Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 10/29 – Signs Of A Meta Watch

Starting point is 00:00:00 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. Welcome to the Tech meme right home for Friday, October 29th, 2021. I'm Brian McCalla today. Tons of meta commentary about the meta move by Facebook, including the appearance of a meta smartwatch, small bit of earnings fallout for Apple and Amazon, very important detail from the reviews of the new MacBook pros involving battery life, and of course, the weekend long read suggestions. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. The fallout from yesterday's meta event was ongoing overnight, and we'll get to that in a second. But among the discourse, two things I thought you should be aware of. First, the Facebook

Starting point is 00:01:14 View app on iOS apparently contains an image of a potential meta smartwatch, which has a front-facing camera, rounded screen, and a detachable wrist strap, quoting Mark German and Bloomberg. The image was found inside of the company's app for controlling its new smart glasses launched in partnership with Rayban. The picture was located by app developer Steve Moser and shared with Bloomberg News. A meta spokeswoman declined to comment. The watch has a detachable wrist strap and what appears to be a button at the top of the watch case. Its large display mimics the style of Apple's watch rather than the more basic fitness trackers sold by Google's Fitbit and Garmin Limited.

Starting point is 00:01:55 The camera suggests the product will likely be used for video conferencing, a feature that would make meta's device stand out. Apple's smartwatch doesn't have a camera nor do rival products from companies such as Samsung. Facebook has been planning to launch its first watch as early as 2022, but a final decision on timing hasn't been made yet, and the debut could come later, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. The company is working on three generations of the product aimed at different release timeframes, the person said. The device in the image could ultimately represent a version that is never released, but it's the first evidence of the company's work on the project, end quote. Did want to note that that was our friend Steve Moser, who discovered this

Starting point is 00:02:35 image. He's been on our Twitter spaces quite a few times. And also, everything is going meta. The Oculus brand is apparently going away entirely to be replaced by meta branding, starting in early 2022. Also, Facebook Reality Labs will become just reality labs. Okay, now for a taste of the meta discussion and the meta narrative developing around meta, Mark Zuckerberg made the rounds giving various interviews, including to Ben Thompson and to Alex Heath from The Verge, which I'll mention again the long reads in a second, but I want to quote real quick from Ben Thompson's analysis of the rebranding. Ben wrote, quote, meta exists because Zuckerberg believes it needs to exist, and he is devoted to making the metaverse a reality. It's his call for better or worse.

Starting point is 00:03:30 In that, it reminds me of an increasingly popular phrase on FinTwit, House of Zuck. It has been adopted by a set of investors that are eternally bullish on Facebook not because of its results per se, but because of their conviction that those results come from Zuckerberg's leadership. It is a belief that is being tested as never before. Facebook has always been unique among the big five tech companies because it is the one company that does not have a monopoly-like moat in the market in which it competes. Today, it is also unique in that it is the only one of the five that is still founder-led. I don't think that is a coincidence.

Starting point is 00:04:04 The fact that Facebook is uniquely held responsible for the societal problems engendered by the internet does, I suspect, stem from the fact that Zuckerberg is an obvious target. How many people concerned about anti-vax rhetoric, for example, can even name the person in charge of YouTube, a far more potent vector. Page and Bryn were wise to step aside once Google was established to make Google a less tempting target. The same with Jeff Bezos. Facebook doesn't have that luxury.

Starting point is 00:04:31 Kara Swisher made explicit what seems obvious. the way for Facebook to escape its current predicament is for Zuckerberg to hand the reins to someone else. Only a founder, though, can admit, as Zuckerberg did on Facebook's recent earnings call, that the company is losing ground with young people and not just pivot the family of apps, but the entire company toward a future vision that establishes meta as a dominant platform in its own right. That's also why I considered titling this article, House of Zuck. That more than ever is what meta, nay, Facebook is. Today's Facebook Connect Keynote is entirely. about a future that doesn't exist yet. Believing that it will happen rests on the degree to which you

Starting point is 00:05:08 believe that Zuckerberg, the founder, can accomplish more than any mere manager, end quote. And Kevin Ruse said in the New York Times that Facebook's Metaverse move is designed to solve several problems at once, an aging user base, dependence on Google and Apple, regulatory risk, and reputational damage, quote, building the Metaverse won't solve any of these problems overnight. It probably won't solve them at all and could, in fact, invite new kinds of scrutiny that Facebook wouldn't have faced if it had simply spent the next several years focusing all of its attention on fixing the issues with its existing products. But it would be wrong to write Facebook's metaverse off as just a marketing gimmick or a strategic ploy meant to give the company more leverage

Starting point is 00:05:46 over its rivals, although it is both. If it works, Mr. Zuckerberg's Metaverse would usher in a new era of dominance, one that would extend Facebook's influence to entirely new types of culture, communication, and commerce. And if it doesn't, it will be remembered as a desperate, costly attempt to give a futuristic facelift to a geriatric social network while steering attention away from pressing societal problems. Either possibility is worth taking seriously. Regardless, this isn't a vanity stunt for Mr. Zuckerberg. In the metaverse, he has found what may be an escape hatch, a way to eject himself from Facebook's messy troubled present and break ground on a new untainted frontier. No wonder he looks so happy, end quote. One small quibble, if I could add my own meta commentary here real quick, as we mentioned on last weekend's bonus episode,

Starting point is 00:06:34 if one of the main ideas is to attract talent right now, did yesterday's event do anything good for meta at all? I mean, most normal people will hear Facebook change its name to a new name that feels faintly silly at best and downright cringy at worst. Side note, will we all stop calling them Facebook? Somehow, I feel like this is going to be harder to get to stick than even the name alphabet was. But for those paying closest attention, technologists like us, especially young technologists that Facebook wants to recruit to meta, I mean, what was that presentation? It wasn't vaporware exactly, but it also wasn't anything, really, to quote Lane Nooney on Twitter as she was watching the event live. This is a 3D movie Zuck and Crew has made about a fictional technology they think they're going to invent. This is not a proof of concept, and it sure as

Starting point is 00:07:27 S isn't a prototype, end quote. And I mean, I know they mentioned NFTs and crypto and things like that, but as I tweeted last night, with all of the energy right now in Web 3 and the like, not in the very dad energy, hello, fellow kids vibe that Zuck was giving off last night, the energy is in creating bored apes, not in imagining new ways people can do work meetings in VR with avatars as Zuckerberg continues to demo as if this is something that will excite anybody. Oh, I want to go to meta and kill Zoom by making people strap things to their face and collaborate on virtual whiteboards is something that has been said by nobody. Maybe at worst, by claiming meta as a name, Zuck and Company have out of stroke made the entire idea of the Metaverse suddenly seem very, very boomer.

Starting point is 00:08:26 Quick note to round up earnings week. Apple actually missed Q4 revenue estimates by coming in at $83.4 billion versus $84.85 billion, as analysts expected. But I mean, revenue was still up 29% year-over-year. iPhone revenue of $38.87 billion was up 41% year-over year, and services revenue of $18.3 billion was up. 25.6%. Amazon also missed its Q3 with revenue of $110.8 billion versus $11.6 billion expected. But again, that was still up 15% year over year. Net income of $3.2 billion was down significantly from $6.3 billion year-on-year, and AWS net sales of $16.1 billion was up 39%. This morning, both stocks were down more than 3%. I'm not willing to call these narrative. violations per se because they seem to be slight misses on overall economic softness, but I will note that

Starting point is 00:09:23 Amazon estimated Q4 revenue will be in the $130 to $140 billion range, which is below analyst's estimate of $141.6 billion. And Amazon also expects to spend more on delivery operations this quarter, their busiest, which could, of course, hurt profits. The MacBook Pro reviews are trickling out, and I'm actually not going to quote from them in the same way that I normally do, because look, all the reviews are saying the same thing. Incredible performance from those new chips. Happy to have sane hardware design back. Happy to have ports back. Happy to have the touchbar gone. But also, they're expensive as hell. Having said that, I do want to quote from this section from the Verge's review. By the way, the Verge gave both machines a 9.5 out of 10 rating.

Starting point is 00:10:17 I want to quote from this because I think this is a useful little nugget if you're considering one of these machines as a near-term purchase, listen closely. Neely says, for content creation and creative work, these new MacBook Pros are the most powerful laptops the Verge has ever tested. Quote, all that performance is excellent, but here's what's really impressive. The 16-inch MacBook Pro with the M1 Pro ran for 16 hours on its battery during continuous use, making it the longest lasting laptop we've ever tested. To test battery life, we just use the machines during the work, day without plugging in and without letting the display go to sleep. So that 16 hours involved jumping between a dozen-ish Chrome tabs using apps like Slack and Spotify, and often running Zoom calls

Starting point is 00:11:04 and YouTube videos over that. At one point, we were worried we'd fall asleep before the MacBook Pro did. The other two MacBook Pro models didn't last quite this long in similar testing, but their results are still exceptional. The 14-inch model with the M1 Pro lasted just over 10.5 hours during normal use, and the 16-inch M1 Max model ran for just over 10 hours. A lot of you asked about battery life with an external display plugged in when I worked for a day with the TV I use for Zoom intermittently plugged into the HDMI port on that M1 Max machine. Battery life fell to seven hours. These results make sense when you look at what's inside these devices. The two 16-inch models both have a 100-watt-hour battery, which is the biggest laptop battery you're allowed to bring

Starting point is 00:11:49 on an airplane, while the 14-incher has a smaller 70-watt-hour battery. But the M-1 Max has a whole bunch of extra GPU cores to power, and that drains the battery faster. I asked Apple and the company confirmed the M-1 Max uses more power both when idle and when active, but it noted that the M-1 max might potentially be more efficient if you run specific multi-core GPU workloads all day. A lot of you asked whether the extra money for the M-1 Max is worth it. And, After all that, we think the answer is, no, not for most people. Carrying around all those extra GPUs has an impact on battery life whether you're using them or not. Unless you can identify a specific part of your workflow that would benefit from serious multi-threaded GPU acceleration,

Starting point is 00:12:35 the reality is that you're probably not going to use them. I recommend really thinking about whether the battery penalty of the M1 Max is worth it for what you need to do, end quote. Time for the weekend long read suggestions. and I won't quote from it at length, but if you want to hear the thinking behind the meta news from Mark Zuckerberg's own mouth, check out the interview he gave to Alex Heath at the verge. I'm also not going to quote from this, but this is also a timely pairing, I think. Fast Company asked 28 experts what they expect the metaverse will actually end up being, and what it probably won't be might be worth contrasting that with what Zuck thinks it will be.

Starting point is 00:13:18 The third link in the long reads is also timely. The Wall Street Journal takes a look at exactly how and why Apple's privacy changes have been hurting the businesses of the likes of Snap and Facebook. Quote, A dozen e-commerce companies interviewed by the Wall Street Journal said they now have to spend a lot more money on these ads to get the same number of sales from them that they could expect before the new feature was rolled out. They also can't get enough data to know how effective these ads are at driving purchases. Many have reduced their ad spending on, targeted ad platforms. In a July poll of 118 e-commerce store owners by e-commerce fuel, 62% said they had decreased their Facebook ad spending since the iOS upgrade. As a result of the data drought, many brands have shifted their ad spending to Google because its flagship search ad business relies on customer intent. Users' search terms immediately reveal what they're interested in rather than data collected from app and web tracking, end quote. New York Magazine has a great piece up to introduce you to the idea of a Dow. We've been throwing that

Starting point is 00:14:20 term around for a while now, but maybe never really explained it. Using the concrete example of the Discord community, Friends with Benefits that just got some investment from Andresen Horowitz and Spark Capital, quote, admittedly, Friends with Benefits, which was co-founded by Trevor McFederees, the former DJ who created the infamous CGI influencer Little McKella, is something more than a group chat. It's also a Dow or a decentralized autonomous organization. Decentralized as in it has no executive leadership. Autonomous as in self-governing. An organization, well, that's the group part of group chat. At their simplest, Dow's are blockchain-based co-ops with software constitutions. And in the last few weeks, they've overtaken the imaginations of the crypto-futurist visionaries and feverish

Starting point is 00:15:06 speculators who turned NFTs into a multi-billion dollar market over the course of the pandemic. plus a bunch of eager, hopeful artists, marketers, and programmers. To the true believers, DALs are the institutional building blocks of Web3. The blockchain-grounded decentralized utopia promoted as the future of the internet by a group of savvy investors, artists, futurists, and developers. Web3 is, quote, owned by the builders and users, orchestrated with tokens, and combines the decentralized community-governed ethos of Web 1 with the advanced modern functionality of Web 2,

Starting point is 00:15:39 as a widely circulated Twitter thread by Chris Dixon, the Andreason Horowitz partner who led the investment in Friends with Benefits put it, in this vision, a corporate-controlled data-cyfining social network like Facebook could be replaced by a quasi-democratic Dow in which new features and products would be debated and voted on by user-owners with decisions and regulations transparently enforced by contracts encoded on the blockchain. And unlike with Facebook, user owners who wanted to quit could easily sell their stake in the DAW, on the blockchain pocketing any profit. That's one story at least. To detractors, Web3 is at best a colossal waste of energy, literally, and at worst a pyramid scheme, a vast, distributed, utterly transparent scam bent on suckering the greedy and naive with promises of wealth and transformation.

Starting point is 00:16:26 If you really buy into it, though, if you're steeped in the ultra-positive hyper-utopian, get-rich-quick culture of Web3 as it flourishes across Twitter and Discord, you're not just looking to change the web. Sure, the future of privacy, finance art, that's all nice. But as Dow evangelist Tchaopteryx recently told Coindesk, quote, Dow's are a bet on the future of human organization itself, end quote. Something I've been bullish on for a while now. Sister Publication Vulture also takes a look at the free streaming wars, the streaming channels that are ad-supported, quote, At a time when linear channels are fading into the shadows and a handful of super-sized streaming services dominate, a six-year-old broadcast network devoted to old game shows might seem about as relevant to the future of TV as UPN.

Starting point is 00:17:14 Yet the relatively tiny buzzer is actually thriving right now. It has nothing to do with a sudden uptick of consumer interest in episodes of password or supermarket sweep. Instead, the Fremantle-owned network has managed to dramatically increase its audience and revenues over the past few years by diving headfirst. first into something called Fast, and its success so far points to a potential path forward for old-school broadcasters struggling to survive. Short for free ad-supported streaming TV, Fast is a rapidly expanding quadrant of the video universe, best known to consumers through platforms such as Pluto TV, Jumo, and Tubi. Viacom, CBS, Comcast, and other media giants have snatched up these services because they've realized there's huge profit potential in serving audiences who can't or

Starting point is 00:18:00 simply don't want to pay for an increasingly expensive array of subscription-based streamers. Even TV and device makers such as Roku, Samsung, Vizio, and LG have jumped into the game. As a result, money is pouring in. Analysts that U-Screen Media estimate revenues from ad-supported streaming will nearly double over the next two years, reaching $4.1 billion by 2023. And finally, just because I love stories like this from a FAR magazine, the story of the nation of West Antarctica. Quoting from the long reeds of the week post that turned me on to this long read,

Starting point is 00:18:36 quote, comprising 620,000 square miles of Antarctica since 2001, it has been ruled by his royal highness, Travis I, the Grand Duke. This is a micronation, a political entity whose members claim they belong to an independent state, what they lack in legal recognition they make up for an enthusiasm. Members bestow elaborate titles upon themselves and engage in heated discussions about how to govern. West Ardica is not alone. There are nearly 100 active micronations around the world. While physical landmasses have been claimed, these micronations largely exist online. West Arctic started as a basic Yahoo website with a god-awful teal blue background, project name, and email address.

Starting point is 00:19:19 There is a fun fantasy vibe. West Ardica's legal tender is ice marks, with banknotes featuring McKenry Penguin and the West Arctican coat of arms. However, micro-nations also have serious statements to make. Obsidia is a feminist-only nation with a two-pound rock as its territory and is, quote, intent on using awareness to increase visibility for femme-f slash feminist-lGBQ people and explore concepts for an ideal governance, end quote. Since 2018, West Ardica has also developed an important mission in becoming a non-profit focusing on fighting climate change. So take a dive in to this fascinating article and literally discover a whole other world, end quote. That's all for today and for this week and for this month. There's no bonus episode coming at you this weekend.

Starting point is 00:20:15 Just enjoy Halloween, everybody. Talk to you on Monday.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 10/29 – Signs Of A Meta Watch

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