Upgrade - 408: Upgrade VR

Episode Date: May 23, 2022

The much-rumored Apple AR/VR headset appears to be on the horizon, so Myke and Jason break down several reports about its development and debate what approach Apple should take. And as WWDC approaches, there are also rumblings about a new HomePod, Apple Watch design changes, and more Apple displays.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 408 today's show is brought to you by ladder source graph and trade my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by jason snell hi jason snell hi mike hurley i have some breaking news from our show document. First off, the number was wrong, but you caught it, so well done. And second, we have officially, well, I have officially, and you didn't revert it, moved our entire show document into

Helvetica. Helvetica Noia. Not just Helvetica. Noia. Yeah, well, I mean, because that was the option, was Helvetica Noia. Here's the thing. If one was to, this being you, look at the version history of today's document. I tried on many different fonts today to see if there was something that I preferred instead. I tried to work out if it was possible to upload your own font to Google Docs and just gave up on that. And like basically immediately because I didn't see a plus button anywhere.

And I've decided I let it settle in because I didn't like it at first. Did not like it at all because we have used what is it? Arial. We were using a combination I think of Arial and Trebuchet for Trebuchet was the

headers. All of the headers were in Trebuchet. I don't know why but they were. It of the headers were in Trebuchet. I don't know why, but they were. It was the header style that we'd set. We had been using that since the beginning of the show, basically. Right. And so it was very uncomfortable to me to begin with today, but I've let it settle in,

and Helvetica Neue is much more comfortable to read. So I'm ready to embark on this new journey with you. This is the best redesign ever because it's a redesign of something that nobody who listens will ever see. But we see it. We see it. It's very important to us.

So thank you for trying on other fonts. We talked about it last time and I was kind of appalled that we had just gone in on Arial as the default choice. Yes. Especially when Helvetica is right there. Noia.

And so, yeah, I appreciate it. I did toy around with the headings being in kind of like wacky things. Not necessarily like Comic Sans, but I did consider like Pacifico, which is a super scripty header font. Or Lobster, which is also very stylish and i thought well they're unreadable and although fun uh and no so here we are we're in the helvetica era of episode 408 not 407 because while you and i both played with the fonts on uh on this thing neither of no what are you doing now neither of us actually updated i'm changing the headings to one of my favorite fonts in google docs which is called caesar

dressing which is like a julius caesar themed font so but we're gonna revert all of that supply you to lobster this is the worst kind of show content uh we're reverting please no we are reverting backwards jason because i have a hashtag snort talk question for you this week comes from bk and let's see if this will cause equal amounts of unrest is it the burger king is it the burger king himself yes the burger king would like to say so i'd like to know what is your favorite draft style related why is the upgrade draft not a snake draft mike's uh afraid of snakes that's why i don't like snakes yeah what what what is a draft style well a snake draft is a type of draft right and the type the type of draft that we do hasn't has a name right i don't know if it hasn't i mean it's just a it's

just a sequential draft or something uh okay so we've i believe we've covered this before but just to be clear a snake draft is when you have a large number of participants and a limited pool of choices and so what you try to do to even things out is uh is you go down the list for the first round and then back up the list for the second round and then down the list for the third round. And so if you're playing fantasy football or something like that, and you're in an eight team league, if you're pick eight, which is the eighth best player, that's pretty sad, but you get the ninth best player as well. Whereas the person who gets the number one player, hoor hooray they also then have to wait until number 16 and so theoretically it's all evening out we don't do that because one there's only

two of us so we're just taking turns and picking two in a row is not fun we're just alternating and who goes first we just have a decision about who won the last time and that impacts who goes first and then we just take turns i think people want to i think people question our draft style i think mostly because you win pretty much okay so i think that there is a thought that maybe the draft style doesn't favor the ability for the loser to win but i do not believe that's the case because like this is the thing because you win and get to go first, I think people think that you are naturally taking all the best things,

but I don't think that's true. Because in the end, it ends up being that I get first pick, but that's it. And then after that, once we're alternating, we're alternating. You miss one, the number one,

but that's about it. We could have done it the other way. I don't really know why we do it, winner picks. The idea is to give the winner an advantage because the winner won. It's what you get for winning. You get to go first. Instead of doing it the other way, which is we're sad for the loser, so they get to go first and have the advantage the next time.

It's like when you're playing pickup basketball, does the winner take it? Or does, you know, whoever didn't score get the ball next that's you know that's a rule thing you can decide pick so many items that i just don't think it's like a thing i don't think it adds that much of an advantage uh at all i'm gonna go more broadly here with the question of favorite draft style and say my favorite draft style is what you can hear on a million episodes of the incomparable which is you get a big bunch of people together and they can literally pick anything. But within where there's the possibility for collision, what is, because that's what's fun about that is that there's an infinite number of choices. So you're not picking

crossing items off a list because that gets a little bit boring because you start to see the trends and all of that. And that's a strategy thing. But on the incomparable, it's broader than that. We'll just have a topic and anybody can fit into it. What I like about that is first off, people will pick weird things that nobody expects, but it also still has, since you've constrained it by concept, the possibility for somebody to snipe someone else's pick, and you end up with these wonderful moments where somebody picks something out of the blue, and you think, well, that was weird. And then you hear somebody else who is very angry because they were going to pick that too. And I love that. And it's a large group, which means you end up kind of having that

thing where it feels like a draft, where you've got a bunch of people picking different things and picking things off the board. And that's my favorite draft style so that's my answer if you would like to send in a question for us to open a future episode of upgrade just send out a tweet with the hashtag snell talk just like bk did or you can use question mark snell talk in the relay fm members discord and you may be thinking to yourself why on earth are they talking about drafts all of a sudden because next week we're going to be performing the wwdc draft here on upgrade so if you're new to around here instead of your typical predictions or wild prediction game we play a draft so we take turns of making

predictions and then we score them during the keynote and then for the keynote episode and then there are winners and basically jason wins all of the drafts uh however i think i might talk about this next time wwdc is where i tend to fare best yes have fair best in the past but we'll find out i've got a little i i don't do as well at wwdc so so we'll find out so that's going to be next week's episode we do record every episode of upgrade live um and we'll be recording live uh Monday at 9 a.m pacific noon eastern 5 british summertime 5 p.m british summertime if you want to come and hang out a.m in Alaska excellent thank you very much for filling that in for us there for all of our Alaskan upgradians uh so you can come and hang out and we'll be

talking some prediction stuff. It'll be Memorial Day. It sure will. It'll be 8am in Alaska. And in Upgrade Plus today, we're going to talk about our concerns as we lead into draft time. If you want to get Upgrade Plus, go to getupgradeplus.com where you will get

longer ad-free episodes of Upgrade every single week. I have some follow-up for you, Jason. Okay. Apple, they have delayed the next steps of their hybrid working plan due to rising COVID cases in the Bay Area. Yeah. So we've spoken about this a bunch in the past,

and this will help clarify it, because I'd honestly forgotten where they were in the process apple has been conducting currently a pilot program of employees working two days in the office and three days at home and then i think within the next couple of weeks or so the original plan was they were then going to ask everyone to come in for three days and then spend two days at home. That was where they were moving towards. They will now not be moving forward with the planned three days in the office for everyone with no date of when they will reassess this. And furthermore, those that are currently on that two-day-in-the-office pilot program now have the option of fully working

from home again if they feel more comfortable. Yeah, I will say for people who are like, well, wait a second, I thought we were over this. I live in the Bay Area and I have had in the last couple of weeks, a half a dozen people I know in the Bay Area who've never had COVID before get COVID. Yeah. So it is everywhere right now here. The newest variant of the variant of the variant that is very transmissible and it's getting a lot of people.

So I got to see firsthand for the first time an exposure notification. So that was fun. Congratulations. You know? Yeah. Very exciting.

Somebody in my family got an exposure notification. So that was great. Congratulations. You know? Yeah. Very exciting. Somebody in my family got an exposure notification. So that was great. Everybody's fine. But yeah. Anyway, so I think this makes sense, right? And this shows you one of the challenges of having any policy like this is this stuff is going to kind of ebb and flow anyway. And so I feel like, I mean, we'll see. I know Apple's got a corporate insistence on people being present and that a lot of Apple employees don't love that idea. I'm sure there are Apple employees who like it and there

are ones who don't like it. But it strikes me that when you've got this kind of ebb and flow of a pandemic going on maybe you should build your business so that people can work either place and you know and and and choose what makes best it would just be easier right like at a certain point it's just easier if you stop if you if you lean into let's be as flexible as possible rather than like, well, we need to be forced in flexibility again, but only for a little while. It's complicated. Apple are also asking employees to wear masks again in Apple Park

in common areas. So if you're in hallways, meeting rooms, cafeterias, open office plan, please wear a mask. They're also going to be asking employees in 100 US retail stores across the country to be wearing masks again. So this is a big switch around in the COVID protocols. As of right now, there has been no change to the WWDC plan of having developers visit Apple Park.

I mean, we mentioned it at the time. The guidance on the website said that masks were optional. So I don't know what, you know, that now doesn't match Apple's guidance for its employees. Right. Well, all of this, but they at the time said, very rightly, all of this is subject to change. Right. So they were already going to do, require a negative test. And what I've heard is that the plan

was for this to be outside, which would mitigate a lot of it, right? Like COVID spread outside is pretty minimal. There are very few examples of anything like that. That said, they could also require masks. But presumably that developer center building or whatever is not going to be an outside environment. Right, if they take a tour of the developer center, yeah, they may, if they

keep that and they may cancel the whole thing, but if they keep it at all, they may change it to be small groups, masked, passing through areas relatively quickly and then moving on. I mean, they'll have to figure out how they do it, but this is just, you know, this is what they have to do because there is a surge happening right now in the Bay Area at least. And so they have to figure out how they do it. But this is what they have to do because there is a surge happening right now in the Bay Area, at least. And so they're going to have to adjust. It's going to be interesting to see how the next few weeks play out. I think the larger story here, though, is that they are so insistent on wanting this three-day return to work plan. And I would say, isn't this a little clue

that perhaps being more flexible is really the right way to approach this? And that, because they're having people who were doing two days a week, right? And it's like, well, now three or none, something like that. And it's just, I don't know. I know that this is a complex issue,

but I wish that the powers that be were more flexible. Because saying that managers have flexibility to make decisions, but also having a corporate edict that we want everybody present doesn't really give managers as much flexibility as you think. So anyway, we'll keep watching it. The world may affect Apple's policies more than anything else. I would just say as like a capital to a previous discussion, for the people that were hoping or saying Apple should have just come back with WWDC this year, this is why they didn't. Yeah. Because it's too soon.

You couldn't do it. You couldn't do it. You can't get away with it. Every little conference that I've seen in recent months, and I've thought to myself, really, you're having a conference? Okay. And then comes the post-conference,

oh, you know, 50 people got COVID. So maybe a little premature for that. This episode is brought to you in part by our friends over at Sourcegraph. So you've hired a brilliant developer, right? That's great, but now you have to get them onboarded. If your company is growing, onboarding new developers will be a common occurrence,

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you know, like glasses breaking breaking people are shrieking because john prosser is back once again to report that the next apple watch will have a flat-sided design it's the man in the black hat he's moseyed into town john prosser yeehaw i'm back again with my old rumors this is uh based this time on some reports of a flat display going into production along with the existing CAD files and rumors from last time around I actually do believe that there was the plan for the last Apple Watch to have an updated design I am in that camp of people I felt like it should have happened and it was weird when it didn't especially when like the new apple watch like is like oh the screen is a little bit bigger and now it curves

over the side like why would it it's all very strange but this rumor is now suggesting that the next apple watch not only will it have sides, the screen will be totally flat on top to go all the way. So I looked at the renders of this too. And what I would say is nobody get too excited because this is not a break. This is really, as far as I can tell, not a real break from Apple Watch design. It's more like a refinement because what it's saying is, you know how the sides on the Apple Watch are a little bit curved? Well, what if they were less curved? And you know how the top glass has the little kind

of curved edges? Well, what if they were more flush and flat? It would feel different and Apple would be like, oh, look at this beautiful flat design and all of that. But in practice, if you look at even a render of what this might look like,

it's an Apple Watch, right? It doesn't look like they've transformed it into a new thing. It's not circular like the Google one. No, they're just pulling in the, if you think of it as like an inflatable bag or something, they're like deflating it a little bit.

They're pulling in the outside edges that were a little bit bulgy and making it a little bit svelter but uh it's not a it's not a radical change it's a it looks like it might be a nice uh tweak to it but it's that's about it it's something i want personally because i you know i said this at the time the the silhouette of the apple watch has remained too similar for me for too long. And I would like to see that. That to me is just like enough of a refinement that I would be really happy.

In the same way that the iPhone design did this. And to me, it vastly improved the look of the phone, right? It went from having the rounded sides on the original X model or whatever, and then the XS and probably the 11, and then the 12, they just flattened it down. And I remain a big fan of that flat sided design on the iPhone. So I would like to see this come to the Apple watch.

You know, don't forget this is a year where rumors are pointing towards three Apple watches entering the lineup. So a regular Apple watch series eight, a new Apple watch SE and a a rugged, sporty, athletic watch. That's right. That's your Apple Watch that you rappel down from the side of a mountain and land on a skateboard and roll down to a river where you jump into a whitewater raft. That watch. You need to remember that because that could be worth a point for you in the draft.

It could literally be a video that they make. I would genuinely not be surprised if it was something along those lines. Sorry, they parachute to the rock face first and then rappel down. I apologize for leaving that part out. Because the marketing of that one is going to be interesting to me

because if they make that product like a more rugged watch right they have to present it in such a way that doesn't make the current watch look fragile yep so that's going to be an interesting marketing decision that they make and i'll be keen to see that. Ming-Chi Kuo is reporting that Apple could release a new HomePod in late 2022 or early 2023. Quote, may not be much innovation in hardware design. My initial part was like, so why?

And then Kuo goes on to say, smart speakers are undoubtedly one of the essential elements of the home ecosystem, but I think Apple is still figuring out how to succeed in this market. The MacRumors article written about this tweet from Ming-Chi Kuo

referenced a report that I'd forgotten about from some time ago from Mark Gurman that had reported that Apple was working on a HomePod that would be physically sized between the mini and the original. So maybe this is that.

This is my guess is, and it's just making this up, but imagine you go back to the HomePod mini because you're trying to get something that's lower in price, that's more affordable for people, and then start from there and build back up. So instead of bringing the original HomePod back, imagine a HomePod mini max kind of thing, right?

Which they might call the HomePod, but it's going to be the second generation HomePod, and it's going to be more like the mini, but better sounding and a little bit bigger and cost a little bit more. I think there's room for that product. I think people like the Mini, but better sounding and a little bit bigger and cost a little bit more. I think there's room for that product. I think people like the HomePod Mini, but the HomePod Mini does get knocked for its relatively weak sound. It's fine, but it's not great. And you could build a bigger, better HomePod Mini for a little more money that would not be the original home pod in terms of everything that's in it and um that that sounds like a product and so may not be much innovation in hardware design does it does that sound a bigger home pod mini that sounds a little

bit better doesn't sound super innovative right but i would argue that maybe the original home pods fatal flaw was so much innovation in hardware design that it was over-engineered and cost a lot, and that made it a tough sell. I hope they do make it because I really like my original HomePod pair a lot. I think it's great. I love the sound that I get from it paired to my Apple TV, I worry about what will replace it like eventually right like what what product will I have to replace them at some point in the future when these these ones won't work anymore uh because of whatever reason right they just stopped supporting it or something which eventually you would assume would happen and so if they made something a bit beefier than the home pod mini it would give me

an upgrade path which i would be pleased for yeah imagine a 149 home pod that sounds appreciably better than the home pod mini 149 $199, but something in there. Appreciably better than the HomePod Mini. Not as good as the HomePod, but appreciably better than the Mini. I think they could do that. And I think that's going to be... I mean, if you think about the HomePod, I know Federico has talked about this on Connected a lot. The HomePod Mini is like the Mini version of what?

Of nothing. Because the other product has been discontinued. It is weird right and so you would want to have something that would that people who want something that's a little bit better could uh pay more money for like apple's are really good at that right of having the the well you can get the 99 speakers but we also have the 149 179 that that sound a lot better that that's a key part of apple strategy and it doesn't exist right now. So that's my guess. And I think that could be good, right? I mean, it may not satisfy everybody who loves the original HomePods, but it may satisfy, right, you're trading maybe some of

the people who really like the quality of those HomePods for new people who are never going to buy at the HomePod price, but might buy at the new HomePod price. Yeah, and you would assume that if they had no intention of coming back to this product, they would have just called the HomePod Mini the HomePod. It's the new HomePod. It's small. They would have been able to call it the HomePod Mini. Right. So yeah, I mean, it could be...

I mean, what this isn't then is the other product that we're hoping for is this integrated Apple TV HomePod experience. But that does feel like a longer way away. It's also not the expectation of one day a HomePod with a screen on it or whatever. What Ming-Chi Kuo is talking about here is none of those things, which is intriguing, but we'll see.

And display analyst Ross Young is reporting that a 27-inch mini LED display would now be launching in October. Young had previously said that this could come in June, but Apple has moved manufacturer for this product, resulting in the timeline slipping some. It's expected that this would be something like a Studio Display Pro,

and as well as mini LED would feature ProMotion, so the 120 frames or the variable refresh rate up to 120 I had assumed too that this could probably this panel form the basis for a Pro iMac right it seems like it ticks all those boxes and I think the answer

is going to be this is going to be very expensive and it's going to be promoted as being for the Mac Pro right yeah I guess you could this product It's going to be promoted as being for the Mac Pro. Right? Yeah, I guess you could, this product could also replace the Pro Display XDR for people, right? Because if it's mini LED,

it will do a better job a lot of what the Pro Display can do. I mean, and I would expect probably for less money. But it's a 27-inch, less money than the XDR, the xdr is is so much larger than a 27 inch display so maybe they maybe they update the xdr and this and they have three that's kind of wild i don't know how big is the studio display it's 27 oh interesting that they would have two models of two different displays at the same size even though right that's that's why i just got confused then and the str is 32 yes so it's an interesting thought and it may be that the studio display exists because it got delayed and also it allows them to have a lower price point than this mini led version which they will sell for even more

money and people be even angrier about any bets on the webcam on that one by the way interesting that'll be would be interesting to see what happens there and um take it all out take it all out uh and and then the pro display xcr what's the fate of that is that a one-off product or are they gonna i know there were some rumors out there that they might do a new version of that and maybe the answer is that there that the the new Pro Display will come in two sizes, right? A 27 and a 32. That would make sense. And that's the successor. Yeah.

I think that this product seems better than the Pro Display for most people in pretty much every right way, I would assume, right? Like, you would also assume this will they will sell this like they do the current one right where like you just choose it comes with the standard stand you choose your own stand so they get or get they'd be able to distance themselves from the one thousand dollar stand thing um this seems like the successor to that um and then also they would have a nice strong lineup of models right so you've got the 27 inch studio display, 27 inch, uh,

pro display pro or pro display. Uh, and then, then the 32 inch or something pro display or XDR or whatever. Yeah. Something, something like that. I think,

yes, it's entirely possible that we will end and we will go from a world where apple is abandoned displays to a world where apple has three a range of displays for everybody no matter what they want to do no one else is making them so why not apple i mean i bet they've they've done really good numbers on the pro display i mean i wouldn't be surprised if inside of apple they were like oh yeah this was probably a good business to get back into again it's like i don't necessarily think that they thought that the that being in the like you know making displays was like a thing that they uh shouldn't do i think they just decided that they weren't really going to make a lot of computers that were meant for displays anymore

yeah and so they just got out of that market but it ended. It's just one of their misguided ways of you. And given all the laptops they sell and given their pro customers, it was a misguided decision. And I can't tell how much of it was just, look, we don't need to do this. The market will handle it. Or how much of it was them misreading the desire to have an Apple display,

but either way, they completely misread the market because the rest of the display markets, like not interested in what Apple wants displays for. Like they're not they all want to be it's a there's kind of a race to the bottom where it's resolution doesn't matter and you know 4k in 32 inches is good enough and and apple doesn't think that's the case for its platform uh and nobody else stepped in to the breach there, just that one LG monitor, one or two LG monitors. So what a world. This episode is brought to you by Trade. I love coffee and I am a fancy coffee person.

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and let Trade find you a coffee that you'll love. One last time, that is drinktrade.com upgrade and you will get $30 off. Father's Day is coming up. A Trade subscription could be the perfect gift for the coffee lover in your life. Our thanks to Trade for their support of this show and RelayFM. All right, we've got a big topic here about Apple's headset plans. So the Information published two articles in the past week detailing a bunch of details. Apparently, they have had 10 sources from Apple give them a bunch of information about the headset.

Now, I want to go through a bunch of the stuff that's come out of these articles. We can stop wherever we want to talk about it. And then I have some questions that I want to talk through with you at the end. Does that sound fair? There's a lot of little details here. So these articles detail some of the struggles that the team putting this project together has had. There have been leadership issues. They've not been seen as a priority product inside of Apple at different times.

They have had issues with finding talent within Apple to work on the project. Part of this is that they are situated in Sunnyvale. So apparently this has reduced their visibility. So it's basically not in Apple Park. They're like in their own little campus out in Sunnyvale, California. This has reduced their visibility and importance of in Apple not being at Apple Park directly. And it is also said that tim cook is apparently not a champion of the product the report references that kind of makes reference to him not being as involved as jobs was with the iphone but i wanted to pose to you doesn't that like i would expect that's pretty normal though tim cook is not steve jobs tim cook is not Steve Jobs. And so I can't imagine there is any product that he would have that level of involvement in.

And I also don't think that's a bad thing. Like, I think that's a good thing. It's like, honestly, if I heard that he was really involved in the design, I think I might raise an eyebrow because it's not his thing. And that's what's made him so good at his job i think is knowing what he's good at and what his limits are and

letting other people take care of those things i don't know also he he's gone out of his way for the last five years to champion ar and vr as a important future direction in the industry so it's not like he's not he at least publicly, enthusiastic about it. And they've spent a lot of money on it and it's a huge future direction for the company. So weird thing for a CEO. Yeah, this sounds like it's a little oversold here because again, Tim Cook is not Steve Jobs.

And so Steve Jobs is deeply involved in creating the iPhone as a guy with a lot of product taste um that's not tim cook's role no and so yeah that that's stood out to me as like i don't know a thing someone might have said but it has been reported as being what it isn't right like yes tim cook is not involved in the day-to-day, and that's necessarily a bad thing, and I'm not sure that it is.

I kind of see it as a neutral thing, to be honest, right? Mm-hmm. So previously, we had heard a report, this was from Bloomberg, that Johnny Ive was concerned about VR shutting people out of the world. Do you remember that? He was like, didn't like the idea

of people being in VR all the time. This actually ended up leading to Apple going down the path of adding cameras to the front to allow for this to be a mixed reality device. I think that that is a very good design decision they ended up making. Yeah, this is something that I know we talked about a while ago about the Oculus Quest, but I've got an Oculus

Quest 2, and one of my favorite features of it, and it was something that I think they added to it after it launched, but it is, it has outward-facing cameras for, you know, boundary marking reasons, so that you don't run into something when you're playing a VR

game, it marks the boundary and then it knows when you're too close to the boundary and it lets you know. But you can double tap on the side of it now and it just puts you in reality mode essentially. And it's a grainy black and white reality mode, right? But I could envision using really good cameras like what Apple has to make it a much better kind of depiction of reality. And not only are there uses for that, right? Because then you can have apps and games and whatever that interact with the actual world around you, even though you're wearing the headset, instead of it just being completely artificial. But it also means that, yes, if you break through a boundary or if somebody comes,

like, you know, imagine pausing, you're playing a game or doing whatever in VR, and somebody comes into the room and with face recognition, the camera knows that somebody has come into the room where you're playing on the VR headset and pauses your app or game and breaks, puts a little window around the person and and lets you you know interact with them and turns on you know the pass-through head microphone to your headphones or whatever your setup is right like having used the quest 2 this is absolutely a good call like inner i'm not as much of a fan of the way that this has been portrayed as a sort of a uh oh here the designers are getting all touchy-feely and being like do we really want to block people out from the real world aren't we doing a disservice to everyone by doing that i i could i can roll my eyes at that a little bit but i i think in terms of i agree with that point by the way well i do i think if you're making i think if you're making a vr product like part of the idea here so there's a difference between saying like let me undercut the entire

premise of this product versus saying okay first off this is a way to get to ar which is more open and second we need to be mindful of it but this is fundamentally a product where you are putting things over your eyes and that's what this is so um saying you're basically saying should we make this product or not and if you've decided you're going to make it then it's less helpful but what i like about it is the keeping you honest and saying well wait a second isn't this product stronger if it is more capable of being rooted in the in the real world and having experienced that with the oculus quest and honestly, it's sort of rudimentary on the Oculus Quest.

Yeah. But even that rudimentary implementation makes me realize, oh yeah, like one of the big problems with VR is you put the headset on and then you don't know what's happening around you. Yeah. And it's kind of disconcerting.

And so knowing that it's got your back, basically, or it's being your eyes and it can help you out and it can switch contexts, that's a good feature, right? That makes it a better product. Even if it's not true AR, it makes it a much better product for it to know about your surroundings and be able to pass it through to you inside the little goggles. I am a fan of VR for gaming and I'm a fan of VR for experiences. I don't think that's a product Apple should make. They shouldn't make the next Oculus Quest just as the way it was meant to be

or the Oculus Rift or whatever. I don't think that's their... Honestly, I don't think it's their wheelhouse to make that product just explicitly for that. My expectation is probably what we're seeing what we talk about in a minute the idea that this is also as well as a fun experience platform also like a thing that you wear as a computing platform and if that's the case and i'm meant to wear it for many hours at a time in theory and you know or whatever then i don't want to be completely

shut off for the world for that time which which is what I mean about like for Apple, I do not think a pure VR product is the right move for them. And I agree that they should not be making a product that just shuts people out from the world, right? Like I just don't think it's the right move. And I'm happy to hear that they've ended up going down this path.

And talking a little bit more about the, well, the now MetaQuest, Meta just put out a video. think mark zuckerberg posted it himself like kind of showing off some of the stuff that they're working on for their next like their their next version of this it's called project cambria and it's like a higher end product and this is completely what they're demoing and talking about like mixed reality and the quality of that device for that. So the truth is with these devices, the way to look at them is as a continuum, right? So it's just like early personal computers and then early laptops and then eventually smartphones.

Look, everybody knows that the mixed reality future is what they're shooting for, whether it works out or not, who knows, but that's what they're shooting for. But you got to get there. The technology is not there for you to wear a pair of glasses that look just like regular eyeglasses and that nobody knows, and you've got a full, rich, fully realized AR world around you. It doesn't exist. Will it exist in 10 years? Yeah, maybe. 15 years? Probably. But not right now. But how do you get there? You got to build the interim steps. You just have to do it.

And so VR is a start. Mixed reality helps because it allows you to do AR, but it's not really your eyes seeing it with an overlay. It's your eyes inside a thing that covers your face, but it allows you to go down that path. And for all reasons we just described, like mixed reality, even in what are traditionally VR kind of environments, works pretty well. The other thing I'll say is I think the smartest thing anybody working on this project at Apple could do is not think about games to what you said. Because here's the thing. the games are going to happen, but Apple has never succeeded. I would say never. Well, yeah, probably in or rarely or ever, um, succeeded in building something

specifically for games. Apple's success in games is always because they build a really good platform that people want to use for games and the people who understand games figure out how to use it. So if I was at Apple, I'd be like, look, the games are going to happen, but we're not making a game machine to your point. That's not what we're doing here. Not only in price, but just like we need to not be thinking about games as an application. It needs to be bigger and the games will happen, right? The Beat Sabers will happen, but we need to think bigger. And I think that's true because Apple has not, you know, they just don't succeed when they're focused on games. They need to be focused on what they're good at and the games

will happen or they won't, but I think they probably will because it's actually a really great application for this they will uh so let's talk about some of the technical considerations that the information uh we're talking about some of the like more technical stuff so at one point in the design process swap that swappable batteries were being considered for this product because the goal that apple's trying to aim for is to be able to allow users to use the headset for up to eight hours a day if they wanted to. Seems like a lot. Everybody who's ever worn an AR headset looks at eight hours and thinks,

nope, nope. I don't think I want that. I mean, who knows what the future will tell me, but I really don't think I want that. This was scrapped as an idea. Currently, the battery life is said to be for several hours in line

with similar products. Well, think about what Apple talks about in terms of AirPods and the Apple Watch and some other products they've got, where it's sort of like a quick charge. Yes. So use it for a little while because I would say it's very much like AirPods, which is you can listen for quite a while, but at some point, if you want to wear

it all day, you're going to need to do a little recharge and we could do it pretty quick and get you a lot more time. But, um, eight hours a day without a break for the first off it's an, it's impossible, right? Eight hours without a break is impossible. You don't really need that. Um, I guess you could think about travel and things like that. But ideally, in most cases, you would use it, you know, for a while, maybe a few hours, and then you would charge it and then you would come back to it. And that that's a better use case. So I'm glad they got away from that. I think swappable batteries is not the end of the world. It's not Apple's thing anymore. But there's that idea of like, well, I absolutely need it. So the hardcore users will buy a second battery and swap it. And it's not Apple's thing anymore, but there's that idea of like, well, I absolutely need it. So the hardcore users will buy a second battery and swap it.

And it's like, like a e-bikes or something like that. Right. Whereas like, ah, but I want to go even further than my e-bike will take me. So I have a second battery and it's like, okay,

but you know, there are so many advantages to having it all be one piece and, and doing it that way. So I think that that's probably a good idea. Plus again, nobody wants to have a thing on their, on their face for eight hours straight. one piece and and doing it that way so i think that that's probably a good idea plus again nobody wants to have a thing on their on their face for eight hours straight so we will talk about this a little bit more later on but about johnny ive's involvement in the product but there is apparently as a suggestion of johnny from johnny ive that there is at least a version

and this may be the shipping version again a lot of this is unclear right that there is at least a version, and this may be the shipping version. Again, a lot of this is unclear, right? That there is a version of this product with a battery that is tethered to the device and worn by the user to remove weight and heat from the headband. I get it, but that sounds like a prototype, right? Like it's one of those things where like tethering.

Okay, so I've used two VR setups. I've used the PSVR, which is tethered. And I've used the Quest, which is standalone. And, you know, not having, and the Quest is not, I mean, actually the Quest is in line with the PSVR,

but the idea that you could build something super light is appealing, but every time you've got cords running around, especially since you can't see where they are because you've got a VR thing on your, on your head, it's not great. It's just not great.

Yeah. Well, this is at least like the cord just goes into a thing in your pocket, right? Like you're not physically connected to something. You're attaching it to your iPhone essentially, or something iPhonehone like that lives in your pocket i get it and and look making the thing on your face less obtrusive is a good direction to go but i think from a an ideal product standpoint having it all be in one piece is always going to be preferred because it's less fiddly and

you know there's no step two all of that sort of thing it's you know having one one piece like the oculus quest is you know it's just a unit and it's got two controllers but it's just like a thing and you plug it into usbc and then you unplug it and you play and it there's something to be said for that if the goal is to have people wear this for many hours at a time, which it seems like is probably their goal, like they want to make this like a, hey, you can work and play and chat and live with this thing. Reducing the weight on your head is going to be good.

I don't, first off, I don't think you can live with this thing on your head. Work and play and chat maybe. But live? Oh, don't do that. First off, don don't think you can live with this thing on your head. Work and play and chat, maybe. But live? Oh, don't do that. First off, don't do that. That's where I draw the line is with a big thing that's completely enclosed. I can't even imagine that.

But here's what I'll say. I think the challenge is how much do you save in terms of weight and obtrusiveness by putting that thing in your pocket versus all the stuff that has to be on your face because of all the displays and cameras and all of that. And I think the truth might be that while you can save a little bit of weight, first off, you might need a little counterweight for all the stuff that's in front of your eyes, right? And second, like if you pull all that stuff out and then the thing is still kind of bulky and uncomfortable, it doesn't matter that you pulled that stuff out and then the thing is still kind of bulky and uncomfortable,

it doesn't matter that you pulled that stuff out. So does it solve the problem is the question I would ask there, right? Is like pulling this stuff out really solve it? Or is it still kind of just as uncomfortable it was before? And it turns out that pulling this stuff out and putting it in my pocket didn't help matters. So there were reports on the idea of tethering. There were reports a while back that Apple was considering having this headset tethered to a base station to make it more powerful. This plan was scrapped for the device to be focused on being standalone, apparently not even connected to an iPhone, which was another suggestion, right? Yeah, there were some thoughts that it might be a wireless. It might not be physically tethered, but it might be wirelessly tethered. And they dumped... We had some reports of this earlier that... We're

basically watching the product evolve with these reports, right? These are not things that Apple thought would be the final. This is the step that Apple went through step-by-step to figure out what it was doing. And again, having gone from the... I know they're not great examples, but the PSVR to the Quest 2, like there's a lot to be said for standalone, but including the fiddly setup, not even while you're using it. It's like, do I have the base station where, oh, you went too far from the base station. Now you can't use it. Yeah. Apparently there was a couple of options like mocked up and presented to key Apple executives like Tim Cook, who doesn't care about this product, and Johnny Ive.

And apparently they ended up leaning towards this idea of there were like, you know, avatars that could have been human looking basically, like photorealistic or more cartoony. And they ended up going with the less powerful option for comfort and, you know know movability and stuff like that apparently this was a design direction change from what was expected was the path apple going on which is one of the key reasons for multiple delays to the project because they are balancing

between performance battery life and thermal issues it gets too hot and that's the thing for the standalone device that they have to put a lot more time into thing we always talk about on upgrade is where does this where these reports come from who who's giving this information and why this quote here that i'm going to read to you i think explains a bit about where this information's come from some of those people place the blame on Ive, who they say fundamentally changed the purpose of the headset from a product that creatives and professionals would use at a desk

to a portable device for consumers. Those people argue that Apple should have first developed a product for professionals to encourage them to make content for the headset before releasing one for consumers. Seems like, I would expect, some of the people giving this information were the team that was, is at least a member of the team

that was working on the tethered version of this product. Because they seem quite upset about the fact that Apple went in a different direction. This product's been around for so long internally that you've got people

who leave the team. They may still be on the team, but if they're not, then they have left the team and they are unhappy with the direction, and they place the blame on Johnny Ive. I think this is fascinating because who's to say who's right?

It's hard to say until and you can't run the simulation twice and see which one worked out the best, but what strikes me about this is the people who wanted that professionals at a desk, that feels very Microsoft to me, feels very HoloLens. It's like, well, no, no, no, this is a business product. It's a business product. And what I've is arguing feels very Apple to me, which is we make products for consumers, not, you know, not just high end professionals. We make it for a swath of people, not just for the enterprise and, you know, high end CAD applications and things like that. That's not what Apple does.

Apple succeeds sort of like with games, right? Succeeds in other markets because apple creates a great product for consumers you know and that's that's apple's magic and i i can see johnny i've arguing that point i think there's a challenge because um you could argue that what he's really off arguing you could argue that what he's really saying here is you are making a developer product and Apple shouldn't ever release a product that's just for developers. If we release a product, it will be implied that it's for everybody. And so it needs to be good enough for everybody. And he's sort of arguing, don't do version one of this product.

Do version two, which would lead to it being delayed, right? Because he's basically saying skip over version one. We shouldn't make that. And if that's the case, I mean, again, I don't know who's right or wrong here, but I understand that argument that let's make the product that Apple would make here and not some sort of, you know, we've talked about it here. And with the price, it may be this product anyway. But what you don't want is Apple to say, Hey, we're releasing that new category product that you've

all heard about. We're finally going to do it, but don't buy this one. We'll see in a year. We'll have one under, under Christmas trees in 2023, but for right now, no, no, no, don't buy it. Don't buy it. Like Apple doesn't do that. Apple just doesn't do that. So I can see that argument, but also as well, like the way I look at it. do that. So I can see that argument. But also as well, the way I look at it, all right, so let's say we released a really powerful one for developers to make experiences and it looks really good. How long is it going to take to make that a standalone product?

What if you put that out there and then it takes another five years to develop one at the same power level that can be used about a base station? I feel like you're setting yourself up for failure by giving the most powerful version first and then needing to try and catch up for a consumer product. It seems all wrong as a route to take. I want to clarify something because somebody in the Discord just just mentioned shouldn't you start with pros so you can charge a lot of money well here's the thing apple's going to make an expensive product and people are going to buy it the people who are going to buy it are going to buy it i'm thinking more in terms of the approach we take do we take an approach if we're apple and we're developing

this product that says no no this is a limited product that's very high end or do you say no we're not good at that. Let's make a really good product that will appeal to consumers. And the first version of it is going to be expensive. So most people won't buy it. But if they do buy it, they'll have a great experience with it. And then we set about iterating and creating a lower price version and tweaking the features and getting it on the Apple machine that does what it does.

And so, yeah, the first product is still going to be expensive and people who buy it are going to be people who've got the money to buy it. But I don't think you look at Apple's strategy and say, well, Apple's big secret sauce is that they put out a high-end enterprise product and then eventually make a version for regular people. That's just not what they do. Apple's DNA is all about making a version for regular people, even if it's so expensive that most regular people can't afford it. That's where they start. Yeah, and I think that's probably the best place to start.

We've mentioned Johnny Ive a bunch of times. It is said that Johnny continues to consult on this project of Apple as well as others which i was pleased and surprised to hear like they had always said they were doing it but i kind of figured that it wasn't true uh but it seems like he is in fact still helping out where needed he's kind of like break glass in case of johnny emergency uh yeah interesting right and there's the question of like what his role is and it at least this report suggests that his role is kind of being the conscience of the product right yeah and being

kind of prodding and criticizing and saying like what what should this be and and that's that's a pretty good i mean that honestly that's a big part of design or any creative endeavor is is having that kind of dialogue about you need a challenge you need someone who's going to challenge you exactly exactly and and it for all of our criticisms about johnny ive over the last decade and and and the feeling that he he uh he led apple down some paths that were maybe not uh so great i like the idea of somebody a little adversarial who also is sort of representing the heart and soul of Apple and its history to say,

is this actually the product you want to make? Is this what Apple would do? Is this what we're good at? And I think I kind of like like that so luckily apple hasn't lost its soul over like after all i guess oh i mean i hope so i haven't read that book yet uh somebody also uh in our discord for members pointed out about like we don't really know the whole like i don't know who's right or who's wrong we don't really know what the market for this is. And my only comment on that is that really, there does come a point where you just got to be in the market and figure

it out. And I think that the Apple Watch showed that. The Apple Watch first version was like, I don't know, it does all sorts of stuff. Let's see what happens. And you don't want to throw spaghetti against the wall if you're Apple. You don't want to be like, I don't know, it's just a random product. We'll see what happens.sung has actually succeeded at that quite well apple doesn't play that game but there there does come a time where you have to ship something and learn well even the iphone right because it was like they put it out there oh i'll actually what people want is to be able to develop apps for this platform yeah and and what our customers want is for it to be more versatile because now that it's got the entire internet on it they want to do things that we haven't anticipated and don't fit in a web browser.

And we should probably do something with that. Right. And the Apple Watch progressed. And I think that this is the same thing, which is I don't know if this thing is going to succeed or not. I don't know if this category is going to succeed or not. But if I'm Apple, at some point you do need to ship something. And I think maybe Johnny Ive is poking them to ship something that's a little has a little more broad appeal because then you're going to be able to see what happens. And, and maybe it'll be like the HomePod where there'll be like, okay, we learned a lot of things that we thought were important that obviously weren't important because the price drove them away. And, and, uh, I don't think we should do that anymore, but we could do a stripped down version of it.

Maybe that's the lesson they learn, or they will learn a whole bunch of lessons, but developers will tell them things and the apps that work and the apps that don't work and they'll be surprised. But there does come a time where you do have to ship something. And if they believe that this is a major product category in the future or might be, the consequences of staying on the sideline forever are enormous, right? At some point, you have to be out there or you will miss it, right? And I think that they have been lucky in that they haven't missed it. It's not like the iPhone of VR, AR exists. Remember Google Glass?

exists. Remember Google Glass? I mean, and everything that Facebook Oculus Meta is doing, like nobody's really gotten it. And that's a good place for Apple to be is somebody who can release a product in this category that hasn't, so they're in it and nothing has taken off yet and you can figure it out. And that's where they need to be

so some more technical stuff at various points during the prototyping process the devices have been uh htc vive headsets running windows but featuring software made by apple that's just hilarious to me like not the vive part because i think i've mentioned that for a long time i reckon that's why they they did that partnership with HTC a while ago where they had them on stage and blah, blah, blah. Because I think they wanted that gear. But the idea of it running Windows is like, why is that even happening?

I just find that very funny. Some compatibility reason why it made the most sense. Also, prototypes had to be used with the help of a small crane due to the weight of the headset obviously this was all pretty early on it doesn't surprise me right like we've all seen images of like prototype iphones and ipads like suitcases attached to a little screen you know in fact i i was reminded with the crane of the mars helicopter um because you know so they have a there's a drone helicopter on Mars. And when they tested it, they had to put it in a chamber where the atmosphere was as thin as it was on Mars to see if it would fly. But Mars

has lighter gravity than the Earth. So they actually had to rig up a crane kind of thing to give it enough lift off of Earth's gravity that it simulated Mars gravity. And I was thinking about that for this, which is like when I've got this giant thing on my head, I'm like, oh, I'm moving around and it only weighs three pounds, but there's actually an enormous apparatus coming out of the top of your head.

And it's like something Professor X would wear, you know, for Cerebro. I'm making comic book references now anyway uh that's hilarious uh the device includes 14 cameras used to track movement facial expressions and the display and to display the outside world to the wearer so we've talked about memoji being like obviously a proxy for vr uh avatars in the future yeah um i i love this part not because i love the idea of um which we mentioned last week and is in this report too where there's like a screen on the outside it's like i can see you through the screen on the outside mention that

because that this was i read this part and it kind of blew my brain a little bit. There is a concept of a version of this device with a screen on the outside of the device so that it can display images of a user's eyes and expressions to alleviate concerns of being shut out from the world and those around you this feels very weird to me yeah it feels weird and uncanny to me and i'm not sure if it makes sense or not i think it makes the product more of a like curiosity like a a joke and who wants to see that right like who wants to interact with somebody who's wearing a headset with a weird screen on the front that shows their eyes with just a memoji eye portion because it's not going to be it's not going to look like my eyes

or it's an inside camera shot of some sweaty eyeballs in a headset all of that part is very weird to me and yeah i mean maybe they do it but just the sound of that does not sound very appley to me it doesn't seem very sleek but i don't know i don't know and maybe maybe when you see it you go oh yes when i when i read this i was like okay this could be that thing that they do that nobody else has or can do that makes me go they did it they nailed it that's the thing we've been missing but i doubt it but it could be right so what i find most fascinating about this though is the idea that they are looking at your facial expressions and and i i like that this is this is memoji right this is the same idea

it where where your camera on your iPhone can mirror your view. It's a feature that doesn't make that much sense on the iPhone, but it totally makes sense for this. And I love this idea because having played games on the Quest, you know, you're a little avatar, but you're kind of a little like expressionless avatar. And the idea that when you smile or grimace or whatever, while wearing this thing, your reflection in the virtual world matches is actually smart and a lot of fun. So I like that idea a lot. And, and again, this goes back to doing a better job than current devices do in sort of synthesizing the real world and bringing it inside the virtual world. It's a good idea. I want to, and then additionally, the information reported and then Mark Gurman reported as well about Apple performing demos

for board members of the product. The information's report is earlier on, but I just want to read this section because it goes to some way of kind of i think explaining a little bit about what they kind of imagine this product might be able to do for you so former vice president al gore then disney ceo bob eiger so this was a while ago and other apple board members walked from room to room trying out the prototype augmented and virtual reality devices and software one of the gadgets made a tiny digital rhinoceros appear on a table in the room.

The creature then grew into a life-size version of itself, according to two people familiar with the meeting. In the same demo, the drab surroundings of the room transformed into a lush forest showing how users could seamlessly transition from AR, in which they could still view the physical world around them, to the more immersive

experience of VR, a combination known as mixed reality. So, I mean, there's a part of this, this and then Mark Gurman's report of who in those meetings is giving this information away, right? Like that has got to be a very tight group of people involved in this. Whoever set it up, who was part of the team, who then left the team, who was there to run the demos for the board, probably.

My guess. But then there was another report from Montgomery after these information reports, I think in the middle of them, saying that Apple has been conducting demos within the past week of the current product as it is right now, quote, indicating that development has reached an advanced stage. Apple have also ramped up development of ROS, which is Reality OS is the name. I don't know if that's the actual name or

if it's the name that people are thinking is now, quote, suggesting that the product's debut could come within the next several months. That's debut could come within the next several months. That's funny to me. The next several months. That doesn't really mean anything. Still looking at a cost, according to all of this stuff, but between $2,000 to $3,000. So this is where we are. Yeah, super expensive.

That hasn't changed. I mean, and it sounds like it's really going to be depending on everything they're packing into this thing. And Mark Gurman feels really confident that this is not a WWDC product. He's reported that they were going to make it that and it's not. Yes. Which means I think you're right. I think that there will be another event and it might be the iPhone event because that's what they did with the Apple Watch. because that's what they did with the Apple Watch.

There will be another event in the next several months, I guess, that is going to be introducing this product. And then I still think the most likely scenario is they're going to introduce this product and say it will be shipping early next year. That's my guess. If I had to bet right now, and I don't, fortunately, I would say it's going to come during the iPhone event and it's not going to ship until sometime early next year.

Yeah, I think you're completely right. I think this is what I've thought they would do the whole time, right? Just like the Apple Watch. Announcement in fall, shipping in spring. And in that time period, get developers to come out. They do developers center in Apple Park. You're going to come out to do developers in an Apple Park. You're going to try out some stuff with us. They're just going to do they're going to play the hits with the Apple Watch.

That's just the way this product makes sense to me. I think I think that makes sense. And it will give developers an opportunity. I do believe there will be a developer story where there will be a virtual version of it, whether it's a, you you know maybe more than a cardboard box that you put an iphone into but maybe it's a htc vive running windows running apple software i mean maybe that was probably a while ago but i i really do think that it's possible that they're going to have a developer kit that involves buying a third-party headset and attaching it to a mac right and saying this is how you write your apps for this,

James Thompson, how you write your virtual calculator, your dice world, whatever it is, it will be, you'll have to do this this way and then they'll ship it later, later, but they'll be out there with it because they get the chance to do that and build buzz for it. And I'm sure they will.

Man, I'm getting i'm getting pretty intrigued i i'm still not sure what i think about this but the more and more information we get about it the the more i'm like okay show me what you've got like i'll remain open-minded you show me what you've been working on but i don't know yeah it is if you if you take the games out of the equation because right now games really are the best thing yeah um i start to think about other things like okay communication and you know like how oculus or meta has that like virtual workspace where you can be in there and you're in a workspace and i'm sure there'll be things about like visualization of

3d and other things like that but i keep thinking about communication and i keep thinking well it won't be nice to do facetime with this except it won't be facetime it will be virtual facetime it'll be fake facetime right so it'll be it'll be an audio call with a little bobblehead uh memoji and is that good maybe um what are the other what are the other apps for this like saying you can be in your numbers spreadsheet not that exciting right so what is the application if this is not you know is there vr video editing is there i don't know right that is for me that is the big challenge is everybody wants to make VR or AR that goes beyond just a game headset, a thing,

but thus far it hasn't really happened. I will say, and this is, this is something that I think you mentioned before. Again, hashtag Mike was right. I'll just say it again. Fitness,

like fitness is going to be real. And if you're like, wait a second, who wants to exercise? Like there are multiple wildly successful apps for the quest that are fitness. There's this one, I can never remember the name of it because the name doesn't make any sense. What is it called? It's like- Supernatural.

Supernatural, that's it it i can never remember the name of it because it doesn't register to me as a fitness experience it's it's a huge hit yep it's a it is like imagine peloton except it's vr like it is a fitness training app it's a subscription um I have heard word of mouth where people are like, oh, have you tried Supernatural yet? Like from lots of people. My wife, who is not that interested

in the Oculus Quest is like, yeah, I've been thinking about doing that Supernatural thing. I said, well, you could start with Beat Saber because Beat Saber is actually a pretty good workout too. But Supernatural is made to be a workout tool.

And I just, I immediately think, oh yeah, like Apple Fitness. And I immediately think, oh, yeah, like Apple Fitness. And yes, will your headset get sweaty? Yeah, it will. But you know what? I think the signal of the fact that people are super into Supernatural and getting Oculus Quest in order to do those training programs suggests to me that there's something there. So we'll throw that on the list of things that, that, that this headset might be interesting to, but,

but like I still, we need to pile up more examples of this. And again, I'll go back to what I said before, which is you kind of have to try to find out. Apple will try and it will learn because I don't think that the, the exercise training would have been a thing I would have expected out of the Oculus Quest. And yet it turns out that people love the Supernatural product and they love

Beat Saber and they talk about getting a great workout. And it's like, oh, it turns out exercising in VR is successful. And you could imagine other things like, so I do a stationary bike sometimes when I'm not outside running. And I think, well, you put that on while i do a stationary bike sometimes when i'm not outside running and i think well you know you put that on while you do the stationary bike with apple fitness and now you can have a virtual bike ride and there's so many different things you could do i can see them going down that path so two things one as zach points out in the discord and just to alleviate the follow-up meta is trying to buy Supernatural. I actually don't think this is a concern.

I actually do imagine Meta would make their best products available for Apple's platform if they got big enough. I think they've made these mistakes in the past and I don't think that they would be so silly as to not do that. We should say by trying, they are in agreement to do it but it needs to be approved yeah they need approvals because facebook now is not allowed to basically acquire any companies anymore so

the biggest sign that uh that it is a successful thing on their platform is that they just want to eat it right they already bought the the development company behind Beat Saber. Yeah, it's a killer app. And Facebook knows, Meta knows, that if it's a killer app for your platform, what do you do? You buy it. You just take it and put it in your platform and say, we own this. This belongs to us. That said, you know, Apple Fitness, I'm sure that they could spin something up to do this with Apple Fitness that would be a good competitor to it. But also, it doesn't matter because

if Supernatural is a big success and it's on Quest, someone will just make it. They'll just make it. Same as Beat Save. We spoke about this before. Even if I believe that Meta would make these products available for other platforms eventually, but even if they don't, it doesn't

matter because someone will make something just like it. There are already multiple games made by multiple companies that are Beat Saber-like on Quest. Someone else will just make a version of it, even if Apple didn't. The other thing I was going to mention is, for me,

I think they need to achieve a difficult task, which is the keynote announcing this needs to be, in my opinion, iPhone introduction level, where they can't just Apple Watch this, where I think a lot of the Apple Watch keynote was like, A, it can do everything,

and B, we hope everyone does everything for it. Where I think the difference with the iPhone keynote was we have done a bunch of things. We are going to show you what this can do. And then the thing that's different is then also having the bit where they show you what other people are doing. But I think Apple needs to come to the table

with this product and show me why I need it. And it's the work that they have done. And I think Apple has done with the Apple Watch subsequently a way better job of it, and it's the work that they have done. And I think Apple has done with the Apple Watch subsequently a way better job of it, building way more first-party stuff that actually fills out the whole story of the product. But the initial announcement didn't

do that. It was very much like, all this stuff that it can do, we're working with our partners and you can unlock hotel rooms and it was like, this thing can do everything, but asterisk, none of it well. And when they actually worked out what it could do, vastly better.

Same with the Apple TV, right? Like it can do all this stuff, but most of this stuff, it doesn't do well because the product hasn't been designed well for that. The remote sucks. It's not a good game controller. It's not good for browsing anything except video let me throw in a few um other stray thoughts i have about what apple could do here because i i like i said i am struggling a little bit with what other than games do you do with this and fitness

is one of them i would say entertainment apple is good at entertainment. So what does that mean? Well, I think music experiences, right? Virtual concerts with panning, spatial audio, panning audio where you're in a virtual concert space or you're in an actual concert space, but you're there virtually. I think virtual concerts or this new Apple Music live concert thing that you may have gotten a notification for in the music app, imagine a VR application of that where you can actually be there and play it back. They bought that company. Do you remember? Next VR? That's what that company did.

Apple bought that company. I'll also say that I know that they're not super popular, but 3D movies, there are lots of them. So I think that's a thing that they will do, is they will let you watch 3D movies.

I wonder if they're secretly making 3D versions of their Apple TV shows. They could at least make experiences. Like James said this in the chat, but like explore the Ted Lasso training room. Right, exactly.

Everything but the smell. Yeah, but you could also imagine that they, I've done that. I've watched a couple of 3D movies on the Quest and it's okay, but the resolution is low. but if you've got a better resolution and you've got the spatial audio and all that like it could be really and actually sitting in a virtual movie theater it's actually kind of fun then you bring in share play and now your friends are also in the virtual movie theater with you watching the movie uh it gets interesting it's not probably

the killer app but it's something that that um needs to be there uh i wonder if they are going to be extensions to game center and this is i know i said no games but i wonder if there's a there are scenarios where existing games that are not like immersive vr games but are like other kinds of games that you play with people that you could be play in a virtual world and i'm not saying like they're going to bring the finally the chess app has its day finally finally but you know like i had a great experience playing vr poker right on the quest 2 and that's not exactly a poker is not a super immersive game. It is a board game, essentially. It's a card game, but yeah, there's the table.

But with other people and spatial audio and their emojis and all that, and it suddenly becomes really interesting. So, and I do think, yes, for business applications, maybe it's some similar things. I also wonder, I'll just throw this out here because the thought occurred to me, virtual iPad or iPhone where you're literally,

you can have, maybe it's your iPhone, but it's like floating in the air and you can actually like just reach out with your hand and touch apps and scroll and stuff. Oh, what if? You should be able to do that, right?

What if you could hold your phone and look at it, but it does stuff because you can see it right like ar comes out of the phone say you know what i mean like you look at it you look like you tap the weather app and the weather app pops out of the phone and you see it in front of you like you can build like a communication between the devices oh yeah i was actually thinking that you've got you've got your virtual iphone in the virtual world and you tap on world and you tap on an app and you can bring that app out and just float it around somewhere if you want. There's lots of interesting things, but that's the question is what did they choose to do? What works well and what do people want to see? And then in the the answer is not a lot of people are going to buy it. But I think that the feeling there will be if they do it right and there's a buzz about it, some people will buy it.

And then also they will be priming the pump for whatever comes next. I was having a conversation with a friend of the show, underscore Widgetsmith, recently. And we were talking about that exact idea of widgets and how that could be a thing like imagine if you could take your widget smith widget and actually pin it to the wall in space right and you could turn around and look at it and you'd look away and it you know it's always like physically on that wall all the time if that makes sense right i know this is a hard concept to explain i have just now realized how terrible it's going to be over the next few years for us to try and explain this stuff on the show.

I've just now realized that, how horrible it will be to try and explain mixed reality concepts in pure audio form. So we have that to look forward to. And that's why I'm happy to announce today that we're going to be inaugurating upgrade vr a podcast experience that happens inside virtual reality hey don't knock it jason snell we might actually do it you know what i mean maybe the future maybe that's the killer app

mike maybe podcasting is the killer app of vr we did have a moment on another podcast i do where we speculated do people picture us while we're us while they're listening to the podcast? Are they picturing two guys sitting with microphones chatting or not? I do. And I thought, well, VR is an answer to that. This is because I know what my friend's studios look like, right? Yeah. So when I listen to you on a podcast, I very frequently imagine you sitting in your studio.

Yeah, sure. Talking into the microphone. Yeah, I've never been you sitting in your studio. Yeah, sure. Talking into the microphone. Yeah, I've never been to Mega Studio, so I don't. I don't. You've seen pictures. But I can picture you. There's a beard, there's a microphone, there's glasses, you know. I got it. But what I'm saying is, yeah, maybe that is, maybe we have... I'm joking about it, but the truth is...

I'm not joking. I think that would be really fun. Would it be shocking if the Discord for members ends up being like a little concert hall where our Memojis are bopping around while we're talking? It'd be kind of great, man. No joke, that would be really fun. Like every show is a live show. Every show is a live show? All right. There we go. That's it. We're done here. Thanks, Apple. Again, I'd like to formally announce Upgrade VR, which we're going to be coming.

It may be, we may have to announce it in several months. What is that? Approximately several months. If the tools existed, I would do it for sure. It's intriguing.

That's another way of presenting it for people who want to have a different experience i mean i think that's what everybody's going to have to experiment with and half of well okay 90 of what gets experimented with will prove to have been a failure but you hit on the good stuff and that's that's why we're all here is because the good stuff changes everything this episode of upgrade is brought to you by Ladder. Every now and then you hear about the financial administration involved when a loved one passes, including who in the family inherits what. On that note, it makes sense why people get life insurance,

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ladder for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. I have some hashtag ask upgrade questions for you, Jason, to finish out today's episode. First comes from Break, who asks, now Apple have introduced the Max and Ultra monikers to indicate better than the Pro in terms of performance. and Ultra monikers to indicate better than the Pro in terms of performance, do you think that the Mac Pro or even the MacBook Pro could be due for a rebrand? For example, Mac Ultra to indicate the highest level of performance? Always like thinking about these questions, these marketing questions. My gut feeling is no, because there's a lot of complexity here already. And I don't think apple really wants to

have a mac pro and a mac max oh god don't do that and a mac ultra i think they could do it but i feel like it's better i guess the question would be there is no mac pro anymore it becomes the mac ultra yeah i don't know i think it it's fine. I think anything is possible, but I feel like there's no need to add another layer here. Yeah, I would be intrigued. It's like, what makes it more than Pro? What makes Studio, Studio? Where does Studio sit?

Is Studio more than Pro? But then it's also less than Pro, depending on the type of Pro. It's funny. And Mini? Where's Mini come into all of this? I don't know. It's small less than Pro, depending on the type of Pro. It's funny. And Mini, where's Mini come into all of this? I don't know. It's small.

Richard asks, do you think Apple will eventually release their A-series chips on a not one year cycle to put them in lockstep with the subsequent M-series development? So let me flesh this out a little bit more. The A-series chips, which goes in the iPhones, the iPads, etc., they have in the past been refreshed every year. Even though apparently the rumors are that it can split at this time, there would still be a new one for the pros. It would still be every year.

The M-series chips look like they're going to be 18 months to two years, maybe. So Richard wants to know, could we imagine a time or do we think it would happen where the A-series chips would also go out of the yearly timeframe for refreshment? I think no, because I think that the A-series chips

on the one-year cycle are an important differentiator for Apple about new iPhones. I think Apple still likes the idea that they're pushing, they want a new iPhone model every year. And while you could do a new iPhone model without upgrading the processor by upgrading the other stuff around it, I think so much of what Apple does is enabled by the changes that they make on the processor, that they would really be hesitant to pull that back to a two-year cycle. And it's a very competitive market. And although Apple is out ahead of it, I think that they would be reluctant to do that. So I never say never.

They certainly could choose to do it if they wanted to, if they felt that they didn't need to differentiate on chip every year because people don't really care. But it is a useful thing. And remember, when Apple does a new chip, they're not just saying it's faster. It's not like in the days of computer chips where it was like, well, more megahertz this time. A lot of times what Apple is doing when they do a new chip is it's a different machine learning set of cores. There are more of them or they're different or their image signal processor has changed

or there's some other thing that gets enabled, a feature that gets enabled on the new iPhone because of a change that they made specifically on the chip. And that's why I feel like they will keep marching it in lockstep with the iPhone as much as they can. That last point that you said kind of changed my thinking a little bit, because I was going to suggest that at a certain point, it's diminishing returns with how much they can eke out year over year, right? But you make a good point that it doesn't have to be the core counts changed or the chip is now faster. It could be something as simple as

we've we've tweaked this part of the chip which means really it's a new chip or the core design right like you could literally have the same cores as last year because this year we didn't change the cpu cores but we changed this other thing and that enables this new feature and that's why this is the a whatever it is so you know again like if it doesn't serve them they will they will stop if it doesn't serve them they will stop but i think the fear would be that um not having the new chip like having a new chip is a it distances the new product from the previous products and that's helpful um But I think the other truth of it is, yeah, that they do the chip changes to enable new features that they use to sell their iPhones.

And so it would be, how do you differentiate an iPhone from the previous generation iPhone when the chip didn't change? You could upgrade the camera, but do you need to change the image signal processor to handle the new camera? Or can the old chip handle it? Not saying they couldn't do it, but I think that they get a lot of benefit out of doing it. And I will also say, I'm sure that they are coming up with ways to figure out the sync between the A-series and the M-series chips. And that we may see that flow be a little bit different than M every two years and A every year. It may be that the M is on a different cycle. It may be

that the M gets some things in front of the A and other things before the A or before and after, depending on the sync. But I don't think Apple's going to change their iPhone strategy just because of the sync up with the M series, because in the end, that would be the tail wagging the dog. The tail's on the end. So that makes sense because the iPhone is the most important product. And, you know, I think it all comes back to does this serve the iPhone to have a new A series every year? And I think it does for now. So I think they'll keep doing it. And Matt asks you get exactly one third-party iOS app to use and everything else on your phone has to be Apple's

apps or a web browser what third-party app do you keep I want to just scream into the void here and I'm curious what you think about this. My answer, I decided, was sort of a philosophical answer, which is what's the thing I care about the most on my iPhone that, or iPad, I suppose. This is iOS here, but let's say iPhone, everything else on your phone. What's the one thing I care about the most on the iPhone that has the worst web version, right? Or it's like doesn't have an Apple component or the Apple component is so terrible.

Right, right. So this is, so for example, I'm not going to say Overcast because there's a podcast app. Yep. example i'm not going to say overcast because there's a podcast app yep even though i love overcast and it's in my doc i don't think i want to spend my precious single app on that and the podcast app is getting better like it's always getting better like a lot of the features that we used to wish they would add they have them now so yeah so i don't i don't know because I didn't investigate the web equivalents of all of these things, but my guess is that it would be something like Twitterific or Slack or it would be something like that, right? Where it's like, well, can I just use Twitter on the website? Probably. Can I use Slack on the iPhone in a web browser? You can. Yeah, it's probably fine. So I would have to find, I would have to go through all of the apps on my home screen

and say, do they have an equivalent on an Apple app or an equivalent on the web that was good enough? And that would lead me to finally something that I absolutely had to do. But if it's got an equivalent on the Apple, I'm good. So I don't have a clear answer here, but I do have a philosophical answer. I would be trying to find something that wasn't good on the web and didn't have an Apple equivalent. And that would be my answer. Well, I have an answer. Okay.

I'm not going to chicken out with this question like some people. I don't have my home screen memorized. I literally don't know what's on it. So that's a problem. I didn't even need to know my home screen. And then when you were talking, I looked at my home screen and I made my final decision. And it was my original gut decision. It's Timery.

I'm not surprised. Timery is my favorite iOS app ever. Anyway, I love it. It's amazing. But the other experience is using Toggle, and Toggle sucks. Like, the Toggle app

sucks, which is why Timery exists in the first place, because the Toggle app is so bad. Time tracking is very important to me, and I really wouldn't be able to do it efficiently at all, like when i look at everything else i could get by with you know i could use todoist in the web browser uh i loved

you but i could just set a bunch of alarms for myself all the time even though it wouldn't work as well instagram in the web browser uh i would miss the team sharing features of spark but i could in a pinch i could use apple's mail app you know like slack i can use on the team sharing features of Spark, but I could, in a pinch, I could use Apple's Mail app. You know, like Slack I can use on the web. Like all of these things I could just use on the web instead. But Timery is only an iOS app, so, a Mac app, but it's only like a native Apple platforms app. And I really wouldn't want to use the toggle website.

So that's what I would go with. Yeah, I think that's a good choice. Yeah, for me, I think it would end up being either slack or twitterific just because i use it would be annoying i use them all the time yeah it would be an annoyance thing i think and it would be a huge annoyance um yeah that's probably what i do like the mlb app i think i could probably do that on the web but it's it's it's okay i can survive without it my um i might have to choose the roomba app the iRobot app if only because i do need to tell my roomba like there's a there's an alexa skill you could just enable that and just shout it into the void great you know they actually this is some

breaking iRobot news the new version of the iRobot app for iOS supports shortcuts. And it's limited, but it does mean that you can go, ahoy, telephone, start the robot, and have it actually start the robot. Super good. Which is nice. Yeah. So anyway, I find this question disconcerting because the truth is, although there are apps that I would miss miss i could get by with the apple equivalent or the web version and i think that's i think that's really interesting it says something about how apple has done a pretty good job of providing kind of a foundational level of apps um it also says something about how a lot of apps are just nicer versions of the website when i look at my

home screen the apps are basically one of two things it is either what i think is a better version of a function than apple's app meaning there is already an app for it but i have something i prefer more or it is a app that has a really good web version. Well, like realistically, Instagram's web app is not that different to the actual iPhone app. Like it just feels a little bit better, but you can still do everything. So yeah, same as something like Discord and Slack, right? When you go on the web versions,

it just feels like the app for good reasons, right? Because really the apps are basically just fancified web versions. They are exactly right. If you would like to send in a question for us to answer on the show, send out to it with the hashtag AskUpgrade or use question mark AskUpgrade

in the RelayFM members Discord. You will get access to this if you sign up for Upgrade Plus. Go to getupgradeplus.com. If you've not already signed up for Upgrade Plus, let me sell you on it here. If you like this show, if you love this show, if you look forward to it every week, you can get moregradeplus.com. If you've not already signed up for Upgrade Plus, let me sell you on it here. If you like this show, if you love this show, if you look forward to it every week, you can get more of it. Every single week, we make a longer version of this show for people

that subscribe and support the show with Upgrade Plus. You also get the show without any ads. They come out at the same time. You get a ton of extra benefits for being a Relay Infant member, like access to our Discord, bonus content every month month you get bonus content every year we do bonus shows of crossover shows we're going to be putting one together which we'll talk about in a few weeks time you also get our wonderful newsletter that steven puts together there's tons of great stuff available for a RelayFM member but if you choose to supportgrade by going to getupgradeplus.com, the benefits that you get for supporting this show is a longer, ad-free version every single

week. It also helps support me and Jason, which we greatly appreciate. If you have done that, if you have already signed up for Upgrade Plus at either $5 a month or $50 a year, thank you so much. We are actually approaching the two-year anniversary now, I think within the next few weeks. I think

it's like a couple of weeks from now is how long we've been doing Upgrade Plus. And I love doing it. And it has made a real change to the way that we produce the show. And we greatly appreciate your support. But you can always join at any time. You can go back and listen to previous Plus content if you want to. It's all there in the feed waiting for you. Thank you so much to our sponsors of this week's episode. That is Trade Ladder and Sourcegraph. And thank you, as always, for listening. We'll be back next week with the draft.

Don't forget, we will record that episode live, as we always do, Monday, which will be Monday the 30th of May, 9 a.m. Pacific, noon Eastern time, 5 British summertime. You can work out the rest from there depending on where you live in the world. We hope that you'll join us live. 8 Alaska.

8 Alaska time, which is very important. We've got to keep mentioning that. Yeah, 6 Hawaii. Okay, great. Really just like picking off the real unique time zones here. Have you got any more for me? What is it like? Is it – oh, man, if I get this wrong. Is it...

One of the Australian time zones is like an extra half an hour? Oh yeah. It's like... It's 2am in Sydney. Mm-hmm. But... In Melbourne. No, it's also 2am in Melbourne.

Is it Adelaide? I don't know. Yeah, it is. It. in Melbourne. Is it Adelaide? I don't know. Yeah, it is. It's 1.30 a.m. in Adelaide, so get up early for an upgrade draft. Or do what most people do, which is just the podcast then will appear in your podcast player, and you can listen to it whenever you like.

But I'll say the draft and the keynote episodes, they're a wild time if you listen live. That's true. Everyone can listen live for free, but the conversation happens on our members' Discord, which you get if you're a wild time if you listen live. That's true. Everyone can listen live for free, but the conversation happens on our members' Discord, which you get if you're a member. Anyway, thanks for listening to this week's episode of Upgrade, and we'll be back next week. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Good drafting,

everybody.