Apple Wants to Lock You Into Your Home - DTNS 5372

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2:19Nica Montford: this is the daily tech news for tuesday october 13th spooky tuesday 2026 we tell you what you need to know give you the important context and help each other understand yes today apple's coming for your home. Even spookier, right? It sounds so ominous. And I've been actually playing around with Google's flagship Argon model for a little more than a week, so I can tell you how well Google's doing at the catch-up game in the frontier space. Fantastic. I'm Tom Merritt. I'm Jason Howell. Let's start with what you need to know with the big story. Of course, Apple announced several smart home-related products today, including the new HomeView Smart Hub.

2:58Nica Montford: Joining us to run through all the announcements is Nika Monford from snob o us thank you for joining us nika and sarah lane dropping in good to see you sarah you as well fantastic let's start with the home view that's the name home view it's a seven inch square touchscreen display just as german foretold uh running on an a18 chip same one that's in your iphone 16 or at least in my iphone 16 uh it uses siri ai and can tell with facial recognition who's talking to it. It can remember up to six people so that when you're looking at it, when you're talking to it, it can personalize the responses. That's a little more secure too.

3:37Nica Montford: Nobody can see your messages, your photos, your calendar, make your FaceTime calls, see your reminders. Those are all apps that it can have except you. You can also pick up or leave off from conversations with Siri on an iPhone or iPad. You can get it in four colors if you get the tabletop device with that That little round base kind of looks like an old Mac or in two colors. If you get a wall mounted device and you can order both versions right now,$299 each shipping November 13th. The wall mount option, however, won't go on your wall unless you get the mount and the mount is sold separately.

4:12Nica Montford: $60 if you want to plug it in by USB-C or$89 if you want a good old fashioned AC wired plug. And they say power over Ethernet is going to be coming next year. That wall mount will be$130. unless you're in the EU, in which case you can't get this at all because Apple is working to clear Siri AI with regulators there. Before we get to the rest of the announcements, Nika, what did you think of the home view? It's been on my prediction list for the last couple of years, so I'm finally glad that I can mark it off. It's like I guess if you have enough patience and persistence, it'll eventually come around.

4:47I'm glad to see it finally come to fruition, and I truly believe it was ready before now. But with all of the issues with Apple intelligence, I don't think Apple wanted to release yet another device that wouldn't be fully functional with its software. So now that we have Siri AI, people are using it, it's doing its thing. Now we get this Home View, which I had been calling HomePad. I think a lot of people were. Yeah, it's a great, I think, looking device. It definitely, for me, I could see the use case for me. I wouldn't want the wall mount. I would want the one that kind of comes with the little base because, you know, you're on your phone in the kitchen, you're trying to look up a recipe, you're trying to follow it, but then your phone goes to sleep.

5:32You have to keep tapping it, tapping it, going back in. So having kind of like a dedicated kind of central home management device that kind of has a stationary position that you don't have to move around or take with you. And the way that it works directly with the iPhone, it can hand off from either direction. I think it's a a nifty uh looking device you said wood so you didn't order one yet sounds like i have not

5:58Nica Montford: ordered one yet you pulled the trigger all right i haven't pulled the trigger sarah what about you

6:04Sarah Lane: i have thoughts okay so so so first of all let me say that nika talking about kitchens i've got an echo show uh an echo show eight circa 2019 in my kitchen which uh you know it's it's there are some issues with it. It's not, it's not the most fabulous device at this point, but I really like having a display in the kitchen. Now, not everybody is like, I don't hang out in the kitchen all that much. You know, you know, what is this really doing for me? One of the things that struck me is the seven inch square display on the, uh, on the home view, because I'm like, okay, so this is not for video. This is literally for, you're like checking in with people, uh reading messages you know uh you know checking your calendar or facetime stuff like that that is sort of a hard sell for me because i'm like i already have my phone though and i have my laptop you know over you know in the next room i just don't i don't i don't know how well this would work for me personally now if you're a family of six right or or anything under that and you're like, no, no, no, this is actually really great.

7:18Sarah Lane: Nobody's going to be looking over someone else's shoulder to like read the messages that they're reading from their phone. All good. But the other sticking point I have, just because I'm trying to play devil's advocate a little bit here. Sure. And first of all, you know,$300, you can get a new Echo Show for$200.

7:39Nica Montford: Yeah. And it comes with the wall mount.

7:41Sarah Lane: you know so so this is this is something that you're going to pay for because you want an apple product and that's cool lots of people do that but the wall mount option being the same price but then needing more hardware after the fact and let's be honest if you're a person who doesn't care about cords you know like you know down your wall okay most people do though if you're going to go wall mount. And so you're talking about some assembly, some assembly that I think Apple was kind of being like, yeah, or you can just have this one. It's like, yeah, but who's doing that really? Unless you have to hire somebody to help you to make it look good.

8:25Sarah Lane: And then where do you put it? Because it's wall mounted, can't be moved. So, you know, you want to do like a FaceTime with somebody you got to stand in a place on a wall that's like very very good for the family so

8:39Nica Montford: anyway lots of questions i have yeah yeah question no i think they did the uh the wall mount separately so they could say the price is the same uh and not have to package you know and be able to have that desktop display because what the what the echo show does is it just sells you the echo show and you can like you can either set it on the counter as is or you can adapt it a little and use the wall mount, you get everything in the same box. Jason, as an Android phone user, you're not going to probably be taking advantage of a lot of the iPhone integration here. Does this even appeal to you? Yeah, well, I was thinking about what you were saying, Sarah, as far as the square display and kind of the limitations that that creates for a device like this.

9:19As a parent of two children who are a little bit older, so we're kind of out of the realm of like They're so young, they can't help their impulses when they see a screen and they got to go right for YouTube or something like that. That used to be a battle that we would fight. And so when I look at a device like this, I'm like, actually, as a parent, I think this is really smart. This is a device that I think most parents could feel relatively safe putting into wherever the space is that they found for it and have it not just turn into another screen where kids get lost for a million hours. It can be the thing that's very specific to home control or maybe some FaceTime calls or whatever the case may be.

9:58Because so many of these devices, they end up being that landscape form anyways. And the obvious step there is, and you can watch video on it. I know firsthand and also from other parents that I know that they don't want these devices because that opens the portal literally to those use cases.

10:16Nica Montford: And you can watch video on this. It's going to partner with non-Apple video. But like Sarah said, it's not really attractive to do that. That's not your best. But I think the size is intentional. I think it's an intentional distinction between your phone or your iPad or your laptop. Because it's giving you this shape that says it has a screen, but it doesn't look like the other one. So it kind of signals to the brain that this is something different. I really see this device more as like a mission control for the home. It's like you put it somewhere stationary. And if you need to go and check your specific calendar, you can go and it pulls up based on your profile, your information.

11:03Oh, this is where I need to go. Or I need to check a message real quick. Or say I run downstairs, I forget my phone upstairs. Crap, now I got to go back upstairs to get my phone to look at this, look at that. No, I can do all of that on this wherever I am. So for me, it gives the illusion or maybe not even necessarily the illusion, but the fact that it can be like a central place for if you need to look at something, maybe say quickly, or you need to catch something as you're walking out the door. I could see, we'll talk about these later, but I have like three HomePod minis and I have them strategically placed all over my house.

11:37And I kind of see, depending on what your budget is, this kind of thing. I would think if you were going to do the wall mount, maybe you're doing it more for security. You have it by like your garage door, like when you first come in. And that's one aspect of it. And then you have it on this kind of move around version. And you have it in your kitchen or you have it in your family room or you have it in your game room. That type of thing. Wherever the family kind of congregates normally is kind of like a catch-all. This is where I know I can go quickly to get information that's on my phone if I don't have my phone handy.

12:09Nica Montford: Yeah, because I'll be honest, I don't use my Echo Show for video all that often. I use it the way you're talking about. I talk to it and ask it for things, information or music or news, and then I will look at it for maybe weather or a few things. I could see looking at this more often because it knows who I am. The fact that you can switch accounts with the Echo is kind of useless because it's so much friction that we ended up hooking up Eileen's Spotify to my Amazon profile. Even though it says playing it from Thomas's Spotify, we have to remember like, oh, that's not mine. That's yours. Because it was just easier than having to say, can you switch to Eileen's account or me going play my Apple?

12:50Nica Montford: Oh, wait, that's Eileen's account. Hold on. Switch back. having it automatically do that i think is a big deal well i think that's what apple is i mean

12:58Sarah Lane: that's what it's really selling is you have other home hub options yeah i mean i've got a home hub on my lg tv do i use it no not really but i mean that's an option that i have you know like that's built into a relatively new tv that i have and you know obviously amazon has has has its options as well. And I really, and, you know, just even talking about like home kids, I've always wanted to be in entirely in the Apple ecosystem because I'm all in on Apple. I mean, that I have been for a long time. I just don't, I don't know that these offerings today, at least when we're talking about HomeView, I don't know that my Echo Show is going into the trash.

13:44Yeah.

13:44Nica Montford: I don't know how many people outside the Apple ecosystem are going to go for the HomeView, specifically because a lot of the account stuff requires an Apple account to be integrated to it.

13:53Sarah Lane: And it's expensive.

13:55Nica Montford: And it's expensive. But it is matter compliant. So you could use it to control your smart home with Siri AI and just not use any of the Apple account required stuff for the other stuff. To that end, Apple also announced the Apple Home Collection, a partnership with LG and Schneider electric on several smart home devices these are matter compliant as well so you wouldn't have to use home view with these but they're meant to be work to be able to work with that sort of apple airpod one tap setup simplicity uh there's an lg in-home camera that will turn the camera face down when you're home uh to be extra sure that it's not able to see you in your home and you don't want it to the lg outdoor camera that can monitor deliveries and recognize faces an LG floodlight cam with motion detection priced at$350, an LG door lock that has ultra wideband.

14:45Nica Montford: So if you want it to, it can unlock when it senses your phone nearby. That one's$350. A video doorbell at$250. And then LG and Schneider both have temperature sensors, which you can put in a room to inform the thermostat, how your temp is varying throughout the house, and smart thermostats, both from Schneider and LG. Apple will offer home installation through ADT. If you don't want to set these things up yourself, most of the home collection devices will come in December. Some of them coming in early 2027. Still a little murky on the ordering process and when they're arriving on these, but did any of these catch any of your eyes?

15:21Sarah Lane: I mean, it caught my eye, but again, price and also I'm a renter and just a lot of the stuff is just, it's not going to fly in my old apartment, which is a lovely apartment, but, you know, it's old. And it would require, I mean, sure, have ADT come out and install this stuff for me. But I don't know. I'm not really in the market for any of this stuff.

15:51Nica Montford: What about you, Nika? They look great. And I like the fact that they are LG and Snyder devices. but they fit very well into the Apple ecosystem. The whole look and feel of it looks very Apple. I think there is a specific market that they're catering to for not only these products, but for the HomeView as well. Again, like Sarah mentioned, the price point is pretty steep, but if you're trying to get some security upgrades to your home, I definitely think these work, especially with the Matter compliance in there. And then if you're already in the Apple ecosystem, that makes it even easier for you to navigate around.

16:39So, again, I'm not in the market for this, but I know that there are people who are. And if I wanted to upgrade my home system, this is definitely the route I'll go. And I'll say this because I have some home security cameras that I bought like two Black Fridays ago, and they're still in the shrink wrap box that they came in. So I'm not the prime target demographic. I see. Because at first I was like, yeah, I'm going to get these cameras. I'm going to put them in the front of my house, the back of my house, the side of my house. I'm going to be able to see all around. and yeah, they're still sitting.

17:22I mean, I think that's what Apple's after

17:23Nica Montford: is somebody who's like, I don't want to have to think about this stuff. I'll just buy the Apple stuff, use the Apple ecosystem, maybe even contract ADT to come out and set them up and be done with it as long as I have enough money. Because these are not cheap. These are far from the cheapest devices you could get.

17:39Sarah Lane: They're 100%.

17:40Nica Montford: Almost usurious with these$350 price points for this stuff. Jason, are you at all attracted? if money is no object? I mean, if money was no object, sure. These are nice-looking products. We do own a home. We do have some of these devices already up. And I'm trying to, racking my brain, trying to remember exactly how much some of those devices cost by comparison. I guarantee you they were much less than these are. And they do everything that I need. So it really is kind of like capability versus cost. You're kind of paying the Apple premium, if you want to put it that way, to kind of get these devices and have that integration probably be very easy.

18:20You know, the ecosystem is always a real big plus when it comes to devices like these working with Apple. So it's that. It's probably not appealing to me, though. I'm not as much, you know, all in on the Apple ecosystem.

18:32Nica Montford: We're probably still thinking of old prices for smart home devices because the prices have been going up because of chip reduction. Things have really changed. But these are still more expensive than even the more recent prices. And that's Apple anyway. And that is always Apple. You're paying the Apple premium for it. Yeah, yeah. If they were just LG and Schneider by themselves, then they probably wouldn't have this price point on them. I don't understand why they're not launching until December and they didn't give us prices on everything and they didn't give us definite release dates. It feels like maybe they're still trying to source parts for some of this stuff to bring the yields up.

19:07Nica Montford: A couple of new devices that can act as a home hub. So there's the home view, which is the device, but a home hub is anything that can work with HomeKit. And it's a Matter border router and all of that stuff as well. HomePod Mini S2 is a smart speaker with an S10 chip and an interactive light that can change colors and pulse along with the music on top. You can pair four of these together and get surround sound. It could also work as a speaker for a Mac. It will get Siri AI in a future update, but it won't have it when you buy it. For now, it's just a HomePod in five colors. $149 shipping October 30th.

19:43Nica Montford: Nika, I know you said you've got HomePods all over the house. Does this one maybe sway you a little more? So when I bought my HomePods, they were$99. And these are obviously more. They are 33 % more. Right. And they do come in these nifty new colors. but you know for for what i use my home pods for i don't really see honestly the need for the upgrade right now especially with siri ai not coming in now have they said you know it's ready to go it's ready to roll maybe or maybe i'd get a couple of more just to kind of add to the collection but basically each floor of my house has a dedicated home pod mini if i were to get more is like maybe I add one in another guest room or maybe I'll add one in the dining room or you know something like that but I have three um and they still you know serve the purpose you know that they need their of course I got the white one because that's the most neutral uh but I do like the colors the colors are pretty well the others are they're pretty but they're they're

20:53Sarah Lane: very specific. It's like army green. Okay. Pink. Hmm. Interesting. Okay. Sorry, Jason, go ahead. No, no, no, no. I was just wondering with the older HomePods, because the Apple home devices, we have the Google ones here in the house. I'm an Android guy. But are the older HomePods going to get Siri AI or are they limited to just this?

21:17Nica Montford: There was no word on that. We did get word on older Apple TVs getting Siri AI, but not on the older HomePods. Unless you heard something else, Nika. I haven't heard anything.

21:27Sarah Lane: I think the Apple TV going back to 2021, I believe, that the 4K is going to get it. I actually think the, if I hadn't just bought a Sonos Beam Ultra. I was thinking about that

21:46Nica Montford: when I saw the pairing of the surround sound.

21:47Sarah Lane: Yeah. and I have two older Sonos One speakers that are now part of my my surround sound in the living room just because I had them laying around and they were really weren't doing anything otherwise I would be very interested in this now you could also do this you know not to always do apples and apples between Apple and Amazon but you could do something very similar much more cheaply if you want the Amazon roots. You know, you got Echo Studios. Those are nice speakers. Now, the HomePod mini is less expensive than the Echo Studio, but the Echo Dots, you know, you could make this work in a variety of different ways.

22:30Sarah Lane: You just kind of have to choose a company and an ecosystem, really. Yeah, you can cobble together some things otherwise. But yeah, the Apple roots for this, I think is really fun if you care about home theater and music and, you know, and that sort of thing. I won't be interested just because I have another solution. But I was wondering, Jason, you know, being the musician and the audiophile that you are, what are you thinking? As far as like picking these up for anything in my house? What do you think about them even if you work on a good new site? Yeah, just quality. Yeah, I think I haven't heard them, so I would love to hear them and kind of get the understanding of kind of the overall sound quality of these little round speakers.

23:22I have the Google version of it that came out recently, and it sounds okay, but it could be better. I think what I think of when it comes to this from the audio side of things is the flexibility, right? being able to decide, like, do I want this to just be a dumb speaker in a room that does the thing, like plays the alarm and the music, whatever? Do I want to actually configure a bunch of them together to do multi-point surround inside my living room? Do I want to put them on a desk next to my computer, flanked with a stereo pair? There's a lot of flexibility there that I think is really nice in that tight form factor that is appealing, I think.

23:56And they look nice, too. So that's a nice bonus. Yeah, they're cute.

23:58Nica Montford: I love how they want us to forget about matter in all of this. Everyone was like, how are they going to lock you in if they're all interoperative? Just never mention it. Make it sound like you have to use their stuff together because you can use an Amazon Echo to control the LG Apple collab devices and even have HomeKit running on something else. That'll all work together depending on how you want to do it. But if you want to keep it simple, they're going to try to make it sound as simple as possible.

24:28Sarah Lane: I honestly think that all the matter, the marketing around matter and how devices are supposed to work more, you know, more interoperability. Interoperability. Interoperability. Thank you. Thank you. You knew what I was going for there. That was always a great promise. We've been talking about this for years. And more and more devices get that. but I feel like a lot of the normies are just like, well, what is that?

25:01Nica Montford: It works to their advantage because they can just buy something and the sales associate will say like, oh yeah, it's matter compliant. It'll work with whatever you have. But it's not something they want to think about. When I say they, I mean the companies. They don't want you to think about when you're going and buying stuff. So when you're in the Apple store, of course, they're going to be like, oh, you want a door lock? Yeah, we can lock you in to our ecosystem with this LG door lock. They're going to push their product. And for me, that's why I got the HomePod Minis. I was like, I like to keep things simple.

25:31I like to be able to open an app and all of my stuff is there. I'm not a huge, like, smart home person. In theory, I would like to be, but it's not something that, you know, I'm going out to do en masse. And when I do buy products, I do, if there is an Apple version of it, for me, that's where I'm going to go first. Because, again, it's all for me. it's about simplicity it's easier I don't want to think about it I don't want to have to open up one app because see so I have like um Samsung I have a couple Samsung TVs and I have a and my washer and dryer is Samsung so I know those four or five things they're in the smart things app so I know I can control them over there and everything else is you know in my Apple bubble and so I don't want to have to manage all these things in all these different places.

26:25Two was already enough. I don't want to have to add too many more.

26:29Nica Montford: Yeah, yeah. There is an Apple TV 4K, new Apple TV 4K with Siri AI, runs on an A19 chip, and its big advantage over the previous Apple TVs is three far-field mics. The idea is that you can just talk to this without having to pick up the remote. However, when you do need the remote after you've been talking to your Apple TV 4K for so long that You forgot where you put it. You can ask the Apple TV 4K to play a sound and the remote will beep. So you can dig into your couch and find it. New Apple TV will also use what it knows about you from your Apple account to understand what you're asking. So you can say like, what was that show Sarah emailed me about?

27:05Nica Montford: And it will be able to go into your email if you have your email on your iPhone account and then find all that. Siri AI, as Sarah mentioned, coming to older Apple TVs as far back as 2021. one uh the second gen apple tv 4k and newer when tv os 27.2 arrives later this year you can order this new fourth gen apple tv 4k for a mere 299 that's the new price of everything uh quite a bit more expensive than a roku uh or even a fire tv or or even previous apple tv and definitely a hundred more than the last Apple TV. That one is shipping on November 13th. Well, thank you guys for chatting with us about all of this stuff.

27:50Nica Montford: And before we let you go, Sarah, new Live With It with Scott Johnson this week. What are we talking about?

27:56Sarah Lane: We're talking about the Steam controller. Scott's been living with this for quite some time. And in the episode, you will see how many actual gaming controllers he really has. He has like multiple buckets of them. Oh, wow. Like literal buckets. Literal buckets. You never know what's going on in the basement over at the Johnson house. But he has some really interesting thoughts on the Steam controller, why it's good, why it's better than some alternatives, and why you might not want to spring for the price.

28:30Nica Montford: Gotcha. And Nika, thank you for popping in as well. What's going on on SnobOS before we let you go? We're definitely going to dig into this a little bit more on our show. If you're a patron supporter, you'll be able to hear it Wednesday we record. If you are a regular listener, you'll be able to check all of that out. On Friday, we're going to, of course, talk about this and talk about what else is going on in the Apple world. So definitely check that out. Well, thank you again, both of you, for dropping in. The fact that we were able to do this at all is because of humans, right, Jason? That's right.

29:05That's right. DTNS is made possible by you, the human listener. Thank you to Plumber Sanderlin, Simon Daniel Jerk, Joni, and Hitech Oki. Thank you.

29:17Nica Montford: And brand new patrons, Gary, Chris, MG, actually was just helping us test something, but we thank you for helping us test it. Upgrades to memberships from Damon and FakieNoseGrob00. Thank you all. episode prep gets messy when research slack threads and script trackers are all in different places that's where chat gpt work comes in give it the goal and connect to the tools where work happens like apps and files and it can help pull the pieces into a draft you can review without you having to re-explain the project at every step for example chat gpt work can gather team feedback from Slack and use it to suggest updates to a project brief in Google Docs.

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33:18Nica Montford: there's more we need to know today let's get to the briefs it's also frontier model week in the tech world meta released muse wonder and muse wonderful get it wonderful it's wonder spaceful but anyway uh it's meta's first claim at a frontier model meta compared the benchmarks to anthropics fable 5.1 and open ai gpt6 astra wonderful is only available to muse code subscribers. Both of them will be used to power the Muse agent, but that's not the only model on the frontier today. Google's new flagship Gemini 4 Argon is rolling out to the Gemini app and AI mode in search. If you are a Google AI Pro subscriber, it had already launched for ultra subscribers last month.

34:03Nica Montford: It's also available in the anti-gravity desktop app and the command line interface, AI Studio, and Android Studio Canary for ultra subscribers. So the normal wide release, it's out of the like only the government friends can watch it. Now, pretty much anybody who's paying can use it. And Jason, you've been using Argon. What do you think? Yeah, no, I mean, up until this morning, yeah, it was me and a bunch of early access folks. So I'm really just lucky enough to participate in early access on some of the Google models. So I've been playing around with Argon for probably the last week and a half at this point.

34:37And Google says the things that you are used to hearing when it comes to a new Frontier release, better at coding, better chatbot experience, right? You're not going to get as many repeat answers or cliche usage or hedging. Hedging was something that older Gemini did a lot of. They're saying this has kind of stamp that out. How I used it, I mean, I'm not a coder. I don't really use my AI chatbots to code things, but I was like, well, why don't I go ahead and try? So I thought of an old Commodore 64 game, of course, because I'm a nerd, that I used to love called Lords of Conquest. And I was like, I wonder if I could just one-shot a Lords of Conquest game.

35:22And I'd say at the end of the day, I probably worked with it for about like 30, 40 minutes or so, not really knowing what I could do. But I got it running reasonably well, considering, all things considered. I mean, there's still plenty of rough edges to iron out and everything. I think if someone is a coder or has more of an understanding of kind of those modalities or the frameworks, the ways of thinking about it, they could probably get a better output than I did. But, you know, for my first time trying it, I was actually really impressed. and I've seen some really great examples as well of what it's capable of doing.

35:59But I'd say what really applies to me and what I really used it for, I tend to use these models a lot for how I run my business and how I think through problems that come up in my business and everything. And in particular, I was working on like a proposal for a client, and I would normally kind of go back and forth with Claude, like the Opus or Fable to kind of kick that off and then keep it in that wheelhouse. This time I was kind of doing it with both side by side to see kind of how they compared. Speed was a huge improvement on Argon. I was actually really impressed by how quickly I got high quality output from it.

36:38It was just, it was incredibly noticeable, especially compared to Claude. Reasoning surprised me as well because I would get something from on the clod side and it would seem great at first. But then when I really kind of start thinking through it, I'd realize that it was giving me an answer that on paper looked really great. But when I really started kind of getting down to brass tacks on, you know, does that actually serve the customer or does the second option actually differentiate itself from the first one, it started to fall apart. Argon was really cool because not only did it give me two options that were actually very unique from each other, but still kind of solved the problem, about a little ways further into it, it went back to its work and said, actually, I just discovered something about the old thing that I don't like.

37:26So here's what we're going to do. And it kind of course corrected itself based on its own analysis of work it had already done a few steps back. And I don't know that I've seen that before. Usually these things are very focused on the now thing, the now task. And this one was kind of going along. And it's almost like it was going along. It was like, wait a minute. I'm going to go back over there and check something out. And it did that. And when I really scrutinized the output, I was really happy it did that because I was like, oh, man, I missed that too. That's amazing that you caught that. It was just a really interesting and unique experience from my own experience playing around with these models.

37:59Nica Montford: Yeah, that is an experience I've had comparing Gemini's previous model with ChatGPT, is that I will run it through both. And lately, with Astra, I'm usually getting more impressive results, more checking on things, more saying no than I would get from Gemini. And so I'm excited to get access to Argon. I'm not sure if it's coming to my plan at this point. And I think it is because I think I have Pro through DTNS. They'll have to play with that. But yeah, I'll be interesting to see how it compares to Astra now that they're more at parity. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, there were a lot of other kind of testers kind of chatting back and forth as this is kind of going along.

38:43Had a lot of folks in there creating some pretty interesting and very dynamic apps. Not only that, you know, kind of the kind of image and graphical rendering capabilities of it. And the three-dimensional space, it kind of feels like we're getting closer and closer to where these things understand some of the physics of the world a little bit better by the model output that they're putting in some of those examples that I saw in the chat. Creative writing is improved. I definitely can attest to that. Definitely getting better output. Because Gemini was never the model that I relied on if I wanted to, like, write something, you know, as a foundation and then edit from it.

39:22I always felt like it was very mechanical, personally. and uh i feel like they've much improved that with argon um yeah and just overall a lot faster um but you know it's it's not it's not perfect um some overconfidence issues were cropping up for some of the earlier testers um a bit of a a drive for persistence which is like it can deplete the

39:44Nica Montford: tokens because it's like let me keep trying at this use up all your tokens yeah yeah totally or if it's doing that into another system, right? Like you're using that to control another app, you could deplete something over there because it's just hammering it. So you got to be careful. But overall, I think Google's done a good job here. And time will tell how other people feel about it. But they have been kind of in this position of like, hey, Google, like you're Google. Why are you still behind here? You should be in the front with the other frontier models. And this definitely brings them closer.

40:18Yeah.

40:18Nica Montford: I guess the only criticism I can think of is this brings them parody, not back in front. And so obviously the next time Anthropic and OpenAI adjust their model, how long is it going to take for Google to catch back up with them? But it is good to see it, like kind of at least for the moment at parody. So a tip of the hat to you, Jason, for sharing your experience with me. I'll tip my headphones. This hat from the Daily Tech News Show store. it's a it's a lovely denim twill with len peralta's rainbow dtns logo on the front i love it i could get you one it's very stylish you want one i will i will take you up on that yeah okay dailytechnewshow.com store is where i'll go to buy it it's easy anybody can do it this hat is really comfortable zoe brings bacon uh our moderator and one of our our greatest listeners and supporters, wears it every time I see her.

41:17Nica Montford: Now, she's probably only wearing it when I'm around. But still, she's like, no, it's a good hat. It's very comfortable. So go check it out, along with all the other fine merchandise we have at dailytechnewshow.com slash store.

41:34This episode is brought to you by Capital One. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi-agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping. Using self-reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks, it doesn't just help buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive, get pre-approved for financing, and estimate trade-in value. Advanced, intuitive, and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One. This is the story of the one. As a shipping manager, he's running the dock, stocking supplies, and making sure every order goes out on time.

42:11And Grainger helps him stay prepared. From shipping supplies to PPE to hand tools, he counts on Grainger to keep products moving and trucks rolling, so his operation runs smoothly no matter the shift. Call 1-800-GRAINGER, click grainger.com, or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.

42:36Nica Montford: to the headlines oh oh wow i was expecting more from you that's me telling you jason to the headlines all right you know hey sometimes it's it's as easy as three words google announced the fitbit edge a 180 wearable with an oled display and google health tracking features you can order it right now and it'll start shipping on October 27th. Two more headlines. Thanks to RW Nash for noting this one on our subreddit. Bloomberg sources say Epic Games has delayed the release of an upcoming shooter video game that was a collab with Disney. So they're using Marvel and Star Wars characters. And here's the part that's getting all the headlines.

43:17Nica Montford: Epic apparently told its developers to use an AI first production model to get it done. That won't anger everyone. No. The memo also mentioned no more handwritten code and art generated with full AI workflows. So no one's going to buy this game is my prediction. They pretty much just got a bingo card of all the things that were going to really upset people and block them all. Exactly. And also, a lot of the coders are like, this is stupid. They don't really mean this, do they? Like, yes, use the tools. But if you're delay, I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. Anthropix Red Team demonstrated that a very large externally hosted model can conduct a replication of models on machines with intentionally exposed Android debug bridge interfaces.

44:06And the small models can set up their own inference. It did not yet demonstrate a small model that could independently replicate itself. Models that can replicate are not yet small enough to run on inexpensive target devices like smart home gadgets, at least for now.

44:24Nica Montford: This is a typical Anthropic scare story, right? Where they say, we were able to do something that when this improves will be dangerous. That's important, but Anthropic is always a little, like, I don't know, aggressive with the, like, making it sound like the risk is now. And I think it's important to put this research out and be prepared, you know, like, oh, okay. we want to make sure that we don't have models that can replicate on smart home devices. But all the headlines are making it sound like you could do it now. And it's important to know there's a threat model you can use here right now, and you should be focusing on that because that's what the malicious actors are going to use now.

45:01Nica Montford: If you're defending against someone putting a self-replicating model on your smart home device, you're defending against the wrong thing for now. But anyway, it gets complicated when they get crazy like that. This weekend, malicious attackers, for example exploited french supermarket chains running older versions of danfoss control software that had two bugs that had been patched in later versions uh they didn't need to have a self-replicating model to do it uh they just needed people not to patch stuff the attackers were also able to trigger defrost systems overnight thus ruining the contents of the refrigeration units so patchy patch patch my baloney it's it's spoiled uh it would be jamone in this way.

45:44Nica Montford: No. Yes. Yeah. My homony. The OnePlus 16 has officially launched. Yay. The world can celebrate. Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 chipset. 185 hertz refresh rate for gaming titles. It's on sale now in China, starting at 5 ,699 won, which comes out to about$848 before the national subsidy and any other sales. When I say the world, I mean everyone except for the US. Yeah. Nikkei Asia previously reported a reduction in iPhone component orders for the iPhone 18 Pro. And it may be that some of those iPhone 18 customers are shifting to the foldable. China's Security Times is reporting an increase in orders for the Apple iPhone Duo foldable, which goes up for order this Friday.

46:34Oh, this Friday. Coming fast. If you want to see more examples of what Samsung's upcoming Android XR glasses will look like from Gentle Monster and Warby Parker, man, we've been hearing about these things for literal years at this point. Sammy Guru has slides that it claims are leaks of multiple designs from both.

46:53Nica Montford: And thanks to Motang for the heads up on this one on our subreddit. Research firm Serkana estimates that U.S. sales of video game consoles fell 33 % for the Xbox year over year and 25 % for the PS5. Those price increases, those component price increases, all of that is affecting game consoles kind of the same way that it's been affecting PCs. Yeah, yeah, it hurts a little bit. Right on my elbow. We end every episode of DTNS with some shared perspectives. And today, Daniel has a smart lock strategy for renters. Yeah, Daniel wanted to share. I have been, Daniel says, I have been using a Yale Approach smart lock as a renter for about four years.

47:35Nica Montford: Two years in a rented apartment and two plus in my current rented house. They have a model designed to be easy to install without requiring any permanent changes. The core component replaces the thumb turn on the inside side of the door with a piece that has a thumb turn and a motor. The lock internals on the outside side of the door, including the key, are completely unchanged. The lock is battery powered, so there's no wires to run, connects to your phone by Bluetooth when you're nearby, and you can use it just like that without any additional things. The key you have still works. You can share access through the app, though users would need that app as well.

48:09Nica Montford: and he added a wireless keypad which attaches with removable adhesive somewhere outside where you can create codes for friends and family that can be time limited he also added a wi-fi gateway that allows him to connect to the lock remotely and connect it to his smart home system that lets him unlock the door or see the current status remotely without having to go to a cloud provider he says i guess it sounds like an ad but i'm not getting paid thought you might find this useful i'm very much team smart lock the auto locking is incredibly useful thank you daniel Yeah, auto locking. I'm telling you, it's where it's at.

48:42It's where it's at. What are you thinking about? If you have insight into a story, you can share it with us at feedback at dailytechnewsshow.com.

48:50Nica Montford: Big thanks to Sarah Lane, Nika Monford, and Daniel for all contributing to today's show. Thank you for being along for Daily Tech News Show. You're the folks who keep us in business. Become a patron. In fact, there's a secret discount if you go check it out. Half-tober. Patreon.com slash DTNS.

49:10The DTNS family of podcasts, helping each other understand.

49:16Nica Montford: Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.

49:39Nica Montford: HandCloud reinvested their 2 % cash back to help build the company's retail presence. Capital One, what's in your wallet? Find out more at CapitalOne.com slash SparkCash Plus. Terms apply. Grainger knows if you're a procurement manager at an industrial manufacturing facility, you're balancing inventory and budget while sourcing critical supplies across the operation. Too much inventory? Costs climb. Too little? Production slows. Grainger's$2 billion in on-hand inventory helps you get what you need when you need it. so you can help keep budgets balanced and lines moving. Call 1-800-GRAINGER, click grainger.com, or just stop by.

50:15Grainger, for the ones who get it done.