, in the past, like two years specifically has, has kind of come more to the forefront for me. Um, earlier this summer, I reviewed the Fairphone, um, six, six plus, I think, um, which is just like

29:31highly repairable and, um, you can, you can buy components for it. You can swap out the, the back panel just, just for fun, honestly, to put like a different attachment on it. And that was a real, like, oh, this rules, you know, like the, you think about the cost of a phone and if you're owning it for like three or four years, you know, are, are you going to drop it and pay for that repair? Are you paying for that just by having the Apple care or whatever it is? Um, there,

30:04those costs are sort of, um, hidden in a way where, where a phone, like the Fairphone is like, no, you can just buy a new battery from us and put it in yourself. Um, obviously something like the iPhone duo is going to be much, much more locked down. Um, but it, it's great to see that, that, you know, the guide is there. If you have the, um, the wherewithal to, to pry the, the nano texture film off of there, like Godspeed, that sounds, um, terrifying.

30:37It looks terrifying. Yeah. It looks terrifying. Yeah. Um, I, I only think if I had one, I would just pay the 49 bucks, even if I didn't have Apple care to have somebody else do it. Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. I don't, I don't have the guts to, to do anything to a folding phone, but yeah, that's my, my go-to is like get Apple care with this phone. It's going to cost so much to repair, just do it. I thought that, I mean, Apple has to factor in, uh, repair costs into the price of a device because of its first year warranty, even without buying extended Apple care. And I

31:10thought, you know, is 1999, it's not really the price of the device. It's the price of the, they need 30% of that to cover the repairs that are needed for this first generation model. I mean, they, you know, they've got modeling for everything. So God knows how they work out the matrix, or are they willing to like absorb, you know, $50 million of repair overages from their budget, if that's what it takes, because they need to get this out. But, you know, again, with the quality of the hardware, uh, aspect of this, I haven't heard reports. I know it's only it's, you know, it's been out very, very little period of time, but I remember with every

31:42previous folding phone or the first generations, there was always like, I got it. I opened it up and immediately there's missing pixels or this or that haven't seen that. And I expect people, you know, would love to get some viral attention or whatever, they shoot a video. And I, I figure if it were happening, we would know about it. So whatever's happening must be happening on either a very low scale or, you know, I mean, it can't be zero, but it's gotta be doing something. Yeah. It actually just in the last couple of days, I've seen a whole bunch of reports of, uh, people having a problem. Uh, and it's the same, pretty much consistently the same problem where it's the screen,

32:18uh, the, uh, right-hand side of the screen, uh, is getting white lines through it and basically breaking the screen. Okay. Oh, that's not good. There we go. Yeah. This may also be they've, you know, how many units do they make? What are they fixing and manufacturing processes? Will Micah's unit be delayed if they find something they have to fix before they ship it? No, it's already packaged. It's already somewhere. Nevermind. Don't like the Dyson. Don't even listen to me. Yeah. But the January units will maybe upgraded hardware wise. I just put a link in the discord to a nine to five Mac shows you. And I've seen a bunch of reports. There's, there's a whole,

32:53a bunch of people have posted pictures showing the same problem on their screens. Interesting. There you go. Oh, wow. Okay. Wow. That could be an issue. They all seem to break in the same way. The screen cracks down the center line of the hinge and a horizontal block of pixels on the screen is then stuck glowing white. We don't know the scale of the issue yet. Uh, and the amount of time it takes for the cracking to happen varies. Um,

33:23of course they always hold some back, you know, to, to replace, and they always love to capture those. So, uh, for, for testing. So if you, that's one of the things I remember Renee Ritchie teaching me, um, if you have, if you buy a new iPhone and anything even seems the slightest bit off to you, reach out to Apple support because they want those and want to get one into your hands that does work so that they can see if it's, you know, a process that is, you know, an overall issue that

33:57would end up being something that they need to fix in the, in the pipeline. Steve McLaughlin Back, uh, years ago when Apple used to let us talk to people inside the company, uh, a little further, I talked to a fellow who was in charge of, uh, what did they call it? Was ICE or something? Oh no, I shouldn't even say that. I think that's what the initial, the acronym was initialism. It was, uh, like their continuing engineering, uh, group inside the company for products that were continuing to sell because components would change. Things would change. They would get feedback. They'd have to do minor re-engineering tasks and keep the product functionally identical. I've always thought that would be a fascinating group to look at.

34:29Any company is like, how do you keep something? I mean, Apple doesn't keep things on sale for that many years anymore. So, you know, three, four or five years is a law for some of the Mac models, maybe, but, but it's still, you know, it's still a thing. Like, how do you, how do you get that feedback both for like, uh, like the first stage engineering that we need to get these cycled immediately back to the product line to ensure we're delivering, you know, our bulk of our initial product correctly? And then how do you keep stuff working? What feedback do you get and examine

34:59to improve things over, over the life of an existing product? Yeah, that's, that would be exhilarating and terrifying and also having to, you know, reach out and say, Hey, so this is the thing that's happening. And when you grab the phone, just this way, the signal drops. Can someone tell Steve? Sorry, you're, you're rotating it wrong, Micah. Yeah, right. Uh, Alison, anything else that's come up since your initial review or anything that you're kind of looking at now as you go into this next week with the device?

35:35Um, I'm so the, for the review period, I was traveling, I went to New York and that's where the team is. I'm out here in Seattle. Um, so now that I'm kind of back in my, my native environment, I'm sort of like trying out all the things. Like I, I forgot the phone in the other room because I'm, I was using that like tent mode where you have the clock on the outside. Um, and it gives you just a little like, um, yeah, a couple of widgets and it, I'm like,

36:08how is that going to work? Am I going to like that? Is it going to drain the battery super fast? Um, so I'm looking out for little things like that. Um, and so far it's, it's just been really nice. I prop the thing up while I'm folding laundry. My kid will do some kind of torture test on it, you know, which will yield interesting results. Um, but yeah, I'm, I'm kind of excited to just get it into my daily life and see what things pop up. But so far it's, it's nice. It's been good.

36:40Awesome. Well, uh, we will continue on with a few more Apple tidbits and a lot more to come here on this week's episode of this week in tech, but we do need to take a little break to hear from our dearly departed from this continent at Leo Laporte. Shoot. Hey everybody, this episode of this week in tech is brought to you by zip recruiter. Well, the holidays are upon us. They're coming close and businesses are hiring

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38:16on G2. Let zip recruiter find the right people for your roles, seasonal or otherwise. Try it for free today at zip recruiter.com slash twit. That's zip recruiter.com slash twit. Meet your match on zip recruiter. Zip recruiter.com slash twit. Thank you zip recruiter for supporting twit for all these years. They've been a very loyal sponsor. We appreciate it. Now back to the show. Thanks so much, Leo. And we are back with this week in tech. We are joined by a wonderful crew today. Glenn Fleischman, Sam Apple

38:53Samet and Allison Johnson here with us. And I wanted to round out the Apple chat today with the upcoming Pro Intel event. That is, we're hearing more hardware from the company. Of course, we have another event that seems to be for a kind of a smaller cast than you, than we've had with the bigger Apple events. Is this, are we feeling like, um, this is a, uh, something we can plan on going forward with Apple?

39:30Um, and do you think it's a positive, uh, way of doing things or is it, uh, a mat? Like, I guess in terms of something that's small, like a press release in a video to this middle ground where you have certain people going to the larger events like WWDC and the iPhone event where, uh, a very big group of people go and it's also streamed online. Um, why do we think they do these middle ground options?

Apple Pro hardware event preview

40:03Yes, because they can. I think it's great for Apple. I think it's great for Apple. I, I, I mean, they, it feels like they've been testing this idea in a lot of different ways. And, uh, I would say the media coverage, it's not, I mean, Apple has gone from, you know, we all remember the Apple is doomed era and it took a long time for Apple to shake that even then where they're, when they're on their way to becoming like a multi hundred billion dollar a year company. And now it's not like they're blessed, but they get some credit for not having invested early in AI. Like maybe there were so

40:34many crit, you know, critiques about that. And I think in the end they may have taken the right position in, in investing late and perhaps well, I mean, based on my experience, perhaps alone with Siri, AI and Apple intelligence, I feel like they have a found an interesting medium that may satisfy more people, but, but I'm sorry, but as a result of that, it feels like they get a lot of praise for what they do. And as they introduce many different pieces of hardware at different times or different operating systems and so forth, um, I think it's a great strategy for them to get the maximum

41:05amount of coverage without seemingly wearing out their welcome. Maybe they are going to wear out their welcome and they'll go back to bigger, fewer events. But so far I just see wave after wave of reporting about it and people's interest. And so I'm sure it sells more products soon. Well put, well put. Um, what are we expecting to see at this pro Intel event? Obviously pro hardware and, uh, Mr. Mark Bloomberg, uh, AKA Mark Gurman, uh, has, has given us, uh, you know,

41:36some understanding of what we can expect. Is it finally time for the, the, the wrist that, that Steve jobs used to always say we didn't want zombie arms. Yeah. Part of the thing. Are we going to be touching our screens now? I just had rotator cuff surgery, so I don't like the idea of this thing for a while, but no, sorry. You know, I think Mac, I think, I think when jobs talked about that, you know, it was more in the context of, you know, something like a touchscreen iMac, you know, a big screen, you know, which is typically a little

42:10bit further away from you. Um, and with a laptop, you know, I mean, I've, I've had windows laptops with touchscreens and they're, you know, they're fine. You know, I mean, it, most of the time you're not really using the touchscreen very much anyway. Uh, you know, mostly just for scrolling, maybe a little zooming, uh, from time to time, but you know, with a laptop, you know, it's not like you're stretching your arms up because your, your hands are on the keyboard and the screen is literally right

42:40there. Yeah. So it's not really any different from being, unless you're using the laptop with an external keyboard, I guess, but, uh, you know, it's, I don't, I don't think it's really going to be an issue. And frankly, I don't think most people are actually going to use the touchscreen component of it all that much. Um, you know, if, if, if my own experience is anything to go by and that, that, and other people I've seen with touchscreen laptops, you know, most of the time people aren't actually using the touch very frequently. Um, it's mostly just for, for some scrolling and zooming.

43:13So, um, I think the bigger thing is going to be the potential for an OLED screen and having that and the potential improvement in the display quality from the OLED. Yeah. I'm excited about the, uh, OLED screen for sure. I, I, I don't see this as much anymore, but I liked back when these touchscreen laptops first came out and they were the sort of thing where you could fold it back and then it was more of like a tablet and then you'd fold it back over

43:46and then it was back in its sort of standard thing. And then I got a Microsoft surface laptop a million years ago now. And, um, when I would use that, cause I would, uh, sometimes be on windows weekly at the time. And so for that podcast, I would always bring that laptop on. And I did find myself occasionally, as you were saying, Sam reached for the screen for specific instances for specific use cases. But what it was funny was how being on that laptop and then moving back to

44:21what was my typical, uh, mobile device, which was my MacBook air or my typical mobile PC was my MacBook air. Then I'd find myself booping the screen thinking that I could touch it. And Alison, it reminded me of you with face ID on the, the, the duo. Um, have you, for those of you who use a laptop right now that doesn't have touch, tell me about where you think your use would be improved by having touch on that device.

44:56I mean, my main work computer now is a MacBook pro, a 14 inch MacBook pro. And I frankly don't miss the fact that I can't, I can't touch it. It, uh, it's, it's not, you know, I, there's nothing that I do with it where I have a compelling reason to want to touch it. Especially if you've got a good, uh, touch pad, you know, scrolling with that, you know, is just, you know, it's just as good

45:26or better than actually scrolling it on the screen. I've tried to figure out where I could put the laptop the way I use it now because I use it mostly on the road. And when I'm, I've kind of got a downstairs office and, and like the rest of the, you know, house with the rest of the family. So I'll pull up the laptop sometimes there, put it on my lap, literal lap or sit at a table. And I like, none of those positions is reaching out. Can I reach out and point at the camera for those watching video? Can I reach out and touch? It's like just getting to the screen, uh, in that position feels awkward. Um, because I want that

46:00fold over capability you're talking about, if it did that. So I, you know, this is, is it a, feels like a feature in search of an audience in, in the question is, is this just a way for them to introduce it, get people used to the concept, get developers behind it with low stakes. And then there's a future model that is more oriented towards that. Um, and it becomes the baseline for the pro models is that they're going to have touchscreen moving forward. So it's a modality that people who are developers can count on and users can count on, but I don't, I don't see how I'm going to, like, I can see zooming. The one thing I always do though, I swear, I will actually

46:32look at the television set and reach my fingers out and pinch at it as if that would do something when I'm watching something like, Oh no, that doesn't work. I mean, I feel like they've trained me so well. So I think I say, I wouldn't do that. And then I'd be looking at a photo and I would grab the screen and I'd pinch it. And they would train me within like a day of just pinching and zooming and dragging and rotating with my fingers. Some of the most common, you know, tablet-y sort of things you do are iPhone things. So they would probably would get me, even though I don't think they would. I think Apple's in a, a weird moment of like trying to converge things, you know, liquid glass feels like

47:08a, an experiment of like, what if all this stuff looked the same? Shouldn't it look the same? That would be nice. And I don't know, there's little aspects of like, um, the inner screen of the duo. Like, is it an iPhone? Is it an iPad? It runs, it runs iPhone apps. Um, so you have one product over here and another one over here with two different operating system. It feels like that could be a moment of convergence. Maybe they're trying to prep us for like, well, what if everything was

47:39a touch screen and it all ran some kind of one beautiful unified operating system? I don't know. What if an iPad was a Mac? Ah! Yeah, can you imagine? It's almost Halloween. It could happen. Yeah, right.

47:55I, again, there are times where it makes sense, but those times are so few and far between that my bigger concern is what happens to my beautiful Mac OS, because that's my favorite of all of the platforms that Apple makes. Mac OS is my favorite. And what happens to my beautiful Mac OS when even more than they've already done now, it gets the touch target treatment, the TTT as it were. I am going to be really sad by the UI getting more messed up in order

48:35to support that way of interaction. And so, yeah, I don't know. Again, there are ways that Apple could convince me that having touch as an option is a good thing. And certainly one of those would be a convertible style laptop, but just a little screen I can reach out and touch. If that means that then my bars at the top and the stoplight icons have to be 1.4 times bigger than they already

49:09are, that's not a sacrifice that I want to make. Just so you can, you being Apple, play around with some new sort of paradigm whenever it comes to your hardware. And then, yeah, is there some world in which it's a solution looking for a problem? Or is it also a matter of a generation of people who are growing up right now where touch interfaces are their first interfaces and a disconnect between

49:49your screen and your interactions don't quite gel? And so this is preparation for the future. I don't know. I like, oh, sorry, go ahead. I just, I think that that concern is maybe a little bit overblown. I think, I think people are adaptable enough to go back and forth between physical keyboards and touchscreens and, you know, mice and track pads and whatever else we put in front of

50:19them. You know, so I, I don't just, just because, you know, maybe a lot of kids have grown up with phones and iPads, uh, or other tablets in their life. I don't think it's that big a deal for them to go to, you know, uh, a laptop or, or even a desktop with a separate, with a keyboard and not be using the screen to actually manipulate the material that's on the screen. Fair enough. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. I mean, as we were just talking about earlier, I sometimes after using the, uh, surface

50:54laptop then would reach out and touch a different screen. And so, yeah, our brains definitely can adapt to, to other things. Uh, all right. I think it's time for us to move along to some more stories and the next category I want to cover it's cars and transportation. And there happens to be someone here who knows a thing or two about cars and transportation. It's our car guy. So I wanted to ask you first and foremost, Sam, what have you kind of been, uh, looking at this week? As I know

51:26we've got earnings from Tesla plans for, um, maybe, uh, well, yeah, future plans for Tesla. And I also wanted to get your take because this is something that's been not part of the news recently, but I haven't had an opportunity to talk to you about, and that is sort of the state of the infotainment center or system in cars and in, uh, electric vehicles in particular and how that's like kind

51:58of a war zone right now. Yeah. So, I mean, for me personally, the, the big thing this week was I was

GM Forward and autonomous vehicles

52:05in New York for, uh, for a couple of days, uh, GM had an event on Wednesday, uh, called GM forward, which is a, a, a tech preview event. This is the second year they've done it in, in New York for reasons. Um, not sure why, why in New York, other than to maybe, they probably, I think they also did some, did a separate event for, uh, wall street analysts, but they, they were showing off some of their, their new technology and where they're going in the next several years. Um, and, uh, so we, they gave us a preview of what they're doing with their next generation EVs, some stuff that they're

52:38doing with HMI, human machine interface, like you were talking about with screens and so on. Um, also their, their personal autonomy efforts, uh, you know, bringing automated driving to personally owned vehicles as opposed to robo taxis. Um, so we saw a lot of interesting stuff there. Um, and, uh, you know, one, one of the, uh, one of the big things, you know, on the EV side was last year at the event, you know, they, they had announced their, their next generation batteries, their

53:10lithium manganese rich chemistries. And, um, at that, at last year's event, the plan was still, they were going to use three different types of lithium ion batteries going forward. What lithium iron phosphate for entry-level vehicles, nickel rich chemistries for the, the high end, higher performance vehicles. And then, uh, these LMR batteries for kind of the in-between stuff. And now they've pivoted and they've said, you know what, we're, we're getting good enough

53:40performance with these new batteries. Um, and the cost is low enough. We're just going to use these across the board. And so they showed off, you know, they told us what they're doing with that and gave us a preview of their next generation EV platform. Um, but also, uh, talked a lot about the new computing architecture in there. Uh, so they're, you know, today, you know, most of the vehicles on the road today, you know, built over the last 40, 50 years have lots of computers in them, but they're distributed. They're, you know, little tiny microcontroller systems that are scattered all

54:13over the vehicle. And a typical modern vehicle has anywhere from 50 to a hundred electronic control units scattered around the car. And they're consolidating that down into one, one big computer that is going to be powered by, uh, at least in the higher end vehicles and NVIDIA Thor chip, which is that's, that's based on their Blackwell architecture, which is what you find, um, in most of the AI data centers in the last couple of years. NVIDIA is now starting to transition the data center stuff to their next generation, their Vera Rubin architecture, but Blackwell, you know,

54:48this is a really powerful chip. Um, and, uh, there's, these are starting to show up in cars and that's, that's coming to GM vehicles in 2028. Um, and they're going to have, um, highway autonomous driving. So completely hands-off, eyes-off driving, um, you know, unsupervised, uh, unlike, uh, a certain other brand, uh, that has something they call full self-driving, but you actually have to supervise it and pay attention and be ready to take over at any second. The GM system is designed to be unsupervised.

55:20And if the driver doesn't take control when it asks you to, then it will just safely carry on and bring the vehicle over to a safe stop when it reaches the limits of what it can do. Now, when you, when you talk about those, those features, these are like presumably tested alongside NHTSA, they get some sort of stamp of approval who says, Hey, it's totally okay. If you do unsupervised. So the, the funny thing about, uh, NHTSA, which is the national highway traffic safety administration,

55:53you know, they write the federal motor vehicle safety standards. As of today, October, 2026, there are no federal motor vehicle safety standards that govern any of the assisted or automated driving technologies. Nothing at all. I was going to say that. Yeah. So as far as the feds are concerned, you know, they've been investigating some of the stuff that Tesla and others are doing, but there are no actual rules that govern this. Um, so, uh, at, at a state level, it's a little bit different, you know, cause, cause the, the way, the way regulations are set up in the U S is the federal

56:27government's responsible for setting the safety standards for the vehicles themselves. You know, so, you know, here's the standards for lighting, here's the standards for braking, here's the standards for, um, occupant protection in a crash, you know, so, you know, if the vehicle crashes, you know, you have, you have to, you know, have seatbelts and airbags and all this other stuff, but, um, they have nothing for assisted and automated driving. And then the states are responsible for licensing, uh, drivers and registration. And so, um, you know, what we're, you know, what we are,

57:03what we do have in a bunch of States, um, you know, there's, there's a bunch of States now over the last 10 years that have passed new, new rules, um, for licensing to govern automated vehicles, you know, primarily targeting things like robo taxis, but also, also covers personally owned vehicles. And, um, so, uh, like Michigan, for example, where I live is, is one of the States that has done that. And I was actually just reading through the regulations again the other day. Um, and the

57:35regulations in Michigan and a bunch of other States, if it's a, it's a vehicle, it's got an automated driving system. They can sit when the system is active, they consider that system, the driver. Um, and then if anything happens, if, you know, if there's a crash or anything else, that's the many of the manufacturer of that system is liable for that. So, you know, with a human driver, when, when you're driving in manual mode, if you crash, you know, if you caught, if you do something that causes a crash, you're personally liable or, you know,

58:09your insurance is with an automated system. Now the manufacturer becomes liable, which is, you know, an interesting shift. Um, and so, um, I think, you know, for, for the near term, I think, you know, especially for personally owned vehicles, that's going to be, that's, that's the thing that automakers are trying to figure out is, okay, where can I deploy, where can I make this available? Um, you know, where the rules will allow it. Uh, and so there's

58:39that, you know, the other thing, uh, uh, the, uh, the, the one thing at, at a federal level that they do have, um, is some of the robo taxis that are out there, like the Zoox robo taxis. I don't know if you've seen those around San Francisco, um, Micah. Uh, now I live in Portland now, but I saw, I did see, I saw some robo taxis back when I was there. Yeah. Yeah. So the, the Zoox robo taxis has been fighting it as I recall. I don't know. The Zoox robo taxis are these, these little pods, these little four seat pods. Oh, right.

59:12Okay. Yes. Carriage seating. So, you know, two people on each side facing the center of the vehicle and it's, it's open in the middle and there's no human controls in there. And this is also what Tesla is trying to do with the cyber cab, you know, there, so there's no steering wheel, no pedals. And, uh, even though federal regulations don't govern the automated driving system itself, they do require human controls. You have to have a steering wheel. You have to have pedals. You have to have certain other control devices. And so this has been, um, you

59:44know, they, they have a process that allows manufacturers to apply for a waiver, um, from some of these rules. If they, if they don't apply to that vehicle, obviously for a fully automated robo taxi, you don't really need the human controls, uh, or things like mirrors, uh, external mirrors. And so, um, Zoox was the first, uh, company. Neuro was actually the first company to get one of these waivers. Um, that, um, but they were doing, that was for their little,

1:00:14uh, robot delivery vehicle, uh, which doesn't carry any people. Uh, Zoox was the first one to get a waiver for a vehicle that carries passengers. Um, and, uh, but the thing is for what GM is doing, um, they are selling, they're going to, they're planning to sell a vehicle that has all the controls so it can be driven fully manually. Um, and it's, it's going to, it won't need any of these waivers. So they don't have that problem to worry about. They just have to figure out, you know, what States are they allowed to, uh, have the system be able to activate

1:00:49in for, uh, person, you know, for, uh, fully autonomous driving, uh, without the human supervising. This is kind of wild to me because it just sounds like passing, like, I, can I pass the buck? And if I can't pass the buck, then I have to figure out like, oh God, I feel so cynical to me. Um, I was trying to. No, no, you're right. You're right. Whatever it is you're about to say is correct. But that's what, just that in and of itself, I feel is a cynical take. Not, not me, but the companies that they're saying, um, you know, if, if trying

1:01:25to release this technology, but if it can't be the fault of the person that's driving, then we're going to be even more cautious about it. Uh, we're going to do. Well, I mean, but that's, I mean, that's the right thing to do. Um, you know, if, if the, if the, if the person sitting behind the steering wheel is not actively driving and they're not required to supervise, you know, if you're giving them an automated driving system that they don't have to supervise, then yeah, it, it should, the liability should be on the manufacturer. Yeah. You know, whoever, whoever, whoever built that automated driving system, you know,

1:01:57whether it's, uh, you know, whether GM's doing it in-house, uh, some companies, uh, are working with third-party partners like, uh, Stellantis is working with a company called Wave, a British company. Uh, others are working with companies like Mobileye, um, who, you know, whoever is, uh, whoever is building that system, they have to be responsible for it. And that, that puts the onus on them to make sure that the system is in fact safe. And this is part of the reason why Tesla specifically has, you know, when you look, you see full self-driving parentheses

1:02:31supervised, they, they will not, they have not said they are not taking responsibility for their system for consumer vehicles. So if you are driving a Tesla and you put it into full self-driving mode, you engage full self-driving. If something happens, if there's a crash, you are responsible, not Tesla. See, okay. So yeah, I think what I was saying was I, it's, it's, it's silly of me because why would I think in this world, this is the case I'm saying, I wish that I, now I have to believe

1:03:05that they would not be as motivated to do it right if they weren't liable, but I would want in a perfect world for them to be as motivated, even if it wasn't them being responsible for crashes in the end. That's, that was more my, my. Yeah, no, and you're right. I mean, ideally, you know, that would be the case. And I, I think, you know, for, for most companies, um, you know, they prefer for their customers not to get killed, you know, they, you know, makes it hard to have repeat customers when they keep

1:03:37dying on you. So, um, although, you know, that didn't work out so well for the, I mean, for the tobacco industry, that didn't seem to matter, but, um, automakers certainly, you know, prefer to have their customers come back and buy another vehicle, uh, in a few years. And so, you know, there, between, uh, between product liability laws and, and regulations, you know, there, there is an incentive for them to try to do this as safely as possible. Yeah, there, there is an analogy to this, which was in the, uh, strangely in the aircraft industry,

1:04:08which is that, uh, for a long time, uh, airline manufacturers were, had essentially unlimited eternal liability for issues with, uh, planes. And, uh, this came up in many, many lawsuits. And it also didn't matter if the plane often had been modified in certain ways or parts replaced. It was a whole thing. And, uh, how to look this up, it was, uh, 1994, the law was changed to limit that liability to 17 years in, in a, in like a lot of circumstances, but they thought the entire, uh, U S based, uh, aircraft industry was going to implode besides the big, uh, besides Boeing

1:04:42and a couple of big makers, uh, because of this liability issue where the manufacturer retained so much liability. So I hope they're learning a lesson from that in terms of the regulatory, uh, infrastructure. And it's also unclear even after fixing that airplane law or revising it, if it did revitalize the industry, but, um, it seems like a cautionary tale of a few challenges, but yeah, Boeing aside, I don't know. Yeah. I wish that they had, uh, speaking of the Seattle area, I wish they had a few more people in the, the administrative or the, uh, management there actually thought, well, what if we save people's lives? Yeah. Something, something

1:05:17that occurs to me and I'm sorry, this is a little bit of a tangent, but kind of going on the, um, you know, the cars made for humans being driven by robots, um, moment is, I think there's a weird parallel in, uh, I've been testing some of the AI agents, you know, like your, your muse, um, and all those. And it's, it's just interesting to see a robot in, in a human made world. And if it's like a robot, that's like clicking around on a website, looking for information for me, you just see so

1:05:51quickly. You're like, this is not how you would design any of this if we just had robots using them. And it, you know, it's funny. I hadn't really thought too much about the, the, I saw those Zooks, um, vehicles in San Francisco. You're just like, that is a goofy looking car, but why would you have a steering wheel and pedals and mirrors and all that if, if the system doesn't need it? And it'll be interesting to see how much of like our, our physical world in, in the internet and all

1:06:21the things we interact with get remade in a, in a more robot friendly way. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, that's, you know, it's, that's certainly a challenge for, um, for automated vehicles, you know, especially for robo taxis, uh, you know, because, you know, we, one of the, one of the challenges that robo taxi operators have is figuring out, okay, where can I actually pull over to drop off a passenger or pick up a passenger? Uh, you know, getting curb access, you know, is,

1:06:51is difficult, uh, in a lot of places. And so, uh, you know, sometimes, you know, if you've, if you've used a Waymo or Zooks or, you know, uh, you know, a Tesla robo taxi, you know, if you're in Austin or a couple other places, um, they, you know, sometimes, you know, you will summon a vehicle, you know, if you're, if you're summoning a regular Uber or Lyft, you know, it will come up, you know, and it'll pull up, you know, right by where you're standing and, you know, it might double park momentarily while you, you know, go hop in the vehicle,

1:07:23but, um, the robo taxis aren't necessarily allowed to do that. And so they have limits on where they can do pickups and drop-offs. Actually, Las Vegas is a really interesting example. Um, because Zooks is operating their robo taxis in Las Vegas and along the Las Vegas strip, um, vehicle, you know, um, whether it's taxis or ride hail vehicles, they are not allowed to pick up passengers. On Las Vegas Boulevard. So if you are walking along, if you're on the sidewalk, standing in

1:07:55front of a hotel, uh, on Las Vegas Boulevard and you summon an Uber, they cannot pick you up on the street there. Um, because you know, that's, it's a local regulation in Las Vegas. They have to go around to one of the, you know, wherever the, the pickup spot is at that particular hotel. And then you have to go find that, uh, you know, and if you're, if you spend any time in Las Vegas, uh, especially around CES, you know, trying to figure out, okay, where, where's the pickup, the, the ride hail pickup spot at this massive hotel more lost in my life than trying to get an Uber at a hotel in

1:08:32Vegas. Yeah. So there's, there's all kinds of, you know, these quirks that they have to deal with, um, that, you know, these vehicles have to deal with. Um, but it's, it's going to be interesting, you know, 2028 is going to be an interesting year because there's going to be a bunch of companies bringing out these, uh, unsupervised, uh, partially automated systems, uh, like what GM is doing. You know, GM system is going to be designed to work on highways first and then gradually expand to city streets and other, other roads. Um, but, uh, Ford is planning to bring one out,

1:09:04um, Rivian, uh, uh, Lucid, uh, a whole bunch of other companies are planning to launch similar systems in that timeframe and around, around about 2028. Uh, so it's, um, going to have to keep an eye on things. One, one interesting thing that did just come up, uh, the other day from NHTSA though, is, uh, they're, they put out a notice of proposed rulemaking. So for vehicles that are operating in an automated driving mode like this, um, they are going to use, um, these, um, uh, cyan lights. Uh,

1:09:39so you'll have cyan signal markers. So I mean, right now, you know, for brake lights, we have, we have red headlights are white, um, turn signals are amber, uh, typically. And, uh, so they'll have extra cyan lights that that's, that's an indication that that vehicle is operating autonomously. Cool. So, so if you see a car with cyan lights turned on, um, keep, you know, stay away, you know, there's might not be anybody, uh, paying attention. Is there actually, I think we need to

1:10:12take a quick break, but when we come back, I want to ask you because Alison, you've just now like blew my brain and thinking about, uh, shifting the world to something that's more robo-friendly or how that might start to happen. I want to ask you, Sam, when we come back, how would highways and roads, um, be improved in order to better give, uh, autonomous vehicles the ability to see what they need to see and do what they need to do. But let's hear from Leo Laporte for our next ad break.

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1:12:59thinking about the way that we've kind of, uh, had these new systems as, as Alison was pointing to, um, adapt to our environment, but it's possible that we might start to see some adapt. I can barely take my own self seriously with this turtleneck on. Anyway, um, adapt back the other way around with, uh, changing our environment. And so I was asking before the break, and I'm curious to hear, Sam, um, a, is there any push for changes to our infrastructure that would better support autonomous

1:13:37vehicles? And if not any push for it, what are people saying, you know, the folks that are working on this stuff and from what, you know, that would help autonomous vehicles operate better in, uh, in our existing infrastructure, but with, you know, slight changes? Yeah. So, um, you know, for the most

Road infrastructure for self-driving cars

1:14:00part, you know, these vehicles are designed to operate within the existing infrastructure. Uh, so, you know, looking at, you know, things like traffic signals and, uh, road markings, uh, lane markings, and so on. Um, and in most cases, you know, using, using mapping, uh, to, uh, give it a preview of what's coming up. Uh, but there are some things that can be done, uh, and, and that have been tested in a variety of cities and variety of locations over the last decade, um, that would definitely help.

1:14:30So, you know, if you think about, you know, when you're driving, you know, one of the things we do when we drive is we often, uh, use nonverbal communications to communicate with other drivers, to communicate, communicate our intent. Uh, you know, you're, uh, you're sitting in traffic and, um, there's, uh, an exit from a parking lot, uh, and, you know, you stopped at a, stopped at a red light and, uh, you know, you could move forward 10 feet and be right up on the bumper of the car in front of you, but there's somebody waiting to get out. And so you wave to them and say, okay, come on,

1:15:02you know, you can come on and you can come out of there and, you know, take that spot. Um, or, you know, when you're at a four-way stop, uh, you can, you know, do you have that nonverbal communication, uh, to negotiate who's going to go first at the four-way stop, uh, if two cars arrive at the same time. So, um, there's ways that we can do that, um, technologically that would help, uh, improve the performance of these vehicles, make them safer to operate by using things like vehicle to vehicle communications. Um, you know, so having the vehicle send messages to each other,

1:15:36uh, and share, you know, what their intent is, you know, so if a vehicle is going to be slowing down, uh, or pulling over to stop, you know, communicating that, um, or, um, you know, other, other, or, you know, if it's going to change lanes, uh, you know, obviously they've got turn signals, but also sending that message, you know, radio messages back and forth. That's, that's something that's been tested. And there was, there was a proposal back in 2016 to actually mandate that for all new vehicles. Uh, but then, um, the administration that came into power in 2017,

1:16:09uh, did nothing with that and it was eventually dropped. Um, but, um, there's also things like vehicle to infrastructure communications, you know, cause one of the things, you know, we've got these sensors on the vehicles, we've got cameras and radars and LIDARs, but they're all limited to line of sight. So they can't see around corners, just like we can't see around corners. Um, so if there's a, if you're, especially in an urban environment, oftentimes you'll have large buildings at, at an intersection. And so your line of sight is limited, uh, to what's

1:16:39coming on the cross street. Um, one of the things that they've been experimenting with is putting up sensors, uh, at intersections. Uh, so you have, you know, radar camera or LIDARs at, uh, the intersections and then they're broadcasting out information about if there's a vehicle approaching. Uh, so you're extending the situational awareness of the automated driving system beyond what its sensors can see directly and things like that can make the operation of those vehicles much, much safer.

1:17:11Wow. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. I, I've kind of always wanted to have the, my back window. This is for human in vehicle to human in vehicle communication. Wouldn't it be so cool if your back window just was like an led sign and you could write a message? I would, I know that some people would abuse it. I would genuinely just want to be like, Hey, your headlights are off or, uh, oops, sorry about that. That's another example that, you know, we do sometimes, you know, if

1:17:42you're, you know, driving at night on a rural road, um, and you know, you may, you may have your high beams on and you forget. Um, and so sometimes, you know, you'll flash your head, flash your high beams to let somebody know, Hey, you know, or, you know, um, you know, sometimes, you know, people will flash their high beams to signal other things, you know, signal the presence of, um, you know, members of the local constabulary. Uh, so there's all, you know, all kinds of, uh, ways that we communicate with each other, uh, even with what we have in our vehicles today. Yeah. I'm just going

1:18:14to say there's a reason airdrop was, uh, turned off to be, uh, from the everyone setting and, uh, yeah. And it was only half because, uh, China wanted it to be shut off for this. There's a good, there's some plane plates in which, uh, the pilot said, I'm going to turn this plane around if you recall. So, well, actually, before we go on, there is, there is one, there, there's an interesting bit of technology that's out there now that's in some vehicles already. There's a company called Haas Alerts, um, that has been equipping emergency vehicles with transponders. So ambulances, fire

1:18:47trucks, police vehicles, but also construction, uh, vehicles at, at road construction sites with transponders. And, uh, they, um, they, they brought, you know, the vehicles broadcast their location, um, and their direction and speed to Haas Alerts cloud. And then, um, Stellantis was actually the first one to adopt that, but the Haas Alerts, um, messages also come through Waze. Um, and, uh, and so you, if, as you're driving along, you may get an alert that there's an emergency vehicle

1:19:20approaching, um, you know, maybe coming up behind you and you might not be able to see it yet, or coming up, coming in your direction, uh, or there's a construction zone. Um, I was just recently driving, um, a, um, a Jeep, uh, new Jeep Cherokee and driving past, uh, Detroit airport was a bunch of construction, construction going on there on I-94. And every time I went through there, I would get, as I was approaching it, I would get the messages about, uh, upcoming construction zone. And again, that's another example where those, those messages could be used to alert,

1:19:53direct vehicles, uh, of potential hazards, uh, things they need to watch out for. Same thing goes for, um, uh, road surface condition. You know, if it's, if it's icy, you know, if you've got a vehicle that is driving along and, you know, hits, hits a piece of black ice and, um, you know, it can alert other vehicles around it that, Hey, the road is icy here and, you know, you know, provide an alert and the instrument cluster. All I want is a little button I can press that says the driver around me is an idiot. And then when that driver gets enough reports for enough people,

1:20:25this is, I'm stealing a Gallagher comedian idea years ago, he said, everyone should have driving bumper cars and we'd all have big, big, uh, rubber, um, uh, darts we could fire at other cars. And so if a car had enough rubber darts on it, the police would pull it over. And I'm like, let's just do that electronically and anonymously. That car police are like, we, we got 700 reports. You are a jerk. We're going to review the footage. Like upvoting and downvoting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure Reddit voting on cars would be great. That was my best idea. Um, all right. We should move along

1:20:58to, uh, Oh, actually I did, I did want to briefly touch on because there was a story, um, in the

In-car infotainment and Spotify

1:21:06automotive, uh, this week about, uh, it was kind of a small one about Spotify launching its native in car app. And it made me think about right now, and you were just talking about how you keep an iPhone around so that you can test CarPlay stuff, but it made me think about CarPlay and, uh, Android Auto and the companies, the car manufacturers who are still making their own independent infotainment systems that, uh, some that lock out the competition there. Um, where do you see kind of

1:21:42the future going? Is it going to continue to lean into your smartphone being the system that serves your car? Or do you think we're going to start to see that disappear for built-in systems? And then I'd love to hear like for you personally, have there been any manufacturers whose infotainment systems you felt like you could have been convinced or could be convinced to use in place of Android Auto or CarPlay? Um, so, you know, automakers would like, would prefer to not have people use, uh, a smartphone

1:22:20projection system. Um, you know, when GM announced a couple of years ago that they were going to not have smartphone projection supported in their EVs, uh, a lot of people got really upset about it. So it's just cause GM wants all that, all that information. Well, GM already has all the information about what you're doing, where you are, you know, they've got the GPS sensors in the car. They already know what you're doing in the car. They don't need to lock out, um, Apple CarPlay or Android Auto to do that. Um, but you know, what they would like to do is have you running, um, some of the,

1:22:55some more apps natively in the, in the vehicle, um, you know, so that there's potential for them to do deals, uh, for example, uh, with a Starbucks or, you know, some other, you know, some, uh, dealers, you know, to, uh, when you, when you need service or when you want to get a cup of coffee or, you know, get a Domino's pizza, uh, to, um, maybe get a cut of that transaction. Every time you do that through the app that they've got in the vehicle. Um, the other thing that they, um, that they want

1:23:27to do though, is when, when they have control of the system, you know, that you're using in the car, um, you know, they can, they can provide some features that, um, the smartphone projection system can't. So for example, um, one of the things that GM, uh, has done, you know, they have Android automotive, the Google built in stuff. So they're using Google maps in their vehicles and on their vehicles that have super crews, uh, which is their hands-free, but eyes on assisted driving system.

1:23:58Um, they, they made some modification. They worked with Google to make some modifications to the Google maps that's running natively in the vehicle. Uh, so that, you know, how, when you put it, when you navigate, navigate with Google maps, you get that thick blue line showing your, your route, which, you know, where, where you're supposed to go. Um, when you're on a road that supports, um, super crews, then there's a thin white line down the middle of that. So, you know, when there's, um, when there's a, a, a, a location where you can go hands-free. Um, they also, uh, added functionality

1:24:34in there that uses the, um, the Google maps, um, lane, uh, lane guidance, you know, so when you're using Google maps for navigation and, you know, you're coming up on your exit, you know, it'll show you, you know, here's the lanes and it'll tell you which lane you should be in for your upcoming exit. Well, now super crews can read that and it will automatically change lanes for you to get you in the correct lane for your exit as you're approaching your exit. Um, so, uh, and then they're also using it for improved, um, guidance, uh, for charging for their EVs. So it'll tell you,

1:25:10you know, if you set a route that is beyond the current range of your car, you know, it'll say, here's where you should probably stop. Um, and how long you should, you know, what your estimated charge is going to be when you get there and how long you should sit there and charge. And so it can, it can guide you for the most economical route or the fastest route. Um, you know, depending on what the charging capability of that car is. So there's all kinds of things that they can potentially do when it's, when they control it. Um, you know, I think most of the, the Android automotive systems,

1:25:42the Google built-in systems generally work pretty well. Um, there are some other apps I would like to see them supporting, um, you know, cause they have the Google play store in there, but they don't have support right now for any messaging apps, for example. Um, which, you know, I'd like to see them add that, uh, so messages, uh, can, can pop up on the screen, uh, or, you know, I can send a, send a text message by voice, uh, you know, to let somebody know I'm running late or whatever it is. Um, but you know, some of the other native systems, um, like, um, you know, Rivian system,

1:26:18the Rivian software is generally pretty good. Um, and it's pretty stable. Um, the, uh, the latest software from Toyota is actually surprisingly good. Their latest generation system that they just launched this year is actually quite good. Uh, so there's, there's some good systems out there. Nice. Well, uh, I'm, I'm happy to hear that, uh, that I don't know that there, it seems like over time it's gone from a place of just, Hey, we've got this basic stuff that we can do

1:26:50to, Oh, people actually do care about this and we've got competition. So maybe let's focus some internal teams on making, uh, infotainment experiences that are, uh, valuable and would draw people in for sure. Yeah. Well, you know, there's one other issue with the projection systems is they're, they're not, I mean, you know, people like to use them, but my experience, you know, I drive pretty much everything out there. Uh, I drive a lot of different, I drive different vehicles every

1:27:21week and most of the projection systems can be a little flaky, a little unstable. And a lot of times you'll be driving down the road and all of a sudden it loses connection to your phone. And it's like, you can't get it reconnected while you're driving, you know, and you're, you're using that for your navigation and, uh, or your media playback. And, you know, it becomes a real, uh, real pain point for a lot of people. And the, the in-vehicle systems, um, you know, tend to be more stable because they, they're not going to lose connection to themselves. I'll tell you, it works really great

1:27:53as a magnet. Cause I don't, I've never owned a car with CarPlay or any decent projection system. So a magnet typically doesn't lose connection. So that's, uh, that's so far next, next car upgrade coming sometime in the next, uh, one to 15 years. We'll, uh, I'll have to deal with that. All right. Let's take a quick break here on this week in tech. We'll be back in a moment. Leo, take it away. Hey everybody. This episode of this week in tech is brought to you by Tanium. AI has changed the clock on cyber threats. Models like Claude Mythos can find and exploit

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1:29:36twit. We thank them so much for supporting this week in tech. And now back to the show.

PHP critical vulnerabilities and fixes

1:29:41All right. Thank you very much, Leo. We are back from the break and it's time to talk about, well, a huge, huge story that happened this week and has led to a lot of panic and hardening of security and concerns about the future of online services and everything in between. That's because