Apple vs Meta: Who Actually Innovates? TikTok Ban Update, Sonos CEO is Out, iPhone 17 Thick

Apple vs Meta: Who Actually Innovates? TikTok Ban Update, Sonos CEO is Out, iPhone 17 Thick

Show Video

Can't innovate anymore, my. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. This week is TikTok ban. Is it happening this Sunday? We're gonna cover that. Plus the Sono CEO and several other executives are out with a new interim Apple really stepped up its marketing game with Severance and Silo in the real world. ChatGPT is getting tasks and Mark Zuckerberg is calling out Apple saying they don't innovate anymore.

So we're gonna talk about what has Apple done to innovate since Steve Jobs. This episode is brought to you by Notion and you, the members who support us directly. I'm one of your hosts, Stephen Robles, and joining me as always from Narnia is my friend Jason Aten. How's it going, Jason? Jason posted a photo pretty much annually about the snow, huge snow surrounding his office, which is a shed in his backyard. And it's very nice.

I'll have to... one social media stick that works and it's just every year when we get our first big, as if I've never done it before, I just post about how we're now entering our Narnia era. No, no, you have popular social media posts when you say controversial things and then people troll you.

No, no, it's just nice to know. I forgot to ask you about the movie quote last week. And so I have to do that in a second. But obviously, you know where the quote is from this week. It's not a movie quote, but it. and wasn't he referring to the Mac Pro maybe? Which is ironic considering how stagnant that product is.

That is true. Anyway, that's part of that's for the second half of the show. We have talked about innovation.

But last week I had a quote I said you wake up at SeaTac, SFO, LAX, O'Hare, Lose an Hour. Yeah, do know what it's from? there you go. Yes, you got it.

I've actually never seen it. I'm gonna be honest. I have to see that.

As someone with a movie podcast, it's probably required. Yeah, I would actually, would, it'd be worth the membership I pay for months to just hear you two talk about Fight Club. It's, there's so, I would love to hear Nate talk. I have to, okay, but before we get into the news, Jason, I have to tell you something that's been weighing on my mind and I just have to, have to get it out. Okay. You have no idea what I'm about to tell you.

I did a big, USB microphone review for Riverside. I had like 12 microphones that I ordered off Amazon and I was going to return them all yesterday, packed them all up in boxes, got all the things. And I realized once I got home that I forgot to put one of the microphones in the box.

So this is the Yeti studio. And when I got home and sat back at my desk from the UPS store, my heart just sank. And Jason, I don't know what's gonna happen. Am I gonna go to jail? Are there gonna be people coming to my door? And I don't know what's gonna happen. I'm so scared.

It's all I could think about. I don't know what to do. on. You paid for this microphone? And you sent back an empty box? Apparently, that was not my intention. I've returned many things to Amazon over the years. You're way way way overthinking this.

You just own it now. I'm just saying you bought a mic you paid for it. it though. I don't want it.

So I don't know what happens. guess Amazon will send me an email like, hey, doofus, like you didn't put this in the box. Yeah. Okay. gonna just give you the refund and be like, I don't know. I'm so scared because like they're gonna open this box and this man is a criminal.

So I don't know what to do about it. I know. I know that's and there's also three other mics in that same box.

So hopefully they will see like, okay, he's at least partially honest. It was it was totally oversight. what Stephen is doing right now is he's trying to create an out like a public record of I didn't. So like later, later when he's going, this is going to be introduced as evidence in whatever happens here. Supreme Court's gonna hear the TikTok case and then it's gonna be me right after it talking about this microphone I didn't put in a box.

I'm so scared. Anyway, we'll see what happens. We have lots of stuff talk about, but also five star review shout outs, new for 2025, BME07 from the Netherlands, battery percentage on, which can I just say, I was testing a MagSafe battery the other day and I turned battery percentage on to monitor it. It looks terrible. I don't know how anybody does it. I'm sorry.

I still don't like Jason's just staring at me, but anyway, percentage on. Doc? I don't know what he meant by that. But anyway, thank you, BeMe07, for the five star review.

Sundayworld85 from Canada. He says he agrees with you, Jason, that the dots should be off in macOS. I don't know how to feel about it.

is one of the, some of the things we talked about I just don't care about, but I do, I have just told you what it is I do, right? But this one I feel like I was surprised to the extent at which people still have the dots on. Like it feels completely foreign to me, the idea that people would want that. Not that like, not that it's, mean, I don't know, like the docs, the percentage on in your, you know, up in your phone and stuff, or which pocket you carry. Those feel like just like preference things, right? And they just develop over time, whatever one you did for a while, you just keep doing it. But having those dots there is so inferior of an experience that I just don't understand it.

well, and I mean that like, I don't mean that insultingly. I mean, I mean, like anybody who still has them on and feels passionately about it. I would just tell you if you could make it two weeks with them off, you would never turn them back on.

I mean it like you would never. It's like someone who drinks cream in their coffee forever and they just decide I'm going to just try just black coffee. If you could make it through two weeks, I don't think you'd ever put cream in your coffee again. Is this how I become an old man? I have to turn the dots off and then drink black coffee. Are these the steps? my word.

Well, what's funny is I have the dots on, but I also hide the dock. So it's kind of like, I don't see him anyway. All right. But GJ from the UK, the third five star review said, we're entertaining and insightful tech chat. So thank you, GJ.

Also battery percentage on dominant hand pocket personalized ads off, which we didn't ask for that, but I guess he turned that off on his iPhone. So, and he says, Toe. good job. Toe fungus ads not present.

I feel like we can all agree on this one. There should be no debate. Does anybody want those ads? No, but I also I don't want a bunch of screenshots of people saying I get the toe fungus ads Although I'm curious if anybody else besides Jason gets them because maybe they are targeted Jason.

We don't anyway Let's get into the news listen I think Apple heard our discussion the marketing team specifically and they probably a different marketing teams for different things But the marketing for Apple TV plus original content has stepped up the game they had a Severance pop-up glass cube in Grand Central Station earlier this week to advertise the second season of Severance. I just have to say, amazing, amazing marketing. This is a little video I'll link to it. yeah, I just, okay, you did it. That's amazing.

It was amazing. Also, I'm kind of surprised because isn't it Grand Central Terminal, not station? The station is within the terminal, but the terminal is the building. And the station is literally the subway station, right? Grand Central Terminal is where the trains are. Grand Central Station is this, where people walk around. thought the station was where you got on and off the trains and the terminal was the bill.

Okay, I'm not gonna argue. I think I'm right. People can let us know in their five-star rating interview.

But anyway, they did that and there was also a silo character at a basketball game. Did you see this? Someone dressed up in like the I want to go out thing. It is terrifying. This was on Mavericks. It was at a Mavericks basketball game dressed up in the the silo suit, which is wild.

I do have to say I watched me and my wife started the second season of silo, the first episode. Did you watch it? Do you watch silo? I have watched every episode now I binged all the way through the middle of the second season and then got really mad. This is why I don't watch things while they're dropping I wait because I listen. I understand why they do this.

I'm going to pay for Apple TV plus forever just give me all of the things at once I'm not like Netflix has it right just drop it all please. Well, I watched the first episode of the second season of silo and that dude that looks through the little window at the end and says please don't Do I don't know his name yet? Cuz I've only seen the one episode of the second season But he says don't try to open this door again or else I'm gonna kill you I was too scared. I couldn't keep watching. I gotta work up the courage I will. Did you like season one? It season two is good. It is.

It's sort of like takes the momentum and energy of season one and it sort of stretches it out a bit like it doesn't feel like it's moving quite as fast. But but the reason I think it feels like that is it's like getting into the really good stuff. It's like I mean, she's in another silo like that's a big deal like all these things and it's like, okay, maybe that's the reason why also my perspective is a little warped because I literally watched all of season one and the first half of season two in like a weekend.

And now I have to, now it's taken me four weeks to get through the next four episodes. So. I did really enjoy it. So I'll keep going because the marketing is good. All right.

We have to talk about the TikTok ban because this might be happening Sunday, January 19th. I'm to put an article to an Axios timeline. They actually have kind of the dates and what's been happening, all of that. But the fate of TikTok, we've talked about it, I think in the last couple of episodes, what we think is actually going to happen.

But this Sunday is the deadline where it's not a ban, quote unquote. TikTok is supposed to sell or divest. ByteDance is supposed sell or divest TikTok. And if they don't, then the US companies like Apple and Google will have to remove TikTok from the app stores. Basically, as it stands right now, as we record Thursday morning, come Sunday, if nothing happens, which we'll talk about possibilities, TikTok will be removed from the app stores.

If you have TikTok installed on your phone, it will work for a while. But it'll be like one of those things where you had an app on an old Apple device, like an old iPad or iPhone that couldn't get updates anymore. And know, the app just kind of slowly dies over time.

That's what would happen if you already have TikTok on your phone, but you won't be able to update it. If you upgrade your phone, you won't be able to install it and it will be essentially a ban. There's a bunch of TikTok creators doing like goodbye videos on the platform right now.

There's a couple of things that could happen. The Biden administration said that they are trying to work to extend the deadline so it wouldn't go into effect this Sunday. And also the Supreme Court could rule before Sunday to extend on its own. the Biden administration could do something, Supreme Court could do something.

Trump has said he was going to, was an executive order to extend the issue an executive order to say things. to say things, but he's not president until the 20th. So he could not, that could not go into effect obviously before this TikTok ban. So we'll see what happens. Sunday we will know for sure what happens and but it's looking like and you are putting your money, Jason, on it happening.

Well, okay, I don't know what it happening will be, but a couple of things. One, it's weird that the Biden administration wants to extend the deadline on a law that he signed. Like you signed this law and the entire reason that they picked that date was because it was the day before the next presidential inauguration. Like all of this was intentional. All of this was done exactly the way that like they had like designed it.

And so it's sort of weird and it feels like this is what politicians do, they literally just wanna kick things as far down the road so it's someone else's problem as possible and then they get to the deadline. Like this happens with the debt ceiling every couple years, right? They just, that's what they do. I think I said on a recent episode, a previous episode, that I don't think the Supreme Court's going to overrule this and it will not just extend it, they're going to uphold the law as constitutional, I believe.

And I think that the oral arguments, was it last week? Mm-hmm. that out. They do not seem inclined to over throw overturn this law overthrow overturn this law.

Different branch of government does that. Sorry. Anyway, they don't seem inclined to do that.

So I think that the Supreme Court is not going to overturn the law. I think that on the 19th, the ban will go into effect. What happens after that? I think it's super unclear. But TikTok has said that they will basically turn it off. if that goes into effect, even though that's not what the actual band says, because the other piece of it that the way you described it is sort of true, except for that the law does two things that prohibits them from distributing it during in the app store.

So it's really focused on Apple and Google, but it also prohibits like ISPs and CDNs from from basically posting and sharing the content. So it's like, yes, the Apple open, will there be anything in it in this? It's like already cashed into there. So like the timeline of stops working. could be a lot quicker than people might think. So, and I don't know, can the incoming, like, it's so weird because can the incoming president just issue an executive order to say we're not gonna enforce this law? Because then that will get challenged by someone.

I don't know who because it was the government that passed the law, so who would have standing to, it's very weird. very weird. I'll also mention lastly on this, the there's another app now called Red Note. It is a Chinese app like even the description and stuff in the English US app store is in Chinese. And it is people are flocking to it.

I say flocking lightly. There's a few people being very vocal about like, well, I guess we're going over here. And they've created accounts and are trying to use Red Note as a TikTok replacement.

This is too far for my blood. Like this is I'm not going to download this app and pretend it's a TikTok replacement. I don't know if I would recommend it. But yeah, that's up there. that the one, there's several of these that have popped up, at least one of which is also basically the Chinese version of TikTok owned by ByteDance, the company that owns TikTok.

If you are worried that TikTok is going away, a Chinese owned replacement is really not going to be the best place to go because what do you think will happen? It's gonna get bad, it's the same thing. Yeah, it's just kind of kicking the can down the road. So anyway, we'll see what happens on Sunday. We'll cover it next week, whatever the official thing was. Also, Sonos CEO is out. So after their failed app launch earlier this year and just not doing well as a company, Sonos CEO Patrick Spence is leaving and there's been several other leavings, several other exits or oustings.

There's the Sonos Chief Product Officer is leaving. Also the Chief Commercial Officer which was a newish title I was not familiar with and now there is a new interim CEO and she wrote an article about but just they're having a tough time Sonos is trying their whole new leadership now and we'll see what they do in this next season But you wrote about it and the new is it an interim CEO or is it like new CEO? Interim CEO I think he wants to be not interim. It's pretty clear. But here's okay, a couple things.

Can I ask I have two questions for you. First of all, without looking anywhere. Before he was the CEO of Sonos, Patrick Spence, he's the guy that just resigned.

What? Where did he work? What is he most known for? feel like not audio, right? It wasn't audio related. Is that correct? Yeah, yeah. I don't know, I'm say PayPal.

I don't know, that knows nothing. have probably been better. No, he worked for a company called R.I.M. Do you know what they're famous for? Yeah, you don't know they made the Blackberry a product that could not Listen, wait, wait, before I lose all credibility, let me just say, I know Rim, I had a BlackBerry.

Saying it as R.I.M., it threw me off. Research in motion, yeah, that, I know it's BlackBerry, anyway. so this guy was like the head of sales for BlackBerry, a product that no longer exists. They stopped making them in like 2019 or 2017 or something. I don't even remember when they don't make BlackBerry's anymore because they could not figure out a way to respond to the iPhone.

This guy was not a product guy, right? He came into actually came into Sonos as the head of sales. He was the chief commercial officer when he came to and he eventually became the CEO. And I just think it's kind of bananas because This is like a company who built a incredibly loyal audience based on being essentially people would call them the Apple of audio.

And the reason is they built products that just worked. So my question to you, I wanted to ask you, cause I don't have any Sono stuff, right? I do have respect for them. I like good sounding things, but I just don't have any Sono stuff. What, did you download the new app and did it break all of your stuff? I downloaded the new app just so could see it, but I never used the Sonos app. And I think that may be one of the differences in experience where if I, most of my Sonos gear is just set up with a TV. And so in the bedroom I have a Sonos Beam, I have a Sonos Arc on another TV, and I don't typically use them as music players.

I just, they're the TV speakers. And so I just don't and if I ever do want to play something to it, I'll use AirPlay. I go to Apple Music, I play and then I AirPlay it.

I opened the app and I had to use the app when I was reviewing the Sonos Ace headphones and it was clear that this thing was janky. It was not great, but I don't typically use the app. Okay, and then my other question was going to be, maybe this is, you've already sort of answered this because you don't use it to play music necessarily, but my understanding is Sonos stuff sounds great, like it sounds really good, but that isn't actually the main draw of Sonos stuff. Can you explain for people who don't have Sonos stuff, why people are so devoted to it, beyond just it sounds really good? Cause there are a lot of things that sound really good that you can, I HomePod sound really good, right? Yeah, but I mean I will say Sonos Sounds better than HomePods like I did an entire video when the HomePods 2 came out And said like the Sonos Beam and a Sub Mini which is their like middle of the range speakers that combo Sounds better than HomePod 2s. There's just more bass, know standalone sub So if you just want better sound and that's something that's important to you Sonos wins if you're if you're going that and the Aera 300 to HomePods.

Okay. You can be at a Bowers and Wilkins system and spend $12,000. That's gonna sound better than Sonos. Yeah, but when it comes to, think, sounding better, but not crazy expensive, like it's expensive, but not like, you know, over $10,000.

I think Sonos was good option. And I do think the experience, feels very Apple-like. It feels very like the packaging is Apple-like. It feels new and modern.

And typically the setup is pretty easy. You open the Sonos app, you plug in a speaker, the little card comes up, which feels like an Apple, like little card for AirPods or HomePods. And yes, we're working together. If you want multi-room audio, that was its specialty because the Sonos app, the previous version, used to do that pretty well. Like you see your speaker groups in your rooms and if you were playing something, you could throw it to all of the speakers, to some, adjust the volume of each room individually.

And it worked pretty well. I didn't do that. And you can also just do that with AirPlay. You can also just adjust the volume of different speaker sets because that's how they appear in the AirPlay.

But yeah, I think it's just the hardware feeling felt premium like Apple. It wasn't tens of thousands of dollars, it was thousands, and it did sound really good. So. because I again not having any sono stuff.

I understood that it was like people are very passionate about it and just for any of our listeners who don't have sono stuff and I don't I don't not recommend it by the way like I think if somebody wanted to send me sono stuff I'll replace all my home pods today. Jason asking for a... yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah, but you wrote an article about the new interim CEO, which what's his name and what did he write? I forget. Okay. So Tom Conrad was he's a board member.

He was also part of Pandora. So he does understand music and he I think he was maybe at Pinterest, I think. So this is a product guy is my point. So one of the reasons you're seeing this exit of people in the leadership is one they eliminated the chief product officer role, because he's like, that doesn't make any sense. The product team is just going to report to me.

I know product. So we're just going to do that. But he, at the end of the first paragraph there that I, that I shared, he talked about how when it all works, it's absolute magic, which is the thing that Sonos like you just described that it was just that it was known for. The problem is when it doesn't work, it just messes up everything that people are using. Right.

It's like if airplay stopped working because Apple updated the music app, people would be really, really, really angry. Right. Like we know that people get angry whenever something that they're used to working.

And it's like, it seems like. Sonos had lost sight of the fact that if you're going to update a product, it has to make the experience either better or neutral for people. Like you can't make it worse and then spend a year saying we're going to fix it. It's like, didn't have to be broken.

You just, it didn't have to be broken. Yeah. think the other thing is like Apple has a lot of software things that are buggy we complain about on this show like screen time and just in general bugs, but the thing with Sonos is the audio and speakers is literally all they do like that is they're very hyper specialized company totally focused on audio and that experience and so when that one thing is buggy and doesn't work it really feels like well this whole deal is not good like the whole Sonos deal so Yeah. We'll see what they do. I'm also hopeful, curious if Sonos actually tries to release more products. Like they really don't release a lot of hardware.

They release the Sonos Ace headphones, they release the Sonos Arc Ultra and a revised sub, which as a Sonos owner, I have the previous Arc and the previous sub. I have zero desire to upgrade because they still sound great. And this might go to our personal tech segment later about what's our oldest tech that we just don't care to replace. So I do think they need to innovate on Like obviously they're a hardware company. That's where they make their profits.

There's no subscription service You don't pay for Sonos as an app or anything So there probably needs to be some innovation there when hardware release some products, so we'll see we'll see what they do We'll see our chat GPT. It can now do reminders Jason. So not for the free plan to have your tasks, excuse me, excuse me So now if you have a chat GPT plus account, you can ask it to Remind you of things but at chedgpT is calling them tasks. It is for plus team and pro subscribers I think Jason you pay the $200 a month for chedgpT pro, right? Yeah, no, neither do I No, no, I play for plus I pay the $20 for that's it Yeah, no, yeah, you can tell it now to remind you of things.

It's extremely limited It can only do a maximum of like I forget what it is 10 or 20 tasks or something like that So there's like a maximum of what it can do. You do have to actually go into the app and ask it to remind you. You can start a voice conversation if you want.

You can map that to your action button on the iPhone or create a shortcut with that. But I think it's interesting that Chad GPT is trying to become almost like an ecosystem. I feel like this is the first foray in Chad GPT being like, maybe if we can do tasks and then maybe calendar that they can be positioned as almost like a productivity suite. in addition to just a chat bot, which I think is an interesting move. They also already have a search engine.

They already have a web search. I feel like, I don't know, I see this ecosystem coming into focus. Does it feel like that's the direction? I think if you, well, I think there's two pieces of context here that are helpful.

I meant to like think more about this to write about it because I, JetGBT sent me their release, but I haven't had the time, but yeah, it's 10 active tasks at a time during the beta period. And the goal of this is really to try to figure out like how people will use this. I think it's interesting to think of this in the context of what Apple is trying to do with its voice assistant. which is to use your personal context to inform the types of things that are happening. And so if you're Chad GPT, right now, none of the things that Apple is talking about doing in terms of using your personal context to inform, say Siri, Dingus, whatever you want to call it, the thing that we aren't allowed to talk about.

Yeah, exactly. What's his name? The, he shall not be named or whatever. That's right. anyway, I literally can see his face and I actually can't think of the name, but it doesn't matter right now.

Harry Potter's Nemesis. No, it's Harry Potter's Nemesis, isn't it? Voldemort, thank you. Why did I say thank you? Like there's a voice in my head that just told me who it was.

Anyway, this is the best podcast of all time. So I think that if you think about it in that context, right now, chat GPT has such a lead on what Apple's trying to do. But what they don't have is the ability to take all of that kind of context. But now if you're feeding all of your tasks into it, it's developing that sort of thing. And so like I'm sort of of two minds.

One, I think that it would be amazing to have the chat assistant that you use or the AI assistant that you use have all of this context and information about you, but also you're just helping Chet GBT train all of this information about you and about other things. And so you just kind of have to decide how you want to do that. I'll definitely be giving it a try to see like how it works. because yes, I do pay not the $200 a month, but I'm gonna be interested to see like what it does because most people, like we're talking about apps that don't work. If there is a single thing that people depend on most more than I think even their email, if you rely on a task manager or like a calendar type thing, it has to work all the time. or you will just jettison that thing into space because once it fails you, because there are a lot of people who they just organize their life around that and depend on it.

Like I do, I depend on looking at my watch and seeing what does it say next on my calendar or my tasks. Like that's it. That's how I operate. So. I did say, I just want to mention, I was trying to find it real quick, but I think it was a nine to five Mac article that they are thinking, it's not that this was discovered or that it's in the beta, but with the iOS 18.3 that they think maybe the contextual and semantic index dingus might be coming in that next big version, 18.3 or maybe 18.4, which

would mean it's might be coming this year. And that's 2026 like we've heard. Right, which Mark Gurman was saying that might not be coming until late 2025 or 26. So I'm curious if and when that beta comes out with contextual Siri, I will get back on the beta train. I've not been on the beta train because I like my less bugs, but if it happens.

like battery life. You don't want to have to worry about your battery percentage. So you just want all of the battery life.

I such a lot of battery life. Look, I got I got MagSafe batteries over here. I got this battery over here.

This one. I actually did this video that I actually scheduled the video to publish right now as we're recording it recorded right now at nine or published right now. Nine a.m. This is a retractable USB-C cable.

Jason, look at this. You know what that is? Something else they could break. Listen, but also you see this handle.

You see this little handle right here. Also USB-C cable. Okay, I wanna say something about this real quick. First of all, best Christmas present I got all year came off of Steven's referral recommendation list.

Actually, I don't know if this is best one, but I also got the car mount. I got the car mount too that you recommended. Yeah, but I wanna say built-in cords to charging battery things, I get it. I understand why they do it because like what good is it to have a battery if you don't actually have a cord that you can charge from and then you're like, is it USB-C or USB-A or whatever? right.

Nope, I think it's a terrible idea. Cause it is one of those, it's just one more thing that can go wrong. And I want my three meter cable or whatever, not three meters, three foot, one meter cable, like, or whatever. don't want, I don't like cables built into batteries. It's a bad idea. Two quick things.

Jason held up the Anker 10K Ultra Slim Qi2 MagSafe battery pack. In the video that I just published right now, I say that's still my favorite one. It's still the best one. So good job. You guys.

this one is my favorite one, but that's just because it sits on a chart, like it sits on a stand. So this one actually is a stand. It's anchor one.

I don't know what it's called. Steven can probably tell you like from memory, but I really like it. And which is true of this one as well. But this one, if you were like, if my kids need to use this battery and they don't have a MagSafe phone, cause like one of them saws an SE, they can just plug in a USB-C cord and plug it in and it'll charge. So it's kind of nice.

I'm gonna show you one other thing, because you say you don't like built-in cables. No, this is another MagSafe battery. This is the Romos.

You might like this. This one can charge an Apple Watch because it has a little indent right here. I did, I did. Yeah, you can charge your phone and Apple Watch, but it comes with this tiny little cable, but it's not built-in. You can take it out. Mm-mm.

And so, but if you want to charge your phone wired, because that will always charge faster, less heat, you can still MagSafe it to the back of your phone, but then plug in the USB-C cable just like that. It's pretty slick. Pretty slick. Just throwing that out there. If you don't like retractable cables. Anyway.

A sitting here too that I have to put in my keyboard in a little while, but anyway. We'll talk about it in personal tech. personal tech. Okay, that's coming personal tech.

All right. One last thing before we talk about Zuckerberg's interview on Rogan, trashing Apple saying they don't innovate anymore. We don't typically do rumors, but I thought this was interesting. The Samsung Galaxy S25 apparently is leaked and it might be showing off a super thin design when it comes out. Now Samsung unpacked the event is January 22nd. So next Wednesday, so we're gonna see this in less than a week.

Samsung is gonna announce whatever. But I think it's interesting because there's also been many rumors, I don't think we've talked about them yet on this show, about the iPhone 17 having an Air version where they will have an ultra slim version of the iPhone. Whether or not that'll be the Pro or non-Pro or something in between remains to be seen, but it's curious that companies, the two biggest, I mean Samsung and Apple, might be going slim this year instead of adding bulk. which would I think be less battery, apropos, because we just talked about battery life. I don't know.

I mean, if you see a slim iPhone this year, but maybe it's not pro, does that tempt you at all? Yeah, me neither. slim. Well, who cares? I've heard people talking like, no, mean, sincerely, like, we'll talk, I'm gonna save this for personal tech because I don't understand the like, that's cool. But the killer feature of the new iPad Pros is not that they're thinner. The iPad Pro is like ridiculous no matter what. It doesn't, but it just doesn't matter.

Like that is, mean, There's a threshold if it was the thickness of my MacBook Pro that'd be bad for a tablet, right? But the killer features are tandem OLED or M4 or they finally put the camera in the right spot. I don't care how thin it is. I just don't care how thin it is. I mean, I'm gonna take my phone out of the case for a second.

which also in my videos, I'm not just pumping my video today, but I will say Ryan London leather case. First one with a camera control button in the leather case. So if I was, if you want to use camera control leather case with that, you still using the suit. No logo on the back. No.

that's good because I don't like logos on the back. the side on the very bottom. It's very discreet, but... one thing I love about the Nomad cases is they are, there's no branding on the outside at all. Are you still using the SU-T back only? Yeah, it's nice.

it is nice. I really like the leather texture better of the Nomad one, but this one has held up really well. And I think the reason why, and also like the Nomad one has microstructure on it as well. And this one doesn't. And I tried to figure out how are they getting away with not having it. And I think it's because it goes around the, it snaps around the cameras.

Whereas the Nomad one just has a cutout for that whole area. So I think that that's, they got it right. I don't, I don't know if I love this feel. It's like, it's not fine woven feel.

No, no, no, no, no. little bit, but I like the leather better, so. But I'm gonna keep. I still I had my su t I was using it for a while and then I dropped my phone twice and I have a screen protector on it Which I don't typically do do but since I've been using the backs I have a i'm actually using anchor screen protector now But I do have a couple scuffs along the corners of my phone now because I dropped it I don't think you'll be able to see it.

I mean they're into like indistinguishable. Do you have scuffs? No, but this is the nomad one and it just kept like coming apart here, but I definitely like the feel better. It's it's very nice. This is the worst podcast episode we've ever. this is why you need to go to youtube.com slash at primary tech show.

I'm about to sneeze. Hold on one second. the people love about what we do, Steven, is we're just real.

We just talk. We just give our opinions on all of this stuff. I was talking so that you could sneeze. All right.

away. Anyway, yeah, the Nomad one, it started, I don't know, like it wasn't patina-ing, it was just scratching and stuff. So this was my Nomad one and it's like, I don't know, you can see the scratch and stuff. So I don't care for that.

anyway, that is, anyway, Ryan London, I forgot what I was talking about. the, what were we talking about? batteries, we were talking about... what's happening. I don't know what's happening. I'm gonna drop a marker. I'm gonna edit all that out.

yeah. that's what the whole reason I took the case out was because I wanted to talk about the thinness of the phone. Yeah. Okay. So listen, mean, thinner than this, I mean, it's really not that big. I don't understand.

I mean, lighter maybe would be nice, but it got lighter with titanium with the iPhone 15. I think it's fine. I'm not in the market. thinness is not the thing that they need to worry about.

I agree on the pro ones. Make it lighter, use aluminum. No one cares.

Titanium is great, but like just stick with, because like the only thing that's noticeable is the difference between the base, the 16 and the 16 Pro. When I take that 16 that's sitting up there, I won't do it right now because it's my camera. It's like these two things are not even the same species. Like this is ridiculous.

Well and also I think it would be amazing if Apple like did this as an experiment But it would never happen if they released an iPhone 17 air that was super thin but obviously got worse battery life because of the form factor and released as an iPhone 17 like thick It was like double the thickness, but you got like three days of battery I guarantee you 90 something percent of people would buy the thicker phone for more battery. Yeah, yeah right. Thank you. I'm we could finally agree on something, Jason. Finally. Now, speaking of things we can agree on, I know we also agree on today's sponsor because today's podcast is brought to you by Notion.

Notion is literally what we use every week for this show. Jason and I are looking at it right now, even when they're not sponsoring. We're just staring at Notion the entire episode because that's where we have our run of show. It's where we have the links for all the articles. Notion is, it powers this podcast, Primary Technology. But listen, Notion does so much more.

It can be your workspace, it can be your note taker, it can have transcriptions, and Notion has an incredible AI tool built right in to help you manage all of it. AI built right inside of Notion and it works across your entire workspace. And it's been a game changer.

Jason has used it to like search our past episodes. You can find things like, when did we talk about this thing? Notion AI is great for that. Notion combines your notes, docs, and projects into one space that's simple, beautifully zavant. designed and you can leverage the power of AI right inside. And Notion now has shortcuts actions.

I talked about that actually in a video on my channel. So you can actually add things into your Notion pages directly from shortcuts, create automations that way. And the fully integrated Notion AI helps you work faster, write better, think bigger, doing tasks that normally take you hours in just seconds.

It can summarize, it can rewrite, it can help you generate ideas, give it some bullet points, it can expand it, it can do all of that. Notion is used by over half of Fortune 500 companies and teams that use Notion send less email, cancel more meetings, and save time searching for their work and reduce spending on tools, which help keeps everyone on the same page. So try Notion for free. And we actually use it for free too. We don't pay for Notion. mean, Jason are just using it right now.

Do it for free when you go to Notion.com slash primary technology. That's all lowercase letters. Notion.com slash primary technology. That links in the show notes too. You just click it there.

to try the powerful, easy to use Notion AI today. And when you use our link, it supports the show, and we appreciate that. Notion.com slash primary technology. Thanks to Notion for sponsoring this episode and powering our podcast for a year now, over a year. All right, does Apple still innovate? This was a big interview.

Mark Zuckerberg went on the Joe Rogan podcast, and they talked for 18 hours. No, I think they talked for three hours, which still sounds like an exaggeration, but no, it was literally about three hours. And Mark Zuckerberg said a bunch of things. He said things like, Steve Jobs invented the iPhone and now they're just kind of sitting on it 20 years later. Wild statement. Zuckerberg also said, that, Apple has thoroughly hamstrung the ability for anyone else to build something that can connect to the iPhone in the same way as like AirPods.

there would probably be much better competitors to AirPods out there, Zuckerberg said. We're going to address all this in a second. Also, this is on the heels of news coming out. This is the Wall Street Journal saying that Metta is about to cut 5 % of its staff because Mark Zuckerberg says he wants to raise the bar. And these job cuts are going to be coming February 10th.

And Wall Street Journal and others are calling this a Trump-friendly transition. Remember last week we talked about Metta changing its policies, removing fact checkers. leaning on community notes, inviting more political content on the platforms. And I'll also throw to Daring Fireball and link to this. John Gruber had lots of fun things to say about this interview and about Metta saying that, you know, what they've innovated versus Apple and things like that.

innovation and Apple. First of all, let's talk about just Zuckerberg's claims saying that. Yeah.

even more important we have to address. A week before Mark Zuckerberg announced that they're gonna lay off 5 % of their staff or whatever, and in the announcement where he was essentially saying, we're no longer gonna pay all these third party content moderators, he's wearing a $900,000 watch. By the way, that's not an exaggeration. It's a $900,000 watch that he was wearing. Just Google Mark Zuckerberg watch.

you know, content moderation video or whatever. It's a custom made, the company that makes them only makes like three or four of them a year or whatever. And so it's just, it's like, dude, how out of touch are you that you're wearing a $900,000 watch in an Instagram reel where you're announcing like all of this stuff.

So it's just, it kind of blows my mind. But I mean, I love a $900,000 watch, but I don't have any. like the whatever, but minute, just so our people know that this is real, this is a Guardian article, Mark Zuckerberg sports a $900,000 watch as he... He wore a Grubel Forsee Handmade 1, which retails for $895,500. which, you I rounded it up just slightly, but yes, anyway.

Amazing, I did not know that. Yes, people who pay attention to watches caught this immediately because they're like, look at his new watch anyway, because well, those are extremely hard to get because they only make a couple of them a year. So anyway. I think it's really interesting. And I think it points out like there's a lot of stuff going on with Mark Zuckerberg, you know, and I think it started with the accepting a fight with Elon Musk.

Remember when they're supposed to be a cage match between those two? Yeah. And I just think that he is, I don't know if this is what a midlife crisis looks like for a hundred billionaire, you know what I mean? Like, but Clearly like he can just do whatever he wants and there's no one in his life that will tell him no and you know, whatever that's worked Mark Zuckerberg has been more successful than I mean if Then almost anyone in the world, right? There are like less than a hundred people in the world in the history of the world That have achieved the kind of success is him Okay, so Mark Zuckerberg is 40 years old in case anybody was wondering. I was wondering so maybe you were wondering too. He's 40 years old. What did Mark Zucker...

No, no, no, no. When you said that I was just curious. I was curious how old he was.

What has Mark Zuckerberg created? Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook from a college dorm room or whatever and it was based on whatever, a rating system to gauge how attractive people were. It was basically a knockoff of hot or not. that's basically what he created and it became a social network and that is what he has built. Now, after this interview, many people pointed out, if you look at Meta, the landscape of what Meta is today, WhatsApp is a massive part of Meta, Instagram, now Threads.

You could say Threads might have been a product they invented, but a lot of those things are things that Meta acquired. Meta acquired Instagram. and then added a bunch of features that copied Snapchat and TikTok, namely Stories and Reels. WhatsApp existed before Meta. It was just acquired, and I don't know if anybody's opened WhatsApp recently.

I don't prefer the design, and I don't really, I wouldn't say that that is some beacon of innovation in messaging apps. Well, okay, I will say this about WhatsApp. It is the best group messaging app that there is.

Group messaging app that there is. it's also not changed in the last 10 years. Like five years maybe. Maybe five years is more accurate. Has there been any new, anything about it? Anything innovative about WhatsApp in five years? I mean, how innovative do your group messages need to be? Okay.

not saying it needs to be I'm saying like it were talking about what has metta innovated the Ray-Ban's meta which one Ray-Ban's is making the glasses and It's just Facebook's it's Facebook software and that's one of the things I feel like this entire interview was I feel like it needs to be said meta is a Basically 100 % software company like they don't make hardware. The meta Ray-Ban's is made by Ray-Ban's They tried to make a Facebook phone, if someone remembers, like 10 years ago, and that failed. I mean, am I...

Again, acquired, right? They make the headsets now. Yeah. The MetaQuest, MetaQuest Pro, okay, fair enough.

Yeah, they make the headset hardware. Again, of all the technology categories, probably the least pervasive. They did not invent it. not start Instagram, they bought it. They did not invent stories, they copied that from Snap. They did not invent Reels, they copied that from TikTok, right? They bought WhatsApp, which both WhatsApp and Instagram, like you gotta give them some credit because like they are extremely successful.

Like they're multi-billion user platforms, right? like the one thing that I can give Mark Zuckerberg credit for unequivocally is that he understood what a good product was, even if he didn't make it. And he knew what might be a competitor to what he was trying to make. And rather than compete, would just buy it. Like that's WhatsApp, that's Instagram. Or copy.

like what he saw from Instagram was, there's an idea there. But what we have is we have the social graph. We have the platform, we have the user base.

And that's how that's why stories basically cut off Snap is because it was a great idea. It's just that Instagram already had the user base that Snap was never going to get to. Even their most recent announcement, Community Notes. He made it clear like, we're just copying this directly from X. He even said it. Right.

let's remember, Facebook was also not the first quote unquote social network. There was MySpace before that, and there was other weird things like LiveJournal and stuff before that. But Mark Zuckerberg didn't tumble still around. So that's, I think, the picture of Meta. Now, his claim, Steve Jobs admitted the iPhone and now they're just kind of sitting on it 20 years later.

I just made a short list here, and you have another list. What is your list? I forget. hold on, I wanna just be clear. The reason that the iPhone 17 is not going to get any thinner is because Apple is just sitting on it and we know that they bent. Ben Gate was iPhone 6 Plus, but yeah.

Now. Yeah, my list was of all of the all of the inventions at Facebook. I think that the Ray-Bans is probably the most is is probably the example that you could give them credit for. Yes, they partnered with somebody and somebody else is actually manufacturing them.

But like there really wasn't a category, a consumer product category of that type of a thing. I do think it's important to mention Apple has, I think. Set the iPhone aside, because it's the most successful consumer product in the history of whatever, which is why Apple hasn't made another product like that, because it is the most, like no one will ever make a product that beats the iPhone.

It's just, it's not going to happen. It was the quintessential personal computing form factor, but AirPods, Apple Watch, iPad, all bigger businesses, HomePods, bigger business. The Apple Watch straps are a bigger business than the Meta Ray Bands.

Okay, with the quote about Steve Jobs specifically, I feel like that's such a easy, like I'm gonna drop Steve Jobs name here and it automatically like, I don't know, is some kind of takedown or whatever. But Steve Jobs passed away in 2011. I still remember where I was, it's weird. So he passed away in 2011. That was also the year of the iPad release. Am I correct? No, no, iPad was 2009.

iPad release, original iPad was, original iPad release, sorry, I'm trying to fact check myself here. The original iPad was 2010, excuse me, 2010. So right, the year before he passed, because he introduced the iPad on stage. That was probably the last big product announcement that Steve Jobs did. After the iPad and after he passed in 2011, what was next? You could say the Apple Watch was 2015. Steve Jobs probably knew about it, was aware, probably was not, didn't have a huge hand in it because it came out.

four years after he passed. We have the Apple Watch in 2015, AirPods I believe in 2016-17, and I would say AirPods Pervasive Technology. And I want to talk about Zuckerberg's claim about Apple locking things in and there would be more innovation if they allowed whatever. But anyway, I think AirPods, especially the quality of AirPods Pro 2 now, I mean that is, I think leaps forward. The 2019 Mac Pro, which Again, I said I started the show with Phil Schiller's quote talking about the 20 What was the what was the Mac Pro where he said that what was the year it was the 2013 2013 The trash came Mac Pros in 2013 and that's when Phil Schiller and I feel there's the first time Apple ever directly addressed claims that it wasn't innovating It was 12 years ago, and it was Phil Schiller when they announced the Mac Pro, Trashcan said, can't innovate anymore, my ASS.

anyway, you had that. But I think the 2019 Mac Pro, I think that was pretty amazing product to the Pro Display XDR. Again, quality wise for the time, still very expensive.

But if you want to talk about innovative, the series chips, I feel like everybody forgets about this as a product that Apple makes. Once Apple started making its own silicon, which actually started with the iPhone, let's beyond like the A4 chip. and all of that way back when.

The Apple Silicon Revolution, which has been kind of a slow progress over the last, whatever, 10, 15 years, that is incredibly innovative. The fact that you can buy an M3, an M1 MacBook Air, and it is as powerful as it is, that's incredible innovation in hardware. So the series chips, plus Apple then released the Mac Studio a couple years ago, and again the Studio Display, but Apple Vision Pro also. You can say what you want about its popularity or whatever, but it is amazing technology and again post job.

I mean, those are just a few things to say. I mean, to say that Apple has just been sitting on the iPhone. We've talked about before how many products are kind of iPhone related, like Apple watch. You need an iPhone to set it up.

AirPods. You need an iPhone basically to set it up. Apple vision pro also kind of an extension of your Apple ecosystem. All that. But I mean, it's kind of disingenuous to say that Apple has not innovated since Steve Jobs, right? and to be clear, that's not exactly what he said. He said, what have they invented since then? Now, and here's the thing.

There's a little bit of a difference that I think is worth, Steve Jobs invented the iPhone and now they're just sitting on it, Okay, I think the important piece there is that, okay, two things. It's weird that Mark Zuckerberg, someone who it's unclear what he's invented, period. would be knocking another company. So then you have to look and be like, why? Why is Apple living rent free in Mark Zuckerberg's head to the extent that it is? Like, it's true.

Like Tim Cook just tweaks him constantly somehow, and the two don't ever even talk. Like, it is just, I've never seen a person that is seemingly more obsessed with a different company than Mark Zuckerberg is of Apple, and here's why. good.

because for almost all of Facebook's metas existence, it has been at the mercy of Apple, right? Because it is, Facebook exploded when it was on mobile, on the iPhone, right? It exploded because it was like you could have it anywhere. made it, you know, remember, because remember for the beginning of the iPhone, was no, like Facebook's app came later. Remember they didn't even do a mobile app at first because they're like, nah, people just use this on their computers, whatever. And so, You have to just kind of ask yourself why and he reveals it like he was he is very, sour that the the experience of connecting the Ray Bans is not the same as the AirPods. And to be fair, he has a point.

If you take photos with the Meta Ray Bans, they should just end up in your photos library on your iPhone. And the fact that they don't is completely ridiculous and is completely on Apple. And they should do better.

Like they're just like. but you can use a DJI drone, and when I fly the drone and take a picture, those pictures end up in my photo library. Why can't...

They have to go through the app, but they'll go to the photo library. Yeah, I don't have any of their meta ray bands. But the point is like you don't get the same kind of connection as you do with both the audio and with like you can't use the voice assistant, I don't believe with the meta ray bands. Like I don't think you can summon the voice assistant doing that the way you can with AirPods. And so I just feel like so there is a point there.

But that is that it has nothing to do with whether they've invented anything. fret. mean, think about it, like the AirPods alone would be a Fortune what, 100 company? The iPad and the Mac alone would be Fortune 500 companies, right? All of these things, like it's kind of, it's amazing. We don't think of them because all of them are at the mercy of being compared to the scale of the iPhone.

And yet on their own, those are huge business. And you could argue like the AirPods wouldn't exist without the iPhone. Obviously the watch wouldn't really exist without the iPhone.

It's just, the iPhone is a singular example. You can't compare it to things because it is so unique in its sense. saying like, the watch, there are other fitness watches.

I don't know anyone who was wearing a fitness watch before the Apple watch came out. Now I'm talking about people who maybe aren't using Apple watches, but like the Galaxy watch, the Pixel watch, all those things came really after the Apple watch became popular. So they invented a lot. They invented a lot. I also think, talking about why does Apple live rent-free in Zuckerberg's head, the app tracking transparency and the change, I forget what iOS version it was, that introduced the... What was it? 40.5.

into effect, because this is when you and I met. yeah, the ask app not to track. I mean that significantly affected Metta's business because what is Metta's business? It's advertising because Metta doesn't sell hardware products. They don't charge for their services. You don't have to pay to use Facebook or threads or Instagram.

They are a ads business. I mean it is the same with Google. They're an ads business. And so why is Mark Zuckerberg whatever? Yes, because his entire business is based on where can my ads be shown and a vast majority of them especially here in the US is on the iPhone as when the iPhone changes how it Treats apps and tracking and it directly affects Mark Zuckerberg's business.

Yeah, I think I think he's still bitter about it. I think so When it comes to like does Apple's closed system prevent other companies innovating You know, you could say I recently talked about the Beyerdynamic Amaron headphones, their Bluetooth wireless headphones. I actually really like them. They sound great. They actually fit better in my ears than AirPods Pro 2. And you could argue that due to Apple's tight reins on the iOS and macOS ecosystem, it's a worse experience because they don't auto switch.

I can't auto switch between my iPhone, iPad and my Mac as seamlessly as my AirPods. and it maybe won't integrate as tightly with whatever other things. Honestly, companies can still make really innovative products like Bear Dynamic did, and I will use them even if it doesn't have that slight integration, but also there's other platforms out there and the biggest Android is bigger worldwide than iPhone.

And so companies could try to innovate based on the Android operating system, which is more open. And if that innovation succeeded, then I think there would be more of an argument to say, if Apple were more open, then this

2025-01-24 06:02

Show Video

Other news

I can't believe people still pay for Netflix... 2025-02-08 18:08
Google's Quantum AI Is Actually Mind-blowing 2025-02-09 16:23
Primitive Technology: Flywheel blower smelt/Monsoon begins 2025-02-07 20:07