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Connected

587: We're All Confused

 

00:00:00   Hello, and welcome to episode 587 of the Connected Podcast here on Relay.

00:00:12   This episode is brought to you by Sentry and Ecamm.

00:00:15   My name is Mike, and I am joined by the keynote chairman, Federico Vattici.

00:00:20   Hi, Federico.

00:00:21   Hello, Mike.

00:00:22   We're an open-faced sandwich this week, where I'm the meat on top of you, the chairman bread,

00:00:28   because there is just one chairman on the show this week, because Stephen has actually

00:00:32   lost his voice, so he would be essentially useless to us today.

00:00:36   Yeah, that's how the French do it, the open sandwich, I think.

00:00:39   Exactly.

00:00:40   So we are but an open sandwich today.

00:00:43   Yeah, not great.

00:00:44   I actually, we do a membership show called Backstage, which is available to all Relay members.

00:00:49   And Stephen, we did it today together, and it was terrible.

00:00:53   The man sounds horrible.

00:00:54   He just sounds horrible.

00:00:55   I feel bad for him.

00:00:57   You don't want to hear Stephen right now.

00:00:59   I don't, no.

00:01:00   And I don't think anybody else does, really, if I'm being completely honest with you.

00:01:03   Do you know, by the time we record next week, hoping that he is back on the show, he will

00:01:09   be 40.

00:01:10   That's rough, right?

00:01:13   That's rough.

00:01:14   I forget that he's that much older than me and you, you know?

00:01:19   Right, because we're all kind of used to the idea that he's, you know, for the show, he's

00:01:24   like 57 or something.

00:01:25   But then when you put it in real terms, it's like, oh, he's actually so much older.

00:01:30   Me and you, like, even in real terms, he's just like way older.

00:01:34   So it is Stephen's big birthday next Wednesday, the 28th.

00:01:39   So mark it in your calendars and send him, I don't know, stuff.

00:01:44   Stuff.

00:01:45   Yeah.

00:01:46   I don't know what, but something.

00:01:48   Some stuff.

00:01:48   We had a piece of follow-up.

00:01:50   We've actually got quite a lot of news today.

00:01:52   It's happened again.

00:01:53   There's news.

00:01:53   So we've got stuff to talk about.

00:01:54   But there was a piece of follow-up that I thought was really interesting because I hadn't

00:01:58   even considered it.

00:01:59   So Brian wrote in and said, with the advent of Apple Creator Studio, I fear for the end of

00:02:04   the iLife apps.

00:02:05   GarageBand and iMovie have not received significant updates in so long, which is sad because these

00:02:11   apps used to be a significant selling point of Apple's platforms versus Windows.

00:02:15   Countless professional musicians got their start in GarageBand and many home musicians,

00:02:20   young children find it invaluable.

00:02:21   Not everybody needs apps like Logic or Final Cut.

00:02:24   So obviously, we've been talking about Creator Studio for like a week and a bit.

00:02:28   And you've got like apps like Pages, Keynote, you know, they're in the suite.

00:02:33   But it didn't even occur to me that GarageBand and iMovie are not.

00:02:38   Now, they probably shouldn't be, right?

00:02:41   Because you've got the big professional apps there.

00:02:44   But it was just like a thing that's like, oh, just didn't even really think about the

00:02:48   fact that these apps, I guess, continue.

00:02:51   But now I reckon will probably become even more like pushed to the side, which is a shame.

00:02:58   I mean, GarageBand is how I started with podcasting because logic is so complicated.

00:03:03   By the way, Apple, you absolutely should make a podcast app, like a podcast recording app.

00:03:09   Like they absolutely should do that.

00:03:11   Just like take the simple part of GarageBand that would let you do that and just give people

00:03:17   the ability to make a podcast recording and editing app.

00:03:21   Like they should, should do that.

00:03:23   It's like we are the face of the medium, right?

00:03:26   Which they want to be.

00:03:27   I think they should make a tool to help people make podcasts.

00:03:31   Yeah, I agree.

00:03:32   And for those easier, more intuitive apps, I don't know.

00:03:38   I kind of wonder if when it comes to iMovie, for example, I kind of wonder if, you know,

00:03:44   obviously more of those features will be folded into the Photos app because that's the thing

00:03:49   that most people use on a daily basis.

00:03:52   And I also kind of wonder, as much as it's going to be potentially terrible in some ways,

00:03:58   but something like GarageBand, there is a plan somewhere to redo GarageBand with generative

00:04:08   AI, which is not great, but I fear that it's happening.

00:04:15   Lots of companies are cutting deals and investing into this AI music, quote unquote, music, startups

00:04:24   and companies making these models.

00:04:26   And I wonder if there's a version somewhere at Apple that is GarageBand, but it's all based

00:04:32   on this new tech, which is, I mean, obviously as a, you know, music is a huge part of my life

00:04:39   and I don't even want to call it music because it's not, but I also know that it's happening.

00:04:45   That technology is out there and you see Warner Brothers and all these other studios cutting

00:04:49   deals with Suno and all these other startups that are making music.

00:04:54   And so I fear that there is a timeline where a tool like GarageBand is actually just based

00:05:01   on generative AI at some point.

00:05:03   Rough.

00:05:04   Yeah.

00:05:05   Speaking of, Mark Gurman, he's been on a break and he's back.

00:05:10   We're just, we're launching into the main topic.

00:05:12   Okay.

00:05:13   Yeah.

00:05:13   He's back and he's back with a big old report.

00:05:16   Usually around this time of the year, Mark will have a report about what we can expect

00:05:21   at WWDC or he will at least have it at some point.

00:05:23   And then we'll, we'll do more throughout the year.

00:05:26   And we have that today.

00:05:27   And essentially the thing to note is that WWDC this year, the 27 releases, we should

00:05:33   say, they are essentially Apple intelligence releases again.

00:05:38   Yeah.

00:05:38   You know, he has already referenced in the past that it would be otherwise a snow leopard year

00:05:45   for the OS's, like they're just going to do their best to make them run nicely.

00:05:51   Nice and smooth, as they say, no bugs, all that kind of stuff.

00:05:55   But there's going to be a lot going on in Apple intelligence.

00:06:00   So we know that kind of before WWDC, the expectation is that Apple will enhance Siri using Google

00:06:12   tools, using Gemini.

00:06:13   And so that, Mark still says sometime in the spring, we should see that.

00:06:18   And it would have features like some form of on-screen awareness and personal context.

00:06:23   No idea what that looks like.

00:06:26   I have no idea now how they're going to do it.

00:06:28   Do they just drop that?

00:06:29   Like, does it come out in the beta?

00:06:30   Do they have an event?

00:06:31   I have no idea how they're going to do this, which is fascinating.

00:06:35   Just like, you know, maybe like some random Tuesday, 26.6 comes out or whatever in beta.

00:06:43   And by the way, there's a whole new Apple intelligence Siri in there.

00:06:46   No idea how that's going to happen.

00:06:48   But the big thing in this report is that Apple is working on a, quote, chatbot, codenamed

00:06:55   Campos, that could be unveiled at WWDC this year.

00:06:58   That would be the expectation.

00:06:59   This would then replace the Siri that we would have whenever, you know, so like the Siri we

00:07:07   have now, plus any improvements that we get, this system will just straight up replace that.

00:07:15   It also is referenced in this article that to do this, Apple may need a model powerful enough that Google is going to have to run it themselves for them, which is fascinating.

00:07:30   The system that is being referred to will be integrated with Apple's apps.

00:07:35   It can analyze and control and open Windows.

00:07:37   It could be interesting on the Mac.

00:07:39   You can ask it to do things.

00:07:40   It could do things for you.

00:07:41   It can anything that is in one of Apple's apps that should be able to go and control.

00:07:45   There's a lot of conversation about, like, it being a chatbot, but there's also, in Mark's article, there seems to be some arguments inside of Apple as to whether they would actually have it as an app that you could use.

00:07:59   Like, it may have all of the, or the majority of the features that a chatbot like ChatGPT, Claude, would have, but it may not be like a dedicated icon on a home screen that you launch.

00:08:13   So, fascinating.

00:08:15   What are you, what was your thoughts on reading all this stuff?

00:08:17   Okay, okay.

00:08:19   So, the first thing I want to talk about is what Mark is essentially proposing as two architectures.

00:08:29   Coming out this year.

00:08:29   Two completely different experiences coming out this year.

00:08:32   So, in the spring, basically Apple making good on their promise from 2024 for a more personalized, contextually aware Siri based on voice mode.

00:08:45   So, a voice-only Siri that runs on a version of Google Gemini running on Apple Silicon with private cloud compute that is going to be able to answer word knowledge questions.

00:08:59   So, search the web, summarize, use citations.

00:09:01   But also, take data from your apps and perform actions inside apps.

00:09:08   This is not going to be a chatbot.

00:09:09   This is going to be a more powerful voice-based Siri with on-screen awareness, personal context, performing actions inside apps, running on Apple's cloud.

00:09:23   That it's not going to be a chatbot with persistent chats, persistent conversations, or memory, right?

00:09:29   So, it's a smarter Siri.

00:09:31   And then Mark is saying, later in 2026, and this is going to be their big announcement at WWDC, they're going to have a proper chatbot.

00:09:39   You will be able to ask text questions, have persistent conversations, upload file attachments, so images, maybe documents, and have your regular chat GPT-like experience.

00:09:52   And this is going to be based on a more powerful version of Gemini.

00:09:56   And Apple is considering running this on Google's TPUs.

00:10:00   So, the TPUs are the tensor processing units.

00:10:02   This is the Google chip made for AI, the latest gen.

00:10:06   It's called Ironboot, I believe.

00:10:08   And Apple is considering doing this.

00:10:11   Now, this is immediately fascinating to me.

00:10:13   Like, this split, right?

00:10:16   In the same year, two completely different things is extremely interesting.

00:10:21   So, let's talk about the first one first.

00:10:23   First of all, what you said, like, are they just going to drop this thing?

00:10:27   They will make a big deal out of this.

00:10:30   I'm not sure from a PR perspective, how can you...

00:10:34   Because they're going to be in this really odd predicament where, like, they want to sell people on this great new thing,

00:10:41   while also acknowledging that it took them two years to deliver on that thing.

00:10:47   And they needed to get some extra help from their friends at Google to make it happen.

00:10:51   Interesting.

00:10:53   I think they will find a way to make a big PR push.

00:10:58   But there also needs to be a developer push.

00:11:01   Because I guarantee there's going to be a developer story that is going to be slightly different from what we saw at WWDC 2024.

00:11:07   How much of a fuss do you want to make about something that you're then going to do all over again, like, two months later?

00:11:15   Well, two months later, you're going to do the chatbot.

00:11:19   You're not going to do the voice.

00:11:20   Two months later, you're going to say, and we're building...

00:11:23   We've made it even better.

00:11:23   We're making it even better.

00:11:26   Right.

00:11:26   People are loving the new Siri.

00:11:28   People are having millions of conversations with the new Siri.

00:11:30   And now, we're going to give you an app.

00:11:33   Like, they know how to spin this, I think.

00:11:36   You think they will do an app?

00:11:37   Because it seems to be very much, like, backwards and forwards on whether they're going to do that or not.

00:11:42   I mean, at this point, yes.

00:11:44   I think they actually have to.

00:11:45   They have to.

00:11:47   But I don't...

00:11:48   I just...

00:11:48   I don't know.

00:11:48   Maybe they'll find a way to give you an app-like experience without having an app.

00:11:54   Like, every time you press and hold the button, you can get everything you need.

00:11:58   I mean, at this point, and I hate to say this and to be the guy, but it would kind of be a crime against the shareholders to keep saying,

00:12:06   ah, we're just ignoring almost a billion people using ChatGPT on a weekly basis.

00:12:12   We're not going to do a chatbot.

00:12:13   It's going to be like, ah, but what we have is so much better integrated into the system.

00:12:17   We don't need an app.

00:12:18   I mean, look, it can be integrated with...

00:12:22   Like, that is going to be their big advantage.

00:12:25   Like, I am so thrilled to hear that they're going to do this thing where it's going to be able to work in all of your apps,

00:12:31   and it's going to be on the iPhone, on the iPad, on the Mac.

00:12:33   Like, it's going to be...

00:12:34   I think it's going to be really interesting to see.

00:12:36   But you've got to give people some kind of icon that they can tap, and they can see those conversations again.

00:12:42   Like, it's simple as that.

00:12:44   They will have to do it.

00:12:46   I am convinced they will have to do it.

00:12:48   But that brings me to the second point of all of this.

00:12:53   Like, because I see so many people say, no, how can Apple even consider running this on the Google architecture?

00:13:01   Are they going to forego privacy at all?

00:13:04   Does Apple no longer care about user privacy?

00:13:07   And it's slightly more complicated than that.

00:13:09   So, first of all, private cloud compute is no longer, like, just an Apple thing.

00:13:14   Google has their equivalent architecture.

00:13:17   It's called private AI compute that they announced a few months ago at this point.

00:13:22   And it's basically the same idea.

00:13:24   Like, it's creating an isolated space on the Google TPUs.

00:13:28   And I'm going to read you from the announcement.

00:13:30   Private AI compute is a secure, fortified space for processing your data that keeps your data isolated and private to you.

00:13:36   It processes the same type of sensitive information you might expect to be processed on device.

00:13:42   Within its trusted boundary, your personal information, unique insights, and how you use them are protected by an extra layer of security and privacy in addition to our existing AI safeguards.

00:13:54   It's more or less the same thing.

00:13:55   And it comes down to, do you trust Google for actually delivering on this?

00:14:02   But then, I guess, the buck stops there, right?

00:14:05   If Apple trusts Google, then, you know, it should be good enough for us to believe that it's private and secure enough.

00:14:13   I would wonder, yeah, because this is the question, though, right?

00:14:16   Like, I know you mentioned, you've already, you kind of summed it up.

00:14:19   But, like, it is a very big deal for Apple to say, Google now processes your Siri requests.

00:14:30   We don't do that.

00:14:32   Like, that is a big deal, right?

00:14:35   Like, now, if this was a brand new thing, like, completely new, it maybe wouldn't be as weird.

00:14:43   But, like, you think over time, you know, they're like, we're taking more and more out of the cloud to be more on device because that's even more private.

00:14:51   You know, like, even from us, that's more private.

00:14:53   And then it's like, we've gone to these great lengths of explaining and creating this technology called private cloud compute.

00:14:59   And it's going to, you know, it happens on our service, but we can never do it.

00:15:03   And then, like, well, now it's just Google's going to do it.

00:15:06   And, like, even though it sounds like it's the same kind of system, it is still weird.

00:15:13   And it's also weird to imagine them doing something like this when we're also, like, trying to believe or be led to believe that Apple is working on their own technology.

00:15:25   You know, like, even in German's article, he's saying, like, oh, this system is designed to be replaced.

00:15:30   But, like, it just feels like it gets harder and harder to do that if you're doing less and less of it.

00:15:34   Okay.

00:15:35   So let me explain something else.

00:15:37   Another area where I think Apple was caught flat-footed, so to speak.

00:15:43   Why do you think that the major companies in AI right now, both NVIDIA and OpenAI, are investing in startups that run large language models, not on GPUs?

00:16:01   So in case you're not familiar with this, NVIDIA took a very weird deal that they announced just before the end of the year, I believe.

00:16:11   NVIDIA took a majority stake or something like that in this startup called Grok, not the Elon Musk thing.

00:16:18   Yeah, it was with a Q, right?

00:16:19   Grok with a Q.

00:16:20   Grok with a Q is an American company that developed their own chip for running inference.

00:16:29   So running large language models with a completely different architecture from your traditional GPU.

00:16:36   Right now, most of the AI industry is predicated upon NVIDIA.

00:16:44   And NVIDIA making GPUs to run AI models on.

00:16:50   GPUs became popular for running large language models because they are more powerful than CPUs, obviously, and they have more addressable space.

00:17:00   And, you know, certain instructions that you want to run when it comes to the parameters and the layers of a large language model, they perform better on a GPU.

00:17:08   But still, GPUs are not ideal for running extremely large language models.

00:17:14   That's why NVIDIA recognized this and invested in Grok.

00:17:19   At the same time, OpenAI, just a couple of weeks ago, announced we are teaming up with Cerebras, another American company that created this very large, physically large chip.

00:17:32   That is a custom created wafer style chip for running AI models on.

00:17:39   All this to say, Google saw this coming hundreds of miles away, years ago, when they created the TPUs.

00:17:48   So, specific chips that are designed for AI.

00:17:51   Google recognized many, many years ago that you cannot possibly imagine that 10 years from now, you would have to be bound to the structure of a GPU to run a large language model on.

00:18:05   That's why they invested on their proprietary silicon just for AI.

00:18:09   Now, NVIDIA, which is, you know, NVIDIA has everything to lose at this point, right?

00:18:14   And they're also saying, well, we're going to take a majority stake in Grok.

00:18:17   Because they know that the GPU architecture has probably hit a threshold when it comes to running AI.

00:18:23   And OpenAI is also doing the same.

00:18:26   It's funny, really, if you don't mind me, just a quick interjection on this.

00:18:30   Like, I remember the time, as I'm sure you do, when processing moved from CPU to GPU, because it was more efficient and more powerful doing certain tasks.

00:18:43   And now it's shifting back again.

00:18:46   It's very funny.

00:18:47   It's like a very strange thing to happen.

00:18:49   Yeah, yeah.

00:18:50   And look, I'm obviously not an AI engineer or a silicon engineer, so I am...

00:18:55   We only know the surface at most.

00:18:57   Yes.

00:18:58   But meanwhile, here's Apple saying, oh, yeah, we don't do chatbots.

00:19:05   Those are going to be a fad.

00:19:07   Nobody's going to care.

00:19:08   We're just going to do some AI on our M2 chips on private cloud compute.

00:19:14   And look what happened, right?

00:19:17   They were not able to deliver on that.

00:19:19   They are two years late to their voice-only assistant features that they announced two years ago.

00:19:26   And now they're realizing that they need to do a chatbot because people like using them because they've made plenty of progress in the span of two years.

00:19:33   And they're realizing, oh, well, there's potentially we're not going to be able to run this chatbot with this version of Gemini 3.

00:19:43   They're potentially not going to run on Apple Silicon because we don't have the infrastructure.

00:19:46   And so I think this move from the GPU to a dedicated hardware for...

00:19:57   Specifically designed.

00:19:58   Specifically designed for the, you know, to very much to simplify for the three stages of AI, which is training inference, which means when it runs.

00:20:12   And even arguably you can consider the post-training stuff that comes before you ship an LLM to consumers.

00:20:18   That's not going to run.

00:20:19   That's just not going to run on Apple Silicon, on a bunch of M2 chips running on Mac Studios.

00:20:25   That's why Apple has not been able, most likely, to train a large language model with like hundreds of billions of parameters.

00:20:33   Or at least incredibly inefficient, right?

00:20:36   I mean, you would have to fill how many warehouses with Mac Studios.

00:20:39   Very, very inefficient.

00:20:41   Because you have so much stuff you don't need.

00:20:44   Yep, yep, yep, yep.

00:20:46   And so I think this is something that they should actually consider, you know.

00:20:54   And obviously Google comes out once again as the winner in this scenario because they have the model, they have the hardware.

00:21:02   And I mean, from their perspective, they also have the ecosystem.

00:21:05   But in this case, we're talking about Apple.

00:21:07   I also wonder if there's a couple of other things that I want to call out.

00:21:12   So Mark, in the article, mentions this modular architecture.

00:21:17   And I'm going to quote,

00:21:19   Apple is designing Campos so that its underlying models can be swapped out over time.

00:21:25   That means the company will have the flexibility to move away from Google-powered systems in the future if it so chooses.

00:21:31   Apple has also tested the chatbot with Chinese AI models,

00:21:35   signaling plans to eventually deploy the feature in that country where Apple intelligence isn't yet available.

00:21:42   Remember the rumors that Apple was interested in acquiring perplexity?

00:21:45   Guess what perplexity does?

00:21:47   They provide a thin layer with, you know, essentially a modular system where the experience is still the same,

00:21:59   but you're swapping out models on the fly depending on what you want to do.

00:22:04   And it seems like Apple is actually considering the same thing.

00:22:08   And at that point, you can appease the, you know, the Chinese government saying,

00:22:13   yeah, we're going to let you use, I don't know, DeepSeek or Minimax or whatever it is that they like.

00:22:19   Baidu, right?

00:22:20   Baidu is, you know, yes, they can do that.

00:22:25   There's a, there's no joke, six or seven Chinese models that are state of the art right now.

00:22:31   And you can use the European ones.

00:22:33   You can go to the, you can go to the EU and say, look, we're going to kind of deal with Mistral and we're going to have Mistral in Apple intelligence.

00:22:40   Gosh, that's going to be terrible.

00:22:42   No offense to the French, but that's not a good model.

00:22:45   But, and in the US they can say, ah, we're, you know, we're integrating all of the American state of the art models.

00:22:52   Yeah.

00:22:52   So fascinating.

00:22:54   And also potentially, by the way, something that Apple can monetize over time.

00:23:00   I mean, at this point, if you are becoming a model provider, I could realistically imagine a scenario where you have your Siri AI, whatever the product is going to be called.

00:23:12   And there's going to be a subscription for Siri AI plus.

00:23:14   And it's going to give you a reasoning models.

00:23:16   It's going to give you extended thinking times, more features.

00:23:20   At least it goes into iCloud plus, right?

00:23:23   Goes up.

00:23:23   Yeah.

00:23:23   It becomes a thing.

00:23:24   You know, I was thinking about this today, right?

00:23:26   I think the private cloud compute thing is a solvable, is solvable, right?

00:23:32   They could tell Google how they want it to work.

00:23:36   Right?

00:23:36   Yeah.

00:23:37   And because I was, you know, not everything in iCloud.

00:23:41   It's stored on Apple servers, right?

00:23:44   They use Microsoft and Amazon, I think, right?

00:23:46   They use Azure and AWS to serve some of their files.

00:23:49   I don't know exactly how it breaks down.

00:23:52   But like they, you know, and they're like, and I'm sure that they still make the exact same privacy claims because they have very specific ways that they do things, right?

00:24:01   Maybe there is a scenario where they can still feel comfortable to call it private cloud compute, but they don't host it.

00:24:09   I don't know.

00:24:10   I don't know.

00:24:10   Or maybe it just won't matter.

00:24:11   Maybe I'm overthinking it and it just won't matter.

00:24:14   The other interesting point is that I can also imagine a scenario in which this two-phase rollout is actually based on two different Gemini models.

00:24:27   Based off what we're going right now, we have Gemini 3 Flash and Gemini 3 Pro.

00:24:34   3 Pro is the smarter, slower, but more capable model.

00:24:39   Gemini 3 Flash, based on the same Gemini 3 family of models, but more efficient, doesn't think as long.

00:24:48   All of the Gemini 3 models are reasoning models.

00:24:50   That's something that Google is doing behind the scenes.

00:24:52   But Gemini 3 Flash is faster and more efficient.

00:24:56   Gemini 3 Pro is more of a powerhouse.

00:24:58   I could see a scenario in which the voice mode is based on Gemini 3 Flash.

00:25:02   Because when you're talking to Siri, you want speed.

00:25:05   It needs to be quick.

00:25:06   It needs to be efficient.

00:25:07   You don't want to wait around too long.

00:25:08   But when you're chatting with it, then you have more leeway, so to speak, to wait a little bit longer.

00:25:15   Or if you're asking for it to do things for you as well, you can give it a bit of time.

00:25:19   And also, you would assume that when you're doing a text-based interaction with a chatbot,

00:25:28   statistically, I would say those text interactions, they tend to be more complex by nature than a voice command.

00:25:38   Usually when you're doing a voice command, it's a quick sentence or a quick thing.

00:25:42   You know, you're not issuing a 30-minute instruction to an LLM via voice, right?

00:25:48   But when you're typing, then maybe you're crafting a longer message.

00:25:52   Maybe you're attaching a couple of documents.

00:25:53   Maybe you're attaching a few links for the LLM to check out.

00:25:57   And in that case, maybe you want the power of Gemini 3 Pro.

00:26:00   And maybe Apple is having these conversations with Google right now.

00:26:03   And Google told them, look, okay, we can use Gemini 3 Pro, but we cannot make that run on Apple Silicon.

00:26:10   It's just not going to happen.

00:26:12   So if you want to have Gemini 3 Pro level of intelligence in a chatbot, it needs to be on our cloud.

00:26:19   It needs to be on TPUs because we've just done.

00:26:21   Or maybe Google just said, we don't want to do it.

00:26:22   We don't want to put Gemini 3 Pro on Apple Silicon.

00:26:25   We don't want to, you know, because it's a bit of an effort, as you can imagine, for Google.

00:26:30   So I don't know.

00:26:32   But I wouldn't be shocked to see this kind of scenario where voice mode means efficiency, intelligence still, but speed and more efficient.

00:26:41   And chatbot interaction means a little bit slower, but more intelligent and more capable.

00:26:48   It's wild, man.

00:26:49   I know.

00:26:50   I know.

00:26:51   Even the fact that we're having this conversation now.

00:26:53   I know.

00:26:53   And I want to see, right, all those people now.

00:26:56   Where are those people from last year saying, nah, Apple is never going to do it.

00:27:01   You're so mistaken.

00:27:02   This is a fad.

00:27:04   It's going away.

00:27:04   You will see Apple will come out on top once again because they are not doing a chatbot.

00:27:09   And now they're partnering with Google.

00:27:11   Yeah, of all companies.

00:27:13   Like, that is the thing that is just so wild to me.

00:27:16   Like, I think it is the logical best move, right?

00:27:20   I think it's a move that we've been asking for them to do.

00:27:23   Lots of people have, right?

00:27:24   Where it's like, you clearly institutionally have struggled to get this together.

00:27:29   And maybe it's a long time before you can do it, if at all.

00:27:33   There is no reason why you shouldn't partner with someone, right?

00:27:37   Like, there is a lot of logic to that.

00:27:39   And I'm sure we've had conversations on this show and other places similar.

00:27:43   But them actually doing it still feels weird.

00:27:47   Because, like, there's a lot of things that we say, Apple, please just do this.

00:27:51   And they don't.

00:27:51   But this is one where they're actually doing it.

00:27:55   And it is, in a way, one of the weirder things for me.

00:28:00   It's like, just giving.

00:28:03   It's not giving up, but it's not not that, you know?

00:28:09   Yeah.

00:28:09   It's being pragmatic about it, I think.

00:28:11   They're making a smart move.

00:28:13   This is the right move.

00:28:15   But it's fascinatingly strange.

00:28:19   You know what's even...

00:28:20   You know, I mean, I obviously think that Apple is behind in all of this.

00:28:25   Yeah.

00:28:25   But you know what I think is really smart here?

00:28:27   Is that there's a really potential funny scenario on the horizon where you get a much more integrated, Gemini-based experience on Apple platforms than you do on Android.

00:28:47   It's not a lot of Android phones, you know?

00:28:50   Exactly.

00:28:51   Because, like, Gemini 3 is capable of calling external tools and external integrations.

00:28:58   But the ecosystem that, like, the Gemini app experience is absolutely terrible right now.

00:29:05   They don't expose integrations with third-party connectors, save for maybe literally two of them.

00:29:14   Right now, I think WhatsApp and Spotify, they don't have an ecosystem of integrations.

00:29:18   And Apple has the potential to come in and say, well, we're taking this model from Google.

00:29:22   We're opening it up to the vibrant ecosystem of developers on Apple platforms.

00:29:27   And it would be so funny if you get a much more integrated Gemini with your operating system on multiple platforms, from the desktop to, I don't know, a phone, right, that works with your apps, works with your Windows, works with the file system.

00:29:43   And meanwhile, on Android, you get none of that.

00:29:46   But you still have Gemini 3.

00:29:47   That would be funny.

00:29:48   This episode is brought to you by Sentry.

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00:31:31   So we were talking about, you know, I think an idea of what this year is going to be, and I think this year is going to be potentially supremely weird, but also fascinating to talk about, which is, you know, I personally can't ask for anything more than that in my career.

00:31:46   So I wanted to get kind of a vibe check with you, and we can kind of go through this together, about like how we're feeling about Apple for this year in 2026.

00:31:57   Okay.

00:31:58   Are you kind of here at the beginning of the year, are you hopeful, excited, optimistic, pessimistic?

00:32:06   What is your overall vibe about what Apple's 2026 could look like?

00:32:11   Excited.

00:32:12   Yeah.

00:32:13   Yeah.

00:32:13   I think we're coming out from, at least from my perspective, from a couple of relatively boring years.

00:32:25   The iPad was, you know, the only, I don't want to say the only good thing, but it was my favorite thing.

00:32:33   The iPhone, don't forget how good the iPhone lineup was last year.

00:32:37   Yeah.

00:32:37   I mean, obviously the iPhone Air, my beloved.

00:32:40   Yeah.

00:32:40   But I think Apple is now coming out from this slumber, so to speak, you know, and with the new HomePod or home product and the AI features and the foldable and maybe new accessories.

00:32:54   Yeah.

00:32:55   I don't know, it just feels like they, and obviously, you know, maybe the changing of the leadership, like it's a time for change.

00:33:03   And as the person who, you know, embraces change, that's inherently exciting for me to see Apple get out of their comfort zone a little bit, you know, try new stuff.

00:33:15   So yes, that is, my vibe is excited right now.

00:33:18   Yeah.

00:33:18   I mean, from, I agree with you, like, I think WWDC 2024 was like a real problem.

00:33:28   You know, like, I think for me, that was a marker, which was not great.

00:33:35   Like, I was thinking about this yesterday, because I was thinking about like, I was thinking about WWDC and how I want to think about covering it this year.

00:33:43   And I remember that in 2024, obviously, I was at home, and Jason was busy, he had like briefings and meetings and stuff.

00:33:56   So we ended up recording the next day.

00:33:58   And I was always so thankful for that, because I was completely shell-shocked after WWDC 24 had ended.

00:34:06   Because we all had really different expectations for Apple's attempts at AI than what we got.

00:34:12   You know, like, I was so disappointed with the image generation stuff.

00:34:18   And still, I am, I still kind of can't believe that it, that they still continue to ship image backgrounds.

00:34:27   Just, I think that was just a real mistake, that I really do believe they regret, but they're kind of stuck in it now.

00:34:34   And just like, you know, having that time to reflect on it was helpful for me, because I wouldn't have known what to say if me and him were going to record straight away.

00:34:45   And so, like, I was thinking back to that moment, and just like, even the things that, like, the things that were the saving grace of that presentation don't exist, nearly two years later.

00:34:56   And I really feel like that was a fork in the road for them, or kind of like, you know, like a good timeline, bad timeline kind of scenario.

00:35:09   And I think there are some aspects of Apple that slipped into the bad timeline from that point.

00:35:14   Because I am, I definitely entertain the conspiracy theory that Liquid Glass came out earlier than it was supposed to.

00:35:23   Like, I believe that they were working on a redesign and been working on it for a while.

00:35:29   But I can absolutely understand a scenario where they were like, boy, we should do that this year.

00:35:36   Like, I can see that.

00:35:37   I don't know if it happened, but I can imagine a scenario very easily where that got moved up a little bit.

00:35:42   Because then that was like a whole thing, you know, that like, just dealing with this past year.

00:35:46   So these last two years on the software side, from the WWDC presentation, it's just not been a good time.

00:35:53   Like, it's just been an overall bad time.

00:35:56   And I am very hopeful for WWDC 26, that we get things to be tidied up in general across the operating system, and for them to have a cohesive, sensible, thought through, and useful AI strategy.

00:36:13   Where there's a ton of stuff happening on device, and the stuff that isn't is happening on good architecture in the cloud that has privacy, and is actually useful to me as a consumer.

00:36:27   Because I would love, you know, like, I would love to get to a scenario where I don't ever think about what app am I using, where should I be doing this, and that like, I just talk to my phone and it's just handled for me.

00:36:42   You know what I mean?

00:36:43   Like, it sounds like a great scenario.

00:36:45   And in theory, they should be able to do it.

00:36:48   I still have some, like, a lot of question marks, you know, you reference developers.

00:36:54   I don't know how developers are going to take to any of this, because I just think, in general, they all hate Apple.

00:37:01   And so, you know, but maybe if it's good enough, you know, like, maybe if the features are good enough for developers,

00:37:11   like, there is a scenario where they may want to jump on board and do some stuff with it, you know, like, I've actually been, I would say, heartened to see how many indie developers are using even the current version of the on-device models to do interesting things in their apps.

00:37:29   And maybe if the technology is good enough, it could incentivize more of them to jump on board and integrate, and that could be really interesting.

00:37:39   But even outside of that, like, you know, you mentioned a bunch of things, but the iPhone lineup, again, could be super strong again this year, which would be amazing, right?

00:37:51   If we get, like, if we get, like, a weird folding phone and some really good, like, you know, like, all the rumors are pointing towards a semi-redesign for the pro phone with, you know, in-display face ID.

00:38:06   That's just like a, I don't even know if it's just something I want, but it'll be interesting.

00:38:10   And then maybe we get a bunch of laptops this year, right?

00:38:15   The cheap MacBook, the, I mean, I'm very hopeful that we get the OLED touchscreen MacBook Pro this year.

00:38:21   I know, man.

00:38:23   Like, it could come this year, which is just like, I'm so excited for that computer just to, like, see what's going on there.

00:38:30   Like, that would be cool.

00:38:31   And then the, you know, the looming executive change, like, so, yeah, I am both hopeful and excited for 2026, I think, in a way that maybe I didn't feel at the beginning of 2025.

00:38:46   So, you know, I am optimistic for it.

00:38:51   I think we could be in for an interesting year as well as a year that has lots of good products from a software and hardware perspective, you know?

00:38:59   I agree, I agree, and I think the tide will shift when it comes also to the developer narrative around Apple.

00:39:14   Because what I think is happening now, I'm obviously a very online person.

00:39:24   And I spend time maybe more than I should on all the social media platforms.

00:39:31   Something that I think is very unfortunate is that a lot of people are still using X and they never, they literally hundreds of people that are interesting people never stopped posting on X.

00:39:47   They never even considered other platforms.

00:39:50   But what I think is so fascinating is that, so, set aside for a second the many, many, many political problems with X.

00:40:00   Just take a look at the people posting there, right?

00:40:02   So, those people are not moving.

00:40:04   They're not embracing Mastodon.

00:40:06   They're not embracing Blue Sky.

00:40:08   But as a result of that, we, I think in the Apple community, we have become, many of us, very insular in terms of the takes and the opinions that we read about Apple.

00:40:18   If you just spend time on Mastodon, you would think that Apple is absolutely doomed.

00:40:23   That they're doing illegal things, that they are a corrupted company.

00:40:29   And I'm not saying, by the way, that Apple, you know, has not done questionable and some despicable things.

00:40:37   They're doing all the things.

00:40:38   What I'm trying to say is that due to the fragmentation of the social media landscape,

00:40:46   a lot of people with a job similar to ours, to me and you right now, that only look for opinions in a certain social media space,

00:40:56   that's colored their opinion to think that Apple is done, no more indie developers for them,

00:41:03   there's no longer a developer ecosystem, everybody hates Apple.

00:41:07   And I'm telling you that it's not like that.

00:41:09   But I think that we are now in this moment in time where, and I think I also see this with the Max Stories audience.

00:41:18   This is something that I talked about with John in private a few days ago.

00:41:22   I think we are shedding a lot of the previous pundits, developers, influencers, whatever you want to call them.

00:41:32   But there is a new generation.

00:41:35   There is a new generation of builders, of commentators, of creators on YouTube and TikTok and Instagram.

00:41:43   There's a new generation of vibe coders.

00:41:45   There's a new generation of AI programmers.

00:41:47   They're just not posting in the space where we're all hanging out, which is Mastodon and Blue Sky.

00:41:53   But I think the moment, all this to say, if Apple comes up with a really cohesive and practical

00:42:00   and interesting and powerful AI strategy, I think we will see that changing of the guard

00:42:06   when it comes to new developers, new voices, new commentators, new creators, I think it's going to happen.

00:42:13   And so far, those people are there and they're using Apple devices, they're using Apple computers, right?

00:42:18   But they're all relying on OpenAI or Anthropic, right?

00:42:22   All those people are getting their work done and therefore are commenting on or are creating software for those companies.

00:42:29   And I think that's what Apple has been missing out on for the past few years.

00:42:34   That new generation exists.

00:42:36   They're on threads too, by the way.

00:42:38   They're on threads? Yes, I agree.

00:42:40   Like, I often talk about a lot of, like, weird and or negative design takes that I see on threads, which I do.

00:42:51   But I also see lots of people who are really plugged in and care a lot.

00:42:57   And I get a lot of, like, stuff in my threads algorithm and timelines that are people building new and interesting apps.

00:43:07   So, like, there's just, like, with really, like, bold design and stuff like that.

00:43:12   There's a podcast app, I think it's called Q, is the name of it.

00:43:20   I think I've seen this.

00:43:20   And I, I mean, I've seen it around in a few places now.

00:43:25   But I saw this app just on threads.

00:43:30   And, like, it is an example of an app which doesn't look or act like really any podcast app that you've seen before, but is really nice looking and is doing some really interesting stuff.

00:43:47   Yeah, I mean, look at this.

00:43:48   Call it backstories.

00:43:49   Unlike any podcast app I've tested on iOS, that is on their, on their, uh...

00:43:53   Was that, was that me?

00:43:54   I don't know.

00:43:55   It just says Club Mac Stories as the, uh, as the name.

00:43:58   Okay.

00:43:58   I don't know who said it.

00:43:59   It doesn't say.

00:44:01   But they do have app stories in their screenshots.

00:44:03   So, you know, they're, they're, they're a fan.

00:44:06   But, you know, this is like an app by a, I'm assuming, newer developer who's just doing things very differently.

00:44:13   And so, like, these places exist.

00:44:15   I mean, for me, I absolutely see what you're saying.

00:44:18   I get what you're saying.

00:44:19   I think that I am in a place in my life where I am paying less attention to social media takes than I ever have before.

00:44:32   Like, I think I am just trying to develop more of my own opinions about things, where I think in the past I have been, like, many of us susceptible to more external input.

00:44:51   And I'm not saying, like, one is right or the other.

00:44:53   I just, like, I'm, I'm a little bit tired of social media in general.

00:44:58   And so, like, I'm trying to think more and spend more time reading and trying to find things a little bit more objective and less, like, takey.

00:45:08   That's difficult.

00:45:10   But that's kind of where I am.

00:45:11   But I still see it.

00:45:12   I just don't use social media as much as I used to, which it's not a, I'm not saying anyone should live any particular way.

00:45:22   I just, I'm just drawn to it less and less over time.

00:45:24   But, yeah, I, so the people that you're seeing, this, the newer generation of builders, do you think that they're going to want to build on Apple's platforms?

00:45:39   I think so.

00:45:40   I think so.

00:45:42   I think, I think they, I, I think there's still very much a preference for Apple hardware.

00:45:49   There's still the idea that you can make money from the Apple App Store compared to the Google Play Store.

00:45:59   A lot of these folks are building for the web, obviously, right?

00:46:02   Yeah, that's what made me ask.

00:46:04   Like, I, I think it would, my assumption would be if you're building in AI.

00:46:09   You're building for the web.

00:46:11   And so then if you're going to stop building in the App Store, Apple's going to get that money.

00:46:14   Yeah.

00:46:15   Yeah.

00:46:15   Or maybe as well.

00:46:16   But I think there's still, and I mean, obviously, like, who knows what's going to happen with vibe coding.

00:46:25   And there's also that to consider, right?

00:46:28   That potentially, you know, in the not so distant future, potentially anybody could be just become a quote unquote developer just by prompting an app into existence.

00:46:44   And if you think that's ridiculous, not only is it happening now, and there are already some, some solutions to turn your, your prompt into something that's on the App Store.

00:46:55   But I don't think that's, here's another potential hot take.

00:46:59   I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.

00:47:03   And in the history of, of human progress, this has always happened.

00:47:10   Um, and in more recent memory, you know, it used to be, say that I wanted to start Mac Stories in 1995 instead of 2009.

00:47:22   I would have had to know HTML or the basics of...

00:47:27   Or just in the early 2000s.

00:47:29   It was just so much harder.

00:47:30   Right.

00:47:30   I would have had to know how to manage a server, you know, log into the server, do server admin stuff.

00:47:39   But no, when I started in 2009, I just signed up for a thing on the web.

00:47:46   It installed WordPress for me.

00:47:48   And I just started blogging away like that.

00:47:50   And so, to the eyes of some people back then, like, was that, most of them would say, oh, that's not a real blog.

00:47:58   A real blog is something that you install, that you manage, that you, you know, you know how to manage the database.

00:48:02   And, and over, I guess what I'm trying to say is that over the course of time, we have always abstracted technology away from creators.

00:48:11   In a way that has allowed more creators and different types of creators to exist.

00:48:17   We've always democratized technology and the act of creation.

00:48:21   And I think that's going to, that's, that's coming for mobile software.

00:48:24   And so, who knows what the developer ecosystem will look like two years from now.

00:48:32   Yeah.

00:48:32   And I'm being conservative, I think.

00:48:34   Yeah, I've been spending some time thinking about this too recently.

00:48:37   And I, I think that I'm, you know, and, and I know that there might be a lot of people, including you, that may be like, ha ha, poor naive Mikey doesn't know.

00:48:48   But like, I see what people are doing with these tools and it is fascinating, you know, people can just build apps.

00:48:56   But I don't think, I struggle to imagine this in a world where this is what everybody does, right?

00:49:05   Like, I think it would be a nerdy thing that people do, but I struggle to imagine the vast majority of users or even a majority of users just being like, I'll just, I'll ask the AI to make me an app, you know?

00:49:21   And so that's one part, like, I think it will happen and there will be a lot of people that would do it, but I don't think it's going to be a large portion of people.

00:49:31   But then we get into the, but the software that these people are using, who made it, right?

00:49:37   Like the apps that are in the app store, who coded them?

00:49:42   And I am coming around to developers with these tools.

00:49:49   Like, I don't, I, I struggle to imagine a world where at the moment, where just saying me, person who does not know development can start shipping apps just because I used Claude code.

00:50:10   Like, I know you have been doing this stuff, but you, you have a grasp of development.

00:50:19   More than the majority, I would say, of people interested in technology.

00:50:25   Like, I know you are not like a developer, but you are, you have built knowledge, right?

00:50:30   To understand.

00:50:30   I'm technical enough.

00:50:33   Yeah.

00:50:33   And you are technical in that way, which I'm not.

00:50:36   Like.

00:50:37   Yeah.

00:50:37   No, no, no.

00:50:38   I get it.

00:50:38   I'm an advanced user.

00:50:39   I am not a developer.

00:50:41   But, I will tell you that even two years ago, this conversation would have been impossible.

00:50:49   Yeah.

00:50:49   And now we're saying, yeah, you can do it, but like, it's accelerating.

00:50:56   But, you know, I think of it more of like a, what Photoshop does for design, you know, or like what computers have done for all jobs, right?

00:51:12   Where it's like, it's not like we don't have accountants anymore, right?

00:51:16   But, accountants can be much more productive than they were before, because now they have, instead of trying to do everything by hand on paper, they use Excel.

00:51:29   And there are other skills that accountants can learn to more round out their role to be more useful to their customers.

00:51:39   And like, I think we may start moving more towards that, where it's like, the role of a developer, let's just focus on indie developers, right?

00:51:49   The role of an indie developer is, can you create a good idea that you can craft with the LLM to make a good product, as opposed to, can you write every line of code?

00:52:07   Yeah.

00:52:09   But I don't know.

00:52:09   Maybe I'm being too optimistic.

00:52:11   But that is just, that's where, it's more like I think about other roles and jobs that computers have morphed.

00:52:22   And I think we may just be moving more towards that.

00:52:27   I don't know.

00:52:28   I think, I think I saw somebody say this a while back, that all of these new technologies are,

00:52:38   both raising the floor for a lot of people, but also drastically raising the ceiling still for the really highly skilled individuals.

00:52:53   Yeah.

00:52:53   So that anybody can get started and produce something at the base level, but also they're, they're giving the experienced folks much, much higher level tasks to be able to perform.

00:53:07   Like, they're not a sponsor of this episode.

00:53:10   Let's just, I just want Squarespace, right?

00:53:12   Yeah.

00:53:13   Squarespace lets me build a website.

00:53:14   Yeah.

00:53:15   I still have people build me websites.

00:53:19   Because I need things that are more complicated than what I can do on Squarespace.

00:53:24   So it's like, I use both of these things.

00:53:29   Now, maybe there are less web developers now than there used to be.

00:53:32   Maybe.

00:53:33   Or maybe like website builders.

00:53:36   But I don't know if that's the case.

00:53:37   And I also know there are people who have whole careers building Squarespace websites.

00:53:44   Like, that's what they do.

00:53:46   Because people want, still want help to build it and customize it.

00:53:50   But then like the tools in the back end, because it's easy for them to publish and make any changes.

00:53:55   But they want someone to just do the other part for them.

00:53:58   So they'll just do that, right?

00:54:00   So like, there are these tools that they clearly change the status quo.

00:54:07   But it doesn't remove the job.

00:54:11   It adapts the job.

00:54:12   I don't know.

00:54:16   Wow, we went into a place.

00:54:19   What we were talking about?

00:54:20   Oh, yes, the vibes.

00:54:21   Yeah, the vibes of 2026.

00:54:23   But I actually think that that fits in pretty nicely.

00:54:26   Because I think something's going to happen this year when it comes to coding.

00:54:33   It really feels like the moment.

00:54:38   Like today, in January 2026, lots of people are getting very excited about Claude.

00:54:44   And I can absolutely see a world where anthropic, they move more towards that than anything else.

00:54:52   Yeah.

00:54:53   Look, I think right now, a lot of us are maybe upset, maybe excited.

00:55:00   There's a spectrum of feelings about AI and what's happening.

00:55:04   I feel all of those things.

00:55:06   I feel, and I think something that we can all agree upon is I think we're all confused right now.

00:55:13   We're all just, no matter where you look, even the most positive person about AI and the most negative person about AI, we're all just confused because we don't know what's happening.

00:55:21   And these things are changing so quickly.

00:55:23   So we cannot agree upon the fact that we are confused right now because it's happening.

00:55:27   Everything is changing from under our feet so quickly and it's creating new possibilities and it's displacing people, displacing jobs, but also creating new ones.

00:55:36   And also, lots of people are lying as well, which adds to the confusion.

00:55:41   There's a lot of lies, right?

00:55:43   Yes, yes.

00:55:43   Which doesn't help.

00:55:44   A lot of hype, a lot of snake oil.

00:55:47   Yes, yes, yes.

00:55:48   Yep, yep.

00:55:49   We're all confused, man.

00:55:52   We're all confused.

00:55:52   That's the truth.

00:55:53   Yeah.

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00:57:58   You wrote one of the classic big Federico articles like a couple of days ago where it's not like it's not a review, but it's like you've got a bunch of stuff to say about something that you're using.

00:58:10   And it is essentially a piece of open source software that I assume you install on your Mac that then allows you to talk to it from you're using Telegram.

00:58:26   This is called ClawedBot.

00:58:27   And then it essentially executes AI scripts and stuff like that on your Mac to do things.

00:58:34   Yes.

00:58:35   Yes.

00:58:36   It's open source made by Peter Steinberger.

00:58:41   Folks who have been listening to Connected in the Apple community, you may remember Peter from their previous life at this point.

00:58:52   used to be the founder of PSPDFKit, makers of PDFViewer.

00:58:58   Yeah.

00:58:59   Later, the company was acquired, I believe.

00:59:01   I think they're also just called Kit now.

00:59:04   Just Kit?

00:59:05   Okay.

00:59:06   Interesting.

00:59:06   I think.

00:59:07   Anyway, so here's the idea.

00:59:10   It's like a do-it-yourself personal assistant power by AI.

00:59:17   That's the short version.

00:59:18   Oh, no.

00:59:18   Nutrient.

00:59:19   I don't know why they would be called that.

00:59:21   I got them mixed up with another company.

00:59:22   Interesting.

00:59:23   Okay.

00:59:23   I don't know, man.

00:59:24   Okay.

00:59:25   Sure.

00:59:27   So the idea is that you can talk to an assistant powered by an LLM.

00:59:32   You get to choose which model provider you want to use, and you get to choose the messaging app of your choice to talk to it.

00:59:40   I believe they're working on a native app experience for iOS and the Mac.

00:59:46   But right now, you choose one of the existing messaging apps.

00:59:49   And they have these, they're called gateway connectors for Telegram, WhatsApp, iMessage, even Signal, Discord, Slack, all the messaging services.

01:00:00   So, and you may say, well, what's the big deal?

01:00:02   Like, how is it different from CHGPT or Cloud?

01:00:05   The difference here is that it's running on your computer, and it's, because of that, given the right permission authorizations, in fact, today a new version of it came out with a permission system similar to the one seen in shortcuts where you can allow, always allow commands, stuff like that.

01:00:27   But because it's running on your computer, it gets access to your computer.

01:00:34   And that means that it can work with all of your documents, all of your files, can work with your entire file system, and it can run terminal commands, and it can basically improve itself.

01:00:46   If a feature that you want doesn't exist, you can just ask CloudBot to give itself a feature that it doesn't have by default.

01:00:55   How does it do that?

01:00:59   How does it do that?

01:01:00   Well, first of all, it's going to look into the community-made skills and integrations.

01:01:06   Peter himself creates so many open source projects on GitHub, stuff like integration with Google, integration with Sonos speakers, with Spotify, with you name it.

01:01:18   Peter is an extremely prolific open source contributor and programmer.

01:01:24   But then, if it doesn't find anything popular that already exists, or if it doesn't find anything in the community hub, it'll just say, well, if you want, I can write my own feature for that.

01:01:38   And I'll give you an example.

01:01:39   A few days ago, I was using CloudBot, and I wanted to be able to control my Philips Hue lights.

01:01:46   And I said, hey, can you do that?

01:01:48   And he said, well, okay, yeah, there's an open source thing that I can install, and I'm just going to download it now.

01:01:53   I will enable it.

01:01:55   And all I'm going to ask you, he literally said this, like, I'm going to ask you to, CloudBot has a bit of a funny personality.

01:02:02   That's part of the system prompt that Peter gave it.

01:02:05   He said, I want you to get off your couch and go press the button on your Philips Hue bridge, and when you do that, I will enable the integration.

01:02:11   And I was like, wait, am I really talking to an AI that says these things?

01:02:15   And I did.

01:02:16   I pressed the button, and two seconds later, it started controlling my lights.

01:02:19   Do you not ever get scared?

01:02:20   Yes, absolutely, yes.

01:02:22   It's just all your lights are just red, and you can never turn them off.

01:02:26   But then, the same day, I was like, okay, that's interesting.

01:02:32   I wonder how far I can push it.

01:02:34   So I want to, you know, I've been using CloudCode, obviously, a bunch.

01:02:39   And I've also been using CodeX, which is the CloudCode by OpenAI, essentially.

01:02:44   Same terminal thing, but made by OpenAI.

01:02:48   And it turns out that those two services, they're not apps, but they save their conversations, the conversation that you have with them locally on your file system.

01:03:01   The problem is that they save a complete log of their conversation in JSON documents.

01:03:07   Those are unreadable.

01:03:10   Like, if you open them up and you preview them with QuickLook or something, it's just a wall of text.

01:03:16   Thousands and thousands of plain text characters.

01:03:19   And so I was like, okay, I wonder if I can build a little app for me that gives me a nice messaging-like UI to let me read my previous sessions.

01:03:32   And so I talked to CloudBot and I was like, hey, I know that this open source thing exists for parsing those logs.

01:03:40   Can you take that and modify it for me so that it's got a liquid glass design and it supports CodeX in addition to CloudCode and has some features that the open source thing doesn't have?

01:03:54   Like, can you use that as a starting point and then modify it for me?

01:03:59   I was like, sure, let me take a look.

01:04:01   And so that's the benefit of having this thing run on your computer.

01:04:05   It downloads things from the web, takes a look at the code, comes back to you and says, yeah, I think I can use it as a starting point.

01:04:11   And then if you give me access to your file system, I'm going to go look into those sessions, see what the file format is like.

01:04:18   And I said, yes.

01:04:19   And so it went there and it looked and basically 10 minutes later, and I'm staring at it right now in Google Chrome.

01:04:25   It built a web app that is basically like a fancy little JavaScript-based web page that runs on my local network and that has two tabs for Cloud and CodeX and lets me open one.

01:04:39   And I can take a look at the entire conversation, my messages are blue, the assistant messages are purple, and I see the entire flow of the conversation presented as if it was, I don't know, like a Slack thread, much more readable UI.

01:04:51   I see every single bit of code, every single tool call in a UI that makes sense.

01:04:57   This thing didn't exist, and then it did.

01:05:00   And for example, you know, I can take a look at this conversation, and then I said, oh, this is great, but these conversations are too long.

01:05:08   Can you create an integration with Google Gemini so that I can summarize an entire session with Cloud Code using Google Gemini as the summarizer?

01:05:17   And it was like, yeah, sure, do this.

01:05:19   Go in the macOS keychain and save securely your Google Gemini API key.

01:05:26   And once you did that, come back to me and say that you did it, and I will start using Gemini.

01:05:31   Five minutes later, it built a Gemini integration so that it can take a look at a session and summarize it for me.

01:05:38   And then I was like, ah, this is nice, but I kind of wonder if you can create a table of contents for it so that I can jump to a specific point of the conversation.

01:05:46   Like, all this back and forth, basically created the thing I wanted in 30 minutes, right, on my computer.

01:05:53   And I can give you, like, I can have, but I won't, because otherwise it's going to be a long monologue.

01:06:02   I have built, I don't know, 10, 15 different integrations of this kind, things that didn't exist and that CloudBot coded itself and gave to itself.

01:06:17   Which is obviously not something that you can do with Chagipity or CloudBot.

01:06:20   Sure, now you have skills and integrations, but it's limited, right?

01:06:24   Because it's not like you can go to cloud.ai right now and say,

01:06:28   Cloud, I want you to give yourself a dark theme and to speak to me with a thick British accent.

01:06:35   Cloud will say, well, that's a nice idea, but I can only do things that my developers at Anthropic give me.

01:06:42   And this is a different type of experience with CloudBot.

01:06:46   It's similar in that you can use the popular models, Chagipity, well, GPT, Cloud, Gemini.

01:06:57   You can run it with local AI if you have a powerful enough computer.

01:07:02   You can run the entire thing locally with no cloud provider.

01:07:07   But, because it has access to your computer and your data, it's scary, obviously.

01:07:13   There's tons of permission dialogues, tons of permission settings.

01:07:17   But if you're comfortable with it, it's basically like putting a...

01:07:22   At this point, like, for me, and I'm not exaggerating,

01:07:26   I felt for the past 10 days or so that I've been playing around with this thing,

01:07:30   the same way that I felt the first time I tried Chagipity or the first time I tried Cloud,

01:07:35   it was like your brain connected a bunch of things that you didn't think were possible before, right?

01:07:44   This kind of power.

01:07:45   And it's open source.

01:07:48   And it's getting so much, like, contributions from people.

01:07:53   Like, if you go to the GitHub page right now,

01:07:56   there's about 300 to 400 commits every single day to release.

01:08:05   So commits are like, I don't know, new features.

01:08:10   Think of it as new features, like, or fixes.

01:08:13   And then they all get packaged up in a release, right?

01:08:17   So they're getting hundreds of commits every single day,

01:08:20   packaged up in two, three releases on the same day.

01:08:24   I don't think Peter is sleeping anymore at this point.

01:08:27   This thing is getting really popular, really fast.

01:08:31   And rightfully so, I think.

01:08:34   It's, I don't know, it's eye-opening, really.

01:08:40   And scary at the same time.

01:08:43   And yeah.

01:08:44   Anything else you want to know?

01:08:47   What are you actually doing with it?

01:08:50   Like, what is, how is it useful to you?

01:08:51   I basically, okay.

01:08:52   So I basically don't go to JGPT or Cloud by default anymore.

01:08:56   Okay.

01:08:56   First of all.

01:08:57   So you're like, anything you would ask a chatbot,

01:09:00   you're just an hour opening signal and talking to your assistant.

01:09:02   I treat it like my ever patient never gets bored with me,

01:09:08   never gets upset at me, personal assistant that can do anything for me.

01:09:13   So you, so just to confirm it, right?

01:09:15   So you are, when you send a message in Signal.

01:09:19   Yeah.

01:09:20   In Telegram.

01:09:21   Telegram.

01:09:21   Sorry.

01:09:21   On the other side, it's.

01:09:24   It's going to my computer.

01:09:26   Wearing Claude?

01:09:26   Yes.

01:09:27   On your computer?

01:09:29   I, I, I, my model of preference is Claude Opus 4.5.

01:09:33   Okay.

01:09:34   On my computer, the Claude bot program sends my request to Anthropic.

01:09:40   So, uh.

01:09:41   Is your computer looking like it's doing anything?

01:09:44   Like, is it doing stuff or is it all just like happening in the terminal or something?

01:09:48   It's all happening in a, in a background terminal.

01:09:51   Okay.

01:09:51   So you don't even see it.

01:09:52   Don't even see it.

01:09:52   You can, you can run it in the background, in the foreground.

01:09:55   Yeah.

01:09:56   If you want.

01:09:56   But by default, it's a background terminal.

01:09:58   You don't see anything.

01:09:59   So like you could be sitting in front of your Mac and sending these messages and like.

01:10:04   Yes.

01:10:04   You just wouldn't know anything's going on.

01:10:06   You wouldn't know anything.

01:10:07   You wouldn't know absolutely anything.

01:10:09   Um, and, uh, and, and the other part that I think is important is that there are many similarities

01:10:18   between this and the, do you remember the obsidian moment from the pandemic?

01:10:25   Whenever, I mean, there's obviously the historic, the historical episode of Cortex when Gray discovered

01:10:32   obsidian.

01:10:32   Yes.

01:10:33   There are many similarities between that moment and this moment.

01:10:35   Yeah.

01:10:36   I thought it was fascinating.

01:10:37   Like I actually did recall that kind of feeling when I was reading your article and it said

01:10:42   like it stores a lot of stuff just in markdown.

01:10:44   Like a lot of your memory stuff is just stored in text markdown folders.

01:10:48   And I didn't want to make the same mistake that I made six years ago.

01:10:51   Gosh, six years ago.

01:10:53   Um, I wanted to get in early on this.

01:10:56   I didn't want to do what I did with obsidian because I, I, I think I have a pretty good sense

01:11:01   at this point to spot these things.

01:11:03   I was like, I need to get in this on this right now, but there are many similarities in that.

01:11:08   Uh, well, I don't think obsidian is open source, but it's open in the sense that it's living

01:11:12   in your file system.

01:11:13   And it's, uh, like obsidian, uh, cloud bot stores all of its, uh, preferences and settings in markdown documents.

01:11:22   Yeah.

01:11:23   Your memories, uh, our daily notes in markdown, um, everything is based on folders.

01:11:30   You can go in there.

01:11:32   Uh, the, the, the skill architecture is basically the plugin architecture of obsidian.

01:11:38   So anybody can make a skill, anybody can make a plugin.

01:11:41   Um, and there are many, it's, I think it's, um, it's, um, uh, uh, it's appealing to the

01:11:48   same kinds of people that, that saw obsidian in 2020 and realized, oh, this is a big deal.

01:11:53   And, and those people are taking a look at cloud bot now and, and are feeling the same feelings.

01:12:01   You, you, you, you've already got your quote on the website.

01:12:05   I noticed, I noticed, yes.

01:12:08   Claw bot showed me what the future of personal AI assistance looks like.

01:12:12   I mean, this also does feel like, I know you say, no, not that you say, I know it is open

01:12:16   source, but this feels like it's being productized now.

01:12:19   Like, I hope so.

01:12:21   Um, and, and I think the bigger point, when I say the future of personal assistance looks

01:12:26   like, obviously I don't think that the future of personal assistance means that you got to

01:12:32   get your hands dirty with the terminal and download a thing from GitHub.

01:12:36   Yeah, because I don't want to do that, right?

01:12:37   Like, no, but the point that I make in the story is, is the idea that a personal assistant

01:12:44   should be able to do anything you want and should be able to give itself a capability

01:12:50   that it doesn't have by default, just by virtue of explaining to your assistant what you want

01:12:57   to get done and how that I think from my perspective is the big deal.

01:13:02   And then everything is just icing on the cake.

01:13:05   The fact that it's open source, that it's based on markdown files.

01:13:07   That's nice.

01:13:08   But the underlying idea of these models are so powerful.

01:13:14   The GPT 5.2, Opus 4.5, Gemini 3, arguably.

01:13:19   But there's still so many limitations, right?

01:13:25   And I think it's interesting that, uh, that OpenAI, especially as recognized is, uh, Fiji Simo,

01:13:33   the new CEO of applications at OpenAI wrote a few months ago that they, one of their goals

01:13:40   for 2026 is to turn ChagiPT into a personal super assistant, uh, to address, uh, you gotta

01:13:47   love, man, this Silicon Valley terms, the capability overhang.

01:13:52   You may wonder, what's, what's a capability overhang?

01:13:55   I like how you can just say things.

01:13:58   You can just say things you say, by the way.

01:14:00   You can just say anything.

01:14:01   Like, you can just say anything.

01:14:02   You can say anything these days.

01:14:04   Um, the capability overhang means these models are so powerful and yet so constrained, and

01:14:10   we haven't even begun to tap into their true potential.

01:14:13   That's what it means.

01:14:14   Yeah.

01:14:14   GPT 5.2, 5.2 is so powerful.

01:14:18   And yet most people are bound by the ChagiPT website or app.

01:14:24   And that doesn't feel right.

01:14:27   You know, all that power, all this infrastructure to still have a chatbot with some integrations,

01:14:33   that feels like a waste.

01:14:34   Yeah.

01:14:35   And so that's what the capability overhang is.

01:14:38   Capability overhang.

01:14:39   Yeah.

01:14:40   Um, do you have a capability overhang, Mike?

01:14:42   I think I do.

01:14:43   Yeah, we all do.

01:14:45   We all do.

01:14:46   Well, my capability overhang is when looking at tools like this, where it's like, I...

01:14:51   Okay, look, it's not for you, okay?

01:14:53   Yeah.

01:14:53   Not right now.

01:14:54   It's not.

01:14:55   Not right now.

01:14:55   That's the capability overhang.

01:14:57   Like, the capability is there, but I don't want to do the management that I know a system

01:15:03   like this requires.

01:15:04   Oh, yeah.

01:15:05   Yeah.

01:15:05   Let me tell you, man.

01:15:06   I ended up yesterday...

01:15:08   Do you know what Node.js is?

01:15:11   I am familiar with the term.

01:15:13   I know it's a JavaScript thing, right?

01:15:15   Yeah.

01:15:15   I ended up with three different installations of Node on my Mac Mini, and I thought I was losing

01:15:20   my mind because my Telegram stopped working, and then I had to chat with CloudBot in the

01:15:27   terminal, which is also something that you can do.

01:15:29   I had to chat with CloudBot in the terminal, and CloudBot told me, like, buddy, you have

01:15:34   three different Node installations.

01:15:35   That's why Telegram is going crazy.

01:15:37   And guess what?

01:15:38   It fixed itself.

01:15:39   Yeah, but who did the three installations is what I want to know.

01:15:43   That was me by accident.

01:15:44   I like that the AI...

01:15:46   I was going to blame the AI.

01:15:47   I should be blaming you.

01:15:48   That was all me because I installed Node both...

01:15:51   See, the genius here installed Node both via the package installer for macOS, but also

01:15:58   homebrew.

01:15:59   And yeah, that was silly.

01:16:02   Anyway, a really interesting project that is not for the faint of heart right now.

01:16:11   requires management right now, but I think Peter, the creator, is aware of it, and I think there

01:16:23   is a version of this two months from now.

01:16:27   After all the...

01:16:29   Especially now that it's getting really popular, it's getting bug fixed requests, feature requests

01:16:35   from...

01:16:36   I mean, just go look in the GitHub projects.

01:16:39   There are like hundreds of requests each day.

01:16:41   But I think a few months from now, once we have a baseline set for this product, a way to

01:16:49   productize, as you mentioned, this in a way that it's easier to install.

01:16:53   Maybe there's an iOS app, maybe there's a Mac app, and it has all the same features.

01:16:58   And if you want, you can get your hands dirty, but you don't have to, then it becomes really

01:17:04   interesting, I think.

01:17:05   So, that's been fun to play around with.

01:17:11   If you would like to read more about Federico's experience with Clubbot, you can find links

01:17:16   to that on MacStories, of which he is the editor-in-chief over at MacStories.net, and you'll find

01:17:21   the link to his article in the show notes for this week's episode.

01:17:24   If you would like to leave feedback, follow-up questions, go to ConnectedFeedback.com, and

01:17:30   you can send those in.

01:17:30   And you can also support this show by becoming a member.

01:17:33   Go to GetConnectedPro.co, and you can sign up, and you'll get longer, ad-free versions

01:17:37   of the show each and every week.

01:17:39   If you want to find Federico, as well as at MacStories.net, you can also listen to his podcast

01:17:44   of AppStories.

01:17:45   You can listen to NPC, one of my favorite podcasts.

01:17:48   Thank you.

01:17:49   Am I missing any other podcasts that you're on?

01:17:52   It's just the three now.

01:17:54   Unwind, Unwind.

01:17:55   Of course.

01:17:56   Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

01:17:58   To me, it's all AppStories.

01:18:01   I know.

01:18:02   You know?

01:18:02   Like, it's just, usually I'll listen to both shows one after another, so really it's just

01:18:07   all the same show.

01:18:08   I also have a theory that you record them at the same time anyway, but maybe that's...

01:18:13   Sometimes we do, sometimes we don't.

01:18:14   I like when I believe that John just cuts in you saying goodbye, John, from another episode.

01:18:26   Sometimes I think that happens on AppStories, but I have no way of proving it.

01:18:30   Not as frequently anymore.

01:18:31   Not as frequently.

01:18:32   Aha!

01:18:33   Okay.

01:18:33   So I know it does happen.

01:18:35   I'll keep my ear out for it.

01:18:36   You can hear me on many shows here at Relay.

01:18:38   You can check out my Worker Cortex brand and TheEnthusiast.net.

01:18:42   Don't forget to go and hound Stephen and wish him a happy birthday on the 28th.

01:18:47   And hopefully his voice will have recovered and he'll be back next week.

01:18:52   It's scary, right?

01:18:52   The thought of having vocal problems doing what we do.

01:18:55   Not great.

01:18:56   Yeah.

01:18:56   Not a great thought.

01:18:58   No.

01:18:58   So let's all wish that he recovers quickly and comes back to the show.

01:19:03   Thanks so much to our sponsors for this week's episode, The Fine Folk over at Century and

01:19:07   Ecamm.

01:19:08   But most of all, thank you for listening.

01:19:10   We'll be back next time.

01:19:11   Until then, say goodbye, Federica.

01:19:13   Arrivederci.

01:19:14   Cheerio.