The Chaser Report - Apple's Plans to Ruin Your iSight

Episode Date: June 6, 2023

Apple have unveiled their VR headset and we were lucky enough to be the FIRST PEOPLE in Australia to imagine all the messed up stuff people will do with it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Dom, big day. Big day in the tech world. And this is a bit of a crossover with the tech podcast that you and I do. Welcome to the future. That's right. Where we look at terrible new products that don't work very well.

Do subscribe to that if you want to. But this really, it's both, Charles. This is a massive news event. Apple have figured out how to publicise their stuff for free by getting it at every newspaper in the world. And so we, of course, are obliged to talk about their new Vision Pro, the augmented slash virtual reality headset that they just launched this very morning in Cupertino.

Do you think that the augmented reality that Apple envisages is one mainly of product promotion of their products? Yes. That's exactly what they are. That's exactly what they've envisaged, and they've managed to make it happen. But it is a bizarre and wild device. Really?

I'm going to explain that after this. So, Charles, you haven't seen any of the publicity, right? You've been doing other work all day. Yeah, I've been working all day. What do you reckon it is? I want to just see how close you can get to what they've actually invented. What do you reckon this thing is? Well, it's basically an Oculus Quest.

It's a headset. And I think what will be the things that are, improves upon is it'll be much higher resolution and therefore far more expensive and it'll have lots of cameras. That's what I heard in the rumour in the middle. Just the 12. Just the 12 cameras. Just the 12 cameras. And so, but I can't see why it's such a and then the other funny rumor was that they were going to have goggly eyes that you'd be able to see people's eyes even though they're looking at screens. You'll somehow, it'll transmit your eyes to the world. It definitely does that.

He does that along with some of the other features. So the main pitch for it is, you know, right now you've got a computer in front of you, you're recording the podcast, you've got a monitor. Yes. That's such an old-fashioned way to do it, Charles. What if instead of just having a monitor that displayed information like always, you wore these ski goggles that had the projected screens in front of you? And this is the clever thing about it.

It's a pair of glasses. You can see the room that you're in, right? But it's actually transparent glass. Yes, it's transparent glass. So you can see the full room. Yeah, right. I think it's transparent glass rather than actually just retransmitting. Rather than retransmitting with the camera, I'm not entirely sure.

But basically you can see the room as though it's the real room. But then in front of you, you can conjure up pictures. You can conjure up virtual displays. Oh, okay. That is pretty good. So the demonstration that they showed was, for instance, you're in your office. You've got your people walking around. So it's minority report.

It is exactly a minority report. Yeah. And in more ways than one of the one of it will get. to how that, because there's a chilling detail that's very minority report report. But it also does pre-crime. You murder people with it. But, yeah, basically it has virtual screens in front of you.

You can have a spreadsheet in front of you. You can have your email and messages. You can resize them. So it's as though in, and when you move your head around, the screens move as though they really exist. So it's just a very large monitor. Yes, it's a series of very large monitors. For doing spreadsheets.

Well, no, what it is, it's completely private. This is like a dystopian nightmare. It's like, we've created a revolutionary new device to make your spreadsheets larger. It's one of the funniest things in the whole demo is where they actually show Microsoft Excel floating in mid-air. So the same boring spreadsheet,

but virtually floating in mid-air. But Charles, the thing that they didn't say, they mentioned it's a private virtual screen. And what that tells me is that humanity has finally invented a way to watch porn at work. In public. Yes. You can be on the bus.

You can be in the workplace. You can be meeting with your boss, with your goggles, and people are boning in the corner. And the rule is that porn drives all technology. It does. Yes. That's what this is. And so the fact that it's actually revolutionising the way to watch porn

means it will definitely be a success. Yes. And in several ways. So one of the things that it lets you do is you can actually watch movies. And you can recite. the screen. So you can have a screen that basically fills up your whole field of view, like almost to IMAX

level. It can even wrap around your eyes immersively like an IMAX movie can. And hilariously, they've also got a preset where it pretends you in a cinema. So it can fill your whole field of vision, not just with the movie that appears like it's floating in the air,

but also it looks like you're in a proper cinema. So it will finally kill off the cinema industry. There's just no need for anymore after this. Wow. So it feels like the screen is actually quite far away. And this is the crazy thing. Even though it's really close. Because it's stereoscopic, right?

Because it's got two old-ed screens in front of your eyes. So there's the illusion of depth. You can see things in three dimensions. So you can move the screen backwards and forwards in front of you. And it actually looks as though it really is there in three dimensions. So how does this not completely ruin your eyesight? Because won't it mean that you're just looking at something very, very close up the whole time? This is the thing I was very confused by.

And I'd love to know the answer to this. Because yes, it's a postage stamp size screen 4K in front of each eye. But you can gaze into it because there's the illusion of depth. So I don't know if that fucks up your eyes because you're obviously your eyes dilating and whatever and you're looking off into the distance. But it's just actually a screen in front of you. I was going to say we should get an optometrist on to actually figure it out. but presumably optometrists will be gunning for this device.

They'll love it. They'll love it because it'll make everyone's eyesight have to require optometry. Now, you mention eyesight. Isite is actually a feature that they've invented. You know Happel loves things that are capitalized halfway through. So it's I, capital, S, site. And what eyesight is... So I, E-Y-E.

Yeah, E-Y-E site. Yeah, not I like I-MAC with the letter I. So it's eyesight. And what this feature is, it's quite clever. Is it eyesight? Is it the ability to see with your eyes? Yes, kind of. What it does is, it's got all these senses.

And so one of the big problems... What, like our eyes do? Yes, it does right. So one of the things that obviously everyone just wearing goggles, if you imagine a workplace, if you and I are wearing goggles now, it would seem like a dystopian hellscape, right? Everyone's just tearing its screens. What they've done is, they've figured it out so that if someone would have walk into the

room with us, let's say one of our children walked into the room with us, The cameras would clock it and actually include the image of the new person in the image on the screen. So you would see, and the demo showed someone, what? You're looking at, imagine you're looking at a bunch of screens, floating in media. Looking at a movie, like murder scene in Mr. Inbetween.

Or in... Psycho shower screen. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And your kid comes into the room. Walks through the shower. Yes, it fades down part of the image and the person can come in and sit on the sofa. for next to you and you'll see them projected on the screen as a way of not

disconnecting you from the people around you. And this is where the goggly eyes bit gets funny because as part of the process, you scan your face. It's got a 3D camera and it basically has two cameras, it's sort of stereoscopically. It scans your face and what it does is it has a screen facing out from the goggles. So when I'm looking at you wearing the goggles, If you can see me, it will show your eyes on the front of the goggles. So I'll be looking at you. You'll be wearing goggles, but it will show me your eyes. But they're not really your eyes.

They're not my eyes. They're a simulation of your eyes. It's recorded your eyes in 3D and it's generating in real time what looks like your eyes, as though I can see the goggles. But I can't. It's another screen. So what you can do is say your partner is having a really boring conversation with you about work.

Yes. You can set it so that it looks as though... You're attentive. That's right. You're actually asleep while... Yeah, or watching porn. It's okay. And what you hear through your ears, of course, they can't hear it's totally private.

But it's quite clever in that if someone walks up on you, it also means that children can interrupt their parents working like never before. Like, they can literally walk through the spreadsheet that you're trying to edit or something. There should be a tearing sound effect as you walk through it. But it goes further than this, Charles, because you know how I mentioned that you had a We're all going to be, sorry, we're all going to be, like, I started this podcast going, this is the dumbest product. Like, I was literally before this podcast went to air, I said, this is definitely going

to be a dud. You said it was going to totally fail. This will definitely fail. And never materialised, which is entirely possible. It's not coming out until next year. Yeah, because it's, I said, it's a vapour wear. Whatever they're promising, they clearly haven't actually nailed it. And that's why they're not even letting people wear it as far as I can tell.

So, plus it's $5,300 Australian dollars. But now, Now, nine minutes in this podcast, I'm sold. Yeah, I want one as well. So, okay, you remember how I mentioned it has the 3D cameras, right? Yeah. So the 3D cameras, when you set it up, you hold the goggles in front of your face, looking at you, and it scans your face, right?

You know how the current iPhone has a camera that can do a 3D render of your face for face ID. Yes. So you hold them, what? As if you're about to put them on. No, no, no. You hold them with the face. with facing you. Yeah, right.

So the cameras face you and they do a 3D scan of your face, right? Yeah. And they use that to generate the fake eyes. And do they give you a rating out of 10? But here's the really chilling part of this product, right? What it does is it uses that scan for video chats because think about it. Of course, you want to make FaceTime calls and Zooms and all that kind of stuff. Yes, definitely.

But there's no camera that's off in the distance taking a picture of you. No, and also if it did, you'd have this stupid goggles. You'd look like an idiot, right? You'd have these ski goggles on. So what it does is it comes up with a digital, like a 3D avatar of your face. That'll be definitely terrible. And it projects it into the video chat. So it's like AI.

Yes. And AI version of yourself. Well, it is immediately lead to scams where your mum rings up. Catfishing pro. Or cat fishing bro. Or scamming, that's right. So it's quite extraordinary. And it tracks your head.

head. The whole thing is this thing's very good at tracking your head like the AirPods are. So when you move your eyes around and your head around it, it's as though the screen reads. But then conversely, it can use, if you blink, it will register that you're blinking and the avatar of you in the video chat will blink. And here's the thing. Well, that's, I mean, that's the most important thing is. And all the impression is sort of expressions on your face. It's very uncanny valley because it looks like you. It's a 3D render of you, but it's not you. If you age, if you, I don't know, get pimples or something, say your hair falls out hypothetically for you, Charles, or definitely for me. That's not registered.

You can just, you can scale along as a 47-year-old. Could you scan in like a 30-year-old version of yourself? People will do this. Yes. I'm sure if you're one of those police officers who like, look at paedophiles, you'll get your daughter and you'll scan her face and pretend to be her online. But to catch a paedophile, I try to make it the nice version. Can I scan Craig's head and then trade?

myself offers Craig. And you know that Apple, in the new iOS, they've also announced it lets you synthesize your voice. You'd need 15 minutes of Craig's voice and then it can synthesize the voice. This is hugely problematic. It's absolutely problematic. So in future, you'll be video chatting with people. And it won't actually be them.

It will be like a simulated version of their face. It'll be horrible. You won't like, because, you know, they already do that. Like, my son occasionally turns himself into a unicorn or something like that. Yeah, and that's sort of silly and fun, right? It's got a cartoon characters. They're called Memojis. Emojis, yeah.

But at no point do you go, you go, oh, this is great, but let's turn it off now. Yeah, I want to see your human emotions. I'm a talking piece of poo. It's the same reason as why, you know, like all the great actors, you know, when they get Botox, you go, oh, they're not. It's not quite right. It's not quite right. I think that this is the same thing. And even in.

It's dead on arrival. It's never going to work. Even in movies, you know how they've been regenerating and de-aging actors' faces and so. Like, Eric Harrison Ford apparently. And you can always tell. You can always tell. It always looks weird, right? Yeah.

So this is one of the oddest things. And even in the demo, had this guy and his face was there, like, in a sort of FaceTime bubble. It looked really bizarre. And so I don't imagine that taking off all that well. But if they get it right, what I'm imagining Charles is, and if you could do it with your personality as well. So that rather than having to talk to your child or your partner, You would simply use the persona of yourself. It's called personas.

Yes. You would just say, digital Charles, talk to digital wife. And match it to chat GPT or something. Yes, it's generally they I. And train it on, we could train it on this podcast. You could. Yeah. So that it would say what you would say.

Yeah. And then that can be chatting with my wife dealt with for that night. And what I'm envisaging is that. And then I go off and use the other reality pro to. It's like porn. What I'm in positioning, Charles, is a world where your AI goes and talks to your child's AI. Both of you are just watching content. But the good thing is the AI will flag if your child says something like, or your child's AI

says something like, Daddy doesn't spend any time with me. And in that case, it's perfect. What you do is you get your kid to put on the goggles, go to the park and have a play with your AI chat box. So it'll be like you're with them in the park, but you're not. It's the persona that's in the park with them. So how is it powers? Oh, this is one of the big flaws of the system.

The Chaser Report, now with extra whispers. The way that it's powered, and they've shot the demo so that you can't quite see this, but I'm sure it'd be very real. It has a cord. So if you imagine a ski goggles with kind of like a magnetic cord that snaps onto it. So there's two ways you can power it. It can either be plugged in all day. He says, all day power, if plugged in, which is not the greatest feature.

Like a desktop computer. Or there's a battery pack. And the battery pack is kind of like the size of it looks like kind of like an iPod Mini or something or an old iPhone. Guess how long you can use it for when it's got a battery pack? It'll be eight hours, won't it? Because you want to be, like if you're working, you know, like if it's to replace your screen, you're doing spreadsheets,

you need to work for eight hours. Well, it can plug into an AC power. But one of the demos that they use, which I'm very excited by, is on a plane. So you can be on a plane and have a headset. So maybe 24 hours. dial out the actual people around you in the plane. And rather than being in a horrible, boring, smelly plane,

you're on a beautiful lake watching a movie or something. Yeah, so it needs to be at least 14 hours. You think so. You know, long haul flight. It's more like, well, now, bearing in mind that Apple's battery estimates, they used to be wild over estimates, but now they're actually quite accurate. So I believe it will genuinely achieve this in the real world.

Oh, great. Two. Two hours. What it lasts for. On the, probably optional battery pack that you've got to buy. this thing. And then two hours. Two hours. And you've got this thing. So to me, it's kind of like, you look like a ski instructor with a nasal drip, right?

You've got the goggles on, and this fucking cord that's everywhere. Two hours. Two hours off the battery pack. Which is probably good. It's probably good because what it means is you- They won't even get you through a movie. No. Well, they're all three hours these days.

I think movies are, I think cinemas are safe. But also, it probably means that people aren't going to walk around on the streets with this thing because the battery is too shit, which is. actually probably a good thing. And I didn't figure out whether it's actually showing you the real world. I think it is. Because with an OLED, you can turn it off and it's, I don't know, I don't know if it's showing you a camera view of the real room or not. It looked like the real. Say you two do take it outside. If you're walking along the street and there's cars coming, are you going to get run over because it only shows human beings?

I don't know. I don't know. It's entirely possible that you could die. But you die happy watching a movie. Yeah, that's true. Okay. So the other thing, And this is the other really chilling part of this experience is because they're very inventive. I mentioned the 3D cameras that let you scan your face. Amazingly enough, these goggles have 3D cameras you can use to record the real world in 3D. Homemade porn. That's right. So homemade porn in total.

In 3D? Oh, wow. So if you're wearing the headset chimes and someone else, let's say that you're wearing the headset and you're talking to someone else wearing a headset. Yes. And who's got the 3D generated avatar. It will look 3D. Their face will look 3D through the headset.

So you're both on headsets, but you both look like you're not on headsets. Well, you're in a box. But it's three-dimensional. But you're having... You've got depth. You've got the illusion of depth on the face. But does the other person look like they've got goggles on? No.

Because it uses the avatar. It's the weird avatar, but it's got 3D. So if you're having sex with somebody who's also got the goggles, You both got goggles on. Yeah. You both have these sort of... The goggles are bumping into each other to make these horrible blushing sap.

But also, they're not actually your true expressions, which actually could be very useful. It could be very useful. So this is the bit that's a bit chilling in this part. Yeah. The 3D cameras that I mentioned, you can use it to record reality. So they've got these lovely... Reality, what's that?

Yeah, that's the thing. So you've got these lovely images of, I don't know, a kid's birthday party or something. Oh, I see. Where you've actually recorded it in 3D. So you can look, we can watch it back, and it will seem as though it was 3D. It will seem like you're actually there. But here's the catch.

In order to record your kid's birthday party and the cutting of the cake in 3D, you've got to be fucking wearing the goggles at your kids' birthday party, looking like a dipshit. And this is where it takes us back to my honorary report. I don't know if you remember the movie well, but I looked this up earlier today. There's this scene, a very heartbreaking scene, or he's playing back memories of his family, who I presume we're all dead or have left him or something for because he's a widow.

Yeah. And it's like in three dimensions, he's talking to the kids as though they're really there. This device will let you be that broken man in my early report, that broken person, looking back at the 3D vision of your family,

you've probably left you because you wear goggles during every important life event. That's what we're looking at. And you can relive the argument that your wife had with you saying, take those goggles off for God's sake. Yes, that's right. And, you know,

there are so many things you can do. You can be doing your spreadsheet on a beautiful tropical island, which you can't afford to travel to because you spent six grand on goggles. It's a remarkable product. Well, so there's six grand. Well, I'm assuming by the time the Apple tax comes in

and it'll be six grand to buy. Yeah, right. But I mean... Because they're three and a half thousand U.S. for the base unit. Yes. Which won't have the enough RAM. Probably not enough RAM.

Yeah. Sorry, Apple. But the thing about them is, they do replace the computer and the display. So they can run all the apps on its own. So we won't need, as long as we don't mind stopping every two hours to charge our battery, we can ditch our laptop and our phone.

Well, this is one of the funniest features, actually, is that I can't see the point of this, but if you've got a Mac, right, and they showed it, if you look at a Mac that's on with the screen, it turns off the screen on the Mac, and it shows you what would be on the screen on the Mac in front of you. So the Mac screen goes from being a real screen to being a virtual screen in the air floating above the Mac. So it's like sidecar. Yeah.

Yeah. So you can basically look at porn on the Mac in the, but presumably also you can then use Mac applications right, because this is an iOS-based thing. Yeah, right. You can run iPad apps and iPhone apps floating in the air. Yes. But I would imagine for video editing, it would actually be pretty amazing to be able to fill up your whole field of vision while you're trying to edit video.

Yes. except that there's latency. And then presumably you could, there'll be hand gestures which allow you to sort of pull things. You can control it with gestures. It is exactly like minority report. You kind of tap your finger and you move it in and out.

And one of the cameras is looking down and it looks at your hands to see what you don't. That'll be absolutely useful for video editing because presumably, like if you can start to actually use both your hands to sort of pull things in and out and cup and all that kind of stuff. That would be amazing. Also masturbation, I'm sure. You just just do the,

Just do the gesture, and it scans you. There's a running theme dome in your sales pitch. Every technology device is driven by porn, like the VHS recorder. Yes. I don't know, I presume many other, video camera presumably, it's all driven by porn, so Apple knows what they're doing. The fridge with the monitor on it, driven by porn. Oh, I've had some fun with that.

So, Charles, what I'm envisaging is that this will lead to a world where all of us wear goggles all the time, and we don't have any real human interaction. Yes. But if you put the goggles on, suddenly you're in a world where nobody's wearing goggles because Apple have the genius, the way I think, Apple have the genius to design this thing, but also because they're so good at aesthetics, they realize that they're hideous and make you look ridiculous.

So they've figured out a way that when you're wearing them, you can't see anyone wearing goggles because it deletes them all. Isn't that brilliant? And presumably that's why there have been no photos of people wearing these goggles yet. Because Tim Cook didn't put one on during the presentation. No, not that I can see. Because he would have looked like an idiot. As far as I can see, no one has been photographed wearing one.

And I think that that's an intentional thing. They don't want anyone to see what it's like. That's right. To see what, you know, because, and presumably all they've got to do is sell seven billion of these things at the same time, so that everyone's wearing one. And then you'll never see anyone wearing a goggle ever again. But it'll be even, that's right, but it'll be even worse.

Remember when iPods came out and you could see the people with the white earbuds and you're like, oh, that person's got lots of money. But I wish I had one of those. If you don't wear the reality, the Vision Pro headset, you'll be seeing idiots in goggles. In goggles. You aren't looking at you, and they've got their weird virtual goggly eyes. It's freaky and horrible. And it's like being in the Matrix.

It's like horrible dystopian reality. So you'll buy a pair, put them on and you'll never see any goggles ever again. Okay. I am definitely sold. So when does it, so presumably, it's in stores on Monday, then, Don, is it? It's 24 and only in America. We don't know when it's coming to Australia as yet.

Right. So at some point in the future, supposedly. Presumably they can put their headset on and imagine that they don't live in America, which is a very huge selling point. I think it's pretty much the Trump re-election campaign, right? Vote for me. You'll get these goggles.

You're going to worry about the planet. Dom, that was a sensational roundup. That really, thank you so much. I assume you're being sponsored by Apple to bring us this news. No, because I just hope they'll give me a pair. Like, thanks Apple. I'd love to fly out and see them. Either fly out to the next presentation and see them in action

or just give me the goggles and I can pretend that I'm important. It'll be great. Our careers from Road, we're part of the Iconiclass Network. See you tomorrow.