Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► Hello, and welcome to Connected, episode 554. It's made possible this week by our sponsor,

00:00:15 ◼   ► Ecamm. My name is Stephen Hackett, and I have the pleasure of being joined by our keynote

00:00:19 ◼   ► chairman, Mike Hurley.

00:00:20 ◼   ► Hello, hello, hello. I have obviously a long road ahead of me as keynote chairman, but it

00:00:29 ◼   ► will be contested shortly, but I have a long road ahead because I'm not going to lose

00:00:32 ◼   ► it. I would like to welcome another long road ahead chairman, the annual chairman, Federico

00:00:37 ◼   ► Vittici. Hi, Federico.

00:00:38 ◼   ► Hello, hello. Yeah, I'll be chairman for a while. I'm sorry.

00:00:43 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, you have the rest of the year.

00:00:45 ◼   ► Unless, you know, they change the calendar or something, you know.

00:00:50 ◼   ► Look, anything can happen, it feels like.

00:00:53 ◼   ► Right? I mean, they've been changing maps and geography, so why not the calendar, you

00:00:58 ◼   ► go. Oh, man. Whoever wins, if you win like three annuals in a row, you get to rename the

00:01:03 ◼   ► Gulf of Mexico after yourself.

00:01:05 ◼   ► Wow. Wow. I love it. Put it in the Bill of Ricky's. Put it in. The Gulf of Mike.

00:01:12 ◼   ► Declaration of Ricky pendants.

00:01:15 ◼   ► Stephen, can you just move on to your very, very weird follow-up?

00:01:20 ◼   ► I do have some follow-up. That's, it's not weird. We talked about a thing.

00:01:24 ◼   ► No, this is weird.

00:01:25 ◼   ► And now we're talking about it again.

00:01:27 ◼   ► Several people sent me a link from Michael MJD, who does these cool tech history videos

00:01:33 ◼   ► on YouTube, going over the Motorola Rocker. So you should go check that out. But the real

00:01:38 ◼   ► reason I put this in here is a direct appeal to a listener named Matt. Matt, several weeks

00:01:46 ◼   ► ago, in our feedback form, was like, hey, I have a rocker. I'd love to send it to Stephen.

00:01:51 ◼   ► So I emailed them. I said, hey, I would love to adopt it. Like, you know, let me know how

00:01:57 ◼   ► we could work this out. And I haven't heard back. And so, Matt, if you're out there, hit

00:02:02 ◼   ► me up. I would love to adopt your Motorola Rocker.

00:02:05 ◼   ► Matt, if you would prefer to give it to me, email me.

00:02:08 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't, I don't, no, no, no, no, I don't, I don't want, I don't want it.

00:02:15 ◼   ► I don't want it.

00:02:15 ◼   ► No, no, no, no.

00:02:17 ◼   ► I don't want it either.

00:02:19 ◼   ► No, thank you.

00:02:19 ◼   ► Okay, well.

00:02:21 ◼   ► This is strange. This is like a personal ad on a podcast. You know, it's like man looking

00:02:28 ◼   ► for rocker.

00:02:29 ◼   ► Oh, yeah. Well, Craigslist shut all that stuff down. You know, you can't do personal.

00:02:35 ◼   ► Yeah. So now you need a podcast.

00:02:36 ◼   ► Now you need a podcast. Look, what is a podcast if not a way to grow your computer collection?

00:02:43 ◼   ► That's a great, that's a really great point.

00:02:45 ◼   ► Have you ever thought about that?

00:02:46 ◼   ► No.

00:02:47 ◼   ► Okay.

00:02:48 ◼   ► WhatsApp is available on the iPad.

00:02:52 ◼   ► What?

00:02:53 ◼   ► Finally.

00:02:54 ◼   ► Incredible.

00:02:55 ◼   ► I mean, cut them some slack, you know, 15 years for a company like Meta, you know, the,

00:03:05 ◼   ► you know, the guy has been busy, you know, Zach has been busy first with the sunscreen and

00:03:11 ◼   ► then, and then with the little cartoons in VR and now.

00:03:15 ◼   ► And then being in court.

00:03:16 ◼   ► Being in court and then buying gold chains.

00:03:20 ◼   ► And eventually it's like, yeah, okay, fine.

00:03:23 ◼   ► We'll do WhatsApp on the iPad.

00:03:24 ◼   ► Why is this happening?

00:03:25 ◼   ► I don't understand why this has happened.

00:03:27 ◼   ► Like, why, why is it now?

00:03:30 ◼   ► Why do we have it now?

00:03:31 ◼   ► You know?

00:03:32 ◼   ► My answer was going to be why not, but probably not good enough.

00:03:37 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:03:37 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:03:38 ◼   ► It's strange.

00:03:39 ◼   ► Look, do Instagram next.

00:03:40 ◼   ► That's, that's what everybody wants.

00:03:42 ◼   ► Like, congratulations.

00:03:44 ◼   ► We have WhatsApp on the iPad.

00:03:45 ◼   ► No, I want Instagram on the iPad.

00:03:47 ◼   ► The only, the only half reasonable theory is that maybe if, if iPadOS is getting this big

00:04:01 ◼   ► update at WWDC, maybe they met, I wanted to be able to, I don't know, to sort of be there

00:04:09 ◼   ► and be part of some like, you know, early demos of people saying, hey, this is the new

00:04:14 ◼   ► iPadOS and look, I'm using WhatsApp on the iPad.

00:04:16 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:04:17 ◼   ► Maybe.

00:04:17 ◼   ► I can't imagine Apple being, like, ever having.

00:04:20 ◼   ► No, me neither.

00:04:21 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:04:22 ◼   ► My, my only thought is like, maybe they're preparing for some kind of foldable thing.

00:04:28 ◼   ► Like maybe they think it's going to happen.

00:04:30 ◼   ► Cause my expectation is Meta would want WhatsApp and Instagram in like a, in like a foldable

00:04:37 ◼   ► format, but what I will say is on the Google pixel fold, Instagram is terrible on, on that.

00:04:44 ◼   ► Cause you just can't see the images in full.

00:04:46 ◼   ► It just blows them up way too big.

00:04:51 ◼   ► Maybe there's a way to fix that.

00:04:53 ◼   ► Android has some weird settings where you can like zoom out and stuff for certain apps and

00:04:57 ◼   ► like change the aspect ratios.

00:04:58 ◼   ► Maybe we should play around with that.

00:04:59 ◼   ► I hadn't thought about doing that until I just said it, but there you go.

00:05:02 ◼   ► Federico, have you used WhatsApp on your iPad yet?

00:05:03 ◼   ► Uh, not because my iPad is in storage and I haven't touched it in like two months.

00:05:09 ◼   ► Whoa.

00:05:09 ◼   ► I'll, I'll bring it to WWDC.

00:05:11 ◼   ► I'll bring it.

00:05:13 ◼   ► I'll bring it with me.

00:05:14 ◼   ► I did not expect you to say that.

00:05:16 ◼   ► Well, it's yeah.

00:05:17 ◼   ► No, it's.

00:05:18 ◼   ► I know you're, I know you're doing other things.

00:05:20 ◼   ► Sorry.

00:05:21 ◼   ► We've spoken about them.

00:05:21 ◼   ► We're going to talk about them a little bit more, but the thing, uh, the reason I'm

00:05:25 ◼   ► surprised about that is just listening to, uh, app stories and you talk about the vision

00:05:29 ◼   ► pro and you were like, Oh, that we should have iPad, um, mirroring.

00:05:34 ◼   ► So I was like, Oh, he's still using it then.

00:05:36 ◼   ► But no, you just want it.

00:05:37 ◼   ► You just like, yeah, I just want it.

00:05:38 ◼   ► I just want it.

00:05:39 ◼   ► I want to change my mind.

00:05:40 ◼   ► I mean, and I think, you know, um, good vibes going into WWDC.

00:05:45 ◼   ► Like I'll bring the iPad pro with me.

00:05:47 ◼   ► I actually want to, you know, uh, I think I'm going to grab it over the next few days.

00:05:50 ◼   ► You know, updated sort of use it again a little bit more, but I'll bring it with me

00:05:55 ◼   ► because I mean, I want to, I do want to see what they do at WWDC, you know, I want to

00:06:00 ◼   ► see what they do with it.

00:06:01 ◼   ► Well, if it's broken in any way, um, you could, you could fix it.

00:06:06 ◼   ► Cause now the iPad is part of the self-service repair program, right?

00:06:10 ◼   ► iPad air M2 and later iPad pro M4 iPad mini a 17 pro iPad a 16 covering displays, batteries,

00:06:18 ◼   ► cameras, and charging ports.

00:06:20 ◼   ► You can, it's all, all of these parts are now available for you to go ahead and fix,

00:06:24 ◼   ► fix your iPad.

00:06:24 ◼   ► Okay.

00:06:26 ◼   ► Um, sure.

00:06:30 ◼   ► I mean, it's been a long time since I thought about the self-service repair program.

00:06:33 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:06:33 ◼   ► Me too.

00:06:34 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:06:34 ◼   ► This is, this is the kind of thing that Steven cares about.

00:06:37 ◼   ► I do care about it.

00:06:38 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:06:38 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:06:39 ◼   ► Thermal event.

00:06:40 ◼   ► Is that the thing that it said in the, if it caught on fire as a thermal event, you need

00:06:45 ◼   ► sand for any thermal events.

00:06:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:06:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:06:47 ◼   ► You, you just, uh, you never know when a battery could explode.

00:06:52 ◼   ► It could happen right now.

00:06:53 ◼   ► Yep.

00:06:54 ◼   ► Right now to you.

00:06:57 ◼   ► How much is that tandem OLED panel going to be?

00:07:00 ◼   ► Like if you break the screen on an iPad and you order the part, whoo, it's going to be

00:07:05 ◼   ► pricey.

00:07:06 ◼   ► What is it available now?

00:07:08 ◼   ► No, tomorrow.

00:07:09 ◼   ► Tomorrow.

00:07:11 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:07:11 ◼   ► They have Beats products in here, you know, just the Beats pill, just the battery.

00:07:17 ◼   ► If you want to place the battery, the Beats pill, you can do that.

00:07:20 ◼   ► All sorts of stuff.

00:07:20 ◼   ► Some real time followup.

00:07:23 ◼   ► I looked at, uh, rockers on eBay real quickly.

00:07:26 ◼   ► Well, you don't have a lot of faith in, in, uh, listening to Max.

00:07:30 ◼   ► There's still, there's still not very many of them, but I did find a limited edition Motorola

00:07:35 ◼   ► Razor that is like gold and it looks wild.

00:07:39 ◼   ► It's a Dolce & Gabbana version.

00:07:41 ◼   ► That's why.

00:07:41 ◼   ► I couldn't pronounce it, but yeah.

00:07:43 ◼   ► Oh, here's a better link.

00:07:44 ◼   ► I'll put a better link in Discord.

00:07:45 ◼   ► People can check that out.

00:07:47 ◼   ► Dolce & Gabbana.

00:07:48 ◼   ► If you want to.

00:07:49 ◼   ► Hmm.

00:07:50 ◼   ► Can I talk real quick about a bit of a problem that sort of manifested itself over the past

00:07:58 ◼   ► couple of days and I'm sort of like searching for a solution to this problem?

00:08:03 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:08:04 ◼   ► So I, uh, like I mentioned, I have been using the, the, the pixel watch, uh, over the past

00:08:11 ◼   ► couple of months, um, sort of paired with my, uh, with my pixel fold, which I, uh, I really

00:08:18 ◼   ► wanted to write about the pixel fold before WWDC.

00:08:20 ◼   ► And then the article that we're going to talk about shortly sort of happened and sort of,

00:08:25 ◼   ► you know, my plans have been all over the place.

00:08:27 ◼   ► But in any case, um, I realized that I, I was kind of missing the Apple watch.

00:08:34 ◼   ► For some things, um, there are some things that I really do like about the, the pixel

00:08:39 ◼   ► watch, the design, the, um, the assistant, obviously, um, the customization I do like, but I, I think I

00:08:47 ◼   ► do prefer obviously, uh, the, like the, like home kit, for example, home kit notifications

00:08:53 ◼   ► notifications on the Apple watch, super handy, um, being able to react to iMessage notifications

00:08:59 ◼   ► notifications with tap backs, basically the Apple ecosystem things.

00:09:03 ◼   ► Right.

00:09:03 ◼   ► And so I got my Apple watch from my nightstand drawer and, and I charged it, uh, it was behind

00:09:11 ◼   ► the software update.

00:09:12 ◼   ► So what is it like a 11.5 or something started using it long story short.

00:09:17 ◼   ► But I realized that my Apple watch ultra first gen battery life, like the battery health is now

00:09:24 ◼   ► down to 86%.

00:09:27 ◼   ► This thing is not lasting through a whole day anymore.

00:09:34 ◼   ► And I'm very bummed about it.

00:09:36 ◼   ► I really wanted to, um, to push it to September or October for, um, you know, to, to get a new

00:09:47 ◼   ► Apple watch ultra.

00:09:48 ◼   ► Uh, but I don't know what am I going to do here.

00:09:52 ◼   ► Um, how do you check the battery health again?

00:09:55 ◼   ► From the settings on the watch itself, the watch, from the watch itself, um, from watch

00:10:03 ◼   ► FM, wait, yeah.

00:10:05 ◼   ► Um, so I don't know because this thing, like I put it on this morning, put it on this morning.

00:10:13 ◼   ► It's now down to 30%.

00:10:15 ◼   ► All right.

00:10:16 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:10:17 ◼   ► That's bad.

00:10:17 ◼   ► You see, I said, you said 91.

00:10:19 ◼   ► Mine is newer than yours.

00:10:21 ◼   ► I got, this is an Apple watch ultra too.

00:10:24 ◼   ► So mine's only a year old and it's already down to 91%.

00:10:27 ◼   ► That's not great.

00:10:28 ◼   ► Right.

00:10:29 ◼   ► Like less than 90 and you've got a problem, I think like resale and stuff.

00:10:34 ◼   ► Yes.

00:10:35 ◼   ► I've only had mine since what?

00:10:37 ◼   ► September 2003 or something like that.

00:10:40 ◼   ► You want to take another run at that?

00:10:42 ◼   ► 2003.

00:10:44 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:10:45 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:10:45 ◼   ► Actually, you know what?

00:10:47 ◼   ► Since September 2003, 91% is not that bad.

00:10:49 ◼   ► Really?

00:10:50 ◼   ► It's pretty good.

00:10:50 ◼   ► It's pretty good.

00:10:51 ◼   ► It's pretty good.

00:10:52 ◼   ► Like 21 years.

00:10:53 ◼   ► That's not bad.

00:10:54 ◼   ► It's actually not that bad.

00:10:55 ◼   ► Pretty nice.

00:10:56 ◼   ► So yeah, I don't know.

00:10:58 ◼   ► I don't know what to do.

00:10:59 ◼   ► I just checked on the, on the app, Italian Apple store.

00:11:01 ◼   ► If I do the thing where I give them my, like the trading with my Apple watch ultra, they're

00:11:09 ◼   ► going to give me 300 euros for it.

00:11:12 ◼   ► That's so bad.

00:11:13 ◼   ► Oh my God.

00:11:14 ◼   ► That's so bad.

00:11:14 ◼   ► It's kind of bad.

00:11:16 ◼   ► And which means that an ultra two would cost 599 instead of 909 euros.

00:11:25 ◼   ► How much would it, would a battery replacement cost?

00:11:27 ◼   ► I have no idea.

00:11:29 ◼   ► Is that even possible?

00:11:31 ◼   ► Sure.

00:11:32 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:11:32 ◼   ► Right?

00:11:32 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:11:33 ◼   ► Sure.

00:11:33 ◼   ► Battery.

00:11:35 ◼   ► I think with the, I know with the phone, there's a certain level of battery capacity that they

00:11:42 ◼   ► won't replace it.

00:11:43 ◼   ► So yeah, if you have AppleCare plus battery service may be covered at no additional cost

00:11:49 ◼   ► if the battery's health has degraded to 80% or less.

00:11:53 ◼   ► So before 80%, I think you'd be paying for it.

00:11:56 ◼   ► In the UK, it would, on the UK Apple store, the estimated cost for a battery replacement

00:12:02 ◼   ► is 95 pounds or it's free.

00:12:04 ◼   ► If you have AppleCare plus, you should just get the battery replaced.

00:12:08 ◼   ► Like that's, if you want to keep it for longer and you're worried about the battery,

00:12:13 ◼   ► I think you should, I feel like you should do that.

00:12:16 ◼   ► Your product is eligible.

00:12:18 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:12:19 ◼   ► For battery service at no additional cost.

00:12:20 ◼   ► If you have AppleCare plus, do you have AppleCare plus on it?

00:12:22 ◼   ► Do you know?

00:12:23 ◼   ► How does one find out?

00:12:27 ◼   ► That is such a great question.

00:12:28 ◼   ► It's just great.

00:12:30 ◼   ► Check AppleCare warranty.

00:12:33 ◼   ► Stephen, how do you find out if you have AppleCare plus on it?

00:12:35 ◼   ► Check your devices.

00:12:36 ◼   ► So you go to checkcoverage.apple.com.

00:12:39 ◼   ► You put in your serial number, which I'm moving right.

00:12:44 ◼   ► Where do you get the serial number from even?

00:12:46 ◼   ► From the watch app on the phone.

00:12:48 ◼   ► Zoe in the Discord says in the Apple support app, which I don't even know what that is.

00:12:53 ◼   ► What is that?

00:12:54 ◼   ► There's a...

00:12:54 ◼   ► Oh, there it is.

00:12:55 ◼   ► I just searched the word support and it was on my iPhone.

00:12:59 ◼   ► I never knew about it.

00:13:01 ◼   ► Look at that.

00:13:01 ◼   ► Okay.

00:13:02 ◼   ► Okay.

00:13:02 ◼   ► Let's see.

00:13:03 ◼   ► Let's see.

00:13:03 ◼   ► Oh, these captchas, man.

00:13:05 ◼   ► Wow.

00:13:07 ◼   ► Are you a robot?

00:13:08 ◼   ► Oh, I guess I am.

00:13:10 ◼   ► Use the support app.

00:13:12 ◼   ► No, it's...

00:13:13 ◼   ► Too long.

00:13:14 ◼   ► Oh, my God.

00:13:15 ◼   ► Why?

00:13:16 ◼   ► I need to find out.

00:13:19 ◼   ► Because do you need to bring it to the Apple store to do that?

00:13:21 ◼   ► Or can you ship it to them?

00:13:23 ◼   ► That is also a great question.

00:13:25 ◼   ► Let me see if I can find that out for you.

00:13:27 ◼   ► This is very weird.

00:13:28 ◼   ► This is weird podcasting.

00:13:30 ◼   ► But I guess this is what people are here for, right?

00:13:32 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:13:32 ◼   ► Send in for repair.

00:13:33 ◼   ► We'll help you.

00:13:34 ◼   ► Again, it's all in the UK store, right?

00:13:36 ◼   ► We'll help you arrange delivery to an Apple repair center.

00:13:39 ◼   ► Your convenience takes six to ten days.

00:13:42 ◼   ► Let's see.

00:13:47 ◼   ► I would say you would get that.

00:13:48 ◼   ► If you have the Apple care, definitely.

00:13:50 ◼   ► All right.

00:13:50 ◼   ► All right.

00:13:51 ◼   ► Well, okay.

00:13:52 ◼   ► Warranty expired.

00:13:54 ◼   ► Oh.

00:13:55 ◼   ► Friendship ended with warranty.

00:13:57 ◼   ► If it was less than a hundred euro, I feel like that is a better thing to do than the trade-in get a new watch, if I'm being completely honest.

00:14:04 ◼   ► Because you would get an Apple Watch Ultra 2, which realistically is not any different to the Apple Watch Ultra that you have.

00:14:11 ◼   ► Okay.

00:14:14 ◼   ► I'll think about it.

00:14:15 ◼   ► I'll think about it.

00:14:16 ◼   ► Sounds good.

00:14:17 ◼   ► All right.

00:14:18 ◼   ► We have some follow-out.

00:14:21 ◼   ► Was that a laser?

00:14:25 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:14:26 ◼   ► On upgrade 565, The Scent of Humane, Jason and one Mike Hurley debated about IO and OpenAI and Johnny Ive, and it was very good.

00:14:40 ◼   ► I was very happy with how that episode came together.

00:14:43 ◼   ► There was definitely a debate that occurred at certain points of the show, which I enjoyed, and I knew going into it.

00:14:50 ◼   ► I was very happy that Jason wrote down all of his opinions about IO beforehand, because I was actually quite surprised at how strong his opinions were, but I think it led to a very good conversation.

00:15:03 ◼   ► So people should check it out if they haven't.

00:15:05 ◼   ► Yeah, it's good.

00:15:07 ◼   ► You know, we covered it as it broke last week, which is always so fun.

00:15:13 ◼   ► Oh, I love to do it to that.

00:15:15 ◼   ► I'm so happy that happened last week.

00:15:17 ◼   ► That was just great.

00:15:18 ◼   ► It was good.

00:15:18 ◼   ► I can't believe Jason doesn't like Johnny Ive.

00:15:21 ◼   ► You know what?

00:15:23 ◼   ► Actually, someone wrote in, because I was saying about how much I love him, and I have such a bias.

00:15:28 ◼   ► And someone wrote in and said, I wonder if it's because he's British.

00:15:31 ◼   ► And it's like, yeah.

00:15:32 ◼   ► I was literally going to say that.

00:15:33 ◼   ► I was literally going to say that.

00:15:35 ◼   ► Of course.

00:15:35 ◼   ► Right?

00:15:36 ◼   ► I mean, I find this so strange, because I get this whenever I talk about F1, right?

00:15:41 ◼   ► That all my favorite drivers are the British drivers.

00:15:43 ◼   ► And people get so mad about this.

00:15:45 ◼   ► But to me, it's like, Americans are the absolute worst with this.

00:15:50 ◼   ► And so it's very funny to me that when Americans get upset that I, as a British person, support British people.

00:15:57 ◼   ► How dare you?

00:15:59 ◼   ► I find it to be very strange.

00:16:00 ◼   ► But yes, of course, one of the reasons I love Johnny Ive, Sir Johnny Ive, is because he's from my homeland.

00:16:06 ◼   ► Also because I think he's the greatest designer in all history.

00:16:10 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:16:12 ◼   ► Oh, man.

00:16:12 ◼   ► I'm looking through the upgrade feedback form.

00:16:14 ◼   ► A lot of feelings about Johnny Ive in here.

00:16:16 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:16:18 ◼   ► Don't look in there.

00:16:18 ◼   ► Closing that tab.

00:16:19 ◼   ► Don't look in there.

00:16:21 ◼   ► Don't look in there.

00:16:22 ◼   ► We get a lot of it.

00:16:23 ◼   ► Some of it gets, everything gets read.

00:16:25 ◼   ► Only a portion of it gets read on the show.

00:16:27 ◼   ► That's right.

00:16:27 ◼   ► That's well said.

00:16:28 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:16:31 ◼   ► But Stephen, you showed up on another podcast this week.

00:16:33 ◼   ► I did.

00:16:34 ◼   ► I was on the talk show when John Gruber came out yesterday or over the weekend.

00:16:39 ◼   ► It's a very good episode.

00:16:41 ◼   ► My favorite part.

00:16:42 ◼   ► One of my favorite parts of the whole episode is where you nearly melted into a puddle at the beginning of the show because you were immediately put on the spot with a piece of Apple trivia that I don't think you got right.

00:16:55 ◼   ► Well, so we were talking about the screen resolution of the original Macintosh, and I quoted it as 512 by 384, which is wrong.

00:17:03 ◼   ► It's 342.

00:17:05 ◼   ► I corrected myself quickly, but then we went down a rabbit hole of, like, why that's true, and then I spent basically the next two days researching why that's true and wrote a lot of words about it on 512 pixels.

00:17:17 ◼   ► Was this a penance, this article?

00:17:19 ◼   ► Yeah, I needed to make it right with the universe, so.

00:17:22 ◼   ► You had to spend way too much time researching.

00:17:25 ◼   ► Watching it.

00:17:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:17:26 ◼   ► Put it together.

00:17:27 ◼   ► So, yeah, you can go read about that.

00:17:29 ◼   ► But, yeah, it was great to be on the talk show.

00:17:30 ◼   ► We covered a lot of ground, and it was a lot of fun.

00:17:34 ◼   ► Pictures of old Macs look so much better on your new website.

00:17:38 ◼   ► I think so, too.

00:17:40 ◼   ► The picture of the Lisa with, like, the sort of teal header and stuff looks really good.

00:17:45 ◼   ► Especially if you, like, line the image up just underneath the banner.

00:17:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:17:50 ◼   ► It's good.

00:17:51 ◼   ► I'm really happy with the redesign.

00:17:53 ◼   ► I'm really, really pleased.

00:17:55 ◼   ► So, yeah, go check out the talk show if you want to hear two hours of me talking about stuff.

00:18:00 ◼   ► Who would want that?

00:18:01 ◼   ► I don't know.

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00:19:58 ◼   ► So as we're recording today, Federico published a world premiere article.

00:20:04 ◼   ► It's that time, right?

00:20:08 ◼   ► It's Summer Game Fest time.

00:20:09 ◼   ► But anyway, this is about an app, a thing.

00:20:15 ◼   ► I don't even know if we call it an app.

00:20:17 ◼   ► Maybe you can answer that for me.

00:20:18 ◼   ► A project called Sky, which comes from some of the creators of Workflow and some of the

00:20:26 ◼   ► people who worked on Workflow.

00:20:27 ◼   ► We spoke about this company being set up a long time ago.

00:20:32 ◼   ► It's called Software Applications Incorporated, which is the like, hey, we've left Apple.

00:20:37 ◼   ► We've got a small team and we're building the thing.

00:20:40 ◼   ► The thing that they're building is called Sky.

00:20:43 ◼   ► Federico had an actual exclusive, right?

00:20:45 ◼   ► You're the only person that wrote about this today who like got the...

00:20:48 ◼   ► Yes, correct.

00:20:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:20:50 ◼   ► And it's kind of like a preview article.

00:20:52 ◼   ► Do you want to...

00:20:54 ◼   ► Can you talk about what is going on here to the best of your ability?

00:20:57 ◼   ► Because I know it's actually...

00:20:58 ◼   ► It's very complicated.

00:20:59 ◼   ► Great, great article, which people should absolutely go read, especially even just to

00:21:04 ◼   ► look at the images and the GIFs that are in it.

00:21:06 ◼   ► So you can kind of get an idea as to what is going on here.

00:21:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:21:11 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:21:11 ◼   ► Obviously, AI disclaimer, this product has AI and it uses LLMs.

00:21:17 ◼   ► So if you are not interested, there's going to be a chapter and you can skip it.

00:21:22 ◼   ► But this is what the product is.

00:21:23 ◼   ► No, but I don't think they should, though.

00:21:24 ◼   ► I was...

00:21:26 ◼   ► That was very nice of you to say for the people that don't like LLMs and stuff.

00:21:29 ◼   ► But like, this is interesting.

00:21:33 ◼   ► Like, you've got to know about this.

00:21:35 ◼   ► So that was very nice of you to put that disclaimer, but I'm anti-disclaimering it.

00:21:39 ◼   ► All right, cool.

00:21:40 ◼   ► All right.

00:21:40 ◼   ► Well, all right.

00:21:41 ◼   ► I tried.

00:21:42 ◼   ► To be fair, they did say that they were going to do this two years ago.

00:21:46 ◼   ► I remember linking to whatever the folks said in November 2023.

00:21:52 ◼   ► And they actually delivered on that idea.

00:21:55 ◼   ► So the short version.

00:21:57 ◼   ► So this is an AI-powered assistant that you install on your Mac.

00:22:03 ◼   ► And it's using a large language model.

00:22:05 ◼   ► It's using...

00:22:07 ◼   ► Right now, in the sort of alpha version that I have, it's using a few different models.

00:22:12 ◼   ► I mostly used it with GPT 4.1.

00:22:16 ◼   ► Cloud is also available.

00:22:18 ◼   ► There are no local models that you can install right now that may change.

00:22:24 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:22:24 ◼   ► So you install this app and essentially when you invoke it, it's got this little floating window.

00:22:30 ◼   ► It kind of looks like a mini version of Spotlight or Raycast, you know, like a launcher.

00:22:36 ◼   ► And you can use it like a launcher in that if you type, I don't know, S-A and you launch Safari.

00:22:42 ◼   ► Like you can use it for that, but it's not really meant for that.

00:22:47 ◼   ► It's meant for asking questions.

00:22:49 ◼   ► But unlike most chatbots, because you may say, well, I can also ask you a question to chat GPT or Cloud.

00:22:57 ◼   ► You can also...

00:22:59 ◼   ► The whole idea is that it integrates with everything on your Mac.

00:23:03 ◼   ► It's got...

00:23:06 ◼   ► It's basically connecting to all the possible system hooks that are available on Mac OS.

00:23:14 ◼   ► It's using all of them.

00:23:15 ◼   ► And I kind of want to get into the technical details of some of the underlying tech,

00:23:20 ◼   ► but I will do so when it actually launches.

00:23:25 ◼   ► And what you can do is, I guess the thing that sets it apart is that it can look at any window on your Mac,

00:23:34 ◼   ► whether it's visible in the foreground or in the background or minimized in the dock even.

00:23:39 ◼   ► It can look at any window and it can read the actual contents of any window using a special flavor of OCR

00:23:50 ◼   ► in that it's not just OCR.

00:23:52 ◼   ► It's like a screenshot plus additional data.

00:23:55 ◼   ► That's the sort of the secret sauce, so to speak.

00:23:59 ◼   ► It can read the content of any window and it lets you ask questions about that app.

00:24:06 ◼   ► So you can do things like basic stuff that you've seen before.

00:24:09 ◼   ► Like you're looking at a browser tab and you're like, hey, summarize this.

00:24:15 ◼   ► And because Sky is built upon this idea of getting window content is the first idea.

00:24:21 ◼   ► And the second one is performing actions.

00:24:23 ◼   ► It's got these tools.

00:24:25 ◼   ► There's built-in tools that come for free with the app.

00:24:30 ◼   ► And obviously, if you're a power user, you can make your own tools.

00:24:34 ◼   ► After all, these are the same people that made workflow, that made shortcuts.

00:24:37 ◼   ► But what's different this time is that, and this is one of the themes of the story.

00:24:44 ◼   ► Both workflow and shortcuts were always kind of, always, they were always mostly optimized for the power user end of the spectrum.

00:24:54 ◼   ► What these folks tried to do this time was like, try and find a better way to cover the entire spectrum of people that want to use computers.

00:25:03 ◼   ► From regular people that maybe have heard about AI and they're like, well, I know that I can ask questions about CharGPG, but CharGPG is in a browser.

00:25:12 ◼   ► And like it cannot do anything on my computer.

00:25:15 ◼   ► So trying and be this flexible product that can scale from simple things to advanced things in a way that shortcuts, to be honest, never could.

00:25:25 ◼   ► Because there's such a high barrier to entry when it comes to shortcuts, you know, putting together a shortcut.

00:25:31 ◼   ► So here you can do things like, you're looking at a, let's say you're looking at a concert page in Safari or in an email.

00:25:40 ◼   ► And you're like, hey, can you add this to my calendar and also send it to Mike?

00:25:43 ◼   ► And it's going to do all that.

00:25:45 ◼   ► Like from that sentence, it's going to do the visual understanding to see what you mean.

00:25:50 ◼   ► And then it's going to use the tools to create a calendar specifically for the event that you're looking at.

00:25:56 ◼   ► And it's going to send a message to Mike because iMessage is one of the built-in tools.

00:26:00 ◼   ► So that's kind of the idea.

00:26:01 ◼   ► It lives on your Mac.

00:26:04 ◼   ► It can look at any window and it can perform actions.

00:26:07 ◼   ► And those actions are based on tools.

00:26:10 ◼   ► And there are some built-in tools that the Sky team is going to give you out of the box.

00:26:16 ◼   ► And you can make your own tools.

00:26:18 ◼   ► That's sort of the broad overview of what it does.

00:26:23 ◼   ► But it's also like absolutely controlling your computer, right?

00:26:27 ◼   ► Like, okay.

00:26:28 ◼   ► So how do I explain this?

00:26:34 ◼   ► It depends, right?

00:26:35 ◼   ► So there are some things, like for example, iMessage, notes, reminders, the calendar, Apple Mail, web browsing.

00:26:46 ◼   ► It actually directly integrates with those apps.

00:26:50 ◼   ► So like it can retrieve your calendar events.

00:26:53 ◼   ► It can create calendar events.

00:26:54 ◼   ► Oh, obviously file management is a big one.

00:26:57 ◼   ► So it can read any directory.

00:27:00 ◼   ► It can create files, move files, copy files, delete files.

00:27:05 ◼   ► Like it basically acts as a finder assistant.

00:27:09 ◼   ► And it can chain these things together, right?

00:27:11 ◼   ► So if you want to do something like, hey, take this email and, I don't know, create a reminder for it.

00:27:19 ◼   ► And also write a summary of the email as a text file in my desktop.

00:27:24 ◼   ► It's going to do all that, right?

00:27:26 ◼   ► So it's got that behavior.

00:27:31 ◼   ► Sort of like, you know, people in these days like to call them agents, where they're like automations in a loop, essentially.

00:27:41 ◼   ► But it's got that behavior where it's going to do multiple things in a row for you.

00:27:45 ◼   ► When it comes to actually controlling your Mac, like it depends on what you mean by controlling your Mac.

00:27:55 ◼   ► Does it have computer use?

00:27:57 ◼   ► Not right now.

00:28:01 ◼   ► Can you use Sky itself to write custom tools to control your Mac?

00:28:09 ◼   ► Yes.

00:28:09 ◼   ► And that's kind of the idea.

00:28:12 ◼   ► Like, if you're a power user, you can sort of extend the app using AI, using a large language model, essentially using cloud,

00:28:21 ◼   ► which is the default model for writing Apple scripts and shell scripts.

00:28:27 ◼   ► So where Sky doesn't reach by default, you can provide your own scripts and you can provide your own shortcuts, which I have done.

00:28:36 ◼   ► Or you can sort of vibe code your way into those tools existing for you.

00:28:43 ◼   ► And what's even nicer about this implementation of vibe coding, and specifically Apple script, which is, it's totally like a, like, I don't know why, but it's, I like to think of it as a Jason Snell feature.

00:28:58 ◼   ► Because I do know that Jason loves some good old-fashioned Apple scripts.

00:29:02 ◼   ► He does.

00:29:03 ◼   ► So what it does, what it does in that case, when you're asking, hey, I want this script to, I don't know, batch rename files in Finder in some specific way.

00:29:14 ◼   ► Or, like, I don't know, I want an Apple script for BBEdit or something that does such and such thing.

00:29:18 ◼   ► When Claude is creating the Apple script, that Apple script will likely never hallucinate, because Sky is actually checking the Apple script definition file of the target application.

00:29:33 ◼   ► So, I mean, it's always been correct for me so far, which is incredibly cool.

00:29:38 ◼   ► And so, I am guessing, this is just my personal speculation, I'm guessing that down the road, this thing will have computer use, but that's, like, totally separate from what it is in this version that I have right now.

00:29:54 ◼   ► How long have you been using it?

00:29:56 ◼   ► Two weeks.

00:29:58 ◼   ► Okay, now you said, and I'm going to read the opening to your article, over the course of my career, I've had three distinct moments in which I saw a brand new app and immediately felt like it was going to change how I use my computer.

00:30:08 ◼   ► And they were all about empowering people to do more with their devices.

00:30:12 ◼   ► And then, moving on, you said, for the past two weeks, I've been able to use Sky, the new app, from the people who made shortcuts.

00:30:18 ◼   ► As soon as I saw a demo, I felt the same way that I did about editorial workflow and shortcuts.

00:30:22 ◼   ► I knew Sky was going to fundamentally change how I think about my Mac OS workflow and the role of automation in my everyday tasks.

00:30:28 ◼   ► That is very lofty.

00:30:30 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:30:31 ◼   ► I mean, obviously, you just wrote this, so you stand by it, but that is, I mean, it's big.

00:30:36 ◼   ► It's a very big claim, right?

00:30:38 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:30:40 ◼   ► I mean, but that's how I felt.

00:30:43 ◼   ► Because I do remember those moments, I do actually remember those moments individually.

00:30:50 ◼   ► The first time I got editorial, like where I was and what I was doing, when I got short, when I got workflow, I remember what I was doing, shortcuts.

00:30:57 ◼   ► I was obviously at WWDC and then I was able to catch up with the guys in private.

00:31:03 ◼   ► And so I do remember each moment distinctly.

00:31:06 ◼   ► And when I got the demo of Sky, it's going to be one of those moments because it was great.

00:31:14 ◼   ► And I was actually sort of losing my mind in terms of understanding how does it actually work.

00:31:19 ◼   ► And I think it's incredibly cool the way that it works behind the scenes, which is I will get deep into the technical stuff for the review.

00:31:28 ◼   ► But today I just wanted to have a preview, you know, no need to get into it.

00:31:32 ◼   ► But also because like technical stuff may change, you know.

00:31:35 ◼   ► Absolutely.

00:31:35 ◼   ► Because it seems like this is doing weird stuff, right?

00:31:41 ◼   ► Like not bad, but like...

00:31:43 ◼   ► Not as much as you imagine, actually.

00:31:45 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:31:46 ◼   ► But it feels like there is a little bit of like, this can only work on the Mac because on the Mac you have the ability to like poke into places and reverse engineer stuff.

00:31:55 ◼   ► This can only work on the Mac.

00:31:58 ◼   ► But if your concern is, oh, this, I bet this is the kind of workaround that is going to break with a new design.

00:32:04 ◼   ► I am very optimistic that even if macOS gets redesigned, it won't break thanks to the way it's been designed.

00:32:11 ◼   ► Maybe a way to put this, I'll ask it to you as a question and you can just answer or not.

00:32:17 ◼   ► It's like the things that it is reverse engineering are solid.

00:32:21 ◼   ► I don't even think it's actually reverse engineering.

00:32:25 ◼   ► I think it's just...

00:32:26 ◼   ► Or the holes they're poking that feel solid at least.

00:32:29 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

00:32:30 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

00:32:30 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

00:32:31 ◼   ► It's the kind of frameworks that Apple would be...

00:32:34 ◼   ► I mean, let's face it.

00:32:35 ◼   ► They would be crazy to get rid of the technologies that Sky is using.

00:32:39 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:32:39 ◼   ► Okay.

00:32:40 ◼   ► Yeah, that was one of my sort of immediate questions.

00:32:43 ◼   ► Like, is this going to be durable or is it going to be one of the situations, which we've seen before, Apple engage in like a cat and mouse thing with developers, which is just silly.

00:32:55 ◼   ► I'm sure it's going to be an app that every single year the new operating system breaks it a bit and they just have to fix it.

00:33:01 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:33:01 ◼   ► Like, so many apps are like that, right?

00:33:03 ◼   ► Definitely.

00:33:04 ◼   ► Like, awesome APIs have changed, so we've got to kind of...

00:33:06 ◼   ► We've got to go in and fix it.

00:33:08 ◼   ► Definitely, yeah.

00:33:09 ◼   ► Not to the point where it's like, if I'm understanding what you're saying, Federico, you wouldn't believe to the point where, like, the new operating system comes out and it's like, well, we're out of business.

00:33:17 ◼   ► It's just like, that was the end of that?

00:33:18 ◼   ► Then no more of that.

00:33:20 ◼   ► Like, it doesn't feel like that.

00:33:21 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:33:21 ◼   ► I imagine installing Sky, the permissions dialogues, a mile long.

00:33:27 ◼   ► It was actually one...

00:33:30 ◼   ► Yes, but it was actually one of the nicest...

00:33:32 ◼   ► I don't know if this is going to change by the final release.

00:33:35 ◼   ► When I got the first alpha, it was one of the nicest onboarding flows I've ever seen for this kinds of app that wants a ton of permissions.

00:33:42 ◼   ► They did all these cute animations and overlays on top of settings.

00:33:47 ◼   ► It was really nice.

00:33:48 ◼   ► Those are my favorites when an app...

00:33:50 ◼   ► I can't remember which app that I used recently, but it was like that, where it opens settings and, like, points...

00:33:57 ◼   ► I think CleanShot does some of this.

00:33:59 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:33:59 ◼   ► Maybe.

00:33:59 ◼   ► And, like, points to...

00:34:01 ◼   ► Like, it creates UI that points to where you're supposed to click.

00:34:05 ◼   ► Which, I like that, because it's helpful, right?

00:34:10 ◼   ► Then just, like, hey, open settings and do it.

00:34:12 ◼   ► It's like, I don't know.

00:34:13 ◼   ► It's so hard to find the places now where you've got to go to change any of these permissions dialogues.

00:34:19 ◼   ► I like it when an app can, like, suggest to you very clearly where you've got to go.

00:34:24 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:34:25 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:34:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:34:26 ◼   ► It's very nicely done.

00:34:27 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:34:29 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:34:29 ◼   ► So, I'm very positive that it'll keep working.

00:34:33 ◼   ► I guess one of the things I wanted to talk about is this idea of the same app being both accessible for simple tasks, but also very, very optimized for power users at the same time.

00:34:56 ◼   ► Okay.

00:34:56 ◼   ► And what I find most interesting is that I actually wrote this in the story.

00:35:02 ◼   ► If you want to use this for, like, just launching some of your existing scripts or shortcuts, like, it's not going to be the best tool for that.

00:35:13 ◼   ► Because those are, like, fixed things on your computer that you just want to launch quickly.

00:35:23 ◼   ► And here, and especially right now, if you try and do that, like, run a shortcut with Sky, just run a shortcut without any additional processing, you're going to have latency because it's going through an LLM.

00:35:38 ◼   ► So, actually, if you just want to run a shortcut as it is with no AI involved, like, there are better solutions for that.

00:35:47 ◼   ► Like Raycast?

00:35:48 ◼   ► Like Raycast.

00:35:49 ◼   ► But what I think is interesting is shortcuts or Apple scripts or shell scripts as part of this, I call it hybrid automation, not because I like to make up brands, but just because it's a pretty simple way to get the idea.

00:36:05 ◼   ► I think Sky is useful when you have these kinds of automations that need to have flexible inputs, non-deterministic inputs.

00:36:20 ◼   ► The kinds of automations where you don't know exactly what the input data is going to be like, which is basically the opposite of shortcuts or Apple scripts, the old-fashioned way.

00:36:34 ◼   ► For the example that I used in the story was, I have this shortcut that I can use to save articles to Mike's favorite application, Readwise Reader.

00:36:45 ◼   ► Love it.

00:36:45 ◼   ► It's on my home screen.

00:36:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:36:47 ◼   ► Now, before, I used to have to choose a tag for an article manually.

00:36:53 ◼   ► You know, save an article.

00:36:55 ◼   ► Okay, what's the tag?

00:36:56 ◼   ► Pick a tag.

00:36:57 ◼   ► Save it.

00:36:58 ◼   ► With Sky, because there's an LLM, and because LLMs are pretty great at understanding text,

00:37:05 ◼   ► I modified that sort of workflow on my computer to be like, okay, before you run the shortcut, do some natural language processing.

00:37:15 ◼   ► Understand what this article is about.

00:37:17 ◼   ► And pick one of these tags from this list of tags that I have.

00:37:23 ◼   ► Choose one that you think is most appropriate for the article.

00:37:27 ◼   ► And then use that for the shortcut that you're going to run.

00:37:31 ◼   ► So, which basically is like, okay, how do you take some input data that can be one of multiple things?

00:37:39 ◼   ► You cannot use regular expressions for that, because you actually need language understanding.

00:37:45 ◼   ► And so, how do you combine that flexibility that needs to happen by understanding text with a deterministic automation that requires an API, requires saving an article, choosing a tag.

00:37:59 ◼   ► And this is what Sky, I think, is pretty great at, like, combining the non-deterministic nature of chatbots with power user stuff, if you're interested in the power user stuff.

00:38:12 ◼   ► Yeah, when I saw this example, this is something I exactly want, like, this exact thing.

00:38:19 ◼   ► Because I have tags, and I like to assign tags to my articles, but I find it a frustrating step, right?

00:38:29 ◼   ► Like, I want to do it, but it's like, every time I've got to, like, choose it.

00:38:33 ◼   ► Plus, Readwise has this thing where I'm sure it just reorganizes the tags every single time I get the view, where it's like, what order are these even in?

00:38:43 ◼   ► So, it's like, oh, yeah, this is great.

00:38:47 ◼   ► And, like, to kind of build on what you were saying, Federico, it's like, the power of this kind of technology is, like, where you're adding variable content into an automation.

00:38:59 ◼   ► Where the type of thing that is going in, article, is fixed.

00:39:05 ◼   ► But the content of the article, completely random, and without this, without a computer that can understand fully what the information is taking in.

00:39:16 ◼   ► Because if it can't do that, it limits what you're able to do with it, right?

00:39:19 ◼   ► Where there are, you couldn't do this without this kind of level of understanding that a computer can provide now with these tools.

00:39:29 ◼   ► Like, the best you could maybe do is some kind of sentiment analysis.

00:39:32 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:39:33 ◼   ► Like, that is so heavy as a thing to do to a step like this.

00:39:38 ◼   ► I find it very interesting.

00:39:39 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:39:40 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:39:42 ◼   ► And so, obviously, I mean, I guess it'll come down to how much they can balance.

00:39:52 ◼   ► the fact that most users just want to play around with AI on their computers, and they just, they don't, they're not interested in writing Apple scripts or shortcuts.

00:40:04 ◼   ► Like, how much can you make it flexible for somebody who doesn't want to go in and create anything themselves?

00:40:12 ◼   ► Like, how flexible can it be out of the box?

00:40:14 ◼   ► Versus, how flexible can you be for the people who actually want to get their hands dirty with this?

00:40:22 ◼   ► And so, it comes down to that.

00:40:23 ◼   ► They, they're sad it's launching this summer, I believe they said in the promo video.

00:40:28 ◼   ► So, they have a few months.

00:40:31 ◼   ► The collection of built-in tools is already quite solid.

00:40:35 ◼   ► What I think is most impressive is the whole idea of you can take a sky shot.

00:40:44 ◼   ► This is one of the things we did not mention, like, taking a sky shot.

00:40:47 ◼   ► It's like, you hold down the two command keys on your keyboard, especially the right one, which nobody ever uses.

00:40:54 ◼   ► You hold down the two command keys, and you take this sky shot.

00:40:58 ◼   ► And the sky shot is basically a screenshot with additional metadata built in.

00:41:03 ◼   ► And so, that idea of, it doesn't need to be, when it comes to understanding what you're doing,

00:41:11 ◼   ► it doesn't need to be integrated with anything specifically, because it can just read the screen and read the window.

00:41:20 ◼   ► But when it comes to performing actions, it does.

00:41:24 ◼   ► And so, they have these built-in tools, or you can use shortcuts, or you can use AppleScript, and you can use ShellScript.

00:41:31 ◼   ► And, I believe, by the public launch, you will also be able to use MCP, which, I don't know, MCP feels like the kind of thing that Mike is going to question me about.

00:41:40 ◼   ► Do you have questions about MCP, Mike?

00:41:45 ◼   ► I mean, I'm vaguely aware of it at this point.

00:41:48 ◼   ► So, it's like, yeah, it's like this standard that everybody's kind of using now.

00:41:54 ◼   ► You know, there was a good episode of the Verge class last week, where they were talking about Google I.O.,

00:41:58 ◼   ► and they were talking about MCP.

00:42:00 ◼   ► And I found it to be an interesting discussion, because it's like, essentially, with something like MCP,

00:42:07 ◼   ► the web just becomes a series of databases that everybody's calling.

00:42:10 ◼   ► And it's like, the hope is that something like MCP could at least try and help establish a new monetary model for the web,

00:42:21 ◼   ► of, like, it costs, it's tolls, essentially, for accessing these databases.

00:42:26 ◼   ► I have no idea if that even makes any sense, but that, to me, was like, oh, okay.

00:42:32 ◼   ► Like, someone's at least trying to come up with something to still make the web some form of transaction where it needs to be.

00:42:39 ◼   ► But, yeah, so I've become a little bit more familiar with MCP.

00:42:43 ◼   ► Here's a question I have for you, Federica, right?

00:42:45 ◼   ► And for someone like, for someone like me, because you were referencing, like, automations, and, like, is it going to be able to do enough?

00:42:52 ◼   ► I think, I'm very interested in this tool, because I think it looks really nice, and the examples that you gave are really cool.

00:42:58 ◼   ► But sometimes, I mean, I think this hits the thing that I have with a lot of automation, right?

00:43:03 ◼   ► Where sometimes it feels like it's more effort to run the automation than just to do the thing.

00:43:09 ◼   ► Sure.

00:43:10 ◼   ► Yeah, there's a, isn't there, like, an XKCD comic about this?

00:43:13 ◼   ► Probably.

00:43:13 ◼   ► Yeah, there is.

00:43:15 ◼   ► I don't, I won't recall it, but I can maybe try and find it.

00:43:17 ◼   ► But, like...

00:43:17 ◼   ► Yeah, this one, this one.

00:43:19 ◼   ► There is, there's an example that you gave, which I thought was very technically interesting, right?

00:43:24 ◼   ► Which was, take a look at my downloads folder and deal with this for me.

00:43:29 ◼   ► And it dealt with it in a really great way, but I'm like, I probably could have done that.

00:43:34 ◼   ► Now, you do reference that John Voorhees has over a thousand things in his downloads folder.

00:43:39 ◼   ► And so, it did a better job, I'm sure, than he could have done in the amount of time to deal with that stuff.

00:43:44 ◼   ► But, I know that in this, you're, like, showing examples of the types of things it can do.

00:43:49 ◼   ► But there is that thing of, like, for someone who's not willing to write an Apple script,

00:43:55 ◼   ► they have to be able to ship this product with enough built-in stuff that I can type these commands in

00:44:04 ◼   ► and feel like that I'm actually saving time and that it's not just, like, look at this fancy toy, right?

00:44:09 ◼   ► Yeah, I think so.

00:44:11 ◼   ► And that is the challenge right now.

00:44:15 ◼   ► It's also, it's going to be interesting because it's also going to be,

00:44:19 ◼   ► it's going to be integrated with your Google account.

00:44:23 ◼   ► So, it's going to have, it's going to have direct Gmail integration.

00:44:28 ◼   ► It's going to use Cloud for writing the scripts.

00:44:33 ◼   ► You can use multiple versions of Cloud.

00:44:36 ◼   ► I tested Opus 4, did an excellent job.

00:44:40 ◼   ► What else I did, I forgot to mention.

00:44:44 ◼   ► Let's see.

00:44:44 ◼   ► Doesn't care which browser you use, obviously.

00:44:48 ◼   ► Because of the window content thing.

00:44:51 ◼   ► And it's also integrated with Google Maps.

00:44:53 ◼   ► So, you can also use Google Maps if you want as a provider.

00:44:57 ◼   ► Again, my personal theory is that there's another shoe to drop for this product,

00:45:05 ◼   ► which has to be down the road some version of computer use, right?

00:45:11 ◼   ► Because by computer use, I mean like, okay, Sky, actually do this thing for me in this app,

00:45:18 ◼   ► you know?

00:45:18 ◼   ► Like, actually take control of my computer.

00:45:22 ◼   ► Like, that has to be something down the road for these folks.

00:45:28 ◼   ► But I don't know.

00:45:30 ◼   ► Yeah, well, at the moment, the only things that it can seem to do is the stuff that the

00:45:33 ◼   ► APIs provide.

00:45:34 ◼   ► Like, add a note, send a message.

00:45:36 ◼   ► Like, it's not actually going, opening messages and sending the message, right?

00:45:41 ◼   ► It's just sending it via the APIs, right?

00:45:44 ◼   ► The integration.

00:45:45 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:45:45 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:45:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:45:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:45:46 ◼   ► It's not actually like clicking the messages icon and, you know, interacting with the messages

00:45:53 ◼   ► window on your behalf.

00:45:55 ◼   ► But I think it's a good thing that it's not yet trying to do that.

00:45:59 ◼   ► I think it's too early to do that, right?

00:46:01 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:46:02 ◼   ► Probably best to do it later.

00:46:03 ◼   ► Also, because like computer use as a thing in the AI space is very early.

00:46:08 ◼   ► There's tons of different models right now.

00:46:10 ◼   ► And sort of like the dust still needs to settle on that.

00:46:14 ◼   ► And so it's probably best for them to wait and just say, look, we have this collection of

00:46:18 ◼   ► built-in tools.

00:46:19 ◼   ► We can read your content from any window.

00:46:21 ◼   ► You can ask questions about any window on your computer.

00:46:23 ◼   ► And when it comes to taking actions, you have these built-in tools or you can use any of

00:46:28 ◼   ► these custom ones.

00:46:30 ◼   ► It'll be interesting to see also if they will leverage what they did with workflow and shortcuts,

00:46:38 ◼   ► which was the community aspect.

00:46:41 ◼   ► Will you be able to actually share custom tools with people?

00:46:46 ◼   ► It's going to be interesting.

00:46:48 ◼   ► Also, because those custom tools can even be regular AI prompts.

00:46:53 ◼   ► Like, because it's based on AI, like a tool can be a custom instruction.

00:46:59 ◼   ► Just text.

00:46:59 ◼   ► Just text.

00:47:01 ◼   ► And so it'll be interesting to see if there's going to be, I don't know, a directory aspect.

00:47:04 ◼   ► Obviously, these folks, they should have some expertise on that front, given the workflow

00:47:11 ◼   ► used to have one.

00:47:12 ◼   ► Shortcuts still has one.

00:47:14 ◼   ► And so, but I don't know.

00:47:17 ◼   ► I haven't heard or seen anything about that.

00:47:19 ◼   ► I hope it does because I would like to share stuff with people.

00:47:22 ◼   ► I think even if they don't, they'll obviously be, you know, there'll be a subreddit or something.

00:47:26 ◼   ► So I think it makes sense for them to embrace it.

00:47:29 ◼   ► And that was, I mean, thinking back to it, that was one of the things that made workflow

00:47:33 ◼   ► so cool, like that you could, you, Federico, could build something and then share it on

00:47:38 ◼   ► Mac Stories and like your readers could download the thing and do it, right?

00:47:42 ◼   ► And shortcuts, you know, they've sort of kept it alive, but I don't, I think if Apple had

00:47:49 ◼   ► started shortcuts on its own, maybe that would not have been a feature even, but I hope they

00:47:55 ◼   ► lead it to it.

00:47:55 ◼   ► I think it makes sense.

00:47:57 ◼   ► There's one thing that you kind of reference and we've spoken about it here a little bit.

00:48:02 ◼   ► And I do think it's important to talk about, which is the when it works aspect of this kind

00:48:06 ◼   ► of technology, right?

00:48:07 ◼   ► That like all of this is great when it works.

00:48:12 ◼   ► And I wonder, you know, like how it's complicated, right?

00:48:23 ◼   ► And doing things on my computer and computery things, especially looking forward to like

00:48:28 ◼   ► computer use, building this kind of tool, there is that risk of like, do you end up just annoying

00:48:34 ◼   ► your users because it doesn't work the way that they expect, right?

00:48:38 ◼   ► Like they try to do a thing and it just doesn't work.

00:48:40 ◼   ► And how much control do they have over that, right?

00:48:43 ◼   ► When the LLMs are powering it at the, like if you build an app where you've written all

00:48:47 ◼   ► the code for the app, you have control to a degree of how it functions when a user tries

00:48:52 ◼   ► to use it.

00:48:53 ◼   ► But when you're kind of giving your house over to the LLM, it's like, well, it's going to

00:48:58 ◼   ► do what it's going to do.

00:48:59 ◼   ► Right.

00:49:00 ◼   ► They can't, they cannot, they can put checks and balances in place, but they cannot control

00:49:05 ◼   ► the output for the input.

00:49:07 ◼   ► You just can't because otherwise you wouldn't use the LLM if you could control its response

00:49:13 ◼   ► in every time.

00:49:13 ◼   ► And I, this is a question we just don't have the answer for yet, but like tools like this,

00:49:20 ◼   ► like how, how do you feel about them?

00:49:22 ◼   ► Like, do we end up feeling about them the same way that we feel about Siri in the long run?

00:49:26 ◼   ► Because you ask it to do something and it doesn't do it?

00:49:29 ◼   ► Like how many times is a user willing to accept that kind of, to accept faults, you know?

00:49:38 ◼   ► Or like, or is the technology so good that you're willing to accept faults more often?

00:49:43 ◼   ► Like, I just don't know, right?

00:49:44 ◼   ► Like, we don't know.

00:49:45 ◼   ► My understanding is that the challenge over the past few months has been like, not necessarily

00:49:53 ◼   ► like, obviously also programming the app itself and all of the macOS integrations, but also

00:49:59 ◼   ► like sort of managing the LLM, you know, like trying to, trying to manage something that

00:50:08 ◼   ► is by design, I don't want to say unmanageable, but it's non-deterministic.

00:50:13 ◼   ► It can produce unexpected stuff.

00:50:15 ◼   ► It can hallucinate results.

00:50:19 ◼   ► I took a look at the, at the system prompt for Sky, even though I wasn't supposed to.

00:50:26 ◼   ► And I did it, I did it on my own.

00:50:29 ◼   ► I didn't, I didn't publish it.

00:50:30 ◼   ► It's a really good system prompt.

00:50:32 ◼   ► And I can tell you that they have put a lot of checks in different places for making sure

00:50:39 ◼   ► that things go a certain way.

00:50:41 ◼   ► The two hallucinations that I saw were actual bugs in how they were dealing with, like, for

00:50:48 ◼   ► example, one of them was getting a link from Spotify.

00:50:52 ◼   ► Like, it was a very specific thing.

00:50:56 ◼   ► But at the same time, like, sure, they can have a really good system prompt.

00:51:00 ◼   ► Sure, they can have this, this structure where, you know, they have some local stuff happening

00:51:08 ◼   ► that is checking what gets passed to the LLM and then it's checking again what returns from

00:51:13 ◼   ► the LLM.

00:51:14 ◼   ► You can have like, and this is not, this is not unheard of.

00:51:18 ◼   ► You know, I think Simon Wilson, for example, theorized this idea of the dual LLM approach

00:51:26 ◼   ► where you have two LLMs actually working together, one to check what the other is doing.

00:51:30 ◼   ► Interesting, interesting stuff.

00:51:32 ◼   ► It's actually like, and Google actually published a white paper on this a couple of months ago.

00:51:37 ◼   ► I forgot, is it called the CAMEL architecture?

00:51:40 ◼   ► Where you basically have two LLMs, one is quarantined and the other is not.

00:51:43 ◼   ► And one of them is checking the output of the other.

00:51:45 ◼   ► Crazy stuff.

00:51:47 ◼   ► There's a paper that you can find somewhere, but even, you know, despite all the checks

00:51:52 ◼   ► that you can put in places, can you have a hundred percent guarantee that this is always

00:51:56 ◼   ► going to go the way you expect?

00:51:57 ◼   ► No.

00:51:57 ◼   ► Like at this point, scientifically, no, you can't have that.

00:52:02 ◼   ► You can check that an LLM always returns output in a certain way.

00:52:08 ◼   ► And if it doesn't, you're going to block the answer.

00:52:10 ◼   ► Like if you expect the LLM to give you, I don't know, some, some Python code or some

00:52:15 ◼   ► JSON and it doesn't, you can have a little actual traditional code on, in your app that

00:52:20 ◼   ► says, well, this is not Python.

00:52:22 ◼   ► I'm not going to show this to the user.

00:52:24 ◼   ► But what if the Python code is bad?

00:52:27 ◼   ► What if it is Python code?

00:52:28 ◼   ► What if it is Apple script, but it's actually bad?

00:52:31 ◼   ► Do you have a hundred percent guarantee that, that it's going to work?

00:52:34 ◼   ► No, you don't.

00:52:36 ◼   ► And you know, that's, I guess the, the, the bargain that we signed up for.

00:52:42 ◼   ► But yeah.

00:52:43 ◼   ► Um, but at the same time, it also gives you the flexibility to do stuff that you couldn't

00:52:51 ◼   ► do before.

00:52:52 ◼   ► Right.

00:52:52 ◼   ► And that's the whole thing, I suppose.

00:52:54 ◼   ► Like at the same time, this thing that sometimes can hallucinate or can be, can be wrong or can

00:53:01 ◼   ► produce unexpected content at the same time.

00:53:04 ◼   ► It's also the technology that allows you to just chat and, and ask stuff with typos and,

00:53:10 ◼   ► and, you know, natural language.

00:53:12 ◼   ► So, um, yeah, it's, it's a balance.

00:53:15 ◼   ► It's another example of someone beating Apple to shipping something they said they would do.

00:53:22 ◼   ► Right.

00:53:22 ◼   ► And this goes, I think much further, even than like the personal assistant stuff, Apple outlined

00:53:27 ◼   ► at WBDC, but man, what's going on in the Apple software division.

00:53:32 ◼   ► Here's a funny thing that, that I'm just going to mention.

00:53:36 ◼   ► Um, I saw a while back somebody on the internet, I don't remember where.

00:53:42 ◼   ► But I saw somebody actually reverse engineer app intents, like third party app intents.

00:53:49 ◼   ► I saw somebody, I'll try my best to find the link, um, that was able to put together a proof

00:53:54 ◼   ► of concept that could call third party shortcut sections from third party apps in their third

00:54:02 ◼   ► party app.

00:54:03 ◼   ► Now, obviously this is something that only Siri, um, can do, you know, the whole idea of like

00:54:09 ◼   ► Apple intelligence and, and using a third party app intents, I think people are trying to reverse

00:54:15 ◼   ► engineer that using private APIs.

00:54:17 ◼   ► So it'll be so funny.

00:54:19 ◼   ► It'll be so funny if the sky folks or somebody else tries to reverse engineer app intents and

00:54:28 ◼   ► ships the Apple intelligence demo before Apple intelligence.

00:54:32 ◼   ► That'll be so funny.

00:54:34 ◼   ► If it happens, I'll try my best to find that link of the person who was attempting this.

00:54:38 ◼   ► It seems risky.

00:54:40 ◼   ► Like that seems the kind of thing where like you would build a thing and then they might

00:54:44 ◼   ► just pull the rug from under you because they don't really care about you.

00:54:49 ◼   ► You know, they're like doing their own thing.

00:54:51 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:54:51 ◼   ► I sent this to Finn.

00:54:53 ◼   ► I'll put it in the show notes.

00:54:53 ◼   ► I sent this to Finn, obviously the one true son for research purposes.

00:54:58 ◼   ► Um, but this was the idea.

00:55:00 ◼   ► Um, uh, it's somebody that was able, uh, to put something like a proof of concept together

00:55:06 ◼   ► that can call third party, um, actions and intents, uh, with, with SIP, uh, system integrity

00:55:13 ◼   ► protection still enabled on, on Mac OS still enabled.

00:55:17 ◼   ► Just as they say, just a little private API happening.

00:55:21 ◼   ► A little, a little, a little private API.

00:55:26 ◼   ► Yeah, man.

00:55:28 ◼   ► Well, this will be exciting to see where it goes.

00:55:30 ◼   ► Um, and congrats on the exclusive.

00:55:32 ◼   ► Uh, thank you.

00:55:33 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:55:34 ◼   ► Super cool.

00:55:34 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:55:35 ◼   ► Super.

00:55:35 ◼   ► Hopefully, hopefully this line, the final thing I'll say, hopefully this launches to the

00:55:40 ◼   ► public before it gets acquired by somebody.

00:55:43 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:55:43 ◼   ► Apple should buy them again.

00:55:46 ◼   ► I don't know if they would want to do that, but I feel like, I mean, Apple can't do it

00:55:51 ◼   ► this way, right?

00:55:52 ◼   ► This is like, I understand what you're saying, Stephen, but like Apple can't do it this way.

00:55:57 ◼   ► I just feel like this is, it's too, like inherently strange, like, which is good about it.

00:56:03 ◼   ► It's like the good thing about it.

00:56:04 ◼   ► I just don't think Apple could do it the way that they're doing it.

00:56:06 ◼   ► But the idea behind the way all of this is working, like they could take the ideas,

00:56:13 ◼   ► right?

00:56:14 ◼   ► Like there are, there are really good ideas here.

00:56:16 ◼   ► Like the sky shot thing.

00:56:17 ◼   ► It's a very clever way of doing stuff like this.

00:56:19 ◼   ► I also wonder, like, I want, you know, there was that rumor of like Apple's models.

00:56:26 ◼   ► I wonder if like Apple's models could be used here so you could do things on device.

00:56:29 ◼   ► So like, who knows how good they would be, but yeah, I mean, will they be bought?

00:56:33 ◼   ► Will this ever see the light day?

00:56:34 ◼   ► I hope so.

00:56:35 ◼   ► Cause I want to play with it, but, uh, we'll never, we will have to wait and see, right?

00:56:38 ◼   ► We'll have to wait and see.

00:56:42 ◼   ► This episode of the show is brought to you by Connected Pro members.

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00:57:51 ◼   ► Big news, Apple is so back to gaming.

00:57:57 ◼   ► Oh, God.

00:58:00 ◼   ► Apple loves games.

00:58:03 ◼   ► Mark Gurman reporting the other day that Apple is planning basically like a hub for gaming that would be a, quote, seeking to sell gamers and developers idea that it's a leader in the market.

00:58:19 ◼   ► So this is like a combo of game launcher and achievement and leaderboards and editorial content.

00:58:26 ◼   ► Of course, Apple Arcade promotion.

00:58:28 ◼   ► So if you see a red badge on this app icon, it's just Apple trying to sell you Apple Arcade.

00:58:33 ◼   ► Have I hit my head or does Apple have Game Center still?

00:58:37 ◼   ► Not really.

00:58:40 ◼   ► It's not what it used to be, right?

00:58:41 ◼   ► Game Center is just in the settings app now.

00:58:44 ◼   ► It's not what you think.

00:58:46 ◼   ► Yeah, it really isn't.

00:58:47 ◼   ► And the reason I had this thing today where John Voorhees pointed this out to me that Game Center is not a dedicated app and it hasn't been for a long time.

00:58:57 ◼   ► The Game Center exists, the functionality and the references to it, but it's like in settings and it pops up in certain games.

00:59:05 ◼   ► It's a framework.

00:59:06 ◼   ► But like Game Center used to be its own application, right?

00:59:09 ◼   ► Where you could go and you could like look at stuff that was happening.

00:59:12 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:59:12 ◼   ► It was felty.

00:59:14 ◼   ► It was felty for at least one iteration in its life.

00:59:17 ◼   ► And then it was bubbly.

00:59:19 ◼   ► Remember the iOS 7 redesign?

00:59:21 ◼   ► Oh, that was weird.

00:59:22 ◼   ► I do remember that.

00:59:24 ◼   ► The icon of it when it pops up in games is still bubbles.

00:59:28 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:59:28 ◼   ► There are still bubbles, but it's not as bubbly as it used to be.

00:59:31 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:59:33 ◼   ► Still bubbles.

00:59:34 ◼   ► What a weird thing.

00:59:36 ◼   ► So as well as that, the Mac version would be able to show games that were apparently not downloaded on the App Store.

00:59:45 ◼   ► And this would be part of the WWDC announcement.

00:59:48 ◼   ► Apple have also acquired a company called Rack7 who made a game called Sneaky Sasquatch, which was an Apple Arcade game.

00:59:55 ◼   ► For some reason, they have acquired this team of two game developers, which is odd.

01:00:02 ◼   ► It's very strange.

01:00:03 ◼   ► Acquisition feels like a strong word when it's just two people.

01:00:06 ◼   ► But I mean, congrats to them.

01:00:08 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:00:09 ◼   ► I mean, it's still an acquisition.

01:00:10 ◼   ► It's a company.

01:00:11 ◼   ► They bought the company.

01:00:12 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:00:13 ◼   ► I don't know why Apple referenced that, like, it's a games thing.

01:00:18 ◼   ► Like, they're not, like, hiring these guys as developers for Game Center or whatever.

01:00:22 ◼   ► Like, the quote that they gave, I'm trying to bring it up now, but Mac Rumors is not loading.

01:00:28 ◼   ► But it's, we love Sneaky Sasquatch, and we're excited that the two-person team has joined Apple to continue their work on it with us.

01:00:36 ◼   ► We will continue to deliver a great experience for Apple Arcade players.

01:00:40 ◼   ► Like, I don't understand why they have done that.

01:00:43 ◼   ► Like, that is interesting to me.

01:00:45 ◼   ► Especially there are, like, other development studios that they give a similar amount of love to.

01:00:50 ◼   ► Like, the What the Car, What the Bat team.

01:00:52 ◼   ► Where, like, they just seemingly, at this point, seem to just be making games for Apple Arcade.

01:00:57 ◼   ► Like, they have, like, a new one every year or something.

01:00:59 ◼   ► I don't understand what's going on here.

01:01:01 ◼   ► Like, in my dream world, this is a game store, and then there is games are separated from the app store.

01:01:10 ◼   ► And there is an app store and a game store with different rules for each of them.

01:01:14 ◼   ► This is my dream scenario of what they're building here.

01:01:17 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:01:17 ◼   ► But I do not think that that is what is going on.

01:01:19 ◼   ► But it's what I would like to occur.

01:01:23 ◼   ► So, like, the game store, that split is 70-30.

01:01:26 ◼   ► But the app store is 10-90.

01:01:29 ◼   ► Like, that's the kind of thing I want to see.

01:01:31 ◼   ► I don't think it's what this is.

01:01:33 ◼   ► But if it's just this, I don't know what the point of it is.

01:01:36 ◼   ► I don't know why this is going to happen.

01:01:38 ◼   ► I don't know what they expect to get from it.

01:01:40 ◼   ► I think a split like that would have worked five years ago.

01:01:43 ◼   ► But I think the situation that Apple is in now, legally and reputationally, with the app store,

01:01:49 ◼   ► like, say they split it and developers get a better cut than game developers,

01:01:53 ◼   ► like, that would only last so long in the world of courts and lawsuits.

01:01:59 ◼   ► Who even knows anymore?

01:02:00 ◼   ► You know what?

01:02:01 ◼   ► I agree with you.

01:02:02 ◼   ► Like, but who even knows anymore?

01:02:04 ◼   ► Like, at least it would be they were trying something.

01:02:06 ◼   ► And it would preserve most of their in-app purchase, right?

01:02:09 ◼   ► Most of their in-app purchase money is from games.

01:02:13 ◼   ► It's not, you know, it's a lot of money for regular developers, right?

01:02:16 ◼   ► But in the scheme, or in the scale of Apple, excuse me, in the scale of Apple,

01:02:21 ◼   ► it is, it's mostly game revenue.

01:02:24 ◼   ► You know, maybe scheme was the right word, actually.

01:02:27 ◼   ► Yeah, scheme is a good one.

01:02:28 ◼   ► Hard to say.

01:02:29 ◼   ► Scheme has a couple of different meanings, and it works great in both of these scenarios.

01:02:34 ◼   ► I'm a writer.

01:02:34 ◼   ► Federico is our resident gamer.

01:02:38 ◼   ► How do you feel about this?

01:02:40 ◼   ► Um, to me, this sounds like Apple is creating a copy of, of, uh, do you guys ever owned a

01:02:52 ◼   ► backbone controller?

01:02:53 ◼   ► Abs, yes.

01:02:55 ◼   ► Good call.

01:02:56 ◼   ► Yep.

01:02:56 ◼   ► To me, this sounds like an Apple version of the backbone app, which is basically a launcher

01:03:01 ◼   ► for all the games that you have installed on your device.

01:03:04 ◼   ► Plus, they also have integration with streaming and that sort of thing.

01:03:08 ◼   ► I don't mean to sound too harsh, because whenever I am harsh, I upset some people, and so I'm

01:03:15 ◼   ► going to try my best.

01:03:16 ◼   ► Um, but it feels to me as if this is yet another delusion from Apple's part to put up this pretense

01:03:25 ◼   ► that they understand video games, when they only understand video games in the context of a financial product.

01:03:35 ◼   ► And I mean, obviously, people make video games because, you know, they want to make money.

01:03:42 ◼   ► But, um, they, Apple seems to always treat video games as, like, a revenue source.

01:03:50 ◼   ► Like, they, they never truly put in the same amount of care and love into games as they're

01:04:00 ◼   ► doing for, say, Apple TV+.

01:04:02 ◼   ► Like, obviously, Apple TV+, needs to make money.

01:04:04 ◼   ► But you can also tell that they care about the artistic form of films and television.

01:04:12 ◼   ► Like, you can tell that they care.

01:04:13 ◼   ► And also, it needs to make money.

01:04:16 ◼   ► But the two things can coexist.

01:04:19 ◼   ► And to me, with the App Store and Apple Arcade, I don't know, it, it always felt like a, like a,

01:04:27 ◼   ► like a half-baked effort to say, yeah, we, we do love, you know, games.

01:04:33 ◼   ► Um, but this seems like another attempt to say, hey, look at us, look at all these games that

01:04:39 ◼   ► we have on the App Store for families and, and that you can use for free and some AAA stuff.

01:04:46 ◼   ► I'm sure this will be a great, a great, another great storefront for Death Stranding, Assassin's

01:04:53 ◼   ► Creed, and No Man's Sky, and those other five games that they, uh, sort of rotate, uh, in,

01:05:00 ◼   ► in their press releases.

01:05:01 ◼   ► What they should have done is understand that they either work with Steam and Xbox or they

01:05:15 ◼   ► don't.

01:05:16 ◼   ► It, that's what I would have, I think Quinn Nelson was posting about this, um, last night.

01:05:21 ◼   ► Like, what I would have done is, you're, you're Apple, you fundamentally hate Epic, right?

01:05:31 ◼   ► You hate Epic Games, all right?

01:05:33 ◼   ► Cool.

01:05:33 ◼   ► You go to Valve, you're like, hey, Valve, all right, listen to us.

01:05:36 ◼   ► We're gonna work with you.

01:05:39 ◼   ► We're gonna, we're gonna work with you to actually make Steam on the Mac a great place for video

01:05:45 ◼   ► games.

01:05:45 ◼   ► Here's the game porting toolkit technology that we have.

01:05:48 ◼   ► Please work with us to make sure that it's comparable to Proton and to the compatibility layer that you

01:05:55 ◼   ► have.

01:05:56 ◼   ► That's what they were supposed to do on the Mac.

01:05:59 ◼   ► On iOS and iPadOS, work with Microsoft.

01:06:04 ◼   ► Work with everybody except Epic Games to say, all right, what do you want?

01:06:09 ◼   ► To bring your cloud games or, or Game Pass, whatever it is.

01:06:14 ◼   ► Can you please, please bring these games to iOS and iPadOS?

01:06:18 ◼   ► Essentially, what I'm saying is, on desktop, there's a company that you gotta go to, and

01:06:23 ◼   ► it's Valve.

01:06:23 ◼   ► And on mobile devices, there's PlayStation, and there's Nintendo to an extent, and there's

01:06:28 ◼   ► Microsoft, because Microsoft truly wants Xbox to be everywhere.

01:06:32 ◼   ► That's what I would have done.

01:06:33 ◼   ► I wouldn't, I wouldn't do yet another quasi-app store, storefront, where you sort of take out

01:06:40 ◼   ► the games, and you put a little, you know, a couple of stories a week to say, these games

01:06:45 ◼   ► are great, you know, we have Tetris, and we have Monopoly, and we have, I don't know.

01:06:49 ◼   ► But, you do what I, what I imagined, if you understand video games.

01:06:57 ◼   ► And if games for you are just another app store category, then that's your problem.

01:07:03 ◼   ► I know that there are people there that understand games because they, they got Bellatro.

01:07:10 ◼   ► Mm, yeah.

01:07:11 ◼   ► Right?

01:07:11 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:07:12 ◼   ► Right?

01:07:13 ◼   ► Like, the people that, that, that did that, I want to see them making more of the big decisions

01:07:21 ◼   ► at Apple Arcade, and at Apple and Gaming, because that was smart, that was really smart, and that

01:07:28 ◼   ► would have cost a lot of money, and they did it, and they made it work, and it was great.

01:07:31 ◼   ► Like, I know that there are people that don't understand how to do it, they are clearly not

01:07:35 ◼   ► given the resources, and, and, and comparing it to Apple TV is really smart, I never thought

01:07:41 ◼   ► about that before, because the people that are making the Apple TV TV shows are absolutely

01:07:45 ◼   ► given the agency and resources.

01:07:47 ◼   ► Apple Arcade is not the same way, but I feel like Apple could make more money from games than

01:07:55 ◼   ► they could make from TV on iOS.

01:07:58 ◼   ► Yeah, like, yeah, they absolutely did.

01:08:00 ◼   ► And I mean, it doesn't, the thing is, if you, if you don't find a way to combine the

01:08:05 ◼   ► culture and to combine the care with the resources and the money, it doesn't matter how deep your

01:08:13 ◼   ► pockets are.

01:08:13 ◼   ► I mean, look at Netflix, and all the, the, the studios they acquired, the people they acquired,

01:08:18 ◼   ► the, the, the exclusives that they got for Netflix games, and then it all went to, you

01:08:24 ◼   ► know, to that place.

01:08:25 ◼   ► Um, it's like, it doesn't really matter how much money you have.

01:08:30 ◼   ► There's plenty of companies these days with this, with, I was going to say disposable income

01:08:34 ◼   ► with billions of dollars.

01:08:35 ◼   ► That's not disposable income.

01:08:37 ◼   ► That's, there's all kinds of companies with billions of dollars who could do games.

01:08:42 ◼   ► And some of them are tried, uh, but ultimately they fail because you require that's, you, you

01:08:49 ◼   ► require that combination of money and the care.

01:08:53 ◼   ► And, and if you don't have both, uh, you're just going to end up being another Google Stadia

01:08:59 ◼   ► and other Netflix games.

01:09:01 ◼   ► Netflix is the elephant in the room because Netflix got all the right games, right?

01:09:06 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:09:07 ◼   ► And it doesn't seem to have worked for them.

01:09:09 ◼   ► Now you could argue the reason it hasn't worked is because like with Apple TV, and I think Netflix

01:09:15 ◼   ► have really put a lot of money into talking about the fact that they have games, like they're

01:09:19 ◼   ► acquiring the rights to lots of great games, but they're not doing a very good job of telling

01:09:25 ◼   ► their customers that they should use them.

01:09:27 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:09:27 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:09:28 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:09:29 ◼   ► So I don't know.

01:09:32 ◼   ► I mean, I'm sure this will be one of the big announcements in iOS 19, um, Game Store,

01:09:39 ◼   ► Games App, whatever.

01:09:41 ◼   ► I bet it's going to be called the Games App, um, Apple Games, Apple Game, oh, yes, it's

01:09:47 ◼   ► Apple Games for sure.

01:09:48 ◼   ► You're right.

01:09:49 ◼   ► It's Apple Games.

01:09:49 ◼   ► We'll see.

01:09:51 ◼   ► Maybe there's more acquisitions coming.

01:09:53 ◼   ► Who knows?

01:09:53 ◼   ► Before we wrap up.

01:09:56 ◼   ► So next week we're doing the Rickies.

01:09:57 ◼   ► So that will probably be pretty focused on talking about WWDC.

01:10:01 ◼   ► Uh, but next week the Nintendo Switch 2 launches, uh, the day after we record.

01:10:06 ◼   ► And so I wanted to get a quick hype check, uh, from the gang, uh, about the Nintendo Switch

01:10:12 ◼   ► 2.

01:10:12 ◼   ► Steven, do you want to start?

01:10:14 ◼   ► I did not pre-order one.

01:10:17 ◼   ► We're going to do it.

01:10:17 ◼   ► Do you regret that?

01:10:18 ◼   ► A little bit.

01:10:19 ◼   ► Cause I, my plan was to do it for the holidays and now I'm afraid I'm not gonna be able to

01:10:23 ◼   ► find one, I will say my 10 year old has been talking to his, uh, cousin and they are both

01:10:29 ◼   ► very excited about the Switch 2.

01:10:31 ◼   ► But my brother's plan also is to wait to the holidays.

01:10:33 ◼   ► And so I think Mark and I will have to do this in conjunction so the cousins can play together.

01:10:40 ◼   ► But yeah, super excited for the reviews and to see, uh, see what people think about it.

01:10:45 ◼   ► My advice to you.

01:10:46 ◼   ► So apparently there is, it's looking like there is going to be stock available when it launches

01:10:52 ◼   ► in stores.

01:10:53 ◼   ► I might just go ahead and get one on the way.

01:10:56 ◼   ► You should just try and get one because if you wait till the holidays, you might be paying

01:11:01 ◼   ► more money.

01:11:02 ◼   ► Yeah, that's true.

01:11:03 ◼   ► It's true.

01:11:04 ◼   ► Did y'all pre-order?

01:11:07 ◼   ► I forget.

01:11:07 ◼   ► We talked about it.

01:11:08 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

01:11:09 ◼   ► Uh, I pre-ordered two, one for me and one for Mr. Brandon Bigley.

01:11:14 ◼   ► Oh, did you?

01:11:16 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:11:17 ◼   ► That's how that went down in the end.

01:11:19 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:11:19 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:11:20 ◼   ► How are you going to get it to him?

01:11:22 ◼   ► I'm going to ship it to him.

01:11:24 ◼   ► To Japan?

01:11:25 ◼   ► Yes.

01:11:26 ◼   ► Wow.

01:11:27 ◼   ► Oh my God.

01:11:27 ◼   ► Wait.

01:11:27 ◼   ► So like you're Brendan's John.

01:11:30 ◼   ► Yes.

01:11:31 ◼   ► Are you not going to ship it to John and have John send it to Brendan?

01:11:34 ◼   ► That feels more like, is John coming over to ship it to Brendan?

01:11:40 ◼   ► Have I, have I guys told you, have I told you guys that I have a new, I have a new, uh, shipments

01:11:47 ◼   ► guy?

01:11:48 ◼   ► No.

01:11:49 ◼   ► Do you not, do you know about my new guy?

01:11:51 ◼   ► No.

01:11:51 ◼   ► I don't know about your new guy.

01:11:52 ◼   ► All right.

01:11:53 ◼   ► So there's this guy, Alessio.

01:11:54 ◼   ► All right.

01:11:55 ◼   ► Um, he's got, in theory, well not in theory, in practice also, like he runs this new stand,

01:12:03 ◼   ► old fashioned new stand shop.

01:12:05 ◼   ► Oh, this is great.

01:12:06 ◼   ► That's cool.

01:12:06 ◼   ► Okay.

01:12:07 ◼   ► Okay.

01:12:07 ◼   ► All right.

01:12:08 ◼   ► We still have quite a few new stands in Rome.

01:12:12 ◼   ► A lot of them have closed over the years, obviously, but it's still, and, but what I've noticed

01:12:17 ◼   ► is that a lot of new stands have sort of repurposed their business with being delivery points

01:12:24 ◼   ► and shipment points for all kinds of packages and Amazon, obviously, or, or selling the,

01:12:33 ◼   ► cards for trading card games, like Pokemon, Magic, One Piece, all the popular, uh, card

01:12:40 ◼   ► games.

01:12:40 ◼   ► Do they sell vapes too?

01:12:42 ◼   ► No, they don't sell vapes.

01:12:44 ◼   ► I haven't seen vapes.

01:12:45 ◼   ► Okay.

01:12:45 ◼   ► Uh, and apparently they're making quite a bit of money with the, especially with the delivery

01:12:49 ◼   ► stuff.

01:12:49 ◼   ► So Alessio is, uh, you know, uh, found out about Alessio a few months ago, become my best

01:12:55 ◼   ► friend.

01:12:56 ◼   ► Uh, now we, you know, when I go there, like today I went there, had like 10 packages that I needed

01:13:02 ◼   ► to ship, all Amazon returns basically.

01:13:05 ◼   ► And it's like, and so every time we chat and, and it's very flexible, he supports all of the

01:13:10 ◼   ► major couriers.

01:13:11 ◼   ► And then we end up talking about like, you know, video games because he's also a gamer.

01:13:16 ◼   ► So we were talking about Xbox and Oblivion and all that kind of stuff.

01:13:19 ◼   ► Cool guy.

01:13:20 ◼   ► So I am going to use Alessio to ship Brandon's Nintendo Switch 2 to Japan.

01:13:25 ◼   ► Um, so that's incredible.

01:13:27 ◼   ► That is, I feel like we just got an NPC exclusive.

01:13:31 ◼   ► NPC listeners just got an exclusive, which is great.

01:13:35 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:13:35 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:13:36 ◼   ► Um, do you guys remember the, my story about the original Nintendo Switch?

01:13:41 ◼   ► I know you did a video review of it.

01:13:44 ◼   ► I remember that.

01:13:45 ◼   ► Well, I, cause I wanted one that bad.

01:13:47 ◼   ► Cause I wanted to do that.

01:13:48 ◼   ► I pre-ordered three of them.

01:13:51 ◼   ► Oh, that's right.

01:13:51 ◼   ► From different, from different services.

01:13:53 ◼   ► Well, I did it again.

01:13:55 ◼   ► I, I, I pre-ordered three Nintendo Switches, uh, again, for the same reason as last time,

01:14:00 ◼   ► which is like retail here in the UK when it comes to Nintendo is very weird.

01:14:07 ◼   ► Like they all just started selling them randomly, not on the agreed upon date.

01:14:14 ◼   ► And none of them are clear about whether you're actually going to get it on release day or not.

01:14:18 ◼   ► So I ordered what the first one I got was from a site.

01:14:21 ◼   ► I do not trust.

01:14:23 ◼   ► The second one was from a website I trusted.

01:14:26 ◼   ► And that was going to be the end of it.

01:14:27 ◼   ► Then there was a company who's like, yeah, but you can just come pick it up from a store.

01:14:32 ◼   ► And I was like, that's the one I want.

01:14:33 ◼   ► So I have three pre-orders, but they already all have homes, right?

01:14:37 ◼   ► Like people that couldn't get them.

01:14:38 ◼   ► So one will go to my wife and one, one of my best friends from home couldn't get one.

01:14:42 ◼   ► I was like, great.

01:14:43 ◼   ► I have three.

01:14:44 ◼   ► So it's like, same as last time where last time one went to a friend and one went to my brother.

01:14:48 ◼   ► Like, I'm not like flipping these things.

01:14:51 ◼   ► It's people that tried and couldn't get them, but I'm just more plugged into the system and was able to get a bunch of pre-orders in.

01:14:56 ◼   ► So I'm going to have mine on day one.

01:14:58 ◼   ► I'm going to go pick it up from a toy store, which is just like fantastic.

01:15:00 ◼   ► I'm so happy about that.

01:15:01 ◼   ► I'll be there when it opens, pick it up, come home.

01:15:03 ◼   ► And what's so good, I'm so happy about this.

01:15:07 ◼   ► So my mother-in-law is coming to help out for when during WWC week.

01:15:14 ◼   ► So like I can work late and like, you know, there'll be help.

01:15:17 ◼   ► She's arriving on that day.

01:15:20 ◼   ► So like, I will get like a day and a half of like, I'm just going to play Nintendo.

01:15:25 ◼   ► I'm going to go upstairs and I'm going to play Nintendo.

01:15:29 ◼   ► And I am so excited about this.

01:15:31 ◼   ► Like this is lining up just right for me.

01:15:33 ◼   ► I'm really excited about it.

01:15:35 ◼   ► I'm really excited about Mario Kart.

01:15:37 ◼   ► That's like the whole thing of me for launch, like is just is Mario Kart.

01:15:41 ◼   ► That's what I'm most excited about.

01:15:42 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:15:44 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:15:44 ◼   ► I'm so, so deeply excited about getting your Nintendo console, Mario Kart.

01:15:50 ◼   ► And I think I've decided I am going to play Breath of the Wild again instead of Tears of the Kingdom.

01:15:57 ◼   ► If anything, because I do know that deep down in my heart, I prefer that game.

01:16:02 ◼   ► And so I'm going to play that game again.

01:16:04 ◼   ► And I, I think I'm just going to download a bunch of stuff to see what it's like on the Nintendo Switch 2.

01:16:12 ◼   ► But I think I'm going to play Cyberpunk on it.

01:16:16 ◼   ► I want to see what it's like to play a really demanding game on the Nintendo Switch 2.

01:16:23 ◼   ► Spoilers, I guess, despite me now having a proper gaming PC, I want to see what it's like on the Nintendo Switch 2.

01:16:31 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm intrigued.

01:16:33 ◼   ► I'm really intrigued.

01:16:35 ◼   ► Like, how are these things actually going to run?

01:16:41 ◼   ► Like, truly?

01:16:42 ◼   ► Like, we're going to find that out in the reviews.

01:16:45 ◼   ► Even though, did you see that Nintendo is not sending reviews?

01:16:48 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:16:48 ◼   ► Yeah, it's not clear.

01:16:49 ◼   ► Are they really doing this?

01:16:51 ◼   ► There's not going to be press with review access before?

01:16:55 ◼   ► IGN said no.

01:16:58 ◼   ► Huh.

01:16:58 ◼   ► That's silly.

01:16:59 ◼   ► Why?

01:17:01 ◼   ► Don't know.

01:17:02 ◼   ► That's not great.

01:17:03 ◼   ► IGN said no.

01:17:05 ◼   ► IGN said that they were not getting units.

01:17:09 ◼   ► And so they'll be doing reviews in progress from when it starts.

01:17:13 ◼   ► That is weird.

01:17:17 ◼   ► Okay.

01:17:17 ◼   ► It's not, it's usually not a good sign.

01:17:19 ◼   ► Or, Nintendo just don't care.

01:17:21 ◼   ► Right?

01:17:22 ◼   ► Like, Nintendo just don't care.

01:17:24 ◼   ► Hmm.

01:17:26 ◼   ► Oh, well.

01:17:27 ◼   ► Okay.

01:17:27 ◼   ► Does it matter if you sell all that you can make?

01:17:29 ◼   ► It doesn't.

01:17:31 ◼   ► Really?

01:17:31 ◼   ► You know?

01:17:32 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:17:33 ◼   ► IGN reported there will be no early Switch 2 reviews.

01:17:36 ◼   ► Hmm.

01:17:37 ◼   ► It's taken me to, well, it's taken me to a Reddit post where it says the post was deleted

01:17:43 ◼   ► by the person who posted it.

01:17:44 ◼   ► So, take that with a grain of salt, I've just said it, and now I'm not sure anymore.

01:17:47 ◼   ► Because that was a thing I saw on Blue Sky, and now I'm struggling to find, like, sourcing

01:17:54 ◼   ► of it.

01:17:54 ◼   ► But they said it, they said it initially, and I don't know what's going to happen.

01:17:59 ◼   ► Well, I think that does it for this week.

01:18:02 ◼   ► If you want to find links to all the stuff we spoke about, including Federico's great

01:18:06 ◼   ► look at Sky, they're in your podcast player, and they're on the web at relay.fm slash connected

01:18:13 ◼   ► slash 554.

01:18:14 ◼   ► Two of those links are special.

01:18:15 ◼   ► One of them, you can leave feedback or follow-up for the show.

01:18:19 ◼   ► You can do it anonymously.

01:18:20 ◼   ► There's a little checkbox there.

01:18:22 ◼   ► And you can also get Connected Pro, the longer ad-free version of the show that we do each

01:18:27 ◼   ► and every week.

01:18:28 ◼   ► You can find us online.

01:18:30 ◼   ► Federico is the editor-in-chief of MacStories.net, hosts a bunch of podcasts over there.

01:18:36 ◼   ► Mike hosts a bunch of shows here at Relay, and you can check out his work at Cortex Brand.

01:18:41 ◼   ► I write 512pixels.net and co-host Mac Power Users here on Relay every Sunday.

01:18:46 ◼   ► I'd like to thank our sponsor this week, Ecamm, for their support of the show.

01:18:50 ◼   ► And until next time, guys, say goodbye.

01:18:52 ◼   ► Adieu d'ritchi.

01:18:54 ◼   ► Cheerio.

01:18:54 ◼   ► I'm taking back the chairmanship.

01:18:57 ◼   ► Just wait.

01:18:58 ◼   ► Yeah, good luck.

01:18:58 ◼   ► Good luck.