Side Project Spotlight

The Trio tests Google's new Gemma 4 model running locally on an iPhone and gets an instant wrong answer, which sets the tone for a sprawling conversation about AI hype, Anthropic's Mythos release, and the social media panic Steve dubs "mythos psychosis." Along the way, token maxing emerges as the new worst productivity metric, Kotaro reminds developers they could just do things themselves, and Steve makes a compelling case for building your own push notification system on Apple platforms. Plus, the never-ending monitor saga inches closer to a verdict.

## Chapters

00:00 Introductions

00:37 "AI" Hype Bubble Updates

02:39 Mythos and Myth Making

05:24 Local AI Models and Their Performance

12:57 Mission Impossible: Mythos Psychosis

17:09 Responsible Token Maxing

23:42 Local Models and Personal Assistants

26:56 You Could Just Do It Yourself

30:02 Modern Push Notifications

37:25 Building Your Own Push Notification System

43:14 The Value of Push Notifications in Apps

47:03 Steve's Monitor Upgrade Update

50:34 Wrap Up

51:30 Tag

## Show Notes

- Anthropic's Mythos, Google's Gemma 4, and Meta's Muse Spark all dropped within days, kicking off The Trio's AI hype bubble update segment.

- Mythos is reportedly 5x more expensive than Opus, and Anthropic says it's too dangerous to release publicly, so only a handful of partners have access.

- Steve demos Gemma 4's 2B parameter model on his iPhone via Google's AI Edge Gallery app: it's blazing fast, but instantly wrong about how many Rs are in "raspberry."

- Aaron points out small local models like Gemma are meant to be fine-tuned for specific tasks, not used as general chatbots.

- Steve coins "mythos psychosis" for the social media meltdown over AI capabilities, with influencers posting videos titled things like "the end of software."

- Token maxing is apparently real at some companies, where managers measure dev productivity by token usage; The Trio helpfully workshops a strategy of generating and deleting code to keep your codebase in perfect equilibrium.

- Kotaro's advice for devs reaching for AI on simple tasks: you're a good developer, just do it yourself.

- Steve dives into modern Apple push notifications, highlighting the Push Notifications Console, broadcast push for live activities, and how much easier setup is with SwiftUI.

- Building your own push server is just HTTP/2 calls to Apple's API, and Apple doesn't charge for sending notifications at indie scale.

- The monitor saga continues: Aaron and the LLMs keep pushing Steve toward the Pro Display XDR, which now has a VESA mount discount making the price slightly less painful.

## Links

**Modern Push Notifications**

Apple Push Notifications: https://developer.apple.com/notifications/

**One More Thing**

Slopes: https://getslopes.com

**PhillyCocoa:** http://phillycocoa.org

Intro music: "When I Hit the Floor", © 2021 Lorne Behrman. Used with permission of the artist.