Tech Brew Ride Home - (Bonus) Did Tech Recover This Year? With Big Technology

Episode Date: October 28, 2023

We started this year with layoffs and the whole "Tech Recession" narrative. So, as we wind up the year, did tech recover this year, and if so, how? Also, self-driving cars and speculation on Monday's Apple event. Check out Big Technology here! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Big Technology is launching a new premium edition with a new monthly podcast. We also take a look at the state of tech as the year draws to a close, and then we sort fact and fiction from AI and crypto,

and maybe we throw in a little bit of Apple's big news coming up right after this. Welcome to Big Technology podcast, a show for cool-ended, nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. We have a special double-feature episode today because we're running this both on the big technology feed and on the TechMeme Right Home feed, which means that none other than Brian McCullough is joining us live. Welcome, Brian. Hey, Alex. Welcome TechMeme Right Home listeners to another weekend bonus episode with our buddy Alex. I think you've been on like five or six times at this point. That sounds right. It's always pleasure to talk, Brian. Yeah, no no intros needed on my side. But given that this is news for your audience and for mine too, what is this news? big technology premium thing, Alex.

Okay, thanks for team me up perfectly there. So this is great. This is an opportunity for me to introduce it both to our listeners on big technology podcast and to TechMeme right home listeners. So big technology has been free for three years and the free edition will remain after this. But I'm introducing this new premium edition that's just going to give more of what we've been doing in new forms and new formats with new features and even new podcast. So I'll start with the podcast first because I feel like it's, you know, pretty exciting for podcast listeners.

It's called Big Tech War Stories. It's going to run once a month for Big Technology premium subscribers. And it's going to be a conversation with people who are, who have been in the weeds inside big tech companies and have either built a product that people love or one that was never released. And we're going to speak with them about what exactly happened. I think I have a clip from it that I can play here. This is with, so our first episode, which is going to be running next week, is with Garv Mehada, who is the first product manager on Google's Lambda chatbot. What are some lessons learned for Google looking in the rearview mirror? Like, how should Google change? They need to go back to the experimental routes, I feel, like over the years.

Google has become more and more conservative about doing things. They care a lot about PR, like public relations. relations. They care a lot about how their image is shown in the media. And I feel that, at least in my experience, that plagued so many projects inside of Google. It was like the PR was always top of mind for leaders. And on the other side, like Open AI, like, they don't give a shit about PR or like for the most part they don't. So that's a bit of a clip of the news show. I'm stoked about it. And again, coming next Monday. And then in addition to that with this premium edition, we have this new thing called the panel, which you're on, which is we already have about 20 tech experts. We're talking

about analysts, VCs, journalists, and technologists that are going to weigh in on news as it's happening. So let's say the Silicon Valley Bank is in the middle of collapsing. I'm going to email the panel. The panel will all, well, when it's relevant, email one to two sentence replies about how to think about the news and we'll be able to contextualize it for readers. And then finally, we have a new Amazon column coming from Christy Coulter, who's a recent guest of the show. She spent 11 years at Amazon and has like a really good insight into how the company works. So that's it, basically, Big Technology Premium. You can find it on big technology.com. And the launch special will still be going on. So that's 30% off the annual price, which is already a good amount off of the monthly

price. So you can get an annual subscription for $90. And that's it. comments on this. First of all, thank you, Alex, for asking me to be involved in this panel thing. I actually saw Alex in person this weekend, and I was like, oh, you should have this person on the panel. You should have this person on the panel. Everyone I said, he was like, they're on. So, believe me when I say this is a blue ribbon panel, because everyone that I was suggesting to him, they have already agreed to be on the panel. So that's great. And then number two, I have a suggestion for the podcast. Years ago, I did an interview with one of the people on the team at Dig. If you know the history that, like, Dig was the big thing before Reddit, and they did a site redesign that destroyed Dig and Reddit came to the fore. So that would be a sort of behind-the-scenes story if I can, I'll have to dig into my archives and see that person.

Oh, that would be great. Yes, yes, please. Yes, okay. That would be great. We'll see if we can make that happen. Yeah. Yeah, so it just got it off the ground. We're recording on Tuesday. This show's going live on my feed Wednesday and then yours on the weekend. But this thing is fresh and hot off the presses. And I've been like thinking about the right formula for many years. I want to be able to keep the free product for those who want, but also offer more for people who are interested in a premium subscription, something that can help them do their jobs better, you know, give themselves an edge in their career, give their companies an edge against the competition. I think that this sort of insight, insight in terms of being. able to read tech events as they happen and learn about how the best do it is the best possible offering. And I'm really excited to roll it out today. Well, everyone, go check it out because, as you know, big technology is one of the best sources out there for really in-depth sort of stuff

in terms of analyzing the tech landscape deeper than I can do in my 15-minute show. However, and I'm going to grab the reins slightly, because one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you this week is because you are the big technology guy. And it's sort of that time of year when a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of year-end recaps. And so this is me teeing into our first topic, which is I wanted to ask you, seeing as how you follow closer than I do, all of the big tech platforms, this year started out with tech in turmoil, with layoffs, with, you know, some people questioning, you know, the business models of something, like was meta in trouble and stock down, whatever percent it was or whatever. I feel like it's not that much in turmoil.

So if you'll allow me to pose the question to you, but then we can go back and forth on this, what happened to big tech this year? I feel like they've recovered. Is that the correct sense? Or what happened? I mean, they've definitely. recovered. And you know, you just have to look at meta stock price, right? Right. 150% over the year to know that all that doom saying towards the end of last year was misplaced and that these companies were always already, sorry, they were always going to respond to the demands of the market. And boy, did they do it. So what you had is Mark Zuckerberg basically, you know, he came in flat footed, but then immediately realized that it was going to have to be a year of efficiency, as he put it, right? Big cuts.

and a focus more on inventing versus maintaining. And I think you've seen that meta has done the cost cutting. It's very tough for them, right? They had to cut a large percentage of their staff. But it also changed the culture internally where they started acting less like a big company and more like a company with some urgency. And you've seen that manifested with big moments where they've shipped, you know, their open source AI model, Lama, they've opened, they've shipped chatbots.

this whole new slew of purpose-built chatbots that you can now get in WhatsApp and Messenger. Honestly, like, you know, been among the biggest skeptics of what this Metaverse thing was going to be for consumers. But I just got a chance to try the Oculus 3, Quest 3. And I thought it was very impressive. It has great pass-through. So you basically can wear it, walk around, and see everything going on in the room with you. And it's not quite where it needs to be. obviously it needs to be much thinner than what it looks like now as opposed to these big goggles.

But I mean, is it getting there? Absolutely, especially because Apple's bringing it forward. And so, so I think that meta is emblematic of the type of movement you've seen through the entire big tech echelon, where there's been, you know, cuts that they had to make and they've made them, however painful they were. And then innovation. And I mean, AI, which we're going to talk about later, has underpinned a lot of that. So I attended a meta event sometime in the summer, June or July, and they were talking about all the AI stuff they were going to bring into their ads products and things like that. But they constantly made the point that, like, we're still committed to the metaverse. Is it just that maybe it's, they still are committed and they're still spending money on it. But is it also a thing where it's like if we just don't shout it from the rooftops, that keeps,

Wall Street happy. It's not like they're walking away from it or doing a Mayacopalus saying, well, that was a cul-de-sac. They're just not talking about the Metaverse as, you know, forthrightly as they were, say, a year ago. Absolutely. I mean, don't you think that when they said year of efficiency, I mean, how much of Wall Street thought that meant not investing, you know, billions of dollars into the Metaverse every year,

not losing billions of dollars? That's actually not what happened. They didn't cut spend at all. They, in fact, increased spend. On the Metaverse. I mean, they are not taking their foot off the gas pedal there. And they've just tried to trim elsewhere within the company. And not only that, their ad product has recovered nicely from Apple's anti-tracking moves.

So you put it all together. And it is sort of, it's almost just, you know, business as usual in a way that the strategy hasn't changed. Maybe they've added more AI into it. But they're just trying to do it in a way that's, again, a way, you know, a method of building. with more urgency and slightly, although not dramatically, less people. Well, so I was going to ask, again, like you go on the compound and friends, like, you're closer to like the stock market end of this or whatever. Was it ever a case that like in the early part of the year, were like, was EPS down for any

of these companies? Were profits significantly hit and they've come back? or was it more that they were being cautious in terms of like forecasting and also so then when they do cuts to especially personnel that looks better to the bottom line to Wall Street? What I'm asking is, were their businesses significantly hit? You just mentioned meta's ad business recovering from the ATT thing. Were they hit and they've recovered or is it just the vibe, which all of Wall Street is to a certain extent where Wall Street likes the narrative better now? Part of both. I mean, there was a real hit, especially with Apple's anti-tracking moves. We're talking about a $10 billion loss coming in or a contraction of revenue coming in, in particular because Apple didn't let them track what was going on. And so for meta specifically, that has come back in the sense that like, are we back to where we were before ATT?

Not 100%, but there's two things that have happened. One is that people have taken their money and they've brought it to Snapchat and they've brought it to Twitter and they brought it elsewhere. And then, you know, even though they weren't getting the same returns that they were on Facebook, they've just been like, oh, shucks, you know, the best place we have to put our money is Facebook. So they've actually like, come back from that worldwide tour and be like, all right, Facebook, you know, take it. Then Facebook has built a lot of technical tools that have enabled these advertisers to start to get maybe not back to where they were, but to a point where they're pretty comfortable now spending money with this company. So you're at a point where you also had some pretty hard comps against COVID because people all, you know, every company that we're talking about in big tech just had massive increases in revenue during COVID because they were basically the economy. So that tails off a little bit. But now, I mean, it's definitely evened out at this point. And everything is pointing up for these companies. So if we have time, can I ask you for two other specific companies?

We'll save Google slash alphabet for the AI conversation later. But you're talking about COVID times and cutting back the workforce. That's Amazon, right? Amazon was also dealing with the sort of the transition to a new regime, you know, Andy Jassy taking over. So what's your take on Amazon's year this year? I mean, in some ways good. They really were slow on the AI front,

but they positioned themselves a lot better with their big investment in Anthropic, right? Already 1.25 billion in Anthropic, potentially up to 4 billion investment in Anthropic, which is like this counterweight to open AI. So now they have a research house similar to the way that Microsoft has a research house. And while doing this, they've sort of, and Matt Wood was, this VP from AWS was on the show a few months back talking about this, where they've kind of created AWS as this clearinghouse for AI models. So no matter what model you want to build, they're not going to favor necessarily the ones that are developed within Amazon or the ones that are developed within Anthropic.

They have access to the builders. And they're like, all right, builders, like, come use our tools and build. So I think they're in good shape there. The one concern for Amazon is that AWS growth has really been slowing in a way that, you know, you see Google, Google, I mean, Google Cloud, right? There's not anymore close, but it's starting to at least put up some formidable competition. And there's still a shine around Azure, Microsoft's cloud offering. And so you put it all together.

And at Amazon, you know, you're still dealing with the fall out of the pandemic, right? because you overbuilt your infrastructure. You kind of were caught flat-footed on AI, but you're starting to make up for that. And you came into this year, and it was probably like an, oh, my God, what are we going to do, scenario, people talking about Jeff Bezos coming back.

And now the ship seems to be riding there as well, and they're up about 40% on the year. So. One thing that I have been hearing, which might be related to the AWS thing, I don't know if you've been hearing this too, but the idea that there are these new startups that have access to the Nvidia chips that are creating sort of new cloud offerings,

I've been hearing from a lot of people that this could provide the opening for people to get a wedge against the traditional... Because essentially running a cloud instance or a set of racks for doing AI stuff, is different. You have to design it differently than how a traditional cloud service does. And so I think maybe that's some of the concerns around AWS as I've been hearing people say, a bunch of these startups that now are getting multi-billion dollar valuations just because they have access to A100 chips. If people get like sort of acclimated to using these people to do their AI stuff, well, then it's easy to be like, well, here, we'll add on this cloud thing or whatever.

Anyway, the point being, this might be an opportunity for people to create alternatives to AWS and the traditional cloud providers. Right. And don't you think it's a huge opportunity for Nvidia? Sure. They are starting to license them of their computing in the same way that Amazon is. Today they were talking about also getting to the GPUs, which is different. But Nvidia is investing in all those like cohere and what's the one in Jersey or whatever? Right. Or maybe that's the one in Jersey. Anyway, the point being is that, yes, all those ones that are having these multiple,

multibillion-dollar valuations, you're seeing that the lead investor is Nvidia. So, yeah, and Nvidia. They're covering their bases. Nvidia has an interest in powering cloud stuff. So, yeah. Exactly. Don't you love the fact that, like, one of the more important companies in this space is in Jersey, it's like such a Jersey thing.

It's like, yo, you need some chips. Yeah, no, I love that company because I, you know, I think I did it, the story a couple months ago. They just had a bunch of GPUs left over because they were experimenting with crypto. And then all of a sudden it's like, well, we're not doing crypto anymore, but we still have these. And everyone's like, please, please, give me,

give me. There's plenty of startups right now that are plowing that field, FYI. Maybe that's what Web 3 was all along, where Web 1 was read, Web 2 was right, and Web 3 was stockpile Nvidia chips and sell them for the AI boom. Hey, I always say that the whole reason Web 2 happened was because it was all of the infrastructure left over

from Web 1, like all of the blow-up of global crossing and all those that left all the dark fiber in the ground. Real quick, last one that I want to do here. Apple's story this year is essentially just a global macro story that global growth slowed and they couldn't sell as many phones and that's it, or is there any other larger story to the Apple story? Yeah, there's like a few angles. So, like, yes, growth slowed.

The number two thing is that people, by and large, upgraded everything they needed during the pandemic. Right? So you had a two-year super, super-super-super cycle. And then, like, people just don't need to replace. So, and by the way, like, this is obvious at this point, but an Apple, you know, an iPhone 12 or 13 is fine. for five years, really.

If you had the 10, you needed the 15, but if you have something, 12, 13, you can probably, I mean, there's not a massive difference. So the compelling event to upgrade is no longer there in the same way that it was. And then, I mean, honestly, like, there is some worry from China where you've, and this is something that has been overlooked, but I think is really important. We've talked about it in the show in the past, where the Chinese government said, if you're in public service in China, no iPhones. And not only is that a decent sized amount of the market there, but it's also a signal to people in China that says, hey, if you have national pride, don't use the iPhone. We make

great phones here. You know, okay, we might be reading your data on them, but if you love China, use a Huawei. And now Huawei is the number one phone in China. So there's a lot of different currents writing against Apple. The comps to COVID definitely don't help. But we have like four straight quarters of revenue growth decline. We're going to talk about their new laptops and, you know, towards the end of the show. But, but, but geez, you know, not only they have revenue decline, but they have serious geopolitical risk. That's a rough spot to be in if you're Apple.

Indeed. And in terms of like, like we said, you know, maybe everyone recognizes that they don't need a new phone as often as every two years. You had Google acknowledging that with the pixel. What is there? They're supporting out to eight years or something crazy like that now. but yeah it's a very long time yeah yeah which uh you would imagine that some people will have to match at some point but we'll see um okay that's my that's my trip around let me tell you brian yeah

yeah i mean to me the thing the real big story so first of all like i think we know that these tech companies are they're in good shape and you mentioned the compound and friends i think one of the things that josh brown uh who is the co-host of that show has talked about is that ai save the market in 2023. I really think that's true. We're going to get into that in the next segment. But one thing that I think is super important to touch on is to me the underrated, unheralded story of the year.

And listeners of a big technology podcast probably know how I feel about this because we've talked so much about it is that self-driving cars took a huge leap, a tremendous leap. And they're finally at the point where the driving is good enough that they are, you know, able to operate functionally in large portions of cities, 24-7. We're going to have Waymo CEO, Takedra Amalakana on next week on Big Technology Podcast. And one of the things listeners are going to hear in that conversation is that Waymo since 2021 has gone from 50 square miles of operation within Phoenix, which is already a decent amount

of size to more than 200 square miles in Phoenix. Not only that operating in San Francisco, testing in L.A. and we have crews testing on the freeways. So the speed and success at which this wave is coming is truly fascinating. And while it's kind of interesting, like while we all talked about crypto, AI was quietly the biggest story in tech. And now as maybe while we're all talking about AI, the rise of self-driving is quietly the biggest story in tech. To the degree, I mean, I know that obviously there's different ways to answer this. But I agree that it's a big story in terms of a technology that we were promised,

promise, promised, and it kept not coming. And I had the famous, will we get self-driving by 2020, as everyone promised that it never came true. But is that a big tech story in the sense that, I mean, Waymo and Cruz could become big companies? but is that going to be, that's almost ancillary to tech in the same way that Uber, in a sense, is ancillary? Like, do you see what I'm saying? Like, is this, when we tend to think of big tech in terms of like the platforms, it's like, well, Google can do X, Y, and Z, or why can't you also do a music service? Why can't you also do movies? And is, is, I know that Waymo comes out of alphabet, but is this, if it's a success,

Ten years from now, is it a story of like, well, yes, I don't own a car anymore because I have a Waymo or a cruise subscription, but that's sort of walled off from the larger tech story? I think it's a great tech story. And I think that, like, we sometimes can judge the impact of tech in terms of the way that it rearranges our world. Right. And for better or worse, I think this is mostly a better situation. And, you know, despite the fact that. that everybody tags me when a cruise falls into a puddle of cement in San Francisco, which like, not great, but come on. You know, anyway, we're going to talk about it more on Wednesday about all these, these headlines about the cruise hitting a purse or someone being critically injured under a cruise. And turns out it was a human driver that slammed into them and they just landed under the cruise. But I think that this could really reorient the way and not to get too deep into this because

it's going to take a while and these promises have been made and delayed. But it will reorient the way that our cities work. It will change, you know, if you don't, if nobody owns these cars and you're just hailing them, then you don't really need space for parking. I think it will create a much better world and will probably be, I mean, I put it up there with iPhone, chat GPT, and Waymo cars, the three most amazing experiences I've had with tech in my lifetime. You know, the other, I don't know if you've been aware of this, but simultaneously to all a sudden, six months ago, oh, wait, there are way more self-driving cars out there than I

anticipated. Are you aware that, like, the drone delivery thing is actually becoming a reality, too? And it's not necessarily Amazon, though. Apparently, they've made some more moves recently. But, like, the FAA has officially, like, given the okay for, like, real actual drone delivery for stuff in the US. And so like, I feel like that's another one where it was a promise for the last decade that has never come true. But while everyone is looking elsewhere, I feel like drones are suddenly becoming closer to being a reality, sort of like self-driving cars are. That's pretty exciting. I'm pro-dron. I like the idea. I mean, as long as you're not like flying your drone and looking into my window with the camera, like, I think that we really benefit from the ability

for drones to deliver things. I mean, it's also good, I'd imagine, better for the environment than having a car drive around to do that. I think that drone photography and footage is exceptional to watch. I've been, when I was at BuzzFeed, I flew the drones and captured some wild footage inside some of the wildfire impacted areas in California. So I didn't realize it was it was that close to being approved in terms of delivery, but are we that far away from seeing this stuff hit? Yeah, no, this is what I'm saying is that the two stories. rhyme to me in the same way that like the promise was self-driving and then it never came, never came. And now all of a sudden like a switch has been flipped. And that is that has been true.

I think Walmart is whoever's doing it with Walmart. I don't have any of my notes in front of me is the furthest along. But even this week I saw movement from Amazon Air or whatever they call it for them doing more than than they had been doing too. So what if we look back on 23 as the year that self-driving and drone delivery passed a threshold and started to get real. Yeah, definitely. And it's interesting, right? Because in the middle of this AI moment, the thing that everybody looks at is that attention is all you need paper outside of Google, which is the transformer model. And that was in 2017. And, you know, I mean, it comes to a moment where there are these breakthroughs, they're quiet, and then people build on them. And the fact that

these drivers have become generalizable and are able to apply the same stuff they know city to city road to road is extremely underrated and I think extremely cool. So I know we're both in New York. It's going to take a while for this stuff to hit the streets in New York. Like, man, get a robot to drive on ice. It's not as easy. I mean, humans can't do it either. But who knows?

I'm now hopeful that we'll see the day. Yeah. I'm more hopeful than I was in 2020 when I, declared my bet Nolan void because I couldn't I couldn't take a self-driving car into work or whatever. Soon enough. Can we take a quick break and then come back here and talk about AI, crypto and Apple on the other side of this? Please. All right. We're here on Big Technology Podcasts with Brian McCullough of the Ride Home podcast. We're also on the Ride Home podcast. It's pretty cool. TechMeme Ride Home podcast, which is awesome, a great daily update on what's going on in the tech world. And also talking about. Premium addition to big technology.

I'll throw out the URL one more time. It's big technology.com. If you go to the launch post, which is going to be the second or first or second from the top, big technology is going paid with deeper coverage and new features. You can get a $90 for the year subscription as opposed to our typical $15 a month or $120 for the year deal. All right. We'll be back right after this. And we're back here on Big Technology podcast with Brian McCullough, host of the TechMeme Ride Home.

podcast CEO of Ride Home Media. Brian, let's talk about, and actually, you know, now we're going through your titles. You're also a partner in the Ride Home Fund, which is focused all about, wait, is it the Ride Home Fund? Well, there's this new fund that you came on in the There is a Right home fund, and then there's a Right home AI fund. Right. So there's two flavors, original flavor and AI flavor. So AI flavors. So yeah, let me just, so I, you know, obviously we've been, we've been in a year of exceptional promise and lots of questions now about AI, right? I think that people have, we'll talk about crypto in the next segment, but people have a little bit of maybe PTSD from the crypto movement where a lot of people said this could change it all and it didn't change it all. And or at least yet.

And they were like, okay, well, now we're hearing the same thing about artificial intelligence. And yeah, I can chat with chat GPT, but is that really good amount? to a new web. Let me read to you something from Tanya Dua's newsletter on LinkedIn, and it's talking about whether AI has been overhyped. This is a quote that she puts in from Matt Turk from First Mark. You've started to see the cracks in the whole generative AI hype train in the past few months. It's a clear case of Amara's law where people have overestimated what a specific technology can do in the short term

and underestimated what it can do in the long term. Brian, where do you stand on that? That we're over-estimating what it can do in the long-term. Listen, any technology wave, there's, you know, the curve of, you know, trough of delusion, you know, anything that gets hyped at first, the first couple years, there's a lot of things that will not work. By the way, chat GPT is not even a year old yet, right? So, like, we're so, we've thought of this year as like the big AI year, but it's the equivalent of if I, if you and I were having a conversation about e-commerce on the worldwide web at the end of 1994, right? So this before Google or Amazon or anything, like, the reason that I say that in the long term, we're underestimating it, I'm not even one of these people necessarily that believes true artificial intelligence. like self-aware, computers are, you know,

maybe, might not even be here in our lifetime. But the thing that I think that this represents is the true promise of computing. And that's why I say that this is underestimated. What I believe, and the reason why I raised the fun to go after this stuff is, I believe that what the simplest way to put it is what I think is being promised right now is the computer from Star Trek the next generation. where, you know, all of computing has been about sort of abstracting away the complexity of making a computer work. There once was the command line, and you basically had to know how to code to make a computer work.

Then came the GUI, and so now it's easier you click on icons or whatever, but you still have file menus and pull down menus. On Star Trek, the next generation, Picard just says, you know, computer do X, Y, or Z, computer enhanced, computer, you know, assess the makeup of that star or whatever. you don't have to know all of the things that go behind it to get the computer to work for you. When computers first came out after World War II, they called them electronic brains. Because again, we've always thought of robots and computing primally as humans in the same way, well, this is a tool that will do my work for me. I think that that, the fact that we have spent at least the last 50 years bringing computers into our lives, but they were still difficult tools that you had to master, if we can abstract away all of the things that are complex about computing and just say, computer book me the flight, computer, respond to Alex and tell him I can record the show at two today instead of four, like, then essentially, this is a different paradigm where we don't necessarily have to look at screens. I'm not saying

it's all going to be voice commanded or whatever, but I think that we're underestimating the ability of the true promise of computing to be manifest within our lives, normal people's lives, within less than five years. This doesn't even get into how it could transform medicine, you know, change how different professions work and things like that. I think that we're underestimated, the fact that the true promise of computing as a tool that normal people use and rely on in their everyday lives to make it better is it's here, it's now, it's a paradigm shift that I've been waiting for my whole life. And so let's talk about, I mean, he talks about how it's overestimated in the short term. Are we going to go through a year or two where like people are going to be like,

where's the cream filling on this stuff? Like, yeah, 100%. Which is, which is scary to be investing in in a space like that. I can ask about that, yeah. But also, at the same time, if you gave me the choice of investing in a sort of greenfield, wide open, new, this is a new paradigm, I would take that all day long. Like, there are other, you know, investing in SaaS companies for the last decade at least has almost been a spreadsheet like thing. Like you see how much users grow and like sort of how the revenue grows.

You can plot it on a graph and see like, okay, here's the valuation of this thing. it's more interesting to me to invest in a space where it's like think of how crazy it was that the mobile phone came around and the things that got disrupted were taxis and hotel rentals right like that's there's no way that you can plot for that it's more interesting to me to invest in a space that it's greenfield having said that Chris and I started the fund just at the beginning of the summer

by the way it's still open if anyone is interested in investing in the fund, you can find out at right home fund.com. Our thesis has been to go after the productization of stuff. So, like, what is the Airbnb or the Uber of this paradigm shift? I would say, by our definition, we've only made one of those types of investments, and all of the other investments right now have sort of been infrastructure plays, by which I mean, who is creating the scaffolding around what this new level of compute is? we've kicked the tires on dozens and dozens of these products.

You know, AI for architecture, AI for law or whatever, and they don't seem defensible. And so I will tell you, if I'm being quite honest, we haven't found the Airbnb of this moment yet. What we are investing in is, hey, if you're Ford or American Airlines and you want to deploy a chatbot or a large language model, you've got to be able to do it safely. Or if you're on Wall Street, you've got to make sure that your proprietary data is here.

So that's what I mean by infrastructure. There's a lot of plays right now around allowing this moment to flourish. And so, again, that's kind of like investing in 1994. Like if you invested in every website at the time, you might not have done well. But if you invested in the underlying tech, you might have done that. You did great. Okay. So I have a question for you about that. What do you think about, and I'm writing about this this week, so for listeners, if you're a journalist, don't take this idea.

But what do you think about this emerging fight between Facebook and Open AI? I mean, you have Open AI, super open. No, sorry, not, no, open in the name, pretty closed in the technology. Yes. You have meta pumping out these open source algorithms. By the way, like not signing on to any of these, we need to stop AI progress while open. A.I. Seems to want to shut others out of it. Yes.

And then you have open AI with this big, impressive, generalizable bot chat GPT, and you have meta in this moment with all these personal, more specific use case style bots that they're releasing. Talk me through this fight. And is it like, it's kind of like an underrated conflict point between the time, you think?

Alex, if it's almost like you and I are more professional and more organized and we had thought about, because I thought of this. as a topic, but we never, we didn't coordinate on this, but I'm glad you brought it up because I have some serious thoughts on this. Here's what you've got to understand. In a sense, open AI is already the incumbent, okay? Because if you think of these large language models as a new sort of, as I'm saying, computing paradigm, the key behind them is the secret sauce of what the data is trained on, what the large language models are trained on, but also the key is, is what they call like,

temperature. And basically, imagine you have to, you train a large language model and you're like, well, it doesn't work that well. So turn this knob three points and slide that dial 70% or whatever. It's fine tuning, okay? That's the secret sauce for making things work. And you can, it's not just for accuracy, but it's also for making it cheaper and stuff like that. Okay. So Open AI in previous models, they released what the models were trained on. And, like, how the inputs worked and how, like I'm saying, they fiddled with the knobs and the dials to get the secret sauce. They're not doing that anymore. And so the reason is, is essentially, because they had the first big win on this, right? And so if you're a meta or someone coming from behind, Open AI or ChatGBTBT is the fastest product to become successful of all time. What it was 100 million users until threads. It still threads. Yeah, I can't count out threads.

But who knows? Maybe they're both lost users. But sorry, go ahead. So what you have to understand is that anyone else now is like, well, there's a scenario where the biggest model will always win because it's the got the most data behind it. It's the best trained. And so either everyone can just follow in Open AIs wake and be like, ours is just as good. It's sort of like a Google versus Bing thing.

Or they have to differentiate. and not just in the market, but in terms of developers. So, meta does what Google always used to do, which was open source, anything that they did. And the reason that they're doing that is there's a scenario where if you can let a thousand flowers bloom and a thousand different, Chris and I think talked about this on your show, like the AI varietals thing. Like if you have a thousand different models and this one is trained

slightly differently than that one, it gets different outputs. That's the sort of way that you can differentiate. Meta has obviously an incentive to do that because OpenAI got ahead of them. You could argue that Google will have similar incentives. But I was at an AI conference two weeks ago, and it was all discussion about open source. And let me give you the negatives about open source first is people are concerned about, well, you know, you throw a large language model out there that anyone can get off of GitHub or hugging face or whatever. And then, you know, terrorists can use it to do bad things. People can use it to create misinformation or X, Y, and Z. But the sense is that the open source stuff is we're never going to be able to innovate and create the Airbnb of this moment. If the actual models are behind this firewall of open AI and they don't tell you how it works. Because then all you're left with is a scenario where people can build businesses that are just thin wrappers

based off of open AI APIs. So if people are excited about this moment and they want to grab hold of the future of it, they feel like they need it to be open source so that they can own the models, okay? And one of the things that I said to a lot of the startups that I talked to at this conference is, you have to understand that not only does Meadow want this to work that way,

the VC class of which, obviously, I'm a part, wants it to work this way too, because that's, again, if you're the biggest VC firms in the world, your Sequoias or your Andreessen Horowitz's or whomever, even if they're already invested in OpenAI, they need an ecosystem to grow up around this stuff. Otherwise, again, Open AI or just the biggest model wins. And so I said to a lot of the startups that I met there is, I'm glad that everybody is exploring open source for this technology, but if you're being pushed to do it, keep in mind that the incentives by the people that are pushing you to do it are their own. Meta wants to unseat OpenAI. The VC class wants to create a bunch of startups that will be the next OpenAI.

So I think that people are excited about open source being the future of AI, but I would caution a lot of people to understand why a lot of people are shouting that right now. Well, let's, okay, so let's go then on one level deeper. Why does meta want to unseat open AI, in your opinion? I mean, everybody's going to want to in the sense that if you believe like I do that this is a, this is a new compute paradigm in the sense of how you're going to interact with compute, that works for what is meta do? Their social network, essentially.

I mean, really, their business is selling ads, but you can throw AI into that. But so, meta needs to control the fact that what if five years from now social networks are really, maybe you don't talk to your friends as much as you talk to your favorite bot, that you've maybe created their personality, you've trained it on everything that you've got on your phone or your computer, and so it knows you, and so the bot becomes your friend. Or what if five years from now social networking is all of our bots interacting with each other on social media, or in VR or in AR. Meta does not want to be in a position where the only way they can do that with a high degree

of accuracy and efficacy is to have to ping somebody else's APIs. Because again, they'll be in a position that they have been with like the iPhone and Android all these years is they don't own the platform that their service fundamentally sits on. That's why meta needs it. But also, one of the things that I've said on my show is that, you know, meta's looking at what OpenAI is doing and is thinking, how did Open AI create these products? They trained it on the internet. They trained it on users' content. Who has more user content than meta from their family of apps? There is a scenario where within two years,

meta has the best LLM because it has access to more. Meta will shut off Open AI's ability to be trained Like, you're already seeing Reddit shut off OpenAI from training on their content. Like, who's in a better position to be the dethroner of OpenAI than Meta is? They've got the PhDs, they've got the science, they've got the patents, and they have the content that you can train this next generation technology on. I think there's any level of envy in terms of how Zuckerberg feels about Sam Altman. Zuckerberg, to my sense of him, has envy for anybody that, I mean, Bill Gates had this too. Anybody that's successful in a field that he thinks he could be successful in, yeah, he's like, why not me?

But I also think that he's in a better position now because, you know, the phrases is that the leaders often end up with a bunch of arrows in their back. because the two companies that are best positioned in my mind to challenge OpenAI are meta and Google. I mean, Google created the technology that allows the current attention-based generative AI, transformer-based AI to happen. But Facebook has been, had a decade of the best AI minds under their roof as well. and then, like I said, they have the content that they can train this stuff on. So if someone's going to dethrone, if Open AI is and also ran within three years, I bet it'll be meta.

My money would be on meta that would dethrone them and then maybe Google slash Alphabet. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Okay, great. So let's just do, let's go lightning round through our next two topics, crypto and Apple, Apple's new launch event. one of the things that you wrote to me while we were to talk and discussed about what we're going to talk is wither crypto. I mean, to me it seems pretty obvious. I mean, crypto is, is disgraced in many ways.

Now, listen, maybe there's going to be something emerged from the rubble. I have to point out that today on October 24th, Bitcoin just surged to $35,000 a coin. No. You didn't know that? Yes, because apparently everyone believes that the first Bitcoin ETF is, is, is, uh, about to be announced. So yeah, for the, Bitcoin hit the highest it's been in 18 months. Now, you can make the argument that Bitcoin is almost a separate story than the larger crypto ecosystem. I don't know that Solana has come back to its highs of 18 months ago or whatever or Ethereum. But so having said that, and so if we look like idiots, if you're listening to this three months from now, because crypto all of a sudden is $100,000 a coin or Bitcoin

is, what we're talking about is two years ago when we were on like the Twitter spaces and the clubhouse rooms or whatever, we were all talking about crypto and NFTs and all the Web3 goodness and stuff. And I think that you're alluding to the sense that I get as well, which is like the energy has gone out of that. They're still the same people that are in the space. I'm not saying they've evaporated. But the overall energy... Well, some of them are in jail. That's true. Do you agree with me that you feel like that the energy or at least the chatter that was there around crypto this year sort of dimmed like it, we felt like it was starting to do at the beginning of the year?

Oh, yeah. I mean, if you think about pandemic, like zero interest rate crypto versus now, like that was a fully inflated balloon. And this is a sad piece of bursted rubber. Well, let me again caveat this by saying, if you think Alex and I are just talking about price, that's not what we're talking about because, again, two years ago, three years ago, there were new ideas. And as much as people did and still do laugh at things like NFTs or, you know, fintech around like, again, the things that blew up and people went to jail for, which is like all of these crypto lending things that were, you know, giving you 18% returns and turned out to be Ponzi schemes or whatever.

But there was a period of time where there was this flowering of a ton of new ideas. And I don't see like a new idea around lending or, you know, putting your mortgage on the on the blockchain and stuff like that. Like there was a time when that was every day and like I don't hear that. No, maybe I'm not listening in the right spaces. That's because people like their houses and they don't want to lose them. Sorry. I don't know. I feel I guess I'm just getting out of these SBF trials.

earings and I'm feeling salty. Yes. Well, all right. I get it. And one of the things is that the people that used to yell at me on my show when I would do two stories or three stories of crypto in a day and they're like, what is this the crypto right home? And I was like, listen, it was for a time the biggest story in tech. No doubt. Absolutely. And I mean, I can go entire weeks without mentioning a crypto story now. So to the degree that Alex or I are a barometer of this sort of stuff for the broader tech thing, I think that

yeah, right now it's another lull. I mean, maybe it'll come back for all we know. I don't discount the idea that blockchain technology might end up being, I mean, it is being used in many different places and there's going to be some innovation that comes out of it. But whether it reinvents the web

or reinvents the way that we do things, it seems questionable at best. Okay, last story, Apple just announced, or if you're listening on Saturday, earlier this week announced, they have a new event happening Halloween Eve called Scary Fast, and the idea is that they're going to announce new Macs. And Mac has been one of those products that have been troubled for them. I'm curious, speaking of things that used to be exciting and now are seemingly not, do you think there's going to be any buzz at all? I mean, it's interesting that they're even announcing it's like seven days before this event happens.

Also, it's interesting. I, you know, work with the editors at TechMeme and we were trying to look. They've never done, the events at 5 p.m. on Monday. They usually do Tuesday events. They never do events in the evening that we can, we couldn't find, at least in the history of TechMeme when they had done a 5 p.m. Eastern Time at night event. And then you're saying, Max, what we've been speculating in the slack is,

is scary fast means that we think that it's going to be about the M3 chip. Because if you think about it, even if they were just going to upgrade, even if they were going to upgrade the Mac Pro line or whatever, and the rumors initially were, oh, they're going to upgrade the IMAC line, because the IMAK line, as it exists right now, is two and a half years old, I think. They could do that just by doing a press release and, like, you know, updating the store. The fact that they're doing a special event at a special time and it's called Scary Fast says to me that they are excited to tell us about the M3 and they must have something

that they think is significant to tell us about how those chips perform. Now, they'll probably also announce putting them into new Macs as well, but I think that what we're going to see, and this is Claim Chowder for, you know, if you listen to this after Monday, I think it's all about the M3. Well, I would be stoked for that. I mean, even though that the juice has come out of these events a little bit, I'm on like a five-year-old desktop at this point. And having that compared to the Apple, the MacBook Pro with the M2 chip, it's just, it feels so slow.

Like, I have a great setup with the desktop, and I just find myself wanting to work on the laptop all the time. So I don't know, man, if this is what's coming down, then I guess sign me up for these new machines. M3, here we go, baby. I'm going to quote from our resident Mac expert inside the TechMeme Slack. I won't name him, however. I don't think they'd have a weird event time like this if there were just big chassis form factor changes. It also feels weird if it's just M3 refreshes across the board. So I really don't know what to expect, but something tells me either it's something bigger than those two things or those two things combined will be bigger than what we're all expecting. scare me, Tim Cook. Scare me. I'm ready for it.

All right, Brian, thank you so much for the time. This was great. Always great to speak with you. Thank you, Alex. And congratulations on Big Technology Premium. Everyone, go check it out. If you want to see my immediate takes on the big news in the roundtable,

you got to subscribe to Big Technology Premium. Yeah, thanks again for being a part of the panel. Again, it's big technology. You can get it there, 30% off, no, 25% off for our launch special. It's a great deal. I hope you go check it out. And if you're not on the free list, then try the free list and see if you want to upgrade. Again, we'll have a story about this meta, open AI fight up there on Friday.

So also one last thing to our listeners, if you don't subscribe to Tech meme right home now, I recommend it. It's a great list and gets you up to date on everything going on in the tech world every day, hosted by none other than Brian. So I'd recommend. Thank you, Alex. All right, everybody. Thanks so much for listening. Thank you, big technology listeners. Thank you, TechMeme right home listeners.

Thank you, LinkedIn for having me as part of your podcast network. Thanks to everybody who's willing to go give this big technology premium a try. And again, it's a pleasure bringing you this show. Stay tuned Friday. Ron John Roy will be on. We're going to talk about the latest in tech, especially tech earnings this week, big week of earnings. I'm preparing to go on CNBC to talk about Amazon on and others on Thursday, so we'll break that down.

And then next Wednesday, an interview with Tekeedra Ma Wakana, the co-CEO of Waymo, more self-driving car talk, plenty of new details, really fun conversation. I hope you stay tuned for that. And we will see you next time on Big Technology Podcast. Welcome to the Mesa Technologic for this Tuesday, 26 October, 2003. I'm sorry, I'm McAulog. Today, the benefits of my data diare appell

seem to planify a refond complete of the gam AirPod. Spotify prevoed some changement major in its way to get in the royalties. X. Deployed these appell video and audio.

And a regard on how these new controls gestuals function on Apple Watch. Here's what you have marked in today in the world of

the technology. Yesterday, a afternoon, it had announced that the revenue of the 3th trimester was in

a house of 23% per year per cent, the benefit net has increased to 16% per year

to the $13 million to $15 million to $1,000 $15,000 $1 million to dollar. And the number of people active on the family of application

has augmented to 7% at 3.14 million of persons, at 9.23. The investors seem to have some odd to have some views partaged to this subject. The actions of Meta have been slightly based on the exchange at Bourse this morning.

Maybe because this little detail must be mentioned, the laboratories of reality of Meta where it's all the work of VR and Metaverse, signaled a Shiffre of Affair of the T3 in a

26% $210 million of dollars counter pretty 300 million, what he was estimated.

The perts operational have been to gain to $3.17 million of dollars, against an

estimation of $3.9 million of dollars. So, even if Zuck that's

more constantly of Metaverse, Meta is invested always lured there's

little little little bit on the Mark Zuckerberg, said that Trude had attained

Citation just in two of 100 million of users since Instagram has launched the application in the

Virdge. I've thought it should be there have an application of conversation public of a million of people who is a little

more positive, to declare Zuckerberg at the appell to the day. I think that we continue

so we're so that we have been a chance to realize our vision there the director financial

of Meta Susan Lee has also extremely extremely a certain optimism citation.

Treader RETs again a long term attrayant and we We are enthusiastic to capitalize on the far-elang of the product that we have for the year next, has said, Lord of the appell.

In fact, Adam Mossery, has declared, I quote, I hope that we can support the Europe, the progress precoes of Feediverse, the Measures of Instagram, and the tendencies of the next month, in his report of the result of the third trimester, META has declared to have realized a number of affairs of $34 million, in a host of 23% by the same trimester of the year. Spendant, he brule still of the money with its division

Reality Labs. The enterprise prevoys that these perts of exploitation augmentrown to manage of one year on another.

And source of Merck Gurman says that Apple prevoid to refond completely its game of AirPods

Max and two AirPods AirPod of 4th generation redisned with USBC in 2024 and Android

Pro with a new new piece and a new new design in 2025, Stam Bloomberg. The changements will understand a version

remaned of the entry-of-game of Apple in 2024 and a new model pro the year following, according to people familiar with the plan.

The enterprise made a year to the concept of the product of the appearance of the attuies and the quality audio. The new version

of the ecuteor Airpod Max will also also out of the 24, have declared these persons who have

demanded to not be identified, because the information of AirPods. It's not particularly

very much for Apple, a lot of people are prefer to either kind of money and buy a version

or is opne for the model old of gam which comprans a new year the product. The product of the middle

of the model at $129 so certain consumers don't see not not the reason to pay the $40

supplementary. With that Apple prevo to suppress the AirPods to supermobile the third generation

later the year after the person familiarized with the subject. Remplaced by two

AirPod of the 4th generation, which the price is similar to versions actual, but are more differentiated. The two models present will presentron

a new design that looks at a image of the third-generation and the model pro. They'll have all the two of course tithege, the part that

the part that's the part of the earlis of the option in including the reduction of the volume in the version of the game.

This model will also a new boxier to charge that comprans the whole-parliars to find my alerts to

the actual AirPod. The alerts facilitate the research of their etuies by the utilizers when it is perdu. The two new models of entry-of-game offer them a better adjustment, but it is poor-prob

that one or the other include these embus of replacements like the AirPods Pro. The 4th generation of AirPods passers again at the USBC for their etuies of charge pursuing a change that has started with the AirPods

Pro. The Alamine has suppressed the foot of these iPhones this year, in the course of a effort to conforming to the regulation of the Union European, and these

accessories, follow the movement. Apple prevo prevoire an issue of the AirPod Max over the end of the year next to change again its earmark will be in new color but they'll be able to

not many other changes the AirPods Pro as they're going to be benefited of a new design and a new new new push in 2025 and the society works on the functionality

of the software to set upotions. You cease to note rapidly that Apple has also augmented the price monthly to US USE

24029 per month at 9 Euro 429. Also, News Plus pass of $9.09 $19. $12.

$19. $1.29 per per month a $6. $29. And Apple has gained from $645 to $1,915

since in MacRum. The augmentations of price prent effect immediately for the new subscribers and in 30

days, for the number of the newfound newveling after this period of

grace. Apple would have made to get to hear to informe the changements

to the time, as it has as a few times the amountation of price of certain services the year last year.

In the United these are the first augmentations of price for Apple Arcad and Apple News Plus, from the launchment

of the service in November 2019, while Apple TV Plus has conned a first $9 million per month to $6 million dollars

per month in October 2012. In a declaration with MacRumers, Apple's a declaration, it's a

situation, accessed on the furniture of cost of the to our services. And there's not an augmentation of price for Apple Music and Apple Fitness Plus today. These sources indicate that Spotify pre-vue a change major to its model of redvance. For the first trimester of the year next,

including a new soles of annual minimum, before a piece not to generate a redvence. It's the world of the affairs musical. Spotify has discussed the details of his plan for the new model of royalties with diverse detenters of the rights musicals these last few Semes. These sources implicated in these discussions have now confirmed at Mbri.

While Spotify continues with his system of redevance pro rata, it's to say stream share, he prevoed to have three changes major specific to his model. As I said, my Spotify prevoysed to make it in effect of this changement, in a tentative of, I quote, I'll quote three drains on the pool of royalties, to some pashions, actually the money to attain the artists in activity. MbWVV has confirmed that, at the first trimest, 2024, Each Pist on Spotify, in the card of the new plans of DSP, will have attained a minimum of streams annual

before to start to generate the royalty. No sources were not disposed to precise the number exact of streams that informer this seigne. But a source implicated in these discussions recent us has said that the goal is to demonetize a population of TIT, who, today, gain in a median, more than zero-fellow $5 dollars per month. Some calculus economic is Alavavit.

The sources industrial suggest that each lecture on Spotify in terms of royalty of music enregistrated, generate actually around $1.5 million of dollars, $0.003 American per month.

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month or around 200 lectures per per year. Spotify say that the morso that representate actually

99.5% of the parts of streams will be to monetize after these changes by a source

well-placed. So, why Spotify cibble-tile, specifically, a portion relatively minimum of pists on its service that are very poor

popular and generate very few of revenue because we're talking of an industry or 100,000 pistes or plus they are telecharged on the platforms

of streaming. A amount of agents versed to these pieces cumulatively represent a sum substantial. In sum, the Pists that

Spotify's Cibble here generate the royalty that's elevates to the 10 million of dollars

per year, and this Chiffre has made an source at Mbbbbb. The year, without trying this measure,

Spotify I think they would have generated $40 million dollars. Avertisement that X has started to deploy these appell audio and video to use with some users with the options

to selectioning with who you are at least to use. Disactivate completely the function. I say, Avertisement, because you would

be maybe verify that it is tint if you want to use it not use it using the verge. Several users on the platform,

including certain of us, here at the verge, on receiving notification in opening the application indicating that the appell audio and video are there. There also a new activate the bascule of appell audio and video in the parameters of the application

which says you can't, I cite, activate the functionality, then selects with you are at least to use. They comprehend these options for authorize the appell audio and video only people in your cardet of address, the person that you see,

the users, verifiate or the three. You can also pass an appell appell an email with an other user, in selecting the phone in the coin superior right of the screen and choosing the appell audio or video.

In a publication on X, Elon Musk confirmed the deployment of the appell audio and video, adding that it's a version preliminary of the function. Musk has often evicted the add to appelled audio and video to the platform in the call of these objectives for all of what he is. Application. Musk has recently declared that the function would be available on iOS, Android, Mac, and PC, with, citation, no number of telephone necessary. He is still not clear at how X has launched these appell audio and video,

or if the utilitar non-premium, can't use it. The month last year, the inventor of hashtag and defensor of the open source, Chris Messina. We have discovered that the code of X suggested that the users would be inscribed to the abominium of X

for the use. X not immediately responded to the demand of the commenter to DeVorge. Finally, a regard on the gesture of double tap

of Apple, which is in course of the watchOS 10.1 which permits the series 9 and the users of

Apple Watch Ultra 2 can interact with their mount without using its screen tactile, essentially,

without having no no need to have no need to touch any other. From the verge, Double Tap, Neighbor, consue can you help you navigate. The major way of it decry is like the Surrey of your Ordinator. He defile, he selection,

and it is hot-programmable. Double-tapped and more like the double-click on the part of the use of a surrey. You'll use only for effectu the action of an application. And for this far,

Apple has had to pass much to research what people would or to attended to a double tap. And when double-tap as a little the impression that the monitor is peer-lare in my pensions.

It's really cool to see Double Tap to work with. Not only my index, but the rest of O.S. My grand surprise, it seemed more gadget that I didn't let's think of Apple,

it's not long time to encounter the limits of Double Tap. The Commands Multimedia are a good example. A double tap should it make in pause or play your music? Or it would it

be to pass to the piece of the next if you're someone who uses your monitor in your monitor, for the old-parleer intelligent,

the ancient has more sense. If you are a course of your playlist, this last year is the more useful, I just on this one of the same in various scenarios,

but it's past to be one of the two instances where you can choose what you can't doble tap for pass to the next piece.

This lack of choice is also apparent in the applications tiers. My application of courier electronic me permit to double-click

to start a response rapid to the end of series. But even in two 23, I don't dix my email,

these applications like Spotify and PocketCast It's not not even with double tap. The part of the applications tiers that function with double tab you can't simply to reject the notifications. It's sate, but still limit-in. With WatchOS 10, these applications like fitness

and the meteor have been repensed to be more consultable. On the way of a long-screen that you parkourn't, the information is divisive in a morseau more digest. You're always a defile, but it's more. It's super. So I've used often to use the double tab

to navigate at the menu on the new coronet numeric. And I can't... You can't do you can't to make defile the new widget smart stack, but if I selectsioning a widget and it'll I'll always use my other hand. If I selectioning a widget,

I can personalize to do that, but it's selection never that widget of the old. You just simply have confidence to make in evidence the good widget. The multi-tache is another in a other domain in which double-tape can do if I'd

do this way to put in a pause a minute-ehr, but I'm away to this application, I'd either either either or use my other hand, or use the double-tap for the double tap to stop for the minutare. Plus of personalization would be the

answer is evident, but it's an option that Apple's a few for this first iteration of double tap. It's not always there's a moment where the action principal

is not what I'm doing to finally, I'm going to use to use my other man. In the example, if I'm on the series of

I can have need to have defile with the courn numeric to get to find the different iterations of the double tap that can't

and selectionate. Something that is not as complex as a Stive Touch, but that's a better equilibrium between simplicity and personalizability. Without too count on Apple for trying to understand what you want to do you want to doble to do. Even now, with the limitations

existent of Double Tap, I can do more in displacement and without my telephone. I'm going to get a little more or when I do it's for add a few more intentional like the lecture, the actual video.

The last few times with Double Tap have been like a future of a monster of a intelligent, independent of the telephone. The apparets, who, have tried the notifications and the appell, they're gere, entirely. Fewer of you have

asked why I mentioned the firmature of Pebble here. Pebble is this alternative at Twitter, in which Right Home Fund has invested this year when he was known to the name of Titter.

Justine Nachin, she divisions unique of the situation. You know, Pebble has a mank'estown these things can arrive Daly Startup, Eileen Westesma, To the meaer, I like you pebble.

Parla, too many. Welcome by the TechMeme Right Home for Dondondondack, 6 October, 2020. I'm Brian McCulloch, today, meta-incomsts of yesterday. Apple, like, an full-endip-vernewing of the AirPods assortiment. Spotify plans great

changes in how it royalties off-handled. I'll launch it video-guespreck and audio-experks and then a kijk-you-up this new Gebarsturing works on the Apple Watch. Here is what you've missed have in the world of Tech... This is the new technology. Gistermendor, that the Q3

upbrings with 23% is has got to get in the over year. To $3.15 million the netto income stee with 160% to the last year. To $11kadn $50 million.

And the daylice active men, maitstaff for the family of apps, was 7% higher. To 3.14 million men, at least for September, 2013.

The beleggers like in here over a bit of a bit of The Aundle of META handled in the forebearshandle A lot more than this little detail to beled to bevind the realitatslaps of META where all the V-R and METAverse work Wooned.

The on-the-third-quartered with 6.7 million percent, $200 million versus $300 million, what was. And operational-verleases were 2% higher $3.4 million

$7 million, so even $7 million, so even the whole time over the METAverse Eschrewebate Meta there still in. Another a little a little bit of the conference

gusprick, said Mark Zuckerberg that Threads is Geraq, Cita, net under the 100 million maindlea monthers since Instagram the app beginning July has

out of the verge. I have long thought that there a guspects app for a million people should be more than more than

the oprope. I think that if we here not a few years with we're a good chance have to realize. With a C.F.

Susan Lee, dealed also some optimism, Cita. Threats also also is also on long-term

a great-of- chance, and we are enthusiastic to build on the strong product momentum that we have for the

year, said she in a thread's post. On Wednesday, said Instagram Hafeatam Moseeri.

I hope that we understown for Europe. Vroger's fordgang, better Instagram integrations and

trends in the coming the coming to planer. As underde the third quarter resultat, said METa

that it $4 million on incomest in the opposite of the same quarter of the year. It verbranded, after, still, with his Reality Labs division.

The business is the operational verizon, there, quote, betakenessful, year-na-year, end-quote, will beckoning. Following Bron of Mark German,

planned Apple a full-ledgernawing of his AirPods-Line, the out-bring of AirPods Max, and two-vernewed four-generation AirPods with USBC in 2014-24-N. AirPRO with a new chip and a new design in

in 2000, Citeran, Bloomberg. The forandering will a re-newed version of Apple's instap-nive- AirPods in

2014 and a new pro-model the following year omvatted, according people who can't with the plan.

The business works, the oortephone of the product, the outelike of the hoosges and the sound of

the new version of the AirPods, makes coptefefeons comes also in 2014, said the

people who didn't be identified wanted because the information is. The 3-D

generation AirPods has not particularly good-vercoct for Apple. Many copers are or for for for money to

and the second generation version to buy or the three-e. They go for the high-end model, that was delivered with

ruse-under-drucking. The midden-nivop product bids not more than the model of $110. $120. So some consumers see

no reason to pay for the extra $40 euro to betal. With that in-ggett Apple,

to both the second- generation AirPods, to phaseer and the people who be-censed

with the material. werevanging by two 4th generation AirPods, that are the higher-priced but are more differentiated. The two models will a new entwerp have that likes on the third generation AirPods and the pro-model. They will both short steles have,

the deal that out of an user of a user hanged. Apple will the two options undershundershruiting in the duer version up to name. That model gets also a big-geverged-aught cassette that speakers bevath for Find My, war-shrings overreinkomened with the current-airpots pro. These wereschuings make it for the for the users more than their sake to find as these

forlore goes. By the new, goodcoper models will a bettered pass form but it is unwisely that one of both vervangening tips will bevatted, like the AirPods Pro. The 4th generation AirPods will also overshackle on USBC for their uplaid cases, a reshiving that began with the AirPods

Pro. Duteland has this year the blixem out his iPhones got out as underdeal of a Pogue of the European Union. And his accessories follow in the the same path. Apple planned at the end of the end of the next year an update for the AirPods Max, that also his uplaught port to USBC for another. The coptelephones

come in new colors, but will not very other other changes. The AirPods Pro, therein'teat, were, in 2015, renewed and a new design and chip, and the bedrives work to the health functions for that appraat related to hear.

I will there quickly on that Apple also the maindleks American price has very high up From Apple TV Plus, from 6999 per month to 996. News Plus goes from $999 per month to $12.99, Arkaid, goes from $4.99 per month to $6.99, and Apple has won. From 1655 to 19 Finaster, citerer, Mac,

the price-verhoogings are in for new abbeenees, and over 30 days from today for besta-dawness on their following for the respeight period. Apple would bea-mustrains to send them to about the changes in the loop of the time, as it did after price-verhogings for some Diences for the VHS in the VES,

are the first price-verhugings o'it for Apple Arcade and Apple News Plus since the Diencese were in November 2019, while Apple TV Plus's the first price foroging had from $499 per month to $6.9 per month in October 2012. In a foreclaring

with Mac Rumors, said Apple, it is, "...geritched on the best-mogelike for our clients by consequent-soxawartage entertainment inhout and innovative functions to add innovative functions to to add on our dines to-to-foogings.

There are today no price for Apple Music and Apple Fitness Plus. Bronner says that Spotify great forerangings planned in his royalty model. The first quarter of the next year, inclusive a new dremple of minimum-jaarly streams, before that a track begins with the generating of royalties, Citoran Music Business World. Spotify bespreed the details of his blue-druck

for the new royalty model with the various music rexholders in the off-golopened weeks. Bronn, that, by the guspecting were, have this now bevested to Mb-W, that, how well Spotify doer

with his pro-Rata royalty system, also as stream-share, it's plan is to three specific, great, in his model to bring. As a Bron it

stelde, is Spotify of plan to do this for a point in a point, in a point, in the royalty pool that momenteal

all come that that geld by working artists come. MbbW has bestished that from the first quarter of 2014 Every number on Spotify, under the new plans of the DSP,

will a minimum-auntal yearlies must be able to generate, our brons will not the exact amount of streams that this dremple will bepaling. But a bron that bethocke was by recent discussions told us that the step is made-worned to demonetize that today the day, immediately than five cents per month,

what economy on the backer-cant of a servette? Industrybronneres suggest that every off-spelialing on Spotify in the VS in the VAS, the up-genreys, momenteergens around the $1.003 dollar generated 0.003 U.S.D.

per month. This would suggester that for these numbers to generate they're 17 times per month or on about 200 per year would have been

Spotify says that tracks that momente 99 and 1⁄2% of the streamdell will beckon will bevern will bevested a good-ge-replaughts the

broad. So, why omitststststifite specify, specifically on a relatively little bit of the numbers on his service, these are very low popularity and very low income genererent,

because when you talk over an industry where 100,000 tracks or more were daily gopload to streaming platforms. The bedrash that was outbataed on these numbers

resulteate in an unseenly sum. In total, generate the numbers that Spotify here on the o'clock here on royalties

uploped to top-million-dollar per year, and that amount grew only more, and the brunted a bron to NBW.

Next year, without this action to underneme, think Spotify that they on-givert $40 million would have generated. Washering that X has begun with the outrolling of audio and video

to show to selecter with who you it pretty find to use. Schackle the function completely out. I say, Warshuing,

because you might be controlling or it out-gascaled is if you it not want to use, citerer of the ground.

Verschillender the user on the platform, whereon some of us here by the Verge have a melding on the medialing. Audio and video-gespeck and video-speckin here. There is also a new, shackled audio and video-gespect function in in the app installings,

that you can set-auntlete and then selecter with who you it comfortable find to use. It bevats options for audio and video-gespreck to stand of only people in your address book, people that you follow, give you're all three. You can then an op-prop do by an DM to open with an other

user, the telephone pictogram in the right-the-overhook of the screen to selecter and audio or video-gesprek to choose. In a brief on X, bevested Elon Musk the out-roll of audio and video-gispreck. To-fugent that it a vroo-versy of the function is. Musk has long up gint to add to-to-govue to-gover to-gover to-to-dogevue to support as a underdeal of his dole of allus to make.

App Musk said, onlang, that the functionable on iOS, Android, Mac, and PC, with, quote, "'Gneetate, quote, "'X, audio and video-gespreckes' have launched, "'or as not premium-gobruses it can use. "'Forgemauntor-Maw-Shaner and Open Source-Fondersterster Christmas-Sina. After now, the code of X suggested that the

users should have to be to be able to the premium abutement of X, to use. X reageed not immediately on the forsook of the Verge. Ten slotted, today, a kike-y-nairpillar, that's outgerald in

WatchOS 10.1. Watseri 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 users, to with their horloge to communicate, without a touchscreen to use, actually, without it ever to have to

of the rant. Double-tap is not been made up-envaporpe, the best way I can describe it, is that assistive touch as the mouse for your computer is, it scrolled, it selecteart, and it is very programmable. Double-tap is more as the double-click-gadele of the use of a mouse. You've used it

out-slupting, on the host-activity of an app out to do, and, on that to do, must Apple time to docket to look at on the look at people who wanted, or that a double-tick would do. And when Double-Tap presteered as well as

it's a bit as if the horloge my thoughts can leasing. It is really cool to see how Double-Tap works with not only my wise finger, but also the rest of

him. To my verbasing, it feels it more gimmicky than I have expected. But, ongantz the inspannings of Apple do it not long

to take the abeltings elements are a good example, a double-tick would you have music would you have to play, or it would it to

stand to go to the next number to go as you someone who is smartwatch use. To the weirgave on slimmed loudspeakers to regal is the formalogical. If you a hardloper

been and the the first-the-number and the number of the scenarios, taken come back to but this is one of the the slext two

cases where you can choose what double tap do it. For me I have double tap in to start to springing. That's a

break on a keuse is also in apps of third. My email app let me double-click to start with Siri, But even in 2003, I dictere my emails not. Apps, like Spotify and PocketCasts,

work also with double-ticking. The most apps of third, they work with double-tick, let you just meldinger. That is... It is hand but still beperked. With WatchOS 10, are apps like Fitness, and again up new ontworpen,

to be more flutting to be. In place of one long screen where you end-loose through-hens is information-verdealed in more forteerbable brockes. You sculled not still, but there is... This is great,

This is great, Behold that I often double-tick to To navigate in place of the digital. And I can not... You can scroll through the new widget Smart Stack, but if I a widget will selecter

and open, I still my other hand use, if I can I can to do it to do but it selects only only only the bovest widget.

You have only to trust that Apple's algorithm the juest to bring to the other AbelTap too short can shoot if I that will, to pauseer,

but I'm way-geneive navigated from the app, I'm going to my other hand or Siri use. Otherwise can I wait to the timer off-gat and double-tick,

or the timer to beendigue. More maitwork, would here it for the hand-litting answer, but that is something where Apple hold-houdant in was for this first iteration of double-tick. It work not always so naught-loose.

There are moments where on the primary action not is what I will do or, or I come I'm at the point where I have my other hand to use. In the above-standing example, when I see if I'm if I'm going to seey around

to the information to bring to bring that I need have. But it is not much to to come up to start to selecter. Something that not

so out- as assistive touch, but a better even weight between a un-pastable without too much to betrower on

that you will do. Even now with the bestaverting of DoubleTap, can I more do on the way on my telephone.

I'm not I'm more more than dolebubst to dole-o-earned, like lez, or it's looking to a video. The off-glob with Double-Tap

felt as a blick in a smartwatch to-coms that unoffhankly of telephones. Apparates, that in place of the trier of melding and uprope, handle them full-end.

The various of you asked me why I yesterday not that Pabble is. Pabble is that Twitter alternative in Rite Home Fund

has reinvesteate. Eager this year when it was as T2, I have no unique in the situation You know, Pebble has his chance missed.

This sort of things can happen by startups and investions. The best for the Pebble team.

Until morning.