Upgrade - 433: The Lava Lamp is Not Responding

Episode Date: November 14, 2022

Let's get real about the Apple VR headset. Is it really coming next year? What's it going to look like? What features should it have? What lessons can Apple learn from Meta's foray into VR products? We break it all down. Also, we've got home automation on our minds in various ways, as a smart switch fails Jason, Myke seeks advice, and it's beginning to look a lot like expensive fairy-light season.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 433 today's show is brought to you by squarespace and storyworth my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by jason snell hi jason hi mike how have we been doing this for 433 episodes? How is that possible? Just one episode at a time. Yeah, that's all you can do. I mean, unless you need to record extra. Anyway, yes, in one episode at a time. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think you always do one episode at a time, right? Even if you're doing extras, it's always one at a time. That's true. You do one and then you do the next. You can't take it more than...

If you try to record two podcasts at once, I don't advise it. I think it would think it would be a disaster no bad idea i have a hashtag snail talk question for you comes from rick and rick wants to know well rick starts by saying jason i loved the tea robo episode of the thoroughly considered podcast i also finished it since we last spoke it was a very good episode rick wants to know do you partake in and enjoy iced tea? Oh boy. Sure, iced tea is fine. If I have leftover tea in the teapot, like, let's say I make tea for Upgrade because I want

my voice to be clear and not having my throat being cleared every five minutes. And the caffeine. Caffeine delivery is important, you know? Caffeine delivery to make me talkative and also to get the phlegm out of my throat. But I might have some leftover. What might I do with something like that? What might I do? The answer is yes, I might actually drink it as iced tea. And in the summer, sure,

we've got a, you know, I've got a little iced tea. I actually have an iced tea maker, which is not as high tech or nice. It's a big plastic contraption that you stick you put water in the in the in the plastic contraption and ice in the bucket in the pitcher and you press a button and it basically just boils the water and runs it through a little steeping basket it's i hadn't really thought of it but it is basically a a sort of a low-end tea robot for iced tea. We do have that. And so, yeah, I'll do that too. That's fine. Sometimes with lemon, sometimes not.

Sugar? You sweet? Yeah. Yeah? There is something truly special about like really sweet iced tea. I mean, for me, it's Memphis where I've enjoyed this the most.

It's Memphis, sure. Because they make it that way. Most, outside of the South in the US, generally you need to supply your own sugar, which I do. And it's never as good, right? Because you got the granulated sugar and it has to dissolve and it's never as good.

But in the South, they just use the simple syrup. So they just pour it in. It's instantly dissolved, and it's this sweet thing. It's great. It's amazing. I've said this on many occasions. I'll say it again. If I lived in the South, I'd be dead by now because of all the barbecue and the sweet tea.

It's absolutely true. I would be gone. But you'd be dead happy, though. I would because barbecue is my favorite food and um sweet tea is a amazing drink and it would it's not yeah i don't recommend it if you would like to send in a snail talk question for us to open an episode of the show just send a tweet with the hashtag snail talk i use question marks no talking to relay fm members discord i have a couple of items to follow up so I was complaining or was questioning how good Siri commands were

to get lights to turn on and off when you're in a room Eric wrote in to say that if you add in here to the Siri request to turn on or off the lights it does a remarkable job of knowing where you are

and acting accordingly because I was not convinced that it knew which room I was in. So Eric suggests to try this. All right. Should I try it? Yes. Turn off the lights in here. Okay.

Which room? Living room? Jamie? Outside? Garage? Sorry, Eric. That didn't work as well as you wanted the lava lamp is not responding check the home app for more details oh no

after I told it what room I'm actually in which it doesn't know because it was my watch it was not on a home pod it did actually turn off the lights in here so I'll give it that. I think the key is the HomePod part. The lava lamp. Right?

Like, it's a device that has some kind of idea of where it is. I think that's probably the key part. I think that's it. So maybe it does work. It just doesn't work with the watch. But if I had my smart assistant on a HomePod in here. Yeah. Okay.

That's a good tip, Eric. Thank you. What I want to know, though, Jason, is what's happened to the lava lamp? Well, you know, funny story. I woke up on Sunday morning, and our Wi-Fi was down. Ah.

Okay. And so, and this is like, and funny, I was just listening to the ATP episode where they talked about Lutron Caseta switches and how the great thing is that it's on its own network. And so Wi-Fi is the thing that makes home networking and smart home devices not reliable. And I got to get that firsthand. UPS, an uninterruptible power system, for my router and my Wi-Fi so that if the power goes out, the router and the Wi-Fi stay on. And this is my oldest, I think, UPS that I have. And it's battery died. And the UPS's decision when the battery dies is to take all the devices that are on the plugs

that are backed up by the battery and turn them off. And so at three in the morning, my Wi-Fi and my fiber router were just unceremoniously shut down. And so I had in my pajamas, I was like, what is going on? I diagnosed it. I got out, I pulled out the UPS, I put in a power strip. I plugged it all back in. But I'll tell you, some devices, some Wi-Fi-based smart home devices do not like it when there is a power cycle like that. And so I have been, and the lava lamp will be next, the lights outside in the backyard didn't come on last night and i'm like i know what this is and all i literally all i did was i unplugged them and because it's a smart outlet unplugged and replugged the smart switch out there and then they worked like i had to reboot uh homebridge because it was confused and the undoubtedly the smart switch that the lava lamp

is plugged into just needs to be unplugged and replugged at which point it will get back on the network that's back up and it's been back up for ages now but they just get really confused and this is what we talk about when we say that relying on a wi-fi network for your smart home devices is a problem because sometimes the wi-fi network gets kind of out of whack and the devices get out of whack. And then, you know, you have to power cycle everything in order to get it back together, as opposed to something like the Lutron Caseta stuff, which is working fine because it's got its own radio network and they talk to themselves and they are connected to the rest of the house, but they don't rely on the Wi-Fi to stay up and running. I wonder if some of these devices, like with that kind of turning off the power, like that almost treat it like a reset.

Like it may trigger like a, you know, like they think that you've purposely reset the device or something. I think what's happening is that the smart home devices that are on Wi-Fi are dumb, and they lose the network, and they go, oh, no. And then they never, and they, until you reboot them, they don't know how to reconnect to the Wi-Fi network that went down. That seems to be what's going on here. Like, oh, no, I don't know what to do. Well, you know, this happens on networks all the time. You should know what to do, but they don't.

And so then you power cycle them, and then they come on on and go, oh, where's my Wi-Fi network? There it is. It's been there all along. Stupid thing. But that's the bad ones are like that. I think there are good ones that aren't like that, but the bad ones are like that. Yeah, I can definitely empathize because I haven't had Internet for like seven days. We had Internet.

Now the Internet's gone away at the new place, so there's no internet anymore. And it's kind of made the home network a bit of a disaster, including all of our smart stuff. So you had it and then you lost it. We were using the previous owner's internet because we wanted to sign up, but they weren't canceling. So I just decided to set up, but they weren't canceling. So I just

decided to set up my network. Then they canceled it. And now we're waiting to get re-set up again, which hopefully will be tomorrow. But when it comes to internet service providers, I never actually believe anything that they say until it's done. So we'll see what happens there, but we're having an issue now where we need to be off Wi-Fi to have a connection to the internet, but then we need to turn on Wi-Fi on our devices so we can turn off the lights.

Let's do some follow-up here. Turn on the lava lamp. Turn on the lava lamp. You got it?. Oh, hey, nearly. Turn on the lava lamp. You got it? Coming right up. Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, the lava lamp is on.

And all I had to do was take a smart outlet, unplug it, and plug it back in. Perfect. That's it. That's all it takes. That's it. Not so smart, is it? You need to put the smart outlet on a smart outlet so you can turn off the smart outlet for the smart outlet.

And then you'll be good to go. it's it's just it's dumb speaking of which jason i saw an article today i think you might be excited about this philips hue christmas lights ah like string lights this is a new product uh it's available today i actually bought some uh i think this is a great idea it's 250 mini smart leds on a 20 meter cord which can be used on a christmas tree stairway mantel or more says mac rumors hmm interesting that is what i was talking about the idea of having some uh smart controllable led i'm sure there are lots of cheap ones out there that are not hue based and these aren't cheap it's 160 dollars but yeah i've had nothing but good things to say about the hue line of products uh so i think this might be

a fun little thing plus i'll say my wife id, just loves these kinds of lights. We've always had what we call fairy lights somewhere in the home. So these won't just be used at Christmas for us, I think. But over the Christmas period, we can put them around the tree. So I think that'd be nice and cute. Festavia. Festivia. Festavia. Festavia.

I don't like the name of that. I was thinking it would be Festiva, but it's Festavia. Festivia. Festavia. Festavia. I don't like the name of that, but... I was thinking it would be Festiva, but it's Festavia. Festavia. That's the Dutch for you. Germanifying everything like that. Festavia. Yeah. It's a sign Festavia.

Indeed. Speaking about the festive season. Festive season means an important thing around here. It is time to vote for the 9th Annual Upgradees Awards. Yes. You can go to upgradees.vote and you can put your votes in

now for the 9th Annual Upgradees. Are the votes the nominations? Yeah, nominations, votes, nominations, votes, something like that. You know what we're saying. It's now time. So the nominations are open.

You can go and fill out the Google form. Voting is open from now until December 12th. So you have about a month. As a programming note, we have condensed some categories this year. So we previously had an iOS game of the year and a game of the year. We now just have game of the year. So we're bringing that together. And previously we had three podcast categories. We had best tech podcast, best non-tech podcast, and best podcast newcomer. We now condense this to just best podcast,

which is one podcast category now. But as a note, we had had some previous Lifetime Achievement Award winners, the Accidental Tech Podcast and the Flophouse. So they are going to continue. They are not eligible for winning. So it is not worth making that nomination because it won't be counted. So they're going to continue being Lifetime Achievement Award winners. We encourage you to recommend maybe your second favorite podcast if either of those is your favorite.

So we're going to now just do the one overall podcast of the year category. This is partly to bring it in line with the other categories in this kind of block. So we do of the year. You can just choose, right? You just choose your favorite and we're just going to go with it. Yep. You can find previous winners at Upgradies.com,

which the wonderful Zach maintains for us. And the changes to these categories will be reflected at some point in the not too distant future on the website. So that is, we're getting ready. I think we're going to be probably, I'm expecting, we haven't set this, but I'm expecting December 19th

is when the upgradies will occur because December 26th will be the holiday special, I expect, is what we'll be doing. Oh, really? I thought it would be the other way around, right? It's either going to be December 19th or December 26th. Me and Jason have not had this conversation yet, but you have a month to do the voting, and it will be one of those last two episodes of the year. What if it's January 2nd? I don't want that.

Okay. I'd like to do itnd? I don't want that. Okay. I'd like to do it in December. But we'll see. We have some scheduling to do as well, right? There's a lot of holidays happening there, as there always are. That's why I wanted to get the voting going now. Yep, that's a good idea.

We had enough time, and so then I'll have enough time, depending on whenever we do it, to get the tabulation complete because a lot of work goes into that. I wanted to put a request out to Upgradians.

So in the house move I'm kind of redoing all of my home automation stuff and I've decided to kind of redoing all of my home automation stuff. And I've decided to kind of do what I can to focus on going all in on HomeKit this time around. Where previously I'd kind of dabbled with HomeKit and Amazon Echo, that kind of stuff.

But my goal is that all of the smart devices that i buy will be able to tie into home kit and then if i can tie them into other things with matter of integration is great but like home kit is the goal right it's just the system that i like the most and then if i have all of these devices in home kit then i can automate them to do interesting things together so i was look i would like if if uh upgradians have recommendations you can send them to do interesting things together so i was look i would like if if uh upgradians have recommendations you can send them to me um in the follow-up in a channel in discord or send them to me on twitter or whatever uh i would love to know products that you like um i will say not a car products i'll get to that in a second, or if you have YouTubers that you enjoy,

blogs, influencers in home automation, focusing around HomeKit, I would love some recommendations for people. The reason I mentioned Aqara, so I got an Aqara hub so I could use some of the leak sensors that David Sparks recommended. But I also have a HomeKit alarm system by a company called Abode. So this is like a, it's like a four alarm system, kind of like a ring or something like that, but it's all tied natively into HomeKit.

The problem with Acara is their hub works. It tries to, it tells HomeKit it's an alarm system system even if you don't use it for alarm system stuff so then i have two alarm systems in one home kit which causes tons of problems i have learned because then you kind of have to set both for this it's like a whole nightmare so a car is i don't think it's going to work for me unless they have a hub that does not tell home kit that it's an alarm which is odd to me that its hub does that because you can set akara stuff up like and you can you can buy all of akara's sensors and turn it into an alarm system right

like that's kind of what they're doing but it's odd to me that will only let you do that or not and so if you have some kind of HomeKit alarm system, and so part of the issue I'm having is, you know, you have these like categories at the top now of HomeKit, right? So you've got like lights and stuff like that where it tries to, you can tap them, it takes you to each thing.

If I set my HomeKit alarm system, but not the Aqara because I'm only using it for leak sensors, it tells me that my alarm system is disabled even when it isn't. And so like at first glance, that's not helpful to me. So I then would have to set both of them and that's just a nightmare and I don't want to do that. So anyway, I found leak sensors that actually just tied directly into HomeKit. I'm going to try those out as well. But so if you're going to tell me about Aqara stuff, I kind of can't use it unless you can also tell me that they have a product where

it doesn't do this. My Googling has not helped me to try and find something that doesn't do this. So yeah, I would love recommendations though, if you enjoy stuff in the HomeKit world. Yes, I've checked out many episodes of automators and MacPower users, so assume I've got that, but I would like from listeners too, if they have any recommendations. This episode is brought to you by our friends over at Squarespace, the all-in-one platform for building your brand

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So shall we do some rumor roundup just now? Yeah, let's do it. All right, so I've got a couple of things for you. DigiTimes is reporting that the production of Apple's Mixed Reality headset is set to begin in March of 2023. Looking at high prices, low quantities, currently expecting around 700,000 to 800,000 shipments a year.

Quote from MacRumors, who's reporting on this too, despite low profitability on production of the initial headset, Apple's manufacturing partners are said to be willing to work with Apple on the project to prove their technical capabilities so they will be well positioned for future AR VR products.

What do you think about this? This product is so strange, right? It is, again, like low quantities. So are they setting the bar low here? Are they going to be like, well, this is really a first crack at it and like i think it's funny because i've always said apple apple always wants to sell millions of anything it makes and here we are talking about low quantities under a million i mean it makes me feel more and more that this is more of a tech demonstration and a developer product than it is uh and maybe they'll they'll you know

sell it into some industries or something but like that it's not a consumer product they don't expect it to be a consumer product and they're perhaps even knowing what the price is they want to it's interesting that they want to ship it and call it a product but also that they may set expectations pretty low for it i think it's uh i think it's I think it's interesting because the other choice would be if you only think you're going to be able to make less than a million of them, don't ship them. But I guess that's what the story is going to be. And when DigiTimes says they will produce it starting in March of 23,

it does really make me wonder about the timeline of when this is going to be announced and when it's going to ship. Because you and I have said for a while that it will probably have its own event. And I think that's probably right. But I do wonder at what point the message becomes very rapidly about it being a developer environment for a future Apple platform as well, and that it becomes more of a developer story. And if you're starting to produce them in March, you're getting perilously close to just announcing it at WWDC.

So I've had a new thought based on this, like just reading these rumors. I could imagine now like an early 2023 announcement. They start the production and then there's a big developer focus on it in June at WWDC. It's a pre-announcement explaining what they're doing. And then it ships in June, maybe, along with a lot of talk at WWDC about it. Maybe. I mean, that's what... Because this is... Let's be honest. Who's buying this thing? Who's buying this thing? It's not meant for the masses,

clearly, at the price that it is. And they know that because they're apparently, according to this report, not even expecting to make a lot of them and ship a lot of them. So what's the purpose here? And I think the purpose really is that Apple thinks this is a platform for the future. And so it wants to get developer support behind it. Yep. And that's why I keep thinking it's kind of a piece of developer hardware slash maybe some targeted industry slash obviously people who just want the cool new thing. And that's what this product is. And it's not the one for the masses. It's a couple generations away from being the one for the masses it's it's a couple generations away from being the one for the masses um yeah i wonder if the uh reception to the meta quest pro which has been bad i think yep uh that people are like it's not really that great uh and it's so expensive and i feel like it's maybe this is just me because I have a Quest 2, but it feels a little bit like the shine

on that old product remains where they're like, but this thing is fine and it's way cheaper. And this thing is so expensive and it's not that much better. I wonder if people who are working on this inside Apple are also looking at that and saying, yeah, we're going to need to do a cheaper version of this real fast if we want

people to use our platform. Because if you're a developer, it's great that maybe Apple's saying the future is we're going to do mixed reality and AR and VR, and here's our first one, and we want you to develop for it. But part of the developer story is who's going to buy the work that I'm doing? Who's going to buy the software I'm building? Because developers aren't just making a living selling developer apps to other developers, right? There needs to be an audience for it. Who is that? And when are they going to arrive? And if I'm a developer, it's great if you give me a $2,000 headset or you sell me a $2,000 headset now with the idea that this is going to be the ground floor of Apple's next great computing platform. Okay, Apple. All right. But what is my expectation that this is going to be a product for the masses? And one way for Apple to do that would be to say, or at least to be

plotting in the background that the product that they're going to release in 2024, at least one of those products is going to be a more affordable version. And maybe they offer the high-end version as well as a more affordable version. I don't know whether they're going to say, nope, it's $2,000 or nothing or what. But like, if I was a developer, if I'm James Thompson and I'm like, finally, my Apple VR calculator slash Dice app is going to happen. And you know, James loves this new technology stuff. But if it's a $2,500 headset, and he has no reasonable expectation that anybody is going to be a regular person buying it in the millions until 2024 2025. That's a tough

calculation to make beyond your pure enthusiasm for Apple's platforms. So I'm still pretty skeptical of this. And I'm only more skeptical of it since the Facebook product, the Meta product, seems to have sort of been rushed out in order to beat Apple to the punch. And it has come out with a thud. That's not great.

Because Apple's going to be way more expensive. It seems like Meta's issue is the software rather than the hardware. And I'm not saying you're saying anything different but like that the hardware is fine the hardware seems fine but that there's no nothing appreciably i mean what i was struck by in all the reviews is that it's really more a nice quest and quest two and like i i think a lot of the reviewers are like, okay, so, right. And like, but for, for what?

Like, could you have done a nicer, a quest three with color cameras and a little bit upgraded screen, but it was under a thousand dollars. And would that have been a better product than this thing where they seem to have spared no expense. Right. But you're right. It's, it's not just that the hardware, the hardware seems okay. They made some questionable decisions.

I think there's debatable things in the choices that they made. But what really seems weird is that people try it and they're like, okay, but is it that much better than the other thing? And the answer seems to be not really. And I wonder if there's a lesson there for Apple that like, oh, yeah, you might like a $500 VR headset, but wait till you see a $2,500 headset. And the response is going to be, no, I don't see where that extra 2000 is in value. Right. Like I know that it's there in the hardware, but it doesn't provide enough value for anybody to care about it. And I think bottom line is nobody, you know, you don't, there's no such thing as a million plus, millions, millions new platform product that's a VR headset for $2,500, right?

Like, that's not going to happen. It has to come down. So, I don't know. I think it's a real challenge if you're a developer and you've been thinking about developing for this platform. Apple does really need to make the case that this is the future and that eventually a lot of people are going to buy them. Otherwise, not even developers are going to... Why develop apps on a platform

that's so expensive that only the developers developing apps can buy it, right? There needs to be an act two there. And what is that? Well, maybe it's this. Mark Gurman is saying that Apple is looking for software engineers

to further their work in creating VR environments and the ability to watch video in the headset. Two quotes from job listings via Mark Gurman's newsletter. Quote, the most interesting job listing is one that specifically calls out the development of a 3D mixed reality world, suggesting that Apple is working on a virtual environment that is similar to the metaverse. So don't expect Apple to embrace that term and build tools and frameworks to enable connected experiences in a 3d mixed reality world mark also references next vr which was that company that apple bought a really long time ago now which they were like filming sports games and stuff like that and apple acquired that company for it seems like technology and deals and all that kind of stuff.

Sure. I mean, they're laying the groundwork here. I think I keep coming back to the question of what's the product that people are going to buy and what's the reason they're going to buy it. And, and the fact is nobody's made a breakthrough VR headset. The quest two is probably the one that has broken through the most.

And for a while, their meta had cut the price. And I don't think that would be considered even a hit product, but it is at least a viable product. And I know that there's some stuff like the HTC Vive. And I mean, there are a handful, but this is not a category that's lighting the world on fire. So I appreciate that Apple seems really committed to building this thing. That's great. And maybe they believe that really has to have all of this stuff in order for it to be viable. Apple is expected at any point in the near future to make something that is going to be priced in a way that lots of people are going to want to buy it. And that's troubling to me. As much as they put into it, because it takes both... The calculation is complex, right? The calculation

is not just like, what do you do with it? And then what do I pay for it? And Apple seems to be working really hard on the what do you do with it and what can it do? But the other part of it, it just isn't there yet. And what surprises me is that Apple seems to be devoted to releasing a product so early that it's not a product that anybody should buy who isn't working in vr or software development and that's that doesn't feel like apple to me but that may be where they are so this actually like it it goes back to i think what you were saying about meta a moment ago right with the with the quest pro of like are they getting it out just so they can be apple are apple going to release this product because they think they have to right now and if they do if that is what they're doing that is not that is not the apple that we have known in the past right where like typically there's this

old adage of like apple wait until they've got the thing that's going to leapfrog everyone else right so you've got to hope that they've got the thing that's going to leapfrog everyone else. So you've got to hope that they've got that, because if they're doing this because they're like, oh, well, you know, we've kind of got to get into this market so we can stake our claim, that's not the right way around that they normally do things. I think part of the motivation here is that there is a competitor out there

that views VR as, at least has up to now. We'll see, because, you know, Meta has changed. They laid off a bunch of people, including some people in VR development. And Mark Zuckerberg has gotten a lot of criticism for the amount of money he's putting into it. He's still pressing on it, though, even with those layoffs. And Apple is looking at a competitor that almost views VR as an existential crisis for their company, that meta's future is VR.

And Apple looks at that and says, okay, they have raised the stakes here. And if we don't get into this game now, even though it's early, it's too early. If we don't get into this game now, uh,

we'll be too far behind. And I'll point to like the fact that meta keeps buying it the quest has been a successful enough platform that it's allowed meta to identify successes on vr platforms and buy them right we've talked about this they bought supernatural the exercise thing uh do they don't think that one went through they bought or they tried to buy supernatural and then there were questions about it. So this is like, Meta really wants to control this. And if you're Apple, I could see strategically, you're like, we got to get out there.

Even if it's just a developer kit, and it's not something for the masses. What they risk, messaging-wise, is coming out with something nobody wants, and everybody's saying, oh, it's a flop, and never revisiting it, right? That is the danger, is that they're not going to, because it's Apple flop and never revisiting it right that's the that is the danger is that they're not gonna because it's apple and everybody pays attention to apple i'm not sure apple can sneak a product by and say well it's not for you right like it's like if apple tried to come out with the only mac that they made was a mac pro like nobody's gonna use the mac then right like it's just not gonna happen i mean maybe some people at the very high end will buy it but like that's not a viable platform. Or if the only Apple Watch was the Apple Watch Ultra, right? Like that wouldn't make any sense.

Yeah. But if they feel like they have to be out there, this is I'm going to be really interested with how they talk about this. Because one way you could see this product release is we believe in the future of VR. And so we have decided to make the best VR headset ever made. And it's early in the growth of vr and we expect that this will mostly be of interest to industry and developers right now but in the future this is going to be a huge market and so we're going to get started now and if they if they talk about it in that way and really try to set the bar honestly very low then maybe i can see it

but i do think that they're being motivated by the fact that there are big pocketed competitors who um who feel like they have to do this to survive and apple doesn't have to do this to survive necessarily but apple doesn't want to let this opportunity get away and so you end up having to raise the stakes yourself to match them and the reason we're here and the reason we're having these conversations is everyone's looking for the next platform, right? Like that's everyone's looking for it. Right.

And Facebook didn't get a phone, right? Facebook doesn't have a platform. They tried and failed. And so now they want the next one. And this is the only one on the horizon. Like it might not be the next big platform. It might not. But there isn't another one right there

just isn't one in fact i i would say i said this about the the car like five years ago and i'll say it about vr it's hard actually not to believe that at some point if we play the infinite time scale game yeah it's hard not to believe that the miniaturization of technology will not continue to the point where the devices get smaller and smaller and we have more subtle inputs on our bodies and direct input into our senses via glasses or contacts or whatever it is, or lasers and drones that fire lasers in your eyes. I don't know. I don't want that. But I don't want that but like but uh i don't want it but maybe it'll happen so it's hard if you if you put on your like uh i'm a futurist that kind of hat it's got like a propeller on I think it's hard to argue that integrating more directly with senses is not a strong possibility as where the future of computing devices goes.

I mean, not necessarily. I think there's biological reasons why it won't be. Right. It's hard to get into the eyes because you have to have something hanging in front of your face. And that is not easy, but in, you know,

and so maybe people will reject it and prefer little screens and stuff that they can hold and that and fold and unfurl and all of that. But I don't know. I think it's not a bad, what I'm saying is I think it's not a bad bet to make. If you're a tech company that has so much money that you don't know what to do with it. And you know that it's not going to be like the iPhone Apple was able to kind of do on their own. But now it's like everybody knows this is the category. And so you're either in or you're out. And the stakes are really high. I don't know if it's. Let me put it this way. For Apple, I think it's a good bet because they've got the money and they don't want to be left behind and become irrelevant.

And they've got everything you need. They've got the operating systems. They have apps. They have app stores. They have the integrations of other devices. If they didn't do this, if they weren't doing this at all, I'd be worried, right?

Like it makes sense for them to try. Yeah. Apple is a rich guy at a high stakes poker game. Yeah. Facebook feels like it's like a super sweaty guy who has put in all of his money on this bet. And if he doesn't win. I mean, they're also very rich. He's bankrupt. They are, but I am a lot less confident in their other businesses surviving into the future as I am Apple's business.

Well, I don't think you're wrong there at all. And I think that's why they're doing this anyway. Right? Like, I think Zuckerberg knows that he owns declining businesses. Like, they're very powerful, but they're not going to continue going up. Right. And if I'm Apple, it's more like this is a hedge against, this is the one technology that could make the iPhone irrelevant. So we need to put money into this as a hedge, right? That's what it is. But I don't think it's unrealistic in the long run. But I'll also point out that

people were talking about, like Doug Engelbart designed the mouse in the what, late 60s? And so you're talking about 16 years-ish before the mac was the first kind of viable product to popularize the mouse as a thing and i just keep being reminded of like and there was networking in the 60s and the 70s but it didn't really go anywhere until the 90s and personal computers started out in the 70s but weren't super commonplace like ubiquitous on everybody's desk in every office until the 90s right so you're talking a lot of times these things everybody knows that that's where it's going but it doesn't mean it goes there fast because of all the technical reasons even if we move faster with our tech now i I think it's not unreasonable to look at this VR stuff and say, it's important to be here,

but is Apple going to make the iPhone or iPod or whatever of VR goggles in 2025, in the mid-2020s, in the 2020s? And I don't know if anyone is. I mean, this could very well be everybody spending a lot of money to be the last one standing when they finally can get the technology where it needs to be in 2030.

And that is not something that, like, it's going to make the press coverage of the meantime of all the money being spent on this pretty brutal. But I'm not convinced that AR and VR isn't that far off. Well, I will say, because it's just kind of funny on time, the original Oculus Kickstarter was in 2016, in January. So it's been nearly seven years since that. You know what? This is just, I think that was like a funny thing of like, oh, it took 16 years. Well, we're about halfway from in that idea. So another five or six years.

Right. Yeah. I mean, or six years. Right. Yeah. I mean, it could happen. Right. But I'm just saying that I think that there's some perspective here about like, don't necessarily figure like it's hard to look at this stuff

and say, oh yeah, it's right on the verge of being popular. And it's going to go through a cycle like personal computers did, which I think not like smartphones did. I think smartphones happened a lot faster where people were like, oh, wait a second. My phone could, let's do that.

Like, that's going to be my next phone. But personal computers, it was very much like, it's expensive. It's for hobbyists. It's for universities. We're going to try to expose kids to it in school by having one, just one, that kids will cluster around or take in turn. Right. Like and then and then it was, OK, some businesses are going to have a few in a few places. And then some people who've got enough money like media moguls are going to buy power books and that's going to be a thing. But that it really did take a long time to get to the point where it's sort of like there's a computer on every desk and everybody's got a laptop and every house has a computer.

Like it took a long time for it to grow like that because you had to get the prices down and have the reason that you would do it up to the point where you could get there. And in some parts of the world, it never got there, and the smartphone is what got it there. So VR feels a little bit like that to me. I don't feel like we're on the verge of a VR breakthrough here. I think that this is all about companies spending a lot of money to shorten that time to a viable product. But in the meantime, you have Apple coming out with a $2,500 headset, and it's just, I don't know, it could be a very cool product but like

how cool is it if nobody is gonna buy it right like that that's not part of the part of what makes a product successful is that people buy it right it can't just be good even if it's good if nobody's gonna buy it it's a failure just as a clarification uh from the discord the kickstarter was in 2012 the last update was in 2016 many years to ship but the idea of like well it's been 10 years now it's been 10 years since the oculus rift 10 years since the kickstarter right but that was since it was viable right they were talking about the viability thing, not release, right? Because, you know, we're saying that the viable design of the mouse was 16 years before the mouse was in wide use. So it's just, it's fun.

I wanted to mention one thing, which is I don't want to sound like I'm down on VR because I think that VR has some uses. I have said on here before, I have a Quest 2. I like it. It's nice. It's not great, right? It's's not like oh my god the resolution everything's

kind of grainy and all that but it it works really well the head tracking works well I never I never feel kind of like motion sick in it I think it keeps up the illusion remarkably well and it was relatively cheap it was relatively affordable as a as a kind of a under the Christmas tree present a couple of years ago. That is a reason to be optimistic, I think, because it suggests that there are compromises you can make to make a product that is more affordable. And there are a lot of games on it that are fun. And I feel like they're figuring out with that product sort of what is good on a VR headset. And it's a standalone, which is really nice, as opposed to the PSVR that I had that was,

you had to tether it and there were a million cables. There's a lot going for it. Even though it has not set the world on fire, I think that I'm encouraged by the success and quality of that product. And it says to me that while Apple and Facebook seem to be building the high-end headsets here in order to show the possibility of this, there's room for more affordable headsets. And I hope that Apple dares to go there, right? Because I think that that's going to be required. I think you're going to need to have the... Mark Gur german keeps talking about the apple reality pro and reality one as the name for

these products i would say i think it would be good for apple to have a reality pro and then follow it up with a reality one if if you get my meaning and the Reality One would be a lot cheaper than the Reality Pro. I think they need to get there. And I'll just say before we move on too, I think even more than you, I'm more optimistic about this as a platform just in general and technology.

I don't think that AR, VR is necessarily the next smartphone, but I think it's the next tablet, the next watch, right? Like I think it is a market with a lot of potential. Right. Another $20 million, $30 million a year business for Apple in five or 10 years. Yeah. And I am personally more into mixed reality and VR than pure AR. Like I worry a little bit about pure AR, like constantly visually connected to a computer.

That I don't like so much. I like the intentionality of the bigger headsets, but we'll see where it goes. But that's not all on this for today. No, there's more. This episode is brought to you by our friends over at StoryWorth. When the holiday season rolls around, you want to start thinking about finding a unique gift for your loved ones.

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That's storyworth.com slash upgrade to save $10 on your first purchase. Our thanks to StoryWorth for their support of this show and relay fm so you mentioned earlier like where is the value going to be in this headset right like if it's going to be two thousand three thousand dollars so why don't we pick some things why don't we spend apple's money for them we're gonna we're gonna invent uh some things that might be on the device i i did i did send you a message over the weekend i said i got an idea why don't we talk about what could be in this thing what could be in this thing could i start off with what i think yes please one of

the reasons that they're making a lot of decisions that they're making very high resolution display inside of the headset i think that this is the key factor here because you know one of the things that people are saying about the quest pro is like so many things are better about the hardware but the displays are still not high resolution enough that you can still kind of see pixels i mean and we've seen lots of uh rumors that suggest 8k displays, right? An 8K display for every eye. Dual 8K displays. And this could, if they're building around this, it will make

the experience better, you would hope. And they have that foveated rendering thing, which I know PlayStation's going to be doing. And this is where it uses eye tracking to see where you're looking and then just render what's in front of you, which brings down some of the processing power required,

especially if you're going to have so many pixels. This is, if they do this high resolution display stuff, it's going to have a couple of knock-on effects. One, it will be very expensive and difficult to produce. Two, I mean, you can just throw battery out of the window, right? Which suggests, I mean, there have been rumors in the past about the idea of this needing to potentially be tethered. This is going back a long time.

I haven't seen, it sounds to me like Apple has decided that this has to all be on board, that nobody wants to be connected to a cord. We'll see. But it could need to be tethered, or it could need to be tethered to battery, or it may just have a very short battery life if it's going to be driving these kinds of displays could also make it heavy right with a larger battery so who knows right but i think that going to those kinds of just

that kind of display technology is going to have a lot of interesting knock-on effects but the hope would be i guess from their side of like if we go to this level we can show a higher quality experience and that's what will push them forward yeah i mean clearly so that brings up something that i wanted to mention which is uh which is content uh in terms of like video content you know and uh i know we mentioned this in passing from that Mark Gurman report, but I feel like this has been clear for a while. First off, so many movies still get made in 3D or converted to 3D, and they often have IMAX versions with stretched aspect ratios. They're very tall. thinking that if I'm Apple and I've got a streaming service and I've got a video store, that one of the things I'm going to do for any headset that I produce is I'm going to get a complete library of all 3D movies and IMAX movies that are out there and have that available. And potentially, even if you already bought it on iTunes, you get it in this other form,

or maybe you have to buy it separately or you can rent it or whatever. I know you're sitting there thinking, yeah, but who wants to watch a movie with a headset on? I hear you, but I'll tell you that even on the low-resolution Oculus Quest, I have watched some stuff in 3D. It's pretty good. It's pretty good.

It's pretty good. It's not something I would want to do all day long but for the length of a movie or a tv show um whether if i was on an airplane or something or if i'm just sitting at home and i've got immersive presumably audio as well like just as a virtual movie theater that's showing you something that the equivalent of like 4k quality and it's in 3d um it's kind of fun and in fact i would say it's a way better experience than sitting in a movie theater with cardboard 3d glasses over your eyes because it's bright because it's not cutting it's not a single projection with two different fields in it

it's two different eyepieces with two different sets of uh of a frame in them And so it's, for me, a better experience than movie theater 3D, even at the reduced quality of the Quest 2. So imagining a much higher resolution screen on an Apple device, I think that that could be really good content. They would also presumably do start saying, no, we need to do 3D conversions of all of our Apple TV Plus content as well. So that stuff's going to be available, or a lot of it is going to be available content as well. So that stuff's going to be available or a lot of it is going to be available in 3D. So if you watch it this way, it's going to blow you away. And I think that Apple, as we've talked about here a lot, Apple's interest in doing sports coverage is definitely a place where not just the 3D aspect that's fundamental to having a headset,

but also an immersive VR kind of idea where you could choose to have, like they offer their sports broadcast, but they also offer a VR version that perhaps puts you in a different spot or lets you choose where you are in the stadium and watch it as if you're watching it from a seat with, you know, choose your audio. There are lots of things they could experiment with. Some of them are going to be dumb and some of them might be great but why not experiment with that especially if you're producing your own sports programming as apple sounds like they're going to be doing so i i just i wanted to throw that in there as a thing that i think would help uh any future apple headset is just getting some

video content for it i mean they have the ability to create video content they could create specific video content right like they could create specific video content right like they could do that why not why not do a tv show that shot in video they could do that if they wanted to like from a fixed position you could look around you i don't know if it would be entertaining but you could do it by the way i i did a quick google search so there was a report in the information this is what messed me up. There were two options that Apple were looking at. One was tethered with a base station featuring a chip that went on to become the M1 Ultra.

And one was a standalone unit. And it seems like they were going down the route of the standalone unit. Yeah, with an M2, essentially. So that was what mixed me up. It was in the works at some point, but it seems like it's probably not what I'm going to go with. Talking about content,

an easy one for me, spatial audio. Right? They build in some speakers into the headset and have some kind of spatial audio feature. Seems like an obvious one. Apple will say they've got spatial audio in everything, right? It's in your laptop. So there's no reason why they wouldn't want to do it here too.

And I would think AirPods integration as well well so if you don't want to have the the because i don't think it's going to be the thing where you put it on and then you it has things that you stick over your ears right instead what they'll do is and the quest does this it's got speakers in it that are right by your ears that give you that kind of effect and if you want you can put headphones on and it's a much more immersive effect. And so I imagine that that'll be the argument as you put in some AirPods and they automatically pair. And now you get the kind of complete lockout experience. So people near you cannot hear the sounds that you're hearing because they're just, it's almost like open-backed

headphones kind of thing. It's like, if you're not wearing headphones and you're doing a VR thing, other people around you can hear you because they're literally speakers out into the air. But you pop in some AirPods and yeah. In fact, I would argue spatial audio probably was prioritized at Apple because of this project. That's my feeling.

This feels very much like it's something that went part and parcel with the headset project to do spatial placement of audio. Can I throw in another one real quick? Yeah. Because you had it too it's not a draft you just mentioned the idea of like well maybe they created for vr memoji yeah i think could have also been partly created as this idea of like we need to create lifelike avatars that are expressive and we want to have years of tracking faces and like learning how that can work to create these avatars like this could be a big big thing for them you know

like meta have been really made fun of for the way that their avatars look right this is going back a while now and if apple can make memoji work well and and work well in an expressive way inside of vr that that could be a really big deal for them yeah i agree in fact i will um i will then ping pong off of what you just said and talk about uh collaboration because i think that this is so we saw with we've seen uh the latest round of OS updates that Apple announced in June. They've started to lean into this idea of iCloud-based, basically, collaboration. And what's funny about it is that it's all on Apple's platforms or the web. And yet, they want to make it a thing.

And so I keep thinking about, okay, so they've got iCloud document collaboration. They've got SharePlay. They've got Memoji, they've got FaceTime. Roll it all together, right? And yes, it probably means things like, oh, and isn't there a rumor about how they're going to make it so that you can just do Memojis with or is that, or can you already do that? You can already do FaceTime with a Memoji instead of you, right? Yeah, yeah.

So we're already there. I think it's Zoom announced that you're going to be able to do that on Zoom now. You're going to have like a virtual avatar instead of you. So that's a thing. So the idea of having a FaceTime conversation where one person's holding a phone and looking at the camera

and another person is emoji using a headset, like that's fine. Zoom has already done things like this, but like Apple's got the whole, all their photographic engine stuff where they pull subjects out of the background, which might be a more sophisticated version of what Zoom does,

where they detect your background and then they pull you out of it. And Zoom even has a mode that's hilarious where they like put you in a setting. It's like everybody in the meeting is at a table, even though it's just the cutout of their body of the video without the background. Teams does this too,

of like making it look like you're in an auditorium or something. Right. So like, it's not hard to imagine that Apple might use some of that to try and create kind of collaboration environments where people are placed in physical spaces in VR. And some of them have emoji and some of them might even be people's video images.

Like I can see them going down that route now. Is that something people want? Yeah, this is Horizon Workrooms. This is what Horizon Workrooms is. It is Horizon Workrooms. This is what Facebook or Meta has been trying to do. But I could definitely see the idea of, and SharePlay I mentioned because I talked about movies, right? Well, one thing you could do with watching a movie, I can totally imagine Apple doing this, is you watch it with your friends in VR with SharePlay.

Fair play. And if you've never done any of this, like the way I watch video on the Quest is in an app that puts you in a movie theater with a screen. And you can set how close to the screen you want to be, but they don't put the movie like all the way because it's really bad. That's like you're standing in front of the movie screen.

Nobody watches a movie that way. They put you in a movie theater and you can actually, I mean, you can have it be like you're on an asteroid or whatever, but the one that I use is you're in a movie that way. They put you in a movie theater and you can actually, I mean, you can have it be like you're on an asteroid or whatever, but they put the one that I use is you're in a movie theater and there's seats and you can choose how dim you want the lights to be. And then there's the big screen up there and how close you want to be. And one of the ideas there is you could have your friends come and watch the movie with you. So imagine a scenario where it's like share play,

but you're in a VR space, right? But you're in a VR space, and your friend's Memoji is sitting next to you, and you can talk during the movie, and nobody's going to shush you, except maybe your friends. And you can hear them talk, and you can also watch the movie, and it's an actual sharing kind of experience. So I feel like Apple's going to try all of that stuff.

Again, when we say all the pieces, they've got all these pieces, it does feel like, in addition to making these pieces available for their existing platforms, they've also been sort of building all the pieces they've got all these pieces it does feel like in addition to making these pieces available for their existing platforms they've also been sort of building all the parts to put into a vr product yeah share play that one i lied as soon as you started saying it was like i felt like the scales were falling from my eyes like share play makes so much sense yeah i don't know if people like it or not, but I feel like in some ways

it might be nice to watch a movie or a TV show with your friends in a virtual space because it would be less lonely, right? If it's just you with your headset on, it's just you. It's very solitary. And also, that might actually be a less weird kind of like,

oh, we're doing a text. Right? Like, it would just be well but also like in a movie yeah with share play like if you want to do the video version like you've got to actually have you on video right which maybe you don't want to do but you would have the same it's very similar experience of presence which is the thing that's really cool about vr even more so actually because you would turn to the left and look at your friend. Like, I actually think that would be a really cool thing to do and would be a fun thing to experience. This is very nebulous, but one of the things that I expect from Apple is like some kind of smart way

that you wear the headset. Like, I'm thinking of like Apple Watch bands, right? Like, they really did a good job of how you put the watch on to your body. And at the moment, every VR headset is a clunky experience in some way, like how you put it on, how you have to adjust it, all that kind of stuff. I'm hoping that Apple have come up

with some kind of better way of handling that experience right like handling that part of it all um so i don't know what that might be but i just want them to make it more elegant it's not like meta doesn't have industrial designers because they absolutely do um it does sound like there's been some criticism about the way that the the design of the new product is but and the quest 2 you know it shipped with a terrible headband and then you could buy one that was good the new one is better in that they weight it a bit better like there's more battery on the back and lighter on the front and it's got this like turning wheel thing which

is better than the velcro but yeah the turning wheel thing, which is better than the Velcro, but still not ideal. Yeah, the turning wheel is on the upgraded version of the Quest 2 head strap that I bought. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. Oh, it's so much better. The turning wheel, it's to make it tighter or looser around your head. Yeah, it's a much better design. So all that said, I think about Apple, and I know Apple's had a bunch of turnover and all that,

said, I think about Apple and I know Apple's had a bunch of turnover and all that, but like, you would like to think that Apple's industrial design people and would design a really nice headset that would be as comfortable to wear as possible. You would really expect that. I expect, I expect them to raise the bar there. I'll be disappointed if they don't, because I feel like having Apple think about the human experience of putting this on your face, I would really hope that they have put in some good work there. I don't know what that is either, right? But you mentioned Apple Watch bands. That's a good example.

I've got two more and you've got one more. I am going to say, thinking of services, immersive fitness plus workouts and integration one of the successes i know again if you've never done this you're like exercise in a vr headset sounds like bizarre one of the real successes of the quest has been the supernatural workout app and beat saber which is essentially a a workout app game um they are very successful and you work up a sweat i you know i do that i do beat saber and i also play uh table tennis with 11 table tennis and uh you can work up a sweat with both of those things right so it's actually a thing right um because the idea there is you exercise might be boring and you can make it more

interesting if you strap a thing to your face and show you interesting things so fitness plus could be workouts in the studio that are that are more you know vr where you're actually sitting among all the people on the bikes or whatever uh it could be uh moving through real spaces the idea that when you're doing a bike they have uh immersive bike workouts where you actually are pedaling through an environment and depending on how you're pedaling or walking or running on a treadmill, you're moving through virtual spaces so that it's more entertaining that way. that having a group of other participants uh virtual participants because it's all presumably not live um that you're moving through as a motivator of like you're behind the peloton or you're ahead of the peloton um that would be interesting too and then i will throw in also as well you could even do it based on the video game concept of the ghosts right where you could like do a run workout or a bike workout and see your previous workouts as like milestones of like this is you're going to be chasing your best workout and make sure you get ahead of them.

There's a lot of potential there. And I would imagine that there are people who've thought a lot about this inside of Apple for how you use fitness apps in general and Fitness Plus in particular as one of the ways to do uh you get people to want to use a headset and the last one that i wanted to mention this is a in a conversation i had with underscore david smith a while ago widgets this isn't really a thing about expense like being expensive but just the experience like i could imagine one of the things that they will want you to be doing here is to sit and work with this thing. Like you're actually sitting at your desk and doing work. And you've got like large displays in front of you that are displayed because of, you know, whatever.

And I thought it would be kind of cool to use some like AR kind of feature of being able to pin widgets like we see them on iOS, right? Like in different parts of your room. Like I would imagine like you could select some widgets and basically stick them on your wall and you could just turn your head and look at the widgets and go back to what you were doing. I thought that that kind of idea would be pretty cool if they did something like that

using that technology that they've been building in another way i think it'd be kind of fun uh and i will uh close out with the reason that i actually brought this topic up to you which is my moment in reading mark german say it'll probably have an m2 processor in it and i thought i was thinking about horizon workrooms and I was thinking, you know, I would not put it past Apple to have this headset let you have a Mac on it. I mean, like literally a Mac on it. Like you could do screen sharing to another Mac of yours. That's what Horizon Workrooms does with a higher resolution being able to see your screen. But I was thinking, what if you could travel with this and maybe a keyboard or a virtual keyboard, depending on your input and virtual mouse or whatever you want, but like it's an M2. What if you could travel and not bring your computer with you because you could run macOS in a virtual space on it and iOS apps as well on it

and create like a virtual work environment that you could boot up that would be on the network and run all your apps and back things up and be a Mac essentially, but in a virtual space. Like I don't, again, do you want to work on it all day? No, but I think that there might be something there in terms of being able to run certain apps or get some work done. And if it is a corporate, potentially a corporate and industry product as well, having that as a capability. But I just had that moment where I thought, you know, the hardware is going to be able to run Mac OS if it wants to. What if you virtualize Mac OS? And so then you go, you know, you go on your trip somewhere and you bring the headset. if you need to log into work you can do that but you don't need to bring a laptop with

you at all you just bring the headset it's a wacky idea and yet they could do it or even if it's just a case of like using it as a screen but yes it would be more fun to be able to actually just virtualize mac os it's going to be running a chip that could do it so and friend of the show zach in the chat room says there's no way that they would let them open a terminal on a new product class from Apple. But it's like, well, yeah, but what if it's a virtual Mac, right? Like, opening the terminal on the virtual Mac

or on a... Like, I can screen share to a Mac from my iPad and open a terminal window there. In a certain way, it would not be a big deal because it would literally be like, you can run a Mac inside this in the virtual world. And it's an actual Mac that's running inside a virtual machine inside this virtual world. Like if somebody found that valuable,

uh, sure. Why not do that? And why not have a virtual like iPad or iPhone too, if you really wanted to, but it just, it was that moment where I thought, okay, horizon workrooms has the thing where you install software on your laptop and then your laptop appears in the virtual world and it's very low resolution, but you can sit there typing into your laptop and see the results on the screen. I thought, okay, okay. But what if you could just run it? You just have a, have a Mac in your virtual space that you could turn on. And it was a Mac. That would be interesting.

And I don't know. Who knows? If you enjoy this show, if you really enjoy tuning in to Upgrade every single week and you want more of it, there's a really easy way to do that. You should just subscribe to Upgrade Plus. You can go to getupgradeplus.com and you'll be able to subscribe to the show. You'll be

able to get longer episodes every.com and you'll be able to subscribe to the show. You'll be able to get longer episodes every single week. You'll be able to get no ads as part of that every single week episode that you get. You'll get access to a ton of really wonderful benefits, like the RelayFM members Discord will be available to you. And there's, you know, the Discord is great, but you get additional bonus content as well, which isn't just this show, but you get a ton of monthly content that we do at RelayFM just for members. You get access to a bunch of ever-growing and expanding wallpaper packs that we put together.

There are tons of great benefits for being a RelayFM member, but if you go to getupgradeplus.com and sign up for $5 a month or $50 a year, you'll get longer ad-free episodes of this show every single week. In Upgrade Plus today, we're going to be talking about Wakanda Forever. We've both seen it and we want to talk about it. But like maybe in previous weeks, last week's was really good. We spoke about the disaster of Twitter a lot last week. So that's the thing that's available to you.

Go to GetUpgradePlus.com. You can sign up, support the show, and get bonus content. Let's finish out today's episode with some hashtag ask upgrade questions. John asks, in the discussions about Twitter, I haven't heard much about the one thing that would push me off the service,

being forced to use the official app. Surely Elon will cut the third party clients sooner rather than later, right? What do you think? My feeling, I mean, talk about the missed opportunity, is that for a long time, Twitter could have made a lot of money by just saying if you want to use a third-party client, you have to be a subscriber for whatever the cost of whatever became Twitter Blue was, but just make a subscription where like,

all right, you want to use a third-party client, that's fine. Pay us $5 a month or $10 a month or whatever. And that is, in addition to all the other features it gives you, it lets you use a third-party client. I'd be okay with that. But I agree with John in the sense that, yes, if Twitter, like as we said in Upgrade Plus,

I find so much value in parts of Twitter that it's unlikely that I'm going to get off of Twitter completely unless it implodes entirely. It literally stops working. There is no Twitter left. Or that all of the information sources that I have that I find valuable disappear from Twitter. Then it is valueless to me. But I'll tell you, if I can't use my third-party apps of choice, or in this case it's Twitterific for me, if I can't use Twitterific to be on Twitter or any other third-party app, and I have to use Twitter's apps or their website, that will probably be the thing that gets me off Twitter. Interesting. I think they 100% will kill them. I'm surprised

he hasn't done it already. I just think he just doesn't know, honestly. It's possible. Although, again, at this point, given that they seem to be trying very hard to come up with reasons that you would subscribe to Twitter Blue, I wouldn't put it past them to just say, third-party clients now have to be only for Twitter Blue subscribers. But Twitter Blue still has ads. He needs all the money he can possibly get, right? I know what you're saying, but I don't imagine that the API is going to stick around. Well, this requires a level of coherency that I don't think that the company has right now.

But in the long run, what should have happened all along was that they should have said, okay, we're going to, instead of saying we're going to not do the API and you're all going to die and oh, well, not right. You can hang on and be a third party client,

but it's not going to be very good. What they should have said way back when was we're going to keep doing the API. We're going to upgrade the API, but here's what's going to happen. You have to be a Twitter subscriber, whatever that is in order to have access to it in your app. So you're going to have to have a, it's going to have to be connected to an app that is a Twitter subscriber. And separately, um, you are going to you, the app developer,

we are going to in the API provide you with ads that you have to show, right? They said you have to display, you know, it can't be a star, it has to be a heart, and you have to have these three icons. Like they put all of these restrictions in there, but what they didn't do is say, and also we're going to provide you an ad that you have to display in the feed. They could have, they could still. Will they? Yeah, no, probably not because that would require a lot of effort and they seem to have lost half their people. So, yeah. But anyway, I think that they could have done that. And I think you're right. Other than the fact that it's just been ignored, it would seem to be a very easy thing for Elon to hear about that there are third party clients that don't see ads and don't do an algorithmic timeline and say, just cut them off. I feel like it will happen. It's just a matter of time.

Yeah. Well, that would probably push me over the edge because my Twitter life has been entirely mediated by Twitterific. And if I'm now using the Twitter app or their website, yeah, probably not. I think that, I mean, but maybe I would say at this point, you might not get to it before it shuts down and stops working. What a battle. What a battle. It's Listrust or the lettuce. Oh boy. Michael asks, do you think Apple will actually put a USB-C port on the next generation of iPhones? Or will they try to find another way to be compliant with the EU rule? I think everybody's overthinking this.

I feel like the USB-C transition in the iPhone was always inevitable. Apple has been making that transition on all of its other products. I suspect that they've been targeting 2023 to do it all along and that it has nothing to do with the eu at all yeah and also i mean i've i've had a cursory read of the ruling there kind of isn't a way around it like no unless they've because i actually don't even think that they could go all chi charging like i don't think that that's the thing that they can do right now or at least not do easily um without the eu especially on their first attempt getting like

all up in their business in fact i think this has been a plan for apple all along um because we have had those rumors about well it's just going to be portless but it's like that has seemed unrealistic it's possible that they kept stringing along the lightning port because they hoped that they would never have to do usbc and they'd just go to portless. But I've never really thought that that was a realistic goal. I feel like you need to do something. Maybe they've got some smart connector kind of thing in the works, but they don't have it ready yet. But I prefer the simple solution, which is they knew that they were going to bring all their products over to USB-C.

It was only a matter of time. That includes the mouse and the trackpad and AirPods cases. They knew they had to get there eventually, but it is expensive to redesign your product so that they put it off as long as they could and that the EU will perhaps get them to do it a little faster than they would have done it, but that they will do it. And also be a shield, right? It's like a PR shield. And they will blame the EU this time.

Yeah. Instead of everybody will be like, oh, Apple, you changed the connector again, like a decade ago when they changed it the last time. It's been a long time, but they're like, oh, Apple, they keep changing the connector every year or two. Not true, but people will say that.

And Apple will be like, it's not me, man. It's the EU. It's the EU. They made us do it. Blame the Europeans. It's Brussels' fault. They did the sprouts and they took away your lightning and it's their fault. It's their fault. Richard asks, do you think apps like Uber will actually use live activities? Uber has recently started in-app advertising and live activities would mean users would have to open the app less frequently and therefore would see fewer ads so i have some thoughts on this yes i am genuinely surprised they

have not embraced live activities already because live activities are awesome i don't think it would change how often people are actually opening the app because uber has always been very like forward in the notifications that they send you the push notification send you about all the information you need right like when when the car's coming they're not like hey open the app to find out the info right like they actually say like your car's nearly here here's the license plate like you don't actually once you've ordered the ride you don't need to be going back into the app to check stuff if you don't want to so i think live activities would still do the same amount you still going back into the app to check stuff if you don't want to. So I think live activities would still do the same amount.

You still have to open the app to request the ride. So if you want to see the ads, you can get that that way. And honestly, we've seen it. Uber don't care about sending push notifications for ads. They are sending currently push notifications for ads that aren't even their company. There's like Peloton ads inside of the uber app that are being sent by push notification like they'll advertise to you as part of the live activity i'm sure right like and then it's on your screen they can show you things like hey while you're waiting do you want to get some

food like i don't think that they would i don't think this is the reason they haven't done live activities and i want more companies to embrace it like the food company that we have here uh deliveroo like i'd like to see them do it like because the apps that have done it it's so good and so i hope that they will again i i'm gonna be sorry to bring everybody down with reality but like i don't think it's a conspiracy here i think that a lot of companies do their ios development cycles based on the new os being announced in June and shipping in September. And they put effort into doing their version updates and doing a lot of work. And they have a whole plan

that they're going to come out in the fall with their new version. And then one week from that new version of the OS shipping, Apple announces an entirely new API for this. And I mean, for the dynamic island anyway, live activities was there before, but like it has been, or was it there? Or were they saying it was coming later?

It was always a coming later, right? Live activity was a thing that was coming, but the actual API didn't become available until the iPhone event, I think. Because of the dynamic island being a part of it. So that's what I'd say is let's not jump to conclusions about why more apps are not supporting live activities right now. I think the real answer is the API

didn't get released until September. And on top of that, a lot of companies that build apps sort of had a rhythm for their app development that this didn't fit. So give them time. It's probably going to take some time. I would say let's check back in in June

and see how many apps have live activities. If you would like to send in a question for us to answer on the show, just send out a tweet with the hashtag AskUpgrade, or you can use question mark AskUpgrade in the RelayFM members Discord. I'd like to thank our sponsors for this week's episode, StoryWorth and Squarespace. And thank

you if you sign up to support the show at getupgradeplus.com. If you want to find Jason online, you can go to sixcolors.com. And he is at Jason L, J-S-N-E-L-L. I am at iMike, I-M-Y-K-E. And you can find this show and many others over at relay.fm slash shows. You can find a new podcast to add to your queue if that's what you're looking for. Don't forget as well, go to upgradies.vote, and you can put in your nominations for the ninth annual Upgradeys coming your way sometime in December. Thanks so much for listening to this week's episode of Upgrade,

and we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.