Tech News Weekly 427: 'We See Everything': Meta's AI Workers Speak

Summary

Tech News Weekly 427: "We See Everything": Meta's AI Workers Speak

Podcast: All TWiT.tv Shows (Audio)
Host: Micah Sargent (with guest Dan Morin)
Date: March 5, 2026

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Episode Overview

This week's episode dives deep into a whirlwind of recent Apple hardware announcements, a major investigative report on Meta’s AI glasses and the human labor underpinning them, and the biggest shakeup to the Google Play Store in years. Host Micah Sargent is joined by Dan Morin (Six Colors) and, later, Bloomberg’s Leah Nyland, for nuanced analysis, industry context, and an unflinching look at the human side of tech.

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Key Discussions & Takeaways

1. All the New Apple Hardware (00:45–36:16)

iPhone 17e – The Not-so-Budget iPhone

Starts at $599, with a design echoing older models but several newer features.

• Features: Reintroduces MagSafe (missing in 16e), has a notch (not Dynamic Island), A19 chip (same as mainline iPhone 17), single camera with 1x/2x digital zoom, FaceID.
• Positioning: Blurs the line between premium and entry-level iPhones.
• Missing: Some top-tier features like multi-camera arrays and latest Wi-Fi/Bluetooth chips.
• Quote (Dan Morin, 06:07):
  "It doesn’t always have all the, the flashiest, nicest, most luxurious features that you get on the, the higher end phones."
• Context: Not truly "budget," but Apple is focusing on making most features accessible across price points.

iPad Air – The “Mid-Level Sedan” of iPads

Now available in 11" and 13", refreshed with the M4 chip.

• Updates: Faster chip (M4), same form factor as previous gen, supports Apple Intelligence features.
• Lacking: Still no FaceID; screen is good but lacks top-end Pro display technology.
• Quote (Dan Morin, 12:40):
  "It’s the mid level sedan of iPads... It’s your Honda Accord."
• Insight: Hardware is often more powerful than most users' needs.

Studio Display & Studio Display XDR

Minor brushing up for Apple’s high-end monitors.

• Studio Display: Very modest update—better webcam, Thunderbolt 5, same display panel, new (irrelevant-to-consumer) chip.
• XDR Model: Drops from $6,000 to $3,300 with improved panel (120Hz, Mini-LED), includes adjustable stand as standard.
• Quote (Dan Morin, 14:22): "From a purely display point of view, this is unchanged... just another little bump to keep it up with the state of the art."
• Notable: The longevity of current Apple displays is emphasized.

New Macs: Chips, Neo, & More

Apple’s M5 Pro/Max debuts, alongside yet another new MacBook model.

• Apple Silicon (22:09):
  • Introduction of "chiplets" (modular chip design), renaming "performance cores" to "super cores."
  • Retroactive branding update—older M5 chips now also have “super cores.”
  • Focus remains on balancing power with battery life.
• MacBook Air/Pro:
  • Incremental upgrades: latest chips, better wireless, storage bump (though, with slight price hikes).
  • No new touch-capable MacBooks yet.
• MacBook Neo ($599):
  • Cheaper than any recent Apple laptop, aluminum body, A18 Pro chip (first laptop with iPhone chip).
  • Trade-offs: Max 8GB RAM, differentiating USB ports, lower-quality webcam, no Touch ID on the lowest model.
  • Designed to meet education needs at an even lower $499 price.
  • Quote (Dan Morin, 30:09):
    "Apple chooses to make trade offs for certain things but still wants to keep a certain level of experience consistent."
• Colors: Neo comes in Blush Pink, Citrus, and Indigo for the first time in years for Mac laptops.

Segment Highlight:

• “Apple finally decided to make the trade-offs necessary... They never did this before.”
  – Dan Morin (33:37)

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2. Meta’s AI Glasses and Human Labor: Privacy at Risk (36:56–47:49)

Major Investigation: What Meta’s Data Annotators Actually See

• Source: Two Swedish newspapers.
• Discovery: Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses are sending video/audio data (including nudity, sex acts, financial info) to human data labelers in Kenya, not just AI models.
• Retail confusion: Store staff repeatedly misinform customers, some claiming "nothing is shared with Meta," when in reality all AI features require constant data uploads.
• Worker accounts:
  • “We see everything from living rooms to naked bodies.”
  • Exposures include banking details, protests, explicit acts—users are largely unaware of these risks.
• Regulatory question: Practices likely not GDPR-compliant in the EU, with warnings from data protection experts that, "once the material has been fed into the models, the user... loses control."
• Micah’s takeaway (46:35):
  “People somewhere in the world, not an AI... actually look at this data because it needs to be tagged and understood by a human so that it can then be tagged and understood by an AI system.”
• Advice: Be vigilant about consent and visibility when using AI-powered wearables.

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3. Google’s Android App Store Antitrust Response (47:49–60:29)

Guest: Leah Nyland (Bloomberg)

A sweeping global change to Android app distribution.

• Background: Epic Games v. Google, a jury victory for Epic, forced Google’s hand on monopolistic Play Store practices.
• Major announced changes:
  • Easy ability to install rival app stores (Amazon, Epic, Microsoft, etc.).
  • Lowered revenue cut for Google: now 10–20% (from a default 30%), with some programs lowering further.
  • "Catalog sharing"—a mechanism enabling rival stores to clone the Play Store’s app library.
  • Removal of “scare screens” when installing non-Play Store apps.
• Leah Nyland (49:29):
  "Most people, when downloading apps, use the Google Play Store... Google is now going to allow other app stores onto the Android platform much more easily."
• International Regulation: Changes coincide with EU’s Digital Markets Act and similar UK laws, which would require even more drastic reforms anyway—so Google is rolling them out globally.
• Developers: Can use third-party payment processors (e.g., Stripe) and pay a flat 5% to Google, versus 30% previously.
• Epic’s Role:
  • Tim Sweeney (Epic CEO) cheered the settlement but notes practical hurdles remain for new app store competitors.
  • A rumored gag agreement may prevent Sweeney from bad-mouthing the new setup.
• Apple’s Position: Remains opposed to similar changes—iOS stays locked down.
• Leah’s forecast (59:15):
  "The Apple world is still very locked in, but now the Android one is a lot more open."

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• Dan Morin on Apple’s midrange lineup:
  “You can get a lot done with one of these [Neo] and a Creator Studio subscription... a very large degree of power and capability.” (36:04)
• On Meta’s privacy gap:
  “We see everything from living rooms to naked bodies.” – Meta data worker, via investigative report (45:18)
• Leah Nyland on Europe’s influence:
  “My take is that this is actually all this stuff that they’re going to be required to do in Europe anyway... this makes them seem like they’re doing this proactively.” (53:53)

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Segment Timestamps

• Apple Announcements (iPhone, iPad, Studio Display, Macs): 00:45 – 36:16
• Meta AI Glasses Investigation: 36:56 – 47:49
• Google Play Store Antitrust Changes (Interview with Leah Nyland): 47:49 – 60:29

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Summary & Tone

True to TWiT’s style, this episode is packed with practical detail, technical nuance, and thoughtful commentary—often playful (“the mid-level sedan of iPads”), sometimes sobering (exposing the “we see everything” reality of AI data labor), and always fueled by curiosity about technology’s effects on society.

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For full investigative reading on the Meta glasses, see episode show notes for the cited article.

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Transcript

[A]

Coming up on Tech News Weekly, Dan Moran joins us. This week we talk about all of the new Apple hardware that's been coming out all week. Afterwards, I have a brief story about a really important investigation regarding Meta's AI glasses and the humans who are viewing the content on them. Then Leah Nylan, antitrust reporter of Bloomberg, stops by to tell us what's going on with the Google App Store and the changes to Android. All of that coming up on Tech News Weekly.

[B]

Podcasts you love from people you Trust.

[C]

This is TWiT.

[A]

This is Tech News Weekly, episode 427 with Dan Moran and me, Micah Sargent. Recorded Thursday, March 5, 2026. We see everything. Meta's AI workers speak. Hello and welcome to Tech News Weekly, the show where every week we talk to and about the people making and breaking the tech news. I am your host Micah Sargent and this week we are not joined by Abrar Al Heati, who is in Barcelona right now for mwc. I believe that's where it is. But we are joined instead by the wonderful Six Colors east bureau chief. It is Dan Moran. Welcome to the show, Dan.

[D]

Hi maika.

[C]

It's always a pleasure to be here. I am nowhere near as interesting a

[D]

place as Barcelona

[A]

and we're glad because that means you can be here with me and I appreciate it. Now, of course, we saw this week the introduction of several Apple products, a bunch of Apple hardware, and we did talk about it earlier this week on Mac Break Weekly, but some of the stuff didn't roll out until after Tuesday. And on top of that, not everybody who watches this show also watches Mac Break Weekly. So we're going to cover the hardware announcements from the event and kind of go through those and chat about those. I think it's best if we start kind of at the beginning of the week with the iPhone 17. E. For people who aren't familiar with Apple's sort of method for releasing iPhones after iPhones have been released.

[D]

What is.

[A]

What is this?

[C]

That was quite the sentence.

[A]

Yeah. What is this iPhone all about?

[D]

The E phone.

[C]

It's the iPhone for a. I'm walking easy. It's not an A, it's an E. The iPhone is Apple's, so I always resist the temptation to call it. It's the low cost iPhone. It's not the low cost iPhone.

[D]

It's the low cost iPhone.

[C]

So the iPhone 17, which I believe starts at 599, you know, that's certainly

[D]

a lot cheaper than I think the

[C]

799 that the iPhone 17 starts at. But it's certainly not the dirt cheap phone because you know, Apple doesn't make

[D]

a dirt cheap phone.

[C]

What you get for the 17e is you get a little bit of older technology but with, you know, a little bit of the new injected in there. So the design on this is going to be a slightly older design. It's got the notch instead of that dynamic island. You know, it doesn't have necessarily all of the features that you might get

[D]

in the iPhone 17 line, like the latest and greatest features, not the latest

[C]

and greatest cameras, all that. But what you do get in there is one of the latest chips. So Apple has previously, they used to have what they called the se, which

[D]

was basically the same idea of like, let's have a, you know, a lower cost phone that has not all the

[C]

bells and whistles but is good enough that if you want a modern, decent

[D]

phone that's going to last you a

[C]

few years, if you're not somebody who

[D]

goes out and upgrades their phone every year, this will last you for a little while.

[C]

So this one's powered by the A19,

[D]

which is the same generation that's in the current iPhone 17 line. It has a single camera that has both the, you know, sort of ability to go back and forth between I believe, 1x and 2x using the 48 megapixel pixel. Even though it's a single lens, it can kind of do that crop for the 2x. And then it has, like I said, the notch rather than dynamic island, but it does have face id so you know, that element modern.

[C]

And the biggest addition this time around, which was missing from the 16e that debuted last year, is that this one brings back MagSafe.

[D]

For whatever reason, Apple decided not to include MagSafe last year when it brought out the 16e. It did support wireless charging via Qi, but it didn't have the nice little alignment magnets on it. So this year features both MagSafe and Qi2 charging compatibility.

[C]

Um, yeah. And then basically, I mean again, like I said, it's, it's got a lot of the other niceties you might expect from selling this line.

[D]

It's got that customizable action button, it's got a USB C charger. It has, in this case Apple's newest

[C]

in house cellular chip, the C1X, as well as I believe the N1 chip

[D]

that handles its newest WI fi and Bluetooth as well. So most of the stuff you need.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Honestly, this is one of the sort of things that I recognized earlier this week as we saw these devices was Apple seems to be kind of perhaps more so than ever blurring the line between its more expensive, more premium models and its less expensive, less premium models whenever it comes to the feature set. And I think that makes it easier for us as people who are recommending, who are often asked what devices to get where before you might go, okay, if you don't have the money to spend then you may want to go for this one. But you're going to be missing out on this and this and this and this and this. Now it's not so much that's getting missed out on of course we do have the one camera as opposed to the multi camera array and that's an easy kind of thing to point to. But it's so nice to see MagSafe come to the lineup. It's so nice to see all of those safety features come or you know, be there as part of the lineup and of course to have that all day battery life still that, that you know, iPhones especially I think are known for. So I've been really happy overall with

[D]

the,

[A]

the offering from Apple in this sort of more budget friendly space. Although I'm sure some would argue it's not quite budget friendly.

[C]

You know, it's not. As you know, Apple's doesn't make up

[D]

$500 phone, at least not a new model. I'll correct myself also on one previous point. Doesn't have the N1 chip so it's using an earlier version of WI fi and Bluetooth. But you know, it does have that C1X modem chip.

[C]

And I will say it's like, I don't know, I kind of think of it as having like the, the table

[D]

stakes for all the stuff that you might want for a modern phone and a phone that you're going to use

[C]

for a few years.

[D]

But it doesn't always have all the, the flashiest, nicest, most luxurious features that you get on the, the higher end phones.

[A]

Moving along to the iPad Air, this of course is the second device that Apple announced on March 2nd as we record this, the iPad Air is, you know, it's, it's bigger, better and, and brighter than ever before. It's kind of hard when it comes to, to mostly performance jumps to sort of quantify or you know. Yeah. To figure out sort of what does it actually mean for the end user. One thing that's always stood out to me though, 11 inch iPad Air and 13 inch model which is kind of nice. What, what should people be looking for in this latest addition in the iPad airliner.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, the iPad air is kind

[D]

of the bread and butter iPad. It's the one that's right in the middle. Right.

[C]

If it's not the basic iPad, that's

[D]

sort of really affordable down in that 350ish range.

[C]

And it's not the iPad pro, which

[D]

is the top of the line, you know, luxury iPad with every single thing that could possibly be on it. So the iPad Air lacks face id, you know, it lacks some of the nicer screen display technology that's in the

[C]

iPad pro, but it is a very respectable product.

[D]

It uses the, you know, the M4

[C]

chip now, which is a generation behind the iPad pro, but is still, you

[D]

know, an update over last year's M3 chip.

[C]

This is kind of a, as with many of these releases, it's sort of

[D]

a keeping up with the Joneses release

[C]

where it's like we're going to move the things forward a little bit by

[D]

increasing the processor, increasing some of the

[C]

wireless connectivity options, but not really tweaking

[D]

too much else in terms of it. I mean, down to the colors are exactly the same in this year's iPad Air as they were in last year. You're not going to find a lot of significant upgrades across the board here. Everything's like the same size, the same form factor, works with the same accessories and peripherals, comes in the same storage capacities, comes at the same price points, etcetera, etcetera. Etc. Etc. So, you know, again, if this is,

[C]

this is kind of the iPad, that's,

[D]

you know, for most people, I think

[C]

most people are looking for an iPad,

[D]

they're probably considering something like the iPad air because it's got that sweet spot

[C]

of not being the tremendously expensive model

[D]

of the iPad pro, but it's a step up from that base level iPad, including things like supporting Apple intelligence, which is one of the few things that the. The base level iPad is one of the few Apple products that does not currently support Apple intelligence.

[A]

Now, the give us a sort of, if you can. In fact, I remember asking you about this, talking to you about this yesterday, and it is kind of difficult these days when it comes to the nomenclature. What makes an air an air versus a pro and the iPad space. Is it like, isn't this, isn't air always supposed to be the thinnest, lightest. Right? That was the whole thing. And I'm not saying that it's not, but like, is that all that makes an air? An air.

[C]

Let's call it what it is here, Micah. It's the Magic of branding. I mean the simple matter is the, the iPad with no adjectives is the

[D]

base level iPad now.

[C]

And so they, this mid level iPad needs to be called something. They're not going to call it the iPad mid. That has bad connotations these days. But you know, Air has a lot of cachet for Apple. The MacBook Air obviously is the best selling MacBook in and therefore the best selling Mac in Apple's lineup. And I think that the success of

[D]

the air as a brand name for the Mac is something that Apple wanted to translate here as being like, this

[C]

is the iPad for most people.

[D]

It's gonna, you know, again, do pretty

[C]

much everything you need to do.

[D]

It's gonna offer most of the capabilities that you want. There's not a lot of sacrifices here. I think these days.

[C]

Honestly the only thing in there that feels like maybe a little bit of

[D]

a step down is the lack of face id which is just as an experiential thing is something that I think a lot of people are used to. But because it's, you know, as we just said, the 17e has it right. So it's basically everything on the iPhone line has face ID these days. And that makes the iPad air a little bit of a, an aberration there.

[C]

But it still has touch ID on the, on the little sleep button.

[D]

You know, again, it lacks some of the niceties of the screen that, that iPad Pro has, that really impressive promotion screen that's like the ultra retina XDR display. So it has, you know, it's a great looking screen. It's absolutely gorgeous.

[C]

I don't think most people buying an

[D]

iPad Air are going to look at and be like this screen is terrible.

[C]

I think they're going to find it a great screen. That's perfectly fine for it. It's just that the, the more expensive

[D]

ones are even better.

[C]

So, you know, I think one thing has remained true largely across the iPad line for the last several years, which is that the hardware tends to outpace the, the capabilities that most people are using their iPads for.

[D]

And I think the iPad AIR here is no exception. The M4 is an extremely powerful processor and probably not something that most people using an iPad are taking full advantage of. If for no other reason than there aren't as many applications on the iPad side that can really take full advantage of all of these hardware capabilities.

[C]

So you know, again, the iPad Air it's the mid level, it's the mid

[D]

level sedan of iPads.

[C]

It's not a luxury sedan. It's not an economy sedan. It's right in the middle there. It's your Honda Accord.

[A]

There you go. I like it. I like it. Before we take a break, I want to touch on something that actually didn't release or wasn't announced until the next day. But we've got a lot more to talk about and so this one will be easy. It's the Studio Display and the Studio Display xdr. Now, you and I both are Studio Display users and I think happy, right, with our Studio Display.

[D]

Yes.

[A]

But there's a new one, so obviously you immediately went and rushed to buy it, right, because.

[D]

That's right.

[A]

So many new features.

[C]

I do love a good new product

[D]

to replace something that I've been using.

[C]

I use my Studio Display every day. I'm talking to you on it right now. I mean, I'm not talking to you on it. It's a display, but like I can see you on anyway. The new Studio Display that Apple is offering is virtually unchanged from the old Studio Display. It has a couple of small improvements. It's got a nicer camera, supposedly, although we'll wait to see the full reviews of that. That was a camera was one of

[D]

the things that got a lot of

[C]

criticism in the original Studio Display for just being a lot, not as nice as people expected. And it also features a Thunderbolt 5

[D]

now as its port for connecting to the Mac, as well as offering a downstream Thunderbolt port. That's in comparison to, I believe, Thunderbolt 4.

[C]

Three on the existing Studio Display. And then there's also some talk, I

[D]

think there's a little more bass in

[C]

the speakers, for example, but that's it. The price remains the same at 1599. The panel itself, like resolution, brightness, refresh

[D]

rate, all of that exactly the same as the existing panel in the Studio Display.

[C]

So from a purely display point of view, this is unchanged.

[D]

It's essentially just another little bump to keep it up with the state of the art.

[C]

One thing I didn't see spelled out in the display tech specs is the Studio displays have a. A level processor in them, not unlike the iPhones. And it's there to mainly handle on board stuff. I don't remember. I think it's the A19 in it now. And that is compared to, I want to say the A13 in the older Studio Display. This is not a thing that matters. If you use the Studio Display. You don't know what chips in there. But again, it's just an indication of Apple is ramping down its production of older chips and ramping up its production

[D]

of the current generation of chips. Therefore it's going to sort of bump that up just to keep up with it and to improve its efficiency costs on its end.

[A]

I remember when I first got the Studio display and in fact when everyone first got the Studio display and there were some issues with it early on where it needed to be unplugged and plugged back in in order to reboot it. I haven't had any of those issues since. But it does always make me think about the processing chip that's inside versus, you know, I look to my right and I've got this Dell monitor and I'm going. It's almost like I want to tap on it and go, you got anything going on in there? Or you just sort of, you just sort of dumb.

[C]

You're just a screen.

[D]

Just a.

[A]

Are you just a screen?

[C]

We should mention that wasn't the only Studio display though that they rolled out.

[D]

They also rolled out the Studio Display

[C]

XD, which is the replacement for the former Pro Display XDR.

[D]

That came out, I want to say,

[C]

seven years ago, I think in 2019

[D]

with the the Mac Pro, the latest edition of the Mac Pro that was

[C]

notable for being extremely expensive.

[D]

I believe it was $6,000 plus $1,000 for the stand if you wanted to

[C]

stand along with it. This one's a little more affordable. It's down at I want to say 3,300. And it comes with its height adjustable

[D]

stand which is an add on for the Studio Display. The Studio Display, you can pay hundred dollars extra to get a display, a stand that not only tilts but also can be raised and lowered. That's standard on the Studio Display xdr.

[C]

It also has a much better panel in it. I mean, it's the same in terms of resolution and size, but it has 120Hz refresh rate.

[D]

And it has this adaptive sync technology that can adjust the refresh rate to match whatever content's on there.

[C]

And more importantly, I think for a lot of people it features this mini LED backlighting system as opposed to the

[D]

straight LED backlighting system of the Studio

[C]

display, which has all these local dimming

[D]

zones that can be adjusted more granularly to provide a better range of brightness. And this one goes up to a thousand nits in SDR, up to 2000 nits peak in HDR.

[C]

So it is a really, really nice display. I think primarily aimed at people who

[D]

are doing professional graphics work or graphics sensitive work that really want the highest sort of reproduction quality possible other than that it's largely the same as I said, same size, same camera, same studio or speakers and mics, Thunderbolt 5 ports, etc.

[C]

It's mainly the better panel and the

[D]

adjustable stand included there.

[C]

But at least it's a little bit

[D]

cheaper than that Pro display xdr which is a thing of the past now. Yay.

[B]

It's,

[A]

it's a little disappointing. I. But also good because it means that I didn't just have the reason, have a reason to buy a new one.

[C]

So you continue to amortize the cost of that studio display over more years now.

[D]

Right?

[C]

I mean the longer that display lasts, the better deal it is. So.

[A]

Damn.

[C]

Yeah, there you go. That's right. That's for you. So you, I mean, I'm just saying you paid 1600 bucks or something for that, you know, a few years ago. It's going to keep going to the

[D]

point where your per year cost gets nicer and nicer.

[C]

And the fact that Apple did didn't feel the need to be like, hey, we've got all this brand new technology, we can make an even better display now tells you like, hey, my display is still pretty state of the art.

[D]

True.

[C]

That's pretty nice.

[A]

That's the best. I like that. Look at this thing. It's some. Suddenly it's shinier, it's a brighter.

[C]

Hold on, let me get out my polishing cloth and wipe it off. Oh, it's.

[A]

Oh, you're right. I haven't wiped you off in a while. I'm so sorry.

[D]

I feel, I feel guilty about that every day.

[A]

Beautiful. You pour thing. Okay, we needed a little bit of therapy here and we got it. Let's take a service I provide before we come back with more the Apple stuff that was announced after Tuesday. This episode of Techniques Weekly brought to you by Pebble. I've got a quick question for you. Are you hiring in another country right now? Because once you do, you'll learn that things can get complicated fast. But that's where pebble can help. Because you can send offers to anyone in the world in minutes and get them on board onboarded fast. Pebble is an AI powered global human resources platform built for founders, HR leaders and operators who are hiring and supporting teams around the world. Pebble helps you hire, pay and manage talent in more than 185 countries with fast onboarding that can be done in minutes. Instead of juggling separate tools for contracts, payroll, benefits, compliance, pebble brings everything together with built in guidance and local expertise to support you. This is especially helpful if you're managing teams internationally or planning to grow. And the f fastest growing companies in the world use pebble to stay organized and reduce risk. Founders use it to scale faster without having to become HR or compliance experts. It's rated number one in compliance on G2. The customer testimonials speak for themselves. For example, Page needed global talents to align with its bold mission as a digital diagnostics company revolutionizing cancer pathology with AI. Pages VP of Finance and operations said, quote, over the past year we've doubled, if not tripled our global headcount. That growth has been largely thanks to our partnership with Pebble. Bottom line, it simplifies global people operations so you can spend more time growing the business and supporting your team. Pebble's new standard, discounted pricing at $399 USD per month per employee helps you contain costs. Go to Hypl AI to get a free estimate. That's H I P E B L A I for a free estimate. Thank you pebble for sponsoring this week's episode of Tech News Weekly. All right, we are back from the break, joined by Dan Morin of 6colors.com. We are talking about Apple's hardware announcements this week and of course that means it's time to talk about the Macs. So first and foremost before we get into the individual Macs, Apple always now with its Apple Silicon, loves to take a moment to sort of brag about the latest chips. The M5 Pro and the M5 Max are here with that fusion architecture, next generation GPU and then of course better memory bandwidth so that it can do better AI compute for all of those times you're using Apple intelligence. Although according to the information there are unused servers sitting on Apple's shelves because the Apple intelligence usage is not what was expected. In any case, that's not what this is about. This is about Apple's new silicon. Anything stand out to you this time around when it comes to just specifically the silicon or is it all about for you kind of what it does in the hardware?

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

So there's a couple interesting new things

[D]

here that are you mentioned that fusion architecture.

[C]

One thing is Apple's use of what are called we're going to introduce a

[D]

new vocabulary word here today.

[C]

Chiplets. They're adjustable chiplets, not giblets. Chiplets. Chiplets are the giblets of the silicon world, if you will. I don't know if that's true, but it sounds good. So basically this is a different sort of architecture that's a little more modular

[D]

in its design and allows Them to

[C]

use these little smaller pieces and kind of connect them in different ways to provide a more variable type of hardware. So like being able to think about like having Lego blocks, like you're like putting things together and combining them in slightly different ways. And so it's therefore a little bit more modular.

[D]

If you're building these M5 Pro and

[C]

M5 Max, you know, architecture processors and you need your GPUs and your neural engines and all this stuff, this lets

[D]

you do it in a little bit more of a subdivided and therefore more efficient way.

[C]

So that's part one. Part two is a little bit of what I called nominative leisure domain. To throw out some fun, I'm going to brand that.

[D]

I'm putting that in a T shirt.

[C]

So previously you might remember that most of Apple's processors use two types of cores.

[D]

One type are called efficiency cores, which are the day to day cores that get everything done pretty much.

[C]

But then when you need a little bit more juice, when you're doing something a little more intensive, the processor can flip over to the performance cores that are really designed to like get the

[D]

most out of your hardware.

[C]

The efficiency cores are designed to run

[D]

with like sort of a nice balance between how much they can do and being power efficient.

[C]

Now, as my colleague Jason Sales pointed out, he felt like Apple always was a little miffed that people didn't appreciate its efficiency cores more and thought that perhaps because they had this efficiency name, they were therefore, you know, less powerful than the performance cores. So this time around they've done a little bit of retooling and rebranding. So what were previously performance cores in

[D]

the M5 line are now called super cores.

[C]

Whereas there are a new version of performance cores that are more power efficient but also more powerful than the old efficiency cores. So these M5 Pro and Max chip feature both this super core.

[D]

That's the core that kicks on when you really need all the horsepower.

[C]

You're doing video exports or you're doing

[D]

something gaming or something like that that requires real processor horsepower.

[C]

And then these performance cores are now

[D]

what kick on for most everyday tasks

[C]

where it's like you just need to get stuff done and you want to

[D]

prolong your battery life as much as possible.

[C]

There are no slouches, right? There's still performance scores, but as a

[D]

result we now have this slightly different branding.

[C]

And what I laughed about a little bit is that this is retroactive. If you bought one of those MacBook Pros with an M5, you know, vanilla processor last fall, it's got super cores in it now. If you bought a vision Pro with M5, it's got super cores in it now it all got renamed. So everybody takes like a step up and, and gets a little bit more exciting there.

[D]

But you know, one of the things

[C]

that they really are working on doing is making those power fission cores more

[D]

high performance for multi threaded tasks, which are the kind of things that people are often doing when they really, you know, need to do more complicated processor intensive stuff. But not all the way up to like, you know, high end video editing, slash audio editing, all that.

[C]

So all of this is good. I mean it means those, those cores, those new core designs are really going

[D]

to provide a bit of a bump in terms of performance as well as still maintaining the power efficiency that Apple Silicon has become known for.

[A]

Now that of course is the underlying hardware, but the important thing is that it goes into things, it goes into other products. And some of those products include the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro. With these two devices, have we seen outside of performance, have we seen any other changes before? We just, you know, briefly touch on the performance of it all. Is there anything else that kind of sticks out? Did we finally get this alleged Touch Mac we've been hearing about?

[C]

We did not get the alleged Touch

[D]

Mac that is not in the offing yet for this.

[C]

The changes are kind of on par with what we talked about a little bit earlier in terms of the, you

[D]

know, upgrades for the iPad air and the iPhone 17e.

[C]

These are kind of generational improvements that are moving forward. So mainly as we mentioned that that

[D]

M5 chip, which in some cases offers somewhat more cores. Also in many of these cases, Apple has improved the wireless connectivity as we discussed before, going up to the Wi Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 standards using that N1 chip that it started to roll out.

[C]

One other thing that they've tweaked this time around are a lot of the base storages.

[D]

So for example, the 13 inch MacBook Air previously started at 256 gigabytes of storage. They've doubled that to 512.

[C]

Now that's come with a commensurate price bump too. So don't think that you're getting necessarily more for less.

[D]

The MacBook Air now starts at 10.99 instead of 999. But you are getting double storage, which was probably more than $100 upgrade previously.

[C]

That's similarly the case on the MacBook

[D]

Pro side where you're seeing some bumps in terms of the base storage available. But there are also some price raises as well.

[C]

So you know, again, this is kind of keeping up with the state of the art and keeping up with what's

[D]

the latest and greatest without really being like an entire refresh of the whole line.

[A]

So I of course look, looked at the, the new MacBook Pro, looked at the new MacBook Air, looked at the performance jumps and you know what, we were to kind of try to find where Apple was going in that lineup and if we could kind of read any, read into anything. And of course, you know, this does feel mostly like this incremental incre.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

But I think for me one of the most exciting things that happened happened the next day on March 4th. So yesterday as we record this on Thursday, March 5th and that was the introduction of the new MacBook Neo with a price point that's just ridiculous in a good way. 599 for a 13 inch inch MacBook with a, you know, aluminum design. What is, what have you heard about these sort of early impressions of the device and what were your first thoughts upon seeing this?

[C]

The impressions I've heard are, are generally pretty positive. People are, you know, remarking that yeah, 599 is lower. In fact, it's the second cheapest new Mac ever. Way back when the Mac mini started at 499.

[D]

I don't think that's been the case

[C]

for more than a decade. But certainly Apple's never made a laptop

[D]

starting at 599 anywhere close to it really.

[C]

And so people, you know, often trot out like you know, Steve Jobs talking more than a decade ago about this

[D]

idea of how are they going to compete with what was then the craze

[C]

for netbooks, as you might recall, the little tiny cheap computers that PCs were offering. And he said famously, we don't know how to make a 500 laptop. That's not a piece of junk. And Apple has a quality threshold that they always consider. And people that have had hands on with the Neo so far have remarked this does meet that.

[D]

Right.

[C]

It's like you said, it's all the aluminum design. It still has the build quality in the same way that we saw with sort of the 17e where Apple chooses to make trade offs for certain things but still wants to keep a certain level of experience consistent. Right. It doesn't want people to feel like they're using a cut rate product. You know, this has a great screen in it. Yeah, it's not as Nice as the MacBook Air screen, but it's still a really nice screen. It has a Most interestingly, perhaps for the first time ever, an A level processor in it, which is an iPhone processor. But as we've seen, iPhones are pretty darn capable these days. They're pretty powerful. So having an A18 Pro chip in

[D]

there is nothing to sneeze at. And it allows to do, you know,

[C]

a lot of things that are maybe not comparable or possible on comparable level,

[D]

you know, Chromebooks or PCs, given the

[C]

sort of hardware acceleration capabilities, GPU stuff

[D]

it offers, all of that.

[C]

Now there are some trade offs, as always, when you're talking about, you know, something that's cheaper so that that cost has to go somewhere, right? Apple's not just being like let's throw everything in and just, just, you know,

[D]

we'll eat it, we'll eat our profit margins.

[C]

Apple believes that every product kind of

[D]

has to stand on its own. It doesn't do loss leaders.

[C]

So trade offs include like it's only maxes out 8 gigs of RAM, it's got either 256 or 512 gigs of storage. In an interesting move, that 256 model has no touch ID, which is available

[D]

on the more expensive model, which is the 699 model.

[C]

You know, it's only got a 1080p FaceTime camera rather than the 12 megapixel

[D]

center stage camera we see on most other devices. You know, somewhat fewer speakers, etc. Etc.

[C]

But by all accounts still a very performative computer. I will mention one other major trade off. There are two USB C ports on this, but they are not created equal. One of them is a USB3 port that supports charging as well as the faster USB3 speeds, as well as connecting an external display. The other one is only a USB 2 port which does support charging, but a slower data transfer and no external display.

[D]

And my understanding is if you try

[C]

to plug a display into the wrong one, the computer will let you know,

[A]

move it to the other port.

[C]

My, from what I have read between the lines, this is a limitation of the A18 Pro. But if Apple chooses to revamp this product on a yearly basis, which it may very well decide to do, it's possible that could change next year.

[D]

So.

[C]

So it'll be interesting to see what

[D]

the trajectory of this is.

[C]

It's certainly hard to argue with the price. As you said, 599 is kind of bananas.

[D]

And if you're in the education market, this starts at 499, which is a truly outstanding price point.

[A]

Yeah, I think it's pretty amazing as far as that goes. Yeah, I'VE seen now some complaints coming through from folks and some thoughts on this device. But overall I again find this price point to be something that could get people who maybe don't need all this extra stuff into the Apple and especially macOS ecosystem. I just love macOS, to be honest.

[D]

So same same.

[C]

I think what's interesting to look at it here, the perspective that's interesting to look at it is Apple finally decided

[D]

to make the trade offs necessary. Right.

[C]

They never did this before. They never looked at it and said what could we do to build a

[D]

computer that would meet this price point?

[C]

That is an interesting strategy in and of itself because it points to something that Apple I think doesn't usually do. And to the people who complain about this thing not having this or not having that, there are always going to be trade offs. Like I said, Apple's gonna, something's gonna have to go go. And the question is what part of the experience is can be sacrificed without feeling like you are using a cut rate product. And I think they, they chose the ones that they felt like based on their information were ones that, that would, would not make as much a difference to the daily use to the people

[D]

who are going to buy this computer.

[C]

And will it get better over time? I think it depends how well it sells, but I wouldn't bet against it.

[A]

Yeah, I think that's well, well, well put. Anything else that we might have missed in terms of of all the devices that have been announced or anything. I know you are really good about finding stuff that you know may have been missed during it, but maybe there isn't this time. I'm not sure.

[C]

It's a little more sparse this time. I think one thing we didn't note just about the Neo 2, which we of course should mention is it comes in colors which is a another big change from Apple's laptop line which has

[D]

kind of eschewed that for many years now.

[C]

You can get this in a blush pink, citrus, sort of yellowy green and a blue indigo that is a little

[D]

bit lighter than the midnight available on the MacBook Air.

[C]

I think it's interesting as people point out, Apple promoted basically came out with three separate products at that 599 price point. The 17e, the iPad Air and the MacBook Neo are all 599 which are again affordable as far as Apple products go. And they really do feel like they've got a spread. One thing I wrote about a bit on six colors yesterday that I think is really interesting is in terms of

[D]

the Neo as an education device.

[C]

That 499 price point for education is really solid.

[D]

And when you combine it with the fact that Apple's really aggressively priced its

[C]

new Creator Studio at just $3 a month or $30 a year for education customers, you could do a lot worse than sending kid off to college with

[D]

one of these and a Creator studio

[C]

subscription at a very affordable price point

[D]

for a very large degree of power and capability.

[C]

You can get a lot done with

[D]

one of these things and a creator studio, I think.

[C]

And you know, if at some point you grow out of that, there's room

[D]

to grow in the Apple lineup.

[C]

But it doesn't hurt to have a

[D]

device that's, you know, more of perhaps a starter Mac.

[A]

Absolutely, yeah. Well, Dan, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to join us today. If people would like to keep up to date with the work you're doing, where should they go to do so?

[C]

Well, if you're interested in Apple stuff, go over to 6colors.com. That's where we covered all of this

[D]

week's announcements and we'll have a lot more to talk about as well.

[C]

Of course, I host the Clockwise podcast with Micah every week on Relay. You can go to Relay FM Clockwise, check that out and you can go buy my books, including pre ordering my latest book which comes out in November called Eternity's tomb. Go to dmorin.com you can find a

[D]

list of all my works there.

[A]

Go get Dan's books, please, and thank you. All right. Thank you, Dan. We'll talk to you.

[D]

Thanks, Micah.

[A]

Alrighty folks, let's take another break so I can tell you about our next sponsor. This time it's Out Systems, bringing you this episode of Tech News Weekly. OutSystems, the number one AI development platform, the agentic shift, is happening. We're moving beyond simple chatbots and Outsystems is leading the agentic conversation. Outsystems helps businesses build AI agents that can actually do work, such as take actions, make decisions, integrate with data, rather than just answer. Outsystems is solving the talent gap. There just aren't enough AI engineers in the world. Outsystems empowers the developers that companies already have to build at an elite level. Outsystems is the secret weapon behind the world's most successful companies. They're not just for small apps. They are for the massive, complex systems that run banks, insurance companies, government services. Outsystems even helps companies with aging IT environments bridge the gap to the AI future without a rip and replace nightmare for example, they helped a top US bank deploy an app that lets customers open new accounts on any device, delivering 75% faster onboarding times. They even helped a global insurer accelerate the development of a portal and app for its employees, delivering a 360 degree view of customers and enabling insurance agents to grow policy sales. Outsystems combines the speed of AI with the guardrails of low code. It's the safest and fastest way for an enterprise to go from we need an AI strategy to we have a functioning AI application. Stop wondering how AI will change your business and start building the agents that will lead it. Visit outsystems.com TWIT to see how the world's most innovative enterprises are using AI powered low code to transform. That's O U T S Y-S-T M S.com TWIT to book a demo and see the future future of software development. Our thanks to Outsystems for sponsoring this week's episode of Tech News Weekly. Alrighty, we are back from the break, and that means it's time for a quick little story of the week from me. This week, a major investigation from two Swedish newspapers, Svenska Dogbladet and Yetaborj Posten, pulls back the curtain on what's really happening with the data collected by Meta's Ray Ban Smart Glasses. Written as a collaborative investigative piece and published in late February of 2026, the report reveals that workers at a Meta subcontractor in Nairobi, Kenya, are being exposed to deeply private video footage, including nudity, sexual content, and sensitive personal information captured by everyday users of the glasses. The investigation, which includes interviews with more than 30 employees at the subcontracting firm Sama, plants a excuse me? Paints a troubling picture of the gap between how these glasses are marketed and what actually happens to the data data they collect. It's a story about privacy, about labor, and the human cost hiding behind the phrase machine learning. So let's kind of talk about real quick the promise versus the reality. Because Meta has positioned its Ray Ban Smart glasses as this sort of all in one AI assistant, it'll help you translate languages and capture moments and navigate the world hands free. In Sweden, the glasses are sold at major optical retailers like Synsam and Synoptic, and sales tripled in 2025, reaching 7 million units global. Globally, there have been celebrity endorsements, including a Swedish hockey player that have kind of made it so that more people are are, you know, jumping on board. But here's the thing. The investigation reveals a significant disconnect between the marketing pitch and what actually happens behind the scenes. When These journalists visited 10 retail stores in Stockholm and Gothenburg, they found that sales staff had had wildly inconsistent and frankly, flat out incorrect answers about how user data is handled. There was one employee who said, quote, nothing is shared with them being Meta. That was a big concern for me as well, but you have full control. Another salesperson said, to be completely honest, I don't know where the data goes or if they take data at all. And then the journalist's own testing revealed the truth that the AI functions in the glasses require an active Internet connection and regular communication with Meta's servers. And so it's nothing. The idea that it's sort of like locally in the app or locally on device is not the case when it comes to these devices. Now let's talk about what the workers are seeing. It's the workers themselves who, you know, shared what they're seeing. The data annotators employed by sama, which is a Meta subcontractor. These workers tasked with labeling and interpreting video, image and audio data to train Meta's AI models. And they described being routinely exposed to intimate content captured by users who likely had no idea they were being recorded or that their footage would end up on screens halfway around the world. One employee described it bluntly, saying, we see everything from living rooms to naked bodies. Meta has that type of content in its databases. People can record themselves in the wrong way and not even know what they are recording. They are real people like you and me. Another one said, someone may have been walking around with the glasses or happened to be wearing them, and then the person's partner was in the bathroom or they had just come out naked. Workers have also reported seeing bank card details, pornography people were watching while wearing the glasses, sex acts that were filmed with the glasses. Specifically, one worker described the content as material that could trigger enormous scandals if it were leaked. And when it comes to kind of the work that they're doing, the content can be about any topics, chats where someone talks about crimes or protests. It is not just greetings, it can be very dark things as well, said one of the employees. Now, there's a lot to kind of break down when it comes to what is going on here, what's allowed, what's not. Because Meta, of course, needs to be compliant in the EU with the GDPR General Data Protection Regulation, where companies have to be transparent about how their data is processed, where it's being processed, and it doesn't seem like, according to what these journalists discovered, that Metta is within the realm of regulation requirements for this data. And so one of the data protection lawyers said this. If this happens in Europe, both transparency and a legal basis for the processing are lacking. Once the material has been fed into the models, the user in practice loses control over how it is used. Overall, I think this is a conversation of needing to understand where the data is going, how it's being used and just being mindful, I think, of the technology that we're using. I feel like if I bought a pair of these glasses I would, I would be very careful about what they were picking up. But the fact is not everybody is paying attention to or aware of the, the, the data practices that these companies have and in particular what it means when you opt into analytics in some cases because things can be buried under that term of, oh, help us, help us with the next version of this product by allowing us to, to, you know, view your data and tag your data and this and that and the other. And then you come to find out what you're actually doing is letting someone somewhere in the world, not an AI, not a robot, not something like that, actually look at this data because it needs to be tagged and understood by a human so that it can then be tagged and understood by a, an AI system. There's a lot to dig into to in this piece and so I do encourage everyone to go and read this piece, particularly given the investigative work that I think is an important aspect of this. So we'll of course include a link in the show notes to the article. But we do need to move along because we've got an interview to get to right after we take one more break. So I can tell you about Trusted Tech bringing you this episode of Tech News Weekly. If you're using Microsoft 365, there's a good chance you're paying for licenses you don't need or you're missing ones that you do. In fact, in July, Microsoft is going to implement a significant price increase for M365 and with it a lot of nuance. And that nuance is where people, we hear that people end up kind of getting things wrong. Trusted Tech is there to help businesses of all sizes get the most out of their Microsoft investment by ensuring their M365 environment is one well supported and aligned with how the business actually operates. We got to speak with the folks at Trusted Tech and kind of learn about it turns. That's a lot. There are a lot of pitfalls when it comes to this licensing stuff and you can end up paying a whole lot more money than you would expect because you don't have the understanding of the nuance here. And that's where Trusted Tech comes into place. Microsoft Licensing Complicated options can vary widely. Trusted Tech Team helps organizations understand what they have, what they need, and then how to make the most of what they're actually paying for. If you want to make sure you're getting M365 done right, Trusted Tech is offering a free Microsoft 365 licensing consultation. Just visit TrustedTech team TWiT365 to get a clear data backed view of your current licenses, optimization opportunities and next steps. Kevin Turner, Former Microsoft COO yeah, the former Microsoft COO says you have an incredible customer reputation. You have to earn that every single day. The relentless focus you guys have on taking care of customers gives them value and differentiates you in the marketplace. Trusted Tech also elevates the Microsoft support experience with its certified support services. Enterprises save 32% to 52% compared to the average Microsoft Unified Support Agreements Whether you're looking to fine tune your Microsoft 365 licensing, improve the way your organization receives proactive Microsoft support, or both, Trusted Tech offers free consultations to help you understand your options. Go to TrustedTech Team TWiT365 and submit a form to get in contact with Trusted Tech's Microsoft licensing engineers. And of course, we thank Trusted Tech for sponsoring this week's episode of Tech News Weekly. All right, we are back from the break and Google just made one of the biggest shakeups to its Android App Store in years. It's the result of a long running antitrust battle that's finally seeming to be coming to a head. The changes could have major implications for developers, rival app stores, and the way you download and pay for apps on your phone. Joining us today to talk about it is Bloomberg's own Leah Nyland. Welcome back to the show, Leah.

[B]

Thank you guys for having me.

[A]

Yeah, always a pleasure to get to chat with you. So Google just announced some pretty significant changes to how its Android Android App Store works, lowering fees, opening up access for rival app stores and more. Can you kind of walk us through what exactly Google is proposing here and more importantly, what prompted these moves?

[B]

Yeah, so this is a pretty big change for Google. So up to this point, most of the time when people are downloading apps on their phone, they're using the Google Play Store that is Google's branded own App Store. You could always try and download another App Store, but it was a little bit, bit Difficult. So as a result of this litigation, Google is now going to allow other app stores onto the Android platform much more easily. So you will be able to download a Microsoft or an Amazon or an Epic App Store just the same way that you would download any other app. And then from there, you can download apps the same way you would through Google Play. This is, as I said, a pretty major change, as Google has, has for the past, you know, since it invented Android, tried to push people to use its App Store in part because it gets up to 30% of the costs of any download or thing that you buy in an app from the developer. So the other change that they announced is that they are going to lower those fees significantly. So Instead of taking 30%, they are now going to be taking 10, 15, or 20%, depending on a couple different things. If it's a subscription, it's only 10%. If it's a developer developer who agrees to go into, like a special program, it's 15. If you don't want to be part of their program, it's 20. But that's still a significant, you know, chunk for developers because they have said that this is like a significant tax on them to have to pay 30% of their proceeds to Google.

[A]

Now, when it comes to the kind of the foundation of this, right, Epic Games vs Google case has been the thing that's been playing out for a few years. Could you give us a little bit of an understanding? How do we get from that 2012, I think it was, jury verdict to where we are today with these changes?

[B]

Yes. So Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite, had sued Google in 2020, alleging that it had monopolized the market for Android app develop, app downloads. The jury heard the case in the fall of 2023 and sided with Epic. They found that Google had illegally monopolized the Android app distribution market. And then there was this process where Google and Epic both proposed changes to how Google was going to have its App store. The judge ended up putting in place a remedy that went up on appeal and got affirmed and then came back down, at which point in time Epic and Google had tried to sort of settle the case. And they were going to enter into a settlement that was a little less severe than what the judge had imposed before. The judge did not like that at all. He felt that this was a sweetheart deal that Epic was getting because a lot of these changes were going to apply not just to Epic, but to any developer who uses the Android ecosystem. Whereas if Epic did this sort of settlement with Google, all of a sudden it was going to be getting better terms and everybody else was maybe not. So he was disinclined to accept that until it looked like he was going to reject it. And so Epic and Google went back to the table and this is now Google's proposal. It's not official until the judge still signs off, but it, this is a lot of what he had originally suggested, except that they are also now lowering the fees. So it seems like it's probably he's going to accept. Accept it.

[A]

Got it. Now the, the catalog sharing then is sort of the big aspect there can. That seems like such an odd term. Is there, is there a reason that it's called that as an industry term or.

[B]

Catalog sharing just means that if you wanted to build an app store, what you could do is you could say, hey, Google, I want you to give me just a copy of what you have in your Play Store right now so I can have the same apps available for consumers in my Play Store or in my, you know, not Play Store in my store. So the judge really liked this because it's sort of like giving everybody else, when they're building an app store leg up because all of a sudden they have all the same content. That was one thing that Google said was actually they thought it was going to be difficult to build and like involve a lot of like rights sharing and they didn't like this. And so they had scrapped that from the remedy. And then that was one of the main things that he was like really unhappy about about. So they have now added it back in. If you are starting up an app store tomorrow, I guess you can ask Google, hey, just give me a list of all the apps you have right now and I can start from there when I am building my app Store.

[A]

Google Samir Samat said that these changes go quote well, which, I mean, you would want to say that go quote well beyond what's legally required in the us and that they're also meant to satisfy regulators in Europe and the uk? How much of what we're seeing here is Google trying to get ahead, perhaps of pressure from places like the European Commission and the UK's Competition and Markets Authority, where we've seen in the past those groups know what they're doing.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, to be honest, my take of this whole thing is that this is actually all this stuff that they're going to be required to do in Europe anyway. So they might as well just roll it out globally so that they don't end up having like One set of App Store for the US and one elsewhere. The EU passes major digital regulation, the Digital Markets act, earlier this year, and not earlier this year, earlier in the 2000 and twenties. And it went into effect about two years ago. And Google has already gotten dinged for not opening up its app store enough in Europe. So they're already going to be facing fines for not doing enough there. They were going to be forced to do a bunch more on this. And so this is like their offer. This is them saying, okay, we hear the EU didn't like what we were doing before, so now we're definitely making it easier for there to be other app stores. Same thing in the uk. The UK had passed very similar legislation to Europe. It was going to. It gave Google the special designation, it's a strategic market status, which means that they can tell them, you have to open this up, you have to make it easier for rivals. So they were going to have to do a bunch of this in Europe anyway. This makes them seem like they're, you know, offering it makes them seem like they're doing this proactively. For one thing. They're not like being dragged into court every single time. And it allows them to do it in a global manner. So now we're not going to have extremely different experience in the US than people in Europe or the UK have.

[A]

The fee restructuring is an interesting part. Google decoupling billing system dropping to that flat 5% fee for developers. Is this a big shift for developers in terms of what they've been paying up to this point? And is it a little bit like the Apple App Store in the sense that we have seen that it's sort of the biggest developers that were impacted by the way that the App Store was set up before and that smaller developers, regardless of the old way of doing things or the new way of doing things, weren't as impacted.

[B]

Yeah, so this is really interesting. As of today, all developers just pay 30%, unless it's a subscription, and then sometimes you pay 15%. But what Google is doing here is they are sort of of decoupling the billing system from the rest of it. So now you can choose to use Google Play billing, in which case it, you know, automatically makes the charge through Google or if you're a developer, you can choose to use a different option. So you could use like stripe, you could use shop pay, all of these other options that we have. Like when you're buying something online, you no longer have to use Google and that developers like, because you might be able to get like it cheaper. You know, if you're accepting credit cards, usually the credit card transaction 3 fee is sometime somewhere between 3 and 5%. So if you do a lot of transactions, you might be able to get it cheaper elsewhere. And then you don't have to use Google at all. And then, so that's the 5%. You can, you can stop using Google altogether, stop paying that 5%. And then separately they're going to charge either this 15 or 20%. So the max that you're ever going to have to pay Google, even if you're using their billing, is now 25% instead of 30. 30. Or if you agree to some of the other restrictions, 20% instead of 30.

[A]

And then Epic's Tim Sweeney, which I was just reading that there that perhaps part of the agreement is that he won't talk poorly about the Google App Store or something. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about that. I thought that was really fascinating, but that is fascinating. Yeah. He said after the announcement that anyone can now launch a competitive app store. Do you think that's realistic or are there still practical barriers that could keep rival app stores from truly competing with Google Play?

[B]

So the one thing, if you are going through this process to become a registered App store with Google, they are going to drop what had been called like the Scare Screens. You will no longer have to, like, keep pressing. Okay, okay. I understand that this is like not Google's Play Store and it can do all these horrible things. I think Epic had said before it was going to take like 11 screens to go through if you wanted to, like download something, something through. Another thing, Google has agreed that it's just going to drop that it's going to make it the same for you to download an app through an alternate app Store as it is when you do it in the Google Play. So yes, it will be a lot easier for you to use an alternative app Store, you as a consumer or you as a company to offer an alternative App Store. So, you know, he did say they sort of consider this now the same as Windows. Windows is sort of like considered the easiest platform for developers because there aren't a lot of restrictions on how people download things, where people download things from. And all of these changes that Google is making are supposed to make it a lot easier for consumers and developers to sort of have options for how things are paid for and how things are downloaded.

[A]

Lastly, kind of looking at the bigger picture here, we've got Google making these changes. Apple, of course, facing its own app store battles, regulators around the world tightening the screws on how these platforms operate. Where do you see all of this heading, especially given your domain of or your knowledge domain? Are we looking at a fundamentally different app economy in the next few years, do we think?

[B]

I think it's definitely changing for Android. Like this is a pretty big move for anyone who owns an Android device. This applies to both tablets and phones and outside of the U.S. that's most people, most people have an Android phone. It's just in the US most people have an iPhone. So that's still the one big barrier is Apple has really, really resisted a lot of these changes. It is challenging the DMA and various fines that have been imposed on it for not opening up the App Store. It is still litigating with Epic on and on and on that lawsuit about having to open up its App Store. So the the Apple world is still very locked in, but now the Android one is a lot more open than it was before.

[A]

Nice. Well, I think, you know there's a lot more coming down all of these pipelines so I'm looking forward to talking to you again soon. But I thank you so much for taking the time today to go through where things stand and what's next. If people would like to keep up to date with your great work, where are the places that you they should go to do so.

[B]

Yeah, I am on Bluesky at Leonisland and you can also follow me on Bloomberg to get an email whenever I have a new story.

[A]

Awesome. Thank you so much for your time today Leah.

[B]

Thanks for having me.

[A]

Alrighty folks, that brings us to the end of this episode of Tech News Weekly. We publish a show every Thursday at Twitter TV tnw. You can head there to subscribe to the audio and video versions of our show. If you out there would like to get ad free versions of of all of our content. Well Join our club. Join the club. Join our club. Twit TV Club Twit. Or you can scan that QR code in the top corner there. When you join the club you will gain access to some pretty awesome benefits. As I mentioned, ad free content. You also gain access to our special feeds that includes our feed for our bits, clips, sort of behind the scenes moments. We also have a feed for our live coverage of tech news events and a feed that has all of our club shows in it. That includes my crafting corner, Stacy's Book Club and so much more. If that's not enough for you, well I understand I guess because I'm also going to give you an invite to our wonderful Discord server. A fun place to go to chat with your fellow Club Twit members and those of us here at twit. If that sounds good to you, I'm sure it does. Twitter TV Club Twitt. Plus we've got great deals all the time so you can check those out as well. Twit if you would like to follow me online, I'm ichasargent on many a social media network. Or you can head to Chihuahua Coffee C H I H U A H U a Coffee where I've got links to the places I'm most active online. Be sure to check out my other shows iOS today hands on Apple, which we'll publish today and on Sunday we'll be recording our next set of Hands On Tech episodes, so be sure to tune in then as well. Thank you for being here. I'll catch you again next week for another episode of Tech News Weekly. Bye bye.