Apple Creator Studio, ChatGPT health, and iPhone 18 rumors on the AppleInsider Podcast
80 min
•Jan 30, 20263 months agoSummary
The AppleInsider Podcast covers Apple's new Creator Studio launch, AirTag 2 improvements, and emerging privacy features in Apple's custom modem. Hosts discuss the rollout challenges, design team changes with John Ternus, and broader implications of Apple's business practices amid political controversy.
Insights
- Apple Creator Studio's complex rollout reveals challenges in coordinating multiple app bundles and identifiers, suggesting even large tech companies struggle with coordinated launches despite resources
- Vertical integration of Apple's custom modem enables privacy features (like Limit Precise Location) that were impossible with third-party modems, demonstrating competitive advantage through hardware control
- Tim Cook's attendance at political events creates tension between Apple's public DEI commitments and pragmatic business relationships, illustrating the gap between corporate values and executive actions
- AirTag 2's incremental improvements (4x precision range, louder speaker) represent necessary product maintenance rather than innovation, reflecting Apple's strategy of steady iteration over disruption
- Subscription-based software models are economically necessary for continuous development, but Apple's messaging around free vs. premium versions of Pages/Keynote/Numbers created user confusion during rollout
Trends
Custom silicon expansion: Apple's vertical integration into modems follows successful patterns with chips, enabling privacy and performance features unavailable with third-party componentsPrivacy as competitive differentiator: Apple positioning itself as the privacy-first alternative amid concerns about data collection by competitors and government agenciesCreator tool consolidation: Apple bundling professional creative apps (Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro) into subscription service to compete with Adobe and capture creator workflowsRollout complexity: Multi-app ecosystem launches reveal operational challenges even for well-resourced companies, suggesting industry-wide coordination problemsPolitical-business tension: Tech executives facing pressure to maintain government relationships while preserving corporate social responsibility messagingAlternative platform migration: TikTok uncertainty driving user adoption of Bluesky, Skylight, and other emerging social platformsDevice framing as standard practice: Screenshot beautification becoming expected in app marketing, creating demand for templated device mockupsModem-level privacy: Next frontier of privacy protection moving from app-level to cellular infrastructure level
Topics
Apple Creator Studio Launch and Rollout IssuesAirTag 2 Hardware Improvements and Precision FindingApple Custom Modem Privacy Features (Limit Precise Location)John Ternus Design Team Leadership and CEO Succession PlanningPixelmator Pro iPad Launch and Feature ParityFinal Cut Pro and Logic Pro iPad UpdatesPages, Keynote, Numbers Subscription Model TransitioniPhone 18 Camera Rumors (Variable Aperture, Teleconverter)Dynamic Island Design ChangesChatGPT Apple Health Data Integration and Privacy ConcernsApp Store Nudify App Approval Process FailuresTim Cook Political Event Attendance and Corporate Values ConflictTikTok Algorithm Transition and Data Center IssuesSebastian DeWitt Halide App Designer Apple HireDevice Frame Templates and Screenshot Beautification
Companies
Apple
Primary subject; launches Creator Studio, releases AirTag 2, develops custom modem with privacy features, manages des...
OpenAI
ChatGPT integration with Apple Health data raises privacy concerns; CEO donated $25M to Trump administration
Pixelmator
Pro app now available on iPad as part of Creator Studio; discussed as alternative to Photoshop and Affinity
Final Cut Pro
Professional video editing app added to Creator Studio with new warp tools and background processing on iPad
Logic Pro
Professional audio editing app added to Creator Studio with feature parity between Mac and iPad versions
Adobe
Implied competitor to Apple's creative suite through Creator Studio bundling strategy
Affinity
Mentioned as alternative creative app that lacks some features compared to Pixelmator Pro
TikTok
U.S. ownership restructured with Larry Ellison acquiring 15%; algorithm transition causing technical issues and user ...
Bluesky
Alternative social platform gaining users migrating from TikTok; hosts discussing presence there
Microsoft
Mentioned as alternative to Apple with different privacy practices; handing encryption keys to FBI
Qualcomm
Previous modem supplier; Apple's custom modem enables features impossible with Qualcomm chips
ByteDance
Retains 19.9% ownership of TikTok U.S. operations following restructuring
Icon Factory
Collaborating with Halide on design elements for camera app updates
Moment
Makes external lens attachments; mentioned as comparison to potential Apple teleconverter technology
Squarespace
Episode sponsor offering website building and domain services
Copilot Money
Episode sponsor providing finance management app with AI categorization
Tempo
Episode sponsor delivering pre-cooked meals ready in two minutes
People
Wesley Hilliard
Host of AppleInsider Podcast; leads discussion on Apple products and industry trends
William Gallagher
Co-host; provides technical analysis of creative apps and design; active on Bluesky and YouTube
John Ternus
Apple executive taking over design team leadership as part of CEO succession planning
Tim Cook
Apple CEO; attended Melania Trump film screening amid political controversy and ICE enforcement concerns
Sebastian DeWitt
Co-founder of Halide camera app; hired by Apple to design team; previously worked on iCloud and Find My
Ben Sandofsky
Co-founder of Halide; confirmed app will continue development despite DeWitt's Apple hire
Alan Dye
Former Apple design leader who left; replaced by John Ternus
Jeff Williams
Previous Apple executive in design chain reporting; design team now reports to Ternus
Johnny Ive
Former Apple design chief; his departure created design leadership vacuum now filled by Ternus
Larry Ellison
Oracle founder; acquired 15% ownership stake in restructured U.S. TikTok
John Prosser
Leaker providing incorrect iPhone 18 mockups; being sued by Apple over previous leaks
Ice Universe
Leaker providing more credible iPhone 18 design rumors including smaller Dynamic Island
Quotes
"You deserve nothing. You're not entitled to anything. We live in a world determined by monetary value and if you're not willing to spend you're not going to get it."
Wesley Hilliard•Subscription model discussion
"I think it's great. And nothing better than Pixelmator Pro on the iPad, which I know must be the thing you tried first because you've wanted that for years, haven't you?"
William Gallagher•Creator Studio discussion
"This is vertical integration. Apple couldn't do this with a Qualcomm modem previously."
Wesley Hilliard•Modem privacy features discussion
"Tim is doing the correct thing from a business perspective. He's keeping Apple out of it. They get to operate as is."
Wesley Hilliard•Political controversy discussion
"The ultimate goal is to not have people carry wallets, even though that's a very ambitious goal that has to have government backing and probably just, it's not going to happen anytime soon."
Wesley Hilliard•Digital wallet discussion
Full Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Apple Insider Podcast. This is your host, Wesley Hilliard speaking. I'm joined once again by William Gallagher and our sponsors this week are Copilot Money, Squarespace, and Tempo. We're going to get into it this week. There's a lot of little topics, There's nothing too crazy going on as we prepare for February as we get towards Apple's big Apple intelligence releases. But we did finally get Apple Creator Studio and Apple snuck out an AirTag update. So all of that will be covered. But first, Apple Insider Plus is going to be discussing Apple's responsibility when it comes to Sherlocking features and services. is it really its job to take care of other businesses in light of this current lawsuit with camo the uh app suing apple over continuity camera i don't know if we'll get into that in the show but that is the post-show content uh if you subscribe to apple insider plus of course you get that after show and an ad-free experience so stick around for that william how are you doing today I am delighted and perplexed, and I managed to break Creator Studio. I'm all over the place, but absolutely riveted by Pixelmator Pro on the iPad with my Apple Pencil, except in 24 hours, I have lost my Apple Pencil three times and found it twice. It's here somewhere. That's how I am. So you need to get an Apple Pencil bracelet attachment or something. Yes. A lanyard with a pen. Yeah, well. Some sort of holster. If only you could, you know, attach it to your iPad in some magnetic way. No, I got it. Guys, you know, I'm going to patent this. I'm going to go make it and make a million dollars. You just, it was one of those badge clips that clip to your shirt, but it's retractable. And then it just zips back to your chest every time you're done using it. Okay. So, f-dung into your throat, if you're not careful. Okay. Forget useless devices. that's probably going to make nobody any money. Apple made all of the money as usual. Earnings is out. We're not going to get into it. This was a record breaking quarter as Apple predicted previously. They said this was going to be their greatest quarter ever. Go look on Apple Insider's website. We got into the details there, but today we're going to focus on earlier this week, which was the AirTag. Apple calls it the AirTag second generation. It's not the AirTag 2 as far as parlance goes i we're going to just stick with air tag because i mean i don't know apple does this weird naming stuff in the future it could come out with an air tag 2 or they'll call it air tag 3 or new air tag who knows but it's simply just air tag but william how do you feel about this news do you care at all about this new device i'm a little conflicted about it my first thought was because uh the difference is that it's louder you can hear it from slightly further away and precision finding works and so which uh correct if i'm wrong i when i leave it in my car the air tag the first part is just general maps taking me to roughly where it is and then when i get quite close it switches to that hazy screen that eventually becomes an arrow and then tells you you're five feet near and all that stuff and the fact that you can do that from slightly further away that appeals to me particularly because the one failing i keep finding with air tags is in UK car parks, partly because they're often underground and you have really thick walls, partly because iPhone usage is less in the UK, I think, than the US proportionally. It struggles. It can get me to the car park and then not really any further. So I wondered, I still wonder whether this will be any better. But then also there's an issue. What you just said about the name it's just being called an air tag i know if i go to an apple store apple online and i buy an air tag now it'll be the new one but if i go to amazon i see no way of knowing if it's a new or running out of stocks of the old so well for sure it'll be labeled i mean at the very least apple keeps on top of its amazon listings uh the biggest problem you're going to run into is if you walk into a physical like target and walk to an air tag you're going to have to check the box for second generation because Apple's plain white packaging is not going to be very forthright there. But yeah, overall, this looks like an interesting update. I'm kind of glad that it's finally here and it's not this gigantic whoop-dee-doo. I mean, it's a necessary device in their lineup. I think it's actually been really interesting, especially with their luggage updates and being able to have their location shared with airports and everything. um anyone who travels knows that uh luggage with air tags get treated a little differently than without these days because they just don't want the hassle of the person saying but i know where it is um so so how do baggage handlers know which because i mean i obviously hide my attack inside because i figure they'll fall off this stuff not so much the baggage handler um more so if you walk up to a desk and say hey my luggage is missing and it has an air tag they start to get it yeah instead of leaving it on the tarmac for four hours and lying about it being lost um anyway uh beyond airline stuff airtag 2 it's got the we won't call it the youtube processor because legal reasons apparently it's the ultra wideband 2 chip inside of their second generation it allows for further away precise finding i so it's basically within 50 feet on the original air tag now 200 feet that's 15 meters and uh 60 meters for the other system that nobody cares about so i didn't appreciate it was that big a difference that's great yeah 200 feet's quite a lot um So, you know, four times as much. This means that the little arrow fuzzy thing is going to show up sooner. I think that's very important, especially like you say in a parking lot or – but, I mean, it depends on what you're trying to find, right? So this is – they also went in and glued the speaker down in a way that's going to be harder to remove. And you'll pretty much break it trying to get the speaker out. I think I figured that out. good um it's also much louder i think as a new chime as well uh that's easier to hear twice as loud in the casing they redesigned the casing to allow that sound to escape easier so uh lots of little things here but it's the same design same exact thing the accessories all still fit um and yeah i i don't know it's an air tag too you don't if you have 15 of these things you don't have to go buy 15 new ones. Um, the air tag is going to continue working fine. This isn't one of those things that's going to just run out of software updates. I'm pretty sure they're just going to work forever. I don't know how you break an air tag other than chewing on it. Um, the one thing I will say is if, if you have a set of keys, go upgrade, get upgrade your keys to airtag too because then you can find it better right but if you have an airtag on a bicycle or a piece of luggage yeah maybe not as necessary because that is a giant thing and that precision finding is less necessary because you can physically see it with your eyeballs right so uh use your better discretion but going forward it'll be this product and yeah interesting have you ever had any problems changing the batteries on these things no but i i will say that the screwing mechanism is annoying it's kind of spring-loaded and kind of fights you sometimes yeah i just i bought a pack of four once and i changed when it came around changed batteries i changed three of them fine couldn't get the last one in i even went into an apple store handed it over to them and they hand it back to me instantly opened like i was an old man who couldn't go and i was i've just done three give me a break here but yes also i keep getting the battery into that yes yeah that that you always have to pay attention to the battery i never remember which side goes which way um i i will say that i mean obviously all the rumors were dumb we keep hearing about um like magsafe compatible or apple watch charger compatible air tag and that would just make it so complex and so much bigger that it's not going to happen i've seen some interesting um products that are apple find my that recharge like via magsafe and stuff so that's all fun but um i think the simplicity and the price of air tag makes it just a very good quality device and people are like where where's apple's card uh thing and I don't think that's necessary. Um, you don't necessarily need to put an entire air tag in your wallet. There's so many wallets with built-in find my, my current wallet is the size and shape of Apple's, uh, MagSafe wallet, but it has find my, not, not the fake find my work. You know, it remembers where it was last attached, but it has actual find my built into it. and that's really nice and it's rechargeable via little pogo pins which is annoying that it's its own charger but still very easy to maintain i don't think apple needs to release that but in the future it would be nice to see maybe not so much a card but real fine buy in a wallet and that wallet then recharging over a magsafe that would be what i would design if i was apple i'm trying to remember i do actually take cards out with me i have this really cute little wallets. It's done in the shape of a Mac folder. It's great, and I carry it because I like it more than I ever use it. Here in the UK, everything can be done on the watch. Just every contactless thing works here, so just don't ever need it. You still need some sort of identification, correct? I suppose depending on the things you buy, but I obviously look older than 21, so that doesn't come up a lot. Yeah, the US has a law requiring even if you're 90 to be carded. So, um, yeah, it doesn't matter. Yeah. I know it's probably looser elsewhere, but here, some people don't care. Um, technically you can get fired if you don't card someone, especially at liquor stores or restaurants, but, uh, I'll still sit down from time to time and not get carded. But, uh, yeah, generally speaking, you have to be carded in the U S and, uh, carrying an ID is a requirement to purchase any liquor. Now. I mean, I'd rather have it on me than not need it, but yes, that's just one of those things. You pretty much have to have it. I look forward to the day if ever that i get to use my phone as a digital wallet and just show or tap something to prove i'm over 21 but there's that drummers just an aside every now and again for some reason and truly who knows why if i use visual intelligence it comes up and say you can only use chat gpt if you're over 13 i don't know why it suddenly decides to tell me that and won't work till i try it again but okay so i will say the airtag 2 is fine airtag whatever we want to call it it's fine it's a good update um no need for fanfare some people are like oh we're gonna get max this week didn't happen um just one piece of hardware thrown out there no apple tvs no home pods we'll see uh we got a lot of time left before uh the end of uh the spring season which which is where apple releases these types of products um i will say though it's always fun talking about things like wallet because it's kind of like optimizing for an obsolete product. The whole point of like Apple's digital wallet ecosystem is to get rid of the wallet. And here we are talking about Apple innovating in physical wallets. So that's kind of why I think Apple isn't bothering because the ultimate goal is to not have people carry wallets, even though that's a very ambitious goal that has to have government backing and probably just, it's not going to happen anytime soon actually this reminds me um a couple months ago i was saying oh it would have been over christmas and various birthdays around here i was suddenly using apple wallet on the iphone for tracking orders and i was astounded that i'd never noticed before it did it's right there and it's hidden under the ellipses but now if i go into my apple wallet even though i have various orders outstanding there is no order category at all so it just wasn't presenting before i'm not as blind as i thought i was well yeah that's not get off topic that is the frustrating thing about that feature because it is an excellent feature it auto populates from mail of course it has to be an apple mail uh gmail doesn't count but um it will it makes mistakes i'll buy things on the playstation you know video game console digital media and it'll say your order is pending in Apple wallet and as if it's going to be a delivery. Um, so that, that detection isn't always perfect, but you can just clear that and that's fine. I'd rather it make that mistakes and miss something, but, um, yeah, Amazon packages, things that you just buy in general, uh, are all tracked there. UPS, USPS doesn't matter, uh, shows up in Apple wallet. And what's nice though, even though it is hidden in an ellipsis, which is annoying, if there is any changes to your transaction, um like a pending delivery it shows up in notification center and if you open the wallet app it pops up as a toaster above the cards so it's very um assertive with it if there's anything that needs to be seen but if you want to go find it manually yes it's behind an ellipsis and i think that's very dumb but moving on we have a lot to talk about with apple creator studio so you got we this all launched as we record yesterday we've barely had uh time to play with it i had a full shift to play with this william how's it going you're you're a video guy you're an audio guy you've got you've got a lot of uses for this stuff i do i'm a little bit all over the place because um uh i i think the rollout was really strange i mean uh this morning as you record it if you were on the mac and you went to the mac app store and searched for apple creator studio you've got nothing unless you clicked on the other section that says just show me iphone and ipad results then you've got the whole thing nicely presented all this stuff this yeah a few hours later as we record mac app store same search now you get up a great studio on the mac bit but not when you go into the iphone ipad thing and you were getting results sooner than i was it's like the role the role it was so strange i actually contacted apple and asked them and they insisted no it's all fine it's just a bit busy that's what they said and okay but i don't remember a rollout of operating systems being this weird and it got to a point where um it seemed like you had to just know that final cut pro was one and when you went into that it would show you the rest or whichever one you went into you got the lot but then also i mean i've now got the lot um i can't remember which app i was in now i think i was updating pages it led me to all of them we got the nice list but two of them um it would have been uh motion and compressor had an extra get in app purchases next to them even though it knew i was subscribed to the rest and i'm sorry just get all the contents out in one go at one point um about an hour ago now as i was trying to do something in Pixelmator Pro quickly, it told me Pixelmator Pro could not be opened. I had to try quitting it, relaunching it, and then suddenly it worked. So there's something weird. Plus, I have loads of Stream Deck buttons to do all sorts of things. And of course, they're opening up the wrong versions of the apps now, and certain keystrokes aren't the same. And wow, this is a whinge. Can I spin it around and say that apart from all that, I think it's great. and nothing better than Pixelmator Pro on the iPad, which I know must be the thing you tried first because you've wanted that for years, haven't you? You've got it now. Are you happy? Oh, yeah. No, Pixelmator Pro is great, especially on iPad. I mean, I've loved it on the Mac. I've used it on the Mac because it was the only place that you could. And every time I did, I was just reminded of what was missing from the other apps, like Photomator or Affinity. and I'm glad to see it pretty much fully featured on iPad. I mean, I'm not aware of anything that's missing. I'm sure someone can tell me, but it's great. The design is well done. I like how everything is situated. Everything gets out of the way. Liquid glass actually does a lot of good work here because now the content kind of bleeds through the background of some of the toolbars and units like that. It's all just very nicely done. um like you i haven't seen anything actually missing from the two versions of pixel made a pro in fact actually the opposite there are new features now on both of them like the new warping tool is amazing just seeing what you can do with that uh but i am seeing uh differences like there's an oddity with um you know the content hub that's available in uh pages numbers keynote all that sort of stuff but it isn't in pixel made a pro uh there's nothing at all to stop here i mean contractually as part of your subscription to load up an image in pages copy it and paste it into pixel made a pro except when i was doing that earlier i went into the wrong pixel made a pro and i got the image uh with loads of apple creator studio watermarks all over it and things so well i've got rid of the old ones these will be done but i don't know why that feature isn't in everything i mean we've got image playground where we don't want it why not content hub yeah i don't know what apple's doing there clearly um there's got to be some licensing thing because um pages keynote and numbers they're they feel different as far as creative apps they're useful they create slideshows but pixelmater pro feels more like this is going to create an output that could be used for business. And I think that changes the licensing maybe. And there's got to be some weird legal reason for that. Maybe it's going to come to Pixelmator Pro later. Maybe they just have time to squeeze it in after doing all this interface stuff. I will note Pixelmator Pro has a lot of great templates, but they do have a devices template, which was in the Mac version, but it still shows the old iPads, the iPhone 16 and 16, and only the Apple Watch Ultra. Like, it's missing things, and it doesn't have the modern devices, but I really hope that's something Apple adds to it. And that's something we can discuss in the after show, too, is, like, what parts of this is going to get Sherlocked, or what parts of this is being Sherlocked, Sherlocking other Apple I sorry my goodness What parts of Pixelmator Pro and these other apps are Sherlocking previously easily available third apps right Like I looking at a device framing app that I use that I really, ShareShot, that I really like. And I'm gonna keep using it because honestly it has all of the devices and a lot of options. It's a very good UI. It's very simple to take that, create my image, export it as a PNG, transparent, open Pixelmator as a new project, super resolution it so it fits in a 4K screen better, and then add it to that project. But I wouldn't mind removing the middleman, but nothing against ShareShot. But this is one of those things we'll get into in the after show of feature versus product. and I feel like this could very easily be a better made feature, especially since it's Apple. Like they have access to all of these assets. And I will note the one thing that I really like about the device frame assets in Pixelmator Pro is that it's layered. It has like a screen layer, a buttons layer, and then it has a built-in widget for replacing the display with a different image. Like all of that's very clever. And I think that Apple could build on that. And alternatively, I wonder if others could build templates that can be submitted that people could download and add to their Pixelmator library. I think that would be really interesting for someone to work on. But, yeah, overall, I'm very happy with Pixelmator Pro. I'm using it with a trackpad on an external monitor through my iPad Pro. And it's so functional, so useful. i should say just in case people don't go around taking many screenshots what we've just been describing there is you take a screenshot of your iphone your ipad or whatever it is and pixamate pro has uh versions of the of the device so you can put that screenshot into everybody seems to love that and my thinking is just i know what the phone looks like i just want to see which button you try and tell me to press so i'm less concerned about it yeah i think i think the thing here is these, you don't necessarily need it so much for Mac screenshots because they're, you know, their landscape, they're going to be around 16 by nine, 16 by 10. So they'll easily fit within our website's format, but an iPhone is tall and it's harder to represent without just having a vertical cutout and a 16 by nine square. So I think people like beautifying their screenshots using these frames. I used to have an app on Mac that was really cool. It had like these angular frames and would automatically stretch and skew screenshots to fit these alternate angle views. That was part of the Mac paw lineup of apps. And obviously I don't have it anymore. I wish I had something similar to it on iPad, but I can do without. It's just device framing. It, it makes it stand out because anyone can take a screenshot and set it into, uh, like a 69, I am 16 by nine image and throw it on a website. What sets it apart is, um, taking the time to put it in a frame and create a background that makes it stand out. And, uh, I do this for a lot of things. Like I was creating images yesterday for Apple health and had a screenshot from the Apple watch and put it in an Apple watch ultra frame and put it by the iPhone on a, you know, gradient background. And it looks great. Like it, it's not an, it's obviously not an Apple PR image because Apple uses white for their background. So it still looks like an image that we created, but also photographing that same image would take a lot of time and set up and editing and you would get a similar result, but what's the point? Like you get some depth to it and that's great. And there have been situations where a photograph of the phone with the image is better to use. I've seen you do that a lot. I think that's the better way to go. But in a pinch, I think software screenshots are just fine and framing them that way. And people are used to seeing them that way because of the app store and stuff like that. So I don't think it's that unusual. No, one thing I also do, they're actually not for Apple Insights. So why am I telling you this? But my physics is YouTube channel if i'm showing a lot of things on the iphone i will go through the whole process screen record a lot and then just pop the phone on a charger run the screen recording and film that and i have had people ask me how are you pushing the buttons without touching the screen and you can't tell people it's ruins the magic but yeah i like it anyway so we're talking about the device frames and things and you're very persuasive there i will do it more but i will say um pixelmator pro as an app right because i've been using affinity forever um so i've got a good idea of these ui paradigms i've used photoshop ages ago um like a decade ago but um the thing with pixelmator pro versus these other apps and i haven't used logic or final cut because they're outside of my wheelhouse. I want to experiment with them, but it's just, I don't really have anything to put in them. Um, but pixel mater is definitely where I live and photo mater is still useful. What's interesting is, uh, between the two, pretty much all of photo mater is in pixel mater pro. Um, the difference being photo mater is basically much faster to get from, I have an image that needs edited, uh, like a hue saturation lighting, uh, like LUT level editing style. go in, click a photo, do that editing export is going to be much faster through Photomator versus Pixelmator, create new image, then do the same edits. And it's not that much different, but I don't mind keeping both apps around because it's like a paradigm shift. Like I, if I'm here, I'm doing this versus if I'm here, I'm doing that. Right. Anyway, Photomator, or I'm sorry, Pixelmator Pro, I think people who are just now trying it out who don't know, everything you think should be there is there. It's just kind of hidden in the very Apple style, right? Like one of the things I noticed was I want to be able to granularly select things using the color picker tool. So there's a select option and you go to, okay, select area by color and you get a little eyedropper. And if you just click on a color, it'll select everything near that color that's the same color. and that's how you can like remove backgrounds from images very easily. The background removal tool is great. It's a one-click background removal, but it isn't always perfect. So being able to manually select the background using the selection tool is great. But there's a tolerance. You can say, okay, I want you to select this color, but only if it matches it within a 3% threshold, a 10% threshold. How do you set that threshold? You click and drag the eyedropper and then it changes the threshold and then you let go and then it selects it. Right. It's amazing. Yes. Yes. That's different. Normal other apps, you have a slider that you'd select the threshold and then just click. So stuff like that is everywhere in this app. I'm discovering more every day. But just keep an eye out for all of those menu options, all those floating windows. And I'm sure this is going to change over time, but I don't mind it. It's just, it's different. Something to learn. This episode is brought to you by Copilot Money. Now, I've mentioned before my adventures with money. That sounds so bad. I just mean here in the UK, there's a new making tax digital program coming in that I have to comply with. But since I last mentioned that, you should see the online, the TV, the billboard ads here for all sorts of firms selling something or other to help those of us who now have to comply with the new program. program. And that's all good. I'm not knocking anyone who's teaching us how to comply. But what I found to be absolutely key, the core single thing is that I've now got to be much more vigilant with all of my finances and worse, vigilant all the time. I now have to report tax every three months instead of panicking once a year. And you know where this is going. 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But with Copilot Money, if you think of something you need to add, well, you just reach for your nearest device, whatever it is, wherever you are. And while, you know, you would expect entering your transactions to be quick and easy. Copilot Money also then takes what you enter and uses AI to just automatically categorize everything. So you see where your money is going. Try Copilot Money free with a one month trial on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Web Plus for a limited time. You can get two months free when you sign up at copilot.money.com and use the code Apple Insider at checkout. That's copilot.money.com and the code Apple Insider. New uses only, web only, your money beautifully organised now across every device. And thank you to Copilot Money for supporting the Apple Insider Podcast. Something, because you said you don't use Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro. Final Cut Pro, I mean, it's added some amazing warp tools, just like Pixelmator, really, well, in theory. It's also got background processing. So you finish your video, you want to export it. Up until yesterday, as we record this, you had to leave your iPad open and running while it did its doings. now, though I actually haven't tried it out yet, you can go away to another app. So that's great. But it's still not exactly the same. You can't split a video audio track into two. The best you can do is duplicate the track and then disable the video on one, disable the audio on the other, if you want to move things around, which is pointless, really, given how easy it is on the version uh and then logic pro i found there is just a couple of little tiny bits that are very useful that aren't in the ipad one but otherwise it's fantastic on the ipad and one of the big bonuses for me is i spent all this time considering i had i'd subscribed to final cut pro on the ipad did i also subscribe to logic could i justify it when i have it on the mac already um now it's like the decision's been taken away from me i've got it it's on this piece of glass and it's brilliant So for all my complaining about little tiny bits, I'm ecstatic they've got all of this. Yeah. Freeform's coming to Apple Creator Studio in the future. It's not here yet. Pages number Keynote got those updates, but the apps are still free. I'm seeing some pushback around the internet saying they don't want to update to the new version because they're afraid it's going to change. These apps still work the same as they always did. I think you might get hit with a toaster somewhere saying Apple Creator Studio exists, but once you dismiss it, it goes away. I don't know. I think it's fine that these apps got premium or premium upgrades through Apple Creator Studio. It's something I've mentioned before, but this is a complex topic. But very simply, you deserve nothing. You're not entitled to anything. we live in a world determined by monetary value and if you're not willing to spend you're not going to get it it's just how it works it it gone are the days that you could walk into a store and buy software but the problem is people have already forgotten that once you buy that box software it's immediately obsolete because you take it home you install it and then there's uh in the next year or So you're going to get an OS update that breaks something about that software. And you have to go back to the store, spend $300 more and maybe pray that there's some sort of exchange program, which there never was. So you end up spending that same amount of money every few years. Yes, you get to own the software, but you never really owned it because the only way to keep it working was to not upgrade your computer. and then now you're operating on an old operating system with old features and old and missing vulnerability and security updates just to make sure that the thing you bought at walmart still works right so it's things have changed apps require continuous development because we're getting continuous updates and every update could potentially break an app but continuous updates require people, which requires money and you have to pay for it. Right. So I'm kind of honestly tired of hearing the subscription bad thing because it, it, as much as it's not ideal for customers, I will say it is net negative. You are losing customers are now spending more money on software versus one-time purchase. That, that is not the argument I'm making. The argument I'm making is, is we have to feed developers and keep them alive so they can continue developing apps. we have to give them money otherwise we don't get these things i don't understand why that's such a controversial complicated concept but i don't think i could possibly agree with you more if i tried but you have brought up something else that does bother me even though i think things are infinitely better now but before creator studio came out when there would be an update to pages or keynote or whatever next time you open the app it would say oh you can go to the app store and get a new version and you'd go, yeah, whatever, now, later, something. And today and yesterday, I found going into pages and numbers, it's a different message. It actually says this version will no longer be updated. Go to the App Store to get the new one. Now, you can again postpone it, and they do mean the new version of the free app. But maybe it's because this is the way I was rolling out. When I hit that, okay, go to the App Store, I went to the Creator Studio version. And in fact, that's actually how I got my first Creative Studio app for it. So I think if you know you don't have a need for Creative Studio, you've still got to be careful what you do and what you're clicking on. Well, okay. So here's the thing, though. I think Apple wanted to have a hard switch for Creative Studio to make sure that people, for whatever their reasons, personal, business, whatever, need to hold on to these old versions, have the option to hold on to those old versions. And because honestly, I think it would have been worse to have just updated everyone and not give anyone the opportunity to downgrade or have the other apps. Apple made this clear when they announced this, that these are distinctive apps. But that does not mean Pages Keynote numbers are going to no longer be free. The new versions are still free and they will still be operated outside of Creative Studio. They will just contain language within the apps and be displayed on the Creative Studio page when you go to get them. Um, but when you're using the app, you will not be required to have creative studio to access them. Uh, yes, maybe it might be frustrating if you're not subscribing to see, Hey, there's this thing where you get these templates and AI features or whatever. Uh, if you upgrade, uh, I don't think it's going to be in your face. It's not going to be like you're editing a page and then it shows up as an ad, uh, inside of the toolbar or something like that's not how it's just, it's going to pop up as a toaster every now and then i think it's going to be in like the settings menu i haven't checked this out on mac or whatever but um obviously i'm subscribing so i'm not going to get these anyway but i if it's like apple's other areas where they do this kind of thing it's not going to be that obtrusive and it's these apps are going to continue being free so don't worry about that i would agree with you and i actually expect even just a few more hours i will agree with you When this rollout is sorted and the oddities have gone, then I expect it will be clearer. And I have no problem with seeing there's a free and there's a paid one. I'm in the free one. I click the button. It takes me to the subscription one. It wouldn't be a paid one. That would be wrong. But the thing is, it was for me. So that part of the rollout was wrong. And I could see other things were that have been fixed. So I expect it will change. But I thought that was one of the poorer parts of creative studio design. this is where i'm confused because you click it and it takes you to the app store is it still not a get button i actually can't remember now but it wasn't there were not two versions of it it was only the one where you get subscription and that's that maybe i'm not being clear that is how it's going to be is there's only going to be the apple creator studio option there isn't going to be a second option to download the the legacy version that you have on your mac right now that's telling you, hey, you need to go update to this new version, that will no longer be in the Mac App Store. That is... No, hang on. If Apple is maintaining these apps in the free version, they should be available. It shouldn't route through to somewhere else, should it? So those old versions are no longer, that's what it said, it's not being updated anymore. No, no, no, no. The unusual thing of the message was that it said this version is not being updated. but apple is updating the free version of pages the version of pages the free one has been updated in the last couple of days so in the free one there was like some confusion should have taken me to it i think the rollout was ridiculously poor for reasons like this um yeah to be clear about the rollout uh nobody actually i don't think anyone really cares about how software is rolled out we've seen apple sports and invites and things like this uh and i'm mentioning i'm sorry now i'm gonna disagree here because yesterday you would search for apple and you wouldn't get it yeah that's what i'm saying yeah people care no no that's that's a point um i'm trying to make nerds care because we knew it was coming and immediately went wanted to download it the second it came out. Apple does this with everything. When sports was launching, when these other apps were launching and becoming available, we've seen this every single time of, do you have it yet? Do you have it yet? No. It's a slow rollout and it's phased to make sure server load isn't overwhelmed by people like us who are rushing out to get it the second it comes out. And it took time I think by the evening it was fully rolled out globally and I was not seeing as many complaints No it still isn Right here in the UK the results are wrong So this is horrible. Well, I mean, the App Store, this is a different conversation. Because the App Store's results being botched is a separate situation from the rollout being complete. Hang on. apple pushes we've got a new apple creator studio you get your apps through the app store but the app store does not return a result for apple creator studio i well i care about that and i agree i went there the first second but it's been 24 30 hours now still wrong for and i don't just mean it wasn't there i mean it was wrong right now you do this and you get the result but you do that and you don't and those two things have changed in the last few hours so yeah this is not just traffic they have done something odd here and i i understand because there's like nine or ten apps involved in it that it's much more complicated than one rollout and then uh what eight nine versions that are free or paid for i'm immensely complicated but it hasn't done well i just do think after a while it'll be easier this episode is brought to you by Squarespace you know this already Squarespace it's been around forever it's it's the all-in-one website platform powering countless sites recommended by everyone but if you think of it as an easy way to make website well you're right aren't you but until you're actually using it I think you may well not appreciate that really it's an entire platform designed to help you stand out and succeed online. 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And thanks to Squarespace for supporting the Apple Insider podcast. yeah i think that this will all come together and make sense there will be a an ad on apple's website that you click that takes you to an app store page that has the apple creator studio to be to be clear there is an apple creator studio page in the app store it is not easy to find um i don't know if it they're even advertising it on the front page of the app store yet uh there there isn't, there doesn't appear to be an Apple news or an Apple today tab, a story yet either. So that, that's, that's kind of the point I'm trying to make is, um, Apple's done this in the past of having more of a soft launch. And when they're ready, um, they're going to like maybe tomorrow, as we record Friday, um, there will be an Apple today page in the app store and a bunch of flags on the front page of Apple Creator Studios here, right? None of that is out yet. And that's kind of my argument I'm making is, yes, it was available as of Wednesday. And I agree with you, maybe the rollout from our perspective isn't that great, but maybe this is just, I don't know, maybe this is just what it takes to get this kind of rollout done with all of these different app bundles and identifiers and update changes and all of that stuff. And then once it's all complete, that's when they'll roll out the public facing, here's an ad in TikTok for the Creative Studio with a link to the App Store that lets you get the subscription, right? Because that's what you're talking about is right now, if you are a person who knows about Creative Studio and wants to get it, there's not an obvious way to do so. And I agree with you, that's dumb. But I also agree that this will shake itself out. And this is maybe Apple being as big and rich a company as it is, maybe it's a weird to say like oh why are they having these problems uh they shouldn't they be able to solve them but maybe this is just how this kind of stuff goes i don't know but um maybe i'm just going easy on them uh but anyway hard okay yeah between us yeah there's something right there there's somewhere in there uh but yeah this my point is is outside of our sphere um it's not that big a deal and once you have it you have it it's not like the apps are broken or anything but i agree the rollout could have been better why announce a rollout uh why announce a date and not have that be the launch date because that's kind of the point i'm making it hasn't launched go to apple.com it's not there like also there is on apple's website a page all about creator studio and it was saying available 28th of january and i noticed it was saying that until basically the 29th of January UK time. So it's now just taking the date away, like available now, but it doesn't have a link to where you would go. Yeah. See, Apple has their webpage updated for Valentine's day. Yeah. Which changed since yesterday. Cause I was on here and it wasn't here. So yeah, the main apple.com website does not have anything about creative studio. and you go to the apple store website uh where they want to take your money there is not a mention of creative studio uh it's not in the app store front page the only place i've seen it pushed by apple is in my email i got it in the inbox of hey this exists no i didn't get that interesting no hang on they're pushing valentine's day already i mean i've booked my valentine's day dinner i thought i'm getting ahead here but it's what two weeks away from easter candy's been in the store since like december 27th so okay moving on uh so we're gonna get into apple creative studio infinitely here i it's it's a it's a good it's a good setup i'm i'm excited to see it evolve i hope more apps come to it i hope more features get announced for it i think the apple intelligence push we're going to see in the spring is actually going to bring more features to apple creator studio uh image playground is hilariously stupidly implemented in it i i love that i can generate a terrible image of myself and insert it as an image into a thing and like remove the background i i don't know what that's going to be for maybe i'll make tim cook yell at something i don't know but like it's just very silly um but moving on apple design i wanted this as a kind of a subtopic because we got information from internal Apple. John Ternus is taking over the design team. This hasn't been officially announced by Apple, but apparently this is to get him in front of more divisions to let him, as he's prepping for CEO. Do you have any opinions about this? Oh, I see. I didn't appreciate that. Of course, I mean, I heard John Ternus design team. We knew Alan Dye was leaving, so somebody had to go into it. And we also separately keep hearing John Tennis is likely to be the next CEO. But it never occurred to me that he was being groomed by putting in front of different departments. Actually, yeah, that makes sense. Especially if that happens to be an area he hasn't worked in before. That's clever, actually. if we follow the history here after i've left and we got basically we got rid of that um c-suite executive position for design uh and then what was his name you just said it he just left alan dye yeah i've already forgotten him uh he he's yeah he he left apple um leaving that position kind of vacant but not really because someone already did replace him whose name i'm i am not remembering names today uh someone's already replaced him and the thing is is uh the design team for since i've left has been reporting to either an svp or cook himself so this isn't unusual that that's the case but um it is just once again right jeff williams was the previous one uh who was that so the chain was design team jeff williams tim cook and of course Williams leaving. Ternus is now taking over. I think this makes sense. Like we said, this is helping him get in front of other channels, but you know what? If he's the guy who hired Sebastian DeWitt, then I'll take it because Halide, um, the makers of Halide Lux is an excellent, excellent, excellent pro camera app, right? This, I love my default Apple apps, but this is one of the, a few third-party apps actually keep on my phone because it gives you absolute control and very interesting features for the iphone camera app and uh the design is minimalistic like apple but better it has all the controls you need at your fingertips right like it's very smartly done and sebastian de witt was a co-founder uh with alongside uh ben sandofsky and yep i guess sebastian de witt got aqua hired not aqua hired because that would require a purchase he got hired by apple he used to work at apple on the mobile me icloud team and he also yeah yeah he also worked on find my um and he helped uh with design elements back then he's he's had posts in the past talking about um coming up with the different like skeuomorphism kind of things back in the day, but, uh, I don't know if he was always design or if what he did in those departments, but now he is part of the Apple design team, which is very interesting. And he even changed his bio to say, uh, Apple design. So very interesting. I reached out to Ben Sandofsky to ask, cause I knew that, um, as Apple does, once you become part of Apple, you disappear publicly. So getting ahold of Sebastian DeWitt, I felt like would be impossible. So I reached out to Ben and he told me not to worry. Lux isn't going anywhere. Halide's not going anywhere. In fact, they just announced Halide Mark III and they've partnered with Icon Factory for some design elements. And I think the, I guess the Icon, and they're also collaborating with a colorist named colin kelly uh so for different aspects of the camera app so 10 years of halide and he says that they're going to continue and i mean i know that he has a couple of employees there i think katie rose uh there's one other person i believe who's escaping me but um yeah i'm glad to hear that that team's going on they're excited uh for um sebastian with's move and uh yeah, good news all around. 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Tempo delivers nutrient-packed meals that are already cooked. So the speed is great. The taste. I'm looking at a pasta bake recipe as I talk to you, and I so want it. Plus, the portions are just right. And I don't know how else to say This is real food. It's also real food in 20 new recipes every week. Maria Sharapova swears by Tempo. And, you know, I'm exactly as athletic as she is, clearly. Look, there are Tempo Meals for her, for me, and so surely also for you. For a limited time, Tempo is offering listeners 60% off their first box. Go to tempomeals.com slash appleinsider. That's TempoMeals.com slash Apple Insider for 60% off your first box. TempoMeals.com slash Apple Insider. Rules and restrictions may apply, but thanks to Tempo for supporting the Apple Insider podcast. I'm trying to remember the name of who else was Evan Tandley, wasn't it? Didn't she? when Johnny I've got to say, maybe Johnny Ive is now long enough to go that when you start saying when I've left I think it's you for a minute I've rather he was placed by Alan Dye and I think Emma Tanley and she went quite a while ago I don't know where to it's just interesting that particular division of Apple and what happens next with all of that design is so important but I really hope that, I mean obviously he's part of the design team. There's multiple facets to it. I really hope that he can put some of his magic into Apple's camera app. Um, it needs work and needs UI work, but also just in general, I think he's a good designer and I I'm excited to see what he does at the company. And I don't know that we'll see anything specific from him. And I was 27. Maybe if there's a redesigned camera app, we can nod in his direction. Uh, it's, it's not too late, so to speak for something like a specific component like a camera app designed to change by wwdc obviously nothing major is going to happen between now and then but um because june is not far away and they're already they're locking that stuff in other like they'll they'll begin filming the keynote in like april so actually that reminds me there were there was a sudden rumor this week about a hardware a possible hardware change it was suggested that Apple is considering adding a teleconverter to the iPhone 18 Pro. And just like you, I know that a big change can't happen this late, but maybe in the future. What is a teleconverter? So some sort of magnifying lens, I think. This is the problem with a lot of photography. Different phrases can be used for the same product, but it sounds like this would just be a physical sensor improvement to the telephoto lens. When I read about it, it seemed to me that it was like, isn't it a Moment that does or did, I don't know which, put a lens on the outside to change the zoom? There are several companies that do that now, but yes, Moment was one of them. So Apple would be somehow wedging something else inside. Where do they find the room? Well, I don't know if they would wedge anything inside or if this would be, I don't know the specifics it's calling for, but it sounds like it could be an alternative to the Tetraprism system for telephoto photography. But again, I may be wrong about that. This may be lens-related. I can tell you it's like one little shard of a rumor that came out, and no one else is talking about it except this one. Smart Pikachu on a Chinese social media site, Weibo, has said it, Along with the story saying that a variable aperture is confirmed. I don't know how strong a confirmed that is, but I keep hearing about variable aperture. I believe that one. We're highly expectant of variable aperture. I think that that is like an absolute, it's only going to be on the main camera, but I think that'll be really interesting. I think camera control will get its heyday for this feature because this is, you know, controlling the quote unquote zoom because all you're really doing is switching lenses and switching how you're using those lenses. That feels a little fake. And the dial on the screen is better for that, honestly. But I think camera control being used to control the focus will make this feature much better. you do a lot more photography than i do but you actually because of you i'm taking more so i'm keen to see what happens as well yeah so speaking of the future iphones we saw a mock-up poorly done funny maybe it wasn't poorly done this is the this is a debate but we saw an off-centered smaller dynamic island shown by a leaker and uh cool i centered it in my mock-up because i don't think it's going to be off center but who knows the camera i don't know if anyone pays this much attention but the selfie camera is not centered on the iphone it's so this could be the reason why but even more silly the selfie camera is on the left side so it wouldn't be off center to the right which is what this mock-up was showing uh right so i'm following this but okay i i think they just messed up the mock-up ah oh you were looking at it from behind i i don't know this ice universe um i i want to point out uh something that we've i some dots i connected that have other others have connected but i didn't until after the previous episode but john prosser's leak um we now understand how he came to that conclusion but he came to a very wrong conclusion he's seen the part that was leaked you use this as an image uh in our Oh, yes. The Face ID module. Yes. But the module, he got backwards somehow. He saw the camera as being on the left side of the module, but that's the Face ID module. All right. With a gap in the middle. That very easy to do Well no because the camera looks like a camera But that but that fair it is not the greatest image of in the world of this product but um anyway like it he he we now kind of understand that that mock-up that he made in that whole video is just outright wrong apple is not going to put the selfie camera on the left side or whatever off center of the iphone um it will still be in the center the face id components though are going to be moved from the center to a corner. It doesn't matter because it's blasting you with infrared and that the camera will remain basically where it is. There's a gap in the middle. And so maybe this is what Prosser got right, but it's obvious that that gap exists because of the new sensors in the rear camera and the variable aperture system. So that all checks out. It's just the mock-ups that Prosser showed are wrong. and I'm leaning towards Ice Universe here. If we do get anything, it's going to be a smaller dynamic island. Although, John Prosser is being sued by Apple over leaks. Is this his way of laying some pipe to say later, clearly, I don't have internal access or something. I get it wrong. I don't think that's how self-sabotage works. Okay. Hey, I'm the leaker who gets things wrong, is not the identity you want to have. True. Although, sadly, Prosser is the leaker that gets things wrong. He is firmly as unreliable as some rando on Twitter at this point, at least in my opinion, because the things he's willing to run with and basically not vet makes me incredulous of everything he says because if he's willing to air Steve Jobs glasses, a legacy edition or flat-sided Apple watch, then what is he also getting wrong? And so, yeah, it's not, not, not a good place to be in. Uh, I do feel poor, feel bad for Prosser. He was better when he stuck to, when he had a YouTube channel that did really good filmography and just did Apple news. like if he just did that and his weird toilet squad thing that he does he would have an audience and he would be fine i'm not going to watch it but this this rumor thing and this begging for attention anyway we're not going to talk about prosser apple intelligence no we're not going to talk about apple intelligence because this this doesn't have anything to do with that this has to do with ai right so we're going to wrap up this episode got a couple of quick topics here we saw chat gpt get this integration through an api call not apple apple didn't make this this was open ai making this you can give your apple health data to chat gpt and it will parse it for you and it will give you like a grade on your health apparently um turns out this is all uh well bs i wanted to curse but doesn't work we knew it wasn't going to work but now chat tv just has all your health data so that's wonderful but basically people testing this if you just keep asking it over and over again for a health score it'll just give you a different score every time it's not deterministic ai is not deterministic it will never anyway it just don't do this uh also in ai news um there are still nudify apps in the app store there some of them are disguised some of them are just outright hey you can do this with this app and they're just there and getting through the approval process which is clearly mostly automated um apple removes those apps as they find them but still they shouldn't be getting there in the first place it's not very good look when you're basically going to regular or saying in order for us to operate as a company we need to have control of the app store and here we are so yeah but this gets us into a very brief controversy corner i don't want us to run long this week we're very quickly approaching an hour so if you're listening and you have no desire to get into this skip ahead william do you have any opinions about this particular situation well the particular situation must be uh tim cook having to sit through the, excuse me, being invited to the White Air screening of Melania. When I heard he was going and he was there, I actually, how does your mind work? I genuinely felt sorry for the guy having to do this. But of course the thing is, how could I possibly, even for a moment, forget this? That was the same, it was hours after the second person was killed by ICE. and it's yes this seems to be in uh straw camel back people have mocked him cook before for yeah the golden trophy stuff like that but this time he was really getting slammed for attending more than anybody else who went the ceo of open ai gave trump 25 million dollars so and and cook attended a movie i i just i i understand the whole thing around this it feels hypocritical apple stands on these foundations they celebrate martin luther king day put his image on the website and every time cook is in association with trump at all it feels more and more fake and hypocritical because that is not what the company stands for but here at apple insider We observe these things over a long period of time, and we've seen Apple do the same things with China. We've seen them do the same things with other countries and leaderships that are behaving in these manners. It's not an easy job to have, but Cook, I think, is doing a good job of walking this weird line of keeping Trump satisfied. Because Trump now gets to say, look, Apple's here with me. but you go to Cupertino and Apple has changed nothing about its business, not a single iota, except the public image is being harmed. And Apple, one of Apple's most important products is its public image. Yes. Wasn't it recently voted the most trusted company again for the 19th or 20th year in a row. And I think in most cases deservedly so, but so I want to, we don't need to get into it. His name is Alex, uh, uh, Freddie, Alex Freddie. So I just, I just want to say, right. That was horrific. And our administration lied about what happened as they, the same thing they did with good, like terrible, terrible situation. Um, and even as the administration says they're backing out of Minnesota, uh, there's no evidence of that. In fact, they've increased, um, their presence. There's like 3000 ice people there. They're waiting outside of school bus stops to grab parents who are trying to get their kids from school. Right. Like there's a five-year-old in prison in Texas right now. Right. Like it's it's incredible, incredibly disturbing what's going on. And Tim Cook happened to have been invited, didn't reject it, showed up. And while he was already there, Alex Preddy's murder occurs. and I don't know what you do in that situation. Tim, maybe this is one of those times where Tim should have just pulled the plug and said, sorry, I have another commitment. Clearly the administration should have canceled the screening. That should have been the correct answer here, but he didn't, he stayed. And there are photos of him with various evil, mean people and Cook is smiling and people are like, look at him. And my answer here is once again, we all hate this. I hate this. I don't want Cook to have to do this. I don't like that. it's a requirement, but it is a requirement. And I want Apple to continue operating as it is. I'm aware of Apple's power here as a global entity, as this rich entity, uh, literally has a seat at the dinner table by the president. I get it. Has that position cook even released this internal memo that was clearly going to leak saying he was heartbroken about the situation that he spoke to the president about it and was glad that the president was open to discussion over these matters, which I don't think is incorrect. Trump loves talking about this stuff. Whether or not he's going to do anything about it is a different story. There were very empty words. So it was very, it was a very disappointing moment once again for Tim Cook and Apple in this situation. But I will say once again, here we can move on. I think as fans, it's a tough situation it, but this too shall pass. I personally separate what's going on from Apple because Apple has separated itself. And I know that's tough because you want to blame them. You need someone to blame. You need someone to be angry at, be angry at the administration, be angry at what they're doing and putting ourselves in this situation. Be angry that Tim Cook isn't doing something about it, even though he probably has some power to do something, but also understand pure pragmatic, logical side of things. Tim is doing the correct thing from a business perspective. He's keeping Apple out of it. They get to operate as is. They continue to have DEI. They're celebrating Black History Month. They released the unity band. They're going to have a pride band in June. they're still you know supporting their trans workers all of that is true but we can also be upset that cook is doing what he's doing the thing is and i'll close with this i see people saying well i'm just gonna give up apple i think that's silly because your other options are the companies who are bending over backwards to change their companies to fit within trump's agenda whereas Apple is attending a movie, right? So I understand that it's all bad, but in this situation, we really do have to pick the lesser of two evils. And if you're going to vote with your wallet, my advice would be if you really need to do something, don't go throw your MacBook in the trash can. Keep what you have and just don't buy the new thing for a little while. And then when this passes and your conscience is clear, you can finally spend your money or you can justify it in some way. But skip an iPhone. Skip a Mac. Vote that way because moving to another platform, not ideal. I mean, Microsoft has to do this because they have this data. But, like, we just found out they're handing over encryption keys to the FBI. But it's because they have the keys, right? Apple doesn't. That's the difference. But that's what I'm getting at, right? where are you going to really be other than moving into a cave in the woods, which I guess is an option. I'm very unhappy about everything, but you mentioned DEI in there and that Apple has kept that and others haven't. That actually brings me around to your point. But let's say that's the end of Controversy Corner because there's one last thing you were going to talk about and I'm really keen to know about, the Apple C series modem. um what i understand is that there's something in it that's uh privacy related and i don't understand how it's a modem what can it do so this is interesting we don't have all the details yet uh even because apple does have a page about it but it's it's very limited in detail on how this actually works but apple now makes its own modem it's the c1 the c1x c1 is in the iphone 16e c1x is in the iPhone Air and the iPad Pro. That is it. So the iPhone 17 Pro that I have does not have this feature, but I'm sure the 18 will. So I'm excited about it. But as of 26.3, you will get a new feature called Limit Precise Location. Now what this does is, correct me if I'm wrong, This might be the last line of defense as far as privacy goes for Apple users. We have app tracking transparency for the web. We have these lockdown modes and fully encrypted iClouds where even the photo, like the FBI can't even get access to our photos and stuff anymore. There's no access to encryption keys. We have obfuscated location data. So even apps that get your location, get generalized, like so on and so forth. contacts like Apple has nailed down almost every area in the phone and around it and services for user privacy and data. Even Apple iCloud private relay helps keep you private when you're using the internet through your internet service provider can still see what you're doing, but it's obfuscating some of the websites you're visiting almost like a VPN. The websites don't know where you are because you're getting a more generalized geographic location data that way through your IP address, right? So every facet, there is one left, William, and that was the modem reporting exactly which cell tower you're connecting to and your precise location through that connection. Now, there's multiple ways this is done. I don't think it's GPS. I believe this doesn't have anything to do with triangulation either. I do believe that cell services will still have the ability to check and see which towers you're connected to and determine like within a neighborhood region of where you are. But what was happening before this feature is they could pretty much get down to the house you're sitting in. And the limit precise location feature does exactly what it sounds like it prevents your cellular provider from being able to get your exact location which would then be provided to say authorities or hackers who are broke into your isp or whatever so this is all around a good feature i'm sorry you're talking about lines of defense and this is something else in my mind um the new u.s version of tiktok is apparently trying to get really precise data even though the old tiktok didn't would this type of thing block that as well this is completely separate apple's systems already prevent tiktok from doing that you have to there are three levels of um privacy that you have to go through to give tiktok your precise location you have to give it your location then you have to go into settings and give it your precise location and then turn it to always allow and it only appears after a certain set like it is really hard to get permanent location, uh, in an app. Now Apple just done that on purpose for obvious, for this reason, Google, Google, not so much, but again, leaving Apple for multiple reasons, not just that we're outside of that, but let me just say this. Um, this is an interesting feature of the modem. I think we're going to see more features. This is vertical integration. Apple couldn't do this with a Qualcomm modem previously. And I guess since you brought it up, We'll close out with this. TikTok, the purchase went through. Larry Ellison owns 15% of it, right? There's multiple U.S. companies who own portions of it, and then 50% is owned by investors, and then like 19.9%, the legal maximum, is still owned by ByteDance in China. a algorithm transition is quote unquote taking place, but TikTok now denies that they're actually doing that. And that the reason why there was basically what happened on TikTok is a bunch of people's videos, view counts went to zero and it became impossible to upload new videos. And it seemed to some users that some words were being censored and chats. There's a lot of wishy-washy stuff around this. And it seems technologically related more so than aggressive algorithms, but we won't know until we finally get to the point where TikTok's like, okay, now the algorithm's here and then we'll have to test it. So right now, all we can say is it's probably related to a data center outage, which is TikTok's claim, but I'll take that with a grain of salt. Let's see where this ends up. But I will finally say we have seen a huge influx of users coming to places like blue sky and the app skylight which is blue sky's tiktok like app you get to scroll through vertical video and it has an interface similar to tiktok lots of new users there lots of unique content coming there and there's alternatives like upscrolled a third party app which to me looks more like instagram than tiktok but that has been a another third party app that's become popular since tiktok's um change in the united states so we'll see all that where all that goes we'll be reporting on it here but william anything else before we close out well only that this is normally the point when you ask where we can everybody can find us and in my case one of the answers is now tiktok except i have not one thin clue what my address is there i've made some youtube shorts i thought why not i go on tiktok they seem to be doing all right i can't tell uh so it's possible it might be my name william gallagher but yeah william and AppleSide.com is easy to go. 50K is good point. Yes, that's my YouTube channel. If I didn't use that for TikTok, I should have done. I will look into it. Yes. Yeah, I mean, obviously, creators like you got to pretty much push everywhere these days. And it's not the worst idea to try. But hey, we'll see. We'll see where this whole thing ends up in a couple of weeks if your videos even work. um i obviously did you say william appleinsider.com for email uh yeah so i'm on blue sky you can reach me there uh mastodon of course still accessible via mastodon i don't really post there that often um you can email me west appleinsider.com and you can reach out through apple podcast leave a review and we'll read it here doesn't matter if it's five stars one star we like to share what our at Listener's Think here on the show. No new reviews this week, so get out there. If you haven't left a review, give us one. We'd love to hear from you and share it here on the show. Apple Insider Plus is coming up. 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