John Gruber
Technology writer and podcaster focused on Apple, software design and the companies around them.
“If you talk to people who work in the ad tech industry, they'll tell you — if they could have recordings of what you talk about all day, they wouldn't want it. You know how much work that would be, how much space it would take up? It would be the least efficient way to serve you targeted ads.”
The Talk Show With John Gruber · Tech Strategy & Big Tech · September 2026
Context
Gruber was describing the argument he has at family gatherings with relatives convinced their phones listen to them. What actually happens — tracking pixels across a thousand partners, correlations nobody can explain — is creepier than eavesdropping, and he finds that framing is the only one that lands. He raised it while questioning whether Apple's new listening features on the Watch will be perceived as private, whatever the engineering guarantees.
Transcript
yeah so what I have found works in that regard is by saying that what they actually do is creepier if you understood it and that I barely understand it but that it is creepier that's what resonates because I'm not saying hey the whole tech industry is on your side and doesn't do creepy things
right you're saying it's worse telling worse than what you think right
and if you talk to people who work in the ad tech industry they honest to go if they could have recordings of what you talk about all day they wouldn't want it they're like we don't need that you know how much work that would be and how much space that would take up why would we want that we don't need that it would be the least efficient way to serve you targeted ads it's but that's the world apple's up against apple doesn't do it but that's the world people people are in the other thing i want to before we move on from apple watch the other thing that i'm wondering about with these features is i'm just honestly wondering how well they'll work at a technical level because i do think siri ai is very good on the phone and on the mac and i do think that their plan they announced at wwdc totally works i think it is a step change forward they have caught up to baseline modern llm that's the bar right it's not anywhere close to the frontier it is not going to blow anything away that you're if you're used to the leading edge models from chat gpt and claude and they never said it…
right so it puts your summaries into the Siri AI app so you can open your phone and see so I guess I'm I didn't ask this question but I'm curious is the phone doing any of this work or is it I think the phone must be doing
I think the phone must be doing the transcription but they don't want to talk about that they don't want to explain I think they should. I think they should draw a diagram. Honest to God, like the vibration of the data. Yeah, like WWDC, or the way that, like, I remember Phil Schiller doing one with…
Right, right. That's a good point. I do agree. Siri is so much better, but I have you not seen any regressions in any areas
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