Morning Brew Daily - Apple Unveils 'Vision Pro' Headset & Twitter's New CEO Takes Over

Episode Date: June 6, 2023

Episode 75: Neal and Toby take a look at Apple's new 'Vision Pro' mixed reality headset and explain why the product is so significant for the company. They also dive into the SEC's lawsuit against Binance and what to expect from Linda Yaccarino as she takes over Twitter CEO from Elon Musk. Plus, Toby attempts to explain to Neal why 'beige flags' are trending on TikTok and would you spend $43k on a tiny home from Home Depot? Learn more about our sponsor, Fidelity: https://fidelity.com/stocksbytheslice Listen Here: https://link.chtbl.com/MBD Watch Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Good morning, Brew Daily show. I am Neil Fryman. And I'm Toby. On today's show, the SEC is ramping up its war on crypto by going after the industry's kingpin, and I'm going to gauge Toby's interest in a unique starter home. Then we'll break down everything you need to know about Apple's new extremely pricey headset before checking in on Twitter after a New York Times report revealed that its revenue is down bad. It's Tuesday, June 6th.

Let's ride. All right, welcome back for those who aren't watching the video. Toby, please explain to the people why you are wearing a sweatshirt that might even fit Victor Wenbanjama. I know. I'm wearing a 2XL Taylor Swift Airs Tour sweatshirt right now because we went to the concert last week and we waited in a long merch line. Actually, we kind of game the system a little bit, going to the front of the merch line. But we got this sweatshirt and it's way too big on my girlfriend, Celia. So she's like, you wear it.

Wear it on the show. It'll be a great Easter egg for the YouTube people. So, yeah, if you're watching on YouTube and it looks like I'm absolutely swimming in this sweatshirt, it's because we show up the big ones. I know. I'm doing it. Dedication.

For the swifties out there. All right, Neil, let's jump into the top of the show. Yesterday, Apple hosted their worldwide developers conference, which is basically the Super Bowl for Apple and tech nerds, me and you included. This was one of the most highly anticipated events in years because we knew we'd be getting a first look at Apple's new AR slash VR headset called the Vision Pro. So let's talk about the star of the show.

Right off the bat, the sticker shock was insane. This puppy clocks in at $3,49, which is seven times as expensive as the $500 meta quest three. But some might argue that it's seven times as cool as the MetaQuest three. Here are some of the biggest features that stood out to me. First of all, Tim Cook started out the presentation by saying, that this is the first Apple device you look through, not at. So when you launch the familiar app interface, you get these icons just kind of hovering out in space in front of you. Then you can scroll through and select apps using just your eyes,

your voice, and your fingertips. None of those weird haptic gloves or haptic controllers necessary. They call it spatial computing. And watching the demo, I get like huge Tony Stark vibes from Iron Man. And then I was also massively impressed by the entertainment chops of this thing. You can sit down, put on a movie where the virtual screen is in front of you. You can make it very, very crisp. Each eye has enough resolution that it's like a 4K TV just sitting in front of your eyeballs.

And then they showed how you can change the size of the TV and also immerse yourself in the room and dim the lights. Very cool. Tim Cook brought in Bob Eiger from Disney, who they're partnering with, to show off some of the entertainment shops. So there's a lot of features. I could go on forever. But to sum up this headset, it's really expensive, it's really impressive, and it's either going to revolutionize the way we work or the way we consume entertainment or both. What were your thoughts? I would just like to say that this is definitely a watershed moment for the tech industry.

Apple has set the bar for hardware for, I don't even know how long, many decades. So the fact that it's even creating a headset is a super legitimizing factor for everyone who's been working on this technology for a long time. What struck me the most was that it did not say the word metaverse once. This is seen Apple wants to they called it what spatial computing. They want to they want this headset to be complement to your daily life. You use the same apps that you would on your phone on your computer. But instead of doing it there, they think you'll have a better time doing it in a more immersive way with this headset. So it's kind of billing this as a complement to your daily life, bringing the digital to the real.

instead of Zuckerberg's vision, which is, you know, this, he said in the metaverse, a zillion times, which is this like separate world where you kind of escape the real world. And I think Apple wanted to really draw the line that you're not doing so much escaping, you are enhancing. Right. And one of the big features that allow that to happen is this thing called eyesight. So one of the problems with the MetaQuest Pro and Zuckerberg's whole approach to it is that you can't see the user's eyes. So you're right. It's this very isolating experience. Apple has this thing where it projects the user's eyes onto the screen. So when I look at you, technically, I'm seeing your eyes, even though it's a digital projection

of them, which allows you to interact with the real world in a way that you can't while wearing the meta quest. So I thought that was a big step towards making that vision of reality. And then I also just want to call it that it feels very work first. The first couple frames, couple shots from the demo was of someone using it in a work environment and I actually thought this was kind of disappointing in some ways because when you're using it in a work environment, it projects these 2D screens into the space in front of you, which is a bit of a bummer because the whole idea of AR is that you can have these 3D manipulable shapes in front

of you. And here I am just looking up at a bigger version of my computer screen. So that was a little interesting, but it does speak to their strategy that this is going to be a work first device Yeah, originally. This big question, and from all of the reviews I read, everyone was so impressed with the hardware. They were like, this is by far the best headset I've ever used. Like, this is an incredible headset. But at the end of the day, this is still a VR headset.

This is, that doesn't totally change the game because there is not still this killer app. And by killer app, I mean a software application. This has been used by Steve Jobs, Bill Gates. This term has been around for a while. That sort of unlocks this particular piece of hardware. email is often considered the killer app for PCs, iTunes for Apple Computer, and it's been used a lot in the gaming world. So Space Invaders was the killer app for a particular Atari console. So look, what is the thing that unlocks, that makes this VR headset so much better than

the real world? And Apple still hasn't demonstrated that exists. Yeah, I'm going to speculate here, but I think it could be the entertainment piece too, because that was very, very cool where you sit down in your room, suddenly it feels like you're in your own personal movie theater. So this, maybe it's not a work thing at all. Maybe it's just a better way to consume movies at home. I know. Well, you just don't know yet because these things take time to like, and they'll find their path or maybe they won't. So, but yeah, definitely an exciting event. Quickly, there was other stuff announced at this event as well. Some iOS 17 updates dropped. One of the biggest ones for me is that you can now leave FaceTime messages. That was almost an inside joke at this point where everyone's like,

how can I not leave a voicemail, a FaceTime voicemail for my people when I call them? So people are really excited about that. And there's also this new feature that you can share contact information just by putting your phone near to someone else. It's called NameDrop, which is also a great name. Neil, I know it's kind of funny because your pixel hive. I know. I honestly haven't been listening at all. I know. It doesn't apply to me. None of these apply to you. Well, these are all just Android features that Apple has copied. Oh, my gosh. Ridiculous.

All right, before we move on, oh, the last thing is the most important announcement of all, and this has to do with any phone. Apple said it will stop its phones from auto-correcting to ducking. So you can finally swear on the first time, so that's huge. Okay, last thing on Apple, I'm putting in the hot seat, Toby. Five years from now, will we look back at this Vision Pro and say this was a successful launch? I would say so just because it is better than anything else out there. And it did kind of do that thing that Apple events do where you're like, whoa, like this has some crazy features.

And I think the price will come down. I hope the price will come down. This is clearly a pro version, not like an SE version. So yeah, in five years, I hope that, I don't know, that we're using them at a fairly recent basis. And we use it in our daily lives. But yeah, so maybe in five years our podcast. Toby is on the record for saying this will be successful. Let's go on to the crypto world.

So after taking down Sam Baceman-Fried, the feds are coming for the newly appointed Crypto King, Binance and its larger-than-life CEO, Chengping Zhao, better known as CZ. The SEC dropped the hammer on those two yesterday, accusing them of doing many illegal things, mishandling customer funds, lying to investors and regulators, breaking securities rules in the U.S. Binance is the biggest crypto exchange in the world, handling more than 50, 40% of all crypto trading as of last month. I'll just run through a couple of the charges handed down on Binance, two of them that stood out to me. First is the SEC is accusing Binance of mixing billions in customer funds and secretly sending them to a separate crypto trading firm controlled by CZ in the British Virgin Islands called Merit Peak. And the SEC says this put U.S. customer funds at significant risk.

The other is the feds are alleging a firm owned by CZ engaged in wash trading, which is a type of market manipulation, very associated with the crypto industry that is intended to project the appearance of higher volumes being traded when it's actually just the same investor buying and selling the same thing, which is not allowed. So big picture, I've had to sum this all up. This is one of the biggest actions yet taken by SEC chair Gary Gensler and his huge crap down on crypto following FDX's collection. lapse. He's trying to rein in this industry and try to make them play by the established rules of the road in finance. Yeah. I mean, there is just a laundry list of allegations against them. There's also a laundry list of suits that finance is facing right now. It's also facing a justice department investigation over alleged money laundering. There's also a civil lawsuit from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which we actually talked about on this show previously.

And I mean, some of the quotes that are coming out from this lawsuit are just fantastic. Literally, an internal company message, someone's a Binance's chief compliance officer sent a message to a coworker in 2018 saying, we are operating a ducking, unlicensed securities exchange in the USA, bro. So it really just speaks to the entire crypto ecosystem being this shady practice. And as you said, finance was long, kind of looked at as the only legitimate player left after FTX collapse. I mean, you still have Coinbase. But this is just a really tough look for them. And the lawsuits keep piling up.

Yeah, they obviously denied the allegations and they said they were going to fight back. But let's talk about Gary Gensler because the crypto world absolutely hates him. Yeah. So over the past few months, they've said Gary Gensler is waging this war on crypto. And it's on the SEC and other federal regulators are unfairly singling them out. And they feel like they are huge victims here. And they're like, Gary, you haven't given us any. You say you want us to play by the rules, but you have not established, you have not done

any significant regulation in terms of crypto. So they're like, what are we supposed to do? You haven't done, you haven't given us a playbook to play by. I think it's a fair critique, honestly. Like they're still trying to regulate crypto using laws that were drafted sometimes. last decade, basically, 100 years ago in some cases. So I think it's a fair critique. And I think the biggest final thought on this is that the crypto market has honestly been battered so hard the last few months. It didn't really react to this news because it's just another case. Binance coin, which is

Binance's coin associated with the company, dropped 5%, but then kind of is flat over the last 24 hours. So I truly do think it's something where crypto, people are like, all right, another one. It just added to the list, basically. It's nothing new that hasn't popped up in another suit. But, yeah, still kind of crazy that Binance is getting just smash like this. All right, before we jump into our next story, we're going to take a quick break. It's time to refresh your yard during spring backyard days at the Home Depot. Get low prices guaranteed on propane grills starting at $179, like the next grill three-burner gas grill.

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eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 premium and a year of Xbox GamePass Ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more at Windows.com slash student offer. While supplies last ends June 30th, terms at AKA.m.m.S. College PC. All right, Neil, it's been a minute since we've checked in on Twitter, but man is it riding the struggle bus. According to an investigation by the New York Times, Twitter's U.S. ad revenue was down 59% from a year earlier over the first. five weeks from April to the first week of May. And June's outlook isn't much different. It expects U.S. ad revenue this month to be down at least 56% each week compared to a

year ago. Advertisers are basically fleeing the platform in droves because there's too much content popping up on Twitter these days that they just don't really want to be associated with. And this is the funniest detail about the report. Specifically, Elon has been pushing to introduce these new tools known as adjacency controls so that advertisers can keep their ads away from tweets containing certain keywords or posts by certain users. So what did some advertisers do that use those tools to keep their ads away from Elon's tweets? I really wanted to bring that up.

I know. It's a very funny detail for sure. And then into all this steps Linda Yakorino, the new Twitter CEO. So she's a former NBC Universal exec who officially took over the CEO role yesterday. which is weeks earlier than initially expected. Basically, her mandate is to write the ship and get Twitter making money again. Not the easiest job in the world, Neil.

No, what was her nickname? I forget what it was. Basically... We'll just make it up. Cool, Linda. It was just saying, Velvet Hammer. Thank you, Emily, in my ear. She is known for being a really hard negotiator,

and obviously she worked on a lot of ad sales, totaling billions of dollars at NBC, so she will be seeing if she can write the ship, but it is kind of crazy that Elon Musk is no longer the CEO. Yeah, I mean. Crazy and probably a relief to many people. I know. The funny part, too, is they cited the poll that he ran a few months ago saying,

do you want me to run Twitter anymore? And 56% voted no. So I guess he did oblige by the Twitter poll. So Elon Musk bought, so we talked about the advertising exodus. So Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion last October. I don't even remember. Yeah, a long time ago. And now it is down to $15 billion.

Fidelity, which owns a stake in Twitter, cut its valuation. So it is, I don't know, is that, that's more than a, it's less, it's worth less, more than two-thirds, a little mental math here, more than two-thirds of what Elon and Musk bought it at. And so, yeah, this has not gone well. He's lit a lot of money on fire. For sure. And if we just want to go back to the ad space real quick, last, in one week last month, four of Twitter's top 10 U.S. advertisers were online gambling and fantasy sports betting companies. So you can totally see the shift in the kind of companies that, like,

Elon's Twitter is courting. And then also they've started allowing cannabis accessories, including bongs, vapes, and rolling paper to advertise, as well as erectile dysfunction products. And so you can see why some of these blue chip advertisers like the GMs, the Volkswagen, don't want to shell out the big bucks to be on a platform where you're also getting ads for. It's like Spike TV ads. Right, truly. It's like, I mean, he wants free speech. He also has just a free and open ad market as well.

So, yeah, it's just tough. And then one final note on Twitter as well is that. So Linda Yakorino, obviously a very accomplished and very successful exec in our own right, but some people have been calling out potentially Elon for instituting her in putting in a glass cliff scenario, which is this thing where you elevate like a female or minority CEO into a leadership position, even though there's this very high likelihood of failure. So it's this thing where they finally come to the top of the pyramid, but it's in a very negative and disadvantageous situation.

So this happens all the time, honestly, in the corporate world. Marissa Mayer is often considered the biggest example of this in Yahoo. And she was elevated to Yahoo. and she was like, oh, turn Yahoo around, but Yahoo was in a very bad position. And literally anyone who was going into Yahoo at that time was kind of destined to fail. So, yeah, it's actually demonstrated in the literature a couple times since 2005. But then in a good scenario, Fran Horowitz took over Abercrombie and Fitch in 2017 after Abercombe just got kind of accused of a lot of problematic behavior and has absolutely turned the brain around.

So this is not saying that Linda's just going to fail for sure, but just, Just a note, too, to say that this often happens. All right, Neil, time to move on to our Tuesday segment, Toby's Trends, where I, a young and virile, Gen Zier, educate you a grizzle and battle-hearted millennial, about an internet trend that I think our audience would be interested in. For today's lesson in internet culture, we are talking about beige flags. Now, Neil, you had never heard of this phenomenon, but anyone who has scrolled through TikTok in the last month,

100% has. So I'll break it down. You've heard about green flags and dating right, which are just... I have many, yes. Generally good things in a partner. You've also heard about red flags, which are not so good things in a partner. Well, beige flags are somewhere in the middle. Urban Dictionary actually defines beige flags as something that's neither good nor bad,

but makes you pause for a minute when you notice it and then you just continue on. Something odd. So people on TikTok have been posting about their partners beige flags for the work to kind of weigh in on. And the funny part is, is that often these beige flags are just not so beige at all. So I'll read you one that's been going viral. My boyfriend's beige flag is that he gets impatient at restaurants and helps the waitress bring the plates to our table. And people in the comments are like, girl, that is not a beige flag. That's not even a red flag. That's an air raid siren right there. So you kind of get that people are posting things that they consider beige flags

that are just way red or way green. It just feels like quirky behavior. Yeah. A lot of it are quirky, and that's when people actually appreciate when it is just a harmless quirk. Right. And people are like,

this actually is a beige flag, but most of the time you're getting these much more extreme examples that people are citing. Another one is my partner's beige flag is that he doesn't put his phone on silent mode throughout the night because he's scared it means his morning alarm won't go off,

which I actually understand as early morning. wake-up gang now. But it's tough because she's getting woken up all night by notifications and whatnot. All right. Now I'm just thinking about my beige flag. So I wrote one down for you. I'm not doing it as I actually wrote down a work beige flag.

All right. Expose me. And so your work-based flag is that you listen to only white noise when you write and you work. Yeah. And which is crazy because you've now been working in the brew for six years. And for 80% of your time working, you're playing just white noise into your brain. Yeah, rain and thunder. Well, it's sometimes just the box fan, right?

No, no, it's always rare. But it's effectively white noise. But I do think about that since I've been listening to that, you know, while I'm writing, I can't really listen to anything else. Like with lyrics, I get very distracted. So I do sometimes wonder what is happening to my brain. Because my brain thinks I am in a rainstorm for at least six hours a day for the last five or six years. See, that's your work phase flag because I was thinking that too.

It might be like a condition or something. Someone needs to study you for sure. Something is off there. I'm very curious what being in a rainstorm, what your brain thinks. All right. Our final story, I want to play a game with you, Toby, called Real Estate Appraiser. Okay. I'm going to give you the specs of a house that's been in the news, and I want you to guess

how much it is selling for. It is a free, sorry, it is a prefab tiny house that's 540 square feet, one bed, one bath, in a spiral staircase that goes up to a roof deck patio area. Are all the amenities included or do I have to put the windows in doors in? Okay, fine. I'm guessing in, I'll guess, $50,000. $50,000, not far. It's $43,800.

Here's the thing that is getting people all worked up. It is being sold by Home Depot. So Home Depot sells a range of tiny houses and it put out this tweet about this particular house known as the getaway pad and it went viral and people were saying, hey, this is not bad. This is a pretty good deal. Like, Home Depot is selling a house. I should mention, and you brought this up, this is just the steel frame of the house. It does not include any of the finishings. It does not have any doors, windows, electric, or plumbing. So even though it comes pre-built, you kind of have to build it yourself. Plus, it's known as an accessory dwelling unit, so it needs to go on an existing lot if you get the

proper permits, like your backyard. Still, this house seems. like a not a bad deal and people on the internet seem super jazz by the idea because of how unaffordable housing is these days. Yeah, I mean, I saw that tweet too. It was going viral over the last few days. And honestly, I think it speaks to kind of this new like Gen Z millennial dream of it's not like the picket house or picket fence in the house in the suburbs anymore. People want to own this as an Airbnb. And they're like, oh, I would put three of these up on a property and just run the Airbnb lifestyle. So I do think it speaks to like this new American. dream if everyone just wants to own a few Airbnbs, go and travel the world. So I actually think

it's, yeah, it speaks to a broader trend for sure. I feel like every Airbnb I've stayed at in California in LA and San Diego over the past couple years has been in one of these. Right. You just go in, there's a backyard and then you go in to these. Yeah. It's, I have not, I was looking up the accessory dwelling unit rules in New York and you actually can have an accessory dwelling unit, one per unit, which is, we both just laugh at. We both just laugh at. at that because we live in apartments like where we can't put, oh, great, we have an accessory drawing units in our bathroom or something. So, yeah.

But on the other end of the spectrum, not just Airbnbs, a lot of states and governments see ADUs these smaller houses as a possible solution for, you know, housing former inmates or helping out the homelessness crisis by building these smaller pre-fab. Why can't I say that word? Cheaper housing units that could house people. And, you know, there are some critics where it's like, oh, wow, this is like a band-aid to this particular problem. But it does seem like opening up regulations and allowing these ADUs to be to proliferate and grow and even build them could actually help some of the problem of affordable health. We're in our prefab era.

I like it as a country. Apparently, I can't say the work. So we're not. That is our show. We'll see whether Toby's prediction about the Vision Pro will stand in five years. We'll definitely be doing this podcast still then. just in a virtual reality space. Our email is Morningbrewdaily at Morningbrew.com.

Feel free to write in. Huge shout out to our crew for waking up early with us and making the magic happen. Emily Milliron is our editor and producer. Samantha Velaus and Raymond Loo are the associate producers. Yuchena Waogu is back as our technical director. Billy Minino is on audio. What would you say is a beige flag for hair and makeup? I don't know.

That they're never here? That could be, that's an air siren to me. And Devin Emery is our chief content officer. our show is a production of Morning Brew. Thanks for watching. We'll run it back tomorrow. All. Pay off your home, travel for life, drive a Ferrari.

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