Up next in 10
This week: The new Siri is slipping yet again — but that’s a good thing, Eddy Cue pulls the plug on Apple’s AI doctor, more new AirPods Pro are on the way, the best multi-Mac setups, and we’ve got a great tip for the Messages app.
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Produced by Extra Ordinary for Cult of Mac
Music composed by Will Davenport, arranged by D. Griffin Jones
Chapters:
0:00 - Intro
1:22 - Upcoming product release dates
6:38 - Siri delayed again
22:21 - Cult of Mac Newsletters
23:22 - Health app features
34:03 - More new AirPods?
44:00 - Setup of the Week
49:40 - Listener Question
1:00:38 - Features in Messages in iOS 26
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0:00
Coming up, the new Siri is slipping yet again, but that's a good thing. Eddie Q pulls a plug on Apple's AI Doctor. More
0:07
new AirPods Pro are on the way. The best [music] multimax setups, and we have a
0:12
really good tip about the messaging app. [music] Welcome to the Cult podcast. I'm
0:18
your host, Leander Kaney. Joining me today, we have D. Griffin Jones coming in from Ohio. Hey, Griffin.
0:23
Good evening. How are you? I'm all right, thank you. [laughter] And also Lewis. Hey Lewis, what's going
0:30
on? Hey, it's a great day to wrestle with audio settings. [laughter]
0:35
We've been messing around for for an hour an hour trying to get the technical settings just just to record this this,
0:42
you know, today. It's been a nightmare. Leander and I have been talking about what we want to do on the show while Lewis swears at himself for an hour
0:50
figuring out his [laughter] audio settings. Exactly. Swearing at Craig Federigi. And there's a pretty pretty pretty funny
0:56
outburst. a little, you know, bad type of outburst. Everybody, [laughter] everybody came in for a for a hazing.
1:04
You know, I I just don't get it, man. I I don't understand why every time I turn on my Mac, all these settings change. I
1:12
I can't I can't explain it. It's maddening, isn't it? Absolutely maddening. Oh, it is. Well,
1:18
that's a good segue. Perhaps some new computers might help. Uh, it's showtime,
1:23
actually. It's 2026 is going to be a really busy year for Apple and they've got reportedly 20 more 20 new products
1:29
in the pipeline coming out this year. So, we've been here for ages, you know, new M5 Pro and M5 Max powered MacBook
1:37
Pros, which is frankly a tongue twister. I It's too early in the morning to try to get through. Uh but anyway, now it
1:43
looks like we actually have a a time when it seems like they're going to arrive. You know, we've been thinking it was going to be this month, even last
1:49
month, but no. No. Now, the new target date is supposedly March 2. This comes
1:54
from, you will never guess the source of this story, Mark German from Bloomberg. And uh let's
2:01
see, he says that Apple is going to launch these things the very first as
2:08
early I believe is his quote, as early as the first week of of March. As early as March 2.
2:15
uh that's when they come and and he's basing this on, you know, insider information, plus the fact that like M4,
2:22
M4 Max and M4 Pro version, MacBook Pro, again, tongue twister, those are in
2:28
short supply, which of course means new models are incoming. So, if you've been waiting to pull the trigger, just wait
2:34
just a little bit longer. You got like two and a half weeks probably. And isn't this isn't this dependent upon
2:40
um you know, the next Mac OS update? the the new MacBook Pros, meanwhile, are
2:46
tied to the Mac OS 26.3 cycle that runs through March, he says. Yeah. Which is which is a weird thing to say
2:53
because that just came out yesterday. So, I I don't know. I I mean, German's usually right about
2:59
these things. So, uh I would set my calendar for March March 2 to start looking for the MacBook Pro [snorts] with the [sighs]
3:06
high-owered M5 chips. I I I know I called to Mac. been checking the uh Apple newsroom every
3:11
morning at, you know, 6:00 a.m. Pacific time looking for a for any sort of press release and it's been a whole lot of
3:17
nothing. So, yeah, very very sad, I guess. Yeah. Now, now now we know when
3:22
we can actually start, you know, madly checking for those. Still got a few weeks away.
3:28
So, uh back to your comments about this being a big year. Uh supposedly, uh what
3:34
we're going to see next is the iPhone 17e. That's like the first new product supposedly coming out, you know, popping
3:40
out of the pipeline. Uh supposedly that's going to arrive on February 19th.
3:46
That's a week away. Very exciting. Um this thing, you know, if you're not
3:52
familiar with the 7 16E, this thing, you know, what is it? Is it really a budget
3:57
phone? I mean, it replaced the SE. I guess it's less expensive, but it's actually kind of cool and different,
4:02
right? Uh Griffin, you you had the uh 16e for a bit and loved it,
4:08
right? And this new one's going to have, you know, faster chip. What do you know? What? But here's the thing. It it's
4:15
supposedly going to add Mags safe, which is uh, you know, that was the big downside with it, right? I mean,
4:21
and it just begs the question, why didn't the 16E have Mag Safe if a year later they can just, you know, add it
4:27
back in? Maybe they thought they could get away with skimping on it and then enough people, you know, myself
4:32
included, ragged on them for not having it there. But, um, [snorts] it's the most liked explanation. I'd say
4:37
there was such a backlash, you know, there was so much griping about it that not having it and and it's such a key feature for so many people that they
4:44
fixed it and now this makes it actually a really great phone, doesn't it? I mean, this is it's it's not, you know, it's actually
4:50
going to be a really really cool device if it does have all, you know, the A19 chip and Mag Safe. You know, there a you
4:55
loved it, didn't you? the industrial design and it is it it it just means that like for now and forever anytime we talk about
5:01
MagSafe we say we can say we have to say oh if you have an iPhone 12 or newer except for the iPhone 16 E your phone
5:07
supports MagSafe in this accessory which is annoying but I guess only really annoying to me but and also for iPhone
5:15
16 owners like it's sad that you know [snorts] I I know a lot of people who have that phone and you know those are the people who just want a cheap phone
5:21
and want to keep it for as long as it lasts and you know they've got another four or 5 years where they won't have a
5:27
phone with MagSafe. And that's sad because it's a it's a excellent feature.
5:32
Yeah. Supposedly, this one's going to be 599 just like the last one. So, uh
5:38
I don't know. Sounds like a good phone. And that's supposedly the first new product that's coming. Get ready. One
5:43
week. One week more of waiting. Although, releasing it on a Thursday seems kind of odd, doesn't it?
5:48
My guess is they'll probably announce it on Monday or No, not Monday because Monday is President's Day. probably announce it on Tuesday and then it'll be
5:56
in stores Thursday or Friday. I I just don't remember them putting stuff on storeshelves on a Thursday. But
6:03
yeah, I don't think I've ever they've ever done that, have they? It's usually Friday. It is usually Friday, but I think uh you
6:09
know, he also says could debut on February 19. So, it probably just means like someday later
6:14
in the week, that particular week. Yeah, I can't remember the source of that particular rumor. You know, some of
6:20
these some of these rumors are a little sketchy. We're [clears throat] going to talk about one later. That's [laughter]
6:26
really sketchy. Really, really sketchy. We've also got the M5 MacBook Air and a refresh based iPad with the 818 chip and
6:33
a Mac Studio with more powerful chips coming in the in the coming months. Uh Mark also wrote in his in that in
6:40
that art uh at that time. Um after that, Apple seemingly released the first developer beta of iOS 26.4 4 featuring
6:47
the new Gemini powered Siri. Yay! Here it comes. Oh, yeah. I'm so excited for that. [snorts]
6:53
Aren't we, Leander? We Yeah. You know, the big news here is
6:58
that it's delayed again. Um, multiple reports in recent months said that it was going to be coming in the AI
7:04
enabled version of Siri was going to be coming in uh pretty soon. But according to our good friend Mark, he said that
7:10
internal test builds of IS-26.4 four replaced with the reli reliability and performance problems leading Apple to
7:16
reconsider the timing of its roll out. The iPhone maker is now preparing to push some of the most advanc features
7:22
late to later releases. Uh internal testings of these allegedly now being done in iOS 26.5
7:29
which is expected around May and it's a sign of course that Apple doesn't expect them to make it into the earlier
7:34
version. So, uh, apparently some AI features might be delayed, uh, into 27
7:42
planned for this autumn. Uh, one of the most likely features, uh, features most
7:47
likely to slip from IS-26.4 is enhanced access to personal data, a function that would allow Siri to pull
7:53
information from messages and emails to complete complex user requests. And Apple is also reportedly struggling with
8:00
one of the most complex AI enabled features, app intents. This would allow a user, for example, to say something
8:06
like, "Hey, voice assistant, please send, uh, the email I drafted to April and Lily, and it would understand the
8:12
app context and carry out the action, you know, if it works, of course." So, uh, quote, "Apple employees testing 26.5
8:20
say early support for these features exists, but they don't function reliably in all cases." So, while the first
8:26
developer beta of 26.4 four is later is expected later this month with some incremental improvements the more
8:31
transformational capabilities are now apparently in flux. So, [laughter] I
8:37
mean, isn't that isn't it all of the the transformational capabilities like App Intense? You know, that was I went back
8:44
and looked at that, you know, that infamous um Dubdub DC uh video from 2024
8:50
when they showed what Smarter Siri was going to do. And, you know, again, it
8:55
was a based on app intents um and personal context. And and if they're pushing the personal context and app
9:01
intents, that that's the whole package, isn't it? mostly of the of the new smarter.
9:07
Mhm. And and I'm sorry, did you say WWDC 24 as in 2024? A year and a half ago?
9:17
Yeah. [snorts] Yeah. That was that was the infamous one, wasn't it? Where they promised all these things. Uh
9:23
you know, and that was supposed to be coming that year, wasn't it? Yeah. The the farther we get away from
9:28
that, just the funnier that is that that whole segment. Actually, what do you I
9:33
was thinking about this the other day. What do you think is more embarrassing? Apple's uh Apple intelligence
9:39
presentation at WWDC 2024 or uh Facebook's big keynote where they with
9:46
like Mark Zuckerberg where they said that we're going all in on the metaverse. We're renaming the company Meta because we're going all in on the
9:53
metaverse and VR and AR. That I think is definitely definitely far more embarrassing. Far far more
9:59
embarrassing. It's a close competition though. Well, this this is you know this Apple this is
10:04
what famously what Microsoft used to do in a lot of other companies as well you know vaporware and we [snorts] I used to
10:09
do the roundup at Wired of of the Vaporware awards which we we went back and we looked at all the stuff that
10:15
would had been promised for that year and never materialized and there was a it was just an embarrassment of riches. It was a cornucopia of stuff [laughter]
10:21
but Apple uh you know rarely made it. Uh I think Jobs was very very strict about not announcing anything until it was
10:27
ready. um and would often pull stuff wouldn't he from keynotes at the last minute uh if something wasn't uh up to
10:34
snuff but saying that I actually can think of one good example where that was not true which is the original iPhone
10:41
you know the original iPhone even though that that was one of the rare cases where they actually managed to pull it
10:46
off you know when they showed that thing apparently the the famous keynote where Job put up the first iPhone a lot of
10:51
that stuff was smoking mirrors and they were faking a lot of these things and they actually delay it didn't come out until six months later and then
10:57
six months interim, they managed to fix all of the problems and and delivered on all the stuff that he he promised
11:03
there. If you watch the introduction, there's like a few times where he says, "Oh, and we have a calculator." And he just like opens the calculator app,
11:10
doesn't tap anything on the screen, and then just immediately exits. He does that for calculator and calendar and a
11:15
few other apps. That's because none of those apps were functional at all. He opened them and just opened to a like,
11:22
you know, static image of what they thought the user interface was going to be and then just left. Oh, they did the
11:28
same thing with the Apple 2. Wait, when they first showed that off, look at this great computer. It was like not real.
11:33
Mhm. They had to they had to finish it. Well, this was back at the West Coast Computer Fair back in, you know, 1970
11:40
whatever, right? They were using like dummy up things. Corrected. Apple actually does have a
11:46
long history of vaporware. Well, I mean, they fixed it by the time it came out. I mean
11:51
at the introduction of uh FaceTime in iOS 4 and the iPhone 4 uh Steve Jobs
11:57
said just decided to say and we're going to make this an open standard so anybody
12:03
can you know do that that was completely made up and the the FaceTime engineers were uh very perplexed when they heard
12:10
Steve Jobs say that because it was not an open standard and it couldn't be. Well, every everyone's ragging on Apple
12:17
about this delay and you know the more this week was was an exceptional week,
12:22
wasn't it? In AI doom. Um I mean there was there was two a couple of insiders.
12:28
There was that guy that quit um anthropic to go write poetry. Um
12:33
uh and there was another fellow who uh I can't remember which company he quit but he said that it's going to be AI is going to be worse than COVID for
12:39
decimating people's jobs. And it was it was just all doom and gloom. In fact, I felt very gloomy. It it put me in a
12:44
really depressing mood. Depressed mood to be honest. All this stuff was also the rain.
12:50
Yeah. Yeah, that didn't [laughter] help. That didn't help at all. And uh but
12:55
yeah, anyway, just I think the these delays with Apple I I think this there
13:00
is the amount of spending, the amount of boosting going on in the AI industry is
13:06
off the charts. And it's funny, Apple is the one company, I think, that hasn't
13:12
spent billions of dollars on AI infrastructure. There was there was a really interesting graph that came out
13:19
that showed the different capex spending and how much Google is spending on um you know uh data centers and Microsoft
13:27
and Facebook and all the other Amazon billions and billions of dollars. And then right at the very bottom of the
13:33
chart, there's Apple that has spent literally next to nothing. And people are saying, of course, this is genius, right? Because they're they're allowing
13:38
they're getting all the benefits because they're using Google's Gemini without any of the capex expenditure.
13:45
And it it you know, and and and the things that people are saying about these about AI and its impact, uh even
13:52
if it's negative, I think that's all part of the hype cycle, isn't it? It's it's it's it's trying to convince future
13:57
investors and their customers that this stuff is so transformative that it that the expenditure is justified.
14:04
Um, and Apple doesn't have to do that, which I think so I think it's interesting that Apple's being cautious
14:10
and is coming running into these roadblocks. And I think it's telling us that this stuff is dangerous and it
14:17
should be done cautiously and it should be done properly. And for one, you know, like every time I see a
14:23
delay, I mean, on the one hand, it's disappointing because I want this stuff to I want to see these features. They do
14:28
look transformative, but on the other hand, I want it to be done right. I don't want to be, you know, like messing with some open claw crazy, you know, run
14:38
a mark AI assistant that is going to ruin my entire life. If if Apple acted like every other
14:45
company that's participating in this space, they it doesn't matter if it barely works. They would ship it anyways
14:50
and just, you know, put a mediocre product that's dangerous out into the world. Certainly, everybody else is doing that. And also like we should we
14:58
should also be clear Mark German was the only person who said that you know Apple internally is targeting 26.4 they didn't
15:04
announce that you know we were just expecting it and Apple kicked the can down. It seems like Apple's learned
15:09
their lesson like after they embarrassed themselves two years ago. They're not okay. We're not going to announce it until it's ready and it's not ready yet.
15:16
So we have to wait. Yeah I I I saw that was a good comment. uh they know that the Apple has delayed
15:22
a a feature that it it hasn't actually said that was going to ship. Yeah.
15:27
I I find it pretty rich though. Apple employees testing iOS 26.5 say early support for these features exists but
15:33
they don't function reliably in all cases just like Siri right now. [laughter]
15:38
Yeah. I I mean maybe they should just revoke the damn thing. Yeah. Oh god. I don't know man. This is crazy.
15:45
I I mean I I I definitely understand like you don't want uh Siri to like start ordering,
15:54
you know, [snorts] bunch of Door Dash food, you know, you go out and there's like 600 pizzas on your doorstep, but uh
15:59
you know, gez, could they just make it just a little better? Just a little. And it sounds like that's what they're going to do is just like here's one little
16:06
feature that we're adding and then a little later there'll be another feature and then you know, whatever. So, but I
16:12
mean, you know, this whole thing was just Apple trying to act like, you know, like fake it till they make it with AI,
16:18
right? And they're they're still they're still trying to make it. You know what else is hilarious? I I for some reason I
16:25
was looking at a a story on Cult of Mac about the iPhone 4S and it was talking about how, you know,
16:32
basically, oh, you know, this this thing sucks and and I as I read through it, I'm
16:37
like, what? That's weird. I mean, I think of people liking that a lot. and and the but the guy that wrote this ends
16:42
up saying uh series in beta when you know when they release because Siri came
16:48
out on the 4S it's Apple talks about is in in beta and it's obviously they just
16:54
did this to make Wall Street excited about this phone and wow that's like a
16:59
flashback you know and even back then you know Siri works kind of some for some things
17:06
but not all things I mean the problem is we're all used to expecting more and more and more from these things and and
17:11
Siri seems to be delivering less and less and less as opposed to even just
17:16
working as well as it did five years ago or whatever. But yeah, like what happened to all of the Siri integrations with like wolf from
17:23
alpha, you know, where you could say, you know, plot this thing on a graph and it would actually like show you like
17:28
mathematical formulas or like the the the deep knowledge that it had of, you know, every actor's like heights and
17:35
ages and statistics and things or like its deep integration with Wikipedia. Like did they take those things out? You
17:43
know, if you if you look at old I was looking through my phone of like old screenshots of things I used to ask Siri
17:48
because I I actually uh jailbroke my iPhone 4 so I could get Siri early. Um
17:54
and I still technically run and I was like taking screenshots of all the fun things that I was you know having it answer and you know I I don't think Siri
18:02
does those things as reliably anymore. Yeah, it's really nuts. And uh I I mean it's it's also hard to tell
18:09
how our uh you know sort of experience of this stuff has changed, right? I mean if you think about voice recognition, I
18:16
mean 25 years ago, you had to talk one word at a time and it you know it could
18:22
be very good if you had a very expensive computer and and very expensive software, but one word at a time. Now,
18:29
every device can hear and understand what you're saying and answer questions and do things and so you get sort of
18:37
used to things working properly. And I mean, I see this with my wife all the time. She she's so used to talking to
18:43
Siri or Alexa that she just says, you know, hey, she just kind of like blurts
18:50
it out. She doesn't even like wait for the thing to like realize, oh, you're talking to me.
18:55
Yeah. because you're so used to using it and and it just so naturally works so many ways. But I don't know. So it's
19:02
it'd be interesting to see how somebody from, you know, 2015 thought Siri is
19:10
now. Maybe they'd go, "Wow, this is really way better." I think you you know that that it's true. It is, isn't it?
19:15
the the the uh you know the natural language comprehension and the fact that you can I have music blaring and the the
19:21
speakers the the microphones are so good that it can pick up you know something that you say in another room while it's
19:27
blasting out music. Um it's actually pretty remarkable how much like things
19:32
like natural language um understanding has improved in the last few years. It's
19:38
remarkable. Yeah, it's it's a it's a weird it's a weird ball of conflicting
19:43
uh sort of emotions and experiences. You know, you you expect everything to work better and better and then you start
19:50
pushing it and then maybe it doesn't work the way you want to or maybe it's just not up to like like I I mean, you
19:57
know, they have to hear you address them supposedly before they can start uh thinking about things. And so,
20:03
have you have you tried the new Alexa Plus? Yeah. Yeah. And honestly, I mean, the other day I came damn close to having a
20:10
conversation with it. It was it it was a little bit unnerving. Uh the wife and I
20:16
and somebody else was here. We were talking and I asked a question and then it it like answered it, but then it said, "Oh, do you also want to know
20:22
this?" I'm like, "Well, yeah, sure. Why not?" And it went on and uh then I asked some other question. It was kind of I
20:29
mean, that was I've never had that happen with Siri. Yeah, it was kind of weird. It's kind of
20:37
weird talking to a machine like real freaking people are talking to chat GPT and asking it you know for uh you know
20:44
psychological evaluations and mental health tips. So and then it asks you if you'd like to
20:50
buy any products on Amazon or purchase any new skills. [laughter] Yeah, exactly. Ads and chat GPT.
20:58
I haven't seen any of those yet. Yeah, I haven't seen them either. But I mean there's no way you know that the story I read about it was they're pretty
21:03
it seemed like right now they made all these promises that it's going to be you know pretty well firewalled but as you can see with what happened with Facebook
21:10
like how long is that going to last until it's like mining every intimate detail that you disclose to it and to
21:16
sell you stuff. I mean it it it's for sure it's going to fall. I mean that is a that is a good point.
21:21
Like we're comparing Siri against all of these other products that are loss
21:26
leaders right now. Chat GBT isn't making money. Alexa lost billions of dollars to
21:32
to to be as good as it is. And they tried, you know, shoehorning in a bunch of ads and telling it, oh, you know,
21:37
every time you give an answer, you also have to plug something you can use to to
21:42
send money to Amazon. But it was still losing money. Well, they kind of blew it, didn't they? Amazon was, I think, probably the the the leader in this space. And I I I you
21:50
know, I don't think they're the leader anymore, for sure. I mean they have the same problem of of Apple in that they were also you know they they were a
21:56
little after Apple but they were still one of the really early systems and so they have they built on a bunch of
22:02
infrastructure that's still a glorified like text adventure interface where every time you ask it it's trying to you
22:08
know rigidly like pieced apart like the syntax of what you're asking and you know it wasn't like a modern you know
22:14
LLM based thing probably yeah two two piece in a pod that's why they're behind
22:20
let's uh let's thank our sponsor and once again our sponsor is Cultter Bank. Thanks so much Cultter Bank for sponsoring this week's podcast
22:27
pockets. [laughter] Let's keep this one brief. Uh newsletters. We have this fantastic
22:33
newsletter and I say that without any bias or any kind of It actually is a really really good
22:39
newsletter. It's probably the best Apple newsletter out there. Um, I mean, one guy wrote to me, I I I thanked uh one of
22:46
the readers uh for for commenting uh regularly and he said, "I genuinely look forward to this email every day. I
22:53
genuinely look forward to it." That that was like that really warmed my heart. Um it's at newsletters.cultton.com.
22:59
Newsletters.cult.com. Please sign up. I'm sure you will love it. It's a bunch of great stuff. Uh
23:05
stories, Steve Jobs quotes every day. Uh polls, the people love the polls. We do
23:10
great polls. Um, our polls are the best. Newsletters.coltomite.com. Many people say these polls are the
23:17
best. [laughter] Yeah. Right. Let's talk about this. Uh,
23:22
this is here's another the same story. Unfortunately, we're going to be sound a little bit repetitive, but this is
23:27
unfortunately the same story. Apple's pulled the plug on its ambitious AI health and wellness coach. Um, but you
23:33
know, there's some good news. It's parts of it are going to be living on. Griffin, what do you tell us about this one? App. The AI Health Coach project,
23:41
internally codenamed Malbury and referred to as Health Plus, recently folded. The new plan came after longtime
23:48
executive Jeff Williams retired at the end of the year with services chief Eddie Q taking over the health
23:55
organization. The new focus is all about updating the existing health app
24:00
features. So Q reportedly said to colleagues, Apple needs to accelerate its pace and become more competitive in
24:07
the health space. He pointed to newer competitors like Aura Health and Whoop, which I've actually heard good things
24:13
about from uh other people, noting that these companies offer more compelling features through their iPhone apps. Um I
24:20
think Whoop actually their their whole stick is that it builds on top of the existing health app data, but the only
24:26
difference is that it actually gives you recommendations and says, "Yeah, we've processed all of your data, but like you
24:32
know, here's something actionable you can do with it. you need to the health app will just tell you, oh, here's your
24:37
average walking pace, but Whoop will say, oh, you should go for regular walks to, you know, change change those
24:43
numbers or be healthier. Um, so anyways, Apple spent years developing the AI
24:48
powered service, originally planning to launch it with iOS 26 last year. The debut was delayed multiple times before
24:55
the project was ultimately scaled back. Apple designed the service to generate detailed health reports and deliver
25:01
AIdriven recommendations to help users improve their well-being. And it would have combined new surveys and health
25:07
assessments with data from Apple watches and external lab reports. As part of the initiative, Apple built a content studio
25:14
in Oakland, California that's meant to produce educational videos explaining
25:19
medical conditions, training plans, and wellness topics. Um, and apparently that's uh still being saved. The video
25:27
content and certain capabilities such as suggestions based on existing health app data may still come sometime this year.
25:35
Another feature in development involves using an iPhone camera to analyze how a person walks. But I I guess the um AI
25:42
health coach, the AI doctor um EddieQ came in and took one look at that project and said, "No, no, you got to
25:49
get rid of this. It's no good." So, but it's a kind of a weird report because now but they're still going to
25:54
be rolling out small, you know, um, parts of it like Frankenstein's monster, you know,
26:01
this thing is good, that thing is good, but, you know, you get I mean that that's the good thing about a leadership change. A leadership change always
26:08
brings in, you know, a fresh set of eyes that's able to, you know, look at a project without bias and say, "No, this
26:14
sucks. That's not a good product." Yeah. Right. Someone that worked on it for seven years and and uh, you know,
26:20
desperately wants to make it work. Uh, that's a good point thing about Whoop. I was reading about Whoop. I haven't actually used one, but the the
26:26
the Whoop app um I think the big difference is the actionable stuff. Like I was reading about sleep scores. I I
26:31
became obsessed with my sleep score, especially because I'm not getting any sleep these days. But uh and in fact,
26:36
the sleep score is completely backwards on the Apple Watch. Like it when I get terrible sleep, it it gives me a it
26:42
seems to be when I get bad sleep, it I get a high score and when I get when I
26:47
sleep well, I get a relatively low score. So I I really don't know what's going on here, but Whoop will give you
26:53
recommendations for all these kind of different experiments. So, it'll tell you to uh I think it has this thing called a journal, the journaling some
26:59
kind of journal in Whoop that allows you to um record things like, you know,
27:04
caffeine, like your caffeine intake and oh my god, if if you stop drinking caffeine after like 3 p.m. in the afternoon, it'll tell
27:11
you what effect that has on your sleep score. Um or blue light late at night or um you
27:19
know, drinking alcohol. If you if you don't drink any alcohol, you can record this and it'll actually try to coach you
27:24
to set up all these different experiments and it and it coaches you to set up one variable at a time. So you can you you know it becomes clear what
27:30
the important thing is. Um, and that's supposed to be a really good feature. And that's the thing that's definitely
27:35
missing from Apple's from the health app, you know, like it tells you gives it gives you these scores, but and then
27:41
they do have some stuff, don't they? Some explan explanatory stuff that tell you about like hypertension or high blood pressure or whatever, but nothing
27:48
that really is actionable. And I wonder whether there's a liability issue here.
27:53
Medical [snorts] is a very touchy thing. This is one thing that when when Graham was talking about this, he was very very skeptical
28:00
about this whole AI doctor situation and like all the ways it can go wrong and all the horrible advice he could give
28:06
you. Well, my brother my brother's a medical editor and he said that um there are
28:12
laws in the EU that you're not allowed to use AI to to to produce um any kind
28:17
of um the kind of stuff that he's doing. He he writes for medical journals. uh he's often taking what doctors uh uh
28:25
write in their reports and then making it uh writing it for for more of a lay audience or more for a general audience.
28:32
And he said that there are laws that forbid using anyi in those kind of things because um you know that this
28:40
medical advice you're not allowed to use a machine to give medical advice. It has to come from a doctor or somebody with
28:45
you know uh some kind of credentials to who's credential to give this kind of advice. Um, and I wonder whether that
28:53
there's an issue that there that with this kind of thing that Apple's getting into. Don't know. [laughter]
28:59
I I think absolutely it's it's a it's a huge risk. I mean, there was a in terms of the medical industry. I always think
29:04
back to the story of like the the 25 which was like this advanced uh like machine that was supposed to like treat
29:11
cancer patients probably like you know specifically targeting like you know radiation treatment of certain things
29:16
and you know it was a it was a computer that was had a really poorly designed user interface and inundated the the
29:22
doctors and operators who were using it with like errors and screens and it just trained people to ignore all of them and
29:29
it was it was this major lawsuit because they were using this machine incorrectly. and blasting people with
29:35
like orders of magnitude more rad with more radiation than was like humanly safe and literally killing
29:41
people. And [laughter] I thought it would just turn you into the Incredible Hulk. You would think, but uh unfortunately
29:47
not. I guess I guess that was probably the problem with the machine. Jeez. Uh yeah. Well, I mean I I find
29:56
some of the health apps uh sort of observations to be useful, you know? I mean they [snorts] they give you like a
30:02
weekly summary like like for instance your blood sugar has been in this range
30:08
more percentage this week right all kinds of things that they tell you I although like you're talking about the
30:13
sleep score thing I I have found often times I get an alert that says oh you
30:18
know you had a really bad night of sleep because of interruptions that's why you have a sleep score of 49
30:25
that's what it says on my lock screen I tap on it and says you have a sleep score of 93 3. It's like, how could it
30:31
not know what what the actual slave score was? How can it be two different
30:36
things in two different places? That to me is is an example of how things can go wrong. And and you know, you don't want
30:42
something giving you bad information for sure about your health. I mean, that's
30:48
it's a one-way ticket to lawsuits and horrible horrible outcomes, but especially at the scale that Apple's doing things. I mean know the what is it
30:55
the two and a half billion devices in in use now uh in active use the scale has
31:01
got to be also making them very very cautious and all the different edge cases
31:07
um it maybe these things work well for most people but it's that 1% of times
31:12
when it breaks down um and 1% is still you know 25 million people
31:20
yeah right exactly [laughter] you know I mean all the stuff is like recommendations, right? I mean, it's
31:25
never a diagnosis. That's they're very careful with all this stuff. You know, the blood pressure
31:31
stuff like it's, oh, well, it looks like you might have hypertension. Perhaps you
31:37
should test it yourself or go see a doctor. Mhm. It and and I mean, I I think all that stuff's totally great and still yet to
31:45
hear anybody say that they've had uh actually had one of those alerts, but um yeah, we did. We one of the readers said
31:51
that they got one and they got it checked out and they did. Oh, they did have it. Right. Okay. So, I
31:57
I guess I didn't mean to say I've never heard it once, but I I haven't seen like a rash of these things, you know,
32:04
usually when they introduce some new thing, you know, some, you know, fall detection or whatever. Like headlines
32:10
around the world, you know, fall detection saved this this old lady who fell in her garage and would have never
32:15
been found for weeks. All kinds of things like that. um where the Apple
32:20
Watch actually saves people's lives. But I haven't I just haven't seen a single
32:26
news report about any of this about the about the blood specifically about that
32:31
blood pressure. Just wait until next September. I bet Apple will have a video on it.
32:38
And it's not the kind of thing that um I I actually did start to do some research into this. I pled a couple of people and
32:43
and I I think we got more reports of false alarms where they they said they got an alert and it actually turned out not to have uh hypertension that their
32:50
blood pressure was okay. Uh but you know it's a sensitive issue u medical issue. It's the kind of thing that I don't
32:56
think people crow about. It's not something they're very proud of is it like you know if they get if they get rescued out in the wilderness because
33:01
their Apple Watch um you know helped rescue services locate them. I think that often comes from the rescue system
33:08
themselves or it's not something that people keep quiet, but oh, you know, I got my blood pressure's through the
33:13
roof. I don't think it's something that people really want to crow about. Yeah, sure. I guess I I would think that
33:21
I don't know. I I I would expect that you would at least see some stuff on social media of people going, "Hey, I
33:26
got this alert, went and got it checked out, you know, thank god it was right and it it's really good." Or the
33:31
alternative, you know, which is actually sounds like what you have heard of people doing anecdotally.
33:38
I got this alert. I got it checked out. False alarm. I mean, you would think that people would either be, you know,
33:44
you know, writing letters of thanks to Tim Cook or uh blasting Apple for the
33:49
false alarm, but I just I guess you're not on the hypertension side of TikTok then. I I should go to the Reddit, you know,
33:56
the the hypertension subreddit and look around. Yeah. [snorts] Yeah. Good one. All right. Well, we'll do that for next
34:02
week. Yep. Let's talk about this AirPods rumor uh about the next AirPods Pro. This is kind of funny, [laughter] right, Louis?
34:10
Yeah. Uh new rumor says next generation AirPods Pro will come equipped with
34:15
cameras that can perceive a user's surroundings. Okay, [laughter]
34:21
I guess that's fair enough. Here's what the actual This is based on a single tweet, by the way. This this intro and
34:27
the it. [laughter] I'm just going to read the entire thing. Next AirPods Pro can
34:34
see around you at same price avail. This is from a leaker known as Kosutami.
34:41
Fairly decent record for accuracy, I believe. I I'm not so sure that I mean, it doesn't say that that quote is
34:46
translated, but it's so cryptic and weird. It makes me wonder what the heck is actually going on. Anyway, uh this is
34:52
the first time we've heard about about cameras, right? Um, previously one of our, you know, most revered Apple supply
35:00
chain analysts, uh, Mingchi Quo said that the 2026 AirPods Pro would feature
35:06
at least one infrared camera in what he described as a more significant hardware upgrade than the one that brought a
35:11
heartbeat monitor to AirPods Pro 3. Uh, he previously suggested these cameras
35:17
could enable hand gesture recognition and deliver an enhanced spatial audio experience when paired with Apple's
35:23
Vision Pro headset. Okay. Uh, you know, I'm not so sure that the world needs more people waving their hands in front
35:29
of their ears, but uh maybe maybe so. Um, and then there's, you know, yet
35:35
another person has weighed in on this Chinese leaker known as Instant Digital suggested different scenario. Uh, and
35:42
that was that instead of replacing the AirPods Pro 3, the 2026 model with infrared cameras would be a pricier
35:48
high-end variant sold alongside the existing version. So, I don't know what. AirPods Pro Ultra, AirPods Pro Max. What
35:56
are they going to call Max? Yeah, they already have AirPods Max, though. Yeah, AirPod. Well, why not just throw
36:01
more words, all the same words in the name of Max? So, just Ultra Max. What's between Pro and Ultra or no, Pro
36:08
and Max? We don't know. I guess no AirPods. It could become even more confusing. Uh,
36:15
it's already confusing that there's two AirPods 4, right? There's AirPods 4 and then there's AirPods 4 with active noise
36:22
cancellation. Mhm. Uh and you know anyway, the idea was that
36:27
maybe this would be uh fall somewhere between the AirPods Pro 3, which 2 250 and the AirPods Max, which 550.
36:36
Who knows? Um supposedly they're coming up with an H3 chip that's going to go in AirPods Pro. And uh they're also talking
36:42
about adding temperature sensors. Temperature sensors? Isn't that what an infrared camera is? Don't you remember
36:49
uh Predator? Uh I I I thought that this meant like
36:55
body temperature sensors, right? But that's what that's what you could get with a with an inf with an infrared camera. It would
37:02
it would it would you know it it it detects heat. So that's I think that's how they do heat uh body temperature
37:09
detection. You think maybe all these people are talking about the same thing but just in different ways and translated poorly and so they're
37:16
Yeah, because you know that that's what I Yeah, because the camera thing I'm very skeptical about. Um I think in
37:21
terms of like camera lenses, something that you could see um you know that maybe you could pull it
37:28
up on your iPhone and it would give you these you'd be like an insect, you know, or something or or or or a rabbit. You'd
37:34
be able to see in both directions at once. I can't imagine this being like a like a full size like take a picture
37:40
with it camera that you see. It's probably like even the people who are suggesting that it'll be like a full
37:46
camera. I don't think it's something that the user will be see it'll be you know used for some other related
37:52
ecosystem sort of feature like you know something to do with the vision pro. I think that's somewhat likely if they
37:58
were to have a camera what they would do with it but I I I I don't know honestly.
38:03
Maybe it would do a thing where uh it's it's it can tell that there's a person around you and it goes into transparency
38:09
mode or something like that as opposed to only going into transparency mode when you know you or a person talk loud
38:16
enough to trigger the sensor maybe. I mean or if it hears your voice but it says
38:21
that but it doesn't see a person around you. Like I I have this problem all the time where I'm letting my dogs out and
38:26
you know I have my AirPods with like conversation awareness turned on and then I say, "Indy, come here. Indie,
38:33
come here. Indie." And it takes a few times and then it pauses the podcast I'm listening to even though I'm not talking to a person.
38:38
Right. Yeah. That feature is helpful in some situations and not as reliable as
38:45
it would be. I I mean I I constantly walk around, you know, and like I've mentioned before, you know, both the
38:51
wife and I work from home, so there's a lot of situations where I'm walking around with AirPods in my ear or as I've
38:58
mentioned before, one AirPod, just one. [snorts] Uh and
39:03
she'll start, you know, talking all of a sudden like, you know, I realize completely normal
39:09
human thing. you walk into a room and say something, but it it it always takes a second for the AirPod to clip out and
39:17
stop yammering. And you know, I I am not like a uh a TV news anchor who can like
39:22
have something going in their ear and they can also talk at the same time. I don't know how in the world those I I think those people are freaks. I don't
39:28
know how in the world they do it. I if if I got something going in my ear, I forget it. I can't listen to anything
39:33
else. I can't it has to stop before I can have a conversation with someone. So, you know, may I mean there's
39:40
probably tons of situations where having this sort of like, you know, LAR on your
39:46
ears at all times could be helpful, right? I mean, Apple might come up with some novel ways to use that sort of
39:53
data. Yeah. And uh maybe it's something akin to um gestures on your Apple Watch that
39:59
it where it detects, you know, you're pinching your fingers or those other movements you can make. I've never
40:04
actually used those. Have you ever used those, Louis? Oh, you know, a couple of times, but it just always feels so
40:11
awkward and doesn't seem to really work that well. I don't know. I mean, I to be
40:17
honest, I mean, I don't there's not that all that many times where I need to tap the screen of my Apple Watch to stop
40:22
something. Maybe I should try it to stop a workout. That might help, but uh yeah, I don't know. Like ashing an invisible
40:30
cigarette, you know? It's it's kind of a weird gesture. Picking an invisible blueberry as you
40:35
described the Vision Pro. Yeah, it's all these weird things. So, I don't know what like if they're talking about gestures for my AirPods. I mean, like
40:41
what? I'm going to, you know, wax on to turn the volume up, wax off to turn the volume down. I I don't know that I'm
40:48
going to be doing that. Well, perhaps it would be like a DJ, you could scratch in the air.
40:54
[laughter] I will say after after I wear the Vision Pro a lot, um the one gesture that I really internalized is the whole thing
41:01
where you can now like look at your hand and then turn it over and see like a little floating clock next to your hand.
41:07
I catch myself doing that in person a few times. Oh dear. If I spend a lot of time in the Vision Pro. [laughter]
41:15
Well, the the one thing I love about the new AirPods is that the the um the touch controls are are so reliable that they
41:21
they they work every single time. um you know the volume up and the volume down. It's just what and you can even do
41:27
it with gloves. I do it with my cycling gloves on and and it works and it works the first time you touch it. Um and uh
41:35
uh you know like they they've perfected that so well and you know you can you can control like for music you can go
41:42
forward and back skip to the end of the track, skip to the beginning of the track, volume up, volume down. The one
41:48
thing I don't The one thing I wish you could do is scrub through a longer track or scrub to a certain point in a track.
41:54
Um, which uh actually I listen to BBC Sounds out quite a lot. And that has a
42:00
great control where you can skip forward about 20 seconds. So if you want to skip through a song, you just go click click click click click click click and double
42:07
click, you know, twice a bunch of times and it'll it'll loop forward. And and I was talking to Graeme about this. So I I
42:12
said, "Well, how come the BBC Sounds app behaves differently to all these other audio apps?" And he said, "Well, because
42:18
it's a podcast. They it's uh everything to put out on BBC Sounds, whether it's a podcast or not, is categorized as a
42:25
podcast. It's a podcast app." And those are the podcast in the AP Apple's API, the podcast controls allow you to skip
42:31
ahead or back uh 10 or 20 seconds, whatever it is, but you can't do that with um with a music app. So that would
42:39
might be a nice thing. That's about the only thing I could think of though with gestures. The that sort of fine control.
42:44
I can't really I can't think of any other gestures like at least for listening to musical podcast. You know, what other controls would you want?
42:51
I suppose it's possible that you know you could use like a hand signal, you
42:57
know, like like this to unlock a door. I mean, it wouldn't have to just be audio, right? I mean, if these if these are
43:02
persistent things, cameras, infrared cameras on your body, I mean, you what?
43:08
You could use it for anything. There are times when, you know, it's kind of inconvenient like raising my hand up to click the the button on the AirPods. To
43:14
go back to the same example, when I'm walking my dogs, like I might have a flashlight in one hand, uh, you know, the dog leash in the other hand, it
43:20
might be easier if I could just like do a gesture like with my fingers rather than reaching up and moving things,
43:26
switching things around in my hands to click the button. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. Do you remember the air? Do you remember those
43:31
air mice? mice that you would rings a bell
43:36
held up in the air. And of course, like, you know, that's because you can use camera control now, can't you? Airpods for to to take uh to to control the
43:43
shutter on on your iPhone camera. That's a good point. Maybe it's, you know, maybe I'm completely not thinking about the right thing. It's it's it's going to
43:49
be controlled for all sorts of stuff, isn't it? All kinds of apps and all kinds of controls for all all sorts of different devices.
43:55
It's getting a little weird. It's like we're all becoming bionic. Yeah. [laughter]
44:00
Let's talk about our setup this week. Uh we have we have a really good feature on the best multimax setups, which is like
44:06
uh workstations that feature two or more Macs. Uh and we're going to talk about this one. This one has one of the most
44:12
unusual keyboards I've ever seen. Uh but this thing is people are fanatical about this keyboard. Why don't you tell us
44:18
about Lewis? Yeah, I mean first up, you know, this is a list of top 10, right? And my first
44:24
question is like what in the world is is this is is this really a top 10? anyway
44:29
because it's kind of [laughter] it's kind of a barebones setup. But yes, at the center of this thing, aside from the
44:35
two Macs, there's a what is it? A Mac Mini or Max? I can't even tell. Mac Mini M4 Mac Mini and M3 MacBook Air. But the
44:43
the main thing in this is this weird keyboard and it's called uh it's called
44:49
a ZSA Moonlander. Never heard of Never heard of the
44:54
company. Never heard of this thing. Never. I I mean, I've seen keyboards like this before is it's split in two
45:00
parts with a cable running between it. Uh so you can disconnect the two part. In fact, that's that's how you like it
45:06
comes with a case so you can put one side in the case, one on the other side of the case. The cable that connects the two halves of the keyboard is really long, which
45:12
makes me think like how do they expect this to be used? Like one arm over here, one arm way over there. Like
45:18
Yeah, it is. It is rather long. I I mean, you know, it's an ergonomic keyboard. That's that's what the whole
45:23
deal is, right? And I can tell you that that is a much better situation having
45:28
your arms spread far apart rather than kind of jammed together. Definitely a
45:34
better situation for your your shoulders and everything if you're using a keyboard all day. However, this that I
45:40
mean that's like the beginning of the weirdness with this keyboard. This keyboard is like the keys are in columns
45:46
like straight up columns uh and you know not whatever you call the the standard
45:51
querty uh keyboard setup. These things are straight. Yeah, it's very It It looks just basically like a, you
45:58
know, a tic-tac-toe board only with like what, six or seven columns square. Uh or
46:03
a cross word puzzle, something like that. Um it's got weird sort of like I
46:09
guess thumb rest buttons, you know, like they're those things are weird. That's supposed to be the killer feature of these things is those thumb buttons.
46:16
Uh yeah, and it's supposed to I think uh what it it uh you know, so you can use your thumbs for
46:22
things like command and option, you know, uh command paste, command cut,
46:28
whatever. Uh which I think gives a lot of people problems when they're on a regular keyboard, but those those buttons there
46:35
make it much easier to to use your thumbs. And the red ones can be programmed. the the buttons aren't, you
46:41
know, towards the left corner and right corner of your keyboard because it's not a normal keyboard. They're towards the
46:46
center where your thumb naturally is. So, you know, I can imagine like if I have to do like, you know, command V, I
46:52
don't have to stretch my thumb way over here and press my finger over there. Like it it's right there under your
46:57
thumb where it naturally rests. Yeah. And this thing has like a, you know, palm rest on either side. So, you
47:04
know, you set your hands on there and then you use the thumb things. And I mean, honestly, if you look at those things, it looks like a pair of uh
47:10
kitchen uh you know, mitts, right? The the things you use to get a something hot out of the oven. Uh they also this
47:18
thing also bends. Like you can kind of tint tint it up and and make it so that the keyboard is is bent
47:25
or you know like the the bottom of it is up. It's very It's a very strange keyboard. And you're talking about that
47:30
red thing being programmable. You could program all these keys. Yeah. And they're they're mechanical key
47:36
switches. You can you could swap out those things, you know. You can get them with uh the letters printed on it or
47:44
not. It's also got RGB backlighting. I mean, this is like the most crazy
47:49
keyboard. I mean, I I'm used to looking at ergonomic keyboards. I've never seen anything like this thing. It's very very
47:55
interesting and weird. Didn't you have a split? You used to use a split keyboard like that, didn't you? Uh it was more like it wasn't completely
48:02
split. It was like split in the center and kind of spled out which was more comfortable than uh using a standard
48:07
keyboard for sure. But uh something like this I mean I don't know if you're a touch typist I don't know how easy it
48:13
would be to switch to this thing with that strange column layout but you know people on the the website for this
48:19
company. Of course, you know, we're they're not going to take, you know, use examples of people who hate the thing,
48:25
but, you know, people are raving about it, how great it is, how comfortable, and and how how much it makes their
48:32
workflow better. So, Mhm. The keyboard steals the show. Like, we're supposed to be talking about how,
48:37
oh, he has two Macs on his desk, but I mean, when you look at that keyboard, he also has a magic trackpad between the
48:44
two halves of the keyboard. Uh, so I guess he has, you know, equal access to the trackpad from either [snorts] hand.
48:51
Maybe he's ambidextrous. That could be handy. I I'm just imagining like maybe he could also have a mouse, but you
48:56
know, to the right side of the keyboard, you know, that that's another thing. They they talk about this using this for gaming. You can use only the left side,
49:03
disconnect the right side completely, so you can put your mouse in a natural place and, you know, more comfortable,
49:09
whatever, for gaming. Well, the first question I ask myself is, why does he have two Macs? Well, why do they have two Macs? I know. And there apparently is one's
49:16
for professional tasks and one's for personal. Yeah. Okay. Well, I mean, it's weird that the Multimax setup ends up being
49:23
all about the keyboard, but uh what are you going to do? I guess we're what we're saying is Dave needs to write up an article on, you
49:29
know, top 10 weird keyboard setups. [laughter] Yeah, absolutely. Well, Dave's a keyboard fanatic.
49:34
Yeah, he's written plenty about keyboards. You know, that's probably that'll probably be his next roundup.
49:40
Uh let's uh we've got a great comment from listener uh Connor Furlong
49:46
uh about last week's discussion um about killing AI killing jobs. Um and Connor
49:52
says um quote this idea that AI is going to wipe out white collar jobs is ludicrous. Think it through. Were it to
50:00
happen, it would decimate the economy and make tens of millions of people unemployed and the loss of highpaying
50:05
jobs. A country would collapse in that scenario and so would the companies behind AI. We live in a totally
50:11
integrated independent economy. AI replacing white collar jobs simply won't happen because it would be the business
50:16
killing the customer which kills the business. I think AI will basically continue to be what it is now. A tool
50:22
people use to help them do whatever it is they already do. It won't replace what people do in any meaningful way.
50:30
Uh that's optimistic. [laughter] It is very optimistic. Um, you know, I
50:36
hope I I obviously I hope and here's a good point, you know, like if it does decimate the economy, uh, if it if it
50:42
puts people out of work, where are where are these companies customers going to come from if they if everyone's begging
50:47
out out in the street, you know, no one's going to be able to afford to pay the AI companies that have put them out the work? But in the AI race, what we're
50:53
seeing is a race right now with, I think, a lot of reckless companies that are spending enormous sums of money
51:00
trying to find a return. And companies aren't I don't know if they behave rationally. I I don't think like you
51:05
know when when when someone when a corporation does things like laying people off, it's not thinking about the
51:11
broader economic picture. It's thinking about it in its own narrow selfish terms. What's best for that particular
51:18
next quarter profits and that's to please Wall Street. Yeah. Obviously, I would like to agree with Connor
51:25
Furlong and and this is an optimistic scenario that I that I could get behind. Yeah, it would be great. I mean the the
51:31
the thing that I I actually replied to him on YouTube. Um I I don't think it'll wipe out all white collar jobs because
51:37
really arguments to that effect even though they're kind of like you know doomer scenarios they're a kind of AI
51:42
optimism. AI isn't good enough to wipe out AI every white collar job. It's only
51:48
you know barely good enough right now to have a massive change to the software development industry even considering
51:54
how much tokens are being sold at a loss right now. But let's say that the software industry is the the canary in the coal mine. You
52:01
know, like uh Dario what's his face, the the the uh the CEO of um uh CL Claude of
52:08
Anthropic said that you know that his engineers are no longer writing any code
52:13
at all. It's all being handled by AI. And this and this is of course you know like uh people are people what it's
52:21
decimating I don't know if it's decimating software jobs within within anthropic because those engineers still
52:27
to make those macro decisions about you know what is it we're building what are the features we need and they need
52:32
someone and and they become more like a conductor but it's he he thinks it's killing entrylevel jobs entry- levelvel
52:39
jobs in programming are going to go away a lot of the ways that we've been seeing it talked about amongst you know Apple
52:46
software developer circles is you know independent developers like Steve Stoutton Smith who we you know used his
52:52
him as an example in last week's article saying oh yeah I was able to you know use codeex to make three apps from
52:58
scratch and then he also in the last week he went on a tear saying that uh he had codeex look at his codebase and then
53:06
convert it into like an Android codebase something that he could like straight up put on the Google Play Store but you
53:12
know again those are really small projects And another thing specific to Steve's
53:17
use case is that all of his apps are, you know, meticulously coded by hand
53:23
using uh, you know, UI kit, which is Apple's very, you know, more old-fashioned, dusty, but reliable user
53:31
interface framework. Uh, Codeex is much worse at writing Swift UI, not only because there's much less code to train
53:36
on, but also because Swift UI itself keeps changing and it's, you know, a much twitchier user interface framework.
53:42
Like the big problem, this is an older problem, which is why I I I'm not sure
53:49
it's going to like completely eliminate white collar programming jobs because there's already a bunch of, you know,
53:55
massive code bases out there that are too big and complex for a human to to
54:01
handle or understand like, you know, Salesforce or Facebook. You know, millions upon millions of lines of code
54:07
run these things. And yeah, you can have an an AI thing spit out a new framework. But what a lot of other software
54:13
developers are saying who've used these tools is that you ask an AI system to you know add
54:21
this new feature and it reinvents everything from scratch. It doesn't use the existing frameworks that it could
54:26
use to make things simpler. So you're just like multiplying and multiplying and multiplying the overall amount of code to degrees that like you know
54:34
nobody understands nobody can read or maintain. And so there's still going to
54:40
be you know the a need for highv value people at the top wrangling these things
54:45
reigning things in saying no you can't just you know do pull request after poll request of features that we already have
54:52
reimplementing. Well, true enough, but you know, like uh people I think are worried that you have a highly capable
54:58
system. Um, and yes, you're going to need a human in charge of it, but you're not going to need a hundred human, you
55:04
know, like currently, yeah, you know, a company employs a 100 people all up and down the from beginners to
55:11
experts and, you know, they could reduce their headcount to just a few experts
55:16
who are using AI to do all these tasks that previously were done by, you know, dozens of other people. And I I think
55:22
that Dario Modi was predicting um or someone else was predicting like within 18 months it's going to sweep through
55:31
accounting, lawyering, uh you know, all these different white collar professions where there's a lot
55:37
of sort of data. Look, a a lot of lawyers have used AI to generate, you know, court motions and
55:43
please and things like that. It has not gone well for those lawyers. I'll say that. There's a lot of stories of, you
55:48
know, judges reviewing these documents that are sent to them and they they basically respond with, "Yeah, half of these cases are made up. It's it's
55:54
hallucinating everything." The the big the the two sort of, you know, big picture problems that I'm seeing right
56:01
now are one, how are people going to learn anything? stories of of high school students and
56:07
and and college students who who don't take the time to read or learn the classes that they're doing. Like, how
56:12
are how are the the next generation of, you know, senior software developers going to learn anything if they're just
56:18
using Chat GBT to do all of their homework and projects for them? They don't read any coursework. They don't read any essays and their English
56:24
classes. They don't do their history homework, their math homework. They're just they don't do any of their programming homework, especially now
56:29
that these tools exist. Nobody's going to learn Swift anymore. Well, and and another problem is, you
56:36
know, yes, it works now, but a big part of the reason why it works now is there is a massive amount of training data of
56:44
bespoke human crafted code that it can train on. The more these things are out in the world, the next generation of
56:51
coding agents, how are they going to get better if they're training on mediocre
56:56
code that they've already generated two years ago? AIL, these are also big problems. Like you say, you still need an economy of humans
57:03
writing good, handcrafted, high-quality code to be training data. Well, I hope so. I hope so. I mean, I I
57:09
like I I had a bad week. I was very very pessimistic about the whole thing. Like, oh god, it's doom. Skynet is imminent. We're all, you know,
57:16
we're going to become um just flesh batteries inside some giant
57:22
vat to feed the the I actually think I was I was being too optimistic last week. like you know
57:28
nobody was saying this like at me specifically but I you know sentimental maston was like oh all of these people
57:33
who are against AI generated text and AI images are suddenly okay with AI generated programming and I was like I I
57:40
I didn't quite say that myself but that is something you know an opinion that I need to examine as I this is such a big
57:46
complex topic that is going to have massive ramifications like you know I hope we can be forgiven for not having
57:51
solid opinions at this point right yeah I [laughter] one of Maybe this is one of
57:57
the things you read this week, Lander, but I I read a thing talking about how the study of of AI use in in companies.
58:06
uh how how it basically like people were able to use it to do more things
58:13
but instead of that meaning like oh they have more free time it meant no now you you're dealing with you know seven
58:21
projects at once because the AI is helping you do it and and now you're even more scattered and you you know you
58:28
send a a prompt after work hours you know and you do all these it just it was basically saying yes it helps people get
58:35
more stuff done, but that's not necessarily a good thing. And it doesn't necessarily deliver better results
58:40
because it doesn't mean you'll have less work or less working hours. It means you'll just be expected to do five times more than
58:46
you've done before. I mean, it's like go go back to watch like the Jetson cartoons from like the 50s and 60s. It's
58:51
like [laughter] their dream of a utopia is, you know, somebody who only works like 2 hours a day, four days a week.
58:56
But no, we have all the, you know, magical automation that people in the 50s couldn't even dream of. And instead
59:02
we're working just the same number of hours, if not even more. Yeah. Yeah. And and this was basically saying
59:08
like because people are able to do more now they're going to screw up more because they're they can't pay as much
59:14
attention to any given thing. That was one of the doom doom reports. If you've ever been caught in the bureaucracy of
59:20
an online system that you need to be able to do to like access your medical records or you know your taxes or
59:25
something before, it's only going to get worse because now humans probably won't even be looking at that code.
59:32
There you go, Leander. Right back to the doom and gloom. [laughter] Precisely.
59:38
Um, yeah, I was going to I'm going to chip in some more stuff, but let's move on. Uh, we got a new way for us to uh
59:45
for for you guys to send us questions. Um, and this is using iMessage. So, please message us at
59:51
culttermacodcasticloud.com. [email protected].
59:57
And we'll put this in the show notes of course so you can see it. So, you can send us a text or send us an audio recording or even a video uh which would
1:00:04
be great. Like if we get a video of someone um making a comment or asking a question or or whatever you like, you
1:00:10
know, send us a short clip and and uh if it's good, we we might be able to put it on the show. And more importantly,
1:00:15
compared to our old system, we can actually text back now. Okay. So, yeah, people didn't understand that before
1:00:20
people would send us like direct questions like, "Oh, I'm sorry. This isn't something I can really ask on the show." And so, I guess you'll just never
1:00:26
know the answer. But now I can text back. It it goes to a spare iPhone set up. I guess Leander and Lewis, if they
1:00:31
have spare iPhones, they could sign into it as well. But, uh, I'll I'll be looking at those. You know, I'll do the same. I'll do the same. And
1:00:38
actually, talking of messages, we have a really great tip. Uh Griffin wrote a really good um post this week uh about
1:00:45
six great features in in iOS 26 in messages. There's there's a some six
1:00:50
notable new features. Uh but we were just going to talk about one particular one that Lewis made use of and and
1:00:57
thought like how did I never know this? It makes um it much clearer uh who
1:01:03
you're texting and which groups or which person if you if you fiddle this one surname.
1:01:08
Yeah. So now you can set a background in a chat. If you're on iOS 26, you just tap the person's name at the top or the
1:01:15
name of the group. This applies to group chats as well. And sort of like how you can rename a group chat and set the
1:01:20
picture for it. It changes it for everybody. You go to the backgrounds tab and Apple has a number of built-in
1:01:26
animated ones like sky, water, aurora, aurora borealis, and you know, you can
1:01:31
pick through a few different color options for each of those. They're they're they're nice and pretty. You can
1:01:36
um also choose your own picture. It has a suggestions where it sort of like how it recommends uh lock screen pictures
1:01:44
for you to use. It'll it'll recommend pictures that it thinks would make good backgrounds or you can you know tap
1:01:49
photo and choose from any arbitrary one in your photo library. Uh for some reason you can also generate one with
1:01:55
image playground. [laughter] I don't know why you would do that but the option is available. Um, so you know the
1:02:02
it's really easy to do. You know, you just again tap on the conversation name at the top, tap the backgrounds tab, and
1:02:07
then you can choose a background. And you know, the main benefit is that, you know, you set a specific one for your
1:02:14
partner and then you won't accidentally text the wrong person messages that you intend for them because you'll you'll be
1:02:20
able to easily identify, you know, which which conversation is which. Yeah. And it's it's great for like group
1:02:26
messages. I I can just, you know, like that's the the worst scenario. You're on
1:02:31
a group text message thing and somebody says something and then you mean to reply to somebody else about it, you
1:02:38
know, like, hey, can you believe they want to do this and no, you you put it in the main room, right? And it's like, oh god. So, this is awesome. I I I
1:02:46
honestly like I had never heard of this feature. I was thrilled to read it and learn about it and I instantly uh set up
1:02:53
set it up with uh you know, for for my wife and I. Uh, and and she goes, "How
1:02:58
how did you make the the text message blue or or not not blue bubble, but like has a blue background, right?" I said,
1:03:05
"Yeah, it's just right there. It's like so simple." And I had no idea it existed either, and it's it's pretty great. So
1:03:10
now, like, I know when I'm sending a text message to my wife, it's going to my wife, not my band or my group of
1:03:17
three people who are planning a trip for the weekend, you know? So, it it could keep you out of hot water. I think it's
1:03:22
a great tip. Yeah. Yeah. It's a classic email CC every, you know, CC all, isn't it?
1:03:28
Another one. I guess I'll just shout out another one because this this is what I'm looking forward to using, you know, as soon as all my friends are on iOS 26,
1:03:34
is you can do a poll in a chat as well. So, you can tap polls and you can add, I think, up to 12 options. You can vote
1:03:41
for multiple things. So, you know, if you can't figure out where to eat or what to do for a weekend, just send a
1:03:47
quick poll and then people can vote and you can quickly figure out, oh, you know, most people are okay with this thing. We know we'll go fencing, you
1:03:54
know. [laughter] Fencing, right? I sure means fencing stolen goods,
1:04:01
right? Yes. [laughter] Not getting stabby.
1:04:06
Mhm. [snorts] Excellent. Good tip there. Good tip. Yeah, there's there are so many features out there now. I mean, there's so much
1:04:11
stuff that's hidden. It's great to get these things to to, you know, to know about these little things that make you
1:04:16
make your life easier. So, if you'd like to see the six others, you can uh read the article in the show notes.
1:04:22
That's right. Or watch the video. You made a short video about it, right? Mhm. Only I think two minutes long.
1:04:27
Pretty quick. All right, I think that's a wrap. Thanks very much for everybody for listening.
1:04:33
Please [music] leave us a fivestar rating on Apple uh or a review in Apple Podcast or share it with someone who you
1:04:39
think like [music] to listen to us. Um text us or send us a video question on iMessage and again it's cult of
1:04:44
[email protected]. cult of Mac podcast at icloud.com to ask your questions for the show. [music] You
1:04:50
can find Lewis at uh on Twitter at Lewis Wallace. Griffin's on Macedon at DG Griffin Jones and I write the [music]
1:04:56
Cultmack newsletter every day which is at newsletters.cult.com. So, thanks a lot. Thanks everybody for
1:05:02
listening, for watching and we'll see you next time. Have a great weekend everybody. Goodbye. See you.