Computer Too Good

[Music] Hello, welcome to episode 602 of the Connective Podcast on Relay. This episode is brought to you by Doc Pops, Squarespace, and Fundera by Nude Wallet. My name is Mike Hurley, and I am of the honor to introduce to you, the keynote chairman, Federica Vatici. No, you stumble there for a second, Mike. But thank you. It's a. I do my best. I am pleased to bless you with my presence on this program, and it's my pleasure to also introduce annual chairman Steven Hackett, hello, Steven. Hello, Federico. Hello, Mike. Hello. We're back. We're blessing you, Mike. In case you haven't noticed. You're blessed. Oh, wow. Thank you. Yeah. Yes, you're blessed. And in a couple of weeks, you could become a keynote chairman, but in Chile. I will. We will. Yeah. I'm calling my shot right now. Okay. I'm going to be everyone. What do people say? You're claiming it? Is that what people say? You're. Is that. I mean, what does that mean? I mean, I can say that. Is that like a meme? Is that a. Is that a Gen Z thing that I don't know about? I know a lot of Gen Zers. Here are kids, Gen Z. Two of them are. My youngest, I'm pretty sure is Jen Alpha, which is really upsetting. Is that a thing now? Sophia is Jen Beta. Beta, okay. I'm in. Okay. Yep. Not great for her, really. Well, it's not great. So what's the next one going to be called? Release candidate. Am I right? Wow. Gen Aussie. I want to be Jen final underscore V2 final. Gen 2026.2.4. Oh, man. I just. Okay. Can I. I know that's a popular. I don't actually. Actually, I don't think it is. I think in some circles, it's a popular way to do version numbers in an app. It just doesn't make any sense to me. Sorry. Yeah. I mean, the thing is, it's like it's always incrementing, right? Like, I know people do it because they don't want it just increment. Like, you know, it's just version whatever, whatever. But it still continues to increment. It just increments in a different way. Like, I don't know if it serves what people are hoping to do. And it does avoid some of the things like, like, Brian, I care whether. I think carrot weather, I'm trying to look it up, is on version. Where's this. I said in the app store, I can't find it. A million. But it's like point something, point something. Like, it just kind of keeps going. Yeah. This is version 6.5, but that's the. Anyways, it can be messy. Now, the other side is like, sometimes it's underscore an eye, like, debate, like, is this a point one or is a point O? Point one, you know. But anyways, anyways, that's not what we're here to talk about. We here to talk about follow up and that course starts with the most incredible looking car we've ever seen. So we got some pictures of the Apple livery from. This was the Miami Grand Prix? No, Luna Seca. That's where these pictures are from. Yeah, you got it. And there's Phil Schiller. And in an amazing track. Like, just truly incredible. Yeah. Phil's looking good, man. He's in a track suit. Like, how cool. I mean, how cool is Phil Schiller in this picture? Where's the picture with. It's the second image. The second pose from Joe Beam. Joe Beam was there, clearly at Laguna Seca, and took some pictures of us. And it's of the actual Porsche on track, which has the like Apple computer look. And then also, Porsche, I believe, brought some of the old cars to track and some newer cars that had been. Leveried. painted up. Now, it's worth noting. One of these race cars, the name on the car, Philip Schiller. Yeah. So this is Phil Schiller's race car. I still don't see the picture of Phil Schiller. Where's the picture of Phil Schiller? You're using massive. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. Yeah. Yeah, that's done. There's a Federated Picture Federico. So that is actually Phil's track. It's like he's. I said track suit. I mean, is his suit for driving? That is a driving suit. Man. Yeah. And Phil looks good. Yeah. Yeah, man. I mean, he's driving that car, so. So, someone got in the car. It just wasn't the one I thought. Yeah, they were not putting John Turner in the car. John Turner's driving. He raced his Porsche. They should have. But he's CEO now. They can't put him in an Apple car. He was there. So I still think. I still think an image exists. I've been scaring you. I kind of want to have a dangerous Apple CEO. Like the dust, like stuns and things. Like the Tom Cruise of Apple CEO. It was minus the Scientology of it all, obviously. But, you know, like a CEO of the dust, things. Why not? I still think that he got in the car. Because Eddie Cue was in Miami for the Grand Prix. And he said that Tarnus is at Laguna Seca and it couldn't make it to the Grand Prix. So I am convinced somewhere out there there is an image of future CEO sitting inside. Yeah, for sure. For sure. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. I. How do you all think this delivery would look on a 2023 Tacoma? Amazing. I should do it. Pull this off. You should do it. And then get the. Then get. As Phil Wary's hook up is for the strikes, for this like racing suit. Get one of those. I got a Pokemon 1Z from an old Puckassathon. Could use that. That's not the same. Also, can we appreciate for a second just how good of a name is Apple Computer? Yeah, oh, I know. I miss it. It was so cool. When it became Apple Inc. That was cool at the time. Because it's like we're not just computers anymore. But now it's like, I miss the computer part. Apple Computer. You know? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We also have some follow up about our Tim Cooked quote game that we played. Yeah. Played it last week. And we had a question about one of the quotes about the drop of blood. So the quote is, Mike, you dug this out for me. The quote was, "We seed every day with every day to breach every privacy violation. Every blind eye turned to hate speech." Fake news poisoning our national conversation. The false promise of miracles and exchange for a single drop of your blood. We were like, that's weird. Collectively- It just seemed very intense. Yeah. You know? But the entire listenership of connected reminded us of Theranos. And that's what this is in reference to. Right? Theranos had the fraudulent blood machines. You could put a drop in. It could tell you everything wrong with you. People are in prison to this day because of Theranos. Avitavanian, an old-school next-and-apple person, was on the board. He's not a prison. No, he's not a prison. But, yes, that obviously was in reference to Theranos. I don't know how that didn't click for any three of us, but it has now been corrected. I would like to recommend a TV show called The Dropout, which is the dramatization of Theranos, starring who is emergency-free. Yes. It's so good. Very good. She does a great job of the voice. Do you remember Elizabeth Holmes? Had that, like, she affected that voice. And see, Fred does a really good job of that too over the course of the movie. It's the TV series, I should say. It's excellent. It's really, really good. And what a name. It's good. We also have some praise. And this idea, like, the Federica, this was you. Like, sometimes one of us just shows up. I was like, I have a whole thing ready for you. And Amory wrote in, the Tim quote, tear list was such an amazing unhinge connected energy. No one else could match this. I do not know how you, how you three keep this up, but genuinely one of the funniest and most enjoyable ways to mark the era. Never stopped. Thank you. Have we jumped the shot when we read this on the show? Maybe. Like, just like, Steven just chose to congratulate us in front of everyone. No, because to answer Amory, one of the ways to keep it up, usually in a couple, we can also do it in the thrupal that we are. Every once in a while, you know, beyond, you know, the little bit of spice here and there. Passion. Line about your age, like Steven does. You also got to compliment each other every once in a while. That's true. It's balanced. Yeah. That's true. That's one of the secrets. So the secrets. Thank you, Amory. Appreciate it. For all of the nice comments that we got, we got a lot of mean comments to about Game Hub. So Ben wrote in and said, the reference made to the technique that Game Hub is using is if it's completely new. However, crossover by code weavers, the maintainers of wine have been doing this level of performance now for quite a long time and integrate the game porting toolkit. Federico mentioned whiskey, which was an essentially a community version of crossover. There are also major contributors to proton on Linux. It's been possible to play Windows games on a Mac. Including AAA games for a while. And so he said they're not using any kind of custom x86 emulation layer on Mac. They're just using. Nobody ever said that. They are not using any kind of translation technology for Windows, DirectX or similar. They're just using wine and editing a shiny UI plus AI frame interpolation. There's the shiny UI also making sure that you can log into your steam account and making sure that you can select the right driver, FEX version. The key here is that like sure, right? The technology exists. Sure. Yeah. They are making it accessible to most people, rather than needing to, I don't know, find crossover by code we've. Pretty, pretty sure that crossover or wine, they never bothered with integrated with proton, for example. Like, that's, I mean, I understand the feedback, which is also appreciated, but I think it's an oversimplification to say, oh, game hub, it's a shiny UI on top of wine and crossover, because that's not it. They're doing a lot more things to make sure that you can not just log into your steam account, but, you know, especially when you consider the Android side of it all and now the max side, dealing with proton, dealing with FEX by valve, like all those things to the best of my knowledge, we're never part of whiskey or crossover. So it's, I mean, sure, the technology is not new, but the packaging is often what matters, because hey, otherwise we would all be using Linux computers and laptops on this show and we're not the HH. We use Apple computers because I mean, it's also about the packaging sometimes, you know. So there's that. Okay. I have a little follow out. That's where we do follow up for a different podcast for some reason. On this week's upgrade, Jason and you, Mike, we're talking about the forthcoming yet still rumored M6 class of MacBook Pros, which is expected to bring a redesign and in most importantly an OLED touch display. It's been believed, I think, rightfully so that this would be a more expensive MacBook Pro on top of the current machine. So the, you know, whether it be M5 or maybe those get the M6 as well, but the premium for the touchscreen and the OLED display. And you all talk about the name MacBook Ultra. Did this come from a listener question? I forget how y'all got into this. No, I think it was part of room around up, Philip Esposito, a Mac wall reported that Apple would be using the name ultra for both the folding phone and the MacBook. Okay. And Jason made a point of like, don't do this unless you are committed to ultra being a fourth laptop line. Yeah. Which I totally agree with. And I think MacBook Pro is a really strong brand. And then you're making the pro like the middle one, like that's a bit, a bit weird. And y'all like touched on this, but then like flew away from it like a butterfly landing on a flower and then going away. So I wanted to touch on it here. It's beautiful. Apple solved this in 2012 with the MacBook Pro with the retina display. It was the exact same situation. You had the regular MacBook Pro, which was already unibody at that point, but did not have a retina display. It, the old one had an optical drive and, you know, it was a little bit thicker and they'd already sealed the batteries in at this point. But it was that it was that sort of classic unibody MacBook Pro. And then in 2012, they said, hey, actually it was Phil Schiller speaking of our neighborhood Porsche driver saying, do you want to see what the future is? Like do it come over here? Like, let me show you where we're going. And unveiled a high-end MacBook Pro with a new industrial design and a new display. And I think and hope that that's what Apple does this time around is that it's the MacBook Pro with something. Now, I don't know what the name is because retina display, like that's wordy, but it worked. I don't know what they would say this time. But liquid touch. Yeah. Yeah. Or like with multi touch or, you know, but what that lets you do. Is it lets you keep the name separate as long as you need to? Because eventually all MacBook Pros got retina displays, right? And the distinction went away because it was clear, I get this is going to start at the top. It's going to come downhill and price and feature set over time. And once that happens, we don't need the distinction anymore. And I hope, at least it is exactly what's going to happen now. What I don't want to have happen is what Jason said is that the ultra is like a new machine or a new, you know, a new little family of laptops at the high end. And that Apple never brings OLED and touch to the other models. I think that's a mistake. I think all MacBooks should have touch displays on them at some point. And keeping it like in its own thing just makes me worry that that wouldn't happen for a long time. But if you give it a modifier, then hey, you know, it signals that we're going to do what we did last time. And yeah, it may take a little while. And like the last non retina MacBook Pro hung out way too long. And I'm sure the same thing will happen with the last non touch laptop. It'll hang on for 10 years. But I think a modifier is better than a new brand name. And I hope that's the lane Apple is going to go down. Yeah. I'm not, I'm not sat on this ultra name anyway. Like, I don't think that it necessarily works further. For products outside of the watch. I don't know. Wait until they call it MacBook Studio. That would be fun. See, I would like that name. Yeah. If they, if they had something that was more kind of like designy feeling about the touchscreen, you know, because I could see a scenario in which they pitch it as a way for creative people to be even more creative on a MacBook. Sure. I just, I don't imagine that they will only make one touchscreen laptop. That's the problem. Yeah. Right. The touch screens will come to all of the MacBooks. And so then what's the MacBook Studio if they all have touch screens in three years for years? Apple could do what they want. They're not bound by their history. So they could give it a brand name. Studio is a good brand name and it's weird that it's just on a couple of products. I actually disagree about the ultra name. We can have that debate another time. But I think it means whatever. All these names mean whatever Apple wants them to mean. Yeah. And I just don't like it. It's not really, I mean, I do have, I make the argument of like ultra seems to suggest it will have more, but the folding phone will have a lot less in a bunch of ways. But irrespective of that, I'm just not a big fan of ultra. As a product name. So yeah, that's our follow up to upgrade. It's a good. I do worry that Apple may be a little overexcited about the success of the Neo and like loving the idea of having another laptop brand that they may just do it on the other end. We'll see. Yeah. Yeah, that's definitely a concern. I think it would be. I think it for years, we talked about how messy the MacBook lineup was. And it's like they kind of finally have it in a way that makes sense. Like just leave it alone. I just, just, just, just leave it alone. This episode of Connected is brought to you by Doc Pops. My Mac OS doc is a bit of a mess. I bounce around between a lot of apps throughout my day. Some things I'm using constantly. Some things maybe once a day or once a week and I tend to keep most of that stuff visible all the time. You can get a little out of control. Doc pop fixes that. It sits right in your doc and it works like app folders on the iPhone. You click a doc pop and you get a clean grid of your apps all in one place. There's no menu bar clutter, no keyboard shortcuts to minimize. It's the app launcher your doc has always been missing. I think that makes it really useful is you can organize your apps into groups. So that you have your whole office suite or one for your creative tools or one for all your home kit shortcuts. For me, I've got one set up with all the applications I need for recording connected. So zoom, audio hijack, fishin, forecast, all the stuff I need to make the show is there together. And these pops can have pages so you can swipe between them. It has built in shortcuts integration. You can have each one have its own icon. It's all really awesome. Doc pops is a one time purchase of 999 on the Mac app store. There are no subscriptions and you can try the free tier. Check it out and see if it clicks for you. This is made by a solo developer, not a big company. It's a product manager that turned app developer via cloud code. It's one person who was annoyed at their doc and decided to fix it. So I'm head on over to docpops.com/connected for a 30% discount off of that Doc pops premium upgrade against a one time purchase. No subscription. So get 30% off. Go to docpops.com/connected. The link is in the show notes. My thanks to Doc pops for their support of the show and all of relay. I got some bad news boys. Apple continues to struggle with memory shortages. All sorts of weird things are happening in the Mac lineup. Mike you just mentioned the MacBook Neo. Do you want to walk us through this report from Tim Colbin? So Tim Colbin. Alpen had a report a couple of weeks ago, kind of saying Apple completely underestimated the demand of the MacBook Neo and is now facing across roads. I think we spoke about it on the show a little bit. I essentially, they ran out of the processes, the A18 pros, they just ran out of them. And they need, if they were going to continue to sell the Neo, they weren't going to let it go out of stock. They had to buy the chips from somewhere, like, sorry, like, source the chips from somewhere. And so the most likely scenario that they would end up doing is getting TSMC to make more of them, but that's going to be expensive because they're going to need to kind of jump the queue to do that because the node that those chips are made on is like oversubscribed by not just Apple, but everybody. And so like I'll just say, like, those is the kind of proof of the point in the earnings call last week. Tim Cook said we're supply constrained on the MacBook Neo. We were bullish. There you go, Federica. We were bullish on the product before announcing it, but we under called the level of enthusiasm that would be with it. So they basically just did a way to good of a job with the Neo. And it's like it was a product that was essentially created to give a use to chips that were not good enough to go in the iPhones, right? They're all binned chips. But now they created like the hottest computer. And so it's, it's, I mean, it's a good problem to have, but they've ended up in a scenario where they don't have the chips. So Tim Coppen has published another report yesterday, kind of following up on this, essentially saying that what Apple has chosen to do, they had a bunch of things that they could have potentially done, but they have chosen to do is ask TSMC to go ahead and make more chips for them. So they're going to make more A18 pros. I'm going to read from Tim's newsletter. We have a fresh batch of A18 pros system on the chips, most of the new processes for the Neo, but we'll actually be top tier and only some would fall into the down bin category. This means that in most cases, the six GPUs would be fully functional in the Neo, but Apple is likely to deal with the disparity by simply switching off one of the GPUs through software. And so like the funny thing is now that they're actually going to make the good chips, and they're going to have to put these chips, which are essentially more expensive into the Neo. So Apple is definitely, definitely losing Mark going to start losing margins computer now, because they have had to produce more chips, which is more expensive. They are now kind of taking the cost, which is not of these chips for this computer. It's not so much like amortized across the iPhone line as well, right? Because these chips are essentially just unused. They were rejects and they were going to this computer. It's not probably never reason why the game price down to the level that they have. And so now they're kind of paying for the success of this product by needing to produce chips for it specifically so they can continue. They've essentially doubled the overall order. I think it was five million units. They originally ordered of the Neo, and now it's 10 million. It's just wild that Apple is like so good at this, and then this product surprised them. It doesn't seem to happen very often. I can't know though. I mean, like, you know, you can't, but there's only so much you can do, right? And it seems like this product is kind of surpassed even their best expectation for what it could have done. So that's that's what I took to look at, man. I've had maybe y'all have had this. I've had friends of mine who aren't Apple users, like Android users, PC users, like, hey, I need a new laptop or I've sent them my kid to school. They need a laptop like should I look at the Neo as people I never would have guessed. It's been it's been really cool to see. It's what Apple wanted. Now, the thing now is though what what will they do, right? So this product is going to be more expensive to produce that I have a few routes either A, they can just eat the margin difference realistically, as long as they're not losing money on it. Not going to show in the financials because the Mac plan isn't big enough, right? It's kind of how I look at it. But anyway, so they could just eat it. They could or Tim Coppen suggest another two things they could do. They could stop selling the 256 gigabyte model. So they will raise the starting price to 699. So just be the 512 or they could reduce new introduced new colors now to kind of give another shot of enthusiasm. I'm not really sure how that would help. They would just sell more of them in that scenario, but it's also something they could do. And then maybe kind of like the more they can sell for sure, the better it will be overall. But they're definitely going to lose margin on this. Yeah. So all these to say computer good. Yeah. Sorry. People love this computer. Like they love it. Computer too good. Yeah. Too good. And I don't really know what this. I would love to know the conversations inside of Apple where it's like, well, now what do we do? Like going into the future. Have we created a product that is going to be consistently very popular? Because this machine was only was kind of always meant to sell up to a fixed amount, which is not, I think, how Apple tend to be, right? With this stuff, like in theory for it to be what they wanted it to be, they could only have a sell up to as many bin chips as they had, which feels like something you can kind of, you know, I'm sure they can rough this stuff out. But like if you're not producing the A8 Pro is to create the bin chips, the more the is weird is it kind of feels like the strategy that they had, which on paper seem really good. It's kind of bit them a little bit now. And which again, good problem to have because computer too popular. Certainly interesting. The other problem they have is that they can't get their hands on memory, at least at the pricing they want or they're trying to preserve the memory they have for their more popular products, probably a little bit of both. But they keep narrowing what's available for the Mac mini and the Mac studio. So back in March, we talked about this. They killed Federico's beloved 512 gig, unified memory model at the Mac studio. Still have my loan from Apple, am I not giving it back? Yeah, that's a rare price now. I haven't just written you many letters to get that thing back at this point. They can pop the RAM out there and sell it. I think this is totally the inside big spot. I think Apple loves the coverage of this computer. It all started because they were approaching people for coverage on MLX, Apple Silicon, local AI models. And I think what they have, and this is my speculation, I'm not quoting Apple here, but my sense is that they were happily caught by surprise by the open cloth of it all. Another just going with it, which is, I mean, if you're Apple and you find anyway that people can talk positively about you in terms of AI, you take just about anything in this case. Yeah. That's what's happened is these, I mean, it's open claw and everything else, right? It's not just open claw. It's all of that claw, claw, claw work, open AI codecs, all of these things that can do some kind of computer use. People are buying Mac minis, especially, so that it's sequestered from their computer. And so they have this like clean room computer, which they only give it what it needs. And then they have it on all the time running and working for them. And it's related result. It in the last two weeks, Apple have made two changes to the starting model, right? Like they cut off the 16 gigabyte 599 version. When it's a 699 version. Then they cut the 699 version. So now it starts at 799 to Mac mini, which is very strange to make two cuts at the same product in a week. Like what happened in the intervening like three or four days that they had to do it again? There was something funny that I've seen. I've mentioned this in a few places now, but complexity is just sending Mac minis to people. I keep seeing this everywhere. Like create as that I follow. Yeah. Supposedly they're sending one to me as well. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they just keep mailing Mac minis to everybody. Yes. Yes. Which seems. Which seems unneeded to do, but like this is part of the problem, right? Like they're buying a bunch to send to influencers. Yeah. People are buying them because they want to just have these clean room computers. And also people just want them for computers. It's ended up that we're now in the situation where I think Apple, I think it's a combo, right? Of one, they're selling more of this actual computer than they expected. So they don't have the chassis for these computers. But also too, they are prioritizing RAM for the laptops. Sure. Which is why they're happy to cut this one. Yeah. Some majority of what they sell are those notebooks and they got to keep that train moving. Yeah. It's wild. I mean, the delivery dates continue to be really far out. And it stinks. Like if you just straight up need a Mac mini right now, like you're just, you know, you need one for your office or you're, you know, under your TV or whatever, it's like, good luck. You know, you can't, you can't get one. It stinks, especially not for the price used to be out to get them for. Yeah. I was one of those people. I just a few weeks ago, I was trying to get a Mac mini. It's like, nope. Can't do that. Yeah. it looks like I was going to start getting hit by the RAM stuff at some point in a few months. The space, Tim Cook gave like a really roundabout way of trying to say like, "There's going to be maybe some decisions we need to make essentially." And so we'll see what they end up doing or not in regards to RAM pricing. This is the first step is they're going to start cutting the lowest margin products. So the starting configurations are going to become more expensive. This episode, "A Connected" is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one website platform designed to help you stand out and succeed online. I'll be using Squarespace forever and I keep finding new cool things I can do with it. The newsletter thing, we've talked about that in these ads before and we actually moved our newsletters for Wigismith and Pedometer Plus Plus into Squarespace. The sites were there, but we using another provider, I waited way too long. The newsletter integration is really awesome in Squarespace. For instance, when you build out your content in the sidebar, you see a bunch of your site's design elements, colors, logo, all these things that make the website yours, they're really easy to translate into the newsletter and it really feels robust. A lot of newsletter editors are kind of finicky and you're afraid you're going to break something. Look, if you've used Squarespace's drag and drop editor in other places, it's going to feel really familiar when you go to send a newsletter and all those built-in analytics that are great on the Squarespace website side. New's letters know about those too, so it's easy to track things like open rates and click through all the stuff that marketing people care about. It's all there, but the best part is you don't have to be a marketing person to use this stuff. Squarespace is built for real human beings. Like me, I've been using it for a really long time and I keep coming back to it and I keep recommending it because it's easy enough that anybody can use. So whether you're scaling existing business or starting well from scratch, Squarespace has everything you need. You can claim it in main name, showcase your offerings with professional website, grow your brand and get paid all in one place. So if that sounds good, head to squarespace.com/connectedfreefreetrial. When you're ready to launch, use the offer code connected to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain name, that squarespace.com/connected and the code connected for 10% off your first purchase. My thanks to Squarespace for the support of the show and all of relay. So to continue our special coverage of John Ternus becoming in a few months Apple CEO, I thought we would do something else for this week's episode. We covered the tier list of Tim Cook quotes last week and this week came up with another idea. The tentative title for this segment was Jobs for John and it's a classic connected style round rubbing where each of us gives three suggestions to the upcoming Apple CEO John Ternus. These are not predictions. There are no points or money on the line unless you want to make it. I mean, I think we should score it at least like maybe like a year from now. Okay. I'm always down to gamble. Okay. Yeah. So when we're done, I'll save this and we'll come back to it next May. Yeah. Okay. And it's just a total of nine predictions, suggestions. And I think I'm going to go first because I came up with the idea. That's the only reason. This probably going to sound controversial. I'm just going to say it. John, acquire perplexity. All right. And now stay with me. Obviously, this company is in, how do you say it? Hot waters with many other publications and companies that have sued perplexity and they don't have exactly the greatest pedigree when it comes to things like scraping the web data practices and all of that. But you're not, you're not, it's so I'm telling us in scenario. You're not selling me so far. Nope. I'm getting to it. I'm getting to it. I'm getting to it. That's totally something that Apple Legal can help with. But here's the thing that a lot of people in our community don't want to hear. Perplexity has a good product. They have great designers and they have two good apps in the form of regular perplexity and the new personal computer. Most of all, perplexity has a good product for being an aggregator of multiple AI services. I mean, I remember when you were the person who didn't want to hear this. These are the guys you hated the most. Since, you know, you know, me so well, I'm so humble. And that's why I can say that one of my greatest qualities is the ability to change my mind. It's so humble. It's so humble. Look, what's the opposite of humble? Non-humble. No, no. It's like, you're like famous and infamous. You're like, "In humble." And in humble person. You're not supposed to be this humble person. No, but look, especially if you're Apple and you're in this position where it seems like they will end up being in iOS 27 with the new Siri. They will bet on becoming an official platform aggregator of multiple AI services with the German ideal. They already have the charge-up extension. They're going to have even more extensions in Siri. So it's right there. What perplexity has been doing and what Apple wants to do. There's a lot of overlap. I trust them, right? Because I remember, like, people have been saying this for a while. Like, there was a conference, there were actually conversations reported on, right? Like, they were going to buy perplexity. And I remember at the time we were saying, like, why would they want to do this? Perplexity doesn't have the models, which felt like the important thing. Neither does Apple. Now we've gotten to the point where Apple doesn't have the models either and is building products. We assume going to try and build products that are not too far away from what perplexity is doing, which is we need to build tools that integrate with any model that we may choose to work with, which is like their whole thing. They have a really good search engine, which Apple wants to have for seeing integration with the web. They have a great voice experience that already integrates with reminders and Apple music. They have the new perplexity computer, which is something that you install on a Mac. And I've been using that, comparing that to OpenClaw and the cloud integration that you have on desktop. It's by far the best designed experience for a desktop agent that I've seen to date. Really nice design. Tons of permission prompts, which I'm sure Apple will love lots of sandboxing. You've sold us. How can we span people when they're selling the version of Mac OS? John, I'm telling you this thing as it's so many permission prompts, you're going to love it. They have really nice design and they are just this idea of the model agnostic AI provider. It seems to me like that's exactly where Apple is going to end up being. And so it's right there. It's been rumored for a while and then it was not rumored anymore. I just feel like also let's face it at some point. Perplexity will be looking for an exit. They have not raised the kind of money that OpenAI has raised and these companies like OpenAI and Anthropic have basically become impossible to acquire unless I don't know, you're the government of the United States or something. But perplexity has reached some money, but not an obscene amount of money. And at some point today, we'll be looking for a way out. And when that happens, John, they're right there. They have great designers, really nice experience. They know how to deal with multiple models at the same time. Why not? All right, my first pick, John, resist saying one more thing. Don't do it. You got to build up to that. What about one extra thing? Hey, here's another one. You could say those. Just don't do it. Don't do it. I say don't do it at all. I think that this is the thing that shouldn't have continued post-drops, honestly, because I don't think any of the times that they have said it since justified saying it at all. I would love to have a list of what they are. I know they did it for the Vision Pro, right? And the Apple Watch. The Apple, like, and I just think that none of these things justify that. Look, not all of the jobs one more things justified it, but it was still like it was his thing, right? And so Apple Music, the Zoe, the iPhone 10, okay, maybe that one, right? Like, maybe that one was good enough. But anyway, I think there is a real risk that he's going to do it in his first keynote with the iPhone, with the folding iPhone. Like, I'm worried he's going to do it. And it's like, John, just don't do it. That's really interesting. I think that you've got to make your own way here. And I think playing the hits like that is not is not the best way to start. That's my that's my feeling on this. And everyone's going to get so excited when he says it. Oh yeah. And when he says that I'm going to get goosebumps, but still I wish he wouldn't do it. I'm not opposed to him saying it. I do agree that it should be timed not the beginning. Like don't do it off the bat. But I think it's a fun part of history. Yeah, I think you might do it because you know, it's probably nothing bigger than a new iPhone, you know, I just got that wide boy coming, you know. All right. Mine is stop cluttering the UI with ads for services and I cheated a little bit, increased free iCloud space. I don't think you're going to get I don't think this is going to go the way you want to get yours either, but I think I might. I think that I'm totally fine with Apple telling their customers that services exist. I think there's lots of ways you could do that. Just like app developers have to figure out a way to tell their users about subscriptions and an app purchase. There's clearly a spectrum there of ways you can do it that respect the user and your app and that don't respect the user or your app. And Apple has been sliding toward the second, badging a settings app icon because you haven't set up Apple Pay, feels aggressive. But now if I'm in settings, show me, right? I think you can give people some credit that they do bounce around inside their phone and their devices surface and where they make sense. But I'd like to see that dial back a little bit. And come on, five gigs. We don't only have to talk about this anymore. Like, what are we doing? What are we doing? Just double it. Just do something. I say that, I know it's complicated. I know that I have a stake to claim for myself of not liking data centers and that requires more data centers, but it's painful. Maybe the alternative is making the paid iCloud tears cheaper, doing something to make that better for people. Okay. Do you have a, like, can you verbalize what ads are okay and what aren't? I think a hard line for me is putting a badge on the settings icon, like on the dock or on the, on the home screen of the phone. Yep. If I open the sports app, and there is a banner at the top about f1, I'm okay with that. Like, it's in context of what I'm doing. Ads and maps. I don't like that, but mainly because I think it's, because I like maps a lot. There's no one ads in it. This is a messy thing. Like, you know, there's no clear lines. And there's lots of the first apps. It's like you know it when you see it, I think is the, sure, is, you know, because everybody has their own lines too, right? Like, I have no problem with ads and maps because I'm a Google Maps user. So I get ads and maps, you know, like I'm very used to ads and maps. Yeah. And there are upsides, I'm going to move on. It says there were upsides to having ads in a mapping product, right? If you're a local company, like, it could be huge for you, right? Like, there's this thing. I mean, I think we've talked about this before where like, you'll see a company. It's like a, a, a, a, locksmith. Well, they did that. So they were the top of the yellow pages, right? Or now it's a coffee place near me. And that's like the name of the coffee shop because they're like gaming SEO. Like, there are reasons to have ads and a product like maps. For me, I'm just sad about it because I really like Apple Maps. It's, I basically use it exclusively now. And, um, and I pay for, you know, and I pay for Apple one. And that's another lever they could pull of like, if you're paying for these other things, do you have a lighter ad load? Do you have no ad load? I don't know. I'm not the CEO, but I think it needs addressing. Okay. That's all. Um, as a bit of follow up for you, I have been, we've been sent in the discord, uh, a list of one more thing moments, this is found by Jared HP. I don't know if this is like exhaustive, but we had there were 29 instances of one more thing. Five of them were Tim Cook. Okay. Would you allow me, permit me to read this list? Sure. So the first one was Apple's return to profitability. And it's the Steve said one last thing here. And then referenced that they were returning to profitability. I'm sure that was a very important in 1998. Oh, yeah. Apple Airport was the next one. Okay. Then the 22 inch Apple cinema display. Maybe I'm Mac DV. Hey, including the SC and I movie. That thing had fire wire. Get on board in future. One more thing. Uh, then the announcement of Aqua and jobs becoming the CEO of a Mac or 2000. Okay. Okay. Yeah. The power Mac G4 cube. Yes. That's worthy. That's a good one. Then the power book G4. Then in 2002, iPod for Windows. Okay. And the 17 inch iMac G4 at same time. Then it was power Mac G5 power book G4, the 12 inch aluminum version. Okay. 2004, the iPod mini. That's good. Was a one more thing. Then the 30 inch cinema display. Yes. In 2005, iPod shuffle. Okay. And then iPod with video. It's funny to me the new iPods all being one more thing. Like we knew they were going to keep making more iPods. Like it's not so. It's like, imagine every year at the iPhone events, like one more thing we have a new iPhone. You know, it's like, I'll, Steve, we know you're going to keep doing this in 2006 MacBook Pro. Into that. And then again, in 2006, iTunes movies, Apple TV and a John Mayer performance. Hey, man, John Mayer's a big deal. Safari for Windows. That was a one more thing. Safari for Windows. Get this. 2007, the iTunes Wi-Fi music store. Hey, we joke about that now. But it was kind of sick to be able to buy music wherever you were. Kind of cool. So what were we doing before then? Sinking buying it on your power book and sinking it with a wire. So was this the availability to buy it from like your iPhone and your iPod touch? 2007. Okay. 2008, the aluminium Unibody MacBook. Then 2009, the iPod Nano with video and speaker. Then FaceTime, Apple TV and iOS in 2010, MacBook Air in 2010. So the revision of it. iTunes match was one more thing. That was Steve's last one more thing. That's rough. Wowsers. And then Tim Cook did the Apple Watch, Apple Music, iPhone 10. And the M1 chip, which I also give them as a good reason and then the App of Vision Pro. I feel like the iPhone 10 and the M1 were worth it. The others that Tim did were not. So there you go. There's a list of one more things for you. Okay. Mike, you're up next. Oh, wow. Okay. Make local Apple intelligence models a product that people actually want to use. They're not good, right? Because they're not only our local AI models, difficult anyway, because they're never going to be as good as the stuff you can put in the data centers. Apple's models are just not good enough to begin with. So what I want them to do is find a way to make it work because I believe if we can shift more to local, I think it's going to reduce a lot of the issues that people have with AI quite rightly. You know, like then we're not going to be burning these data centers all day every day. If people are using local models more often for more things than we're doing right now. So I don't know how you do this. This feels like a very difficult thing to do, but I want them to really push on this because I think it could make a big difference. Okay. I'm up next. It's to rebuild relationships with developers. This spans the business deal with the App Store documentation, which on the case you just talked about a good bit. I ran into that headlong this week looking at something. It's like, why is this document not saying anything helpful? And then accessibility to internal support at Apple. So you have a question, can be hard to get it answered. I think Apple's lost a lot of goodwill in that community and it would be who've them to get it back. Can I just add to your list by saying the feedback system? Oh, yeah. Let's say that's like deal with the feedback system. If you're going to make us fill in feedbacks, actually respond to them. That's good. I'm up next and a pretty simple one. Launch smaller, stranger products. I think this is something that we've been saying for a while and also Mike and Jason have been saying this on upgrade. Every launch from Apple has to be a big deal. And I understand why. Like everything needs to be a massive success because they're the biggest tech company on earth. But that doesn't mean that they cannot try and have, you know, ex, I don't really know how they can potentially present the product by saying this is something that we're trying. But I think that's exactly like that's I'm I'm I'm not being silly. It's like that was just like here's a weird little thing we're doing. Yes. Don't worry about it. And I think if you own it, I think we've seen lately from from for example from OpenAI. It's not unusual for OpenAI to say, Hey, this is something that we're trying. We're not sure where it's going to go, but here's this thing. Yeah. And I'm not sure. I mean, obviously Apple is more judicious than any AI company really. But I would love to see Apple kind of own the idea of here's this product, here's this accessory. It's very different from something we've done before and we want to see how it goes. Like that kind of honesty. It's it's it's it's it's it would be different from the kind of hyper polished image that we've gotten from Apple for the past decade or so. I don't know. It goes back to their idea of I was half joking when I said let Apple have a dangerous CEO like in that sense like a more of a kindred spirit. So to speak, you know, like a like a different person that is willing to take risks even when it comes to announcing products to the public. I would be fun to see. Okay. I mean, I feel like this is the you know, the idea of not everything has to be a platform. Yeah. Yeah. Some things can just be accessories. Like they can play off the existing platform that you already have with the iPhone. I mean, unfortunately, they seem to have been trying that with the home pod with a screen product. But then yeah. But then there were other problems that have stopped that thing from shipping. But that feels like the right approach. Then like trying to build an app store for everything. Yeah. It's good. Mine we we spoke about a couple of weeks ago. So highlight again, like take a long hard look at software quality. Please. What's going on there? So like just just like a lot of these weird strange products. Federica you want, which I also want. That's a really good job for John. It seems like a lot of stuff at least recently has been held back by the software side of the organization and that's a little disappointing. Yep. I'm up next again. I mentioned this before kind of a similar idea. John, bring back the live events. Please. Okay. Enough with the videos. I get I get why you started with the videos. Necessary. I get that they're cheaper to produce. But now I think I said this a couple of weeks ago. Well, no way. I do. Yeah. Nothing is cheap, especially for Apple. But still like especially now I think people are seeking the kind of personal touch from the tech industry. As a response to AI and the fears around AI. And I think there's something about a not hyper polished live event that brings back that kind of human touch. And especially you John as a product person that could really give a feel of Apple is back with a person at the top that cares about products. Has been making products and can tell you a story about those products live on a stage without anything. Quarant could fake around it as in a pre-produced super polished video. And there's something to that idea of the human touch live on stage mistakes and all because that's part of what humans do on a stage. Everyone's in a while they screw up and that's fine because I think in a way it kind of adds that touch of delight and whimsy that you know to quote to quote the masterful no-al-galagher through perfection has to be imperfect. And so bring back the live events. Okay, my final one actually is hand in hand with yours Federico. John do a good podcast interview like a long one sit down with someone talk for a couple of hours or whatever. Let's hear you in conversation show what makes you tick. Like yes, you know go on the talk show although you should come to us but you know like do something like that. Come on connected. Come on. You know you'll have a good time of us will play a game. We'll talk about you being in a race car but like show us who you are right like go and do something that is a little bit more raw and have a conversation with someone for a bit. Let's kind of see who you are as a person. No, no, have a conversation with us. Not with us. With us specifically tell us where you come from. What were you into as a kid? You know, you like video games. Did you like video games? Do you go to concerts? All the stuff. Yeah, I mean what yeah. Yes. Yeah, we need some humanity. Yeah, up there I think. This episode of Connected is brought to you by Fondera, powered by Nerdwallet. 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I'm this is me reading the title of the section. I have become a homo-system person. Why would you do this to us? Why? Because I'm well, because I'm friends with Casey Liss and he drug me into this. You can be friends with Casey without being dragged into Casey things. That's true but difficult. Really, it's starting because I needed to solve a smart home issue I was having. And I've just got to point something out. I'm sorry. I go to the home assistant website says home assistant 2026.5.0. I know it's bad. Yeah. Don't. They're doing it. Casey does it with a call. See, too. It hurts me. Oh, yeah. I know. So I need to solve an issue, which I will get to, but just very briefly before everyone quits the podcast. I'm going to do a little overview of home assistant because I was very briefly. You said, do I need to put you on a timer? No, please don't. I did it because I wasn't really aware of where it fit because it's different than home bridge, like home bridge, which actually just got updated this week to support matter devices, which is cool. Yeah. Home bridge is like a shim. So you can get non-home kit accessories into home kit. Right. Home bridge is like a one-way funnel basically for that sort of thing. For instance, on my old house, my home alarm did not have any awareness of home kit, but it did work with home bridge. And so I could pipe my home alarm system into home kit via home bridge around a Mac mini and it broke down. Stephen, you're losing me. You're saying home too much. I can't. I'm already struggling to keep track of all assistant. Should we call it H a home assistant? No, no, no, no, just stop talking about keeping things. Mike, it's only gonna get worse. It is. Wait till I tell you about the two home kit plugins for home assistant. No. So home assistant is an open source smart home and home automation platform. So it is independent like home bridge exists to serve home kit more or less. Home assistant is like its own thing. Like people who don't have a single Apple product can use home assistant. And because it's open source, you get a lot of flexibility. It can run on basically anything like a Raspberry Pi. It can run directly on a bunch of operating systems. You put in a virtual machine. I'm running it on what's called a home assistant green, which is a little. Okay. So I think it's Raspberry Pi day. I bought it like it's a pie. Yeah, I bought it like two years ago and it was literally in a box on the shelf and then I got it out for this Because I we actually we were going to do it an MPU episode about home assistant and I kind of the outline kind of just didn't ever go anywhere so I had the hardware, but didn't use it until now Also because it's open source it has a wild amount of integrations and so it can plug into Other ecosystems natively so like Mike you and I have both have a lot of a car a stuff around our houses, right? You just tell it hey, I have a bunch of a car stuff and it finds your hub and it and it can talk to everything a car Same thing with the Lutron cassette of light switches and Yo link, which is a bunch of I use their leak detection sensors and what's cool about yo link is they have extremely long range. I was having trouble The attic of my house is like completely lined in metal backed like foil backed insulation and My what I was using previously I guess they were using matter. I don't really remember, but those water sensors dropped off the network all the time because the radio isn't strong enough and you'll link are and so I have a bunch of those around And It's open source so there's also like community projects so like Miras I have the garage door opener. I could pipe in through a third like an open source third party community project U.F.y. Smart vacuums a whole bunch of stuff So it's it's its own world like you don't have to have anything apple You don't have to have apple home or an apple TV or anything to run this and I think most people who have home assistant or at least a lot of people who use it aren't apple people they they are Android PC Linux type of people who want to do this separate of any ecosystem and I've benefited that is a lot of the stuff can be done locally a lot of the stuff with homes is it doesn't require a trip to the cloud now that varies depending on Your exact smart home devices and that sort of stuff, but It's popular for the I'm a popular in air quotes It is around for those those reasons But if you have home kit They have tools to bring devices from home kit into assistant and vice versa So for instance my yo link leak detection sensors The yolink app is not good It's very confusing as to what is actually happening sometimes like when you're trying to set notifications But assistant can talk to yo link and I can set up notifications through there So for instance I have one of their they have some outdoor gate openers And I have one on one of the gates at my house and I Want to be alerted if that gate is opened when no one is home. I get for a home It doesn't matter right probably one of the kids maybe you know someone's watering or rowing the grass like we have to open it or whatever But if I'm gone, I really want to know if that gate has been opened and yo link because their app is bad doesn't have any Awareness of your location so you can't set up. Oh alert me if I'm gone, but not if I'm home Well, I could do that really easily in assistant. So I was one of the first things I did actually was solve that notification problem And so you can also so yes, you can sling things back and forth between home kit and assistant as needed Through a couple of their plugins For me everything that I have works in both and so I didn't have to do any of that But what's nice about that is you have that flexibility You could make assistant like have everything there and just then it just pass everything to home kit and you don't have to Managing thing and apples home app directly. It also means that my family doesn't know I've done this because They just use the Apple Home app. They're just using home pods and all that stuff Still works exactly the way it did before I started this and So it lets me have more control and really why did it with some of the automation stuff But they don't have to see it right like I'm not running around putting the assistant app on everybody's phones like they just use Apple home the way they always have which is good. It's what I wanted it I want them to have a room to take that so kindly if you did that to them They would not no and like the kids they have a limited access to Apple home like they can do some things in it but not everything and You could do that in assistant but it'd be really fitily and home makes it really easy to like add a guest and just tell them You know, okay, you can open the garage door and do these lights, but you can't do these other things So for me it really was the The automation engine is what drove me to this what are my examples was that you'll link notification issue But the other was something very specific in my garage and this is where Casey comes in because Casey loves his garage. He he backs both of their cars into it very proudly if you ever seen a photo And he loves some automation. It's like great the Casey's the person I need to talk to you I I wanted the overhead light in my garage to stay on for a set amount of time After activity in the garage so come on automatically when the garage door goes up or if the door between the garage and the house is open Okay, that's easy But I want you to turn off after 30 minutes Home kit can do that If you're putting an automation in the home app there is a setting like turn light off after x amount of time The problem I was running into is that Home kit seemed to get confused when like multiple things were happening in that 30-minute window So the garage door goes up And then someone goes from the garage into the house What sets the 30-minute thing? That's not a big deal. That's probably 90 seconds in between the two. It doesn't really matter But what happens if I'm 27 minutes into the timer and something happens like Should it reset should it not and I found it to be inconsistent And that was frustrating because then you'd like be in the garage and the light would turn off unexpectedly Or when it come on the way that you expected to or like it'd be on in the middle of the night and um And I had tried solving this with have you guys played with like the presence detectors that they're more than motion They can actually detect if someone is no I haven't John has one the millimetre wave ones or whatever. Yes. Yes. I haven't but because I don't know what I was using for plus a lot of them until very recently Had to be like wired all the time. That's right. Where would I even put this thing and have the wire dangling around? So not By not they're battery they have battery ones now - they do and in fact I tried one of their battery ones Anna tried a yolink Presence detector because my initial thought was Okay, when the door opens turned light on like there's just a goods like base Base level uh the But what happens if you're like in the garage and I wanted light to stay on if you were in there and What I found again, just my experience was that the presence detectors didn't work very well in the garage. I think um Because If a vehicle was in there we had two car garage like say that one car is there, but I'm working on the other side of the garage like you know Fixing a shell for or working out or something It would get confi I think having a car there like just made it difficult for it to get a sense of what was going on And so you would be in the garage and the light would turn off because it said oh there's no one in here As it turned this light off. I saved some energy Um This was all very frustrating to me it was very frustrating to my family and as as all of you know Smart stuff is fine until it annoys the people you live with and then it's bad Right, yeah, you can't that's a line you should not um Um, you should not cross and so Wanted it up with an in assistant. This is like a small example one reason I've really come to enjoy setting it up and using it Is that assistant has the has the the the ends and outs for automation In home assistant Blow away anything else that I've seen uh the home app is very basic in terms of ends and outs and that that means a lot of needs like It's it's good that is basic But if you need to go further you kind of run into issues um, there is an app called home plus six Uh, version six it's in the app store and they do a good job of of surfacing some of this stuff in a very apple-like way But What is nice about assistant is that you can do things like timers and so I have Okay, the door opens the light turns on But also you're starting a 30-minute timer and so that is what's in control of When the light turns off and if a door is reopened Then the timer restarts and it's very simple to see and control What's happening? I'm not I'm not I don't have two timers racing each other to the finish line is just one that both these automations talk to and set. I mentioned the yolink thing. One that I am working on, I actually had to buy a new sensor for this is, okay, my porch lights come on an hour or two before sunset, right? It's pretty straightforward. But I would like them to come on if it's dark outside. So if it's a really overcast day or it's getting right to thunderstorm, like I would actually find it beneficial for my porch lights to be on in those situations. And so I have this little matter-luck sensor coming and I think Eve makes it and it works with assistant and I can tell it, okay, out of all the things this sensor knows about, I just want to look, they call it an entity. I just want to look at just the light outside, like not the humidity, not the temperature, just the light and build an automation off of that. It's fiddly but it's really powerful and I'm having fun with it and my family doesn't know and I'm not ruining their lives so that's all good. Anyone's still there? Yeah, no, I'm still here. I mean, again, I struggle to get my head around some of this stuff because it's so complicated and also I have like a real problem with home assistant. I know it's not what you're- wait, home bridge? Home bridge, yeah. I have one of them. I think I had home bridge and it just completely failed for me. Yeah, bridge, I found it pretty fragile. Yeah, but home assistant you like more. So, really, it's you want to do more complex automations than home kit is going to allow with devices that don't necessarily tie into home kit anyway, right? Right. Yeah. Right. Okay. And you can tie these things together in more ways with the automation. And I think- So, are these automations ever running through your Apple devices? They can. So you can set the location of your phone to be a trigger. So- Right. And you can do that in the home app, right? In fact, that's one thing the home app's really good at. Like when the first person gets home or the last person leaves do these things. But you can also, if the home assistant iOS app is installed on the phone, you can use it's background location as a trigger just like you can in home kit. So but like essentially what you've got here is an operating system for the disparate devices. It's not like, good to say, like I think I'm starting to get my head around the difference. If home bridge, you are bringing non home kit stuff into the home app on your iPhone. Correct. But on home assistant, you have a specific device that is talking to all of these things on its own. That's right. Okay. And do you have home kit devices in your home assistant as well? So I have everything set up in both. Say that there was a- They're not conflict of each other. They don't. In fact, if you took like say I turn a light switch on an assistant, it not only turns the light on, but the home app responds instantly that it's on. There's no- You're selling me on this. Good. Pray for a dinner. The- I don't have- I'm good. Like I don't- Yeah, yeah. I don't think I have needs. Sure. The longer your dad, the more needs you have. Mm-hmm. They- Just like a general statement. It really is. The- So if you had a device that was only- For some reason only supported home kit, like like a lot of older devices, right? Remember back in the days, like I bought this plug because it works with Amazon, but then I got a home pod. I have to not use that switch anymore. Like that sucked. Most of that stuff's gone, but there are- There are still pockets, I think, of smart home things that are really designed for one ecosystem. There's a- You can pull in home kit devices to assistant if you want them there as well. Is it support matter? It does support matter. Supports thread and it supports Zigbee and Z-Wave as well. Those I think have kind of fallen out of style a little bit, at least with the stuff I'm using. Not a car. The car is a little- They don't- They don't see. The car's new stuff is matter. But they're still using the- Oh, yeah, it's matter over Zigbee or something or over Z-Wave. It's basically some of their stuff is thread, but some of their senses are still communicating to the hub, which I think is the Z-Wave. Okay. Because some matter products cannot be added to home kit unless you have a hub. That's right. And for me, my car stuff, like, home season sees the hub and so it's communicating through the hub, but already had it, right? There is definitely some shifting sands when it comes to some of these standards. But hopefully that's getting sort of settled out now. Well, I mean, this is not how I thought it was going to go. Disc conversation. I mean, I'm a little bit more like I understand it a little bit more. I think I just- I had such a bad experience with Humberidge that I think I kind of just like, um, tired all of these things with the same brush, where this does sound a little bit more friendly, I think. Yeah. I mean, it can get complicated quickly. One thing I sort of had around my head was, like my echo-be-therma stats. They set the temperature, they set the fan control and all that stuff, but they also know the temperature and humidity and presence and the room that they're in. And Apple Home doesn't really have a meaningful way to do anything with those things. Like it shows you all that data, but an assistant, you could say, okay, when the humidity, for instance, when the humidity at this thermostat hits this point, do these other things. So you can pull out like individual pieces of data from these devices and do things with them, which is really flexible, but it's also kind of overwhelming. You look at your list of like all the data this knows about your home. It's like, there's a lot of stuff in here that I will never need or touch. It's cool that it's there, I guess, if I want to go see it, but that is sort of the downside. Like this is a full blown operating system in many ways. Like it is- it can be extremely complicated. It doesn't have to be to start with and I'm sure over time I will build more complexity that's probably inevitable. But I was surprised and pleased that it was relatively easy to sort of set up a base level of stuff really just in a couple of hours, you know, clicking around at Chrome. And is that how you interact with it mostly in Chrome? Yeah. So I've got the iOS app on the phone, which is totally fine. It looks like the home app and you can actually put buttons where you want them and stuff. As far as the management and building automations, I've just found it easier. So it gets an internal IP address and then you can access it from the outside if you set that up. And so yeah, just doing it in the browser is the primary way. But do you need to interact with any of the devices or are they all just like census and stuff? So the devices that you have in home assistant or any of them like specific things that need your attention. I know like if you were shutting a blind door to it, right? I mean, yeah, I can like go into assistant like turn a lights switch off, but I could also do that in your home app. You're not doing that with the things that you have. Not currently. I'm still I'm still basically using Apple's home app for that because I think it looks a little bit nicer, but you certainly could do it either way. Just some of the stuff you have in home assistant doesn't show in the home app, though, right? Some like the automations don't like there. Right. If assistant does something, all home kits sees is, oh, this device changed state. It doesn't know why it did or like what caused it. But I haven't run into any conflicts with that either. It really the joining of the two really is a I really thought it maybe it used to be this way. Maybe I was just had a bad understanding was like, oh, I'm going to have like ditch Apple home and like move my family to this. You don't absolutely do not have to do that. At least the level I'm playing it. Okay. And do you have anything like that super different like so like a ring system or whatever inside of here? I put my entire unified network into it for a couple of reasons. One, I could have it set up. I think you can do this and unify, but I've never found a way to do it or at least do it well. I could have like when this device is a bit of a network semi notification or if my, so like we're talking with Casey, some of his location stuff is also dependent on where Aaron's phone is, but home assistant is not even on her phone. How he's doing it is is Aaron's phone on my network that she's at home, then that's the trigger. And I also kind of wanted to see what it would expose like am I doing anything meaningful with the unify inside of assistant? Not really, but it's interesting that it's there and it could be something that I rely on more like if I wanted to locate just stuff with the kid's phones, I probably wouldn't put assistant on their phones, but I could do it with, hey, are you on the Wi-Fi? Then it's It's probably safe bet that you're here. - What about your Roomba? - I actually switched to a U-Fee. - Oh, you did? - I did. We wanted one that moped, and it was like, as it was happening as Roomba was like going out of business, and it was very uncertain what was happening, and sparks how to U-Fee that they really liked. - Do you like it? - I do like it. - Okay. - And it shows up, and it, you don't have all the controls you have in the U-Fee app. Like, I don't, I haven't found a way to go clean just the kitchen. You can do that in the U-Fee app, of course. But the U-Fee app is really rough, and it's like, talk about something full of ads. It's like my word. - Yeah, do you have the apps bet? I had a U-Fee camera that I just had for a long time, and we just used it when, it was one of those cameras that could move. - Mm-hmm. - You know, you could control it, and we set it up when we were having a leak in the downstairs from the bathroom, and we were going on vacation, and so we turned the water off, but we wanted to be able to like pan around and see if there was any leaks. But that's the only thing I ever used it for. But I found the U-Fee app to be terrible. - Yeah, it's pretty bad. Yeah, I'm still learning, and I would love to like, if people are doing cool things with it, let me know, I'd love to hear what you're doing, 'cause it is like a whole world, and it's like a whole world, and it's like a whole world, seven bucks a month. It's a great deal. Go check that out. If you want more of us, you can find us online. Federico is the editor-in-chief of MaxTorys.net, the esteemed award-winning - Wow. - Yes. - Journalistic output. - Hmm. - MaxTorys.net. I don't know what I was doing there. It felt like-- - Thank you, thank you. That works. - It is good. I read it every day. You can find Mike on a bunch of other shows here on Relay. I'm a connected to this is best one, but he's on some others. And you can see his blogging at theinthusiest.net and his work at Cortex Brand. You can find my writing at 512Pixels.net. I think our sponsors this week, DocPops, Squarespace, and Fondera. And until next time, guys, say goodbye. - I'll see you there, Chi. - Cheerio. - Bye, y'all.