Android fateful your weekly source for latest news hardware and apps for the world of Android Let's do it again. I you started before I pulled you up. So we only caught you're the beginning of it Oh, I see you're a stickler for These things so if you're not showing me on the screen am I not we can't hear you yet. Correct. Yeah. Oh really? Yeah, I think I know I think I can do that though. It's fine. I just didn't realize that yeah Yeah, that's how it is. Yeah, it's basically live or not live. So all right, so um, okay Let's try that again. Yeah, that's important. All right. Um, all right. Goodbye Hello and welcome to android faithful your week the source the latest news hardware and apps for the world Of android that that last part of that intro a little bit different than what i'm used to i'm jason howell And I am ron richards And i'm hoon foot dal And i'm shawaraman And i'm telling you we are only two-thirds of the way through the people that are on this show with that list of people That's crazy today. How y'all doing? Good to see you. So happy to hear you do the intro Yeah, it's only your second episode. You're already doing the intro man.  I can't yeah quick learner. I can't think of a better way for our last episode of 2023 then to have jason Kick us off and and as you mentioned as a packed episode, uh, should we welcome our first guest? I think so Of a longtime family member of the show miss florins ion. How you doing flow? Hi, everybody What's up flow? Good to see you. Yeah back holidays gizmodo, of course material podcast Any any other things that we should get right up at the top? I can't tell you about my personal diaries. Okay. Wow. We don't need to know that yet But check out our work gizmodo and uh material And then our last our second guest right jason That's right welcoming to the show shon hollister from the verge shon is a good friend In the world of technology and actually in the family of of our podcasting because shon You are indeed actually related to tom errant. So there's that Well factoid for the people who don't know shon, it's great to have you here tonight. Thank you for taking me Oh my god. Thank you for having me. Yeah We actually have you on for a very specific reason and then you Then you posted another story that was really important So we're going to talk about two today and we have you for a certain amount of time So we will respect your time. I think we have about 15 ish Maybe 20 at the most minutes with you But shon the primary reason that we reached out to you to bring you on the show today Is because not only did you write for the verge about the big google epic case and google's epic loss in that case You were and you were saying this in pre-show while we were getting set up You were possibly the only journalist who was there in the courtroom every single day for For this uh for this case. Yeah, I was helped around I was helped along by a number of veteran court reporters who welcomed me with open arms into the room But uh, you know you duck in and out for many trials and we made a concerted effort to be there Every day of this trial and it was interesting to see uh, who filtered it out because uh, tim sweeney Epic CEO tim sweeney was also there almost every single day all but one And so I got to watch his expressions or lack thereof as various things were revealed understand So when you're in the room, this is this is always the thing that I find really interesting when I talk to journalists who have been Inside the courtroom or at the event or whatever like I want to get a sense of kind of like the uh, the Temperature Of the room while you're there. Was it it was it a tense scene? Was it pretty subdued? I mean, we were also talking in pre-show that really anyone could actually go and check these out And maybe if you've seen a lot of law and order you expect it to be fireworks and craziness But was it really that well the the procedurally it worked a little bit differently than I expected So the uh, the the the plaintiffs in this case epic games Always get to go first questioning each witness that comes up on the stand And then google gets their turn with whichever witness regardless of whether it's you know Somebody who epic brought up or somebody who google brought up to help plead their case And uh, and and so what ended up happening the dynamic of the entire trial Was that epic painted this this this story of good and evil trying to you know explain that google had all these secret business deals where it was bribing Different companies not to install rival app stores or blocking them with contractual arrangements and then uh, And then google of course had to spend a similar amount of time Trying to convince the jury that this was just business as normal. This is just how the sausage is made We make business deals. We offer discounts to different companies and we hope that they will put their apps in our store All we just want is these apps to be in the google play store We want people to buy android phones. They tried to say and uh in the end the jury did not buy that Which and you pointed this out also in our in an article that posted just a Hample a days ago for the verge which a lot of people have been really questioning How this case goes the way it did so decidedly against google for epic And yet epic games had the same had a had a very similar um Kind of case to make against apple Very similar kind of like destination that they were going for yet in that case The outcome was i mean it was entirely opposite. It was entirely different And I think a lot of people you know Michelle you were saying in pre show that still every day people are asking you like how the heck How how the heck could it be with so with with one and not so With the other yeah, well how how could epic have won against how could google have lost When apple is the company that seems to be the obvious monopoly, right apple has this Grass the iron fist around the iphone it controls everything that goes on there Whereas google is like you could you could side load apps from anywhere on the web you could Install a rival app store every samsung phone comes with two app stores on the home screen google pointed out time and again in court right there on the home screen is one of the quotes You know uh and and and these things are all true But google also wants to control android for reasons both That we might That us in this room might accept as good reasons You know we want to make sure that security is there across the android platform We want to make sure all these phones get regular security updates We don't want to see that fragmentation where we're missing out on features But the other side of things is that internally google play the app store is a Tremendous profit center for google We found out during the court during the case that it makes maybe $12 billion in operating profit per year with operating margins of well over 70 percent It it it could be a fortune 100 company all by itself a google executive Said in a recorded video that we watched in the courtroom at the jurors heard in the courtroom So they had incentives to make sure that other app stores did not come up on android did not popular on android And did they do shady things to make sure that didn't happen? Well They didn't I think wasn't able to prove everything it set out to prove that I didn't see much evidence that google directly bribed any other companies The way epic was trying to tell us the tip, but it did arrange deals with hundreds of millions of dollars Possibly billions and in the case of say an act of vision blizzard where it would provide all kinds of Co-marketing would provide play store credits it would provide Now here's some here's some ad revenue over there We'll share a little bit of our profit of the app store there And it adds up to if anybody else wants to compete with the google play store You are Mm-hmm So one of the things that I kind of brought up when we talked about this last time was like Cases like these really show you the public versus private arguments that companies like google and apple are making when they try to sell you On the security aspects of android versus like everything they're doing for google play They kind of wanted to ask you about like what you saw when you were going through the trial like What was the perception of like having these revelations these google chat? transcripts being shown to the jury like did it really sway the jury's opinion that much like was it um Did it play a key factor in actually having the jury decide against google to seeing the actual intentions behind these deals and everything One of my colleagues in the courtroom was able to chase down a juror after the case was done And that juror told told her Um There's a journalist for mlex whose name is gays me right right now, but i'll look her up later anyhow The juror told her that it really did That that that google did not seem credible to them that that sundar pichai did not seem credible on the stand Based on everything they saw in testimony based on what they heard in the courtroom they thought that epic was Telling the truth and that google was lying to protect itself For the most part and so that was and and and i can i can i can understand that having seen The defense that google mounted having seen the internal emails that came out during this trial There were so many so so very many emails and chats Where google was very clearly trying to defend its play profits. They very clearly wanted to block other app stores From being able to be with google play like that intent was obvious But that's not the entirety of how courtrooms work. What happens after that is Each side epic at google gets to ask the people who wrote those emails Who are brought into the court as witnesses they get asked What were you thinking? What did you mean when you wrote this? What did you mean when you said this and both of the companies have a chance to Allow that witness to explain away what they actually meant to defend You know what they said what they wrote in those emails and and i could see you know that that google was You know trying to explain things the way that were pretty clear on paper It was pretty clear what they meant so i can understand how the jurors wound up reaching that that idea But if you look at the contracts too it is true um that none of the contracts explicitly say You shall not have a rival app store on android. You must put your game Only in the google play store. They say you have to ship it on the google play store at the same time as you ship it elsewhere You have to give it feature parody and I could see how developer, you know Well, I guess i'm going to spend the money to make this game look good on apple I'm going to spend it to look good on google play. Maybe i'm not going to put the effort into these other stores Again uphill battle, but not outright block I have a really quick question for you sean Which is I you know first of all i want to say i've been following your reporting on this. Thank you so much Uh, but i'm wondering could you tell who in the courtroom? Was using android. Did you look around? Did you like survey to see who was actually using? A an android device I wish it were that easy unfortunately Not only are are no no phones allowed in the courtroom except for except for in the um in the in the Journalist section and even then you know they're a little cautious. Um, but uh, but there were a couple times that some Lawyer did whip out a phone and the judge got a little snooty about So by about halfway through the case nobody was daring to pull out a phone. Oh my gosh. Oh gosh But but uh, but one of the lawyers actually said uh, what did the lawyers on epics side? Was talking about how much she loved google product and uses them all the time and was still grilling lauren moskowitz One of the one of the hard-nosed attorneys on the on the on the on the epic game side She was she was she was talking that about talking up google at the same time. She was grilling google real hard about other practices Wow, um, and that's not even all like obviously your reporting has been extensive on that case So everybody who really wants to know this case inside and out definitely You know search out Sean's work at the verge on that but you also wrote about something that's Not directly related like it's not part of this case at all But it is related because it kind of feeds into the kind of very similar Crosspoints between the two cases and the technology that google's uh, you know has with android entirely separate from the epic versus google case This is a ruling or sorry A ruling that happened in the case that google I apparently this started back in 2021 36 states suing google over antitrust issues in the play store settlement Or sorry in the play store and then there's settlement terms now from september that were just made public and I don't know.  What is the impact here as far as side loading? Which is kind of like a you know an android staple as far as we're concerned How does this impact in app billing like a lot of questions about the impact of this case? Which is different but similar so talk a little bit about that Yeah, let me let me spend a moment on different but similar because there are so many of these cases right now It's a little bit hard to keep track But um the the apple the apple case was different from the google case Even though they're both about the play store and in app billing practices And maybe google is making these secret deals and and not you know allowing other stores to rise up They're they're antitrust suits. They're all like does google have a monopoly on this and this one This one is a consult this this last one here is a consolidated case that where it was originally like you said 36 state attorneys general And it was consolidated with consumer plaintiffs as well So there were a whole bunch of individual people who were like i paid, you know Or some lawyer got me to say that i paid more than i should have for apps because These companies, you know are They're 30 fee is ridiculous enforcing developers to charge too much and therefore i paid too much So consumer plaintiffs state attorneys general All the rest of the states and and several u.s. Territories signed on as well So this settlement should eventually cover all 50 states and beyond and there were additionally So the states consumers i'm missing one other party. I think they also consolidated under this But this settlement came out and The reaction i'm hearing when i look around is that this is one An admission of guilt. Oh google's gonna make all these concessions and a settlement is by definition not that for one thing And two i'm hearing that This is doesn't seem like a lot of money When you consider that all 50 states and all of these consumer plaintiffs settled We have seen settlements in the hundreds of millions of dollars already from google over a single state So for all the states to settle for 700 million bucks That's not a lot. Um the way it's distributed is interesting too. So First up 700 million bucks as i mentioned in this piece. This is roughly 21 days worth of google's profit from the app store alone So this is this is this is not a big amount of money for google um Most of that money will go towards Satisfying consumer plaintiffs. So 629 million dollars will probably be distributed to Individual users of android who might get a buck or two Yeah, handful of cents And then the states are are gonna get 70 million dollars, which has to cover all of their legal expenses among other things Taxes fees all that kind of stuff. Um, and then there is the long list of Concessions which i argue in this piece are Really not i'd love to hear what all of you think because i pay attention to android But but you in this room no android forwards and backwards You've spent way more time digging into it than i have i followed some of your work And uh, what i know is that if i compare this to what epic wants in the epic the google case This would not even begin to scratch the surface of what tim sweeney wants to see happen here. Um A lot of these practices Yeah, him sweeney came out swinging right after this case, uh was what the settlement was revealed He was not very happy with the outcome of this case And one particular concession that he hammered on was the changes that google's proposing to the default side loading flow, um Could you explain a bit about how side loading is changing if you if you know off the top of your head? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, uh, I wonder if uh, yeah my quick post is coming Okay, so literally today if you try to side load an app on android You're taken through something called the unknown sources flow, which google argues and this is mostly true um Only requires you to enable this once for a particular source So for instance, you say I want my chrome browser to be able to side load apps to my phone when I download an apk Through chrome. I want my phone to say yes, I will actually install that That's only a few steps. You only have to do it once For each source that you want to be able to install apps You might have to do it again if you're downloading the epic games launcher to install for it And it and google itself does not impose very many of what i'm what what epic calls and I agree with Should be called scare screens, but there are some scare screens and one of them reads Your personal your excuse me your phone and personal data are more vulnerable to attack by unknown apps By installing apps from this source You agree that you are responsible for any damage to your phone or loss of data that may result from their use And in the trial epics experts argued that this is A little bit ridiculous for two reasons one They were saying, you know Are is there some implied warranty here google? Are you going to protect my phone from damage or loss of data if I install through the play store? And google was forced to concede that of course No, they're not going to protect your phone from any damage regardless of where you install your apps from You're responsible period if you download an app from anywhere it breaks your phone You're responsible not google to It it sounds Unnecessarily scary and winds up Scaring people off epic epic showed that a certain percentage of people Could not make it did not make it from the i. Yes, I am downloading this app I'm going to put it on my phone Stage to the the phone has the app has been installed in my phone stage They saw a huge drop off between those stages And the only thing that happens between those stages is the scare screens and the actual download process So I suppose some of those people could have been Fallen off because they're they couldn't download the app because of their data speed or something, but Many of them probably got scared away. Okay, so that one that phrase You agree that you're responsible for any damage to your phone or loss of data that may result from their use Is being replaced with something like this Your phone currently isn't configured to install apps from this source Granting this source permission to install apps could place your phone and data at risk less scary shorter Uh, they also have to combine their two screens They currently have two different things you have to click through into one So you will get one screen with this message or something that is functionally identical to it because that is what 50 states a g and or maybe 36 states a g and google have agreed to Um, this message like this functionally like it. Um You'll Download the app apk through chrome. You'll get that one screen with that one message you hit. Yes. Actually. I do want to do that And it should let you install the app Interesting. I know that we could talk for a lot longer about this, but I know that you have a heart out and I want to Make sure that we respect that Sean um Love love the reporting that you're doing on all this because it's really helping to kind of make sense Of a lot of things that could very easily get incredibly confusing. Um But uh, yeah, this is I mean this has been a pretty big couple of weeks for for android when we're talking about The the business model of android and the incentives that google has to bake in Some of these requirements and now the unraveling of that it kind of before our eyes in real time So I imagine you're going to continue writing about this stuff as it I would I will I would hate to leave before hearing what you think Is actually significant among this list of uh, this this long list of concessions Doesn't develop. I'm not impressed by anything any of this. Yeah, I'll do that. That's a little ego, but yeah I'm sorry. I didn't mean to speak over ruin. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to burst inflow No, it's okay. Oh my and also look at us women apologizing to each other. What are we doing? I? I Actually put them into an article because I think that might be some bad news for android users uh going forward so I I I would like to defer to that From my list. Yeah, what do you say? What what like what are some of those if you had to summarize it real quick? Um, I have to remember what I wrote. What did I? Where did I write? Oh computer on um, there was definitely there was one on there that said like now the bloatware can continue so Samsung oems can now include the kind of apps that they want to include on there without requiring consent from google So that seems like kind of a kind of a bad news bears um, also you uh The advertising that they give you about like pricing they can say whatever they want now so they can Plaster all over like it's cheaper if you go to this app store or you know 30 off over here.  Oh the app developers They can update the app in the background without telling you through those third-party apps so you can get random updates even if You thought that you had deferred them, which can be very annoying. That's like the number one thing android users complain about uh in the forums So I will take this from uh from like two different perspectives I'd say for like the average user Like when I saw like um the ongoing when epic v apple was ongoing and that that was decided a lot of Apple users online were happy that apple won because they didn't want ios to be opened up to Third-party app stores to all these other things because they like They like the locking they like having a single app store to download everything from they like having a single payment provider That also handles refunds that also handles their you know all their customer support stuff They like having all of that and from a perspective I can kind of understand that like for my parents, right? I I don't want to have to micromanage the places they install software from like if they're if I give them a windows pc I got to be careful because who knows what they might download and install right versus with An iphone or an average android phone that just only installs from google play There's not much I have to really worry about because the faked in protections And yes, there are a lot of there are a lot of issues with google play especially on the developer side with um their billing system their customer support system How they handle developer relations in terms of like if you get banned or you have a strike and there's a lot of issues at play But for the average user They don't care. They just want something that works. They want something that's easy And so you know this unraveling and this opening up could potentially take away some of that simplicity for the average user And I don't know if that's actually for the benefit of the average consumer Definitely for the benefit of the indie app developer and the small to medium app development company in many ways But for the average consumer there are some disadvantages to this opening up Well, I see wen shaking your head. I so I told this story yesterday on dts with tom But basically and something that you mentioned shan is that even if this is open and nominally things are more equal That it's going to be a lot harder A lot more things have to open up for two app stores to have an equal experience and to be of equal quality And then I kind of mentioned experience we had with amazon app store Sure, we could put our app on amazon app store But the app itself was inferior to our other app because of a lot of proprietary stuff, you know tied up with google play services And no, yes, we we actually respond to if our users don't want, you know extra friction We're not going to spend the time To invest in a alternate payment source So we respond to that too. So again, like I I'm just very disappointed by all this and I don't think it's enough yet because Again, I believe in like equal, you know in equal app stores and in quality in markets But until things loosen up until there's actual quality in market power in in kind of like, you know frictionless, you know, uh You know interaction with the users It's not going to happen and people like me are just not going to spend the time to do it I'm not going to support four app stores as an indie dev because it's not with my time I'll just support google play store Put up with it and then hope I might my account get never gets banned until I can actually reasonably justify the roi on supporting multiple multiple stores And I think that's the point that you made. I just like yeah, it's not equal. It's it's it's far from it So yeah, it's not clear to me one of the things that's that that's interesting for me about Spending a little time listening to the legal system in action Is it's not clear to me who if anybody would have the power to make it fully Equal or even close to fully equal like the states they weren't going to get there The uh the epic epic may have won But we have no idea what the judge believes is in His power to grant that he believes, you know Is it is not only in his power to grant initially but won't be overturned on appeal Because a judge would not want to grant a rule something that will be overturned on appeal. That's not great Maybe what we what we've seen more and more recently is that europe is setting the tone for regulation across the board in technology They their regulators are willing to push further and have the power to uh to find Real amounts of money that actually Impact a company's bottom line if they do not comply if they do not comply. Um and make things, uh more Fair as far as the european regulators believe them to be fair Who knew that e you would regulate capitalism? Who knew that they would do Turning out to be a pretty effective uh effective approach for for getting um kind of the technology companies to To kind of bend a iPhone got usbc That's that's exactly right Right And we're certainly not at the end of of what we're going to see as far as that's all concerned Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, i'm super aware of the time and I know we need to let you go Sean holster. Thank you so much for for being here It's really great to get your perspective on all of this and uh, I've just always really appreciated Uh, you're reporting, you know and uh, everybody should definitely check out what you're doing at the verge If people want to find you online, just go to the verge.com do a search for Sean holster That's the way to find you there That'll work. Yeah. All right, right on Sean. Thank you. I'd love to have you back sometime soon. We appreciate your time Bye everyone. All right. Thank you. Take care. Sean. Bye And through the magic of podcasting we bring back Ron Hello Welcome back to the show There was enough people at the table. I wanted to defer, you know, you didn't need to see my big head That way I could press the buttons behind this. I know my best impression or Burke Yes, exactly. You got to see what it was like to be a technical director. Exactly. Exactly.  This is a moment in time Like this is whether we whether we realize it now or not This is a marker for what is the next chapter of all the stuff that that's going to shape what we're looking At for the next couple of years. So, uh, really curious to see how it all pans out. Yeah Yeah, indeed Cool. All right. And so Sean is so great. By the way, how great is Sean? He's just he's fantastic. So Absolutely one of my favorites. He's a great guy All right, when we got more news we do written all over it. Well, it does if I could just find the sheet after, you know Going back and forth You know and and you know, it's kind of the story that keeps on giving for better for worse We did have Eric Mijoski with us. Was it just a couple weeks ago or a couple weeks ago and the beepers saga continues And we touched last week how the u.s. Government specifically senators klobuchar and warren we're starting to Pipe in on the conversation and join the conversation and call into question What apple is doing? So of course beepers since we talked to Eric Mijoski's had a rough time of it to put it lightly and of course apple has repeatedly Been engineering ways to block them from you know from beeper mini being you know functional And you know with all this In the middle of all this you have to give eric and the team at beeper a lot of credit for fighting the good fight because people have noticed And this week so on top of you know senator warren and senator klobuchar You know speaking out and also having eric to testify before congress senators aiming klobuchar of minnesota and Michael of utah and representatives jerry nadler of new york and ken buck have jointly written a letter That is basically pushing for an investigation of apple for quote potentially anti competitive conduct you know in in regard to them just basically parrying every blow that beeper has been you know hitting them with and You know they say they say in this letter that beeper mini is quote creating a more competitive mobile market mobile applications market Which in turn creates a more competitive mobile device market And they used you know and we mentioned before with the eu and their digital market sector dma and you know the recent news of You know certain companies that provide core services or that have core services being labeled gatekeepers They're using the same you know language to kind of I believe you know evoke these same kind of feelings and of course, you know Uh, I think the dma did label i-messages for example and uh, you know apple as being core service and gatekeeper You know consecutive or Actually, it looks like they're not like there was a latest report. It hasn't been official yet But it looks like they're not going to be labeling i-message a gatekeeper in the eu just because of its relatively low use Which would be interesting because if a similar legislation was passed in the u.s There's no way i-message would be very different Yeah, I mean that's fair in the eu and that's yeah the point that flow made earlier about look at the eu You know doing capitalism, but because there's not enough Volume of if ios is in europe. It's not an issue. It doesn't even make a blip Yeah, but I mean I but I think it is going to show that at least in the u.s It does matter and it is the finger pointing is definitely more valid and is it is a case to say at least in the u.s It is a core service and that's what this letter seems to be kind of like evoking and and the imagery and language that it's using Uh and well, I mean we'll see how that shakes out and and you know what further actions our lawmakers here in the u.s Will take uh beeper meanwhile is working But for those of you who are following and trying to support beeper at least continuing to be users Things are getting a little even more dicey. We reported last week that basically now you have to use a apple id while it's even harder than that basically the reason that apple has been able to Basically poo poo on the beeper party this last week is that when you are when you are logging into i-message Basically, apple wants you to have some kind of freaking apple hardware whether it's a phone or a computer And basically when you are logging in some registration data is generated by some apple hardware that goes in with that signing request Is like hey, yeah apple hardware here in the house. We're we're good. We're we're one of y'all So basically what was happening is that beepers service was generating that registration data for you from their little farm of very hardworking, you know max servers, but the problem is scale So At the scale that beeper is operating at one registration data generated from one of their servers was being used for a thousand users And that's that's probably like being able to To basically filter out registration data that was being used by a thousand different accounts is something that apple managed to pick up on So what the beeper solution is is to basically let you Or your friends that happen to have apple hardware generate registration data for you and share that which Is not good is not the best experience for less tech savvy people beeper did find a way It wasn't quite as hard as drilling into amber and extracting dna from a mosquito, but it's getting to be there And so yes, if you have a mac device that you want to generate registration data for for iMessage services You can share that with 10 to 20 of your friends because that's about the set size It seems to still, you know, not, you know alert apple servers that hey, you're you're doing something I don't like um, but uh, you will have to regenerate this registration data Once a week to once a month because of the you know the way that it works and it's going to want to see any registration data So, um, that's I I don't know how to spend that. I mean like there's a way, but it's not it's not easy Is this is not it's this is like this is like classic square peg round hole or like or android phone peg apple sized hole, right? Yeah Yeah, totally. Um, so so there's so much to unpack with this the the two things I want to make a point and then flow I want I want to have you weigh in on this um One is the fact that this went from Us talking to eric two weeks ago and like eric being on this week in tech and like doing the rounds of the tech thing So the fact that cbs mornings is covering it Is like in the two weeks span. I think is fascinating Further cbs cbs and that's cbs. You can go get your flu shots But at cbs um in that piece and I encourage you to go check out cbs mornings It's online you can watch the piece where they interview eric and they revealed the identity of the 16 year old hacker A kid by the name of james gill Who's also in that interview so if you want to see the kid who figured this out Bravo to him. I hope he has a very successful future ahead of him The kid who's working overtime right now because every time they fix it it gets broken again He's like, oh god here. I go again. Yeah, but flow. I know you've written a bunch about this since it's happened So what is your take on the whole beeper situation for you know our listeners who might not have read your pieces? so uh Ron you said something and then my earphones went That's awesome. What is your take on the what does your take on the whole beepers saga right now? All right. Well flow some of some technical difficulties. I'm really sorry This made recording. I don't know what just happened. I'm so sorry. That's okay That's okay. There are other headphones. Yeah, there's one positive outcome. Oh, I wanted to be on the show today Michelle there's one positive outcome if there's one positive outcome to come out of all of this It's hopefully something similar to the dma gets passed in the us and apple is forced to open up my message I'll take the loss of beeper mini if that happens It would it would it would be nice if if um if we're able to get that solution and apple Reliance basically Eric. Yeah, so this is an interesting um thing. I'm back by the way. Oh, welcome back flow. I'm sorry That's okay. We missed you, but we're really happy that you're back Well, what what you missed is I wanted to know what your take on the whole beeper saga has been Yeah, well, I wanted to tell you but um my one plus buds pro died, uh, even though I charged them Not for what happened there one plus Get better with that wireless charging Um So really what's kind of going on here in my mind is first of all I guess kudos to getting warren On this crusade because she's looking for anything right now to latch on to yes, it's a political statement I'm making uh, and I I just find it really interesting that we're rallying the senators this way Without considering that iMessage Could be billed along the same lines as like the slack or discord apps Because iMessage may be proprietary or other iMessage users on a certain platform But it doesn't keep people from actually texting each other because it will still allow you to send a text message regardless and I really like I understand what beepers trying to do for the platform and I Swear I am not taking apple side here But this feels like A lot of hoops to jump through. Oh, yeah to make this work. I think you're right flow in that as much as I Have sometimes positive feelings for our lawmakers I think that there is the the gap and the discrepancy between, you know What the image presented is and the actual technical slash business, you know reality of it I feel like it's diluting the message a little bit if we kind of go in this and it you know kind of overturned easily It's I kind of feel that way that sometimes like the I don't know i'm being mean and kind of like basically attacking the lack of technical acumen in in congress But I just feel like that it's not it doesn't have you're not being mean you're being truthful These are people that we have voted in who are supposed to be representing us And they do not know what they are representing and it's frustrating Especially with all this tech legislation going on like the stuff in the play store, right at the end of the day Like the users are the ones that are gonna get the backs, you know the the splashback from all of this Like we're the ones that are gonna have to deal with all of this like platform fighting and If a politician really wants to appeal to us like that's where they need to really Get us but they're not doing that because what they're doing is just latching on to It's election season guys. Oh, yeah, I mean, you're totally right. I meant this Yeah, I said this last week, but like the whole premise of Warren and klobuchar latching onto this is flawed from the beginning Because people are just competing. It's not competing with iMessage. It's an iMessage client It's piggybacking using well, no, but the thing but yeah But and the thing is is that there but I will counter that because the argument Isn't so much competing rather. It's the Exclusion the angle that the government comes is the exclusionary tactics that apple does to suppress You know, this is big tech suppressing american innovation, right? Like that's the that's the government angle that they're seeing Whether you agree with it or not. I'm not saying I I prescribed that or not But that is what they're where they're coming from is that that you've got a bunch of people in dc Who are looking at apple and google and microsoft and all these companies is these companies that have gotten too powerful They've gotten too big we need to reel them in and here's an example of a of a david versus a goliath That's all it is and to flow's point. They don't understand what the f they're talking about at all, right? No, they're they're you know, they're taking that position and it's good for beeper because it is getting the It's getting cbs to notice is getting the publicity to notice and the fact of the matter is is that And it's funny because I've seen so many articles cropping up and actually, you know I I almost want to skip ahead to one of our emails Which we'll do that I'm gonna you know because hey I'm running the show and I can do whatever I want sure Sorry, actually can I interrupt you? I just wanted to say that actually I've only written one article on this so far And it's because we had an internal discussion Like it makes sense for nine to five and the blogs to kind of like keep up with what's going on in the incremental Like stages because that's what we go to them for but for the bigger outlets like right now I'm sorry bigger outlets. I meant more mainstream. No, yeah more general. Yeah, apologies to our friends in blogs But what I want to say is that I'm really just kind of sitting back and watching this right now Like I have beeper installed I'm every time they ask me to reauthorize I do and you guys know I cover iphone now So I have the hardware to spoof it myself And so I'd be very curious if they end up coming up with a solution that Will just let us android users more easily like with our resources Do something which I'm cool with because that's in the spirit of being android Well, so that's a great that's a great segue. We did get in so we're gonna jump to one of our emails We're gonna pivot a little bit bob from pennsylvania wrote in and he says hey android faithful Maybe this is beating a dead horse to talk about some more But I think this article sums up my feelings about iMessage pretty well I don't really want to use iMessage, but I just want to I just want the bullying and complaining about our green bubbles to stop Ugg it's beepers minis message a piece that is that is the compelling part not the bubble color promises Anyway, thanks for what you do for the community. Love the show super excited jason's returning We all are not that everyone else isn't great. Haha. No, we're not as great as jason is This just makes a great team even greater Bob from pennsylvania and the article bob was referring to was a piece that ran on android police Which I think represented I saw a bunch of articles that were similar to this You know where this is a piece by uh will saddleberg and android police where the headline is android users don't want iMessage They just want peace and that pretty much sums it up is that All all apple's gotta do is implement rcs and get rid of the two different colors That's all it is and then and then this all goes away and they could they could stop beeper in their track If tomorrow they updated iMessage said all bubble colors you can pick your bubble colors You know the customizable bubble colors and everyone will be blue This all evaporates and why they won't do that is just a little bit of hubris a little bit of stubbornness a little bit of apple You know like they're not going to get rid of the colors. Yeah the colors serve a purpose They are there for a very specific purpose. They also have the Added benefit depending on who you ask of like waging this like class war behind the scenes But they have an actual purpose. They do tell you that certain features within the apple realm are going to work If your color is that um and I don't even think that you know rcs being encrypted Changes that apple still has many features and iMessage that they're going to want other members Other users of iMessage to know that they're they they get those features between each other But but I would agree. I think the majority of of android users at least this is where I stand like I'm I'm far less interested in using iMessage as my messaging platform like I don't I could really care Like I couldn't care less about that Um, I just want for my messages to not suck when I'm chatting with an iphone user Yeah, just want to be able to see some photos from the outing video. Yeah, exactly The iphone parents they're friend. They're friends of mine who I can't send I went to a concert the other a couple weeks ago My buddy's like, oh, send me. I saw jason isbell joined dinosaur jr.  I sent him a link to the video in google photos, right? There you go. Yeah, you know and but he's not one of us. So he's like, what do I do with this link? Right Yeah, I'm so confused. Do I have to log in? Yeah, so anyway, um, that's pretty good. It's kind of absurd that apple has to compete By locking users out from sharing files from one another and just sending messages to one another That phone maker should be competing on hold on it doesn't lock anybody Well, it just doesn't like make it annoying skirt it. I know Yeah, but like I just want to bring that up because like I saw that warren tweet that we put up about her saying like How could apple ban it and like apple banned? Beeper because it was doing something that was kind of against its terms of service Which they which we totally understood why they did right? Yeah Yeah, they were using they were using an exploit that spammers could use that they could figure it out Right. It was really kind of dangerous. They were playing with fire, you know, and I'm not defending apple I just am trying to bring up like I'm trying to think like a lawyer And how they would look for you know the ways that they would prove you wrong With you saying that like oh you got locked out. No, no, no, we didn't lock you out We still let you use parts of this. It's the exclusivity of the high res is for The device owners Yeah, my main point was that like phone makers should be competing on things like camera quality on your camera sensors your display quality your battery your actual like your unique software features your AI You know assistant and what are not not the ability to share files via airdrop because like you want to share files between and or in ios You got to use you got to have everyone agree on something if you want to Send messages you got to use a different app like it's kind of ridiculous that We have to jump through these hoops just to be able to talk to each other send files to each other Meanwhile, I'm enjoying my life with nearby share. I'm just sharing files between my windows pc And like the three android phones I have around me and then when I have to do any file moving between the ios devices I'm like, oh my god. I have no idea how I'm going to do this Well, you are literally the biggest fan of nearby share. I know every time we talk you nearby share gets into conversation Sometimes I use it because I'll take screenshots on the z fold and then I'll send those screenshots of memes to the pixel Because I need to send a signal message and don't be encrypted on one device So yeah, so I I got I got my husband did really love nearby share when we were in japan because our service was spotty So when we were sharing links and sharing pictures we just use nearby share he freaking loves it now Yes, oh that's a smart solve and my husband's an android dev So he should know about this stuff and obviously it is not his tech savvy But it just takes using it and having it and having good use. I just taught my husband about it too Really clever usage of nearby share when that's I gotta yeah, no, I didn't even think about it was like, oh We can nearby share like I do sometimes I do the airdrop to my husband Like we'll be sitting on the couch and I'll get him something like an awful screenshot that I just pasted But yeah, it's it's possible for us now All right, well we can go on and on talking about this, but we got we got even more show to get through We aren't even doing news Exactly well We got one last bit of news to go through because Every week all of our awesome patrons over a patreon get the opportunity to help us to vote on a story for us to talk about Um and before we do that I do want to take a moment and thank all the amazing people on patreon Including all of our new patrons who joined now that jason has joined you all are amazing It's we would call the jason bump internally And we know that there's there's more of you out there We really appreciate your support helping the the four of us five us six of us the whole the the big android Android faithful fam get it all done. We really appreciate that And so thank you to everybody supporting it And you go to patreon.com slash android faithful and there you could sign up And we know there's more of you out there that might be on the fence It's very cheap you can sign up for as low as five bucks a month 10 bucks a month 20 bucks a month There's also the 500 bucks a month that gets you on the show which I'm surprised nobody's done yet. Come on use that year end bonus um But so you go and in addition you can go to uh patreon.com slash android faithful and every week you can vote on a new story And this week we had three stories up for grabs Uh nothing os 2.5 based on android 14 begins rolling out to the nothing phone 2 came in last The 14 percent me thinks nobody cares about nothing um Coming in second was the fact that the grand theft auto trilogy is now on netflix games on mobile including android Uh got 23 of the vote. Um, but the winner above all was the fact that google messages Sure enough is giving rch rcs chats A background wallpaper. You know what it was time. Yep. It was time So, you know, uh as they're looking for where the what they're on green bubble functionality could be inside google messages google's now um giving more of a green circle slash bubble's backdrop for rcs conversations. Um And this is separate from another feature that's coming soon that allows for custom bubble colors Which is what I mentioned earlier is what apple should just do. Um, but they're just like While all this beeper drama is going on. I love the fact that google is silent and just slowly Adding more features to google messages. We're here. We have cool stuff for you and it's fine I've I've been perfectly hot and yeah So that's that's I I love google messages by the way except Except I want it back. You guys know what I want, right michelle and win. You know, I've been complaining about it all year, right? rightfully so the The message sorting feature that was there that separated your personal texts from company from business tech How did they remove that? I mean I never used it, but when did they remove they removed it like in august I think like august or september for somebody that was before android 14 rolled out I'm praying that there's a larger plan That that will apply and bring it but like right now like it was so great because my messages were so neat and tidy I had all my friends and that are all my otp messages and my two fa messages and marketing messages and things like that. They were separated I was I was texting more and now that it's just a mess of personal mixed with business stuff I'm texting less and so Maybe they're just gemmin gemminifying the ai that helps you sort through things and adding summaries or something something They're turning it into an air sign. Yeah, I hope so maybe um, who knows? So yeah, so there you go. That's what the patrons want to talk about But I do before we move on two more notes about our patrons first I want to thank david gurbino Who's one of our patrons for supporting us david you rock we thank you very much shout out to you david And then finally a little bit of a plug as we said or as I said earlier. This is the last episode of the year and We're going to be dark next week for the holidays But we are going to do a patron exclusive wrap-up of 2023 Where michelle win and jason and I are going to talk about our favorite things from 2023 and android and kind of give you kind of Our little picks you can only get that on patreon though So you guys yeah, so if you want to hear that patreon exclusive you got to go to patreon.com slash android faithful and sign up So that's going to be coming out next week. So keep an eye out on that And I am going to break the news that we're not going to do a best of this year. Thank you to everybody who submitted the stuff But the combination of we just didn't get enough submissions and Running out of time and all that sort of stuff, but we will do a lot of change in december. Yeah, there's a lot of change So bear with us. We thank you everybody I will say that the the majority of the best of moments were the starting of the show and jason joining There you go. There's your best of moment right there right right here. Just watch last week's episode. You got it Exactly Jason make it makes you feel any better ron When I was kind of going through old episodes from twit and like pulling out like archive Episodes that I want to keep on a hard drive and not just up in the cloud in case they disappear someday Not that I think that they will but I just want to keep them and I realized and I forgot about this I think the first three Years of all about android. We did not have a best of so we're you know keeping that tradition Yeah, we're keeping the traditional live. No best of first year, but instead you're gonna get a patron exclusive 2023 wrap-up. So tune into patreon.com slash android faithful for that and with that i'm gonna stop talking so we can get into hardware Let's do it. This is where normally there'll be some music Hopefully eventually we'll get some music Yeah, so the first bit of hardware news we have is a report from the From a publication called the information If you're a subscriber they they do a lot of excellent reporting about silicon valley tech companies and this time they did a report talking about Various efforts by google to shore up its ai it's it's work on ai and open ai to compete with open ai and etc And one of the interesting tidbits they revealed is that google appears to be working on a new ai assistant for pixel smartphones called pixie And this is rumored to be basically a much more personalized version of google assistant So basically you teleport yourself back time travel back eight years ago And everything you thought google assistant would be Hopefully this is what it will actually be whenever this launches sometime. Hopefully with a pixel nine Sure. Keep hoping keep hoping So pixie is rumored to be um be using the new gemini Um Large language model that google that we talked about a couple weeks back that google unveiled There are three tiers of the gemini model the gemini nano gemini pro and gemini ultra The pro model is what's currently used on bard online The gemini nano model is what's currently being used on the pixel eight pro for the Summarization feature in the pixel recorder app as well as the new smart reply feature in gboard when you're messaging through whatsapp So right now that gemini nano model can't really do a lot except for very small text-based stuff So we don't know exactly the full details of what exactly google will be shipping once they enable this pixie ai assistant on device, but perhaps the more Sophisticated version of the gemini model running on next year's device or maybe even year after's device But supposedly this model will be able to synthesize information from various google services like gmail maps and other google products And you'll be able to you know, maybe Do things like have it automatically give you Information about a package in gmail and automatically show you It's that's it's routing information through maps like who knows if we don't have a lot of details Just know it's something that they're working on right now But it is interesting that it sounds a little bit different than the previous The previous feature that we know is coming that the google did show off at the made by google event in october, which is the assistant with bard That doesn't seem to be the same thing as pixie. That seems to be potentially A less evolved version of pixie pixie might be the next evolution of assistant with bard So hopefully we'll find out more once that launches And there was a little one other small tidbit from this report Is that google was toying with some kind of object recognition with spark classes? Basically, you have like classes that you can uh, take a picture and ask it and it can describe what you're looking at really if you're It's I don't know if you've seen the demos Wearing glasses to take a picture of an object and then have it tell you what you're looking at I mean, I recognize maybe if you if you're visually impaired that could be helpful But I can see the goddamn thing in front of me I don't need you to tell me what it is pixie bear with me for a sec It's basically like google lens, but always active if you I don't know if you've seen the demo This is how much this cost Well, yeah, the meta rate So a friend of mine has the meta ray bands I was gonna bring that up a friend of mine got him and he loves him He's taking pictures with them and using them and stuff like that things. They're awesome Yeah, like they look really impressive Basically, any anything to take a picture of you can ask it describe it and like marquez that the mkbhd crew They did a live demo of it on them while they were doing the podcast and like describe two guys In front of a microphone when it appears to be doing a podcast and it was so cool That's a trip. I gotta say this whole pixie thing horrifies me because my kids have they're they're gonna be five in a couple of days They figured out how to talk to the google homes And now it is like literally walking through my house the christmas tree just turns on and off and but like With a little kid voice going hey gee turn off the christmas tree Hey, gee turn on the christmas tree So if if you give it a name like pixie and make it even that much more friendly, it's going to be even that much more horrifying What a cute name to the pixie Yeah Yeah, that's for sure. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's kind of a convenient name considering me pixie It's cute. It's between girls I see the mark remember just this this is the new Millennial moms do you remember this era? We're back I kind of want to get those when the assistant launched it was pretty cool And it did do some really cool things and then it just it did fell apart. It did look at us We're all cynical about it. I just want to yeah I just want to like reconstruct a little bit of the history because it's easy to look back and be like It never did anything we wanted it to do and it's it's not true Like, you know, the okay google Can I say that on this show? Um, you know that the whole thing like there were times where we were really taken by the capability and the technology And then over time it just seemed to really fall apart now Like i'm surprised when it does exactly what I wanted to do. I want that to change I will be honest as the I don't have the sound effect Burke hasn't sent it to me yet But I have the sound effect of my google glass reaction, but as someone who is easily impressed by technology I find myself arguing with um With the google assistant more often than not where it's just it's like i'm still having problems with youtube music It still doesn't play the stuff. I wanted to um, you know, I don't know It just it Jason to your point. It is very very frustrating And the response the canned responses and the you know, when I know i'm getting a bad answer And like also the it's great to have the continuous conversation But also it doesn't know when to not talk, you know So like just you know, like being in the kitchen and just all of a sudden it starts talking to you It's like stop it, you know So when it starts talking and you're yelling at the kid to do something and that's listening while you're yelling So it's actually sending google an entire audio of you and how you yell at your child when no one is looking And then it's judging you. Yeah, it's writing a report. I saw in turn is judging me I saw I saw the I saw a stupid tic-tac do in the weird blank meme, you know And it's that we're parents.  It's like writing like butter like isn't that great I've I did that off the top of my head. I know that's weird to Consider the asus rog phone 8 and the 8 pro apparently this is my beat because I think I talked about this last week too Gets even more leaked designs Full specs even and we were talking about a little bit last week, you know the rog phone it is I know you say rog and I'm reprogramming myself Do I get a visa to get to the republic of gaming? How do I get to the republic of gaming? Oh republic of gaming. Sorry. I got it wrong. No, you get a vis a ron You buy one of these phones. That's all it takes. It's all it takes. That's all it takes. What is it? What is the currency right there? It's a rgb lighting. I'm just gonna say it's led Something along those lines Last week when we were talking about this, I was mentioning that this phone looks less gaming phone more kind of mainstream Yeah, it's the it's the gaming phone for your parents. There you go. Yeah, sure If your parents ever wanted a phone with an elli with a colorful led On to beat that big you can get a water cooled phone to play solitaire on Hey, it's intense. Okay Okay, but in all sincerity though, uh, I do I never actually touched this phone except for like one time seven years ago and all about android I think somebody brought it to the studio. It was like the one time I I think it was josh for girl. I actually know that. Yeah, you I think you're right. Yeah, but I I'm thinking about michelle. You were talking today about your fold and how you um, you use the handheld controllers with it and how you're doing all this gaming and I was thinking about how I I don't have the hardware to do that right now I should probably call something in but like I really like the xbox game pass And being able to just like jump in to dream life valley, which is the only game that I've played this year Uh, you know, I just I just love this idea of your phone being a little game like Game console with just an extra accessory We should just normalize that that's what they were supposed to be doing this whole time Yeah, I mean I I honestly just do not have enough time to game anymore. I'm always knee deep into Yeah, we're adults. I know that's the first thing but like first thing recently since I started using a book style foldable I have actually started gaming a lot more on it because it has a large enough screen To meet with a comfortably game on it So like I have one of those telescopic gaming controllers that I open up and recently when I went On vacation like my real estate and Thanksgiving like I actually played quite a bit of games on my one plus open And now that I switched back to my z-fold 5 and anticipation of you know, what's coming next month I'm gonna be doing the same with my z-fold 5 once I start traveling next month for all the events that are coming up Look at that. It's like way better than the nintendo doesn't give you a screen that big It's awesome. I'm shocked that that I I mean and I'm not in the gaming world or whatever. What are you playing minecraft? What are you? What are you? Yeah, that's minecraft minecraft. What are you eight? I appreciate it I'm sorry But I'm I'm shocked that I haven't seen anyone doing this with a foldable yet Right like you're the first person they do they do on reddit like if you go on You'll see people post their setups all the time. Yeah, that's pretty cool All right, well sounds like we're that's all we had to say about that My power's about to go off Yeah So, all right. Well, we will uh, we'll move on to the next story Yes, well, I just we just want to let you know real quick that one plus did not settle And that's not why they're someone found a bug in one of their phones Basically in response to the reports from one plus 12 owners over in china And to one of them having a bug in some glue and and and like having like, you know gaps between the k The camera casing and the phone just basically saying it's all standard That standard practice for tolerances to you know, respond to kind of situations that might cause tension enough to crack the phone And glue is totally standard Used it totally, you know, high quality still we're not settling That all that's basically it and then shall we throw shade at them for maybe settling on the bug quality this but More substantively if you're a mid-range lover and you were sad that the one plus 11 are the r being You know one plus's mid-range series was only available in india Well, guess what this is your year because the one plus 12 are will be coming to north america and europe Sorry for all of our listeners not in north america and europe But you know kind of setting aside all of the android drama in the chinese market Guess what one plus 12 are come to north america and the us There you go Just gonna leave it at that is going this this winter was you're supposed to be cozy at the start of the new year You're supposed to be setting goals. You know, you're supposed to be like thinking about the year ahead We're gonna be barreling through all these new phones coming down the pipeline I gotta tell you i'm i'm i'm so excited to get my hands on the one plus 12 Like I like this is this is i'm at a point. I'm at a point now where I can't decide which phone I want as my daily driver more whether it's the the google pixel 8 pro which i'm currently using the one plus open Or the upcoming one plus 12 like this is like I can't remember a time where it's been like It's been a a plethora of phones to choose from that i'm like excited to use I don't know. Maybe i'm alone there, but well you're done by choice No, you're you're you're right and one plus has really increased the value on their devices like The my husband uses a whatever one plus I give him and He takes some incredible pictures that I was never able to take in my review any any review I've taken of our kit like he knows how to use the freaking depth of field on there Like he he unders I don't know what it is What it is, but he vibes with it and so I like that we still have one plus No one plus is on the upswing man. This is like Like second third act of one plus man.  Yes Well, yeah, that's the that's the only thing that that's the only thing that's got me on the fence and Michelle are you using the one plus open as your daily driver? I was but I switched over to the z fold 5 back again because you know anticipation of the s24 series I want to get that used to one UI once again And samsung does it really well, okay with the one UI on the foldable like that's a yes That's a bridge. I won't cross. I'm not I'm not coming over to samsung land As much as as much as I as much as I know you'd like me to just just step a foot in ron He doesn't want smart select that's his problem I drew a line years ago when with flow when flow was the president of the samsung um the samsung which we'll call it Fan club.  We didn't ask Well, this show's gone off the rails and I love it. So, um, no, but I was back Michelle No, I was just saying uh bringing us back to topic like one one of the I think I picked a perfect time to switch back to the z-fold 5 because One of the things I disliked about the z-fold 5 was that I had to use a samsung keyboard app if I had if I wanted to use Stylus handwriting on the inner screen Right as I switched back gboard started rolling out stylus handwriting support Oh, finally, I can have stylus handwriting when I'm using gboard And I can keep gboard as my main keyboard on both the cover screen and the inner screen. I'm so happy right now That is your Christmas fruit cake and eating it. Yeah Over the weekend a couple of users noticed that um Gboard is now letting them write with their stylus on their device a couple of pixel tablet owners first notices Which by the way, if you weren't aware of the pixel tablet supports styluses Even though google doesn't officially sell one. So hey google, when are you gonna? Oh, sorry Totally accidentally that was an accident. Uh, you have to apologize drink I When are you gonna release your stylus for the pixel tablet? I don't think they're by the way, I don't think they're going to because I remember asking them when I when I went I saw the pixel tablet I was like, are you guys releasing any accessory besides the the stand-up case and they were like no So I by the way, I forgot all about the tablet My tablet's sitting right there next to next to the computer. I totally forgot about it I saw I saw I saw an article that came out about the pixel tablet saying that it was like google's biggest mistake this year Was the pixel tablet. I love my pixel tablet. I think it's great. I think I've been it didn't get badly reviewed people liked it It's just that it it's it's just tablets is a form factor. That's that's the issue Yeah, so uh speaking of the pixel tablet and stylus one of the other features that I think Uh, maybe the reason why you know google hasn't released a stylus accessory for it Is that there wasn't really a robust note taking support within the google key back And it looks like that's one of the things they look to be adding in a future release So recent versions of google people keep app reveal that they're preparing to Make it setable as a default notes app so that you can launch it from the lock screen shortcut And in addition, you'll be able to quickly Open it in a floating bubble and even insert screenshots of the current window So you can quickly jot on top of whatever you're looking at You can just tap a button on your stylus to quickly launch the default notes app And it looks like you know the kind of feature that you can already have if you have like an s-pen pro and Thank you. Michelle is waiting for you to say if you already have a samsung device You've already had these exact same features for like years Right and uh google looks to be finally bringing this to google keep and hopefully to the pixel tablet if they release a stylus accessory wow And speaking of things google looks to be finally bringing into apps um In google photos looks to be finally adding support for being set as a cloud content provider for the android photo picker So back in 2020 when google released android 13 One of the features that you introduced was the photo picker and not a lot of apps use it So you may not even be familiar with what it looks like But one of the things they promised was integration with cloud media providers like google photos Well lo and behold finally google photos looks to be adding support for that So soon in apps that use the photo picker once this rolls out You'll be able to select photos and videos that you have backed up and stored in google photos instead of just Whatever files that you have stored on your phone locally That was so it's so annoying um when i'm trying to do one of those like This instagram post where it's like post your you know post a photo of you from whatever and you want to like Yeah, I know but so I want to go look for a photo But I have to actually go download it from the cloud get it on my device before instagram will pick up that it's like available For people that follow my instagram Yeah, I I ran on a nightmare ramp because what basically instagram will work Is basically refusing to use a photo picker because they want to do their own custom like photo media picker really? Yeah, that's what it is So before so before as as michelle mentioned in his article kind of like the there's a way to always get to Cloud there's always like a file picker which you can have have always used traditionally to kind of as a backup So you can get to drop box anything that's like a document provider, which is basically a nasty way of saying hey here have my shit Wait, is that too many did I sorry anyway? But so so the problem is a lot of apps like instagram they they have this there's a feeling that you know You want to have your own media picker for whatever reason my team in adobe did it Yeah No comment there and instagram recently did it and that's like the problem is that a lot of times when you're rolling your own media picker Like by hand it's easiest to not support cloud Cloud that cloud document provider.  Okay, so that dialogue is that's a good thing to know for users is that that you're right? That's not going to change they always default you to whatever is like most recent in your camera roll And they don't they make it really hard for you to go in your android folders Just like it used to be better It wasn't great it did be better and they made it worse because they wanted to make a tighter ui And they made the experience suckier don't do that devs use the damn photo picker for android sake Wow Wow win got win got win got real. This is like I don't I'm not even a developer and i'm scared.  Sorry I don't I don't I don't have I'm I'm out of intellectual Justifications use the damn photo picker. Well, that was that was really good background to like No, I wouldn't have known that as a user that's to be fair. It's hard But I don't I understand not supporting cloud doc cloud photos cloud documents, whatever especially in this day and yeah In this day and age they make us pay for everything Exactly All right. Well talk about in this day and age and and paying for everything in the idea of premium One as we're talking about tablets Moving forward premium quote-unquote premium android tablets will now get a premium chrome experience by default So if you consider the desktop experience premium that is Google says a premium tablet has eight gig of ram or more a 10 inch display and a 10 inch Or a higher display and google reminds Folks that quote desktop chrome and chrome on android don't share all the exact same web platform apis So there could be some irregularities. So if you Fall in this kind of thing and you think you're gonna have a one-to-one relationship between your desktop chrome and your premium tablet chrome You're still not going to so that's good to know for apps like reddit by the way, which I've noticed are A lot less friendly if you're trying to do the mobile version because they want you to go download the app and do You know get the ad served so I've been flipping into desktop mode on the z-fold when I open it up to read reddit And it gives me all the features that are a part of the reddit experience But I can kind of feel it it makes things choppy It feels friendly isn't understatement. They are obnoxious about trying to use the app I really don't want to I just want to read my housewives gossip Only all Speaking of housewives gossip right jason. Yeah speaking of housewives gossip Google moving more of its stuff onto the device including location history, right? There's obviously a correlation to those two things You know and google's been doing this in a lot of different ways I think we've we've been hearing this a lot, you know when it comes to AI processing No, no, you know not doing it in the cloud moving it onto device Always with kind of security and privacy in mind in this case This is so google's location history So if you are go into your maps app And you take a look at the whatever is the timeline feature that that if you have that activated It tracks kind of like All of your location moves over a certain amount of time day by day by day total like You know a honeypot or like gold mine. That's the word For law enforcement if they want to, you know, pull that data that can really be incredibly valuable to them Google is, you know continually as our other big tech companies Continually in a space where they want to kind of absolve themselves from the responsibility of sharing anything like this That's why, you know Partially why the move to end-to-end encryption and then of course in this case keeping things on the device So that that timeline feature that really kind of Desirable a set of data for for users to Law enforcement moving it onto device Eventually it's it hasn't happened quite yet, but it's going to happen in the next year. Do you have it set already? Yeah, I have it set already So I just wanted to show that actually the way that you get to this and I can't scroll because it's destroying my address The way that you get to this is you tap on your blue dot on the google maps app And it will bring up this screen and then you're going to keep scrolling like pull it up And then you will see here in the settings whether let me do that whether your device location is on or your location history is on You know whether auto delete is off blah blah blah and then you tap on that and it takes you to the actual settings panel So this is just a much easier way than having to tap into like the google account Under the little cog icon and then you would have to like tap into the right tab So it's all trying to be transparent The one one question here is if you're moving this stuff onto device How do you have that information on another device? So you get a new phone you want to move it over and google has said that they're going to make it so that you can Actually move that that data Samsung does that with smart switch now. So because a lot of their data now is encrypted on device so They want you to feel that way by physically moving data from one phone to another and so I imagine Yeah, that's coming. I do wonder if this is all just like for show just to make us feels Make us feel like our data is safe. Just to make us feel period I think it marginally improves the the privacy around this Are you wondering if google still has access to that even though it's on? I mean they say they don't Yeah I would guess that they wouldn't If you go back to the to the diverge article It says like one of the underlying reasons for this change is that Whenever like there's some incident that happens in a particular area like law enforcement can suffine And get like the location data of anyone who is in an area and you're potentially a suspect in some case, right? But now if all the data is stored locally and encrypted Then they can't really get any of that data anymore like google can't have as long as you delete it Yeah, because then they could subpoena your phone just for anybody out there who's trying to evade All right, let's not let's go too far. This is not legal advice by the way that was just me making a joke All right, well, that's a great, uh note to stop down on um this the show has been wild but uh Before we wrap up and say goodbye for the year to flow. Let's uh, let's we got a couple more emails So michelle, I think you got the first one I do and this one comes in from scott who says hey afam So glad you guys continue the show after triple a ended even better now that jason is officially official I recently did the podcast migration from google podcast youtube music and was left thoroughly disappointed It is so bare bones. It reminds me that youtube music slash google play music migration days I love watching some podcasts and listening to others So I feel like podcasting in general is in the worst place it's ever been Having these multiple apps to watch some shows and another app listen to another show But that being said, can you please upload your video show to pocket casts? Love the show scott All right, well a lot to unpack here. Um There there was there was a lot going on with google podcast this week, right? Wasn't there the the the migration tool launch now? So you can start migrating your your google podcast in youtube music So we saw some people talking about that. Did anyone do it? Is anyone using it? I didn't I'm not using it I'm not yeah, so Because really at the end of the day scott has the right answer which is Podcasting is not in a bad spot in android. Just use pocket casts. I think that's the best solution, right? That's that's our best one and it's cross platform But we have gotten people asking about the video version and rss feed So I wanted to address that Clearly we're not as big of an operation as the the folks at twitter or whatever So we are we our video exists on youtube on the dts channel There is a way To get that as an rss feed and manually add that to pocket casts So we're going to add that to our website so that everybody can do that And that way you'll have the video feed in your and if that's your preferred method of viewing And we'll continue to look for ways to make it You know make it easy for you to watch or listen or listen or watch the show as much as you want That's our goal is to give it the way you want it So that that looks like the the rss feed of the playlist from youtube will be the way to go for that And you can just plug that into pocket cast so we'll do a post on Where will we do a post we'll do a post on patreon a public post So you don't need to be a member to find it so anybody goes or patreon will be able to see it I'll do that tonight and we'll get that set up and we'll put it on the website as well So all right I like promising things before I do them so now I have to do them Accountability is super important And and honestly and and scott if you can't find it or don't get it just email us again And I'll email you and I'll tell you where to get it so and and and that goes for anybody listening If you have any questions about where to find us or how to just email contact at android faithful.com And uh, we will personally respond to whatever questions you have about android faithful I can't answer or any questions you have about your taxes or just your your relationships or anything like that I can answer the relationship one. We'll forward the relationship questions to flow. Yeah, exactly But android faithful specific ones will do that. So All right, we got one more email. Yeah, and this is our last email of the year and a very special one from bob Hey, if Sure, I just sorry bob. Hey afm. I've been a long time listener of the podcast since 2016 I've always wanted to write in but never got around to it this time. I couldn't hold back though I just wanted to say I'm almost 40 But you guys nearly brought a tear to my eye in this episode with surprise union with jason I know you guys feel it too, but as a listener, there's just a magic created when you guys are all together It's really special and there's no podcast regardless of genre.  We are we are we are legion. That's not right. Yes, we are Um Ron win michelle and now jason. What a powerhouse Hope to see more of florence as time goes on goes on to That married or happy holidays bob. You got your wish Uh, at least for today. Thank you for everything you do. It feels like a family hosts and listeners included p.s. Ron. I'm a big youtube music fan I'm going to have to write In full my thoughts on it someday. I don't think I'll ever sway away though Winkings a sticking out tongue-pace emoji. Uh, take care bob. Bob. Thank you, bob Yeah, I think I think we're ending on a make us get teary-eyed bob way to go. Oh, thank you. Um, But uh, no, I won't you know, the irony about youtube music is that it's my default music app That's what I use to listen to music. So it's like as much as my griping about youtube music I am using it every day. Um So that my kids that's why you care so much. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Um, close to it But uh, but yeah, what a great way to end the year. What you guys think? Thank you indeed It's gonna be awesome y'all And I believe bob who wrote that email in was watching live tonight. Um, or no, or no, he was bob from pennsylvania was Oh, it's bob. No, right. Yeah, so Lots of bobs watching so Um, hey bobs, cool. All right, so, uh, that's gonna wrap us up, right? I think so. Yeah, that's Put you on the spot, but since you're not gonna be on our year-end show Uh, if you had to pick one thing from android in 2023, that's your favorite thing. What would it be? And you're by chair We should have seen that you got you already asked me about this for my for Thanksgiving I did You're by share launched on windows out of beta this year, right? So you do have a legit like there My life changed the gates to heaven opened officially So All right without flinching Excellent Well Do you want do you want to wrap it or you you go for it jason? Okay, I feel I felt like someone someone needed to step ahead. Um flow. Thank you so much for coming on tonight I know that you're you're writing amazing things for gizmodo gizmodo.com And you're podcasting amazing things with uh, andy and i coan material I am I am please tune in. Uh, we've got two more episodes of the year left for us as well So please if you're interested we talk about some of the same things Yeah, and andy's great 442 wow It's a good run. You can get that at relay dot fm slash material. Yeah, definitely go Uh, it's great. It's good stuff. By the way, I'm very happy that jason is here because now when I come on I'm literally just coming on to hang out with my friends Not that I I mean, I love hanging out with you guys last time, but this just completes If if anything this last week has just proven how much of our magic is jason magic and that's okay Yes, we we love and accept exactly. Oh, where did oh, no, did I make the magic go away? Well Since we're in the plug space, um, we can also we should let everyone know that jason and I are going to be live streaming Uh, the new year's eve streamathon this year. Yeah, december 31st And thank you to willy in the chat for reminding me to talk about that But uh, so in december 31st that 135 eastern you can tune in at dc streamathon.org And you can check us out on the on the diamond club Stream action that's going on and maybe we'll see if we can get some other special guests to Come on to jason. We haven't we haven't discussed anything about that yet We haven't we haven't even talked about what it could be last time We did it was a couple of years ago And we you know, we talked a little bit about android, of course and then just talked about other random stuff. I mean Heck, yeah, let's let's let's talk about this off stream and and that's a good reminder because I haven't told my wife yet so Well, we should invite her she could be I guess the wives could also join I'm gonna say you guys are andy cohen and uh, anderson cooper the not gay versions But still very drunk Right one one one of them get totally wasted on on a cnn or something like that. Yes, okay Maybe both of them did I have no idea As for me ray gun dot fun is a little easy place to go It rhymes and it has all my things and I did include android faithful there like I said I was going to ron so I did my homework and it's some of my homework there It's on the screen.  What do you want to leave people with? As always you can find me everywhere. I am on twix mastodon threads Discord telegram reddit everywhere at michelle ramon I'm also on patreon if you want to support my work join the discord to chattel out about android google stuff and And check out my articles android authority android central a lot of different places You can find me if you want to find out what's happening. What's coming next on android Michelle before android even knows it michelle knows it michelle in 2024. I want you to branch out to webo, okay? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, wait I have I have a wechat already. It's just like I I sometimes rarely get like DMs from product managers and like stuff from like chinese companies and like and you can't read it Michelle just a language pack just install the language pack google translate All those ways to follow michelle now, you know when what about you? Hey, I'm an android developer. I'm actually going to be doing some android development soon So maybe there's going to be some new kind of my website but Content on my website But regardless you can find stuff that I have done in the past My talks on android development associated code and video at my website randomly typing calm And you can find me generally speaking on the social Places at queen code monkey, but if you really want to find me Let's be real as much as I complain about the app instagram So if you really want to see what i'm doing Mostly it's working out and then android stuff work out then android and then work out an android and some folders gait three recently Um, that's where I am queen code monkey.  Thank you and finally ron Yes, well, I I do love me an end of the year podcast. Uh, so you head over to ifanboy.com or me and josh and connor wrapped up 2013 in all media. So it's a three hour podcast where we talk about our favorite movies TV shows Music podcasts books And comic books on the year and I even gave a little plug for android faithful on the show there So you can hear me talk about android faithful the guys who don't understand android But yeah, lots of good conversation about killers of the flower moon and oppenheimer and the bear Barbie and and and the gold which is a great show on paramount plus. Does everyone should check out? Um, and yeah, good time. Let's talk about music talk about hardcore. It was fun So, uh, go to ifanboy.com to do that ifanboy.com and of course follow me I'm at at ron xo across all the various platforms and stuff. So, okay, we didn't really talk about this Do I read all these things? No, we don't you riff on what you like really? This is where we just now plug the show. So, okay Yeah, well, you know, you can subscribe in all the obvious ways that you normally subscribe to podcasts Just search for android faithful or go to android faithful.com and find all the information there Including all of our episodes if you want to listen, you can just drop right in Um, we do have a patreon that you can support us at and if if you do that Then you get to vote on some stories. You get exclusive content like the exclusive episode We're gonna have in for patrons next week Looking at the year in review. That's patreon.com slash android faithful and you're supporting us directly when you do that So we really thank you for all of that contact at android faithful.com if you want to contact us We do this every Tuesday evening. So subscribe Let us know what you think and uh, yeah It's a great time y'all. We'll see you next time on android faith