Tech Won't Save Us - We Don’t Need the Apple Vision Pro w/ Brian Merchant

Episode Date: June 22, 2023

Paris Marx is joined by Brian Merchant to discuss the vision of the future of computing offered by Apple’s Vision Pro headset and why it should be resisted. Brian Merchant is the technology columnist at the LA Times. He’s also the author of The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone and Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech. Follow Brian on Twitter at @bcmerchant.Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.Also mentioned in this episode:Paris will be in Edmonton, Alberta on June 24. More info here.Brian wrote a column about the Apple Vision Pro for the LA Times, and another about Uber drivers in California getting payouts.Paris also wrote about why Apple Vision Pro should be ridiculed for Disconnect.David Karpf called virtual reality the “rich white kid of technology.”Meta employees are not working in the metaverse.Mark Gurman reported on the internal division at Apple over whether to release the Vision Pro in its current form.Support the show

When the price was read, there's like a tweet that was like, it sounds like the crowd groaning at a tennis match. And it's like, oh, because it's true. They know what that means. They know that that means it's a barrier for adoption. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us. I'm your host, Paris Marks. And before we get started, just a quick thing I wanted to let you know about. If you are in Edmonton, Alberta, I will be there on June 24th doing an event at the Caffa Roastery. I believe doors open around 6pm and I will put a link in the show notes if you want to find out more information about that. Now to this week's episode, I have a frequent guest who has not been back for a little while. Brian Merchant is back. He is a

technology columnist at the LA Times, the author of The One Device, The Secret History of the iPhone. And this coming September, his second book, Blood in the Machine, The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech, will also be published. And he'll certainly be back to talk about that. But in this week's episode, we wanted to talk about a recent announcement from a major company that you will be very familiar with called Apple. I'm sure you've seen the stories about it by now that Apple announced this new headset called the Vision Pro that it imagines as being kind of, you know, the future of computing and how we're going to be using devices and engaging with our apps and the Internet and all sorts of these things into the future. You know, I am not really buying this vision. I don't think Brian is either. And I think a lot of people are very skeptical of it because it really does seem like, you know, quite similar to the metaverse vision that meta was trying to sell us just a couple of years ago, potentially even worse than that if we really dig into the potential

implications of it. So I thought that because this was a big new product announcement by Apple, it was worthy of discussion on the show because if Apple pushes it, then a lot of other companies will be trying to kind of follow it down this road as well, if there is any degree of success with it. And that could have really serious implications for how we think about computers and computing, but also what the future of technology looks like and how it shapes the future of society. You know, these tech companies often get away with putting these products out into the world. And then those products kind of shape our social and economic relations in ways that we later find, you know, are not so great for us and that we're not very happy with. So I think that we just need to be aware of these things

ahead of time. And, you know, since this device is out here, I think we need to start talking about it and start thinking about how we can challenge the vision of the future that it kind of portends, right, that it puts out there. So no need to spend any more time introducing this episode. If you have been listening for a while, you will be familiar with Brian. And if you're a more recent listener, then, you know, I think that you'll enjoy this conversation with him. As always, if you like it, you can leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You can also share the show on social media or with any friends or colleagues you think would learn from it. And if you want to support the work that goes into making the show every single week so I can keep having critical discussions about the tech industry,

like this one with Brian, you can join supporters like Kier from London, Will in Victoria, and Clint from the United States by going to patreon.com slash techwon'tsaveus, where you can become a supporter as well. Thanks so much and enjoy this week's conversation. Brian, welcome back to Tech Won't Save Us. Thanks as always. It's been a minute here. I feel like I've been neglected and I've been seeing all these great guests come on and waiting in the dugout going, hey, coach, put me in. Yeah, it's been since December. you know, you helped us close out the year last year with a big discussion on, on what went on. Listen, let's be real. I was waiting to talk to you about your book and then your book got delayed. So that's why we had this delay in

the Brian content, but now people are going to get a double dose. You're going to be on now and you're going to be on again in a couple of months to talk about your book. So people are going to get their fill of Brian Merchant. Yeah, more than anyone could reasonably want. So apologies to your listeners for that in advance. They love it. They love it. Well, I don't know about that, but I love coming on.

Well, I love it. And that's what matters. That's right. And I do have to say, you know, since it has been a quick minute since you were last on the show, it's been a big development for you. That's right. Yeah, you know, it's been great. I've got a great editor and the times have really sort of supported this mission of doing very sort of critical and hard lined tech analysis. So, so far so good. And yeah, it's great to be able to opine and investigate things from a legacy perch. It's kind of a dream job, to be honest. Absolutely. And, you know, obviously criticizing the media and coverage of tech is something that

I think people who follow the industry who have a critical perspective like we do, it's something that we do pretty often, right? Looking at some of the New York Times coverage of AI, for example, things like that. But it's really fantastic to see someone like you at one of these legacy publications being given, you know, the space that you're being given to put out these critical perspectives on these tech companies and on these technologies that we so often talk about, but don't always see kind of represented in these spaces. So it's really fantastic. Thank you. And but you also can feel sort of the hunger for it too. I mean, tech journalism for the early part of my career as a tech journalist, I, you know, wasn't probably as critical about things as I could have

been and helps us support the formation of tech journalism as, you know, not so far always as an industry cheerleader, but certainly not as critical as it could have been. But then when you start telling the stories of people who are impacted by the decisions that the tech companies and the platforms, you can really feel it resonate. Some of the most popular stories I've done have been basically tech labor stories, stories about Uber and their sort of wanton deactivation, the algorithmic wage discrimination, a Vina Duval paper. And I just did one about some

Uber drivers who sort of took the fight to the state and won a bunch of back pay for drivers. And I'm just like, I'm getting emails and notes and people asking me questions and people sort of grateful that that kind of thing is being spoken up about. So you can really feel that there is a hunger and that it resonates with a lot of people, not just sort of on the consumer side. So yeah, I hope they keep me around. I hope so too. Yeah, it's been fun. But no, I I've been loving it. And that Uber story you did recently was fantastic. It was great to read the story and how these drivers had, you know, kind of found these terms in proposition 22, which, you know, allowed a bunch of drivers across the state to get kind of payouts based on mileage and things like that, I believe it was. But then you shared on Twitter some of the messages that one of these guys who had found this was kind of getting from other, you know, Uber drivers and things like that who got these payouts and just like how thankful they were to like receive this money and how impactful it was for them. And like, you know, I think that's so

just incredible, right? Yeah. I mean, and now the credit all goes to Pablo Gomez and his co-conspirator there, Sergio Avedian, who really just kind of collected the receipts. And I mean, that's just how the, especially the gig companies, that's just how the especially the gig companies, that's just how they work, right? If there's a corner that they can cut and get away with it, you can bet with 99% certitude that they will do it. So here's this corner that they had cut. And because they had sort of used their influence to get Prop 22 passed that sort of spread all of these sort of half measures across a bunch of different agencies that it was very difficult to enforce. The state dropped the ball, too.

But because this was a new enforcement mechanism that this agency, the Treasury, wasn't used to enforcing. So no one sort of noticed it until these two drivers did and really sort of put pressure on the state to do it and then in turn put pressure. And then, yeah, drivers are getting thousands of dollars. And if you're taking home hundreds of dollars a week and you have to pay for your own vehicle, you have to pay for it. Getting $2,000 is a huge boon. It's a huge help. So yeah, all these elated messages were coming in that Sergio and Pablo were getting because, I mean, yeah, I mean, he doesn't have to do this. You should have him on sometime because he's got a million things to talk about. He keeps these giant Excel spreadsheets of it. Like every ride that he ever takes that mapping it out to make sure that his data matches his pay and that Uber's not stiffing him. And then

he notices he has a show that he does on YouTube. That's not, I didn't mean to say little, it's getting a big audience because drivers come to rely on it in this, for tips and for backup. And yeah, he's become quite a force. So, you know, kudos to him. Absolutely.

And maybe we will have to do that. And I would just say, you know, if you want to know more about that, I'll put the link to Brian's story in the show notes. You should obviously go there and check it out and also become a regular reader of Brian's column because it really is fantastic. And he's covering such important stories and topics that are the kinds of things that we talk about all the time on the podcast.

But it's great to see them kind of represented in yet another forum and to be reaching this wider audience that the LA Times allows. So kudos to brian love it oh thanks paris cheers you're you're cheerleaders here you know we're big fans of brian merchant i'm blushing over here now you know this isn't just have brian on for an hour to really pump him up and, you know, give him a ton of compliments. I actually had you on to talk about something else. So, you know, June 5th, Apple has its big WWDC event, dub dub, you know, for all the real Apple nerds out there who love to be in on the lingo. They, you know, obviously announced the operating system update, some, you know, new MacBook 15 inches or whatever. But the big thing that everyone was waiting for was the new headset, right? The Apple Vision Pro that they showed off

and kind of positioned as the future of computing. The one more thing, right? Yeah, right. So Tim Cook gets his moment to have his one more thing. So obviously, there's a bunch I want to talk to you about. But initial thoughts, what did you think about this headset when Apple showed it off? Yeah, I mean, it's honestly, to me, it's one of the more perplexing devices that I've seen from Apple for a lot of reasons. Apple doesn't really release a big device that's going to be a new sort of product category altogether, unless it feels pretty sure. Usually, usually we can get into why this has a bunch of caveats that aren't usually the case. But, you know, I mean, there's some skepticism or criticism about every time it's done this over

the last 15 years, and it has not done it a lot. I think it's worth saying that it was the iPad and then the watch. You can maybe kind of say, you know, the AirPods have been, but there's not the same level of expectation or the same potential investment in this product category. So the watch, I kind of rolled my eyes at it, but I didn't think that it wouldn't become successful. I think it remained to be seen whether or not it would be successful at scale. But to me, people love Apple. They love their Apple screens, obvious place to kind of put another screen that's, you know, not too controversial. So I'm not surprised necessarily that it's the best selling watch in the world now. One thing I've been kind of noticing lately, or just taking, you know, stock of lately on the watch point is

just like picking out and noticing in so many photographs, like when people are wearing an Apple watch and like how common that has become. Like there was recently an election here in Alberta in Canada and the two leaders of the political parties, one of the news organizations, like had a photo of them both mocked up together for some story that they were running on the on the election and i noticed that like in the photos that they were using for the story both of them were wearing the apple watch and like i feel like i just see it everywhere now i don't own one like i don't understand the appeal of it yeah me too ease of use i do like apple products sort of better than microsoft whatever i've gotten used to it i've gotten accustomed they do a nice enough job with the software and the presentation. And for the

relatively simple and straightforward uses that I need in my computing, it meets the bill pretty well. I had a MacBook. I bought the iPhone. I got the iPad. I don't know if you wear a watch. Do you wear a watch? No. No. See, I don't wear a watch. Maybe if I wore a watch, it would have become an Apple watch. But it also somehow always felt like a bridge too far. It's like, I don't need the third thing. I have the iPad for watching a movie or handing to the kids to get them to be quiet at dinner or whatever. I have the iPhone, obviously. Eventually, curiosity came knocking with the iPad, even though I guess I was initially reluctant with that. And then it's like, oh, yeah, okay, it's good enough for like reading long form stuff and for just like propping up and watching a show when you're traveling on it. But the watch, I never felt that urge to get. And that's where with this Vision Pro thing, I guess. So with the watch, I feel like people who had watches like, well, maybe I'll try that. It syncs up with my phone. You can kind of see the use case. This,

I would say for me personally, has even less of a draw. I want to try it. I want to see what it's all about. I write about technology. I guess I'm sort of obligated to do so, but I'm genuinely curious about what they're doing with it. I am not innately inclined to want to purchase this thing, especially since it's so expensive. And people have said in the past, you know, we're still in the middle of this sort of every time I feel like a new Apple product comes out, we do this dance and we compare, you know, the conversation or the criticisms to those in the past. So when the iPhone dropped, it got a lot of criticism for being too expensive. It got a lot of criticism for what it didn't have, like it didn't have hard buttons and the Apple headset doesn't have controllers that you would use to probably play games or, you know, like the meta headset has.

And it gets criticized for, oh, how would you use that thing? And people say, oh, well, people figured out how to use the iPhone. You know, I think that that's all true to some extent, but it's a lot more expensive. It's really expensive. $3,500, that's enough to put it out of reach to a lot of people. There is a sort of wealthy upper class tech set that will, you know, have no problem paying for that. But it's enough to make even people who are doing pretty well say like, do I really need this thing? When the price was read, there's like a tweet that was like, it sounds like the crowd groaning at a Wii tennis match.

It's like, oh, because it's true. They know what that means. They know that that means it's a barrier for adoption. And people knew it was going to be high, but they expected like 3000. And it was even more than that, right? Or like, I saw people thinking it was going to be 2499, or like, which is sort of the upper end of a more powerful sort of laptop. If you get like a MacBook Pro totally decked out, then it could run you that much. But all of the criticisms of every headset that's been expensive are still applicable here, right? Like they didn't solve the issues that have kind of doomed every headset in the past. People are saying the same things. Oh, well, they're going to release it at this price point without a real use case that's clear so developers can get their hands on it

and find that killer app. Well, that's what Magic Leap said. And that's what Meta has said. And that's what sort of you go back, this is a technology or a technology system that kind of has a deep legacy. So we're talking like 20 years, 30 years, where people have been making basically the same sort of argument. Developers will eventually figure it out. Totally. It brings to mind Dave Karpf, of course, you know, who we're both familiar with. You quoted him in your piece that you wrote about the Vision Pro. He wrote a piece for Wired a year or two ago, something like that, where he basically called VR like the rich white kid of technology, right? Like it can fail and fail and fail. And it's always still the future. And it still gets more

funding. And there's still this belief that it's going to be like followed through on. And then it never does. But then it'll still come back again, right? And it just feels like yet again, like, okay, you know, Meta's metaverse has failed and we've had VR before that. And, you know, we had the 3D TVs and all that kind of stuff where we thought that was going to happen. And like, you know, VR has been around before and AR and we had Google Glass and all this kind of stuff. And now Apple's doing it. But because Apple's doing it now, like some people want to believe that this is the time because when Apple gets in, like this is when it's serious and this is when it's really ready. And it's like that's not necessarily the case. Like it's still pretty stupid. Well, the criticisms certainly still apply. I do think that there is at least a sliver there

to that just given Apple's resources and its track record and it's sort of like cultural sort of gravity that it has maintained, Even though it hasn't really demonstrated in this particular case that it is any more impressive or world-changing than any of the recent headsets that have come before it, it is still Apple. interesting question to me is whether or not this becomes the device that begins to sort of erode that sort of cultural gravity that it wields. It's hard to bet against Apple because they do have so many resources and they do usually sort of put their money where their mouth is once it's out the gate here. So to some extent, it's a little silly to kind of get it to the point where you're doing inside baseball and kind of horse race tech criticism. But it does really risk Tim Cook coming out of this with egg on his face if this is a big failure. In our earlier conversation, we mentioned some things that like Apple has had kind of like low key misfires.

But it usually knows when to say like, OK, we're doing the HomePod. This is our home version of Alexa. And it never takes off. But it was the way that they sort of put it out onto the stage was not with extreme fanfare. They weren't like buying out huge social media ad buys and really pushing this. And sort of it wasn't the kind of product that was transformative in a way. They kind of knew how much to push it. And it basically kind of failed as much as an Apple product failed.

I'm sure people are still buying it because people buy Apple stuff. But it obviously was not a main contender. And they've had other products like that, that have just been kind of like non-starters. The Apple TV thing, not the streaming service, but the sort of Roku thing. That's not really, they have that kind of stuff, but this is center stage. They know that if they put a product out there like this, that it's, we're going to do spatial computing and get into this world, that it's a different conversation. So it is riskier in a way. If this fails, they start looking more like Samsung,

right? Where they're just kind of churning stuff out. And then maybe the next time they do something like this, it's not taken quite as seriously. So I do think that they think, for whatever reason, that this has a better chance than not of succeeding to the point where they get to count it as a success, or the executive leadership gets to count it as a success, given the numbers that they see. But yeah, you're right. We've seen all these demos a million times before. Oh, it's a T-Rex. Wow. Oh, it's a home theater in virtual reality. Wow. I mean, they made it look really nice and I'm sure it works better than the competitors because it's Apple, but I don't know. I'm not seeing the transcendence. I'm not seeing it pushed through. And then all the other things that we're talking about, all the negatives working against it,

where it's just, as I kind of wrote in my column and you wrote in your piece that it's, it deserves to be ridiculed because it's leading us in this direction of antisocial environments where the tech companies get to sort of dominate more of our attention and then charge us for more of it ultimately, or that's, that's the hope. And I wrote in mine that it's just sort of, it is just, even in terms of a sort of conception of a vision of like what we want to do with computing, it's just so solitary and depressing to me that, you know, I think those two conversations are part and parcel. But yeah, this home theater for your face sort of vision, that's what they really highlighted. And we want to go even deeper into the things about our phones that have been isolating.

Like, I don't know. I don't think so. So I think people might revolt against that, too. I feel like even, you know, the demos that they showed off when they were presenting the device at their event looked really odd. And it was kind of like, is this really what we need? Is this something that I was really desiring and that I needed a solution for? Obviously, they showed the people who are doing the work on their headsets. And in the same way that Google Glass was kind of ridiculed out of public existence, it still had an enterprise use case after that.

So I can maybe see some of that. But like, I think the idea that you're going to have all these workers strapping headsets onto their faces and doing their work, like computer workers and stuff like that, I think that seems a bit far fetched for me. And as you mentioned in your piece, it's like this, they're obviously trying to make it seem like you got the goggles on and then you can kind of do work but still engage with your kids. Like that was a very – but to me, that's even more depressing. Like right now, like we're already expected to sort of have one eye on our phones and to see email when they're coming in and like, oh, yeah, paying attention to the kids. But now we literally have sort of our work overlaid on our faces and we're like viewing our kids and our family through a layer of omnipresent work through a platform that is dictated by a tech company.

Like that seems even more dystopian to me. And then if you want to talk to that kid or interact with the person who's like on the other side of your headset, once you get the headset, you kind of scan your face and it does this kind of like false version of your face. And so they see like a fake version of your eyes that's being like detected based on all the cameras that are on the headset. And it's like, I don't know, is this really what people want? Like, is this the vision of like wearing a headset, but now you can actually relate to people and like, just pick up on that. Like one of the other

demos that they showed was a guy like wearing the headset, he's in his house, he's filming his kids, or, you know, they show that, you know, the same type of a guy is wearing the headset, he's in his house, he's filming his kids. Or, you know, they show that, you know, the same type of a guy is like filming his daughter's birthday party. And it's like, why are you wearing this headset at your daughter's birthday party? Like, what is wrong with you? Yeah, exactly. I mean, it really is just weird. And you know, Apple's famous thing is like, we're not going to do focus groups and learn what people want. We're going to tell them what people want. But this also, again, seems another instance where Apple is sort of trying to breach new territory. And it's even like the tech reviewers, I think that got to try this thing, that FaceTime, like where it

like makes the deep fake of yourself. And then's your avatar i feel like even the most gung-ho tech reviewers are like yeah like i i don't want to see like uncanny valley versions of other people i was talking to somebody on twitter i was like what's wrong with facetime for that like facetime gets this right like you don't why do you need to be any closer why do you have to see a weird 3d rendered version just to do facTime, just like in that case, put down the goggles and pick up your phone. Like that is to me a totally sort of fabricated and just a leap into a terrain that nobody has to go into. Absolutely. And you know, for, for listeners who aren't aware what you're talking about, basically they showed off this demo where, you know, if you're wearing the headset, you can still FaceTime call with people, But obviously, you know, you're not going

to get a real picture of your face. So since you've scanned your face when you got the headset, it'll do like a fake version of you. And because the cameras are like watching your face, it'll kind of mimic your interactions and reactions and stuff like it's really odd. Like, I think it's particularly odd. Like, obviously, we've been talking about what this device looks like and and the kind of idea of how it would be used but like to think that these people developed this headset this device and didn't think that these use cases they were showing off were like these are very weird features and like what is the kind of person that looks at this and says yeah that that's a good idea i really want to use this device in this way. Like, I think it does show how kind of disconnected from reality these people are. Yeah, no, I do too. Or it's just

the desperation for finding something that sticks that just, well, maybe this, like maybe this will resonate with people because we don't know. Like you said, we don't know. My critique of the whole sort of spatial computing universe, I feel it continues to endure. And that's that people have shown what they want to do with these things. Let's play games. The problem is that there's a of millions of people who want to do this. You know, for Silicon Valley, that's not big enough. We can't say, okay, here's a cool use for this. This makes some people nauseous. This makes some people feel turned off. They don't want to be on the headset. But there's this large and vibrant community that likes being in this space, why don't we serve them? Why don't we make great games for them? Why don't we make sort of a digital community and tailor it to them? It's like, no, no, no, no. We have to make sure that this is for everybody. Everybody's got to want to work in this. Everybody's got to want to sort of strap it on and sort of communicate with

all their friends in it. Everybody has to, you know, want to be entertained by this. We have to make this for everybody. And it really, I think you're right in that it's sort of how out of touch like, yeah, someone like Zuckerberg, that might seem really cool, because it's been hitting all his sort of pleasure centers since he was a teenager. And he's had this dream of making, you know, Neil Stevenson's cyberpunk dystopia a reality since he was 15 years old or whatever. But for most of us, most people, it's, you know, no, thank you. Maybe I'll even be inclined to take a sliver of it and play the games.

But the whole sort of insinuation that I just want to spend all my day in this environment is off-putting to most people. And it's become clear. That's one thing that David says in his piece for Wire, that it's just like, people just do kind of continually sort of like reject these mass. And now as Silicon Valley is sort of more well-capitalized and more powerful and insinuated into every layer of our existence, now it kind of has the power or believes it has the power to sort of bludgeon us with this vision. And it's interesting that the metaverse really seems to be one of those areas where it is at the limit of what it can foist on people, because it's not taking, you know, my fear was that with Facebook, and it was really trying to push that really shitty looking workforce horizons demo That was like its sort of lead use case. My fear was that it was like,

it would be just wealthy enough, powerful enough that it could use its sort of enterprise connections to try to bludgeon its way into various use cases. And then that would become a requirement. But fortunately, the demo was so shitty that it was, I think, rejected even by most managers who were like yeah no i would love to sort of surveil my workforce 24 7 and have the data beamed into corporate about everything that they're looking at everything that they're doing no that's what

i want but they're not gonna go for this sorry even this is a step even this like yeah i can't i can't sell them on this they might i think i read a story recently that like even workers at meta are not using the metaverse i think almost immediately like it was like six months in they were like uh like their their manager was like guys we're building this thing for other people if we want other people to use it we got to use it and they were like no no thanks like this yeah that's not happening which again does kind of tie back i think to the the dichotomy between apple and meta like apple is smart enough at least to kind of intuit who this might appeal to i think their weird deep

fake facetime misfired but nothing else was so over the edge as to like make them look stupid. It might make them look out of touch, but it's going to draw in that sort of core Apple fan, you know, that core Apple fanboy is going to still see things that resonate. And it did do a few smart things that I think, like limiting, you know, without having the controllers, you know, that does take games off the table. I'm sure that their calculation is that the Oculus and the MetaQuest have already sort of have such a head start in that ecosystem that that's not something that they want to compete with. And it is very Apple to limit and make simple. So people are saying that it does work like the gesture, like you just look at something and then you can pinch. And if that feels satisfying enough, that could get it a foothold in some senses.

That's having used every single one of these VR systems and AR systems that have come out. That is still a big catching point. It's always, you got to figure out how these weird controllers you've got in your head, they're all a little bit different and you're sort of, it's a combination of looking and then walking is awkward. So they took walking out too. So in favor of just sort of consumer usability, the pros are that it may have streamlined the use of a VR sort of interface enough to maybe get more people on board. The cons, of course, being that it severely limits what you can actually do. And it renders you a

much more passive sort of consumer of computing. Like you're just looking at videos or you're working on your screens. The other funny thing all of these companies keep trying to get you to do is try to convince you that like browsing the internet will be better on with a headset on it's like it's no we don't i don't need this i don't need to be sort of immersed in like google search or like immersed in reading a blog like it's fine like it's fine to do it sitting on a computer. So yeah, I do think that, you know, and we can probably get more into that. But it is, Apple's vision of this is more, maybe more functional, maybe more satisfying and intuitive, but also ultimately more, more solitary. the core products for the metaverse as imagined by zuckerberg and co were so shitty like i think in some ways apple's vision is even more depressing like at least zuckerberg was like yeah you can be dueling and you can like you know you'll go into this room and it'll be a rave or there'll be stand-up comedy over here and you can you know at least it was like an effort to imagine a

parasocial sort of environment. You were engaging with people was the idea. Yeah. Even though they were, you know, avatars and stuff like that, not real people. But the idea was there are still, you know, some people you're interacting with in some way. Yeah. Or and you're doing something new somehow that you could like, I could never duel with this master duelist. Now I can like, at least there was some appeal. Like I watch Apple's demos and it's like,

you can shut out the world on an airplane and watch a movie on your face and no one can bother you. You can work in your kitchen while your kids are playing and still sort of barely keep an eye on them, but you're mostly immersed in work. And yeah, again, so much of it is about consumptive entertainment and just sort of having it beamed onto your face and being by yourself with more computing power and higher resolution just surrounding you. And yeah, and that to me felt pretty, which again, it's a kind of a continuation of Apple's style, you know, which has been to sort of wall users in and you use the apps they approve of, you use all the sort of the services and products that are in their ecosystem. That's just, that may be appealing to a certain kind of user. But it is interesting to me.

I think my guess would be it's probably partially constrained. I mean, Apple's never really done much social stuff at all. Facebook's a social company. So they maybe wanted to try to keep that in the mix. But by not being able to walk, by not being able to have controllers beyond pinching, you are limited to what you can do. So there was beyond the weird uncanny valley FaceTime, there was really no even gesture towards or play at sort of a shared social environment in this new immersive world. It's you alone. Yeah. It's just that because, you know, you have the cameras on the other side, people can occasionally step in and you can still kind of see them there. Right. I think that, you know, one of the things that really stood out to me as you talk about kind

of the isolation of this experience, and there are some other things I want to come back to, but you know, what really stood out to me is how it seems like an extension of something that the tech industry has really been pushing at us for a while, right? You know, I feel like a lot of these companies have profited from the fact or kind of stay at home or stay at work, get everything delivered, because that works for the business models of e-commerce companies and these delivery apps and things like that. But then I also think that during the pandemic, we saw how beneficial to these companies it was for all of us to be using our screens more and more, to be consuming more content, all these sorts of things. It was their revenue and their profits all soared when we were in lockdown. And I think it showed you how

having this kind of isolating experience, how disconnecting you from other people is actually really beneficial to them, or at least sticking the tech in between your interactions, right? And I think you see that as you were talking about, you see that motivation with the metaverse. Like, of course, you can play games and you can interact with people, you know, through the technology. But also, you know, you can work through the technology because work from home was really big and, you know, is still quite big. But now, you know, you can be surveilled much more easily through that.

And I feel like when you extend that to the kind of Apple universe, it's like, OK, now we're even further kind of closing this down. We're isolating you with this device. This device ensures that you can't really share an experience with other people you know you're not sitting on a couch and watching a movie with people or sitting in a cinema with this you know bigger experience you know that your experience with people it's like how can you shut everything out and just be like your own in your own little bubble as much as possible how can we ensure that the screen is always there, that you're always consuming it? And this is what really stood out to me. Yeah, I thought that was a really good point about how during the pandemic, we went from the theater to the home theater and then to the

theater on your face, where it really is. Yeah, in a lot of ways, I think you're right. I think the pandemic, they saw those conditions and how favorable they were to themselves, for sure. Again, I think that we're also seeing sort of some of the limits of that, why people didn't see more efforts in this space to try to sort of evolve Zoom or to capture more data or sort of do that. There are limits to Zoom, of course, and maybe that's sort of what... Although Apple doesn't really tend to do a lot of workplace productivity stuff. I think their bet is usually going to be the hardware. It's still hard for me to see anything approaching, you know, iPhone or even iPad, like numbers from this thing. But that seems to be how they've gone. And it also does sort of illuminate like this real, like sort of this breakdown in what Apple is. I think, I think

it was another tech guy who like pointed this out on Twitter. Maybe it was Benedict Evans or something, who's like, Apple has spent the last 10 years promoting itself as a privacy company. And now it's trying to sell you on this headset that has whose whole pitch to you right now is, like, stay in our ecosystem. You know, we're building all your hardware and all your software. Like, we get all the say over how all that works, but the tradeoff is you get to feel safe. And, you know, security folks give them credit for that. You know, a lot of the data that they say stays local to your device on the secure enclave chip does stay local to your device. Apple has been able to sort of deal some pretty punishing blows to Facebook in hampering its data collection. So it has been, you know,

it's been interesting to at least right now, but you know, like no one's saying like, oh, Apple just thinks the future of computing should be more private and the user should have more security. And for you, it's like, no, right now it's a huge market advantage for Apple to be able to do that because it has this consumer base that it can sort of make that pitch to and still make tons of money off the iPhone in a brand new environment where it has new, you know, let's say this thing does start to take off in a way that the meta headset didn't it already has partnerships with microsoft which has you know no such qualms you know doing uh you're doing surveillance heavy productivity software it has i made some joke about that on twitter about how it has like excel like like you can beam, you can like immerse yourself in Excel.

And I got a surprising- Spreadsheet everywhere. Yeah, just like, it's like a prison. You're just in a prison of like rectangles just, but I got a surprising number of like earnest replies going like, yeah, this, but unironically, like I do want to be in there, like give me immerse me in just hyper efficient Excel land. But yeah, I do think it's hard to see if they do start taking off them not, you know, sort of finding ways to change their approach on this supremely surveillance capable device and potentially you know like you're seeing a lot too like you're getting a lot of data inputs too so this can be used that was one of the big problems with with google glass that people hated is that like people didn't know whether you were being recorded all the time or whether somebody with google glass on it was like taking snapshots of you uh for further use for

whatever reason and that really bothered people. I don't know if it'll bother people as much now that we've had like 10 years of people putting phones in other people's faces. And it's always a possibility that you might be photographed or, but maybe, I mean, it's still a pretty, pretty, pretty gross possibility, so. Yeah, I feel like there's even like a bit of a backlash

that's been happening to that, right? The people always being filmed in public. Like I feel like there's even like a bit of a backlash that's been happening to that, right? The people always being filmed in public, like I feel like that's starting to shift, especially as TikTok pushes a new wave of it. But I did want to go back to something you were saying earlier when you were talking about the development of this, right? And how Apple has obviously been looking for a big new product that it can pursue. And the Vision Pro is what they have kind of landed on as what they see as the future of computing. And it's not just kind of a HomePod thing

that they put out there and we'll see how it'll do, but they're actually kind of staking a lot on this and making it seem like this is something that we believe is the next big thing. It's gonna make a really big difference to the way that people use computing. And they're really hoping that that is gonna be true because they do kind of need a new device. And I wonder how you feel like about the development of

this, because we hear that the development has been quite different under Tim Cook as under, you know, when Steve Jobs used to kind of shepherd these projects along and his kind of involvement in it. But also if it feels like Tim Cook needed to put something out there to prove that, you know, he can still have some kind of hardware vision that Apple can still innovate under his leadership and not just create a ton of new SKUs that sell a bunch and that make shareholders really happy. But then, like, what kind of happens if this doesn't take off in a way that, you know, an iPhone or an iPad or a watch has if they do kind of really get this wrong. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, Apple is so much different than it was 15, 16 years ago. It is much bigger. It's got a lot more bureaucracy. I mean, Apple was reasonably big since, you know, the 80s and 90s, but it really suffered a string of losses through the 90s. And then it kind of was a non player for a little while. And then the sort of the iPod,

of all things kind of rejuvenated it. It had around the time that they started thinking about doing a phone when the iPod was really the big hit at the company. There was some like elasticity in sort of the management structure of Apple, where they could just kind of say, okay, we're doing iPhone now. And they sort of, it was from the executive level, they pulled everybody into this one project, you know, not everybody, but a huge chunk of the company to the point where people who weren't on it were like, what the hell's going on? And why am I not part of this thing? But they were able to sort of make this the thing that Apple was doing. That hasn't been the case for a long time. There's all kinds of different projects. And

this is probably that Apple's so secret, you have to rely on things that leak out. And Mark Gurman's reporting at Bloomberg. But you get the sense that this was as big as anything of any of those projects. Maybe the car was probably the other contender. It's Project Titan, which has been put on hold, turned into software. It was going to be a whole car for a while, it seems. And then who knows what it is now. But this was the other sort of area of interest that you kept hearing about. But given the structure, what it was, you know, it's a lot more unruly, a lot more sort of buy in a lot more, you have to assume sort of the thing that Apple used to disdain, which was sort of designing by committee, I still think that they were able to get a couple interesting things

right in the Apple tradition in that they're going that what I mentioned earlier, the gesture and like the simplicity where they're kind of like encouraging Apple users who are used to certain things like pinch and zoom and sort of like have already some sort of familiarity, some level of familiarity with the lexicon that you need to use to operate it. So I think they're trying to make it a more obvious product. But yeah, in a lot of ways, it does kind of feel like the things that worked about the iPhone when you would pick it up for the first time. That's the thing. And I guess the jury will have to be out a little bit. Neither of us have used it. And I don't want to completely discount it.

But I remember the first time I picked up an iPhone and and i was kind of a skeptic i you know i just a passive one at the time i wasn't really even interested in technology much but my friend had an iphone and and you could like put your fingers on it and like expand a map and like oh that's where we're gonna go oh okay you kind of got it like it felt very intuitive why you would want to have this thing. Not both ease of use, which is one thing that the Vision Pro may nail. It may nail the ease of use, but it also has to connect into that second level, right? Where it's like, oh, this is easy to use. And I see how this is useful. Like, oh, like I don't know this part of the city that I'm going to be going to. Here's where the restaurant is. And boop, I can use my fingers to expand it and see where... I can see how that could be useful to me. I can

see why I want to have that in my pocket all the time. And plus, it feels nice to just kind of beep boop and touch around on it. So it had those two things working in conjunction that made it unusually powerful. We can't say for sure that we're not going to, you know, put this on and all of a sudden go like, wow, yeah, I can see how this, you know, makes logging on to my email much better or whatever, you know, immersed in email or immersed in that. I mean, it is the part again, they're recycling all these old demos that we've seen a million times before. Like, that's what Magic Leap showed me when I went to the Magic Leap demo, like six, however many years ago, seven years ago. It was, oh, yeah, there's some productivity stuff where it might help you to like move design parts around.

And it's like, yeah, okay, that could work for designers, maybe some of them. And then it was sort of like the ooh-ah, kind of like there's an alien walking on my shoulder, or it looks like it, that's amusing for a minute or two, but it's like has no practical purpose beyond that. And then it's like, yeah, and then the screens, you can sit in a theater and watch an immersive sort of entertainment thing. Again, I'm just, I can't really fathom. And again, I'm going to reserve complete, utter judgment until I try the thing on. But that it sure seems to me that it's still lacking that second part of the equation that yeah, even if they nailed how easy it is to get around. And I think even again, like Nilay Patel is usually a good

bellwether. He can be critical of the technology, but he also loves the technology, obviously. And his review was like, this is the best VR demo that I've ever seen. It's still a headset demo. I don't see what else, you know, what's going to elevate it beyond that. So, yeah, I think that it's still missing that key part of the equation. Yeah, I think even when you see the people who are like, you know, quite positive on a lot of these things oftentimes, and they're still kind of asking questions about it, I think that tells you something. You know, I think one of the interesting things and one of the things that people picked up on about this is that, you know, usually when Apple introduces a new product, you see kind of the executives kind of playing with it, using it, showing you why you would want to use it. And of course, with this headset, you know, it has never been on Tim Cook's face in

public. You haven't seen him use it or any of these other kind of key people who show these things off at the keynotes. And, you know, would that seem to be quite notable, I guess I would say. And then the other thing is a lot of people have been saying that Steve Jobs would have never released a product like this. What do you make of that? What I would say to that is Steve Jobs would have made sure it looked good on his face. That's what I would say to that. It wouldn't have come out if it didn't look good on his face because he did demo everything. And that's absolutely why Tim Cook didn't wear it. He would have looked foolish. That's why the demo was all like hot people, you know, like bearded dad. And it definitely skewed younger to try to

give you the impression that this is something that can look stylish on you. But again, it was in very contained examples. Yeah, it's hard to say. The playing what would Steve Jobs have approved of game is one of the most futile games you can play in the tech commentary because it, yeah, he was ultimately very fickle and very sort of motivated by whatever his, his opinion, wherever his opinion was leading him on a given day. I think he probably would have liked the fact that they made the technology work and it felt fluid and he maybe could have been sold on something like that. I don't know. He's usually not persuaded until there's a headwind blowing strong enough. use case because other phone makers and early smartphone entrants were starting to put mp3s on phones. And so that was going to start to eat the iPod's lunch. So that was kind of ultimately what forced them. And right now there isn't really any forcing mechanism like that.

So Apple's the richest company in the world. It doesn't need to go out on a limb like this. So yeah, I do wonder about sort of like the executive machinations, if there's some like grumblings. You know, Tim Cook's job is probably pretty secure, if only because it's not clear who would supplant him anymore. He's just kind of the legacy guy. And until he wants to bail, I can't imagine him being ousted. That said, he probably does want his legacy to be beyond, you know, the guy who figured out supply chains for Steve Jobs, which is what it is right now. And, you know, an increased profit margins and, you know, that kind of stuff made the shareholders really happy, which is basically what he has done, right?

Right. I mean, maybe that's all he wanted to do. He's certainly not Mark Zuckerberg, who's like, oh, I made this thing. It's everywhere. Like, I conquered the world with it. But also, you know, people kind of hate me. How about this cyberpunk thing that I have kind of fantasized about for 30 years? He's certainly not that, I don't think. But yeah, it's hard to say.

I feel like one of the stories that really stood out to me, like when you read about the development of the product was that the executives and Cook himself, it seemed like really wanted more of like a smart glasses sort of a thing, like something that was going to be much slimmer and much easier to wear. Yeah, that's what you always read about, right? Yeah. And it eventually reached the point where they were like, we have to put something out. And so we're going to do this headset thing that's super expensive and just hope that like the tech keeps working into the future and we can do something that is more approachable and whatnot. But I think that still remains an open open question. It was ARKit. They wanted it to be augmented reality more. And it's funny that it did kind of wind up being virtual reality. They've had it as sort of like something developers could play with sort of the in your iPhone through the camera processor. There

are some apps and things that make use of that. And that's been out for years and years. Yeah, for a while, the smart money was that it was going to be something closer to glasses. And my guess is that is probably what they wanted. But it couldn't really do anything impressive that way. It's my sense is that it just wasn't good enough to sort of be something people would want to use or didn't feel Apple enough, didn't feel like finished enough. So they had to go the super expensive goggles route, which yeah, we'll see. And I'm skeptical, like the smart glasses ever really arrived. Like, you know, maybe if we're talking about in like 50 years or something like that, then they'll be able to do something like that.

But I don't see it as like a product that is realistically going to be available to people and going to be like doing this kind of AR stuff that all these companies want or ostensibly want us to be doing where there's kind of a digital overlay on the real world and we're just wearing like a regular pair of glasses. Like, I just don't see that as being something that is really attainable. Like I think it's a sci-fi vision. And I think even if they did achieve it, like, would we really want that? I don't think so. That's exactly the question we're grappling with like right now, I think because they have released some of these, there was like the Facebook Ray-Bans or it was

maybe even before it was, they renamed it Meta or just around then maybe, but it was like, I think you could buy those glasses. It would be fun to try all the versions. You could still get a hold of Google Glasses. There are these shots at it. There's something I was looking at Best Buy the other day. I never even heard of this, but I guess for that person who really wants some words overlaid on their eyeballs while they're looking at the world or some sort of half finished digital version of snow crash it's i guess there's people that i guess are still standing that cause but not many and yeah i i agree with you i think more than anything this moment where we're really is one of sort of determining whether or not we want a given future.

And I think even if like the Facebook's workforce horizon worlds really worked all that well, would there be buy-in? I mean, again, you could see the managers trying to force it in into use in certain cases, but I think we're at a unique point where after years of percolating criticism and years of Silicon Valley not knowing exactly what to do with itself and having sort of agreed to pursue this spatial computing vision, we're really seeing an opportunity where we get to negotiate what the future looks like. And the point that you raise in your piece in your newsletter, that we should ridicule this thing is salient, because I think we can, I think it is possible to reject this mode of computing altogether, or to determine how we want it to be used. Again, like, as I mentioned earlier, there are some cool use cases for that.

It could be great for gaming or for some things, for some niche professions that want to use it. Build it for them, or just don't try to force us all into this new environment that so many people have clearly articulated they don't want to be in. So we can negotiate this terrain. And I think that it's smart to point that out. And we can reject it. We can. This is a case where we can be Luddites about it and say, we recognize that this is going to be used to degrade so many of the conditions of our lives that we find pleasurable. Let's say no to this one or to this part of it. like isolating device, right? Like it goes on your face. It kind of isolates you from the world around you. That is the goal of it. Even if Apple shows that people can walk into the frame and all this kind of stuff, like it's really designed to be isolating,

to separate you from the world around you. And I think that that is just a really negative vision for how these things have been developing. And I believe, as you said in your piece, like we already have our phones like all the time. We're already using them all the time. Do we really want now our phones like strapped onto our faces? I don't think we want to be that immersed in our phones as you described in your piece in the LA Times. And so

I think that it's so important that we recognize that we do have this power to ridicule these technologies and to reject these futures instead of letting the metas and the apples of the world kind of shape the future of computing and chart that future and say that this is what's going to work best for us as companies, you know, that's best for our bottom lines. And so this is what we are sticking you with. And you just need to adopt it because we are these massive companies that know best for you. Right. And I think that we need to reject that outright, which is why I think that we need to learn from, you know, the example of Google Glass and ridicule these things and even ridicule the people who use them. Yes, because that is ultimately what worked, not just like with Google Glass, right? We saw with Web3 and the crypto stuff because we had the criticism because we said this is ridiculous. You know, I think that's one of

the reasons that contributed to the downfall of this industry and people not kind of adopting it widely and the metaverse as well. Like we laughed and joked at, you know, Mark Zuckerberg wearing his headset and showing off his goofy like designs in the metaverse and all this kind of stuff. And I think that also contributed to people not kind of buying into it and even giving it a shot. And I think that that is worthy of doing with the Apple headset as well, recognizing that I still think there will be some use cases for these, right? As you're talking about, like, I think there might be enterprise use cases for a headset like this. I think maybe there will be some gaming use cases. And I don't think that is inherently a bad thing, right? It's

not to say that, you know, people shouldn't use VR headsets if it makes sense in some certain context. But the notion that this is something that should become a mass product, that instead of serving, you know, maybe five to 10 million people, it needs to be adopted by 500 million to like a billion people. I think that is really the difference here. And, you know, I guess maybe a question for you to start to end this off is if that were to happen, right? If we were to say, okay, you know, there are some use cases for this product, you know, some niche enterprise use cases, maybe some developers are using it, maybe some gamers are using it, maybe some gamers are using it. But it's not this mass product that everyone is using because we're just fine with our computers and our phones and we don't need to strap a headset onto our faces.

Is this something that Apple would continue supporting if it's not something that is adopted by the masses, but is just adopted in a niche sense? Because I would see that as very unlikely. Yeah, yeah, that's a it's a really hard question to answer. Because to this point, no, they don't really support especially because this would be such an intensive product to maintain, like you're going to have to have developers working around the clock, because as third party developers sort of come up with new stuff and the technology advances, I mean, if the metaverse stuff keeps coming out of Facebook, then there's going to be some urge to compete. So they're going to have to fund a pretty large team

just to keep supporting this stuff and to keep it from falling behind or from failing or from breaking or from being embarrassing. So it's going to be pretty expensive undertaking. So that's, again, one of those things where it's like, they don't really have to do too much with the HomePod, right? Like if it fails, like they just have to, you know, make sure it's updated and compatible. And it's, you know, they don't have to make any big announcements how they're discontinuing service and disappointing a lot of people or admitting defeat. Yeah, they're just taking the Siri off of your phone and sticking it in the HomePod. And, you know, there's not much more that needs to be done other than that.

Yeah. So, yeah, it is something that is a big question mark. And it does. It's part of the reason this is such a bigger bet. And I would say, you know, it would be fine, I guess, for people who want to sort of compute this way, who want to sort of be in these environments. There are, I think, points where it would need to be resisted more if it did. I mean, if this thing does sort of get adopted into work situations, then I think no good could come of that. Again, it's unlikely to me that that will happen because Apple is typically not an enterprise company. They do some, you know, they have sort of worked on making their products friendly to sort of designers on to some level. And but it's not their bread and butter. So I wouldn't say it's a pressing concern. But again,

I think there's a number of tiers here. If it doesn't pass the first tier, where if it just kind of flops and nobody buys it, and it's pretty clear, and then they just have to close up shop, then that's fine. If they get to the second tier, where like some people are using it for some things, and then, you know, maybe they dedicate a team of developers to keep it, you know, living along. And if it's not a huge hit, and then they get to sort of dictate the terms and conditions of how people are using it within its walled garden. Again, I think if it's a huge, like, even an iPad or a watch scale hit, then they might have some vested interests

in not making it invasive and not making it a privacy problem and figuring out ways to do that. But if it comes down, like just below that, maybe like where it's like, we got to do something with this, then Apple's already sort of made some noise into venturing into new territory, that enterprise territory, some like defense contracting stuff. I could see this sort of being something that they become willing to pivot on. And that would be something that I think it would be worth preparing for and worth resisting and worth sort of opposing if you find the technology onerous enough to do so. I think people are well within their rights to ridicule these things. I don't know that we're there yet. I also think it's just too ridiculous. I think people remember the Google Glass thing. I think it is going to be a home. I think people

will use them just as VR goggles because I think it's too silly looking anywhere outside of Silicon Valley to just kind of go for a stroll with this thing on. I don't know. I could eat those words, but that's my sense is that it's pretty cumbersome. Like, you don't need to be outside with these things. And I don't imagine many will be. Yeah, I think it's far less likely that they'll be used kind of out in the world. And I think it's more likely to be used in the home. But if it starts to work its way into the workplace as more of a common thing, then that's a place to start saying,

like, you look ridiculous. Why are you putting that on your face? You know? And I think most of all, like, as you said, I think it looks stupid. I think it looks ridiculous. But I think that the framing of it as like this thing that these weird like tech people are putting on their faces and like recording their kids with and stuff like that. Like, I think that is possibly a way to show that this is a product made by people who are super disconnected from like real life and how people actually live and like think it's okay to be social in this way by wearing this massive headset strapped to your face. I think that that starts to show that this is not something that any reasonable person would buy and use. And I think that's a good way to think about it.

Yeah, I think that's more or less right. And I do think it is, you know, it does, does really sort of communicate a, to me anyways, like a lack of creativity that among this set that this is how many go rounds now like we're seeing another headset from Apple after seeing one from Microsoft and from Magic Leap and from Facebook. Like, yeah, it's a little bit different, but it's more of the same for, you know, 98% of its use cases and its DNA. It's sort of aiming to accomplish the same things. And that's to make a very narrow set of people who happen to be much wealthier than most happy. Absolutely, Brian. It's always fantastic to have you on the show. Obviously, it's been a bit too long, but it's great to have you back digging into Apple, a topic that you're very familiar with, having written a book all about the

iPhone. And listeners can be ready, can be waiting, can be anticipating the return of Brian Merchant later this year when we'll be talking about your fantastic book about the Luddites that if you haven't gone and pre-ordered yet, you should really go and do it. Blood in the Machine, the origins of the rebellion against big tech. Brian, always happy to chat. Thanks so much. Thank you, Paris. Always a pleasure. Brian Merchant is a technology columnist at the LA Times, the author of The One Device, and coming in September, Blood in the Machine. You can follow Brian on Twitter at at BC Merchant. You can follow me at at Paris Marks, and you can follow the show at at Tech Won't Save Us. Tech Won't Save Us is produced by Eric Wickham and is part of the Harbinger Media Network. And if you want to

support the work that goes into making the show every week, you can go to patreon.com slash tech won't save us and become a supporter. Thanks for listening. Thank you.