Tom Anderson (00:01)
This is Basic AF episode ninety-three. Show notes for this. And all episodes can be found at basicafshow.com. Hey, how's it going? Tom Anderson here. Jeff Battersby over there. Hello, Jeff. Good to see you, sir.

Jeff Battersby (00:14)
Yeah, I

just bumped into my mic. 'cause I had my eyes closed. Don't ask me why. Dreaming about you, Tommy boy, and

Tom Anderson (00:19)
All right. Solid. Well, as you do.

Jeff Battersby (00:24)
Yes, yeah, yes I do. Yeah.

Tom Anderson (00:27)
I hope not, but

Jeff Battersby (00:29)
I hope not too. don't remember last night's dream, but hopefully it doesn't include you, pal. That's all I gotta say. So yeah, we shall we shall see. I

Tom Anderson (00:39)
I would hope not. I mean unless we're unless

we're, you know, podcasting megastars and making five dollars a month.

Jeff Battersby (00:47)
We're making six dollars a month of our own money, Tom. Yeah. Right. We're we're killing it. does he? Woo! Joe Moyer. What a mensch. I like

Tom Anderson (00:50)
From ourselves, right? Yeah, Joe Moyer supports us too. So thank you, Joe, for that. He does. Yeah. Yeah, so shout out for that. And

Jeff Battersby (01:00)
that.

Tom Anderson (01:01)
you might as well give it a plug, Jeff, in case everyone anyone else would like to.

Jeff Battersby (01:04)
Yeah,

yeah, you can I don't even know where it is. On our website there's a link to be able to support us for a couple bucks a month if you want. Yeah.

Tom Anderson (01:09)
Yep. Support the show. A couple of bucks. Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (01:14)
And if you'd like to do that, we'd love for you to do that. Yeah there's a little bit of news. John Vorak, long time Mac hater. I mean longtime columnist for a number of for a number of

Tom Anderson (01:31)
Ha ha ha.

Jeff Battersby (01:33)
magazines. and unfortunately passed away a couple of actually been two weeks ago now, I think. yeah,

Tom Anderson (01:41)
Just about. Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (01:43)
just two weeks. and they ha you know, he's been doing a podcast. What is the name of that podcast? I don't really listen to it.

Tom Anderson (01:51)
No Agenda was the one he's done for gosh sixteen years or so with

Jeff Battersby (01:53)
A long time. Yeah, and you said they had

six hour memorial service for right? They

Tom Anderson (02:00)
They

did, yeah. So they did I haven't listened to that, but they did it was like a the show is all based on donations. like that's yeah. And so they've

Jeff Battersby (02:08)
Yeah, that's that's the thing I was gonna get to is that it's you know, it's

Tom Anderson (02:13)
they've always done it that way. They've they've kind of taken the approach that no advertisers allows them to do things that you know, so they basically can't be cancelled, so to speak. and so they

Jeff Battersby (02:22)
Right. Yeah, yeah.

Tom Anderson (02:23)
I mean they usually do they were doing pretty well with it. it's a big show. I think it's like a million downloads or something, but

Jeff Battersby (02:29)
Dying.

It's not us.

Tom Anderson (02:30)
but they did do

like donations as a like a tribute type thing. Again, it was like six hours, like three and a half hours, I think, was just reading the donation notes and everything, and they still didn't finish. So but

Jeff Battersby (02:40)
Yeah, you said that. It was long.

Tom Anderson (02:42)
yeah, he he was an expert at getting the Apple users fired up back in the day. He put it on back and he even said they

Jeff Battersby (02:46)
Yeah, he was

Tom Anderson (02:49)
should cancel the iPhone before it even like 'cause remember they announced it

Jeff Battersby (02:52)
Showed up.

Tom Anderson (02:53)
and then it didn't ship until June and he was like, Nah, they just need to kill it

Jeff Battersby (02:57)
my god, such

a funny guy. He was. I

Tom Anderson (03:00)
Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (03:01)
remember reading his column. I think it was in PC World. I used to read it or one of those,

Tom Anderson (03:04)
Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (03:05)
you know, one of those magazines. And you know, yeah, you know, if flaming you know

Tom Anderson (03:12)
Ha ha ha.

Jeff Battersby (03:14)
actually I take this from a bug's life. Flaming death. the he was he was one who, yeah, used to kind of goad those of us who were

Tom Anderson (03:26)
Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (03:27)
Mac centric and he was a funny guy about it. So yeah, he I th the point I was gonna get to though is no ads for those guys. And we have no ads either. And, you know, Tom and I basically I mean not that this costs us a million dollars to produce other than time and you know, that that piece of it, which Tom spends more time on this than I do because he's the one who has to edit it. Although I do have to listen to it. I s do

Tom Anderson (03:51)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Battersby (03:52)
have to listen to us. So maybe it's the same.

But yeah, we'd like to do the same. We'd like to be able to charge nothing. So donate, donate to us like Joe Moyer, the journaling guide.

Would like to recommend that you do that. I was expecting you to fill in there, but you went dead silent. I yeah. The one edit that you'll have to do, right. That was me coughing. The sound of me soul coughing is what I was doing.

Tom Anderson (04:20)
I was gonna let you finish the thought. I can cut that out in the edit. The one edit that I have to make today. Let me add a marker, Jeff. Already, yes. Yes.

So speaking of news, there is a new phone that's been getting a lot of publicity, a lot of push

Jeff Battersby (04:38)
Yes, it has. Mm-hmm.

Tom Anderson (04:41)
on socials and YouTube. Samsung has updated their fold series, the Z Fold.

They've got a Z Fold Ultra, which is an update of the so it's the Z Fold 7 update. So it's the update to the 8. Jeez. that's been around for a while. And they've you know just kind of done a spec update for that one. But they've got a newer model, which

Jeff Battersby (05:03)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Anderson (05:04)
you're seeing a lot of coverage on, and that is the Z Fold 8.

Jeff Battersby (05:09)
Yes, which you got your fat hands on a couple of days ago.

Tom Anderson (05:14)
I did, and th the reason it kind of yeah, I got interested in wanted to go see it is because it looks very, very similar to that rumored 3D print model that leaked out a while back that we talked about

Jeff Battersby (05:30)
Yeah.

Tom Anderson (05:30)
on the show and Ganon Orberg printed one up for us to look at. almost identical to that. And so

Jeff Battersby (05:38)
Yeah, right.

Which makes you wonder whether or not that that that little prototype was based off the Samsung Galaxy. 'Cause it's it's almost exact that'd be hilarious, actually. That would be

Tom Anderson (05:46)
The Sammy maybe. Wouldn't that be funny?

Jeff Battersby (05:53)
that would be amazing. but yes, it's a it it has that same form factor. And Marquise Brownley, who

Does you know, all sorts of good stuff. And he he did a pretty cool little video and a after having used this for a week or two, I think, right? I think he's had it for

Tom Anderson (06:19)
About a week, I think.

Jeff Battersby (06:20)
yeah. and he the thing that's kind of cool about it, and this is interesting to me, surprisingly interesting to me, is that it's the same size as a pocket notebook.

Which Tom is now

Tom Anderson (06:36)
Very close.

Jeff Battersby (06:37)
now addicted to field notes, as I have been for many thousands of years. but yeah, it's it's got that form factor folded, you know, a notebook, so it fit nicely in your breast pocket if you have one. and then it folds out to it just slightly smaller than an iPad Mini. Is that about right? Does that seem Yeah. So

Tom Anderson (07:02)
Yep. Yeah, so the

s th when it's closed, the front display is five point five inches diagonally. And then when you open it up it's seven point six.

Jeff Battersby (07:15)
Okay.

Tom Anderson (07:16)
Yeah, so just a bit under the iPad mini. And so, you know, when I was looking at coverage of this, I was like, Okay, so that looks like what the Apple one's supposed to look like. I wanna go see it. And so one day during lunch, rolled over to the

nearby Best Buy and they had it right inside the front door. So right.

Jeff Battersby (07:36)
Mm surprise.

Tom Anderson (07:39)
and so I thought I'd go check it out. And I have to say, I was really impressed with the build quality of it. Like, you know, I know people that have Samsung phones at work and they really like Okay. And I think

Jeff Battersby (07:51)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Anderson (07:52)
Samsung is one of the top Android makers, for sure.

Jeff Battersby (07:54)
Yes.

Tom Anderson (07:56)
so it's not really a surprise, but

like I looked at the Z Fold seven a while back too because I was curious about that one. but I think they you know they might be on to something with this design. And obviously if Apple makes one and it looks very similar, that's gonna be like a big boost to kind of the credibility of the whole thing.

Jeff Battersby (08:17)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Anderson (08:17)
We'll see how many people end up buying them because we'll they're very expensive. We'll get to that in a minute.

But the the thing kind of and it again, this was five minutes, so it's not a review or anything. It's just a kind of a quick, you know, first look type thing. it was light. Like it was very light. like iPhone

Jeff Battersby (08:39)
Yeah, which is interesting. You'd think it might be

Tom Anderson (08:41)
Air when you picked that up. Remember that when you first got you were like, holy crap, this doesn't even feel like a real phone, feels like one of those dummy units they used to put out back in the day. this same kind of thing. I was like, Wow, that is super light. that

kinda it's not a square but that rectangular shorter form factor 'cause like the slab phones

Jeff Battersby (08:59)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Anderson (09:00)
are taller. and so this is kind of squatty and it's wider than your typical what are you laughing at? I know where you're going, of course. Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (09:08)
'Cause the the next thing that comes to mind when you say squatty is potty. Squatty potty. Sorry Tom. I can't help myself.

Tom Anderson (09:18)
and but it fit really well. Like just felt good.

in the hand, like it was smaller, it was balanced, cause sometimes phones feel like, you know, they're tall, especially the Pro Max. Like you've got that, right? You're still on

Jeff Battersby (09:29)
Yeah. Yeah.

Tom Anderson (09:30)
the 15 Pro Max. and so it felt nice. and then when you open it up, you get the bigger display, of course. and you can use it in landscape or portrait. And whatever you have on the front display by default, when you open it up, it shows up on the bigger display. When so it just kind of like mirrors it.

believe there's a setting where you can actually have the front display be something else and then when you open it the larger two displays on the inside is something else. So they don't have to mirror. Like it could be like an extended type desktop thing.

Butter smooth on the scrolling, like it it just seemed like it's gonna perform really well. but it

Jeff Battersby (10:14)
How's the fold?

Tom Anderson (10:16)
the crease?

Jeff Battersby (10:17)
Yeah.

Tom Anderson (10:19)
not it you could see it under certain angles, but it wouldn't be an issue for me. Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (10:28)
Okay. I'll I'll I'll leave it at that. My my question is, you know, these things are brand new display copies that are sitting sitting out there and people have been using for a few minutes, but you know, what happens after two years? You know, what do you

Tom Anderson (10:41)
Right.

Right. And I I did do a little reading around because on Reddit some people were asking the same questions. Like, well of course it looks great. It's brand new. That was kind of my thought. but there were some people who've had like some of the like the early, early folds had issues, like they would delaminate and everything would and it would just look like crap. but from what I was reading, and again this is just randos on Reddit, so I don't know how accurate it is, but what I was reading is that you know the newer ones

Jeff Battersby (11:09)
They know everything,

Tom. What are you talking about?

Tom Anderson (11:10)
for the last

for the last several years, have held up well and it hasn't really been an issue.

Jeff Battersby (11:16)
Okay. All right.

Tom Anderson (11:17)
Samsung's apparently using some type of new titanium component somewhere that's supposed to keep that even, you know, less of an issue over time. this

Jeff Battersby (11:27)
Mm.

Tom Anderson (11:28)
part of like the sub screen things. so who knows, until you try it, I guess. But I was really impressed.

Jeff Battersby (11:38)
Okay.

Tom Anderson (11:39)
Like

First impressions, like how would it be long term? Like would it get annoying to have to constantly open the thing and be like, Ugh, I gotta open it, just do something. I don't know. I think the the smaller screen on the front seemed to be good enough for day to day, like quick stuff, like if you just wanna, you know, send a message or, you know, scroll social or something like that. so yeah, I that it it's got me more interested in Apple's solution to see what that's

or product to see what that's going to be here in six or seven weeks when they have their event.

Jeff Battersby (12:13)
Yeah, when they

announce whatever

Tom Anderson (12:16)
But

baby's gonna cost.

Jeff Battersby (12:19)
Yeah, how much does this one cost, Tom?

Tom Anderson (12:24)
So Jeff, it's great that you asked. This one

Jeff Battersby (12:27)
funny. Why would I do that?

Tom Anderson (12:29)
starts at eighteen ninety nine.

Jeff Battersby (12:33)
wait, starts at? You mean you can get more juice for more money?

Tom Anderson (12:39)
Correct. So

Jeff Battersby (12:41)
God.

Tom Anderson (12:42)
that gets you 256 gigs storage. And then

Jeff Battersby (12:45)
Okay.

Tom Anderson (12:46)
the it goes from there to 512 up to one terabyte. And so the 512 is 2100 and the one terabyte is 2500.

Jeff Battersby (12:52)
My god.

Tom Anderson (12:55)
Yeah. So a lot. We're not quite in Vision Pro territory, but we're half a Vision Pro. And then if

Jeff Battersby (13:00)
No, but we are or MacBook Pro.

Tom Anderson (13:04)
you want to go up another to the top tier, you're at two thirds of a Vision Pro depth.

Jeff Battersby (13:09)
Two thirds. Which you I'm sure feel painfully as we say two thirds of a Vision Pro. the a yeah, that's that's a lot of money, man, which makes me think Apple not gonna do much better than that. They're probably gonna be

Tom Anderson (13:25)
Right.

Jeff Battersby (13:25)
more expensive. That amount of money for a fold, i that might be leave that might leave me out of the market. I I will say, given your experience and what you did at

intrigued more than I expected to be. I did not expect to be at all intrigued. In fact, if I were to get a new phone this year, I would, you know, I have a Pro Max now. The only reason I get a Pro Max is because of the cameras, which I'm very, very happy with. By the way, I'm also super happy with Halide, which I've been using they have a new version out that if you have not checked it out, definitely something you should just

Total aside, but i the new version of Halite is yeah, I use it way more regularly than I did the previous version. I got regularly out. Look at me.

Tom Anderson (14:19)
Yeah, not bad.

Jeff Battersby (14:21)
yeah, yeah, right. My tongue usually twists over those Ls. but the you know, I was gonna go down to a smaller size, the iPhone, possibly.

gonna go down to the iPhone Pro instead of the Pro Max, whatever they're gonna call that version this year. Right.

Tom Anderson (14:40)
Mm. Right, you should get the same cameras now. That used to not be the case.

Jeff Battersby (14:45)
Exactly right. That the the smaller version and I like I like that form factor. That form factor. The Pro Max is big. you know, I have fat hands, but they're not that fat. You know what I'm saying? They're

Tom Anderson (14:56)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Battersby (14:57)
you know, I can I

All I have to say is I I'm big hands, Tom. Big hands, big hands. but t Pro Max is Pro Max is still is still pretty big in my big hands. So

Tom Anderson (15:18)
Yeah, and you know, I was watching some YouTube videos on it, which we'll put in the show notes 'cause, you know, Marquez did his and then there was there were a couple others. Mr. Mobile, Michael Fisher did a really fun one. He's

Jeff Battersby (15:28)
Yep. Yeah.

Tom Anderson (15:29)
he's been in Foldables since day one. and so I really like to look at his stuff and then he loved it. He's like, it's not perfect, but it's my favorite one so far. but when it's open, it's a four by three dimension. Like and so

Video, you don't have quite the same amount of the the letter boxing, like the black space, black bars is not as big as like say on an iPad, for example.

Jeff Battersby (15:56)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Anderson (15:58)
and the I think the front display was sixteen ten or something like that. but I did mess with the multitasking a little bit, like you can move the apps around, you know, have two apps side by side, you can make them one third, two thirds, which has me wondering what Apple might do there with

They're things like 'cause I you know, they built this new windowing system in iPad OS. And

Jeff Battersby (16:21)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Anderson (16:22)
so I'm wondering how much of that's gonna translate over to the phone. I imagine some of it's gotta be.

Jeff Battersby (16:25)
To whatever it is that they release.

Tom Anderson (16:27)
Now, will they make it more like the old split view on iPad where you can do like half half, one third, two third, and that's all you're gonna get? Or will they let you actually move things around? I think on the mini you can it's like free windowing, like you can put

you know, four and one in each corner if you wanted to. So maybe they'll do that. I don't know.

Jeff Battersby (16:48)
Time to get Riley back in.

Tom Anderson (16:50)
Yep. but like for books, things like that, reading look really nice, like in portrait in particular. Everybody seemed to love playing games on it. So I it it it looks very, very interesting. Yeah. And I'm trying to s

Jeff Battersby (17:04)
Yeah. Have you seen so

that that smaller mode, you know, when it's folded, that notebook

Tom Anderson (17:09)
Uh-huh.

Jeff Battersby (17:10)
size, there's there is a an e reader now, it's like a sixty dollar e reader. I I don't the the name evades me. I'll be able to look it up in a second. that has about that same form factor. Basically it it's just designed for reading stuff and I wonder whether or not something like that would be useful.

you know, some kind of e reader that you could just read a book on the with it folded closed and you kinda scroll through that. I kinda like that idea. you know, as I do except for on weekends, you know, read New York Times and a bunch of other news outlets. It's one of the first things I do while I'm sipping my first cup of coffee in the morning. Yeah, right. I know. I mean I yeah.

Tom Anderson (17:57)
God, what an awful way to start the day reading the news. No wonder you're so grumpy.

Jeff Battersby (18:04)
Yeah. It explains many things. Many, many things. I guess I save it for the end of the day. When my blood sugar's low and I wanna and no, I can't do anything about

Tom Anderson (18:08)
You gotta protect those first few hours, Jeff. Don't don't start off down there, bro. Just avoid it and can't do anything about it anyway. So it's like that, whatever. Hmm.

Jeff Battersby (18:20)
it. It's and it it's my limit it's what I limit myself to. It's just the morning. I

Tom Anderson (18:24)
Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (18:25)
try to avoid it for the rest of the day.

But it something like that makes sense to me. I I'm gonna step back to something else I said a few months ago though. You know, it's gonna

Tom Anderson (18:39)
No.

Jeff Battersby (18:39)
be in the in the same price range. we're talking computer prices is what this is.

Tom Anderson (18:45)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Battersby (18:45)
I mean I got my MacBook Air for half of what it cost to get to get this this is before the prices jumped a couple of weeks ago.

but I got it for half of what it cost to get the base model of this Samsung. i I I want an OS I can y use as a computer then, you know, connect my Bluetooth keyboard to it, plug it into my studio display, and have it be an all in one, all inclusive device.

Tom Anderson (19:17)
So what if

Jeff Battersby (19:18)
what if?

Tom Anderson (19:19)
while we're pontificating, what if

Jeff Battersby (19:21)
Right, 'cause we're so

smart, Tom. We're we're Redditors.

Tom Anderson (19:27)
Wow. Never considered myself that, but but what if?

Jeff Battersby (19:31)
Yeah, you know, we we have the same

the same the same depth of knowledge. Sorry.

Tom Anderson (19:38)
So what what if one of the wild cards in Apple's upcoming photobol is y you plug that thing into your studio display and then it works like an iPad when you plug it into your studio display?

Jeff Battersby (19:52)
Well, I would assume it would do that. That's that shouldn't even be a question.

Tom Anderson (19:55)
a phone doesn't do that.

Jeff Battersby (19:57)
It doesn't turn into an iPad, it just turns into a phone.

Tom Anderson (20:00)
It'll be the first for the phone though, right? Because I think the phone well the phone

Jeff Battersby (20:02)
Yes, it would be a first for the phone.

Tom Anderson (20:04)
Yeah. Because then you're kind of like,

Jeff Battersby (20:06)
Yeah, that would be interesting.

Tom Anderson (20:07)
okay, then I've kind of got some added benefit there. But I'd be worried about

Jeff Battersby (20:12)
Yeah, and then I guess spend some time with Riley and figure out.

Tom Anderson (20:14)
heat. Like I'm I don't know if they'd be able to do that because it seems like it get hot. And it's already very thin anyway. Yeah. But

Jeff Battersby (20:22)
Yeah. Yeah.

Tom Anderson (20:24)
I don't know. We'll see.

Biggest complaints I think people have on this one, which will probably carry over to the Apple one, is the cameras. Like they you know, they get two, they don't get the telephoto, and the quality of the photos seem to be good, you know. And in a lot of light, quite good, but then starts to fall off from there. there's no you get the fingerprint reader on this one. the rumor was that the Apple one will have the fingerprint, you know, have touch ID instead of face ID.

And so we'll just have to wait and see and I'm going to say we can put it in the bet book. The Apple one will start

Jeff Battersby (21:01)
Say itum.

Tom Anderson (21:04)
at two thousand. Which

Jeff Battersby (21:06)
Yeah.

Tom Anderson (21:07)
would be plus a hundred over the Samsung, but we'll see.

Jeff Battersby (21:10)
Yeah, I y you're not wrong. It's a lot of money.

Tom Anderson (21:13)
All right.

Jeff Battersby (21:13)
A lot of money for a phone.

Tom Anderson (21:15)
Which segues beautifully into the segment of the show that's going to be Jeff's rant.

Apple's making it easier.

Jeff Battersby (21:29)
Do you have air quotes somewhere? There's scare quotes. Go ahead. Yeah.

Tom Anderson (21:29)
To buy these expensive products scare quotes

easier. Easier does not equal better. Jeff, the floor is yours.

Jeff Battersby (21:39)
Thank you. Apple's new upgrade program, which all right. Apple had an upgrade program. I I never used it. I would buy my phones outright, and then and then use it. But Apple had an upgrade program that

included Apple Care bundled with your with your phone and it was basically in house financing that you paid X number of dollars a month and then at the end of I don't know, was it every year or was it every other year? I can't remember what the

Tom Anderson (22:18)
I feel like it was every year.

Jeff Battersby (22:20)
Yeah, you got to bump up to whatever the next one was. Apple, by the way, has excellent financing if you use the Apple card. You know, you no interest for

depending on the device you get either twelve or twenty four months. which is honestly decent because you're just doing the same thing that you were doing if you went to your y you know, your ATT or Verizon or whomever phone dealership and and got a phone and you know they tacked it onto your monthly bill. they're now I don't even like this name. They've now hooked up with Klarna

Which sounds shady right out of the box. I don't know why. Klarna that's this is why we don't want advertising, because Klarna would never advertise us with us now because I said they sound shady. but it it's a it's a lease lease program, not a buy program, but a lease program. And a lease coming with all the same fun things that you get if you lease an automobile.

you own nothing. It's not your phone. After whatever the time period is, you know, after whatever the the lease period is, two years I presume, you turn that phone in and get a new one, just like you do with your BMW or your f Suru Forester if you're leasing it.

And I don't like the idea that Klarna is the one that we're doing this with. Price is apparently a little little less expensive than than what you would pay if you were, you know, paying fifty bucks a month or whatever it is to Apple. But just like your automobile, there's a buyout at the end of it. So you have to pay, you 750 bucks or something like that to

own your phone that you've been leasing. there have been some concerns amongst people writing about this that, you know, does that mean your data's gone? Well your data's not, you know, you wipe the phone, you give it back to him, your data's the same as it ever was in iCloud. Until you don't pay for that. And then

And you know, you've got access to everything that's yours. So I think that that's like a little red herring. But i the reality is y you're using this Klarna program. Apple's moving this stuff out of out of their hands and into the hands of somebody with a name I don't even trust. What does Klarna mean, Tom?

Tom Anderson (25:09)
I have no idea.

Jeff Battersby (25:10)
Yeah, it's just some made up word. It's like, you know.

Tom Anderson (25:12)
Yeah. I mean I see them everywhere. Like they're

Jeff Battersby (25:15)
Yeah. Right. It's like it's like drug names though. You know, you just make something up. Doesn't

Tom Anderson (25:20)
Actually does sound like a prescription drug, nay.

Jeff Battersby (25:23)
it right. Klarna, eloquence.

Tom Anderson (25:27)
I knew it, it was big pharmacy behind all of it.

Jeff Battersby (25:28)
Cymbalta Yeah.

So right, it's all

Tom Anderson (25:31)
Yes. Well,

when you get to the end of the lease, right, and you just said you can buy it outright with a one time payment. looking

Jeff Battersby (25:39)
Or you can jump into another lease.

Tom Anderson (25:41)
right, so Apple's got a bunch, and I mean a bunch, of which probably says something. a bunch of questions in the FAQ section on the Apple upgrade site, which we will put in the show notes for you. but it does say

at the end of your initial initial lease term, you can do one of the following. Upgrade and return your current device, leave the program and return your current device, or buy the device outright with a one-time payment from your Klarna account. Now here's the thing where people will have to pay attention. If you don't take any of these actions, your lease will be extended month to month for up to six months from the end of your initial initial lease term.

To decide which option is right for you. During this time, you'll be charged your monthly payment until you take action. So once your term is up, like if you don't do something, you just keep paying.

Jeff Battersby (26:39)
For six months only though. And then what happens after six months?

Tom Anderson (26:41)
Right, that's what says.

so it says if no action is taken at the end of the six month period, Klarner will charge you the purchase option fee under your lease to buy the device outright. So you may be wondering, well, what's that? And that equals the full price of the device at lease signing less the sum of lease payments you've already made. So the balance basically. Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (27:11)
So this is the

There's there's something about this that for me, you know, and w one of the things I've loved about Apple forever is yes, you pay a significant amount of money to purchase whatever it is you're purchasing from Apple. Vision Pros. that wasn't a dig. Yes it was. you know, you're you're paying a lot of money for this for what you get and and

I have been doing this for years because I think there has been and there is value in doing that. Offloading this upgrade program to this

Weirdly named Klarna. Yes, they've been around for a long time. They're doing, you know, whatever it is that

It starts to feel a little icky to me. It's just a gut feeling. I've got no justification for it other than the way that I feel about it, but it makes me feel icky. Plus, you don't get Apple Care, by the way, when you do when you do the Klarna. Like Apples, Lease included AppleCare Plus. you don't get that with this. So you have to add that additional payment.

to whatever it is that you're doing, which, you know, I pay for Apple Care on all my devices. I've got every single one of that's got that's got Apple Care on I

I it it's starting to feel to me like

Apple is going down the path of every other company that we know, where you, the user, become the product. You, the user, are the one. You know, we're we're taking money from you. And I don't know. There's just something that makes me feel uncomfortable. That's all I gotta say. My spidey

Tom Anderson (29:21)
Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (29:22)
senses are tingling. By the way, the new Spider-Man movie. Yeah, if anybody's interested, I love Spider-Man.

Tom Anderson (29:28)
Well, I think

It's another in a series of events that is contributing to your feeling for this.

Jeff Battersby (29:40)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Anderson (29:41)
So when the Apple card first came out,

Jeff Battersby (29:45)
Uh-huh.

Tom Anderson (29:46)
I was like, why would they get into this like finance stuff? That seems skeevy. I was like, okay, that was okay. And then it was ads in the app store.

Jeff Battersby (29:57)
Yeah.

Tom Anderson (29:58)
And that's gonna be ads in maps.

Jeff Battersby (30:00)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Anderson (30:01)
And that's gonna be this upgrade system with Klarna. So it's like a series of things and I think they've at least for me, have walked kind of a fine line where it hasn't been too disgusting. Like, I don't I'll be honest,

Jeff Battersby (30:18)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Anderson (30:19)
I don't care about ads in the app store. I don't give shit.

Jeff Battersby (30:23)
I don't

either 'cause I use the app store f to look for very specific apps. I don't care.

Tom Anderson (30:27)
Right.

Like I rarely, you know, just browse the app store these days. for the sake of looking for something. Usually it's like somebody posts it on social and it's like, this is this

Jeff Battersby (30:37)
Right. Same.

Tom Anderson (30:38)
looks like a cool app. Let me go get it. and then with this, like even this, like I'm like, hmm, I don't know. It's like I think most people or a lot of people, I don't know if it's most people, but I think a lot of people just work through the carriers anyway.

For phones. Now where it's gonna be interesting is now it applies to so much more, like iPads, some Macs, but not

Jeff Battersby (31:00)
Right. Vision pros.

Tom Anderson (31:03)
all. Vision Pro is not included, ironically. don't know what the tea leaves are saying about the future of the Vision Pro, but we'll see. and Apple Watches

Jeff Battersby (31:13)
Right.

Tom Anderson (31:16)
are there too. so I've always of at least in the last ten years, I would say, get my phone through the carrier, which is Verizon.

Jeff Battersby (31:26)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Anderson (31:27)
they just, you know, tack it onto the bill. It's thirty-five dollars a month or whatever it is. But that was a decision that I made because I kind of do this every two-year upgrade cycle at this point.

Jeff Battersby (31:38)
Uh-huh.

Tom Anderson (31:39)
and so it worked for me because what I would do is I would take my so say I've got the 16 Pro Max, and if I decide to upgrade this fall, typically what I've done is kept that.

Particular phone that I had and passed it down to one of the kids. And I just pay for that a few more months and then it's paid off. but it's not a situation where like this is more you actively need to be paying attention as you get to the end, or you're just gonna kind of keep paying. And my parents ran into that years ago on their sprint plan with their phones. Like, and they're like, Should we still be paying for them? I was like, No, no, no, you should not.

Jeff Battersby (32:21)
Yeah.

Tom Anderson (32:21)
and I think sprints.

Well it's T Mobile now, but I think they've changed that. I don't think it works the same way. That was kinda like the legacy thing from way back. they're still running eleven series phones. But so I think, you know, people just need to pay attention to what they're signing up for for one. and you I don't I'd be curious to see like how many people take advantage of this. Like how were they buying these things before?

Right, because obviously you had the iPhone upgrade program, which had that annual upgrade, and the Apple Care Plus, which was great. friend of mine was upset about that because he was on that and he was like, Yeah, it's great, you know, had Apple Care had the upgrade each year, I just kept paying, you know, whatever. and so yeah, I'm curious to see like what's the uptake going to be for this 'cause

Jeff Battersby (33:09)
Gonna be like.

Tom Anderson (33:10)
everything I get, I use the Apple card, as you mentioned earlier, because you get zero

Jeff Battersby (33:13)
Yeah, same.

Tom Anderson (33:13)
percent, it's twelve to t twenty four months, whatever.

and it and it works that way and it works out well.

Jeff Battersby (33:20)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Anderson (33:21)
so I would say if you're considering something, take a look at that as a possibility too.

Jeff Battersby (33:26)
Yeah, over this, I would

Tom Anderson (33:28)
But

Jeff Battersby (33:28)
say. I this doesn't this seems icky to me.

Tom Anderson (33:31)
Now, if you're locked in and you always upgrade every two years or something like that, yeah, it's another option. I don't know if it's a a good option or not. Like mm.

Jeff Battersby (33:44)
Yeah. I

Tom Anderson (33:46)
And

s certainly nothing to be excited about.

Jeff Battersby (33:49)
Florida. I don't know.

Don't like the name. Makes me feel funky.

Tom Anderson (33:54)
But again, I think it's just gonna be up to the individual to be financially responsible to like r read through the FAQs and if you're cool with everything there, go for it. I don't care what you do. but don't be a moron and sign up for something without knowing what you're signing up for. Moron being Tom when he was twenty five years old, but

Jeff Battersby (34:11)
so easy to do for everything these days because

it's like a contract of, you know, five

Tom Anderson (34:16)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Battersby (34:17)
hundred pages that, you know, unless you're a lawyer you're not gonna read.

Tom Anderson (34:22)
Right. Right. I think, you

Jeff Battersby (34:23)
Yeah.

Tom Anderson (34:24)
know, if you pay attention, I think it'll be fine because you've got the option at the end to own it. Like there are some posts on threads and it's like you'll own nothing and you'll love it. And I'm like, well, no, technically you can still own it if you want. and I think a Mac is probably something that people would be more interested in keeping four, five, six years after they've paid it off. So I think that you'll definitely want to pay

Jeff Battersby (34:42)
I usually

Tom Anderson (34:44)
attention to. Apple will notify you though, because they want you to keep upgrading. They'll notify you when you're eligible for your next upgrade.

Jeff Battersby (34:51)
Of course.

Tom Anderson (34:51)
So

and I think it just depends. Like I mean if your phones I think even these days now though, I don't think people are too amped up great every year or every two years, except for people like us, which we're in the minority for that.

Jeff Battersby (35:05)
No. I I think it's it it's a s the slippery slope towards quote unquote services services, recurring income,

Tom Anderson (35:15)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Battersby (35:18)
and i y you know, i w Apple one just saw a bump in price. I mean, I'll be honest, I like what I get, you know, and y I know you don't watch much of anything.

You don't watch movies, Tom? It's like No. I don't want to

Tom Anderson (35:36)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Battersby (35:37)
burn time. He does listen to the show. He ag apparently he ignores that part. but, you know, we it just feels like, you

Tom Anderson (35:47)
I thought you listened to the show. Hi, Ben.

Jeff Battersby (36:01)
know.

SAAS, dude, software as a service. you know, that's and this is just another one of those things. And to some extent, Apple is offloading the the risk. You know, they're handing that over to Klarna. They're probably, you know, collecting whatever it costs for the phone right up front. And

Tom Anderson (36:23)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Jeff Battersby (36:25)
Klarna's handling the risk and you know.

Tom Anderson (36:29)
Which is similar to what they do with the card. Like Apple doesn't run the card, like the Apple card, and they don't run

Jeff Battersby (36:32)
No. No.

Tom Anderson (36:34)
Apple Cash and all that stuff. It's a service. And I think Goldman Sachs has the card, but they were shopping that. I don't know if somebody else picked that up or not, but they were trying to Goldman Sachs was trying to get out of it. Apparently. Allegedly.

Jeff Battersby (36:42)
Yeah, for a little minute more, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I I would

I would say part of the reason for that is is Apple really tries to encourage you to pay off your balance. You know, that's that's one of the things that you get from the Apple card is, you know, don't don't keep a balance, pay. And of course those companies are making money off of their you know, off the interest.

By the bazillions.

All right.

Tom Anderson (37:15)
All right, so well

as we continue the rant segment, Jeff See this is why I tell you

Jeff Battersby (37:20)
Okay.

Tom Anderson (37:22)
not to read the news first thing in the morning 'cause you're all salty.

Jeff Battersby (37:26)
I am salty. I'm salty no matter what, anyway.

All right. So everybody may have heard by now, should have heard by now. If you haven't, you better have heard by now that open AI i it's kind of a crazy story. open AI set up a device, or sorry, a a an instance that was supposedly segmented off from

the known universe. In other words, no internet access. and it was supposed to be taking a test. Sounds like me in third grade. Supposed to be taking a test and it was not supposed to be able to cheat on. So they wanted to see, you know, what it could do to solve this. God knows how, because they're black boxes, their AI was able to through a series of hops

Find a device on an open AI network. when it found the device on that OA open AI network, it had internet access, was able to then jump out to the public internet and hacked into a company called Hugging Face. Hugging Face is a code repository, kinda like GitHub for

AI specifically. So they have open source AI and stuff out there where it was able to find the information it needed to be able to pass the test. So and this was, by the way, unbeknownst to anybody at OpenAI. Nobody knew it at the time

Tom Anderson (38:57)
Mm.

Jeff Battersby (38:59)
until they suddenly figured out that, shoot, it was able to hack a number of devices. all of which, you know, probably should have been had security upgrades, but it was able to exploit

a number of things with exposed passwords and and it's just kind of crazy, honestly. Well, come to find out this week now OpenAI has said, and by the way, they hacked into three other companies as well. Not saying who they were, not explain you know, that it was Microsoft or someplace like that that it went in and got got a

information from but they

Tom Anderson (39:45)
Was it open AI that said

that or anthropic?

Jeff Battersby (39:49)
no, I thought it was open.

Tom Anderson (39:50)
I'm looking at your link

and it said anthropic, but that could be something else. I'm I'm not sure.

Jeff Battersby (39:53)
let me look. Let me look at my link, Tom. I thought it was open air. I thought I I thought Anthropic says AI systems. Sorry, Anthropic. My bad, my bad.

why, well, this computer doesn't have access to my New York Times account, that's why.

Now it does.

Tom Anderson (40:18)
Yeah, so the headline says Anthropic says its AI systems broke into computers

Jeff Battersby (40:20)
Yeah. Sorry.

Tom Anderson (40:22)
at three organizations. The disclosure followed OpenAI's report last week that its own artificial intelligence

Jeff Battersby (40:27)
Anthropic.

Tom Anderson (40:29)
had hacked into the network of an online

Jeff Battersby (40:32)
Yes.

Tom Anderson (40:33)
Yes.

Jeff Battersby (40:34)
Yeah, sorry, my bad. You're correct. Anthropic, not open air. Yeah, no. I I was I was ranting about something. anyway. Not unusual

Tom Anderson (40:42)
Blinded with rage.

Jeff Battersby (40:47)
for me. so it's I d I think the the scarier point about this is and you know, we both have feelings about AI.

Just finished a novel and turned it into my agent yesterday, about such creatures. and i it's i

I'm afraid that more and more we know less and less about what these things are doing and what they're capable of doing and what they're able to do to you know, li these were discovered, you know, the the anthropic and open AI issues were were discovered. But eventually, you know, they're gonna be able to clean up their paper trails, I think. The logs will get, you know, hacked and things like that.

Not to say that there's any actual intelligence going on other than we already know that that these L L Ms, at least I know, excuse me, are black boxes. Not even some of the programmers know what's going on. I I'd say not even a a lot of them don't know what's going on under the covers. how information is being handled or got to.

and used. So this is one of those things where, first of all, it's kind of funny. On the other hand, it's kinda not, you know, and yes, I'll stop reading the news. there was a there was an article last week again in the New York Times about how Hegzeth and his ilk at the at the Department of War are

pushing to use AI as, you know, a means of determining whether or not you're gonna make an attack. you know, in other words, using autonomous systems to be able to to do that kind of stuff without any human input, which I think is insane. Right now, I think the way it works is, you know, humans still have the final have the final say. So

Anyway, not saying Terminator's on its way, but you know.

Maybe I am.

Tom Anderson (43:21)
Okay.

Jeff Battersby (43:25)
So anyway, that's a interesting we'll we'll post a link to that article, and and you'll be able to you'll be able to to read read about that. But it's certainly an area of concern, shall we say, if if some device supposedly segmented off from the known universe is able to unsegment themselves and find a way to get the information that it needs to pass a test. It was just a test, Tom.

Tom Anderson (43:56)
Well, I'm not the world's smartest

Jeff Battersby (43:56)
Thoughts?

Tom Anderson (43:59)
person.

Jeff Battersby (44:02)
No?

Tom Anderson (44:02)
But

Jeff Battersby (44:04)
Yes.

Tom Anderson (44:06)
What's rule number one?

Well, there's kind of two. If a device is turned on, it's not secure. And if a device

Jeff Battersby (44:13)
Correct.

Tom Anderson (44:14)
is connected to any network, it's even more not secure. So it's

Jeff Battersby (44:18)
Right.

Tom Anderson (44:19)
like, okay, well, we've already defeated those two kind of golden rules. And if you really wanted to test something, you would air gap the entire thing and have it on a closed network that had no access to the outside internet and simulated that way.

Jeff Battersby (44:39)
Supposedly that's what they had done. Just saying.

Tom Anderson (44:41)
sure they did. Yeah.

Yeah, it

Came a wireless system that got onto another network. Right. Because it VLANs. Like you can VLAN things. But it's still code. So, like, and we all know if

Jeff Battersby (44:56)
Right. Find your way.

Tom Anderson (44:58)
there's code, there's bugs. And I still say these companies

Jeff Battersby (45:00)
What? That software was perfect.

Tom Anderson (45:02)
have the worst PR in the history of companies. Like the teams that do it. Like, remember they started when they were saying, that's it's just gonna take all the jobs. It's gonna take 99% of the coding jobs, it's gonna take all the white-collar jobs, it's gonna do all these things. And they kind of backed off of that.

You know, they're creeping up towards IPO days. and it's like it's probably not good for publicity.

Jeff Battersby (45:24)
Who's cynical? Hold on.

Tom Anderson (45:27)
they did. I'm just saying you say they don't you know, Dario talk about programming and stuff. and then you know, now it's this. And it's like, huh. Okay. So no one if you go by what they're saying here, you can't control it. So

Who would ever want to put it in their enterprise?

Jeff Battersby (45:50)
Too late, pal.

Tom Anderson (45:50)
Right?

I can't control It's gonna do whatever. And so it's it's a head scratcher. It's a head scratcher. and

Jeff Battersby (45:56)
Yeah, I know. I know. Right. Right. It's all it's all insane.

Tom Anderson (45:59)
then also there's been lots of discussions of late, especially in the last couple of weeks, that I see people talking about is, you know, should all of this be open sourced so that everybody can look at it, see what it's doing. Anthropic doesn't seem to want to do that. I think open AI's

maybe said that they were okay with it. I don't think they've I don't know what their stance is on it, so I won't say, but because there are more and more open source L LMs that are getting to be quite good.

Jeff Battersby (46:34)
Yeah, I think Hugging Face hosts a couple of those

or the code at least.

Tom Anderson (46:39)
and so I think, you know, I think that would be a good thing, at least at the surface. I'm not an expert in it, so maybe not, but it seems on the surface it would be. and it's also still, you know, it's going to be interesting to see as time progresses from the financial side of things. right, because we're paying, say, twenty dollars a month for Cloud Pro or Chat GPT Plus, whatever plan you're on.

They're not making money off of that twenty dollars a month. They're loss they're still losing money,

Jeff Battersby (47:06)
No, no, no, no, no, no.

Tom Anderson (47:09)
right? They haven't found like a really good way to make money with this.

Jeff Battersby (47:13)
they're burning through cash like nobody's business

Tom Anderson (47:15)
yeah.

Jeff Battersby (47:16)
between data centers and you know, they're we're talking trillions of dollars, not even millions or billions.

Tom Anderson (47:20)
Mm-hmm. And so, you know,

some of the theories I've seen floating around is because of that, like in the next five years maybe, the kind of goal is to get more and more of this into local models on devices that don't have to burn network tokens, data tokens and data centers and you know, all that overhead that comes with it, and then

Jeff Battersby (47:45)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Anderson (47:46)
leave the big models for like the really big stuff. I don't know.

because it's just not gonna be affordable, like you know.

Jeff Battersby (47:53)
No. Well, he

here's I'll see if I can find a link to send at least one link. if you're at all interested in the cost factor of these things, Corey Doctoro, C O R Y, D O C T O R O W, I believe. I think he's he's out talking about a new book that he has, in

Tom Anderson (48:21)
the grift.

Jeff Battersby (48:22)
The grift. Yeah, right. Exactly right.

Tom Anderson (48:25)
Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (48:25)
but he's he's talking about a lot of this and you know, you cannot continue to spend, spend, spend, spend and not have and we're not talking, you know, remember the old days of Amazon. Amazon was made no money for a good long time and then suddenly,

Tom Anderson (48:39)
Right. Right.

Jeff Battersby (48:41)
you know but we were talking millions of dollars. Maybe maybe hit the billion with Amazon. This is big, big, big money. Yeah. That

Tom Anderson (48:49)
Big money. Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (48:52)
You know. So it Doctor's stuff I think is talking about bubble, you know, an AI bubble, which I don't think he's wrong.

Tom Anderson (49:00)
I don't think so.

Jeff Battersby (49:02)
so anyway, I'll see if I can find a link we can put in the show notes to at least one of his he was with Jon Stewart, talking with Jon Stewart the the other day on John Stewart. I think it's a podcast.

Tom Anderson (49:14)
Yeah, Benedict Evans had some comments about that on threads. so

Jeff Battersby (49:18)
Mm.

Tom Anderson (49:19)
he's he studied a lot with the AI and like data centers and like he publishes a report each year, like like tech in general, so it's been a lot of AI

Jeff Battersby (49:27)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Anderson (49:28)
focus of late. He's done some good podcasts too. I think he did A sixteen and he was on with I think he was on Lenny's podcast, that one for like startups and stuff. he's been on a bunch.

So he had some thoughts on that on throw. I'll see if I can get the link for that too. It was talking about some of the stuff

Jeff Battersby (49:42)
Yeah, so we'll we'll

Tom Anderson (49:43)
Doctor O's putting out 'cause he was like, I looked at it and it's kind of looking like QAnon stuff. I was like 'cause it was more his theory on why they're doing all of this, not so much the cost. but I'll drop

Jeff Battersby (49:55)
Yeah.

Tom Anderson (49:56)
some link. If I can find the link again, I'll drop it into the the notes. But

Jeff Battersby (49:58)
All right.

Yeah, I've got I've got I I'll have some some links. A a link at least. All right, Tom, we're done, man. It's forty five minutes.

Tom Anderson (50:05)
Alright. Well Jeff, wrap us up, brother.

Jeff Battersby (50:09)
More than forty five minutes. Okay. The usual the usual things. we appreciate you listening. And if you know anyone who would be interested in the basic AF show and Tom and me nattering on about I don't know, whatever runs through our heads.

we highly recommend that you that you recommend us to your friends. You can donate a little money to us if you want to. If you go on the on our website, there is a place for you to be able to send us a couple of bucks. We'd like that if you did that. show music, psychokinetics, celsius seven. We're grateful as always for that. And Randall Martin Design has done our show artwork and we're cool with that. Tom, you have a newsletter that comes out.

Every two weeks. Where do we get that?

Tom Anderson (50:59)
Tom F Anderson dot com

Jeff Battersby (51:02)
Yeah, and has a really good link to his buying guide in the current issue of the of his newsletter. Is that right, current issue? Yeah, yeah.

Tom Anderson (51:12)
Yes, yeah, the one from this week

and there's a link right at the top of the website too.

Jeff Battersby (51:16)
Yeah, so if you got somebody kicking off to college, or frankly, you know, even if y you're a rando like I am, makes sense. I didn't go with Tom's recommendation for memory. he's recommending twenty four gigs of RAM. I only went with sixteen. But nonetheless, really, really good tool for you to help h to help you decide.

what it is or what kind of Mac you might need if you're tripping off to college or if you're, you know, looking to upgrade. So check it out. Good stuff.

Tom Anderson (51:50)
For $17.99

a month through Klarna, Jeff. All right, that's it. All right, we're done. All right. So as Jeff mentioned,

Jeff Battersby (51:56)
Okay, good. Yeah.

Tom Anderson (52:01)
we really appreciate you hanging out with us, sharing the show with your friends and all of that. And we'll be back in two weeks. Look forward to seeing you then.

Jeff Battersby (52:10)
See ya.