Big Technology Podcast - Hands-On With the Vision Pro, Big Tech's Back in Washington, Elon Musk’s $55 Billion Payday — With Joanna Stern

Episode Date: February 2, 2024

Joanna Stern from the Wall Street Journal joins us to talk about her hands-on experience with the Vision Pro. We also break down the dramatic big tech hearings in Washington, Meta's monster earnings report, Elon Musk’s $55 billion pay package, and Peter Thiel’s steroid Olympics. --- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. For weekly updates on the show, sign up for the pod newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6901970121829801984/ Questions? Feedback? Write to: [e-mail]

Joanna Stern from the Wall Street Journal joins us to talk about her hands-on experience with the Vision Pro. We also break down the dramatic big tech hearings in Washington, Elon Musk's $55 billion pay package that may or may not end up going to him, and Peter Thiel's Steroid Olympics. Yes, it's going to be a classic edition of Big Technology Fridays, all that and more coming up right after this. Welcome to Big Technology Podcast Friday edition, where we break down the news in our traditional cool-headed, nuanced format. What a week of news we have for you today? We are talking about the Vision Pro, which is live basically or just went for sale hours ago, people walking out of the Apple headquarters in our Apple store on Fifth Avenue and a bunch of people applauding them. It's pretty weird.

Anyway, we want to go hands-on with the device, and to do that, we were going to bring you a guest who's actually been hands-on with it, has experienced it, spent many days within the Vision Pro and can tell us all about what it is and what it will be. I want to welcome to the show, Joanna Stern. She's an Emmy Award-winning digital video and print journalist, a senior personal technology columnist, an all-around great reporter from the Wall Street Journal. Joanna, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, guys. Thanks for being here, and we're also joined, as always, by Ron John Roy from Arjans.

Ron John, welcome. I still have not tried the Vision Pro, but Joanna, watching you skiing and chopping onions has gotten me even more excited about it. Those are the first things I'm assuming you're going to do in it. Those are the first things I will do. Okay, so, Joanna, just give us, give us like a perspective of, like, is this device going to be something that people are going to want to use, like, on a consumer level, or is it so beta at this point that it will be just the enthusiasts and the developers? I've been thinking about this all week because there's so much in it. And when you see non-enthusists and non-developers try it out, I was at the Today Show and be.

see earlier this week and just seeing people try this out and colleagues, they like love it. They're like, wow, that's magic, that's amazing. And then I start thinking, okay, that's the first reaction. What would these people really be doing with this in their lives right now as it stands today, which is a heavy, bulky headset with a battery that comes out the top of it? And it's buggy in some places, and I can list all of the, you know, first generation issues. And that's where it really comes down to, I think everyone should try this thing. But I don't know, a small subset of people should buy this thing.

And I'm hoping the people who buy this thing are the people who are going to make this thing better in the future. Those are the developers out there. Those are the enthusiasts who are going to be pushing people in the tech community to do more with this type of technology. But that's how I'm feeling after a week of this thing. So how are you going to be using it? Next week. First week, being videotaped, wearing it for 24 hours straight, I think it was. How are you going to use it next week?

That is absolutely the biggest question. So I start, like, I finished the review. Oh boy, what day is it today? Friday. Friday. Zero concept of time. And I think that's kind of. You're in the metaverse now. I'm in the metaverse. All I've done is talk about the Vision Pro all week. I've done, just done so much around it. But so first week obviously had to use it, had to test all of the things. That sort of ended on Tuesday because the review posted Tuesday morning. Now I've been doing a lot of demos of it.

But yesterday was like the first day went to work. I had like a normal day of work kind of in between media hits and stuff like that talking more about the Vision Pro. And I brought it with me and my office at the Wall Street Journal headquarters, look, I'm gonna say right here, I have a crappy monitor there. Like I guess they just don't think the, you know,

the senior tech columnist of the Wall Street Journal should have a decent monitor. And so I put it on, and I was using it to work. I have a private office, glass office, and I was using it with a giant Mac monitor. One of the coolest things you can do with it is that you pair it with your Mac. You look at your Mac, if they're both logged into the same Apple ID,

and your monitor just pops up. You get like a 60, maybe it's 40 inch monitor sort of hovering over your Mac. And I was using, I was fully working, I was doing my news, I was writing my newsletter in there, I was listening to music, and people just kept walking by laughing at me, taking photos of me. And I could see them, but I was pretending I couldn't because I don't want to be bothered. Oh, I just loved your tweet. You said, first day working at Wall Street

Journal's offices with the Vision Pro on, people keep coming by laughing at me and asking from even working. First of all, I'm always working. Second of all, I'm writing my newsletter for tomorrow on a giant Mac monitor. Third of all, I can see you naked. And then you had to follow up in case HR was reading that the last part was a joke. But like, so I do like working in this thing. And that's kind of, that hits on like the use that Ranjan has been looking forward to the most is that this is going to be an enterprise device that will be helpful in the office. But here's my like downside and Nilai Patel talked about this in the Verge review. Like I have a, I have a backpack that I bring my MacBook in every day, take it on the train.

Am I going to like be carrying? And I don't actually have it right here. But I have this. It comes with this giant. travel pack and it looks like a pillow basically and you have like i would need a whole separate bag to bring that to and from work every day like i'm going to carry like a like my vision pro satchel and like my backpack with my macbook pro you didn't see that in any of the product photos that apple released i wonder why that it was the the travel the traveled bag

the battery battery pack there was the vanity fair picture of tim cook you couldn't even see the line coming from that thing was as if their battery pack did not exist. I wonder if that was in the agreement. But this is why you need two vision pros, one for home, one for work. I think that's the grand Apple strategy. Yeah, what's $7,000 in the long run? Right, right. I think maybe my answer is probably just to get the Wall Street Journal to buy me a nice monitor for my office. So we have actually a great comment here from Jesse Hempel that we are assuming that people are going to be working in an office. Is this, when we think about like the future work, is this something that you can start to like imagine wearing at home beaming your coworkers in and then like that's the office

all of a sudden it is when apple figures out the persona right because that was the other that was the big problem you talk and talk about the personas a bit from the review yes but i do just to jesse's i i working from home and it is amazing and like i or travel working i think is that thing like i do do have a nice monitor at my desk here, and I have been using it at home, obviously, when I was writing the review. But I think travel working will be a big, big use because I usually even travel with an iPad to use a second monitor while I'm traveling. But back to persona. So to quickly explain, when you're wearing the headset, there's no, there's tons of cameras, but there's no cameras facing outward really at you, right? There's no webcam to easily capture

your whole face. So what Apple does cleverly is they create a 3D scan of, you know, you know, your face using the camera. So you go through this process when you're setting up the vision pro, you hold the vision pro out in front of you and it asks you to do a series of, you know, basically face exercises, or head exercises up, downside, all the, all the things, right? And it scans and then you put the headset back on and it creates a persona of you. I cannot describe what mine looks like. People just have to see it. Many have said I look like a deformed Mona Lisa. To quote my colleague, Jason Gay, he said, Botox from hell, to quote my sister, terrifying, scary, just no, to quote my father, frightening. So it just doesn't look.

It's not me. Or, yeah, as Nilai Patel said, they did you dirty, Joe, is my favorite quote in the video. And so, look, and I've seen others being recreated better, but it's not the meta. avatar cartoon avatar situation supposed to look like a person supposed to look like you but it just doesn't and anytime I call someone they're just laughing hysterically at me so I don't know how I would get work done do you think personas are going to be you know a consistent feature in the next iterations of this or do you think Apple's going to step back because I think I read somewhere that they you know very carefully clarified that this is a beta feature and you know we're learning from

this, do you think it goes away or do you think they're going to get it right? I think they'll probably double down on it, but it's hard. It's like, could it be one of these features, you know, certain things which, you know, with the Apple Watch, um, if you remember, and I think it might still be there. They did this with the first Apple Watch when you could send your heartbeat to people. Is that feature still there? It's certainly not when they mark it, right? It's still there. It's still there. I do it as a joke to some friends sometimes. You can like write out these letters and this weird animation form and everything don't send me a photo send me your heartbeat just show me your life that's all just want to know you're alive it's almost valentine's

day there are certain things that like apple realizes as they go yeah this isn't working let's let's not market this or let's change course in this situation you have to like if you want this to be a work device you have to have a way of video conferencing there's just no way around it so much of our work is that. Now, there has to be a solution there. I can see it just getting rapidly better, or I could see them giving us some other options. Like, I don't understand. Like, I, Apple, we have our Apple emojis. Like, we all probably have made those silly, you know, cartoonish things. I'm assuming they didn't do that because they didn't want to be like meta. They didn't want to have the, like, oh, competing, you know, versus. Yeah, like, I think that just would step into too many

memes, but who knows. I mean, they got to do better than this. That gets us still to a crucial point, which is how Apple has marketed this device. And by the way, we definitely want to get to like the cool things that you saw there and like what blew you away. But let's let's talk quickly about the rollout. So Ron tonight have had this little debate going on about like how big of a deal that Apple was going to make the Vision Pro because we know this is probably a beta model. We know this isn't anywhere near where they want to get. And to the point we're like, well, maybe they're going to downplay the Vision pro and just get it out into the hands of developers and then see what happens not what happened at all

they have a big vision pro logo on the apple store on fifth avenue uh they tim cook basically is talking like he met god inside that device um the vanity fair story talking about how like it's the next generation of computing on your face some of the uh getting james cameron and john favro to talk about it like the expectations are now i think we can all agree through the roof so i'm curious number one was that a mistake i'm actually curious to hear from you joanna and ron john about that about that point and then b we don't really know the use case that they're marketing for like is it watching videos is it setting timers on top of your cooking which that was my favorite part of the video or you know is it uh entertainment is it enterprise right we talked about work

maybe it's entertainment those are two different buyers consumer versus enterprise so what do we think about the rollout you're going first raja i'm i'm happy that they've gone big on it and i think they should go big i think and especially when we get into the cooler parts of it especially the entertainment side of it which i'm very excited about this is a big step for their future and they need their next iPhone. They need their next kind of killer device that drives the entire company. And I think this space of spatial computing is they're calling it, which I think I would be curious how you guys would distinguish spatial computing in the metaverse and if there is a difference between the two. But I think I'm still picturing a world where wearing a headset in a lot

of different situations is going to become normal. I think, I mean, sitting on an airplane, sitting at work, these things won't be weird, especially working from home or working, as you said, travel work from a hotel. So I think going big and establishing it as a category is the right move. And also I think, again, Apple can take the heat. Apple can take a little bit of blowback. This is not, again, as someone who embarrassingly waited in line for the first iPhone and had Apple employees cheering for me as I walked out of the Fifth Avenue store, I was like, I was ridiculed when I went back to work for waiting in line for four hours. So I think it's the right Are you waiting in line today?

Yeah. No, I'm sitting here on podcasting with you guys. Well, that's obviously the right choice, but Apple. But you ordered one, right? I have not ordered one. I want to try. I'm waiting for a friend to order one and one of my friends has and I'm going to try it on. And then I'll probably pull the trigger pretty quickly.

I wrote about this in my newsletter today that you basically just have to like contact your early adopt your friend, make some small talk and then be like, can I come? over. Actually, are they allowing people to try it at the Apple store? Yes. Okay. Then maybe. And they just announced this morning that, look, it's going to be a mad rush. So, like, they're only letting you come to the Apple store right now for the next two days through the weekend. You have to go there. You have to wait in line to get an appointment. Like, you have to, like, you know, camp out all day. Then starting Monday, you can make these reservations. Or actually, I think you can make the reservations now. And you can book a calendar

your appointment and go on that day. Ron John, you and I should, we should go on an Apple, Apple store date together. I think we're all right. Let's do that. Yeah. Because now that you're saying, Joe, and I'm, I camp out at the Fifth Avenue for the night to get our, to get our appointment. I'll put the link in here for you.

There was this video I saw of the first person coming out of the Apple store in New York and maybe I can drop some of the audio in, but there was this, the Apple store employees for like cheering for this person. He was holding up the Vision Pro box, like it was Simba from the line. Lion King was like, this is the weirdest thing I've ever seen. I saw these too. I saw these too. So but Ron, going to your point that we're, you know, obviously they're trying to, and I would never, I mean, I wrote the book always day one, right?

You always got to be like, is it your first day? Don't worry about the legacy product. Right. That's the whole point. But like talking about the rollout that Morgan Stanley only expects them to sell four billion dollars of these things in 2027, right? Like the iPhone, knowing the total business did $119 billion in the fourth quarter or the most recent quarter. So it's a really tiny, you know, product category for them. So I'm kind of curious.

Well, John, why don't you answer your, you know, this question from your perspective about the rollout? Yeah. Look, I've been listening to a lot of the analysts on this and that it will be a smaller market than even sort of iPad or Apple Watch in the first couple of, you know, it won't hit the, it will be smaller. and then those in the first couple of years than those were. And I think that's right. I mean, I think, first of all, you're asking people to do a lot by putting a computer on their face. And then there's this price point to contend with right now. And I was on CNBC this morning, and they're comparing it with the meta quest.

And it's just, yes, we're in the same category. And, you know, yes, there are some real ways to compare to what happened with the iPhone and Blackberry and some of the legacy products that were on the market before, but I don't remember a price delta ever like this. This is not priced for the average mainstream market. It just isn't. And just thinking about sort of the category in its own, one thing that I just think that is actually you,

that I really realized, especially using this device, is there is an ecosystem play and trap here, certainly. And so partially I keep thinking, you know, the Mac is a really good accessory for it right now, but maybe one day this is actually going to go that way of more of a computing device that is a Mac replacement versus a phone or a tablet. Or maybe I'm wrong.

I think they have a number of ways to take this. And I also wouldn't diminish just the thought of like, this is the pro, right? This is the Vision Pro. Apple is very good at coming out with the pro and the air and the whatever other version, you know, know, the series SE or whatever, there will be versions like that in the future. I just don't know how long it takes them to get to those because of the price of the components in this.

So do you think that this is enterprise or do you think this is consumer? It has to start enterprise. And like I think, you know, enterprise is sort of like a bad word for this type of category because like it's only success has ever been in the enterprise. But on the other hand, that's guaranteed units and market that Apple can bank on, right? Already a substantial number of enterprise have bought, you know, previously the HoloLens, then the Quest, even the Magic Leap. All these companies always brag. I mean, you guys probably heard it as well.

You know, they come in to have you meet with you. They will, we're having, you know, X, Y, and Z company bought a huge fleet of these, and they're loving them in the factory floor. And, you know, then they show you the pictures of the factory floor. and you know you definitely know the guys like grunting being like i never use this thing um but it works for them it works it sells units and there's a really decent application of it let's also not forget that every graphic designer at work has a three thousand dollar plus mac monitor so the pricing isn't even out of range anyway so yeah i think enterprise

but i guess has apple ever successfully launched an enterprise product other, I guess, I mean, the hardware itself, but anything outside of I'm thinking from a software perspective or, I mean, everyone I know uses pages. Sheets as well. Numbers, numbers, numbers. If you think about the evolution, like the Blackberry actually was the thing that pioneered the smartphone revolution and that was an enterprise device. But we just got better technology.

And next thing you know, we all started using iPhones and the iPhone. became the enterprise device. So maybe that's what's what we see here. Jonah, I'm curious to hear your perspective about like, what was cool wearing this thing? I mean, you wore it a lot. So what were the things that made you say this could be special?

The entertainment stuff is really cool. I will say like I have a very nice TV in my living room, but the rest of my house I've got to upgrade the TVs there. And there's absolutely something to say for just this immersive viewing experience. And I think I heard Tim Cook say he watched the whole series of Ted Lassow on the ceiling on his ceiling. I called that out. That, I got to say, that experience sucks.

Like having the thing on your, I haven't done it with the Vision Pro, but I've watched like full movies or shows like with a projector going up to the ceiling. And also I had like Netflix on one of these Oculus devices. Can we, have you tried it before? Wait, people are watching TV on their ceiling. on the ceiling. There's a reason why you don't have the screen on the ceiling. Yeah. Like you laid back on the couch.

I did not know that was a thing. I don't have a projector, but ceiling TV I've never realized is a trend. It's because I just think it's not something that people want. I mean, also obviously like Tim, Tim Cook's ceilings are so much nicer than my ceiling. So I don't,

I can't judge. It shouldn't matter in virtual reality. That's, it's a level the playing field device. Give Tim Cook $3, and you can live like him. That's the promise. Can live like Tim Cook.

your ceiling can be his ceiling. Maybe if my ceiling was as nice as his, it would be a different experience for all of us. We don't know. We don't know. But no, I mean, I'm joking, but I think that that is something. And I really believe around traveling where like you can't be home and you're, I think about the long flights or the times I've, okay, I'm going to, I've got to go overseas and I'm going to watch 12 hours of something on my iPad and now I'm going to use this. But so, That is cool. Look, the work experience is cool. When you try it, you're like, oh, yeah.

And then you go back to your monitor and you're like, hmm, this is kind of stifling. But look, the part that went viral was this cooking experiment that I did. And in no way, shape or form is Apple saying you should cook with this on. And I'm not saying normal people should, you know, wield a sharp knife and be around hot surfaces in a 1.5 pound headset. But I'm a little bit, I like to put. push the limits. This is what I like to do. So I, I somebody, the developer pitched me. The company's

called Cruton. The app is called Cruton and they pitched me on this and I'm sure, I'm going to try it out. And I really was blown away by it. I sort of just figured like this is going to be, you know, but like I'm there in the kitchen. I'm cooking. I pin my recipe up on the right side of the kitchen, which already is a better experience than using your phone because with your phone or your tablet, you're tapping on it. It's dirty. You got like meat on your hands or whatever you're cooking with and you've got to keep washing your hands and then like scrolling on the the iPad or the phone. So that's great. And then I see like as I'm moving through the steps on the recipe that there's a timer and it's like, okay, set the timer for the pasta 16 minutes or

whatever it was. And then it pops out and I can drag that over to the stove. And every time I look over at the stove, I see the timer ticking down. And I take another timer and I've got to put that over the mushrooms. And every time I look over, I see these two virtual timers hovering over my stove. I know why I was blown away because this is such a melding and a useful melding of digital information in your real world. And it sort of just opens up your eyes to what could be. And I think, you know, I think people are laughing $3,500 cooking timers. Like, I've been ridiculed. does she not know about magnetic timers that she can buy on Amazon? Does she not know about smart speakers?

Phone? No, I had no idea of these things exist. It's crazy. Thank you, Internet, for letting me know. But there's something about that, like simple digital information in your real world that opens up your eyes for what this could be. No, no. I loved this example.

I mean, even little details, like you just said, I cook a good amount. and, again, washing your hands every time if you're handling meat, when you're going to scroll the iPad to see the recipe again, having another device set up to watch, have a sports game on to the side, having multiple timers.

Like, I agree. I think thinking about in different situations in life and what are all the little bits of information that could contribute to making it a better experience and making it more seamless. Yeah, as a V1, I think that one's going to live years from now. we'll look back at the onion chopping and the cooking as an early use case of this. Or something that showed the promise, yeah.

To me, the thing I want to try most is the spatial video and photos where you can actually like, you know, feel like you're in your videos. What was it like? I feel like that's one thing that you really just need to hear from someone who's used this versus, you know, try to read about it or watch it. What was that like, Joanna? Yeah, and I think you really have to see it. I mean, I think that's the tough thing about all of this is like, and I didn't even

shows like, oh, when I show it, it looks like 2D video. And that doesn't look like anything to anybody watching it on YouTube or wherever they're watching the video. But yes, you can, so for the last couple of months, Apple, or a number of months ago, Apple released spatial video on the iPhone 15 pros, which uses two cameras to record 3D video. And so the nice thing is, is that I've been shooting this video and then it just pops up in my photos app under the spatial tab when I'm wearing the vision pro so scrolling through there i already have a nice library of my kids doing funny things and nice things and so i just watching that again another example of travel like when i'm not i wouldn't want to like be sitting here if they were in downstairs like i'd rather go live and be with them not be

in the headset but when i'm traveling it's nice to be able to relive some of those moments and it's it really it's look it's not fully immersive 3d it's sort of in a you can there's two settings where it can kind of sort of float out in front of you. And then there's a setting where it can be within a sort of a square shape. Yeah, like a, just like a frame, basically. And in both of those situations, it's, it's 3D. I mean, it depends on how you've shot it. Works best if there's something in the foreground. A really good one is I had my kids petting a llama, not a llama, it was an alpaca. Went to Alpaca farm and they're petting this alpaca and they're cracking up. And the sound is spatial, so it's surround sound. Oh, this is today. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's,

It's very compelling and moving. Is there going to be a point where we're going to have like little video cameras embedded in our eyes and then we'll be able to play back any moment in life just like that black mirror episode? It feels black mirror in some ways. Like, you know, and I think like you think about the potential of this being combined with AI and yeah, I think a lot about some of this technology about preserving people's lives and afterlife and it could get crazy. I mean, it won't get crazy. Yeah, I just don't want to live in a world where, I mean, you know, seeing this, my reaction was, A, technology is amazing, B, really do not want to live in a world where we have like this mask on our face at all times. Yeah. And we have all these distractions there. Sorry, Ron John, go ahead. Would you say the difference between, let's say, you know, a photo and a video, is it the same scale of difference between watching a video flat on your phone and experiencing spatial video in the vision pro?

or is it is it a smaller degree of difference i would say it's i mean it's just a it's a it's a better experience i mean you can take spatial spatial photos um you can only do that on the vision pro you can't actually take spatial photos on your iPhone um but the video just feels more immersive i mean the the photo quality is actually not that good um but i think out you know look i i think there's something here to and you know i did go skiing with these on. And when I was skiing with them on, I sort of was making the comparison more to what Meta's done with the Raybans, where you have this hands-free experience of shooting video. And I actually always, like when I actually go skiing with my kids, I bring the Raybans now because I don't want to

have my phone. I just want to be able to snap and like I'm not an amazing skier. And it's just, you get a more first-person point of view like you're there. Right. And I actually think that's something Apple's probably really interested in. Interesting. So maybe they'll do their own version of those glasses. I don't think it's a crazy thought, or at least that that, you know, we get that kind of functionality down the road. I mean, it seems like that's what Meta figured out.

Like you do those two experiences and then you merge them in some way. I want to ask. Are you a big fan of the Meta-Rabans? Like, exactly for that use case. Do they fill that purpose well? That's like the, I take the Meta-Rabians if I'm going skiing, like, or I'm doing something like that with my kids. basically, or I'm shooting a video and I want some good first person point of view.

Like I did a piece on EV charging a few months ago and where of them was I was driving around. So I find them very useful for certain things. I wouldn't wear them every day. This is going to be the most expensive podcast for me ever because I think now I want to both the Vision Pro and the Raybans. I've been reading about the Raymands here and there. I hadn't really thought about them, but they sound nice as well.

Yeah. And they work really well now. I mean, the second generation, they've done a better job of speeding up how quickly they get to the phone and better quality. So I want to ask about like the societal consequences here because we all know like what happened when we got phones in our hands. Like this is a powerful technology, the phone. And we're like half present all the time anyway. And it's so interesting because like Tim Cook always gets on his high horse about how like Facebook and, you know, Facebook obviously has its problems. But like, you know, all the things about how it's ruining society. but they're using your phone, bro.

So I'm just kind of curious, like, what happens to society here? This is something that Nick Billton called out, you know, after he did this big profile in Vanity Fair. And this is from, okay, one Silicon Valley investor tells him, I'm sure the technology is different. I still think and hope it fails. Apple feels more like the tech fentanyl dealer that poses as a rehab provider.

And so he, so Billton goes, what does the future of all of it look like to cook and cook says I don't I think it's actually hard to predict which is like you're again like this is your device it's going to have consequences I'm just you know having been in such an immersive computing experience do you worry at all about a society where like this gets to the place where Apple wants it which is on everyone's face small easy to use immersive and addictive definitely and I thought that was the most powerful thing about Bilton's piece. It's great details about Cook and all these other executives and how they built this in secret.

But then you read to the end and how he weaved that together was just beautiful. Look, you'll, it's funny. The tagline for the Vision Pro is live in the moment, I believe. I believe that's what they're saying on the website. It's like the messenger tagline was break the news. Well, yeah, mission accomplished. Sorry, go ahead. Where it's, I want to make sure it's, it's something like that.

I've seen it marketed as, as that, whereas like you can pick your head up from the phone, right? I don't know if that's how they're intending it or if it's just sort of you can be in your moment and also have this digital thing, but you can pick your head up from your phone. I think that's a nice idea, but right now it's so much more isolating than the phone. And one of the things just to kind of talk back to the hardware is they put these eyes on the front. right these creepy eyes so the front of the the headset is actually a display and the display can show your persona eyes as you're looking at people well one those are really subtle those are really really subtle and people don't really see them and i've probably said have can you see my eyes like a hundred times this week to my wife and people are around and they're just like

no i don't see your eyes stop asking and two even then nobody really thinks they're a conversation with you right they don't really know so like i was sitting i was sitting and watching a video and my mom's living room wearing this thing and she had no idea am i talking to her am i in there what am i doing you know so there's the in there versus out there feeling right now and it is isolating there's no doubt about that and one of the funny things that uh you know they are saying you will be able to do with this i think you can do it now is if two people are wearing a vision pros they can actually watch the same movie together using share play it's just like picture that it's weird yeah it's like you got to get a couple of these if you're in different locations like joanna sure the

at those points it definitely adds something yeah but what if you and your you know partner are sitting on the couch and you're both wearing this vision pros and you're watching the same thing i don't know it's just that's a little disturbing i agree yeah it's a little dystopian yeah going for the kiss and your heads headsets will bash. Yeah. Sorry. Well, the funny thing is at the end of the video, I tried to like go and kiss my dog. And whenever something gets really close,

the cameras get messed up. So like I couldn't find him. This is so funny. It's just this is the most humorous part of the whole thing to me. Like I was cracking up and I was like, we've got to get this in the video because like it's so funny. I was just like laughing so hard because I can't like, you see the dog and then as you get closer,

It's your depth perception is off because it's cameras that can't see super close. Yeah. So, yeah. That's amazing. It's amazing. I just looked it up. The tagline is, be in the moment. So they are trying to push that.

But I think actually, I'm going to make the argument that an isolating piece of technology is not the worst thing because when you put it on, you are isolated and you're signaling that I am doing stuff in here and not around me versus if you think about a phone. everyone is half paying attention to their phone while having a conversation at dinner sitting next to their partner. So what do you think? Maybe is it better that we have technology that kind of definitively isolates us rather than allows us to live in that half attention world?

I like that idea. But the goal is to be in there always. Like that's what all these companies are building toward is that they're on a lightweight pair of glasses. I guess that's a question. Is it something that it's like for focused bursts? of experience in immersion or do you think Apple really believes 10 years from now we're walking around in headsets? I think they believe that we're walking around in glasses that are

connected, you know, going full back to Google Glass, but better. Google was the original on this, the Glass Vision, I guess. So do you guys think we're walking around in glasses 10 years from now. Yeah, I think this is, this is going to be difficult to beat back. Like we never, humanity is not, has never said, oh, that improvement in technology, leave it aside. We always adopt it and then adapt to it, sometimes better than others. What do you think, Joanna? Oh, I feel, you know, and it's with this, with AI happening at the same moment and us learning to rely more on those tools, I think it's going to be a question of which part of our reality Are we augmenting the most and which part of, you know, artificially are we improving our lives?

Probably a combo of these things together, which is just going to be crazy. Yeah, because just wait until you're in these things. And like the meta, meta's vision here is to have you hanging out with other people and AI avatars in these settings. Speaking of meta, Congress, the Senate took a bunch of social media executives in for a hearing this week. notably Zuckerberg was there, show true from TikTok and Jason Citron from Discord was there, and Linda Yakorino from X. And, you know, these hearings have largely been embarrassing for the Senate. They grandstand, they do theatrics, they get nothing done, they ask dumb questions.

And sometimes, okay, sometimes it makes sense to bully because you can't have executives do whatever they want and never be called you know into any moment of accountability for it but sometimes it's just like there was even one senator who was like this is our annual flogging and nothing ever gets done but there was this one moment where Zuckerberg uh was basically forced by josh holly to stand up and apologize to the families of kids of who have lost kids who they say have taken their lives from uh interactions or spirals that occurred on social media and Zuckerberg said He said, quote, I'm sorry for everything you've all been through. No one should go through the things that your families have suffered.

And this is why we invest so much and we are going to continue doing industry-wide efforts to make sure no one has to go through the things your family have had to suffer. I've been back and forth about this with Zuckerberg. I can't tell, like, was this a powerful moment? Was this more or the same? What did you guys think when you saw that? I felt I have been on, I have not always agreed with you that. these hearings are all useless and more grandstanding. I think there have definitely been productive

hearings in the past, and there's earnest, you know, policymakers that are trying to actually get to a solution. I felt this hearing definitely fell into the camp of grandstanding, and I felt the apology as well. The whole thing just feels weird because we all kind of know these problems. I guess it's good, especially in an election year, to remind us of many of the problems that META has very conveniently, nicely skated past in the last year and a half thanks to Elon and X in Twitter. So I think it's good to bring it back, but I think we need to get back to some kind of concrete legislation around how to fix these platforms or how to protect us to solve these problems rather than apologies or Tom Cotton asking the TikTok CEO if he's a member of

the Chinese Communist Party, even though he's Singaporean. I think it's probably important to get back to some concrete. ideas. So let's talk about like the practical stuff here because this is from Nikita Beer who sold his company to Meta and worked there for a bunch of years, I think, till he vested and got out. He said, Zuck got roasted today, but I think a lot of people missed the point. Facebook actually does studies on the impacts of their products so they can address those

problems. When I was building apps there, I had access to PhD researchers to fully understand the impacts of my work on people. the findings of those studies may make the company look negligent you have to remember that Zuck is literally financing and elevating these discussions not avoiding them so do you do you think does that hold water in your opinions well look there was also a lot of evidence brought by some of these senators that they have ignored a lot of that and that's they're holding up some of the wall street journal reporting on that of course they were also holding up some i mean Zuckerberg was talking about

some of the things they've done in the last couple of months to improve this. They have carefully been rolling out more and more protections and software tools to help people. Now, I have some issues with that because really they're not forced to make any parents use that. And so sure, could some legislation help with that? Yes. Could more be done also on the platform's end? And Zuckerberg was arguing that Google and Apple should be doing more too for gatekeeping and getting a sense of How old are our users? So a lot of questions around that. I think one thing just actually to come back to the apology,

I found that was pretty insincere. I think it's important to see because it's just a powerful moment. You have these parents standing there. But it felt a lot like when I tell my kids, you have to go say sorry for what you did. They don't want to, but they know if I go say sorry, I'm going to get to move on, right? Like, okay, if I go say sorry, I'll be out of time out

and I can go do something else. Rajan, you point out a pretty interesting solution that's being piloted? Yeah, Joanne, I would love your thoughts. This has been a long-running thing of mine. Reverse chronological feeds to try to solve a lot of the problems. I had written about this back in 2019, and I remember when I first brought it up, I would always get the reaction again, well, how would we sift through all these,

all the information? And that's the whole point of it, the algorithmic feed. And it was interesting because in the Nikita Byer tweet, he talked about, you know, we have been financing all these studies that we have had access to. And a year ago, Facebook released this study where they had studied reverse chronological feeds, tested them. And the most mind-blowing part to me was the findings were and the headlines that came after it were that it created a bad user experience.

Yes, relative to an algorithmic feed, it is going to be a bad user experience based on how all of these apps have been built over years and years. they've been built to be as addictive as possible and around algorithmic feeds. But to me, the ridiculous idea was, you know, you have default chronological feed. And to change to an algorithmic feed, you get like a pop-up warning, almost like a cigarette pack, that this could be, you know, detrimental to your health. But I was very happy that there is a bill in California, the protecting kids from social media addiction act that was introduced, where for at least people under 16 for children,

and it would be default reverse chronological. And I still think like, you know, if that becomes the default behavior, it changes the way all these companies operate. And of course, they would never, ever want it because it makes the product less addictive and less conducive to advertising. But it would make it a less engaging experience. I've advocated for this for a long, long time. I mean, at least just give us the option for kids.

sure set it as the default. I mean, I think especially when you look at, you know, I mean, well, the issue would be that like TikTok just wouldn't exist. I don't know how TikTok would work. I mean, you could get a following tab and you'd have, you know, the people in order, I guess. But, oh, yeah, really, it would, it would certainly take out the addictiveness of TikTok and the fun of it, probably. And so Zuckerberg had then this really strange one to punch, like two days in a row.

One day he's getting eviscerated. before the Senate. Next day he's sitting, you know, giving the company's earnings reports and they beat everything. They spent 22% less quarter, you know, between this fourth quarter and then last year's fourth quarter and their revenue went up, their profit went up $10 billion. So the company today on Vision Pro Day has gone up $200 billion in market cap with like a 20% increase. Is this like, I don't know, what do you guys make of the fact that the company has done this well? And, Yeah, I'm curious, like, given the timing, given how many swings Tim Cook has taken at Zuckerberg, is this may be the sweetest revenge that they are, you know, soaring in the stock market. They have their own device ahead of Apple.

They don't have any overhang with China like Apple does. And they've gotten around Tim Cook's ad embargo. Like, does this sort of reframe the competition between meta and Apple? This was a blowout earnings report. I mean, you just scratch the surface. There was a couple of other things I wanted to highlight was that the average price per ad was up 2% year on year, meaning like the ad business is even becoming more profitable. And then there also one thing I found was interesting was they're going to stop reporting Facebook daily active users and splitting them out

and only meta family of apps, which I thought was interesting because in one way, maybe it's recognizing that, you know, Facebook Blue is declining in relevance, but still overall. They're at 3.19 billion monthly active users, 3.2 billion people in the world using their apps less in December. And then my favorite was Threads is up to it's up to 130 million monthly active users. And this is where I will, you know, apologize a bit to Alex because I had been laughing about his threads usage. I've been using it more and I kind of like it. Yeah, you did text this week. Threads is good.

I know. Julianne, are you on threads? Welcome to the board. Do you thread? I'm on threads, but I'm still balancing threads in X. I, I, so much of the tech community is still on X. It's just the truth. Yeah.

Yeah, but I, when I started actively following and curating my feed on threads, it was interesting. I started seeing people that I had, you know, interacted a lot with in tech journalism world and then had kind of disappeared. and suddenly it was like they came back to life almost that they were they've been on threads I guess doing stuff threading interacting for the last few months I've been on I know I'm there I'm definitely there I'm checking it definitely a couple times a day I just think that it's back to the algorithm thing the algorithm sometimes gets weird it's slow it's like you see things from days before yeah and like and then it's like just random like memes and stuff it's just like this is not of interest to me yeah okay okay

We have my, oh, well, Ronchan, you go and then I'll, I'll, I was just going to say my algorithmic threads feed this morning was suspiciously all about how great the meta quest is and how great LFBA meta's earnings were. I don't know if that was a tuned by our friends over on the Instagram team, but it was pretty, pretty consistent with that. Okay, so we have like seven minutes left. I want to hit two more stories before we go. First of all, a Delaware court ruled that Elon Musk's $55, $56 billion pay package was illegal, and basically saying that these milestones were milestones that he knew he was going to hit, which included taking the company from $60 billion to $650 billion, which he did, and not fully communicated to shareholders,

therefore he doesn't deserve it. I've done a bit of a 180 on this. Obviously, I think we have a problem with CEO pay in the U.S. And when I first read this, I was like, of course E. Lent should not make, you know, $56 billion for four years of work. But then you look at the performance bars that he set, which were, everyone thought were unrealistic at the time. And the fact that he hit them, to me, I think that he just deserves that money. What do you guys think?

Yeah, probably. Ron John. I have much deeper theories on how those, uh, that the performance package led to the performance itself. Again, the share price, if you had written about this in the past, if you look at the days, basically the month that the performance package was issued and the share price graph shortly thereafter and then suing 12 to 16 months, just map out the two and it gets interesting.

But if it was that easy for a CEO to engineer their stock price, don't you think everyone would? During COVID during the I mean exactly during that moment I think he played it incredibly well and he had a platform that allowed him to do it that no other CEO quite had or probably would have been willing to to act on but I think and again we're seeing it's already down 40% from the high when it was like split adjusted a thousand it was at 1.2 trillion now it's 579 billion and by the way Elon can't sell can't exercise those options. for like three or five years or something like that. Yeah. So it has to sustain. I think this ruling is not going to have a huge impact. I think, again, it's going to get tied up and it's not like he's going to give back $56 billion in stock.

I think, again, and even the people who filed the lawsuit, I mean, they're just looking for compensation as well. So I don't think this out of all the challenges Tesla is facing is going to be a particularly big one. Okay. Final story. And this is my, I think my favorite one of the week. week is that this is from the New York Post, billionaire Peter Thiel bankrolling Olympics on steroid events that allows athletes to dope. It says Silicon Valley billionaire Peter

Teal is throwing his financial muscle behind an Olympics on steroids whose organizers boasts that athletes will dope out in the open and honestly. Do we like this? I'm kind of into it. I'm going to watch it in the Vision Pro. It's Ron said. If I can watch it in the Vision Pro, I'm definitely, it better be 3D. Yeah. I've missed Peter Thiel in the news. I'm glad to see this headline. I think we've needed a good Peter Thiel story for a while,

and this is the one we've all wanted. It's the ultimate Peter Thiel. Like, this is exactly the type of thing that he would finance. But I also think that, like, the Olympics is so filled with dopers. Like, yeah, get it out in the open. At least have a doctor there. No? Nobody.

Safety. Safety and doping. That's Alex's platform. forum for 24. I mean, I've been doing it. I haven't read the story. Are there any details on what sports specifically will be in this version of the Olympics? Well, he's going to provide more details.

You can imagine. Okay. Yeah. He's going to provide the details April 17th. So, and promoted during the Paris Olympics. Oh. I think this will attract a huge audience. Just seeing inhumanly jacked people competing against each other in athletic events.

Yeah. Can they do a hot dog eating contest, too? See, I think they should add only events like hot dog eating or every other kind of absurdist event that exists out there. If you focus on that and let them dope, I think we have a winner. Ron John, you know that every sport needs a little performance enhancing thing. Like when you ran the marathon, don't tell them you didn't do any goose the entire time. Are those performance enhancing?

I think there is. There's like caffeine in them. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm not calling it. I would never be able to have done it without the goose, but it's all about those goos. I admit it. Performance enhancing for the marathon. I couldn't have done my 24 hours in the Vision Pro without the goose.

Exactly. Yeah. That was the true endurance sport, I think. I wish I had actually had some of that. I mean, some PCP, I think, especially for that, would be sick. All right, Joanna. Look, thank you so much for joining, sharing your experience, especially on such a busy week for you.

You're, like, setting the world record on podcasts and TV experience and TV appearances. And so thank you so much for making time. Great having you here. Thanks, guys, for having me. This is really fun. All right. Thanks, everybody for listening. Next week, John Gruber is going to be here, the author of Daring Fireball.

We're going to talk about the state of Apple. So we're going to build on the state of this conversation. Can't wait to bring that to you. And that will do it for us. So, Rang and I, I, I, I'm sure, will be between this time. Next, make our way out to try to Vision Pro, and then we'll report back next. I'll see you at the Apple Store. See you at the Apple Store.

All right, everybody. Thank you so much. I hope you see a picture of you. Oh, my God. Yeah, there'll be selfies. In front, no, holding up his box. Like, it's like at the first iPhone. Yeah, Simba.

All right. We'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.