New details on iPhone 17 Air, AirTags 2, and a MBP hidden feature! (CultCast #674)

0:04
great leis is it your nerves is that the
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problem it's probably my [Laughter]
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diet it could be both let's see something's going on there why can I not see
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the I think we're live but let me just double check no one say anything offensive leis let's see here
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I see no bits coming in although I see a big fat oh there we go you got some yeah
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I got nothing are you sure well I see I can only do the boom once so I see the
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Hodgman I don't see you you see Hodgman there we
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go oh come on there it is that took forever I don't know why it took so long
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hey everyone our apologies for being being late uh Lewis had a pretty serious
1:03
bathroom situation on his hands it wasn't a number one it wasn't a two it was a mythical number three and he was
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in there for at least 20 minutes you okay leis are you oh my God oh my God
1:16
you made the AI one that was
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fast oh my goodness oh you got to show you got to show people okay I'm not even going to give this any context I'm going
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to just show it I'm G to just show it um let me see can I can I open this up
1:36
here who says Apple intelligence isn't worth anything it won't let me um oh
1:42
wait here let's try this instead I'm gonna just go to browser mode and it'll show you the beautiful
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creation that Griffin just made all you Italians and Germans and French are you
1:55
sad that you aren't getting this wonderful feature
2:00
this my look at look at the side of that pickle first of all it's like not even complete you see that it has like it
2:06
looks like it looks like it's disappearing because Marty McFly has haven't uh hasn't gotten his mom to not
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fall in love with him yet it's like slowly disappearing the eyes aren't looking quite straight that looks that's
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accurate that is accurate yeah the fli though The Flipper fingers are weird oh god I didn't even notice
2:26
that until I believe that's also accurate I don't know if you ever seen his hands on camera but that checks
2:32
out there's too much hair though oh my God these things are
2:39
hilarious of course I I run a picture of me through it and it makes me look like a freaking 95y old completely bald man
2:47
it and that was a picture where I actually had like hair you looked like you should have had your eyes closed laying in a casket in
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that suit it God yeah yeah what's with the casket suit dude come on Apple intelligence
3:00
I should load some of these I should load some of these up for it's almost hard for it to draw a picture of somebody bald it always wants to add
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hair I gave it a bunch of pictures of Steve Jobs and it gave him like and it gave him like a full head of hair and
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the other thing is it always gives everybody like that Pixar hair like I actually have hair that goes up it wants
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to give everybody hair like that not everybody looks like me I don't know
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maybe oh my God yeah man we should talk we should definitely talk about
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image Playground now that I've image played playgr grounded with it all right
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uh should we get going because we got all sorts of stuff we got Hugo lasses here we got anth Towers we got torquil
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deir level remix Anthony coft we got a quorum it's
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time to get this thing rolling let's give these people something to enjoy it's kind of time it seems like there's
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something else we got to do uh so out the Tweet action is that what is that
4:00
what you're thinking about sweet tweet let do all right here we go oh look at you you've got the Pixar air
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too oh yeah I got take the ring to Mordor oh my God you know I thought that was pretty good didn't get nearly as
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many likes as I thought it would to be honest with
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you the teeth man the teeth oh those are those unfortunately are real
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yeah oh my gosh not seeing the Tweet what's going on here you're not see the Tweet action let's see how send you a
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howto maybe it's live I I think you need to
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get uh how to get a vision test there we go or maybe get that coat
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cloth out and swab the deck of those glasses I should all right all right here I go
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trying to type all right let's go ahead and
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queue up Mrs you know who and get this this get this show rolling do I have my notes out let's please let's hope so oh
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you know what before we do that uh I gotta load up our sponsors I completely forgot
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um gotta do that all right you guys ready chat are you
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ready hold on to your Dair airs let's queue up Mrs you know who oh Mrs
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d my Dar D did someone say derri a oh no
5:33
here we go I had my hands on elan's bear derer last
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night perilous it Rhymes but I don't like
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it oh Mrs D no one wanted to hear that please don't continue we need to move on
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from this topic as soon as possible we got all sorts of Apple news to talk about if you don't mind I'll get the music queued up we'll get this thing
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rolling in three two hello and welcome to the kassi best 30
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plus minut app conversation you're going to hear all week long I'm your host ER Li and join me
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today it's one of his favorite times of the year after his Thanksgiving feast he
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shovels all the scraps into a large wheelbarrow and then dumps it into the culac rider trough so the team can enjoy
6:20
a delicious holiday meal but only for 20 minutes it's time to get back to typing he's a man cter back Lis Wallis is here
6:29
I'm going to refrigerate him over the long weekend rather than just leaving him outside uh that sounds like a solid
6:35
plan that way there's not as many twice also with us one of his favorite Thanksgiving activities is to dress in
6:42
his self-made Jedi robe Point his hand towards the oven and pretend to cook the
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the turkey with nothing but his Force Powers the the micans are off the chart with this one he's a writer at cter back
6:54
Griffin Jones is here good evening I would like we don't really do follow up on the show but I
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would like to start off with just a little bit uh I've always said that
7:05
Vindication is much better than revenge and you know what I went to the Apple Store to return my Mac Mini and my iMac
7:13
last week you know I'm I'm hauling these things into the mall go through the store I set the iMac box down y
7:19
vertically because the handle is on the top and that's what happens when you put it down and you know what the employee
7:25
opened the box to check if the iMac was inside and you know what he did he left the Box sitting vertically and I said to
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him careful opening it that way he drop it way nope he didn't he
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just you know carefully opened it a little bit peaked in I I guess he knew that it was in there upside down so
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unbelievable that would have been he did the same thing that I did if he had
7:48
actually had it crash topple out and break on the ground that would that would have been one of the best stories we'd ever told on this
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show I would have laughed in his face UPR speaking of warning people of things
8:02
that could happen I've got this situation going on with a mechanic right now which I I don't think I can tell
8:08
here on this on this episode maybe we could do this for an off topic that is truly one of the most unbelievable
8:13
situations with the mechanic I've ever had and my car currently is like not working because of this issue that is
8:20
happening the new one uh no no no the new issue no no my my my uh my the car
8:25
that I purchased the Subaru is actually so far okay oh okay take that it's my it's my other uh my other car that had a
8:34
problem previously that was repaired by this shop and I was like I got to tell the story either on this show or we'll
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we'll save it for uh an off topic because we definitely need to put out a new off topic um what's that yeah right
8:47
exactly it's a previously retired show
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concept that we had going on which didn't actually get retired we just for some reason forgot to to keep keep doing
9:00
it and so it was retired by default which we need to resurrect and get that thing going again so I think we maybe
9:07
should do that in a near future episode hopefully it resolves the way I I'm
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hoping and praying it's going to resolve because otherwise I'm gonna have to sue these people like that's how serious
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it's it's it's become like this shop made one of the biggest blunders I've ever seen and they're trying to weasel
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their way out of it I think um and so I was going to tell story but never mind I
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I don't know why I'm talking about it here there's absolutely no point this is an apple podcast this is not what you're all here to to listen to well maybe some
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of you actually actually maybe a majority of you should we should we just call it an apple podcast but then never talk about Apple just talk about other
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stuff that we want to talk about no we we wouldn't do that to you we got all sorts of great stories this week what's
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on the docket iPhone 17 air could be Apple's slimmest iPhone ever we got new
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Intel we've got some updates on what's coming next for for air tags 2 a hidden
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feature Apple didn't tell us about which is actually pretty cool in the new Macbook Pros we're going to talk about
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uh Apple intelligence and image playground I think we've all played around with it to humorous effect and uh
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we could talk about how we feel about it so far and then it looks like an actual
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honest to goodness Apple television might be back on the menu fellas why
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well we'll talk more about it we'll see how if we have time towards the end of the show Happy gobble gobble to everyone
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in the US actually you know what is next I guess I should save that for next Wednesday because our next episode will
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actually be our official Thanksgiving episode um even though we'll be recording it before Thanksgiving so before we continue let me go ahead and
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give a huge thank you to notion for supporting this episode let me bring up
10:53
my browser mode here boom MINI BOOM you all know that there's no shortage of
10:59
helpful AI tools out there but using them and switching back and forth between them and yet another digital
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Tool uh can be so annoying you know instead you could simplify your workflow
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with notion it just becomes one tool that you can use for everything and you won't have to be switching back and
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forth between your writing tool and like your uh like your AI gen tool everything
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the new notion AI has the capabilities of multiple AI tools built in which means you can search generate analyze and chat all inside notion and the cool
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part is is once you see how notion is able to query documentation and other
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forms of communication and deliver you results that you can ask about for instance notion AI is connected to
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multiple knowledge sources uh it uses GPT 4 and Claude to chat with you about
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any topic it can search across all your notion docs in seconds answer any
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question and with notion AI connectors now in beta notion AI can search across slack discussions Google Docs sheets and
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slides and more like GitHub and jira are coming soon and this technology is crazy
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like if you have your documentation stored in in notion or your Wiki soon to
12:20
be slack conversations you could say hey remind me what I said about X topic or hey where did we land on this discussion
12:27
and it will go out and get the answer for you so you don't have to like go search through all your documents or
12:32
what often happens to me is like hey where did that conversation happen I actually don't remember what was it in
12:37
teams was it in slack was it and you can never remember but with some of these
12:43
features coming in notion it will just go out and get the answer for you which is going to be a huge timesaver and not
12:49
only that it's just a great note-taking app it's far more powerful than Apple
12:54
notes it does way more and it has AI generation buil built in and you know a
13:01
lot more powerful AI features and that's why if you're looking for a better note
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taking app um you should definitely check out notion the new notion AI is a
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lowercase letters notion.com cultcast to try the powerful and easy to use notion AI today and when you use our link
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you're supporting our show notion.com cultcast all right let's Dive Right In
13:34
actually before we do we got here go last with the big $20 Super Chat
13:41
donation no comment he just wants to put that money directly into elcy's pocket which I know will make LK Giggle and
13:49
he'll probably use that on some drinks maybe a couple drinks tonight we've also got shahak
13:55
sarfati love lots of love cult Club member oh my goodness he's a
14:01
cult Club member and he's sending in the Super Chat thank you to shahak for that
14:07
and let me just plug uh support.the cast.com Cult of 95 macrumors.com if you
14:14
would like to join the very exclusive cult club and Fork it over send us a few
14:20
bucks every month we definitely appreciate it and it definitely helps all right should we dive in iPhone 17
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air Apple's slimmest iPhone ever Lewis yeah so rumors we've heard about this
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before rumors suggest Apple replace the iPhone plus model with the super slim
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iPhone 17 air next year this latest uh sort of confirmation I confirmation a
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hard word uh more like just adding fuel to the fire this rumor hiong International analyst Jeff Pooh and yes
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I looked up how to pronounce that it's okay it's Pooh he weighed in up this week saying
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rumors that the iPhone 17 air measuring around 6 mm thick are accurate for
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comparison iPhone 16 is 7.8 millimet thick iPhone 16 Pro measures 8.25
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millimet thick so uh you know math isn't my strong suit but that's like 25%
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thinner 25% thinner it's even Slimmer than the 6.9 mm iPhone 6 which is the
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slimmest iPhone ever produced so far let's see du to the design
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complexity compromis involved make such a thin product Pooh thinks the iPhone 17 air won't be a high volume seller for
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Apple neither is the iPhone plus right I mean this is the problem the the the iPhone sells well and the Pro Models
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sell well and then the the mini the plus everything's always like the they're always also Rands I actually know a lot
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of people who are buying the 16 plus this year really I mean at Hardy our own writer bought one I I have a few
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personal like friends and family who are who are buying the 16 plus as well I mean I I think this year's model is more
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successful just because of everything you know the the regular uh iPhone is more successful probably because of the
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feature parody with the Pro Models but uh and honestly it's the colors people are thinking I don't know what what the
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differences are between them I'm probably not going to use the pro features and the plus comes in the better colors looks better cost less
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what else do you need to know who wants a iPhone that looks good you just want like you know gray or taupe or you know
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white or black I'm surprised they don't have a taupe one to be honest with you they they do they just don't call it
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that taupe you know I don't know I I don't want to Titanium I I don't
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want to I don't want to be the guy that always expresses
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skepticism but I just kind of don't get it you know iPhone 17 air there I mean I
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think it's cool to have it be thin but for me is it going to affect battery life there clearly going to have to pull
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out cameras to make this thing thinner yeah I didn't even get to the good part here oh go ahead yeah I'm not done I
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thought you were oh it was a tangent I thought you had completely just back on track
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okay yeah so uh okay uh the idea is this is going to help Apple showcase its
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technical prowess and flex its engineering capabilities uh using supposedly a next
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gen a19 or or uh a19 Pro I don't know which one this is supposed to use to be quite
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honest can't remember uh but uh it's supposed to use this you know new n3p
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node manufacturing node I I don't understand any of that stuff I mean it's like tinier and tinier and tinier every
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time anyway supposedly you know provide noticeable performance and efficiency improvements and uh as you were just
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saying Pooh reiterates this previous rumor that the iPhone 17 air will only come with a a single 48 megapixel rear
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camera yeah I believe other rumors have said that it will actually use the lower R A9 chip not the a19 pro ah okay could
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not remember that fact uh let's see 24 megapixel I cannot talk today 24
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megapixel camera will be common across the entire 2025 iPhone lineup including this one as
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previously rumored these phones will also use a more complex aluminum design than current iPhones is
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that surely they're not going to move away from Titanium on the Pro Models well well here's the thing now I'm
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starting to think that this is not going to be positioned as a high-end phone cuz
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now with these details that we have that would make way more sense if it's aluminum if it's not using the prole
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chip if it's um if it's if it's gonna have fewer
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cameras then this I think it makes more sense to have it be like the cheaper
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option or maybe like a mid- tier option probably and they make it thin to make it more
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appealing I think they're going after the you know sort of like what we just said the iPhone 16 plus is selling more
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than the previous plus phones did because it's a cheaper phone that looks nicer I feel like this is taking that even farther in that direction me too
19:12
when people are like ah this rumor doesn't make any sense I don't understand this phone I think it doesn't make any sense because they haven't seen
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it yet because this phone will be all about looking really cool MH yeah maybe
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it'll even come in a an even better color mhm yeah well good luck with that
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yeah but I mean that's the whole thing right it's going to be noticeable that that's I think when we discussed this before it's like oh you can actually
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tell that it's a different phone for the first time in what four four years is it four years uh so yeah I mean a lot of
19:45
people like thin stuff you know I mean having a real heavy iPhone is not
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awesome having a really thin and light one could be great when the MacBook Air was new it it
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didn't fit in between the MacBook and the MacBook Pro it was like you pay more for a worse computer that's small and
20:03
light and then when you know after the MacBook sort of got long in the teeth it was the 12-in MacBook there was the same thing it was sort of in the middle but
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it was more expensive but it was really cool looking and I think this one is actually going to be you know successful
20:17
whereas some of those earlier Macs weren't because it's an iPhone and people want a cool looking iPhone and
20:23
what if they made it like completely portless wouldn't that be weird only
20:29
only Powers up or uh you know juices up wirelessly no no but fun to experiment
20:35
with that on for sure I mean it could just be you know the ultimate thin nothing nothing but a
20:42
piece of glass the the Steve Jobs Vision right it is interesting and the more we
20:47
talk about this the more I feel like I don't mean this is a bad I I don't mean this in a bad way but it it almost feels
20:53
like a gimmick to get people to buy a stripped down phone with a higher profit margin so they make it super thin and
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the market it is being super thin they're going to pack it full of lower-end tech remove some of the cameras but hey it's really thin in
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light which I think that alone would appeal to a lot of people that and the fact that it's actually different from
21:12
all the other phones and then they sell a ton more of them because now it's got like this perceived advantage over other
21:19
phones and apple can now make a higher profit margin on a phone with lower-end
21:27
features or not pro features I should say is maybe a better way to frame it um
21:33
because the more we hear about this phone the less it makes sense that this would be expensive I why would you pay a
21:38
lot of money for a phone with a with less cameras not as not as fast or as powerful I am dubious on the battery
21:46
life it doesn't make any sense just because if you take out all the buttons and all the other stuff it could just be
21:52
all battery a battery and a chip yeah maybe but how How big is the phone going to be
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if it's going to be thinner like I don't know if you can put in enough battery the other phones or or maybe what you're
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saying is like you don't need a bigger battery if you remove some of the features that the phone has is that what you're saying and so it still gets good
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battery life or it just that there's more room because there's fewer oh you know yeah okay components who knows I
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mean I I think they're if this all proves true and they release it and it's called an iPhone Air I mean I think
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they're just going to pitch it as wow you know the first real evolution in iPhone
22:31
design you know the thin of course they going to say the thinnest iPhone ever you know yeah you can you can just
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imagine all the numbers you know 25% thinner than any iPhone ever made I mean it you know they're trying
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to make something compelling right something that's more compelling than the mini and the Plus have been and also
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what a coincidence also cost more right the other thing that kind of worries me about this phone is being so thin
22:59
is its ability to not Bend when you sit on it I keep my phone in my back pocket a lot in fact I pretty much exclusively
23:06
keep it in my back pocket the phones are so big now like where else you going to keep it and having a phone be this thin
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I kind of Wonder once you press your your big old butt cheeks against it on a car seat or something you know is it not
23:20
GNA is it not going to bend it seems like you kind of need some meat in there to kind of keep it stiff you know
23:27
they're probably will tell you don't put this in your back pocket yeah th huh you can't fit your phone in
23:35
your front pocket I I exclusively keep my phone in my front pocket and I and I never have a problems weird and I'm kind
23:41
of short so like I don't have giant Pockets well that tells me like the front pocket everything I need to know
23:47
about the kind of pants you wear Griffin I've never seen you below I would say mid
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chest but I know now that you buy your jeans from Costco I know that jeans
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you wear slacks only yeah pretty much exclusively I I have one pair of jeans that I wear once a year and that are you
24:05
kidding me you wear slacks full time well yeah they're they're more comfortable wow oh my God so so then you
24:13
get the pockets at like cuz like in the jeans like the pockets are on the front but on the slack the pockets are like on
24:19
the side which I actually think makes them uh more roomy so you can fit more
24:25
inally I I wouldn't say that I noticed a huge difference so so Griffin is just always dressed to
24:32
the nines look at him I mean he's got a dress Shir on now what we did know is that he also has dressed pants on and he
24:37
just wears them full time he's just always dressed up we hope I I'm a little I I am shocked by
24:44
this I wear jeans just about every single day of the year I mean every once in a while I have to go to a funeral or
24:50
a wedding I wear jeans to weddings leis I wear I wear nice jeans I figure why do
24:57
I need to wear Slack it's move to California outmoded uh leg
25:03
covering slack jeans are so stiff jeans are so stiff I don't like jeans not not
25:09
after you wear them for you know a couple sessions let me ask you this and and and and I'm almost scared to ask you
25:15
this question Griffin okay pleats or no pleats no no pleats I'm not I'm not
25:21
trying to look like I'm wearing it like half a suit I just wear gray pants as normal pants I mean do you remember what
25:27
pleats were a thing thing I mean talk about one of the most absurd design
25:33
Innovations ever imagined I mean hey I got a great idea Let's Fold parts of the
25:39
front of the pants in on themselves but only at the top and it'll make it you
25:44
know really fun to iron because now you've got like this strange top fold
25:49
and you'll have like this fake pocket on the front of your pants that people are going to just go crazy over it's really
25:55
going to be a popular fashion feature and that that feature lasted probably like 10
26:01
years I did not see this tangent coming pleats leis
26:06
pleats you know they're probably invented in like the you know 1800s or
26:12
something I guarantee you this was a British Innovation it had to have been it's so absurd it had to come from the
26:19
UK I mean I would also say that before I slacks I I typically wore like corduroys
26:24
you know like sort of slim fitting corduro with those either no they didn't have
26:30
okay well my curo did have ple I mean they were everywhere you could not Escape ple in the 9s this is this is a
26:35
bad memory did you were you like Jean corduroys or dress pant corduroys what's
26:42
the difference what are Jean Cordo those like Jorts but corduro oh
26:49
wow you so maybe this was is this was the 70s and ' 80s you don't remember corduroy jeans Levi made cords all the
26:56
time oh so those are the the Cordo with the really thin ridges right like not the big fat chunky ones okay yeah I had
27:03
some of those yeah I wouldn't have called them genan C that sounds like what I that sounds like what I had to be
27:09
to be fair okay not the pleats okay hold on a second this is a really W I think
27:15
it's called a wide Swale corduroy this is why you're the best editor in the biz
27:21
you actually know the name for the thickness of the actual corduroy Rose a
27:27
a wide swe I had some of those too the whest swes you could get to be honest with you baggie we got to know this comes from
27:34
dread D in in the uh in the channel in the chat what kind of shoes you wear
27:41
every day are they dress shoes Griffin are you wearing dress shoes right now I'm not wearing any shoes
27:47
right now because I don't I don't leave the house on you know six out of the seven days of the week are are you
27:54
pairing when you leave the house do you have socks with sandals on over them what's going on with have I have a
28:02
universal shoe that I can wear with basically any outfit that are uh LL Bean
28:08
leather slip-on shoes and they're black and shiny aren't they uh they used to be
28:14
shiny they're very old and they they get quite muddy so they're no longer shiny I just love that Griffin has a pair of
28:20
universal Sho Lea leather shoes you know that just sounds like Griffin he's like he he thought this through and he was
28:26
like I need a pair of shoes that are going to look good with a wide sale or a thin or my or my slacks and
28:34
it's got to work in every situation and that's what he went for can you imagine he's ordering on the LL Bean he's
28:39
talking to the chapers so I'm just wondering are these shoes um would you consider these Universal look I can I can take my dogs
28:46
out and I can run through a creek if I have to and then I can hose them down get in the car and go to a wedding with
28:52
the same shoes I love this conversation I don't even want to move on but I feel like maybe we should
28:58
pretty far a field from App okay although it's similar to Steve Jobs you know just the one just the one
29:05
turtleneck I mean you that's right do Griffin is exactly like Steve Jobs that's what I've learned here today I
29:11
mean he does have the one shirt well multiple versions I mean he's got he's got more of that shirt but it's just all the same shirt you open up his closet
29:18
and it's just like that shirt he's got like 20 of them all right anything else to say
29:25
about the iPhone 17 before we move on Lewis we got other stuff to talk about here it's it's wide whale not Swale it's
29:34
wide whale okay you've been demoted thanks thank God Apprentice
29:43
editor all right let's talk about air tags then I uh you know it's funny I bought a bunch of air tags on sale and
29:50
I've probably deployed three of them I have like a whole pack of air Pags air Pags that I've never even used they're
29:57
just sit in unused airbags I've got them on everything you do yeah like what I I
30:02
just can't figure out what to use them for come on man exactly where they are that much is true yeah I tossed one in
30:09
my truck just in case it ever gets stolen here in this cess thought about doing that actually I I've got one in my
30:16
darts bag got one on my cat got one on every set of keys I have yeah you know
30:22
on my passport on your passport yeah you ever have that feeling you're getting
30:27
ready to on a trip you're like oh crap where's my passport oh dude very nice to be able to look that up with the thing
30:34
that is worth $29 right there I always feel bad with the cats with like an air
30:39
tag on the collar because like the air tags are small but they're they're very big and round to like go on a and
30:45
radioactive let's strap a radioactive I think the cat's GNA be
30:50
fine I I don't think you care about the cat I mean I've got airpods in my ears
30:57
practically 24 seven so what's the diff I don't know I guess that is a good
31:02
point I need to figure out what to do with the rest of my air tags anyway it looks like new ones are coming out and
31:08
this is coming straight from Flur Furman over at Bloomberg air air Tag 2 might
31:15
feature a More tamperproof Design actually let let me bring up my notes where there's actually like good stuff in here um Apple's first air tag upgrade
31:24
is another step closer closer launch thank thanks to uh uh Bloomberg for this story according to Flur Furman the
31:32
company plans to launch the second gen air tags in mid 2025 we're not going to talking about the the code name because
31:38
that's boring but it will look it will look the same but have increased range that actually is super useful and
31:44
improved privacy features which I don't know maybe that may not be as useful as it sounds that's one of the things I
31:50
actually don't like about air tags is I feel like a lot of people want to use them to find things that have been
31:56
stolen and they're probably going to make that harder to do because of all the Privacy features they have built in
32:02
but um we'll see let's see here uh the internal changes will make
32:09
it difficult to remove the air tags speaker which I don't even know you could do that um creeps often sell
32:17
silent air tags with disabled speakers really maybe I should do that to mine yeah go for it
32:23
creeper well it helps me find the helps me find the criminal that steals my car right otherwise it's like warning
32:29
warning a tag following you it's like what it's like oh great I don't think that's
32:36
audio I actually don't think the speaker's loud enough uh I had a speak or I had an air tag um that I could see
32:43
in my find my app that was dying the battery was getting really low and I was like I do not know what this air tag is
32:48
for I have no clue where I put it you don't label them I did label it but I it's a label and I couldn't remember
32:54
what the label meant I named it like atg1 one or something which I have no I
32:59
have no clue even to this day what that even means Pro tip use a word you
33:04
understand and so it's like telling me that this thing's going to die and I'm like where is this thing I have no idea
33:10
where I placed it and so I'm walking around the entire uh Co Commander compound you know
33:17
trying to activate the speaker and finally I hear a little in my living room but I could not
33:24
for the life of me figure out where that thing was coming from cuz it was just so faint and it took me probably a week to
33:30
find it and eventually I found it it was in my MacBook Pro computer bag which makes perfect sense I put it in there in
33:36
case anyone steals it and atg d690 what
33:41
I have no idea what that code means I'll never know I'll never know but I did find it and change the battery but um I
33:49
felt like the like the speaker could have been even louder the speaker on the
33:54
new um uh airpods 4 dude I've already those things have already sa that that
34:00
feature alone has already saved me like three times and it's loud you can hear that case you know from across your
34:05
house it's got a really great pitch to it uh let's see here what else do we have a more tamperproof design should
34:14
help with privacy oh that's about the speaker yep other changes include better a better uh or a new wireless chip for
34:21
better range yeah we mentioned that um presumably presumably I can't talk today
34:26
this could allow uh Precision finding to work over longer distances which would be super helpful because I feel like
34:32
with the current air tags you have to be somewhat close to get them to work um an August 2023 report said that
34:39
the air Tag 2 could feature AR capabilities to make finding lost items easier that would be super cool if you
34:44
can like hold up your phone and it's like showing you some kind of like AR overlay of where the item could be and
34:50
how far away you are that would be finger pointing at it yeah Tim Cook like a weird scatter shot rumor like a while
34:57
ago the air tag would integrate with the Vision Pro somehow and you could like put an air tag on an object to like be
35:04
able to have the Vision Pro be able to see it or track it or something like that maybe as like an input device
35:09
somehow I don't remember I don't think dude I there was a video I did on my YouTube channel a while ago about these
35:16
P patents that apple had for air tags and they're all sorts of zany use cases for them like I think one of them you
35:22
could attach it to like a golf club and use it to like track your swing I mean there's all sorts of stuff that they
35:29
that they patented that I think eventually we will see air tags do cuz if you think about it if they're good at
35:35
tracking motion you could attach them to all sorts of things to get all sorts of interesting Telemetry that you wouldn't
35:40
have access to aside from just you know tracking your car as a thief drives away
35:45
with it only to hear the air tag go warning warning you are being tracked and he tosses it into the LA River so
35:54
that uh he's not being tracked anymore so it looks like these are going to be coming sometime um well I would say
36:01
relatively relatively soon in the next maybe six or seven months um so if you're thinking about buying air tags
36:07
over the Black Friday season maybe you should wait unless you really need them which dude I'm I'm seeing so many Black
36:13
Friday deals launched oh my goodness I don't know about you guys I'm having to practice some serious willpower to not
36:20
buy something I'm thinking about buying a uh a Weber griddle like uh I don't
36:25
know if you guys barbecue very much I barbecue all the time my barbecue attaches to my natural gas line on my
36:31
house so it literally never runs out of of fuel which I love but is also a big problem because sometimes I forget to
36:36
turn it off and it's like just going all day and all night oh my God but I really want a I really want a griddle it's like
36:42
you know it's a griddle yeah my future news my house is burned down but
36:47
griddles have become really popular like the Blackstone and now trager's getting into them Weber has one and I the idea
36:55
of having like a flat top that is just always ready to be cooked upon where you can make bacon and eggs and like you
37:00
could sear your meats and stuff like I really I really have been wanting a griddle and I might have to bite on one
37:07
of those this Black Friday season and if I do I'll definitely review it here on the show I love barbecuing I um I make
37:14
my own beef jerky I have a dehydrator I do all sorts of stuff with meats that you guys would never believe I don't
37:20
want you to just review it on the show I want you to like cook a a breakfast on the show I don't know if people would
37:26
want to watch that I'll be honest with you I GoPro on your head I mean I do have a
37:32
GoPro I feel like maybe they would want to just hear the experience afterwards cuz griddles are one of those things
37:38
that although they're popular they're not nearly as popular or as ubiquitous as like just a regular
37:43
barbecue and they're they're just making them fancier and nicer and uh I don't
37:50
know I feel like there's all sorts of like cooking use cases that you could do on a griddle that you would never be able to do on a barbecue or like a
37:57
pellet grill or something and uh you got to learn all the Habachi tricks like how to do the onion volcano and stuff like
38:03
that under gr I have I I got some mysterious learning to do apparently I
38:08
even consider the onion volcano or know what that is or know that that's a real thing actually
38:14
that you never gone to a like Habachi restaurant I don't think where they cook
38:19
where they cook the meal of you a giant flat not a long time not a long flaming onion volcano what is that made of onion
38:27
you slice up an onion somehow and then you like layer the individual rings on top of each other like a little cone and
38:33
then you like you know squirt some oil inside and then little little flame comes out the top okay that's definitely going to burn your house down I think we
38:39
should disclaim if you're at a professional restaurant maybe try that if you're at home definitely do not do
38:45
what Griffin just described we disavow any uh onion volcano action that could result in
38:52
second or third degree burns and your entire house burning down so they use cooking oil right instead of gas
38:58
it works better if you use diesel tastes good too uh let's see here
39:05
one other thing I want to mention just real fast as long as we're talking about cool stuff that uh you may not know
39:10
about which is the entire premise of this show I think cool stuff that you did not know about maybe we should
39:15
rename the show and this one's well it's not free if you don't have a MacBook Pro the M4 version but it is if you do have
39:23
an M4 MacBook Pro cuz there's a little hidden feature in there that's actually really cool that we just heard about
39:29
this week now that these things have started to ship out and that is the latest MacBook Pro screen reportedly
39:36
includes a quantumfilm which is like the newest technology that a lot of the best TVs have and the result is a much better
39:43
looking display in the new Macbook Pro so you didn't even know that you had this a quantum dot display includes
39:50
semiconductor nanoc crystals and uh they produce monoch monochromatic red green
39:57
and blue blue light the result is is improved brightness and color gamut I think um all the new Samsung TVs and and
40:05
have for a while included Quantum dots so it really improves I think color reproduction and uh color saturation
40:12
this is according to Ross young who is a display an analyst he said the latest MacBook Pros use a quantum dot film
40:20
rather than a red KSF phosphor film well that's good to know I'm not a huge fan
40:26
of KS F phosphor films I don't know about you L but sounds really unimpressive so it doesn't have that it
40:33
has the best new technology uh let's see here he said some other stuff that's very technical
40:38
and probably too boring to mention on this show except for he said that these
40:44
new films are very efficient feature a good or better color gamut or feature as
40:51
good or better color gamut and better Motion Performance oh so the Motions is improved too um the surprise is only
40:59
just coming out now there was no mention of that in the M4 MacBook Pro news release or any of the banter that I've
41:06
seen online so cool hidden feature there and uh it's always surprising when we
41:11
learn about these kinds of features I feel like these are the kinds of things that they would want to mention in a news release or on their website but
41:19
it's just in there and uh it's not a freeb cuz you're paying for it obviously but it's a nice perk that we didn't
41:26
previously know about so so there you go I'll let you know what I think when I get my new Macbook Pro definitely not
41:31
doing the 14-inch version I've completely abandoned um abandon that in uh in lie of getting
41:38
the 16inch even though it's going to be way heavier but from all the benchmarking that I've seen you know this this one this one
41:46
factor says it all okay if you open up let's say you get a 14inch M4 Max uh
41:54
MacBook Pro the 14inch and the 16-inch version you flip on over you take the bottoms off they have the exact same
42:00
specs what you're going to notice is that the cooling system for the 14-inch
42:06
version is significantly smaller than the 16-inch MacBook Pro now if they have
42:11
the same specs why would Apple make the cooling system bigger on the 16inch if it didn't warrant it right they would
42:18
have the exact same size cooling systems well the reason bigger computer I know but but they if they didn't need to make
42:25
it bigger they wouldn't it would be the exact same size even if the computer was bigger and they would probably use that space in other ways but the reason they
42:32
make it bigger in the 16-inch MacBook Pro is because the chips need the extra Cooling in order to maintain the
42:37
performance that they're capable of so that that right there just tells you what you need to know about the 14-inch
42:42
MacBook Pro it is a significant compromise to get that machine and from the from the Benchmark results that I've
42:49
seen so far which there's not nearly as much of as there were for the M3 Max MacBook Pro for some reason the 14inch
42:57
um is going to be and has been significantly hobbled because of its inability to cool the components that
43:04
are in its interior and so I don't even know that I would get an M4 Max 14-inch
43:10
MacBook Pro because of the overheating that I've seen and and and the throttling that I've seen and that's
43:15
exactly what I was hoping it wouldn't do so if you want pure power and if you
43:20
want the best and Apple has you got to go 16 inch I hate to tell you I hate to tell you I guess my my question to you
43:25
is when do you plan on buying this computer because in the United States at least there may soon be an incoming
43:32
tariff on imported Chinese products of 25% are you gonna buy soon or I so the
43:39
what I'm waiting for is the availability of a apple discount that's the only
43:44
reason why I'm waiting so I have to wait until the new year because that's when the discount becomes available otherwise
43:50
I would have already bought it what's that that's rolling the dice waiting until 2025 I know watch me wait and then
43:57
find out that the tariffs um are so high can't get it until January 21st it
44:02
negates the actual discount I'm like going to be like great but one one last thing I wanted to mention um I need to
44:08
do a little bit more research on this but from what I saw in the benchmark test that I've seen so far is the M3 Max
44:16
16inch MacBook Pro um or 14-inch wait sorry let me back up the M3
44:23
Max 16-inch MacBook Pro outperforms the 14inch M4 Max MacBook Pro because of the
44:30
overheating issues now I will caveat with I don't know if that's conclusive
44:35
across the board or in what ways the M3 Max 16-in version is a better performer
44:41
but I have seen some Ben results that indicate that so I'll keep following that and update you all if you if you
44:46
care to know this information as I discover more but it just goes to show the 14inch even though it's portable is
44:53
a is a major compromise design-wise and performance- wise um because of its size
44:58
all right let's move on I've been talking long enough should we give it over to the griffer to talk about oh
45:05
you're gonna try and make this case all right oh wait before you do that though
45:10
um real quick I do want to thank our
45:16
sponsor let me pull this up one password for supporting this episode do I have this brought up oh thank goodness I do
45:24
and we're still in browser mode so let me say thanks to one password for supporting this
45:32
episode Lewis just
45:37
imagine there you go I can tell your imagination mode now I'm I'm deep in thought imagine his eyes are blinking so
45:43
rapidly he's deep in ra no one imagines this kind of stuff better than LS your company security like the quad of a
45:48
college campus there are nice brick pass between the buildings those are the company-owned devices it approved apps
45:54
and managed employee identities oh Griffin is closing his eyes too they're both fully immersed and then there are
46:00
the paths people actually use the shortcuts worn through the grass that are the actual straightest line from point A to point B those are unmanaged
46:08
devices Lewis Shadow it apps and non-employee identities like contractors
46:13
most security tools only work on those happy brick paths but a lot of the security problems take place on the
46:18
shortcuts one password extended access management is the First Security solution to that brings all these
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unmanaged devices apps and identities under your your control I know you're all about control Le it ensures that
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every user credential is strong and protected every device is known and healthy and every app is visible one
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password extended access management solves the problems traditional IM am and MDM can't its security for the way
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we work today and now it's generally available to companies with OCTA and Microsoft inra and in beta for Google
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workspace customers check it out at onep password.com cultcast
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that is onep password.com cultcast and thanks to one password for
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supporting this episode okay shall we talk about why Apple should start
47:11
selling Mac Mini SSD storage upgrades actually I think this is a great idea I
47:16
don't think it's ever going to happen Griffin not a chance but we can dream
47:21
well as we'll cover in the story Apple might not have to even though they should so in a surprise move the M4 Mac
47:27
Mini includes a removable swappable SSD Apple really should give customers
47:33
the option to buy high capacity versions of these as storage upgrade for the Mac Mini the best computer in the world even
47:40
if Apple has to sell them at their ludicrously high prices so this is another surprise Apple made no mention
47:47
that the storage on the Mac Mini is easily removable um which probably means
47:52
Apple won't be selling these as upgrades but they should so as it is today you
47:58
can take out the storage it's on like a tiny little board on its own that you can easily remove with like you know
48:04
just a single screwdriver um the bad news is although you can take it out you can't replace it
48:10
with anything else it's because it's basically like a raw nand chip on
48:15
Apple's custom tiny circuit board it's it's a bespoke thing now Apple does have
48:21
another computer with replaceable storage they currently sell aftermarket storage upgrades for the Mac Pro
48:27
and their prices are equally as insane for that product um even if Apple were
48:34
the only company selling upgrades for the Mac Mini I think it would still be worth it even if they sold them at
48:40
insane prices because you know say you want to buy a Mach mini and you want to
48:45
get it with like 8 terabytes of storage but you don't have all of the money right now to buy that well you could
48:51
still buy like an M4 Pro Mac Mini like a lower spec version
48:57
with the with the specs that you can you know that with the spec you you would buy it with the specs that you can't upgrade down the line but you would
49:04
skimp out on storage and then down the line when you have that money again well you could you could upgrade it
49:09
yourself uh that used to be a thing that you could just do all the time know you still can in the PC space yeah but it it
49:16
would also make it easier to repair down the road like if something happens to that SSD like if it wears itself out you could replace it easily if Apple were to
49:23
sell the these chips on their own but but the good news the hidden good news
49:29
behind all of this is that Apple doesn't have to be the only one uh The Accidental Tech podcast covered this in
49:36
arguably way too much detail I'll just get to the I don't believe that but it
49:42
is technically possible to reverse engineer the Apple Storage module dos
49:47
dude one on YouTube made his own circuit board and upgraded his Mac Mini as like a proof of concept like a Mac Mini
49:54
straight out of the box from the Apple Store he he able to do this on and you know that means that it is possible for
49:59
a third party company like new egg or OWC to make a storage module to sell as
50:06
upgrades to Mac Mini owners we don't know if that's on the table yet but it is a it is a thing that is technically
50:12
possible they could they could fill in Apple's shoes because they can they can do what Apple for some whatever reason
50:19
decides not to do year OWC has got to be working on that they've got to be
50:24
there's probably way too much profit in it for them to not be I mean you can just buy the base model Mac Mini and
50:31
then buy an upgrade from you know OWC or from some other vendor I mean Apple charges such
50:39
ludicrous prices for upgrading the storage that you can still make a lot of money selling aftermarket storage yeah
50:44
and still be cheaper than Apple you could you could do it at like half or a quarter of the price and it would still
50:50
be worth it and you would still make money doing that I really I don't love that Apple does this other companies do
50:55
it too um I now that that there are Black Friday sales happening all over the place I
51:04
finally suum to Temptation and I bought an Xbox SSD storage module which are way
51:11
too costly for what they are I mean the 2 tbyte version the sale price that I
51:17
got was $185 for a 2 terab Drive which at that sale price I mean for an
51:24
SSD is is probably like $60 too high that what
51:29
what you could get in the marketplace give or take so it's not outrageous but
51:35
you know without the sale it's like $250 normally for a 2 terabyte drive for that capacity is way more expensive than what
51:42
it would cost for a two terabyte drive just you know in the marketplace but you know Xbox has like this proprietary
51:48
drive that you have to use that plugs into the back of the Xbox series X and even though it's expensive it's like you
51:54
know it does work really well and you've got no other options like if you want to not be constantly managing
52:01
your game library and moving things around and deleting games and games these days because they're all in 4k are massive then that's just kind of what
52:07
you have to do but it's tough to swallow it's like you know $200 for a 2 tbte SSD
52:15
that is not even as fast as like the current gen ssds that are on the market
52:21
and the PlayStation five you can just crack that thing open and replace the SSD bump it for a moment I wish 2
52:28
terabytes was only $200 on the Mac Mini that's like an $800 upgrade from Apple
52:34
that's true Apple's upgrade fees are slap you in the face outrageous yeah
52:39
like an air an 8 terabyte so there is a sale on like
52:45
Samsung's best SSD right now 8 terabytes for um
52:50
$550 which is Bonkers I mean I I have no reason to spend $550 an 8 tbte um SSD
52:59
but let's just see how much do Apple charge for that same upgrade let's just let's just let's just go look how much
53:05
do you think it is Griffin $1800 I I'm not going to answer because I i' I've been looking at the prices recently and
53:11
I feel like I have a a good educated guest Lewis what do you think it
53:17
is I don't know $1,200 okay let's look so let's just go
53:23
to the base I don't know if the let me upgrade to 8 terabytes on the base no you need to go to the pro model to upgrade that
53:31
much okay so let's go to the pro model is this the um which one is the pro
53:36
model maybe this one let's try this no that's not the pro model either maybe
53:43
this one there we go nope that's not the pro model either oh there there's an icon there's
53:51
the pro model okay so the pro model the pro base model
53:56
1,400 bucks comes with 24 GB of memory 512 GB of SSD storage and if you want
54:05
eight terabytes $2400 oh my God by% just absolute gravy
54:13
going right into TC's pocket $2400 and the the um the Samsung I think
54:21
it's a 990 Pro SSD you know for 550 for $8 terabytes and they're still making
54:27
profit on that thing it's not like they're losing money on it so Apple I mean think about the scale at which
54:33
Apple buys these they have got to be they have got to be making like two grand profit on this
54:38
upgrade I mean not not to mention that they are not including the 52 gigabyte
54:45
module they're swapping that out for an 8 gigabyte so like really they're only giving you or 8 terab they're really
54:51
only giving you 7 and a half terabytes of extra storage for 2400 $ man that is that is the TC
54:58
gravy train right there how many of those do you suppose they sell I doubt very many I mean who needs
55:04
that much St expensive yeah well I mean that's yeah probably not very many people I would say a lot of people would
55:10
love to have that much storage in fact I think everyone would have this much storage if it weren't
55:16
$2,400 if they charged you $500 to go from 512 to 8 terabytes like I would I
55:21
would make that trade almost every time storage is one of those things that you could just never get enough of
55:27
yeah here's here's my pitch to Apple if you make the upgrades cheaper more people will buy them well I mean I'm sure that they've
55:33
run the numbers and then they know that but but when they do like the like the profit analysis they probably make more
55:40
from the few people who are willing to spend $2,400 than they would from the
55:46
mass amount of people that they would have to well they would have to lower the price to such a degree that maybe
55:51
they would actually end up making less I don't know I'm sure TC has a spreadsheet somewhere
55:57
with numbers 10 decimals or or 10 point 10 10 numbers past the decimal point
56:02
that he's tracking on like cost and profit and all this stuff but anyway all right I've completely lost my place what
56:09
should we talk about next does anyone have any ideas should we talk about image
56:14
playground what are you gerking me around let's do it let's talk about
56:20
Apple's image playground because I think we all actually played around with it so
56:26
that we have some real world experience oh my god I've definitely got some opinions on it now that we've used it
56:33
what do you think Griffin okay so this was a a piece that ran I I believe two weekends ago and I actually got a lot of
56:40
negative push back on my video and article people saying oh you were so negative why are you why are you pooing
56:46
this so much you clearly didn't do your research like okay it's like 2,000 words and it's like a 12-minute video on
56:51
YouTube clearly I did my research I don't know what that guy's on about but like a lot of people didn't like how negative I was about these features and
56:58
to that I would say tell me where I was wrong so I like
57:04
I they I I I messed around with image playground gen Emoji visual intelligence
57:09
all of the chat GPT updates and ser writing tools there'll be a link in the video description we're going to talk about them here a little bit more but uh
57:16
really my what I what I took away from image playground is wow this is what it
57:22
was like using diffusion B on my Mac two years ago the images are really just low
57:29
visual quality they're really low resolution they're like a 1024 x 1024
57:34
Square kind of not very good not very good picture quality there like they they have all the Hallmarks of like the
57:41
beginning of like the free AI image web tools from like two years ago because like they're blurry things just like mix
57:48
into each other weirdly they're terrible at just like duplicating legs like we
57:54
we've been playing around with it like the to Max slack the last few days and I think yesterday Ed or Lewis tried to
58:00
make a a picture of like a camel in the desert you know CU hump day camel whatever and it gave it like three back
58:07
legs and one front leg and two necks like it was just horrifying island of Dr Maro that was a
58:14
great movie by the way but with a a smiley face you know it's like happy happy freak all of these Abominations
58:21
are Smiley and happy to be there oh it's great having two heads I
58:27
can eat two bowls of gravy at the same time you know what this feels like to me it feels like uh photo booth remember
58:34
photo booth mhm where it was for those of you who are n of age this fun app in
58:40
fact does it still exist on Mac it does do where it's like you can get in front of it and it has filters and it will
58:47
make your face contorted and you know it's fun to use with your kids for about 10 minutes I think Steve Jobs demoed it
58:53
at Mac world one year and you're like aha is really cool and then you never use it again because there really having
58:59
a webcam on your computer was an actual cool thing and like that was the feature itself like Photo Booth was a cool way
59:04
to play around with it and it had like these image effects and you're right I mean having played around with image
59:10
playground particularly um I mean it's an interesting start and it's kind of fun to play around with it but I was
59:17
disappointed by how limited it is and like the types of images it's able to create I I will say the the the user
59:24
experience like the way that you create images is another Masterpiece by Apple's
59:30
team of absolute brilliant UI and ux people I mean it's just so easy to use that it makes AI image generation
59:38
accessible to people who would never otherwise touch it because it's been very um esoteric and how you inter inter
59:46
interact with these generative AI image systems is super uh uh convoluted like you have to
59:54
go into Discord and then type Tye of prompt I mean it's like no regular person is ever going to do this stuff so
1:00:00
I think that is the big win and I think this technology will get better but like the quality of the images is kind of
1:00:07
weird um it's just kind of limited in the type of images that it can create like this is the one it created of me
1:00:15
which I tweeted about I mean that kind of looks like me it gave me a ginormous
1:00:21
super way too curly fro which okay I'm not that upset about that but like the
1:00:26
face I'm like that doesn't really look like me in my opinion that fro is way too
1:00:32
froy and there's just not really anything here's the next one which I thought if you're listening to the show
1:00:38
I'll I'll make this the chapter artwork a few of our example images talking about yeah I appreciate that Griffin um
1:00:43
it made me look like I was going to take the ring to Mordor and it some interesting castles
1:00:50
in the background so it's kind of like Whimsical and and fantas fantas fantas
1:00:56
full did you press the fantasy button for that one I think I probably did yeah
1:01:02
yeah that's right there's like there there's a very limited amount of like buttons that you could press to create
1:01:07
different kinds of imagery and if you just give it a prompt and you're like hey show me you know fending off lions
1:01:13
at a carnival like it just it can't do anything like that it's not very generative like if you use mid Journey
1:01:20
or Gro or something you can give it full sentences or Bing and it will go and
1:01:26
create a realistic image based upon the prompt that you gave and like this doesn't let you really do prompt
1:01:31
engineering it's more like a drag and drop Adventure well it does have one open uh one escape hatch there and that
1:01:39
you can keep adding like the little text box at the bottom you can keep adding specific stuff to that uhuh like may or
1:01:45
may not add it yeah that's true it has like a limited like bandwidth of like how much input it can take but if you
1:01:53
want to add if you you have a picture and you want to say like you know make this a night sky or make this a cloudy
1:01:59
sky or stuff like that you can type in open-ended stuff in that little text box and you can keep adding more and more
1:02:04
text prompts as long as they're short and they're not a big like the the other thing about these these images is that
1:02:10
it it always crops them in like super close on the subject of the image like if you
1:02:16
want a picture of you know Aon in a forest or something like that
1:02:21
your face will be like you will be depicted like shoulders up and very close to the camera so there's not like
1:02:26
actually a lot of room in the background to add stuff you can't have you at the zoo with like a bunch like you know
1:02:33
elephants to your back right and giraffes to your left and stuff like that like there's only room for like you
1:02:38
and a very small background yeah so like the utility here is just very limited I
1:02:44
I don't really know what you're supposed to do with these images right now that that's why I compare it to um photo
1:02:49
booth because I'm like oh okay it's cool like um it's fun to play around with but what am I supposed to do with this like there's not really very much you can do
1:02:56
I think it's more like uh memojis on steroids yeah and you know I mean they
1:03:03
all have that sort of I don't know how to describe it sanitized
1:03:09
cartoonish super happy I mean you you don't get that like real Sinister look
1:03:14
that you can get from something on Mid Journey you know dude mid journey is absolutely mind-blowing like oh it's you
1:03:22
can tell mid journey to create images with a specific film style in the style
1:03:27
of a specific artist and it it's great at emulating different artists I mean
1:03:33
it's ability to do that is unparalleled from what I've seen But even more than that like it's ability to create
1:03:39
photorealistic images based off promps is truly astounding I mean it will
1:03:45
create something that looks like a photo from an era that you define with a
1:03:50
specific look from a specific lens and film and it looks like a photo I mean
1:03:56
it's just unbelievable the only thing it's not good at yet and I kind of wonder if they do this on purpose like
1:04:01
it's a limitation that's been programmed in is it's not good at recreating images
1:04:08
of a a specific people so if you're like hey give me an image of Tim
1:04:14
Cook in a Parisian Cafe in the 20s the cafe is going to be spot on his suit's
1:04:20
going to be spot on but the person is going to look like somebody pretending to be be Tim Cook it's not going to look
1:04:26
like Tim Cook and it should know what Tim Cook looks like yeah I don't know that on purpose the interesting thing
1:04:33
about image playground in contrast to that is that you can feed it any image from your photo library yeah which I actually think is I I I wish they
1:04:39
removed that because it's so easy you can just like download a picture of Hitler and like to your photo library
1:04:45
and then just like add oh yeah I just like to generate an image based on this picture from my photo library and there it'll just make a picture of Hitler you
1:04:51
can just make Hitlers if you want people you know in your life Maybe you want a
1:04:57
youthful representation of flark Sturman holding a
1:05:02
pickle there he is look at that GI look how happy he is about that pickle he grew that on the Bloomberg
1:05:10
rooftop garden I believe and that actually looks exactly like makes me laugh like
1:05:18
Mark Gman doesn't it I mean it looks exact I mean the hair is off because he keeps his head you mean Mark girkin
1:05:24
that's what I said oh okay Mar yeah it has his teeth a little wrong like he has
1:05:29
a gap tooth for some reason that wasn't in the original picture have you ever seen the flier hand yeah I mean have you
1:05:36
ever see flart German up close I think that might be yes have you you've seen
1:05:41
him in person he was at that uh cultcast live thing back at uh WWDC San Francisco
1:05:48
yeah the one with the strippers and stuff he was there he showed up there yeah he left before he left I didn't see him in the same room with the strippers
1:05:54
I don't know if I think he was one of them look I I you're jogging my memory
1:05:59
from what I recall and from what I heard he brought the strippers loose they were his Entourage you guys have no idea
1:06:06
gerkman likes the party big time Big Time everyone knows if you go to a
1:06:12
gerkman party you're in for all sorts of he's the Diddy of the tech world is that
1:06:17
what you're saying oh my God I wouldn't take it that far I disavow and uh if legal gets
1:06:24
involved I which just want them to know I had no participation in in that commentary um but that is interesting so
1:06:31
you could download so maybe what I need to do is download a picture of Tim Cook into my phone and then use image playround yeah then you can do whatever
1:06:37
you want but so the thing is like you can't even put we were messing around with today you know uh Ed from our team
1:06:44
put in a a thing of like Thor holding a football right and and I tried that in
1:06:51
image playground it's sorry I can't do that like it you cannot use any name even like a a cartoon character he
1:06:58
probably can't use Snuffy Smith anything you know and it's I mean that's a
1:07:03
download a picture but you can download a picture put it in your photo yeah it's it's just weird I'm gonna try this right now I'm gonna download a picture save
1:07:10
the photos of TC let's let's try this in real time here sorry for those you
1:07:15
listen I've done it as well let's see image playground and let's um how do actually
1:07:22
here's the here's the one I made of uh Craig federi Craig
1:07:28
federi in a in a in a wearing a baseball cap in a baseball suit see that actually looks like Craig he's looks like he's
1:07:34
got Joker makeup on or something though he does look like he's searching for Batman I have to give you that um and
1:07:39
here's the here's the aformentioned one I made Steve Jobs I got him to to wear a
1:07:45
turtleneck but again it gave him a full head of hair not really sheesh it was it
1:07:50
was the it was like the iconic picture of him like holding up an iPhone or a MacBook Air or something like that like he he didn't have hair in the picture I
1:07:56
don't know why I did that God why why is why is Tim Cook not my oh here we go let's try
1:08:02
again oh there we go there it showed up oh wait no no no no no here's here's one I made of
1:08:09
Aon yeah it looks just like me I look like uh Screech from Save By
1:08:16
The Bells dork your cousin it's it's weird I mean these things like they are
1:08:22
they are much happier uh you know more familyfriendly kind of Pixar looking
1:08:29
images but but they got their own creepy kind of Polar Express vacant
1:08:35
eyes creepy factor to them one one feature that I really like in 18.2 I
1:08:40
think my favorite Apple intelligence feature is Gen Emoji this is this is a feature where it like creates its own Emoji it's
1:08:47
excellent even the ones based on people that you have in your photo library like they they kind of occasionally there's
1:08:53
like one thing that it can't generate like I've tried repeatedly to get it to make me a trombone Emoji it just doesn't
1:08:59
do it it makes like these weird Abominations against brass instruments like really one time it just made a
1:09:05
violin I don't but like you know you you wanted
1:09:10
to make an ostrich Emoji like you just type in ostrich and like there it looks exactly like what app how Apple would
1:09:16
draw an ostrich or you know specific dog breeds like if you want to text if you want a dog Emoji like for a pitbull you
1:09:23
can type that in or you know St Bernard or dog or stuff like that I put in Bigfoot and and you know sent it to my
1:09:30
wife who's not on the beta she got it looks fine on her phone yeah yeah I don't know if does it work with what
1:09:36
happens if you send that to an Android person I haven't tried that yet it just well because they're not technically
1:09:42
Emoji it just sends it as a picture so third party apps can be updated to use it like Apple notes you
1:09:49
can use gen Emoji just like regular notes in the middle of a note interestingly Apple Mail also supports
1:09:56
gen Emoji because email is like a rich HTML markup format so it just adds it in as an inline picture just like you know
1:10:03
you can add pictures to the middle of an email but like Facebook it won't work on that it won't work in slack it works as
1:10:09
like stickers like in Snapchat but that's because you know Snapchat is like an image based thing here we go fun you
1:10:15
look pleased here's here's Tim Cook eating a pickle look at him going at
1:10:22
that look how excited he is about that Pi he's like an ear of corn that's that how you eat a pickle that's how TC does
1:10:28
it nobody eats a pickle like that yeah well he's way more advanced than you he's probably thought through all the different eating pickle scenarios and
1:10:34
this is the one that was the most efficient he is holding I like how he has a whole bowl of pickles there he
1:10:41
pickles that's his so actually that that I mean that
1:10:47
doesn't look exactly like Tim Cook but that's way closer than mid Journey would have got oh I don't know about that man
1:10:54
I I've seen some really pretty pretty pretty uh accurate images
1:11:00
of him generated have you by yeah I have to play around with it mid Journey used to be free and now I think it's paid
1:11:07
only yeah well you know yeah we we have a paid account we use it all the time on
1:11:12
C oh man maybe you should look at the site once in a while no no not all the time once in a while I mean sometimes
1:11:17
there's just it's impossible to come up with an image to to put with a post so we uh you know we label them as AI
1:11:23
images we would never try to off is real but of course and it's not like we're hiring artists to make our featured
1:11:29
images anyways like no nobody's louing a jog for this to be clear yeah right true no if anything it's improving journalism
1:11:35
because like you could not pay to have a artist create a custom image for every
1:11:42
single post it's just not possible it's not feasible so like having AI That's the perfect AI task it's like I need a a
1:11:48
unique image for a YouTube thumbnail or for the header image of some kind of
1:11:55
piece we can't pay anyone and that's AI is able to crank something out instantly
1:12:01
you can iterate as much as you want you can prompt engineer to get exactly what you're looking for and now you have a
1:12:07
great image to go along with a story it kind of seems like a win to me because no artist was ever going to do that work anyway that's not the work they want to
1:12:13
be doing right like we we did a post the other day on uh these people who are using uh was like some kind of AT&T data
1:12:21
breach or something using this to somehow to to track packages of Apple
1:12:27
products getting delivered you know iPhones so so like they know this this iPhone's getting delivered to this
1:12:32
address on this day and they show up and take it immediately and uh you know what
1:12:38
are you going to illustrate that with a picture of an iPhone so uh you know Dave one of our writers you know created one
1:12:44
licky split of uh you know somebody standing there looking at a you know with a like of course like a a hooded
1:12:51
scary character right looking at a stolen thing I think there's a UPS truck for the side of this this house you know
1:12:57
I mean the typical thing that a a news site does for that kind of thing is you
1:13:05
know draw a picture you know put a stock photo of a mailbox or something right which is just stupid and repetitive and
1:13:13
ter you know just not good so yeah we we look at I mean we've talked about it should we use these things some some
1:13:18
you'd be surprised we get a lot of push back I can't believe you use an AI image it's like yeah it's labeled as an AI
1:13:24
image and it's clear clearly that's clearly not Tim Cook sitting on a a throne in a throne room filled with
1:13:30
money that is clearly not a real picture we're not trying to pass it off as one
1:13:36
and I don't you know I guess people think it's a slippery slope I don't think it is yeah I I think in some cases
1:13:42
it can make it look cheap like you know if if he can't be bothered to put a good image around it should I even be bothered to read it I've seen that take
1:13:47
a few times like if you couldn't be bothered to write it why should I care to read it you know with with
1:13:53
the writing tools mostly it at least the image Generation
1:13:58
stuff it does have a specific look to it right now and you can kind of tell when people are using it because it has a
1:14:03
very distinct style and I do think that it's overused at least at this point because a lot of it looks the same and
1:14:10
so I feel like I have image fatigue like I see like the same kinds of images all over the place there are some YouTube
1:14:17
channels that use them in every single image uh video thumbnail and I'm like oh
1:14:23
my goodness like this image again it's it's different but it's the same and I
1:14:28
am kind of growing weary of it in that regard although that's going to change in the future I mean the cost of the GPU
1:14:35
compute used for creating this these kinds of images
1:14:40
continuous plummeting and the sophistication just keeps increasing increasing increasing I saw this um I
1:14:47
saw this uh this keyote by oh dude I'm spacing out on his name um the CEO of
1:14:54
Nvidia what is his name um Jensen hang oh my gosh this guy
1:15:02
is I I mean the stuff that he's talking about is so unbelievably futuristic like
1:15:07
he's talking about having the actual AI write its own code because it can do it
1:15:13
efficiently and in a more sophistic fashion than humans could even do I mean just think about that self like AI
1:15:20
programming itself which I I know that machine learning already has an element to that but they're using AI for all
1:15:26
these advanced stuff he did this keynote about what Nvidia is working on in the future and I was like just struggling to
1:15:33
even keep up with what he's even talking about because this stuff is so sophisticated and so Advanced and Nvidia
1:15:39
is getting their hands into everything by the way um Nvidia is now the most valuable company on Earth they have far
1:15:46
surpassed Apple at least the last that I saw um let's see where are we at
1:15:52
now Nvidia is 3.59 trillion and where is Apple at 3.45
1:16:01
trillion oh so they've s surpassed them by a significant clip which is amazing
1:16:08
considering like when you think about Nvidia like what do they sell like apple has all these products and I and I think
1:16:14
Nvidia does too many of which I probably am not aware of because they're like Enterprise grade products but they sell
1:16:20
gpus like that's what Nvidia sells and their vide or their their gpus are
1:16:26
consumer products that people love but now they're selling all this commercial
1:16:32
grade AI or machine learning equipment that companies are buying left and right are filling whole warehouses full of and
1:16:39
it's just amazing to think that they're selling enough of this stuff that now they have surpassed every company on Earth in terms of value and I don't see
1:16:47
where it ends to be honest with you I mean I guess maybe well I won't talk
1:16:52
about How It Ends because that could potentially be considered as political but um you
1:16:57
know manufacturing could be affected I'll say I'll put it that way like Taiwan could be affected manufacturing
1:17:03
can be affected that that would be where it ends potentially but like if none of that changes there's just no one doing
1:17:10
what invid is doing not even close and they're getting ready to release their brand new uh 90 GPU which
1:17:19
I've heard the price is going to be absolutely insane like gpus used to cost like you know 500 bucks Maybe
1:17:25
and this new one I hear is going to be like close to $2,000 just for the GPU just for the GPU you know like it's
1:17:31
going to be more expensive than an entire MacBook Pro computer just for the GPU but the amount of absolute insane
1:17:40
Compu that thing going to be able to pump out and the amount of like frame rates or frame rate per second that
1:17:45
you'll be able to get in like 4K gaming is going to be absolutely mind-blowing why am I talking about this here I
1:17:50
probably shouldn't say no one really cares guess I'll wrap up this topic and say that if uh you want to hear more
1:17:56
about the other Apple intelligence features that we couldn't get to talk about visual intelligence chat GPT integration and c and the writing tools
1:18:02
and stuff uh there'll be a link in the in the in the in the show notes where you can read my piece on that H I kind
1:18:09
of like this two-headed giraffe in this story is that from m is that from M playground yeah dude I love that put
1:18:14
that on a t-shirt I'd buy it and and I'm sure you just said a giraffe right not a
1:18:19
two-headed giraffe uh it's a two-headed giraffe no I mean the prompt oh yeah I I did not
1:18:26
say make a two-headed giraffe that that's what's so crazy it just does all these ridiculous things so um I don't
1:18:34
know if we even mentioned this this is available in iOS 18.2 which is available in public beta
1:18:40
right now so don't go looking for it on your phone if you're not up updated to that right and have you you got any idea
1:18:47
I mean why in the world is the app called playground and not image playground is it just because it it
1:18:54
won't fit on the in one line if you put the two words have they done that before where they don't put the actual first
1:19:02
name of the app in the the name of the app yeah lots of apps do that you can have you can have a on a bridge name
1:19:07
just appear on the home screen but then a full name elsewhere elsewhere in the system it's called image playground huh
1:19:14
I don't remember seeing that except for you know like on some of the ones where they they don't put in like apple music
1:19:19
maybe I don't even remember they just call that Apple's apps are just called mail settings Sor so they they don't
1:19:25
often run into that limit but but I I don't remember them doing that with with a another thing like image playground I
1:19:33
don't know it's just really it it seems weird as can be but you're saying that you've seen it before see if I can find
1:19:38
another example of that on my [Music]
1:19:43
phone oh yeah I have I have another app called camo camera which is the the app that I use to you know use my iPhone as
1:19:51
my webcam but on the home screen it just appears as camo and it's true that if you type in either
1:19:58
like I I find every app in the only by search at this point I the home screen doesn't even really make any difference
1:20:04
but even if you type in I IM to start with it pulls up image cler PR is first
1:20:09
so okay while you're talking I'm going to show my newest creation a vampire
1:20:14
giraffe reading a newspaper how many heads does it have only one I actually think that looks pretty good it's got no
1:20:21
teeth well it's not its mouth isn't open well what how do you know it can't be a
1:20:26
vampire with no fangs I see what you're saying it definitely should have some fangs but the but the bats behind it are
1:20:33
evocative of vampire don't you think yeah I suppose yeah you're right it doesn't really have any that is
1:20:40
disappointing but I like the robe that it's wearing yeah which you know is I
1:20:46
guess it's kind of like a cape but it also looks more like a house robe you
1:20:51
know I haven't really played around with image playground aside from doing people also just be like a vampire that just
1:20:56
came out of the shower and is wearing a bathrobe that's true but why are the bats there um let's see here I don't
1:21:02
remember seeing any vampire mov scenes where they're bathing cook I feel like it doesn't do people it will describe it
1:21:10
will it will no it won't let you put in any like proper name no it doesn't want to do any
1:21:17
real person it just wants to do fantasy stuff all right anyway before we wrap up I promise you guys I would talk about
1:21:23
this story and it seems as though we may have a
1:21:29
return of the actual Apple television uh I put a bunch of notes in
1:21:35
here um I'll Breeze through these as fast as I can this is uh
1:21:40
again from uh glark Furman over at Bloomberg he has a story apples Tim Cook
1:21:47
has ways to cope with the looming Trump tariffs now this is a story that goes on a Meandering Journey about all sorts of
1:21:54
topics but part of what it talks about is the new Apple TV I'm going to just start
1:21:59
reading from the article here uh this past week I reported this is flark talking I reported details of the device
1:22:06
including its features the hardware is look and feel and how the operating system will work uh he's talking about
1:22:11
the um the inhome tablet that we talked about previously that will either be
1:22:18
mounted to a wall or on a stand or something that it would be like your home hub that's what he's talking about
1:22:24
uh the product will run many of Apple's core apps like Safari notes and calendar but the interface will be centered on a
1:22:30
customizable home screen with iOS like widgets and smart home controls like many other Apple products the hardware
1:22:35
will be available in silver and black the device looks like a low-end iPad and will have a built-in battery speakers
1:22:41
and a FaceTime camera oriented for a horizontal landscape view I'm getting somewhere with this hold Stay With Me
1:22:47
the square device which includes a roughly 6in screen has sensors that let it change the interface depending on how
1:22:54
far a user is from the screen this actually sounds kind of cool it will also have attachments for walls plus a
1:23:00
base with additional speakers so it can be placed on a table nightstand or desk
1:23:05
Apple envisions customers using the device as an intercom with people FaceTiming each other from other rooms
1:23:12
uh they'll also be able to pull up home security footage control their lights and video conference with family while
1:23:17
cooking in the kitchen I actually think this sounds cool and it will control music through the same home on homod
1:23:25
speakers throughout the home on homepod speakers the device will work with hundreds of homekit compatible devices a
1:23:31
lineup that includes third party light switches uh fans and other accessories
1:23:36
but the company doesn't plan to roll out a dedicated app store for the product at least not yet given the lack of success
1:23:42
with app marketplaces for the Vision Pro Apple watch and Apple TV that's not too
1:23:48
surprising If the product does catch on it will help set the stage for more home devices apple is working on an on a
1:23:55
high-end AI companion with a robotic arm and large display that could serve as a
1:24:01
follow-up the company could also put more resources in developing mobile robots privacy focused home cameras and
1:24:07
speakers it may even revisit the idea of making an apple Branded TV set something that it's
1:24:13
evaluating but if the first device fails Apple may have to rethink its smart home
1:24:18
Ambitions once again I actually think that the home like the home control
1:24:23
screen is a very interesting idea something that I would actually be interested in using and if you can move it from room
1:24:30
to room and use it for like FaceTiming controlling your house um as a portal into content and
1:24:37
you can actually move it and like adhere it to a wall somehow that seems like something I would be interested in
1:24:45
but Mark's also talking about if this is is is successful then Apple is
1:24:51
considering another Apple TV now like television like an actual television now I think an apple television makes a ton
1:24:58
of sense Apple could compete in like the higher-end display Market the interface
1:25:04
and the UI would all be Apple's you just think about what Apple has done for cars
1:25:09
with carplay it's like that for TVs TV operating systems are absolutely
1:25:15
horrendous pieces of garbage LG I think makes the best one and even theirs isn't
1:25:20
great and apple could come in with a TV that is actually usable even Roku I mean Roku is is pretty good but even Roku is
1:25:28
like not as good as Apple TV it's like the um the text based version of the internet that used to exist on
1:25:34
smartphones and then Apple came in with the iPhone I mean that's the same situation that we're in here with televisions I mean Apple has the only
1:25:41
good OS Google OS for a TV not good super buggy crashes all the time I have
1:25:49
I have to use it on my uh Sony television I don't love it I have an Apple TV though so I get to bypass it
1:25:55
Apple TV is the absolute best hands down smoothest silkiest best performance the
1:26:00
most intuitive I mean everything about it is just the best apple could do that with their own TV the only question is
1:26:07
is it worth it for them I think TVs are kind of a weird market for Apple to
1:26:12
enter into the profit margins don't seem to be very high there's a lot of competition and there doesn't seem to be
1:26:19
an opportunity even though there I mean everyone has at least one TV or many people or most people people have at
1:26:24
least one possibly more it just doesn't seem like apple would get the profit margins that they would need to actually
1:26:30
build a TV but if they entered in at the higher end and made a super beautiful display with the best screen technology
1:26:37
marked it up like crazy and it included well I don't know about that but like you know3
1:26:43
$4,000 I think that people would buy it I don't know if it would be worth it to Apple even though it's not for the
1:26:49
competitors it might not be a high margin area but that wouldn't wouldn't stop Apple I mean look at headphones
1:26:55
headphones are a commodity Apple enters in with $550 headphones ludicrously
1:27:01
overpriced and people just buy them anyways because they're the Apple headphones the same thing could happen to the TV and I think we can end it on
1:27:08
saying that like I can't wait to buy an Apple TV plug an Apple TV into my Apple TV open the Apple TV app and watch Apple
1:27:16
TV shows on my Apple TV that's the dream right there that's the future that we all want to live in and what better way
1:27:25
then with that to close the show that's the best that it gets it doesn't get any better
1:27:30
than that so we'll go ahead and say that's all the codcast we have for you guys this week I can't talk anyway I
1:27:35
lost my ability to talk like 45 minutes ago which is a clear sign that I'm either having a stroke or we should just
1:27:41
go ahead and wrapped up there but if you want you can come hang out in the very exclusive cult club and not only do you
1:27:47
get a place to hang out with Griffin oneon-one cuz I have not been going there nearly as much as I should but you
1:27:53
get the warm fuzzy feeling annoying that you're supporting the future of the show helping us just remain alive keep the
1:27:59
thing going which you know what we appreciate so thank you to all of you who have forked it over you can come
1:28:06
Fork it over too at support.the cast.com this has been the codcast the bet the best 30 plus minute Al conversation
1:28:12
you're going to hear all week long new episodes of codcast come out every Thursday night see I told you I want to
1:28:17
thank everyone for listening for hanging out live and we'll see you guys next time
1:28:24
Plus at any moment my power could go out all the wind storms we've been having here it was out for almost a full
1:28:31
day wow and I hear it's going to there's going to be another storm
1:28:36
tonight which I'm not looking forward to you know what you miss when your power
1:28:42
goes out electricity yeah electricity you don't
1:28:47
realize just how great it is until you don't have light went on lights went on at the darts bar last night it's like
1:28:55
shees does it just evolve into darts in the dark huh that no true statement has
1:29:01
been made on this show you can't play darts in the dark although if you just throw a
1:29:06
dart see where it screaming all right everyone more than
1:29:14
usual yeah more than usual exactly I'm going to go ahead and just stop it there that's it bye y'all
1:29:24
[Music]

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