613: Long-Distance Ethernet Cable
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Hello, and welcome to episode 613 of the Connected podcast from Relay. Today's show is brought
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to you by FitBud and Backblaze. My name is Mike Hurley, and it's the pleasure of introducing
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to you the keynote chairman, Federico Patrici. Hi, Federico.
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Hello, Mike. How are you?
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Oh, I'm very good. Thank you. I'm very good indeed.
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No Stephen today, and no me next week. We're in full summer. Full summer right now.
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I'm just, I'm going to be the constant.
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Yes, you are. That's what we call you, Federico the Constant. You are well known for being constantly
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on the show in the summertime.
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Yes, yes, obviously.
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Everyone knows that.
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I have a reputation to uphold.
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Summertime TG, they call him.
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We have a follow-up item, and I found this interesting, and I checked. Tyler wrote in and said,
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what has happened to the advanced dictation preview in the betas? It was there for the
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Tyler's right.
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It has disappeared, and why is no one talking about it? I mean, I think the reason no one's
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talking about it, Tyler, is because you were the first one that noticed. I checked. I had
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turned this on, and it's gone. So maybe they've taken it away. This happens during the beta process,
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right? That like, there are features that exist, and then they do some testing, and they're like,
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we take this away, and it will come back again later on. Because this was in the beta, right?
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The advanced dictation preview. It was actually very hard to find. You had to go into the keyboard
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settings to turn it on, and it's not there. So there you go.
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Yeah. Hopefully, it'll come back.
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Yeah. Can I share something that really, really upsets me?
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The new TestFlight.
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Ah, yes. I wanted to talk to you about this.
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Okay. Can you explain to people what has happened here, and why it's an issue?
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They updated the TestFlight app for iPhone, that's where I tested it, with a search functionality,
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which, if it was just that, great. Almost like, can't believe it didn't have a search feature
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before, but here we are. The problem is that, in doing this, the TestFlight app now has changed
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the default sorting of the betas that you're on. It used to be, before this update,
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that I opened TestFlight and sorted at the top of the list where the active betas that I'm currently
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participating in as a tester, sorted by last updated date. Okay? So, you know, I had my
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active betas sorted by the latest available beta version on TestFlight. That sorting is completely
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gone, replaced by alphabetical sorting.
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Which inherently is not a problem, right?
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No, but it intermixes in the same list, old betas and active ones.
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Yeah. Like, old betas being betas that you were on that have expired.
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Even stuff years ago. Betas that have expired years ago. I am on a beta at the top of the screen
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for Adobe Draw pre-release. This was probably five years ago, right? These are mixed in the same list
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with my currently active betas. I hope it's a bug.
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Yeah, I'm on, like, one of mine here at the top, Backfill, and the last release date, I don't even know what this is,
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March 2020. I have Blink affiliate links right here.
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Yes, there you go.
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From OTJ from 2018, right at the top of the list. It doesn't even have an icon anymore.
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Yeah. Yeah. Some of these are broken. Like, if this is a decision, we need to have a talk. If this is a bug, we also need to have a talk. Because how can a bug like this just slip through?
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I honestly don't know what to think. Like, it's making TestFlight unusable for me at the moment. Because, like, because of my job, and I'm not bragging or anything, just because of my job, I think I'm on, like, I don't know, 400 betas or something.
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John is, like, on 700.
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I think you said 800 somewhere.
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800? Okay, cool. John has a problem.
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It's impossible. So now I got to remember the app that I'm looking for, search for it manually, and then see if there's an update.
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Do you not do automatic updates?
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But also, I want to read the change.
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No, of course, I understand that. Like, I'm not saying that that is an excuse.
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No, no, I have it. I have it enabled. Yes.
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Yeah, I have automatic updates on as well, which makes this a little bit easier, especially because I don't need to check release notes in the same way that you do, right? Like, because that's not. But this is just, I think this is. What is so weird to me about this, right, is that they were like.
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So the way it used to, just to clarify, the way it used to be before, you would have all of these in TestFlight, but your active betas would be at the top, and they were sorted by release date, like the most recent release.
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And then you could scroll down, and there was like a heading that was like expired betas, right?
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And then it'd be down there at the bottom.
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But, you know, like John had previously had an issue because he is definitely on the edge case, right?
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And he was having some performance issues, but he also, I think, wanted search in TestFlight.
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And Apple have added search, but for some reason have now just sorted everything alphabetically.
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And to me, the funny thing about that is like the alphabetical sorting, with no options to change those, like you can't like change the sort in any way, it like undermines the entire point of having the search bar.
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Like the search bar, you add that because people want to be able to find things more easily, but then at the same time, you change
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the sort options and allow for no filtering.
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It's like all of that stuff should be done together as a way of making people find things more easily.
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It is super weird to do this.
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I saw Simon Stovering saying on Mastodon, it's like this proves Apple do not use TestFlight internally, because you wouldn't make this decision if you were using it.
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You would catch it.
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You would catch it.
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You would catch it.
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And you'd be like, oh no, this wasn't right.
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Because in theory, alphabetical sorting is totally fine, right?
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And then the ability to search is fine.
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I do like the idea of searching by release, but that's just a preference.
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Alphabetical sorting is not a problem.
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It is a problem when TestFlight does not remove expired betas from your list, which I also think it should do anyway.
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I don't need to see expired betas that I can't do anything about.
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All you can do when you have a beta expire is just press stop testing and it removes it.
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You can't contact the developer via this system of TestFlight to get a refreshed beta.
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You would have to just go out and do that manually.
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So yeah, it's a bit of a nightmare.
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So hopefully there's a fix soon.
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Obviously, John wrote about it to complain.
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Thank you, John, for your service.
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But we all feel the pain of this.
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I don't even want to call it a new design.
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I just think it's a bug.
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Well, it is a bug caused by a feature decision, right?
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Like it is, I think, an unintended consequence is what they have created here in this scenario.
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Related to this, I want to talk about some App Store chaos.
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So previously mentioned, John Boyd, he wrote an article, Max Lurie's linking to a piece,
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was it New York Times?
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Who wrote this?
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Callie Huang at the New York Times wrote about Vibe Coded Apps and the impact that it's having
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on the App Store.
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And I want to read some quotes.
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Some of these quotes are from the New York Times thing and some are from John's.
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And it just paints a picture, right?
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So this is from the New York Times.
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Last year, the number of new apps released in the App Store grew 30% to about 600,000,
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according to estimates by Sensor Tower, an app analytics firm.
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In the first half of this year, new apps doubled to about 560,000.
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So the first half of 2026, there has been twice the amount of apps submitted to or released in
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the App Store, I should say, than there were in the first half of 2025.
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And also downloads over this time period, this is some of John's stuff, downloads increased
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3% in 2025 and 2% in the first half of 2026.
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So we have a 30% increase of new apps, but only a 2% increase in downloads.
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And based on Sensor Tower's numbers, the total number of App Store releases had previously
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peaked in 2016 at 890,000 new apps.
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It hit a low of 420,000 in 2022.
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And this year, we're on pace to pass 2016's peak.
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So that peak of 890, because it will probably be well over a million new apps in the App Store.
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And this is from John.
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One subtle trend I'll add is that whereas for years where most developers contacted us before
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they released an app in the past, a lot of new developers are doing so after their apps
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are already on the App Store.
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I suspect that what we're seeing is a new generation of developers learning the hard
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discoverability lessons of the App Store for the first time, because when I check out these
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apps, they rarely have any App Store reviews.
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And he says, it's a little like the App Store gold rush of the early days, but without any
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of the gold.
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Just a rush.
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So I assume you're seeing the same stuff that John is seeing, kind of like anecdotal information
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to back up that New York Times report.
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My email has become unusable.
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I was having this conversation with Silvia yesterday.
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I'm at the point where I'm getting about, let's say on average,
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30 to 50 emails for new apps on a daily basis.
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And that's on top of all of the other email you make.
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That's on top of the other email, right?
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That's on top of the other email.
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And the thing is, it used to be easy to spot the scammy, weird, coming from a PR agency,
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low effort apps.
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These are, on the surface, looking like genuine apps.
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They're all made with AI, right?
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Which, in and of itself, it's not a problem.
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I use AI a bunch, obviously.
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The problem is the low effort of it all, and the boilerplate of it all, and the AI-ness of
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it all, just yesterday.
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So I'm using Spark as my email client, and they have that feature that screens your inbox
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for new senders, right?
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That screening feature, despite my best effort, now has 251 new senders already.
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So just yesterday, I went through, and I'm not kidding, I picked three random ones at
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Opened the website for each of them.
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And I swear to you, Mike, it was the same, obviously, three completely different developers,
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quote-unquote developers, because the email was written by an AI agent.
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Three different apps, the literal same website design.
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Yeah, of course.
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Dark background, sans-serif font, followed by a serif tagline.
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Claude makes these designs all the time.
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And then you open the link to the App Store, it's got the same style of screenshots, with
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some sans-serif text, and a verbose description that's made by Codex, and a couple of screenshots.
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One of them mentions that it's private and secure by design.
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Again, that's one of the things that Codex is obsessed by.
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All of these apps are private.
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Now, all of these apps are private and secure by design.
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That's the sentence that they love repeating.
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And they all look the same.
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They all look...
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Some of them are using this skill that's quite popular, called something like UI taste or
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You can tell because it's like it pretends to be slightly fancier than it is.
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Most of them are using the default, like, liquid glass, SwiftUI, boilerplate template that
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Cloud Code and Codex put together.
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And here's the thing.
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Like, many of them are coming from at gmail.com addresses, which has become, unfortunately,
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one of my filters now.
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Like, if it's about a new app and it's coming from a net gmail.com address, I'm sorry, but
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it looks to me like you're not even putting in a modicum of effort into doing this developer
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You're not setting up like a business email address or something is what you're saying.
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You're just a random individual who assigned their AI agent the task to create the app and
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then email a bunch of Apple Press about it.
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Which, I mean, good luck.
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Maybe that's going to work out.
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Maybe according to these numbers from Censored Tower and the New York Times, it's not.
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It's a struggle, right?
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The volume of it all is a struggle.
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I am developing some ways to identify the good stuff from the bad stuff.
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Like, the at gmail.com address is one.
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I joked about it on Mastodon.
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But actually, getting emails with a typo for my name in it is now a pretty good tell that
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the email is actually coming from a person who typoed my last name or my first name.
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Very easy to spell your last name incorrectly.
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Because it's just like a lot of repeated letters and getting them in the right order.
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Like, is it two T's or one T and how many C's and I's?
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I started testing this theory.
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Like, let's try and find all the emails with the typos in them for my name.
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And those were actually interesting apps.
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Which tells me that the problem is not AI, right, in itself.
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The problem is combining your humanity and sense of taste and sense of care with the AI.
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If you just have an idea and you just give it to the AI and, you know, there are plugins that now allow you to submit to TestFlight, submit to the App Store, do screenshots, all without ever doing anything yourself.
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I know because I use one of these for an iOS app that I'm building and that John and I are testing via TestFlight.
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You can automate this process end-to-end.
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The issue is that you're just making something with no sense of care and no sense of effort.
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The AI of it all can be a great accelerator, but you still have to differentiate, right, yourself from the literal hundreds of thousands of other people doing the same.
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And if my inbox can be a little reflection of this, I will tell you that most of these apps will fail.
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And you can tell because you open them on the App Store and you see they have no updates.
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They have just a version 1.0 that was released, no reviews.
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It was forgotten, right?
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The net result is that I think Apple will soon have, over the next couple of years, a serious abandonware issue on the App Store.
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Some of these apps will expire because they're most likely the developer agreements and the developer, like what's it called, developer program will expire for those people.
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They maybe thought, oh, I'm going to make it an app.
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I'm going to be successful on the App Store.
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But no, you're not.
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And so fundamentally, I don't think the app economy will be reshaped by this.
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I think these tools will make people who really want to become developers much more efficient at becoming developers.
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But these people who are just like technical enough to set up codecs or cloud code will realize that they're not making any money.
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And the result, however, will be the inboxes of people like me and John overflowing with this crap and also the App Store overflowing with this crap.
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And it'll be left to Apple to manage and to filter it out, which is, in a funny twist, I guess, we're back to the original point of many years ago, which is editorial creation made by humans, done by humans, more important than ever.
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But at this point, it's a mess.
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It really is a mess.
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And I cannot even imagine what it's like.
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I mean, Mac Stories is a, you know, medium popular website.
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We've been around for a long time.
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Our email addresses are public in a whole bunch of places.
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I cannot even imagine what it's like to work at Apple on the App Store team right now.
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It must be impossible.
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It's funny, really, because basically the what you're describing to me is it sounds like app development is becoming something like content creation because there are, you know, the Internet is littered with abandoned blogs and podcasts and YouTube channels for people that they they give it a go because they think they have an idea.
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But it doesn't gain any traction.
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So they give up.
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And and and we've seen many of them.
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I mean, it just happens.
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Also, we haven't seen the millions more.
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Like people, they start a thing and they do it because they want to make money in a lot of cases and they don't gain an audience.
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So they can't make any money.
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So they give up.
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Or they like they they have an idea and it's not connecting with anyone.
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And so they stop.
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And the reason that this hasn't happened to development is because development is hard.
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It's hard to start.
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And content creation is not hard to start.
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It's hard to get good at.
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And it takes a lot of practice to get good at.
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But you can actually just start.
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I mean, it is one of the things that I do think is great about content creation.
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And it's also probably good for developers, like people wanting to be developers in this way.
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You can just start easily and then you can try to get better at it over time.
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But what happens is there are a bunch of people that start and they go straight to here's the product.
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And then the product doesn't connect with anyone and then they will abandon it, which is just, you know, everybody knows people in their lives set up a YouTube channel and it didn't go anywhere or started streaming and it didn't go anywhere.
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Or they set up their second Instagram account because they wanted to have an Instagram for their cat.
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And their cat's Instagram account didn't go in.
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You know, like everybody.
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We all know these people in our lives.
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We may all be.
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I mean, I've had it.
00:19:56
◼
►
I'm sure you've had it.
00:19:57
◼
►
Projects that you started and it didn't go anywhere.
00:19:59
◼
►
So you just let them go.
00:20:01
◼
►
And it's like, but now development is that too.
00:20:04
◼
►
That is now a thing that has not been the case for decades, but now it can be.
00:20:10
◼
►
And we're going to start to see the ramifications of that.
00:20:14
◼
►
This is what some of them.
00:20:16
◼
►
And then unfortunately John's Tesla gets to a thousand and it breaks even further.
00:20:23
◼
►
I wanted to take an aside to talk about your internet adventure.
00:20:28
◼
►
You've had some internet adventures the last couple of days and I thought you might want
00:20:31
◼
►
to tell the story.
00:20:32
◼
►
Give me a quick refresh as to where this came from.
00:20:35
◼
►
And I know we've spoken about it on the show before.
00:20:37
◼
►
Long story short, I'm now coming to you from a MacBook Pro that is docked at my desk and getting
00:20:44
◼
►
three gigabit per second fiber.
00:20:47
◼
►
The longer version of that is that I did not know that my ISP had been offering for the
00:20:57
◼
►
past year a 10 gigabit plan that was almost half the price of my older grandfathered in
00:21:07
◼
►
one gigabit fiber plan.
00:21:10
◼
►
Honestly, my ISP did not care to inform me because they were like, look at this idiot
00:21:15
◼
►
paying double the price.
00:21:17
◼
►
For a tenth of the speed.
00:21:19
◼
►
For a tenth of the speed.
00:21:20
◼
►
I found out thanks to a neighbor of mine who's also very into tech and also now follows Mac
00:21:31
◼
►
Stories and me on social media.
00:21:33
◼
►
And I was like, what?
00:21:34
◼
►
I cannot believe you of all people do not have the 10 gigabit already.
00:21:38
◼
►
So I put in a request a month ago.
00:21:41
◼
►
It took a month because like the 10 gigabit line here in Rome, at least, has limited slots
00:21:51
◼
►
per building.
00:21:52
◼
►
You only have so many open slots on the 10 gigabit line per neighborhood, right?
00:22:02
◼
►
So, and there's a waiting list to get on it with the single ISP that offers it.
00:22:11
◼
►
And so I put in a request a month ago and then finally, about a week ago, I got a call saying,
00:22:17
◼
►
hey, can we come on Monday?
00:22:18
◼
►
And I said, sure.
00:22:19
◼
►
There were two open slots in my building.
00:22:24
◼
►
Now there's one because I took one of them.
00:22:27
◼
►
So they come in and the installation process itself was totally fine.
00:22:31
◼
►
It was like 10 minutes.
00:22:31
◼
►
They just had to take out the old modem and put in the new one.
00:22:35
◼
►
My apartment was already reached by fiber.
00:22:38
◼
►
It was just a matter of switching my subscription plan from the one gigabit to the 10 gigabit.
00:22:46
◼
►
So they put in the new modem.
00:22:47
◼
►
They're done in 10 minutes.
00:22:49
◼
►
And then they start doing this thing called provisioning.
00:22:52
◼
►
So all these new modems, Mike, I don't know if you remember when we were kids.
00:22:56
◼
►
It used to be that when you got a new modem, you would have to go in, at least with DSL connections,
00:23:03
◼
►
go in and input specific parameters for your ISP username, password to get on the network.
00:23:09
◼
►
Now all these modems, they have auto-provisioning, which means as soon as they appear on the ISP's network,
00:23:16
◼
►
the ISP automatically handshakes with the modem, passes information about your plan, and the modem is online.
00:23:24
◼
►
Now this modem was not going online.
00:23:26
◼
►
It was getting a fiber connection because the fiber LED was turning on,
00:23:31
◼
►
but it was not negotiating the necessary provisioning permissions with my ISP remotely.
00:23:38
◼
►
So it took them two days to do that.
00:23:40
◼
►
In the meantime, I was without Wi-Fi, without internet.
00:23:43
◼
►
All of my home automation stuff broke because there was no Wi-Fi.
00:23:47
◼
►
And it was just that classic thing of like, ah, no, we're going to pass you on to other technicians.
00:23:53
◼
►
And then the other technicians come in like, ah, no, we have nothing to do here.
00:23:57
◼
►
You got to talk to the office because it's a remote thing.
00:24:02
◼
►
Eventually, I got a phone call from somebody saying, hey, can you stay with me on the phone for a few minutes?
00:24:07
◼
►
Do a few things.
00:24:08
◼
►
Reboot multiple times.
00:24:10
◼
►
And eventually, they got it all lined up.
00:24:13
◼
►
And now I have fiber.
00:24:18
◼
►
Obviously, getting actual 10 gigabit down is impossible, right?
00:24:25
◼
►
The effective speed, I think, of the network is around 5.
00:24:29
◼
►
And also getting everything in your home to be 10 gigabit certified is very expensive.
00:24:38
◼
►
And I did not want to do that.
00:24:40
◼
►
So I found a balance for now.
00:24:43
◼
►
I have, I just got one Ethernet switch with eight ports.
00:24:51
◼
►
That's a 10 gigabit one, a 10 gigabit switch.
00:24:56
◼
►
That's in the living room.
00:24:57
◼
►
And that is connected to the Ethernet cable that runs inside my walls and reaches here in the office where I'm recording this.
00:25:06
◼
►
In theory, I could be getting 10 gigabits here on my desk.
00:25:11
◼
►
I am not at the moment because I decided to stay at 2.5.
00:25:20
◼
►
I did not want to switch the monitor.
00:25:25
◼
►
I'm using an Asus monitor that has a built-in KVM functionality.
00:25:30
◼
►
One of those things that can be shared via the KVM feature is the USB dongle with Ethernet, but it caps out at 5 gigabit per second.
00:25:42
◼
►
I do not want to switch my monitor at the moment.
00:25:45
◼
►
And I do not want to purchase a separate Thunderbolt box for 10 gigabit networking.
00:25:51
◼
►
Which is fine.
00:25:55
◼
►
Ramon is asking in the chat.
00:25:59
◼
►
I was going to get to that.
00:26:01
◼
►
With an electrician, we also had a little side project going, which was to run an Ethernet cable five floors down to my storage unit, which is adjacent to my garage.
00:26:21
◼
►
Well, I also decided not to drive the full 10 gigabit network down.
00:26:27
◼
►
So it caps at 2.5.
00:26:30
◼
►
It was a massive project.
00:26:33
◼
►
They used 140 meters of Ethernet cable.
00:26:37
◼
►
There's an Ethernet switch.
00:26:39
◼
►
There's a second Ethernet switch that, from my front door, basically the cable exits out, goes through this breakout box that's next to the elevator on my floor.
00:26:53
◼
►
And from there, it goes all the way down to the ground floor.
00:26:57
◼
►
So four stories down.
00:26:59
◼
►
At the ground floor, there's this room where all of the power meters and electrical switches for all of the apartments are located.
00:27:06
◼
►
From there, it's like I mentioned to John, it's like the London tube map.
00:27:13
◼
►
From there, it's like it switches to another conduit.
00:27:17
◼
►
And it goes down another floor to my storage unit.
00:27:20
◼
►
And it had to be a specific type of long-distance Ethernet cable that has a specific material around it so that it gets protected when it runs inside conduits.
00:27:35
◼
►
Like the shielding?
00:27:36
◼
►
It's got special shielding for electrical interference.
00:27:39
◼
►
And it was really nice.
00:27:43
◼
►
They did a really nice job.
00:27:44
◼
►
I'm getting a six millisecond ping downstairs, which is basically, it's excellent.
00:27:49
◼
►
And all the stuff downstairs, it's like it's on my local.
00:27:54
◼
►
It's not like it is on my local network.
00:27:58
◼
►
There's all of the things that I connected downstairs.
00:28:03
◼
►
It's almost like they are in a different room, except the room is five stories down.
00:28:09
◼
►
So I'm pretty happy with the outcome of this project.
00:28:13
◼
►
It was expensive and a long, drawn-out process.
00:28:18
◼
►
But fiber, man, especially fast fiber, it ruins you forever.
00:28:29
◼
►
So I am glad that I was able to take a bunch of equipment out of the house and move it to a dedicated space.
00:28:38
◼
►
I've already shared this in our group thread, but my prediction is you will not last very long before you start replacing gear to get faster speeds.
00:28:45
◼
►
Oh, yeah, probably.
00:28:47
◼
►
I just, you're just like, you know, you want, I know you, you loved speed.
00:28:54
◼
►
I love, here's the thing, I hate having something that is capable of a certain standard and not taking advantage of it.
00:29:07
◼
►
You've just said it.
00:29:09
◼
►
So I know that you will be upgrading all of your equipment within the next few months.
00:29:13
◼
►
Because it's just sitting there.
00:29:15
◼
►
It's sitting there, available to you, this speed.
00:29:18
◼
►
Yeah, but at the very least, like, now I'm getting, I think I actually got a, for this monitor, I got a Ugreen dongle that's capable of 5 gigabit per second internet.
00:29:31
◼
►
And I'm getting three, which is, I mean.
00:29:34
◼
►
There is also that thing of like, what can you use it for?
00:29:37
◼
►
No, exactly, nothing.
00:29:38
◼
►
It's just the principle of it all.
00:29:40
◼
►
Downloading from the internet caps at a certain point, right?
00:29:44
◼
►
You know, you're not going to get necessarily three times faster downloads than the PlayStation Store.
00:29:49
◼
►
Or whatever.
00:29:50
◼
►
Because it's what do they serve it at as well.
00:29:53
◼
►
But I'm happy for you at Fast Internet.
00:29:56
◼
►
Thank you, thank you.
00:29:58
◼
►
This episode is brought to you by FitBod.
00:30:02
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If you're looking to make changes to your fitness level, it can be hard to know where to start.
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And you can be sure you're learning new movements the right way thanks to their more than 1,000 demonstration videos.
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Which is why FitBod tracks your muscle fatigue and recovery to design that well-balanced workout routine.
00:31:07
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But what I love is it also means they're going to be mixing up the types of workouts that you're doing.
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That is fitbod.me slash connected for 25% off your membership.
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Thanks to FitBod for the support of this show and Relay.
00:32:01
◼
►
You wrote an article this week about an app called Open Minis, which is to me a hilarious name.
00:32:08
◼
►
I'm not sure why, but it's very funny to me.
00:32:10
◼
►
And you called it the most impressive indie app I've seen in a while.
00:32:15
◼
►
So I want you to tell me three things about this app.
00:32:18
◼
►
Very quickly what it is, how you found it, and who makes it.
00:32:24
◼
►
I'll reverse the order of my answers.
00:32:28
◼
►
I think the developer wants to stay anonymous.
00:32:31
◼
►
I think, I'm not sure.
00:32:34
◼
►
I mean, I haven't been able to find who it is.
00:32:38
◼
►
So that might be why.
00:32:39
◼
►
I can tell you it's a real person.
00:32:42
◼
►
That I'm, actually, let me, let me rephrase.
00:32:44
◼
►
Let's see if the name is public or not.
00:32:46
◼
►
You don't have to share the name.
00:32:48
◼
►
You don't, if you're speaking to them?
00:32:52
◼
►
But it's, they have a public profile.
00:32:55
◼
►
That's what I'm seeing on x.com.
00:32:57
◼
►
The Everything site.
00:33:00
◼
►
The Everything site.
00:33:01
◼
►
I think it's a developer based in China.
00:33:04
◼
►
How I found it.
00:33:07
◼
►
Codex found it.
00:33:10
◼
►
Via my, I am, I am quite paranoid about how agents search the web on my behalf.
00:33:21
◼
►
Months ago, I was getting upset about the search, the search quality that like ChatGPT and Claude have by default.
00:33:31
◼
►
So I wrote my own skill for web search that basically it's like a multi-layer search.
00:33:40
◼
►
It searches Google, Reddit, X, YouTube, and I forget what else.
00:33:46
◼
►
So it's like a custom search workflow thing that I have and that I reuse in all of the AI apps that I test.
00:33:59
◼
►
I've been using this in Codex for months.
00:34:01
◼
►
Whenever I say research this topic, it uses that skill.
00:34:06
◼
►
And Codex found it, I think, via a Reddit thread.
00:34:14
◼
►
And then from there, it found the result on the App Store.
00:34:18
◼
►
And I found it because I was looking for, I'm always looking for like beyond ChatGPT and Claude.
00:34:25
◼
►
What are, and this is my other obsession, what are iOS apps that do really interesting things with AI?
00:34:33
◼
►
This is a recurring search that I do every few weeks.
00:34:37
◼
►
Like, I'm not interested in web apps.
00:34:39
◼
►
I'm not interested in Mac apps.
00:34:41
◼
►
I want to see what folks are doing on iOS that is new and novel and weird and interesting.
00:34:46
◼
►
And Codex found it.
00:34:49
◼
►
And what was the first question?
00:34:52
◼
►
It's a chatbot app that lets you use any model you want from a selection of the popular ones,
00:35:03
◼
►
including your ChatGPT subscription, which you can plug in natively.
00:35:09
◼
►
And your Claude subscription, I think, even though it's actually technically against the terms of service.
00:35:20
◼
►
Your Grok subscription, if you want one, open router, you know, all these model providers.
00:35:25
◼
►
It's a chatbot app.
00:35:27
◼
►
So I guess, why did I decide to use it?
00:35:32
◼
►
Because there's so many of these apps on the App Store, right?
00:35:36
◼
►
These iOS apps that let you talk to AI models and chat with AI models.
00:35:41
◼
►
It's full of them.
00:35:42
◼
►
Most of them are a scam and they have these cookie cutter designs.
00:35:49
◼
►
They're doing nothing interesting, nothing novel.
00:35:52
◼
►
You're just better off just downloading ChatGPT or Claude.
00:35:55
◼
►
Except for this one.
00:35:57
◼
►
What is interesting here is that...
00:36:03
◼
►
Open Minis does a couple of things.
00:36:11
◼
►
Zooming out, two things are interesting about it.
00:36:14
◼
►
One, the developer has taken nearly all the possible Apple APIs that are available to third-party developers
00:36:28
◼
►
building apps for the iPhone and has converted, has bridged those APIs to command line interfaces.
00:36:37
◼
►
For example, there's one called...
00:36:40
◼
►
There's Apple HomeKit, Apple Media, Apple Reminders.
00:36:45
◼
►
Like, has turned all of those developer frameworks into CLIs.
00:36:50
◼
►
Which brings me to my second point.
00:36:52
◼
►
This thing has its own mini computer, its own Linux environment, driven by an agentic harness
00:37:03
◼
►
that allows Open Minis to create its own little workspace with these tools and this computer
00:37:14
◼
►
and a browser and folders in the files app, obviously.
00:37:18
◼
►
It's essentially, what if somebody made a little cloud code or a little codex,
00:37:27
◼
►
but it was extremely native to iOS and Apple features?
00:37:33
◼
►
And it was made by a single person in China.
00:37:36
◼
►
That's the gist of it.
00:37:38
◼
►
Do me a favor.
00:37:42
◼
►
Explain the term harness to me like I am a child.
00:37:45
◼
►
Because I see people keep saying this word.
00:37:48
◼
►
And I thought I understood it, and now I'm not sure that I do.
00:37:52
◼
►
The harness in the modern sense is the orchestration environment that puts a model, an agent, in a loop
00:38:07
◼
►
to do multiple things in succession until it's done.
00:38:14
◼
►
This is the simplest explanation I can provide.
00:38:17
◼
►
And by that, I mean, if you want to get even more practical about it,
00:38:22
◼
►
it's usually a collection of Python scripts, markdown documents, system prompts.
00:38:30
◼
►
It's a collection of directions to tell the model, like, how to work in a loop.
00:38:42
◼
►
And by loop, I mean, like, the user asks you to find the best prices for a hotel from Monday to Friday.
00:38:49
◼
►
The loop becomes, you need to work on this, you have access to a computer, you have access to a Linux terminal.
00:38:58
◼
►
These are the other tools that you have.
00:39:01
◼
►
You need to work on this task and perform multiple tool calls, perform multiple actions,
00:39:11
◼
►
and only at the end, close the loop and provide an answer.
00:39:15
◼
►
This is the thing.
00:39:16
◼
►
This is, you know, if you want to study, like, modern AI history,
00:39:23
◼
►
this was the big invention by Anthropic with Cloud Code last year.
00:39:29
◼
►
So it feels like a set, essentially, of system prompts, files, access to things, right?
00:39:40
◼
►
Like, you know, how do you access the desktop?
00:39:43
◼
►
How do you access files?
00:39:44
◼
►
And then also, how do you keep a selection of memories?
00:39:48
◼
►
It's, like, all of the bits that are used to talk to the model and interpret what the model is in.
00:39:55
◼
►
Harness is a very strange word to me.
00:39:57
◼
►
It's a very...
00:39:58
◼
►
Well, because you are putting a harness around these things.
00:40:01
◼
►
Yeah, but isn't it just the app, essentially?
00:40:05
◼
►
I mean, the app is, like...
00:40:08
◼
►
The app, like, talks to the model like it's an API, right?
00:40:12
◼
►
Yeah, but I think...
00:40:14
◼
►
It's like Timery is a harness for Toggle, you know?
00:40:18
◼
►
Well, kind of.
00:40:20
◼
►
In this case, I think, with these agents, you can literally see a folder on your computer
00:40:25
◼
►
that is the harness of Cloud Code, for example.
00:40:28
◼
►
It's usually, like, a giant Python script, right?
00:40:32
◼
►
That tells Cloud how to behave, what to read, what tools to use, how to handle permissions,
00:40:37
◼
►
how to handle memories.
00:40:39
◼
►
And it's a spectrum, right?
00:40:41
◼
►
Do the web interfaces of chatbots have harnesses?
00:40:45
◼
►
Yeah, most likely.
00:40:47
◼
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Yes, and they operate in different sandboxes, right?
00:40:52
◼
►
And there's a spectrum of these things.
00:40:55
◼
►
Like, there are harnesses that are incredibly complex, like codecs.
00:40:59
◼
►
If we are judging the harness alone, I think actually Cloud Code still has the best one.
00:41:06
◼
►
The Codex one is a bit of a mess.
00:41:08
◼
►
I prefer the Codex models.
00:41:11
◼
►
I prefer the Cloud Code harness, myself.
00:41:13
◼
►
Yeah, I mean, it's the thing that I find interesting about co-work, right?
00:41:17
◼
►
Is that, like, it feels like it talks very well to the computer.
00:41:22
◼
►
It's very elegant.
00:41:24
◼
►
It handles sub-agents much more effectively than OpenAI does.
00:41:29
◼
►
And so when I use an LLM and I see it going, like, when I read some of the reasoning stuff,
00:41:36
◼
►
is that the harness at work?
00:41:40
◼
►
So when I see it going, like, oh, I've got to look up this.
00:41:43
◼
►
And then, hang on a minute, what about this?
00:41:44
◼
►
Like, that's the harness kind of doing its thing?
00:41:46
◼
►
It's a combination of things.
00:41:47
◼
►
It's the model reasoning over things that it performed thanks to the harness that it has.
00:41:55
◼
►
And there are very simple harnesses out there.
00:41:59
◼
►
Like, for example, a popular one, it's Pi, it's a coding thing on desktop.
00:42:07
◼
►
I believe the Pi harness is, like, four tools and that's it.
00:42:11
◼
►
But it's also very effective.
00:42:13
◼
►
Anyway, OpenMinis, in this case, has a harness that tells, okay, look, you are operating in
00:42:23
◼
►
an iOS app called OpenMinis, and it basically replicates all the things that we have seen
00:42:29
◼
►
on desktop, but in an iPhone app.
00:42:32
◼
►
There are two really key differences here.
00:42:37
◼
►
The Linux terminal that is built in, and the fact that the entire workspace for OpenMinis
00:42:45
◼
►
lives inside the files app.
00:42:47
◼
►
The Linux shell is actually based on ISH, which is a popular open source Linux terminal system.
00:42:58
◼
►
It's based on Alpine Linux.
00:43:01
◼
►
Alpine Linux is a Linux distro that is specifically built for ARM devices.
00:43:07
◼
►
It provides a whole bunch of default Linux and Unix tools, including the ability to use Python,
00:43:17
◼
►
to install packages, to, you know, do all the basic things that you would expect from a Linux
00:43:24
◼
►
And it's important because, as we know, all of these modern agents, Codex, Claude, whatever,
00:43:33
◼
►
they love using the shell.
00:43:36
◼
►
They love using terminals behind the scenes to perform actions.
00:43:40
◼
►
And OpenMinis does the same, hence why the developer recreated all of these Apple features
00:43:47
◼
►
in the form of command line interfaces.
00:43:52
◼
►
So it all starts coming together when you think about it that way.
00:43:56
◼
►
It's an agent.
00:43:58
◼
►
Instead of being on desktop, it's on the iPhone.
00:44:02
◼
►
It's instead of having a workspace in Finder, it's sandboxed in the files app.
00:44:08
◼
►
But the theory behind it is the same.
00:44:13
◼
►
It's an agent with a terminal and a bunch of tools and memories and a harness that tells
00:44:18
◼
►
it, these are the things you can use, go for it.
00:44:22
◼
►
What can you do with it?
00:44:24
◼
►
Whatever you want in the context of the integrations that you enable, right?
00:44:31
◼
►
So if you don't enable any integration, you just chat and it's the model responding, right?
00:44:37
◼
►
By default, it has some built-in tools.
00:44:41
◼
►
For example, web search and browser use.
00:44:47
◼
►
It can use a web browser.
00:44:49
◼
►
And you may be wondering, wait, how?
00:44:51
◼
►
The developer took advantage of a WebKit API, WKWebView, which developers have been using
00:44:59
◼
►
for a decade to display custom webpages via the WebKit engine on iOS.
00:45:06
◼
►
In this case, it allows the agent to control webpages.
00:45:12
◼
►
Like if you've seen, you know, Cloud Chrome or, you know, used to be called the ChatGPT Atlas.
00:45:20
◼
►
Now it's just a ChatGPT in Google Chrome.
00:45:23
◼
►
Like AI controlling a web page and scrolling and clicking through a web page.
00:45:28
◼
►
It does that, but it's based on WebKit.
00:45:31
◼
►
Or you can enable your own integrations.
00:45:35
◼
►
There's the default Apple stuff.
00:45:39
◼
►
It integrates with the Reminders, Apple Music, Bluetooth, HomeKit, HealthKit.
00:45:45
◼
►
These are all like based on native permission prompts.
00:45:50
◼
►
Like the usual stuff that you see when an app is requesting access to your folder library,
00:45:54
◼
►
for example, or scanning for Bluetooth devices.
00:45:58
◼
►
Like it's all based on native iOS APIs and permission settings.
00:46:03
◼
►
You can connect your favorite MCP servers.
00:46:08
◼
►
I connected Notion, for example.
00:46:10
◼
►
And at that point, it just becomes a regular agent.
00:46:16
◼
►
The difference being that unlike ChatGPT on the iPhone or Cloud on the iPhone,
00:46:21
◼
►
it has much more extensive integration with the iPhone itself.
00:46:24
◼
►
For example, it can look into your photos.
00:46:28
◼
►
It can analyze and find specific photos from your library.
00:46:35
◼
►
You can give it persistent access to specific folders of the files app.
00:46:43
◼
►
There is another little-known API available to developers that they can bookmark a folder in any location of the files app
00:46:52
◼
►
and mount it as an external folder.
00:46:54
◼
►
I'll give you one example.
00:46:57
◼
►
I asked Open Minis to find a specific collection of photos in my library,
00:47:07
◼
►
and I kept it generic.
00:47:08
◼
►
Like, hey, can you find me?
00:47:09
◼
►
I was recently on vacation in southern Italy.
00:47:13
◼
►
Can you find me those photos?
00:47:16
◼
►
Pick the best ones and put together a collage of them and save it into my downloads folder.
00:47:25
◼
►
And typically, ChatGPT couldn't do it, right, on the iPhone,
00:47:29
◼
►
because ChatGPT doesn't have programmatic access to your photos.
00:47:33
◼
►
You can manually upload some photos, but it cannot scan your photo library.
00:47:39
◼
►
It cannot save anything into a specific folder of the files app.
00:47:44
◼
►
Open Minis can.
00:47:46
◼
►
And so, again, the best way to think about it is imagine codecs, imagine cloud code, imagine those environments
00:47:53
◼
►
that so far we have only known as desktop applications.
00:48:00
◼
►
Imagine that way of working with agents, but on the iPhone and iPad.
00:48:09
◼
►
It's truly, when I first found out about this app, I thought, oh, this sounds fake.
00:48:16
◼
►
And then I started using it, and I started sending John screenshots, being like, this is mind-blowing.
00:48:23
◼
►
I cannot believe that.
00:48:24
◼
►
Like, this has been my dream for a long time, to finally see some AI company take iPhone and iPad users seriously
00:48:32
◼
►
for actually working with AI.
00:48:36
◼
►
So what excites you about this is the idea that, like, it's pulling native frameworks into this experience
00:48:44
◼
►
and marrying it with the chatbots that you prefer to use.
00:48:49
◼
►
And that and the fact that on my iPhone, I have an app that has the same capabilities as something
00:49:04
◼
►
like codecs on my Mac when it comes to just building things.
00:49:11
◼
►
For example, you can create a local web app on your phone and run it locally in open minis via local host on your phone.
00:49:29
◼
►
A few days ago, have you ever heard of Hermes agent, Mike?
00:49:36
◼
►
It's like an open claw alternative that has become popular because it's more stable and reliable than open claw.
00:49:44
◼
►
And it doesn't break like open claw does.
00:49:47
◼
►
And the thing about Hermes agent, it's made by these researchers at Noose Research.
00:49:54
◼
►
And they came up with this system that is basically like a self-improvement thing.
00:50:02
◼
►
The whole thing of Hermes agent is that over time, it self-improves based on your usage.
00:50:10
◼
►
And you don't have to do anything.
00:50:11
◼
►
Like, it just learns from all you do.
00:50:13
◼
►
And it basically creates new skills for itself based on what you do.
00:50:21
◼
►
But most importantly, it curates those skills.
00:50:26
◼
►
So, for example, let's say that you, Mike, in March, you were really into, I don't know, using Notion.
00:50:32
◼
►
And Hermes agent would have created a bunch of Notion skills.
00:50:35
◼
►
But then in September, you're no longer using Notion.
00:50:39
◼
►
Hermes agent, via its self-improvement thing, would pick that up and it would prune those skills because you're no longer using them.
00:50:49
◼
►
The whole research area for autonomous AI agent when it comes to self-learning and self-improvement is a very fascinating area of research.
00:51:02
◼
►
Anyway, I opened OpenMinis.
00:51:06
◼
►
I was like, hey, Hermes agent is open source.
00:51:10
◼
►
Can you take a look at the actual code that they're using for the self-improvement loop?
00:51:15
◼
►
Can we recreate it inside here on the iPhone?
00:51:21
◼
►
And I used GPT Sol for the task.
00:51:26
◼
►
And about 30 minutes later, I had this fake mess agent improvement loop in OpenMinis that I've been using for the past week.
00:51:37
◼
►
And it's amazing.
00:51:38
◼
►
Like twice a day, I get a notification saying, hey, I picked up these two things from your usage.
00:51:44
◼
►
Do you want to turn them into permanent things or not?
00:51:48
◼
►
And so that's the idea of like, finally, I have an app on my phone that doesn't depend on a remote connection to my Mac.
00:51:56
◼
►
And it can just do things in its own sandbox on the iPhone and it doesn't punish me for being an iOS user.
00:52:06
◼
►
That's what I find really fascinating.
00:52:09
◼
►
And also the fact that it's made by a single person and they're very receptive to feedback.
00:52:15
◼
►
Like that also helps.
00:52:17
◼
►
I feel like I am surprised this app exists in the App Store.
00:52:22
◼
►
Like I will read from your, I mean, I know you've said some of this stuff, but just this sentence, right?
00:52:27
◼
►
OpenMinis can do anything within its app sandbox thanks to built-in terminal emulation, including running Python, using Git and SSH and accessing standard Unix text utilities.
00:52:39
◼
►
It just seems like a lot is going on in this app.
00:52:42
◼
►
Years ago, it wouldn't have been accepted, this app on the App Store.
00:52:46
◼
►
Like, but this changed around after, you know, after in 2015, 2016, I will say.
00:52:56
◼
►
So it's been about 10 years after Pythonista editorial, like all those tools that were pushing the boundaries of what was possible on iOS with running external code.
00:53:08
◼
►
And now you have a whole bunch of apps that have built-in emulators.
00:53:13
◼
►
I mean, I have an actual terminal app on my phone that I used to SSH into my Mac Studio.
00:53:21
◼
►
I mean, thankfully, these things are accepted now.
00:53:25
◼
►
It's surprising to me, like I wouldn't be shocked to see, especially OpenAI, because I know that OpenAI is paying attention to this.
00:53:38
◼
►
And I know that multiple OpenAI employees read this story about OpenMis.
00:53:45
◼
►
So I think there's a real opportunity for OpenAI to, like imagine if this was real codecs on the iPhone and iPad.
00:53:55
◼
►
Not like codecs remote, which is really nice, but it's still based on the idea that you have a Mac somewhere or a Linux box somewhere running codecs.
00:54:08
◼
►
What if you could actually have codecs on your phone and it was sandbox in the files app, right?
00:54:14
◼
►
So I think it's going to be interesting to see how much these other companies copy this sort of approach, right?
00:54:23
◼
►
Especially now that OpenAI really wants to underline that they do chat GPT work and all these things.
00:54:31
◼
►
Imagine all those people with iPads in the enterprise.
00:54:35
◼
►
Like, I really do think they will do something similar here.
00:54:39
◼
►
But I'm just astounded that a single person did all of this.
00:54:45
◼
►
I mean, it must have been months of work, right?
00:54:47
◼
►
Just to bridge all of those Apple APIs to command line interfaces and make them work with a variety of models.
00:54:58
◼
►
Like, it's, I don't know, it's just incredible piece of work, truly.
00:55:05
◼
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This episode of Connected is brought to you by Backblaze.
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00:56:00
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A thanks to Backblaze for their support of this show and all of Relay.
00:56:05
◼
►
So Samsung Unpacked happened yesterday, I think.
00:56:11
◼
►
And they showed off a bunch of phones, all of the phones that we kind of expected them to show off.
00:56:17
◼
►
There was this time of year, kind of the summer time is when they do the folding phones.
00:56:22
◼
►
And then earlier in the year, I think they do the regular phones.
00:56:25
◼
►
It was later.
00:56:26
◼
►
I've forgotten their schedule at this point.
00:56:27
◼
►
But they did the Z Flip 8, which is the kind of flip phone.
00:56:32
◼
►
They did the Z Fold 8 Ultra, which is they've kind of rebranded the typical Z Fold phone.
00:56:40
◼
►
They put an ultra on the end.
00:56:42
◼
►
Just to clarify though, this phone is actually called the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra.
00:56:47
◼
►
Like that is its name, which is, there's too many names.
00:56:52
◼
►
Yeah, there's too many.
00:56:53
◼
►
I think the Z, they can get rid of that.
00:56:56
◼
►
Why do we still have a Z?
00:56:59
◼
►
I think they put that in there at a time when they thought they may have different form factors for folding phones.
00:57:08
◼
►
And like Z meant a different type of fold.
00:57:11
◼
►
And then maybe they were going to have like V for a different type of fold or whatever.
00:57:15
◼
►
Well, it's unnecessary.
00:57:17
◼
►
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra.
00:57:20
◼
►
The big thing for these phones, and it's like for all three of them, is that they've kind of got, they've made improvements to the visible crease.
00:57:30
◼
►
They've done this by putting a titanium film and titanium alloy plate behind the screen and also putting an anti-reflective coating on it.
00:57:40
◼
►
And that was a little trick, right?
00:57:41
◼
►
Because you only really see the screens on the light reflection.
00:57:43
◼
►
Well, like the creases, I mean.
00:57:46
◼
►
So get rid of the, if you put an anti-reflective screen, like a film on top, like that will get rid of some of it.
00:57:52
◼
►
But apparently it looks a lot better.
00:57:53
◼
►
And in the videos that I watched, like it looked a lot better than the previous one.
00:57:57
◼
►
And we can assume this is the technology that Apple will use, considering that Samsung is providing the displays.
00:58:06
◼
►
So maybe Apple and Samsung display worked together to get this to be what it is.
00:58:14
◼
►
And then the other key thing about this is the Z Fold 8.
00:58:17
◼
►
So the Z Fold 8 is technically a new phone inheriting the name, which is very strange.
00:58:26
◼
►
Because like it went from Z Fold 7, now the phone that was the Z Fold 7 is the Z Fold 8 Ultra.
00:58:32
◼
►
And the Z Fold 8 is now their wide-folding phone.
00:58:39
◼
►
In MKBHD's video, his thing is he thinks this is a clever marketing move from Samsung, because they can be like, the phone that Apple's put in at the highest end, we have one, but it's in our middle.
00:58:52
◼
►
Which is quite clever, right?
00:58:55
◼
►
It's a way to do it.
00:58:56
◼
►
But this is the, you know, when it's closed, it's a little phone, and you open it up, and it's kind of like a little tablet, basically.
00:59:03
◼
►
I think you will like this, that Mark has said it reminds him of the good parts of the Surface Duo.
00:59:11
◼
►
From like the form factor, the thickness, the weight, that kind of stuff.
00:59:15
◼
►
It's 201 grams, which they say feels very light to hold, I think, especially compared to other phones like this.
00:59:22
◼
►
That makes it a little lighter than an iPhone 17 Pro.
00:59:26
◼
►
So kind of like in that kind of realm.
00:59:29
◼
►
It's 9.7 millimeters when it's closed in thickness, 4.5 millimeters when it's open, for some comparison.
00:59:37
◼
►
So the Air is 5.6 millimeters all the time, so it's a little thinner than the Air when you open it.
00:59:43
◼
►
And a Pro Max is 8.75 millimeters, so it's thicker than a Pro Max, basically closed.
00:59:50
◼
►
So you're kind of in the realm that this phone closed is like a thick phone, but not crazy, right?
00:59:56
◼
►
Like it's a millimeter off, which is noticeable, but you're kind of like, you know, it doesn't feel ridiculous, I expect, is the case here.
01:00:06
◼
►
Is the case, yes.
01:00:08
◼
►
It looks, so Samsung is positioning this one as a media-focused device more than anything.
01:00:16
◼
►
It looks, when you unfold it, like you watch the videos, it looks strange unfolded.
01:00:22
◼
►
It's very, actually, it looks strange all the time.
01:00:24
◼
►
When it's closed, it's very square and small, and then when it's unfolded, it's very wide.
01:00:29
◼
►
Like it's just like a, it looks odd.
01:00:32
◼
►
It looks, when you see people put it in landscape, it kind of looks pretty nice.
01:00:36
◼
►
Like it just looks like a kind of like a Kindle kind of size, or like a little iPad kind of size.
01:00:41
◼
►
The thing that has been surprising to me, and all the coverage that I've seen of this, is people that have used it.
01:00:48
◼
►
Because, you know, Samsung do that thing where they let people use the phones before the keynote, and then they will publish their videos.
01:00:54
◼
►
The embargo time is the moment the keynote begins, which is so funny.
01:00:58
◼
►
It's like no one's ever going to watch your keynotes if you keep doing this.
01:01:01
◼
►
But in general, kind of people seem very interested, excited, and keen on the size and shape, which I think is very positive news for the iPhone.
01:01:11
◼
►
I saw all comments from people saying that they loved it.
01:01:16
◼
►
And that made me very excited about whatever Apple is preparing.
01:01:23
◼
►
I, like my excitement for the iPhone fold was already through the roof.
01:01:27
◼
►
Now it's like longest one month and a half.
01:01:33
◼
►
It looks like this form factor, it has legs now.
01:01:39
◼
►
Because, you know, obviously this style and shape has been done before.
01:01:42
◼
►
But I think, like Dave2D in his video about this, was like, his thinking is the technology is kind of now caught up to the point where this form factor makes a bit more sense.
01:01:56
◼
►
Like from a thickness perspective.
01:01:58
◼
►
They're normalizing this form factor.
01:02:00
◼
►
And I actually think it's a good thing for Apple that Samsung is like getting people used to the idea of having a passport-sized phone.
01:02:12
◼
►
I had this thought yesterday in a very twisted roundabout way.
01:02:20
◼
►
This is the phone, this phone, and also when Apple will do it, this is the phone that will make those iPhone mini people happy again.
01:02:30
◼
►
I was thinking this too, right?
01:02:31
◼
►
Like small phone fans.
01:02:34
◼
►
You're probably going to be happy about this, right?
01:02:37
◼
►
Because everyone's saying like it's very usable with one hand.
01:02:41
◼
►
Because it's small.
01:02:43
◼
►
And I guess like it's probably like, you know, if you were like an iPhone mini user or whatever, it might be a little bit wider, but overall like a pretty small phone.
01:02:53
◼
►
And so, you know, this is one of these things of like, all right, small phone users, get your checkbooks out.
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You know, you've got to prove the points.
01:03:01
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Time to pay up again.
01:03:02
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Time to pay up.
01:03:03
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You'd pay the piper now.
01:03:04
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Talking about pricing, actually.
01:03:06
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So, Samsung bumped the pricing up about $100 across the lineup for each phone, which that doesn't feel as bad as I would have imagined it could have been.
01:03:17
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So, who knows?
01:03:19
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I don't think that really says anything for the iPhone, but it's just like it's a thing to note.
01:03:25
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Now, this is on their most expensive phones, which so maybe they're able to kind of like find a bit more margin elsewhere.
01:03:33
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But yeah, it's going to be expensive.
01:03:36
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I want to read from Dominic Preston at The Verge.
01:03:39
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The Z Fold 8 Ultra, tall and thin.
01:03:41
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So, this is the regular one, right?
01:03:43
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So, the Z Fold 8 Ultra, tall and thin when closed and similar to a square when open, is meant to be a multitasking monster, useful for running apps in split screen, giving you the equivalent screen space of two regular 6.5-inch phones side-by-side.
01:03:57
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The wider Z Fold 8, instead, is about consumption.
01:04:01
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Its 4x3 aspect ratio is equally natural for watching Netflix shows in landscape as it is for reading e-books in portrait, and it's light enough to be held comfortably in one hand.
01:04:12
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The width of the 10x16 cover display is less noticeable than I expected, and I got used to using the phone this way remarkably quickly.
01:04:21
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And also, in Dave2D's video, he does a bunch of like side-by-sides for different phones, and you can see like, this is not really going to, I don't know how much of a multitasking app kind of phone this is going to be, because it's really squat, right?
01:04:41
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Like, if you've got two apps side-by-side and you bring up the keyboard, you're not going to be able to see anything anymore.
01:04:47
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So, it's going to be interesting to see how that feels to use like that.
01:04:52
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Here's my thought.
01:04:53
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I know that people are going to say that this is ideal for consumption.
01:04:57
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I think that's obviously true.
01:05:00
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I've always been historically against that sort of like virtual limitation, like, oh, no, consumption only.
01:05:08
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A knife and fold, unfolded, placed in portrait with a kickstand, get yourself a portable keyboard, great text editor to have if you are at a coffee shop or something.
01:05:22
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And you just want to get some work done.
01:05:23
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It will be great for work, but just that like, it's not necessarily the best form factor if you really want that, you know?
01:05:32
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But also, like, it's like, I've been thinking about this in the context of, I know that device is going to eat even more into my usage of the iPad Pro.
01:05:46
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Because now that I have more tools on the Mac and I'm going to have a phone that expands into a bigger screen, not as comfortable as an iPad Pro and all of that, but also technically speaking, I just need to carry my phone with me.
01:06:01
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You know what, though, actually, like, if you rotate this thing into portrait, that might be pretty nice to have two apps side by side.
01:06:09
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They'd be a little bit skinnier, but you'd see a lot.
01:06:11
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Also, we got to see if Apple wants to do split view top and bottom.
01:06:15
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They allow you to do that on the iPad.
01:06:18
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So, and especially if you, like, you can get one of those super portable folding keyboards.
01:06:24
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Like, you know, just grab one of those, put it in your backpack, just carrying your iPhone fold around with you, and then you are at a coffee shop or something, you just put the phone on a kickstand, grab the keyboard, get some work done in portrait mode.
01:06:39
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I mean, it's going to be nice.
01:06:40
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I hope they do the little floating iPad keyboard as an option for this.
01:06:44
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Because that would be much nicer than bringing up the full screen keyboard for, like, being able to still see a lot of stuff that's going on on the phone.
01:06:55
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So, Dave Judy, in his video as well, like, as I said, did those side by sides, and he showed the Fold 8 watching video next to an iPhone 17 Pro Max, and it looks pretty good.
01:07:08
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Like, you know, you obviously get a lot of bars on the top and bottom, but, you know, watching videos of his own, you can see that the screen is much bigger than a 17 Pro Max screen.
01:07:19
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Like, so it looks really nice.
01:07:21
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It really does.
01:07:24
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I'm excited, man.
01:07:25
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Like, this, to me, was, like, I wasn't necessarily thinking that this would make me feel better or worse, you know, seeing this phone.
01:07:35
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More, to me, was just, like, oh, it will be interesting to see what it, you know, like, the form factor is like.
01:07:40
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But then I just don't think I was expecting people to be so positive about the experience of using this phone.
01:07:48
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And so, like, you know, we'll have full reviews before Apple even shows this thing off.
01:07:53
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Like, those reviews will be in the next couple of weeks, right?
01:07:55
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So we'll get even more information about what it's like to use these devices every day.
01:08:01
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I mean, and it seems like it's carrying a lot of the same limitations we expect, right?
01:08:05
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Like, it's a fingerprint sensor to unlock the phone.
01:08:07
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It's two cameras.
01:08:08
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Like, so I think people are going to talk about it a lot.
01:08:11
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But I actually saw a friend of the show, Austin Evans, yesterday because he was here for Unpacked.
01:08:17
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It was very funny.
01:08:18
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Like, I asked him about the unlocking.
01:08:20
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And he's like, oh, yeah, you just use fingerprint sensor.
01:08:22
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I was like, oh, I was like, but you're used to doing this all the time with your iAndroid phones.
01:08:27
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I am a Face ID guy.
01:08:28
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You know, he's like, oh, yeah, you're not going to get that.
01:08:31
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So that would be a shame to me.
01:08:34
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But, you know, I was talking to Austin about it.
01:08:36
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And he was like, he says, you know, I was trying, going into it, it's like, I want to try and find the, like, the take on this.
01:08:44
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You know, like, oh, I don't like this form factor or whatever.
01:08:46
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Like, is that there for me?
01:08:48
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And he's like, no, I love it.
01:08:49
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He's like, I think it's amazing.
01:08:52
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Like, the form factor is really interesting.
01:08:54
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And I'm very excited to use it.
01:08:56
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And I'm very excited for the iPhone.
01:08:58
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You know, because he was like, you know, like, content creators are going to create content, right?
01:09:02
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And he was like, what is the angle on this?
01:09:04
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Like, is there, what is the good angle?
01:09:06
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What is the bad angle?
01:09:07
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And he wasn't able to find a bad angle.
01:09:09
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I really want to get the faulting phone.
01:09:12
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I mean, you're going to get it.
01:09:14
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I'm going to get it.
01:09:14
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I'm looking forward to it.
01:09:15
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I just think I'm not, even this, though, doesn't, it doesn't yet sell me that I'm going to want to use the folding phone as my main phone.
01:09:26
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I still, I still think I'm going to prefer the Pro for my main phone.
01:09:32
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I want to be proven wrong.
01:09:34
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I want the experience to be so enticing that I want to use it all the time.
01:09:38
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But I think there's, I just think that there will be a lot of pluses, but there will be compromises.
01:09:45
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And those compromises are going to be like some core experience of using the iPhone kind of compromises.
01:09:50
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And it really is going to have to make up a lot to make me want to use that phone as the phone that I use all the time.
01:10:00
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I don't know.
01:10:02
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It's exciting stuff.
01:10:03
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About a month and a half left.
01:10:05
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Is that until, that's until we see it, right?
01:10:09
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Until we see it.
01:10:09
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Until we get it, who knows?
01:10:11
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You know, I think, when did we talk about your dream?
01:10:15
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Was that in Connected Pro?
01:10:17
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So I also had a dream.
01:10:18
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Federico spoke about a very interesting dream that he had in Connected Pro, which, by the
01:10:22
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way, you can get 15% off when buying a new annual Connected Pro subscription.
01:10:27
◼
►
Or if you're reactivating an expired one with the coupon code tinyheads15 between now and July
01:10:33
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So you can do that.
01:10:34
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But I also had a, I had a very vivid dream a few days ago that John Turner's got in touch
01:10:42
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with me and he was like, Mike, I want to give you an exclusive interview.
01:10:45
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You can ask me whatever you want.
01:10:48
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I was like, okay, John.
01:10:49
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And I went to Apple Park and it was like a whole thing.
01:10:53
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It's probably pretty similar to what you did with Craig.
01:10:55
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I don't remember.
01:10:56
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I'm not very good of dreams.
01:10:58
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Like I don't dream vividly very much.
01:11:01
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Like I will go months without having a dream I can really remember.
01:11:07
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So gosh knows why I could remember this one so much.
01:11:09
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So, but then I don't really pay any attention to them.
01:11:13
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Some, like I just have like the feeling I don't, I don't do what Steven does, for example,
01:11:17
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and like write them down.
01:11:18
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So I don't, I don't have a lot of detail, but I just woke up feeling very accomplished.
01:11:22
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It's like, well, but that actually didn't happen.
01:11:24
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But you know, John, Turner, if you're out there,
01:11:28
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I'm very willing to have that exclusive interview if you want to give it to me.
01:11:33
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►
So there you go.
01:11:34
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►
Make my dream, literally make my dream come true.
01:11:36
◼
►
If you want to find the notes for this episode, very easy to do that.
01:11:40
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►
They should be in your podcast app.
01:11:42
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►
You don't want me to tell you about where to go on the web.
01:11:44
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►
Just look in your podcast app.
01:11:45
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If you have feedback about this show, go to connectedfeedback.com
01:11:49
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and you can submit questions, follow up, that kind of stuff.
01:11:52
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►
And you can find out more and sign up for Connected Pro by going to getconnectedpro.co
01:11:58
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If you would like to find Prince Flexi Federico Vitici,
01:12:02
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►
he is the editor-in-chief of maxstories.net.
01:12:04
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You can go check him out there.
01:12:06
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I am the host of many shows here on Relay.
01:12:09
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And the Attorney General Flexi Stephen Hackett is over at 512pixels.net.
01:12:14
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I would like to thank our sponsors again.
01:12:16
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That is FitBud and Backblaze.
01:12:18
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►
And this program will be back next week without me,
01:12:21
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►
but with the glue, Federico.
01:12:24
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Now, what do we call you?
01:12:25
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The constant.
01:12:25
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That was it.
01:12:26
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►
The constant.
01:12:26
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And the returning Stephen Hackett.
01:12:29
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Until next time, say goodbye, Federico.
01:12:30
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Arrivederci.