Upgrade - 494: Copyright Violation Machine

Episode Date: January 8, 2024

Hello, Upgradians. I have a note before we get started today. We had hoped that this was going to be our first regular episode, but there was one slight wrinkle that we didn't think was going to be a problem. Jason is traveling today, as we usually record on Monday the 8th. So we recorded Sunday the 7th. We came in on our weekend like, we'll do the show. We'll make sure everybody has a new episode of Upgrade for them.

However, we now have Vision Pro pre-order information. So beginning on January 19th is when you'll be able to order this thing. It's on sale from February 2nd. Apple says they're going to be available in all US Apple stores starting at $34.99 for a 256 gigabyte model. It will come with two head straps, the one we've seen and another with a top strap that me and Jason got to use when we tried them on in June. The Zeiss lenses will start at $99 for readers and $199 for prescription. Why am I telling you this? Well, as you can imagine,

big chunks of today's episode are us pontificating on when and how the Vision Pro would be announced and put on sale. So we had to pre-record this segment. We hope that you will be able to enjoy it. There's still a bunch of stuff in there that's post the launch frame and talking about what will happen for the rest of the year. So still tons of stuff in there, but you will get to be able to enjoy and maybe grade us on just how right or how wrong we are on how we thought this thing was going to be announced. I will say from my perspective, big surprise that they announced it with a press release and when this thing is going to be going on sale. No more information than that as of right now.

We'll be back to normal next week to break down all of this news. Please enjoy today's episode. from relay fm this is upgrade episode 494 for january 8 2024 today's show is brought to you by factor vitally and nom nom my name is mike hurley i'm'm joined by Jason Snow. Welcome to the January Upgrade-ies. That's what we're doing. It's all Upgrade-ies all the time. All the time? All the time. No.

Let's shorten it to just like Upgrade. We'll call it just Upgrade. All right, that's good. Well, we'll just award every piece of news. That's what we're going to do now. We're back to normal now. Thank you to everybody who has checked out our december episodes we had the weirdest scheduling we've over christmas day and new year's day uh episode and i think we did a good job people

seem to really enjoy the episodes and i'm very happy that we made it all work yeah i mean as a monday show we had we had multiple holidays plus travel there was a lot going on there and uh so we it was weird though because we we did essentially record two and a half episodes in a two-day period yep so that was there was a lot and then there was nothing and we have definitely part of my recorded since december 18th which is very strange for us it is it's very weird but uh we're back now we are indeed just like we're back with all of the trimmings that you expect including a snell talk question this snell talk comes from ryan who wants to know jason how do you keep track of the books that you want to read oh books that i want to read oh um

oh i wish i could say i have a system. My system is generally one of two things. I start with Libby, which is a fantastic iOS app that works with Overdrive, which basically if you have a library card, and if you don't, you should get one for your local library. You can do e-books from your library. And Libby is the interface for that. And if you have multiple libraries, and you may find that there are multiple libraries that you're allowed to, you don't, you're not limited. It's not like voting where you can only vote in one place. You can actually sign up for multiple libraries. And sometimes there are even reciprocal

library agreements. I actually am logged into four different library systems in my Libby, which is a little confusing, but I'm eligible for all four, so I have all four. Anyway, so great thing about that is that I hear about a book and I can search for it. And if they've got it, I can either borrow it right then and read it on any device I want, or I can, if it's not ready, I can wishlist it. And if I'm not ready to read it right now, but I want to remember it, I tag it in Libby. Libby has a tagging feature and I have a, I want this book tag that I'll put on it. And that allows me to look later and say,

oh, here are books, here are library books that I wanted to read at some point. And then I can put myself, like if they're available right then, I can be like, oh, I'll just check it out right now and read it. And so that's really great. If it's not available in the library, or I want to read it right now and it's not available in the library for months, then I will usually just go to Kobo. Since my primary reader is a Kobo, I'll just go to kobo.com generally and buy it. And then it's on my device. So I sort of have two places to look for books when I'm deciding what I want to read. I have my e-reader itself and I have Libby on my iPad or iPhone. And those are the places that I get my books. Libby is never not weird to me. Like I understand it, but I still can't fully get my head around the idea of library e-books.

Yeah, it's really kind of amazing. So if you have a Kindle, you check out the book and you choose Send to Kindle and it opens a web page. And you basically say, okay, you log in if you're not logged into Amazon and say, okay. And it just shows up on your Kindle. With Kobo, my Kobo is logged into one of the libraries. So with Kobo, um, I just check it out and sync the Kobo and it just shows up on, I mean, on next sync, whether I sync it or not. So that's, and it's just there. And then it's got an expiration date. It will take it, you know, 21 days later, it will, it will take it

away from you if you haven't finished it. And on the Kobo, when you get to the end, it actually says, would you like to return the book now? And you say yes, and it connects to Libby and it boop or Overdrive and it checks it back in for you. And then you can even download it to your computer using Adobe Digital Editions, which is a very bad piece of software, but it will sync with e-readers too. So the other way to do it is you can download the file on your computer and then sync it that way. And that also works. So there's lots of different ways to do it. It's actually not that more complicated than buying a book somewhere. Yeah. Overdrive is a weird name for a library app. Libby is a good name. Overdrive, that doesn't tell me what it is at all. Yeah.

So the service is called Overdrive, and they're sort of, I think, stuck with it. And they used to have an Overdrive app, but they created Libby as an app. And I think for the reason that you just suggested, which is it's actually for a library-branded, friendly, consumer-facing library thing, Libby is a good name for an app what's the

name for that library book app overdrive yeah okay yeah yeah just because you might you know need to go into overdrive i don't i don't know why it's like overdrive you know some brand names don't make are not the best like there's. The library also offers a bunch of video stuff, including movies and things that you can get from your local library that are digital. And that's usually on Hoopla, which is a thing that is a name that doesn't say anything about anything. So Libby, in the grand scheme of things.

You know what? Here's the thing. It would not surprise me if getting streaming video from the library is a bit of a hoopla. You know? It in fact it is 100 hoopla there you go so maybe that one they actually chose the name correctly but libby um and and hoopla i think you have like a limited number of movies you can check out in a month or something like that but libby it's just like you know you read the book and then turn it back in and then read another book it's once i got in the habit and as i realized just the yeah the support that the e-readers have,

I highly recommend it. Or even if you're reading on your iPhone, I mean you can actually read in the Libby app or you can send it to the Kindle and read it in the Kindle app. There's lots of different options. It's pretty amazing. So check in with your local and regional libraries. Find out where you can get a card and see who's got Overdrive.

This episode brought to you by libraries. Libraries, they're your friends. Thank you to Ryan for that Snow Talk question. If you would like to send in a question to help us open a future episode of the show, go to upgradefeedback.com where you can submit one. I have some follow-up for you, Jason Snow. I will say today is an episode where I think, by and large, we are going to be covering what has been going on over the last few weeks

while we've been giving out awards. It's been a month since we addressed current events. I also wasn't on the last regular episode. Right, because that was John Syracuse. No, I came back. It doesn't matter. Anyway, follow up. Killers of the Flower Moon is debuting on Apple TV Plus on January 12th.

Yes, we have a date now. So if you decided to wait like I did just in the end i was just procrastinating now i'll be able to watch this movie for quote unquote free next weekend which i'm looking forward to in two installments probably we're gonna do the same it's gonna it's it's gonna get lots of oscar nominations everybody i'll watch it in one go but three and a half hours yeah well okay that will that'll also work right so i did with the irishman you know or it's like take a break we just did our our annual um well it's not annual we just did our our recurring family event when jamie was visiting us too we

were all here and we did the six nights of the lord of the Rings where we watched the extended editions which on disc and I actually have the 4K HDR Ultra HD whatever is he Blu-ray

that I bought after we went to New Zealand. It's great. So you watch those extended editions that are super long but they break in the middle

and you watch one half a night for six nights and it was a lot of fun so i i the intermission they don't make movies with intermissions anymore but that was a good kind of like set by the filmmakers intermission process and i i you know sometimes i wonder if if uh for something like killers of the flower moon if martin scorsese could like offer it in two forms like with an intermission and without an intermission. But I guess for most people, the pause button is the intermission. I just, I kind of like the idea of the filmmaker

saying, actually, this would be a good time to go to the bathroom if you want. You pause it here. This is an appropriate, because sometimes I pause it thinking like, oh man, another two hours, I got to go to the bathroom now. And then I come back and I, and I unpause it and like the scene ends. And then there's like a, a huge like story break. And I'm like, Oh, why did I save those last 30 seconds? But you don't know if you're watching it for the first time.

Anyway, didn't Martin Scorsese do the exact opposite of this, where some places were putting intermissions in and he got really mad about it and like made, made the theaters stop doing it. I don't know if I know that story, but, but this is the thing is like i you shouldn't do it without the filmmakers permission but the fact is home video gives

everybody permission and so you know the counter argument would be you know what if filmmakers who are making very long films actually built in an intermission uh either in theaters or for even home video what would that look like could you do an intermission in software where it's sort of like there was a fade out and then it was like take a break or continue i somebody should experiment with that yep there were two cinema chains one in the uk and one in amsterdam where they put intermissions in and they got in trouble with Paramount and Apple. It's not allowed. They're doing it. It's not allowed. Not allowed. Talking about not allowed, the Japanese Fair Trade Commission is working on a law similar

to the Digital Markets Act in the EU that could force companies like Apple to allow, well, not to allow, to force companies like Apple to allow, I should say, sideloading. I said allow three times. Yeah. But I knew what i meant you said it out loud did yeah uh so japanese fair trade commission they were the organization that had the first ruling for links being put in to sign up for a service remember that a very long time ago now good times um and they are now looking to go down the same routes

as the EU have when it comes to sideloading and also like dominant browsers and all that kind of stuff. This is for Google and Apple and anyone else. So I'm just putting that on the radar because I think it's going to be a thing we're going to be talking a lot about again this year. Yep. Apple have announced the first vehicles or at least the first vehicles to get the new car play have been

announced this includes the aston martin db12 coming in 2024 hello governor you're gonna get one of those no and porsche have said that they will be adding the new car play to their cars but gave zero details other than saying that they would adopt it. I've got a link in the show notes to a MacRumors article where they have images from Aston Martin showing how they are actually going to implement it into DB12.

And then there was like a mock-up image from Porsche or something that they might want to do. So this is the new CarPlay where apple is controlling your uh odometers and all that fun stuff so you get your speed and like i know you're not gonna buy an aston martin but like you should contact you're you're a british person you should contact aston martin pr okay. And see if somewhere in swinging London, they might have a demo of the new Aston Martin with CarPlay. Do you think that my lack of a driving license could be a problem? I think CarPlay is perfectly fine from the, well, I mean, you do need to be in the, okay, you got me. Get up, step one, step one. Because they're going to be right in front of you too,

because you're actually controlling this, not just on the screen. Yeah. Could be a problem, right? Yeah, well, they're probably not going to trust you to drive that fancy car anyway. So they'll just sit in the showroom and they'll let you look at it there. How about that? How about that? I'll do what I can on that one.

No promises. Just tell them that you can drive and see what happens. See what they say. I mean, would they really check? You know? You're a fully licensed media professional. That's all that really matters. That's true.

I do have my license from the Media Professional Agency. That's right. It's better than that. The Apple Store at Apple's Infinite Loop campus will be closing on January 20th. Pull one out for the company store. I've been there a couple of times. This was the for the the company store i've been there this was the apple store before there was an apple store this was the apple store and they always sold stuff that you couldn't get anywhere else we got a onesie for our baby yep and tech company store

at one point in the in the uh what 2002 era um the for our baby who is a college graduate now that that baby so um it is you know it's kind of been surpassed they built a whole store at apple park right store slash visitor center and it also sells unique stuff like merchandise that is just not available at any other apple retail it's about five times the size of the infinite loop store yeah it is it is also i mean the infinite loop store has sold i don't know i haven't been there in years now um they did used to sell like there were computers there and there were there were um peripherals there and stuff like that it was um always you know right it predated the retail store and then at some point they put it into retail but it wasn't quite the same as a real retail store. The Apple store at Apple Park

is a real Apple retail store with extra stuff. And the company store, the Infinite Loop store, never really felt quite like that. It's so small. So I think the writing was on the wall.

Honestly, I'm surprised that it is still there but it will shortly not be there anymore. My understanding is they did sell some unique items because they sold some Infinite Loop specific items not apple there's a lot of apple park branded apple merchandise at apple park as well as but like that's where i've got a t-shirt

with a rainbow apple logo on it i'm like where do you buy that and the answer is you buy it at one of these stores that's that that's the the only place they don't sell those it's a funny quirk of apple retail that apple does not spend any money on buy a t-shirt with the apple logo on it in any place other than when you make a pilgrimage to cupertino it's pretty funny i went there um last wwdc so wwdc last year because i wanted to take it in there and it was closed uh they were they were doing set up for a developer event there or something like that and so it was very hot and we had to then stand and wait for an uber to take us away again which was very sad but she got her picture in

front of the sign which is really the real reason to go there yeah what's rapidly becoming a nostalgia trip since there's a i mean it's not the center of the universe anymore at Apple, although it used to be. And it's, uh, I mean, it's, they built a replacement for it.

Oh, and it's like a thousand times better. Like the visitor center, Apple park is fantastic. Right. That like, it's a store and like an exhibition space and a cafe and seating area and like there's also something to look at because no offense to infinite loop not much to look at but you can look

at apple park you can see some hints of it from the from that little viewing area at the top like there was a world in which they did none of that and i'm happy that they ended up doing all of it sure the people that well i think they knew they knew that people were going to come because people come to infinite loop and they're like okay how do we deflect them right and it's like we don't want them in the ring because like literally infinite loop you can just walk you drive around it you can also just walk up to you can walk inside i mean they'll stop you but like you can you can drive and park you can drive all the way around you can power do some power sliding as you drive around the loop. You can. And then you can park anywhere, which is also where the employees park.

Although you're not supposed to. I think you're supposed to park only by the store. And then you can walk in or walk up to pretty much any of the buildings. And then they will stop you because you don't deserve to be there. You don't belong there. You don't have a pass. You're not seeing anybody. You're get out and stay out. They very rarely said that to me but you know occasionally

and uh you know i don't know whether they plan on like gating that entrance but they on mariani avenue but they could because it was always a little bit weird so when they built the new one they're like no no uh apple way parking and everything is completely separate. But across the street from the security gates, we've made a little place for the general public to go. And you can stay there if you want. And the Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 are currently back on sale. Now, in upgrade continuity, we have to be clear. We never covered them going off sale

okay because as we recorded our last episode they had just uh said that they were going to go off sale and we we were like well let's not even break the seal on that one because who knows how it's going to change between now and uh and and beginning of january which is where we are now so they went off sale and then they came back on sale i'm gonna not give all the details but basically they're in a patent battle of a company called massimo over the blood oxygen sensor if you do not know about this right now there'll be some links in the show notes you can read up but the point i mean thank you for only listening to upgrade and no other tech you never know i guess if you've never heard about it.

You never know. I mean, surely with at least one person's only source of Apple news, right? Yeah, I'm sure. I've heard people say that Upgrade is their Apple or tech podcast. Which we appreciate very much. There's an Apple Watch kerfuffle involving patents, and it was briefly off sale. And then when the Biden administration declined to overrule the patent organization, which they did for Apple's benefit in a dispute with Samsung. But Samsung, not an American company.

Massimo is an American company. And despite the name, which makes it sound like it's done by Italian spies. I keep thinking it's Italian. Check with Federico on that one. But it's not. It's an American keep thinking it's italian check with federico on that one but it's not it's an american company it's based in irvine it's like a mile from where my in-laws live massimo so i could check it out i could reconnoiter at some point in irvine in orange county so uh they the biden administration said nope we're not going to do it apple immediately appealed the appeals court immediately basically said okay it can go back on sale while we consider the case because it is taking a product off sale is harm and generally courts

are like let's not do harm while we're waiting to process what's going to happen and uh and as a result apple has appealed and can keep appealing and until it's all wrapped up um it will still be on sale and presumably apple and massimo i, I don't know, are they talking? It feels like this is all jockeying for leverage. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection have to make a decision on January 12th as to whether software changes that Apple wants to make would be deemed acceptable of Massimo's patents. The appeals court that Apple went to that put a stop to the ban, or a stay as it's called,

has also asked the ITC, the International Trade Commission, to consider whether they would be willing to just stay the ban completely until the full appeals process has been completed one way or another. So that's a hurdle for Apple. Yeah. So they could potentially be ruled against and have to take it back off sale, or they could be told... Again, I feel like in general,

courts and other organizations, you kind of want to not... That's what stays are for, is you kind of want to not do harm. I mean, I guess Mossimo would argue that the existence of the Apple Watch is doing them harm, but if there's a argue that the existence of the Apple Watch is doing them harm. But if

there's a penalty that could potentially come, you know, if it's in dispute about whether an appeal is likely to be won or not, I mean, I don't know. We'll see. I feel like that Apple's got a real shot here for them to say, you can keep selling it while this processes. But this may also

be Apple just kind of running out the clock. The ITC having to January 10th to confirm what they think about that. That like, you know, processes but this this may also be apple just kind of running out the clock yeah the itc having to january 10th to confirm what they think about that that like you know obviously if the customs and border protection say it's okay then that's going to help them but if they don't then the appeals court has asked the itc if it can still be sold but failing all of this apple has another hearing on january 15th for the u. Court of Appeals to try and get everything overturned entirely. This is very messy. This is very messy. This is messy, Mo.

I think some would probably call it. Okay. Something's got to get done about this because this is kind of... I will say I'm very happy we've not covered this week to week, that it's been happening while we've been mostly on break because this story is

kind of exhausting to me to be honest and uh you calling it messy mode does not make it better so it does it does it makes everything maybe what if what if there was like a big apple story and we just didn't cover it on upgrade we're like nope i mean we haven't not done that you know there are there are things that are going on where we just don't bother because it's like not really like you know there are people talking about it but it's kind of for us there's not really much to add so we just don't. But this one is big enough that

we would have and are now so like you know we'll probably give follow up in the next couple of weeks as to exactly what's happening with this because it is a big story the idea of a product just being taken off sale which it was um yeah it's wild it's also just a lot of court stuff which realistically is not really super interesting when all you can do is say what we've just said like there was an appeal

that appeal was said yes appeal was said no two things things more that I wanted to say about this. One is buying psychology, which is, I don't know about you. I mean, you have an Ultra 2. I do. When it was right before Christmas and they're like, oh, it's going to go off sale because of this. Part of my brain was like, Jason, just buy an Ultra 2 right now. Okay. Like, why?

And the answer was, because it's going away. So maybe you should get it now. And I'm like, I don't think I really even want an Ultra 2. I'm very happy with my previous generation titanium watch. It's black. It's titanium. It's beautiful. I find it funny that Apple has sold this titanium watch because it's, I don't know if you could even

tell that it's not an aluminum watch, but I know, right? I know that it's titanium. And it fits my wrist and it's fine and I don't need an Ultra 2. But part of my brain was like, Jason, but the Ultra 2, it's going away. Maybe you should get it now before it goes away. Because what if at some point in the future, you decide you do want an Ultra 2, and it's not available in any store. What will you do then? And I didn't buy it, but I just thought about it. And I thought that was a really funny bit of buying psychology, right? Like, oh, we're going to take it off sale.

And part of my brain was like, oh, buy it now then, before it goes away. Even if you don't want it, you got to buy it now. Anyway, my other thing is just that if they really wanted to make this perfect confluence, it would be Lionel Massimo. Love it. I don't know why you think that was acceptable, but mine wasn't. No, I'm just going further into the garbage dump there. So you're welcome. To me, this whole thing is hilarious because of the feature that is the problem, which is like realistically a useless feature

of the Apple Watch because of how it's been implemented, which is the blood oxygen reading. Compared to the other health stuff, it's, you know. I know, right? Like if this was the heart rate sensor, it's like, okay, fight this tooth and nail.

It will do some warning. And I do wonder if like the sleep apnea detection that they're rumored to be working on, if part of what that is going to include is an oxygen monitor. And like, do they, how they, but there's all the FDA approvals and things like that. And as a result, there are some alerts,

but mostly it's just you go to the app and it gives you a number. And we know that the number isn't like as accurate as some other equipment would make it but it is something uh but yeah it's it's very funny this is this is hardly a honestly if if the ruling came down and they said look just turn the feature off on new hardware or even new and existing hardware until we rule on this would it really be a material destruction of functionality of the apple watch to have the blood oxygen sensor shut off for a while yeah because it's just a feature

that they've never really even when it was announced well they just never did a good job of explaining what you could use it for and and i don't even think it's the case of like oh it's not fda approved because like the temperature sensors are not as good as they could possibly be but it's the case of like oh it's not fda approved because like the temperature sensors are not as good as they could possibly be but it's actually implemented into a useful part of the product right right although a very specific part of the product and there are other potential yes but other potential uses they have shied away from sure so i don't know but the blood oxygen sensor is it doesn't even ever really feel like to me it even had that one thing

that it was doing that was super beneficial. I am a noted blood oxygen sensor hater. Yeah, I know you are. The knives are out for the blood oxygen sensor. I am Massimo. Are you

Mike Massimo? Is that you? Are you from Italy or from Southern California? Which is it? Answer the question. See, see. This episode is brought to you by Factor. Get started on your goals for the new year with Factor

so you'll be ready to tackle it head on. Factor's ready-to-eat meal delivery takes the stress out of meal planning and sets you up for success in the new year. You can skip the grocery stores, prep work, and cooking fatigue. Instead, get those chef-crafted, dietician-approved meals delivered right to your door. We've over 35 meals to choose from per week, including options like keto, calorie smart, protein plus, vegan veggie and more, plus over 55 weekly add-ons to choose from, you're going to have tons of nutritious and flavorful options to kickstart your year right. So you can forget those frantic lunch preps and rush dinners. Factor's two-minute meals are your secret weapon in the new year.

Factor now offers loads of snack options like breakfast and smoothies and juices and snacks and more to keep you going. Jason, how disruptive is it to cook a Factor meal? Disruptive is not a word I would ever even use. It's super easy. But what I, I mean, you can stick it in the microwave and it takes two two three minutes and that's it and then it comes out and it tastes good and i'll just say again i think i've said this here before um they sent us another box and lauren just would steal them and take them

to work with her yep i mean like i i said hey wait a second they are very nice sponsors sent those to me so that i can talk about it on a podcast. And, uh, she was not really interested in hearing that and just took them to work with her. And the comment she also gave me as she stole my lunches away to take to work for, to use as her lunches was,

I don't know how they make microwave chicken taste good, which I agree with that. You, you, you might think about it like reheating a microwave meal and you can heat them up in a toaster oven or an oven too, if you with that. You, you, you might think about it like reheating a microwave meal and you can heat them up in a toaster oven or an oven too, if you want to. But, um, but it's easy in three minutes in a microwave. Um, if you've reheated microwave food before or frozen food in the microwave, you know, sometimes, especially with like meat, you're like,

this isn't quite right. There's stuff. And that's just not the case. I don't know what they're doing. Uh, some of it is the high quality ingredients, but, um, it's just stuff. And that's just not the case. I don't know what they're doing. Some of it is the high quality ingredients, but it's just good. And all of it, that's what impresses me. It's in three minutes, you've got something that does not feel like it came out of a lab somewhere and was extruded from a microwave. Instead, it feels like fresh, good ingredients. It's pretty remarkable. And like I said, I can't tell you much more personally because most of them were stolen by my wife. That's the chefs over at Factor. They do magic. That's an endorsement. Yeah, that's an endorsement.

Skip the overpriced takeout trap. Factor is cheaper and way more delicious than takeout. And when things get hectic, Factor is flexible. You can change your order every week with plans from four to 18 meals per week or pause or reschedule your deliveries anytime you have that flexibility. Factor has everything you need for a week of flavorful, nutritious eats. Head to factormeals.com slash upgrade50 and use the code upgrade50 to get 50% off. That is the code upgrade50 at factormeals.com slash upgrade50 to get that 50% off our thanks to factor for the support of this show and relay fm saddle up partner it's time for a round up

ah the horse is happy to get out in the back 50 again the new york times is reporting that apple is in talks with various publishers to license their content to be used for training their large language model at Apple. The Times is reporting that Apple is offering, quote, multi-year deals worth at least $50 million and has made these deals to publications like Condé Nast and NBC News. And I wonder, maybe the New York Times? Could it be? I find that to be very funny. Like, how did you get this information, New York Times? Well, you know, certainly the reporters don't know. But it is always funny when they're like,

we're reporting on something that's happening inside the building. That's always pretty hilarious. So this is in contrast to, I what open ai is doing where they are doing some of these deals but they are reportedly very small and i think and the new york times has taken has taken open ai to court um and open ai said hey we were talking to them we were trying to arrange something and my expectation is open ai was like that's not enough money see you in court right so a couple thoughts here one is there is this ongoing debate about whether you know training a model on copyrighted material is allowed if that's legal. And also if, if it is legal, what is legal in terms of how it gets presented? Because that lawsuit that was filed, which is, I think the New York times filed against Microsoft and open AI, they said, basically we can, we can make a prompt that gets, gets your model to spit

out a paragraph that is verbatim from our source. And I know it was a complex, it was like literally pasting the first two graphs of the story and saying, write the next graph. But that's not the point. The point is, if you can coerce an AI model to output copyrighted material, that, I'm fascinated by this argument because I'm moved by the idea that Google indexing the web is not copyright infringement, but Google republishing your article is copyright infringement. And there's a gray area in between where it's sort of like, are they stealing your, you know, ability to make a business on it by summarizing it in a way that devalues it and they're using it as raw material. And, and, uh, but leaving that aside, I feel like the big problem with a lot of these models

is that is not necessarily that they're trained on copyrighted material. I do think that's a problem, but that there's no control over what they output and, and they will frequently output something that contains portions of somebody's work. And so it's like a copyright violation machine, right? In some ways, like if you think about it, like, let's say it's legal to train on everything that's owned by everybody, but it's still not legal to reproduce copyrighted material. And I start, if I'm a lawyer, especially, I start to look at these LLMs and think, well, wait a second, what's stopping the LLM from generating something that will get us sued for copyright infringement? And the answer

is, as far as I know, absolutely nothing. And I think a lot of the controversy is about that, which is these things don't know what their sources are. And because you're feeding the copyrighted material in, you will get it back out. does. And don't do that. Or some sort of licensing agreement that says it's okay, not necessarily just to train, but like it's okay to train and that the output might contain some of my content because we've got a license for that. And I don't know what the nature of this deal is that's being reported, talking about with Apple. I would imagine Apple is thinking of both those things. Apple is thinking on one hand, we want to do a license, a content license, because that's going to put us in opposition to Microsoft and OpenAI, and we like that. And it also is giving us a business relationship

with the people who are generating the content. So when the content comes out, it is okay, because we all are on the same page about this. I also, though, wonder if it's more than that. If it's also that Apple is then, Apple's LLMs are then allowed to summarize or quote from the material because it's licensed. And that would be one way

to get better quality output, right? In some ways is having the confidence to say when you build your model, that if you can find a good source, you could actually say, here's what the New York Times said about it, and it would be all cool because there, or here's what these Wired magazines said about it.

I don't know. It's an interesting approach. I mean, Apple has a history of this, right? So the machine learning algorithms that they built photo recognition on was on licensed imagery because i remember it was a question at the time of like you're using our images to train your algorithm and it was like no i remember craig fitter i think he said on the talk show said we have we are using licensed

imagery so you imagine they must have spent millions like just buying up all this imagery so they could train it on and i guess what is one of the best ways to get this kind of text information is like to go to an institution with as much information as something like the new york times and just be like we'll just take all of that please just check out yeah and conan asked nbc news and you you build a sort of a licensed engine that is gonna be um distinct in some ways from some of the other models. And I, again, this LLM stuff and all the machine learning stuff, it's really interesting. I have no doubt that Apple misjudged the public's interest in the, in the LLM chat bot kind of thing.

I still am kind of amazed when I see some articles that are like, oh, Apple's like Mark Gurman's newsletter this week said Apple's years behind on this. And I'm like, okay, I can believe that Apple is years behind that Apple, you know, that people have been working on this for years and that Apple really only kicked it into gear last year. Okay. I'll accept that. But then his examples are like, cause, cause Googlered and the thing in Bing are out there. And it's like, those things are embarrassing experiments. They're not real. Apple doesn't do embarrassing experiments in public.

And it feels like a version of that same argument, which is, oh, Apple's late to the Apple Watch because Apple waited until it was ready to release the Apple Watch. And even arguably, they should have waited another year. But the pressure was pretty intense. It feels a little like that to me, which is like, well, wait a second. Bard and the GPT inside Bing, and what was the other thing that he said? He said, oh, there was another AI thing

where it was like, oh, Apple's way, oh, Amazon announced a new version of Alexa. Like, I mean, did they even ship that? Or is it just sort of like a, it's just an announcement that they're going to do it. Like to compare that to what Apple's doing. Like, I'm sorry, you, I'm inclined to believe that Apple's a few years behind on AI. These are not great examples because they're not things Apple would do, right? Apple is not going to put out something like the Bard experiment where it's sort of like, I don't know, the results aren't very good,

but you could try it out. And they're not going to do something like pre-announce that Siri is going to be better eventually in two years or whatever, right? Like famously, they don't do that. So I need more evidence here about all of this stuff. And I'm inclined to believe that, yeah, they're late to the party. But what's interesting about this report is it suggests that they also got a different approach to this than some of their competitors.

And maybe that is born out of the fact that they're late to the party. Maybe it's born out of the fact that their ML people are really skeptical about where all the AI stuff has been going and is going and are trying to approach it. And that doesn't necessarily mean it's a better approach, but they're approaching it differently. I don't know, but this is another data point. I think there's just a difference in the companies. I think Apple is well aware that there is no world in which anyone would accept Apple taking this data

without paying them like people are asking questions about open ai like i think right so but if apple did it we're in a whole different scenario no one's going to accept that right so so like they're going about it the right way i mean google's doing it amazon's doing it so but i think you're right in the sense that apple wants to differentiate and there are lawsuits going on and like it let me tell you it is no coincidence that the lawsuit and the apple is going to pay stories happened within a day of each other right that is not a coincidence yeah that is the whole message is here's the right way to do it here's the wrong way to do it from somebody perhaps the new york times i don't know but But like, it's, yeah, it's interesting.

I don't know. Again, I'm not trying to say, oh, Apple, I've got the inside scoop. Apple really is killing this. Like, I don't know. They probably were behind. They were caught flat footed. But they're also, their attitude to machine learning has always been different. They've been shipping machine learning based products for years.

They have different standards. And again, there's an argument that maybe their standards are a little too high. But time and again, what we've seen is Apple gets criticized for being late to the party because everybody else is pre-announcing things or doing experimental things. And then Apple comes in at a moment when it's a product that Apple would actually be proud of. And all of what is surprising when you're in it is that all that stuff fades away. Do we really remember now? Really? Unless we do this for a living, maybe. That first Apple Watch, when it was coming out,

when it was like six months before it was even introduced, let alone shipped, people were writing stories about how Apple desperately needed a new product and Tim Cook needed something to justify him being the CEO. Those were ridiculous then, but there was a lot of it. There was a lot of heat because people are, you know, people are people and they're impatient and they want to be entertained.

And it doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, Apple has to exercise discipline to be like, I know people want to be entertained. People want us to, the hot thing is chatbots. We need to launch a chatbot, but we need to do it right. Now that could lead to complacency and it could lead to Apple missing the boat. It absolutely could. But I just, I keep thinking about things like the Apple Watch, where it was the most important thing ever. And yes, a lot of us looked at it then and we're like, guys, the iPhone is the most important

thing. And it's going to remain the most important thing. The Apple Watch is a nice thing if it happens, but it's never going to be more important than the iPhone. And yet, that was the case. And then the Apple Watch shipped, and it was what it was. And six months or a year later, it blew over, and everybody was kind of over it. And like I said earlier, I think we could all agree, thinking back on that original Apple Watch, it was kind of too early, right? It was running everything on the phone and projecting it onto the watch. It was a little early, if anything, but they shipped it because they were under intense pressure to do it. So I think about with the AI stuff is that we're comparing apples to oranges here. We're talking about companies that can afford to put up

experimental things and have them be terrible and have horrible output that misleads people and makes people file legal briefs that are citing cases that don't exist. And they're like, eh, what you going to do? It's all an experiment. And Apple couldn't get away with that. But it also is possible. And I think actually likely that Apple's vision of where machine learning tech was going to be applied in its products maybe lacked a little bit in terms of where the technology was going to take great leaps and capture people's imagination. And I think both of those things can be true.

So I'm interested, this is going to be a great year to answer this question of like, well, what can they get in a product this summer? What can they get in the OSs? But this story this the story about the licensing says it again right which is like if you're expecting apple to just jump in and play the exact same game as everybody else they're not gonna like what part of apple do you not

understand they're not gonna do it they're just it's just not how they're wired um and they may succeed they may fail but they're not playing the same game. They're just not. Ming-Chi Kuo is reporting that the ultra-wide camera on the iPhone 16 Pro will feature a 48-megapixel sensor. This would allow it to capture much more light and generate higher-quality images. I would love this, because I have been unhappy

for the last couple of years of how frequently the iPhone switches to like the ultra wide macro setting when you're close to stuff because it produces a worse looking image. Like they can be like definitely not as good in low light. So my hope would be that this would help make that better if they had a lens with that sensor behind it that could take things from closer instances to still get that benefit so that would be good if they do it a lot of good bits here um remember ultra wide gives you even more area like you could use this for um for center stage um you could use this uh for macro and i think one of the big motivators here is if you use this with the main camera to do um stereo videos um 3d videos for the for the vision pro it's cropping from a much higher sensor because it's you know what it's going to be one of the eyes along with the main camera that's how they do that but the current one that's implemented on the 15 it's cropping a

low megapixel sensor in order to get the same field of view as the main camera which means that's why it's like a 1080 picture is because the quality just isn't as good. So if they put it at 48, not only, yeah, your ultra-wides are going to look good and you can zoom in, like center stage-like, you can zoom into parts of it and it's actually going to be good. Macro is good. Stereo capture is good.

It's funny because in a normal world, Apple probably looks at the ultra-wide and it's like, why does this need to be higher quality? But then you start to tick off, oh, but we use the ultra-wide. It's like a utility camera. We use it for a lot of other stuff. Okay. Like, I think they use the main for center stage when you use continuity camera.

But, like, the ultra-wide has more coverage. So I could see a scenario where you even used it for that and said, if you need to go outside the frame, switch to the ultra-wide. And then you can go even further to the left or the right and get everybody in there like there there are a bunch of uses for it right to having that ultra wide and so we've reached the point now where they look at the ultra wide camera and they're like oh yeah i guess it should be better which is great i i love this report the idea that apple's not sleeping on its other cameras that, you know, because they all should keep getting better. Mark Goeman is reporting that the iPhone 16 lineup will include a new dedicated button that you can press for taking video.

I'm assuming also photos, but Mark has just said video. It will be a capacitive button on the bottom right side of the phone where the millimeter wave antenna is if you have a US model. The button will not physically move, but it will feature haptic feedback and force sensitivity. So it will be an area that you'll press. Apple did this with the home button for many years when it moved to Touch ID. This is very interesting and weird to me. It's like it's just like a button like why now like

i know right now but all czars emerged from their tomb after many years it's i don't this is odd this is an odd one um i would like it like why not but it's like it's one of those things where like you know we were just talking about the the 3d video like you know like spatial video this might be part of the reason but it is just like a funny thing to after all these years you now put a physical quote-unquote button on the phone for capturing media after two new buttons and two new buttons in two years yeah they're two new buttons in two years the iphone 20 the entire rail of the farm will be all buttons just all buttons it's all buttons yeah i i mean it puts one it puts an action button on the other side that's part of it we know that they were trying to do capacitive

pressure sensitive you know fake button buttons with the action button and the report is they couldn't get it to work so they or with or with the volume buttons, I think it was right. Like, and they couldn't get to work. It was, it was the volume and the, the action button was supposed to be action, but that's what the rumors said anyway, initially anyway,

and that they had to back out of that. So this is on the other side. It's on the other end. I think it maybe addresses the issue of having it be held upright for, um, you know, held for 3d captures that you put a more natural place for your finger to go. I, I mean, as I'm speaking to you now, I'm capturing video on my iPhone using a

amount that's like the, the studio neat glyph. So it's a, it's like a clip and I keep, you know, it's halfway down the phone because above it, there are buttons and you can't press the buttons. Now this, if it's capacitive, actually, I think the, any kind of mount will not affect it because it's being touched by not a human, not human skin. But I do have that moment of like, how am I going to even mount my phone anymore? But that all said, like, I love it. This is, I'm just going to replay. We could just go to the clip. Uh, what I said about the action button, which is there is something amazing about having tactile. It's like physical interfaces in cars instead of touchscreens. It's the same thing.

Like having to deal with software and like, how do you get there? Well, you tap on this and then you scroll here and you swipe down and then you tap and then you open the glove compartment in a Tesla, right? It's like, or you set the setting on your iPhone. Like, it's so much better to turn on the air conditioning with a button or a switch.

It's so much better to start capturing video or take a photo by pressing a button or doing whatever with the action button. But I think the goal of the action button initially was literally, I want a shutter button. And this sounds like the primary goal is I want a let's start doing video button. And I think that that is, I think what it shows is that Apple is really analyzing how people, how regular people use their iPhones. And that one of the complaints about using their iPhones as a camera, which is probably the number one thing that people use their iPhone for, or certainly top three, is, oh, I gotta like, do I unlock it?

And I have to go and I find the app. And then by the time I do all that, the moment has passed. And I know there are shortcuts and stuff. You can swipe in this direction and do that. But like, there's nothing like the smooth physical action of pulling your phone out of your pocket. It's in your hands.

You press the button. You don't even need to look. You press the button and know that the capture is starting. the smooth physical action of pulling your phone out of your pocket it's in your hands you press the button you don't even need to look you press the button and know that the capture is starting i think that's the key part and you're capturing video you can get it going before you've even looked at the display just with your hands feeling the phone that is powerful because and because you don't have to interact with software at all. It is like a physical camera from the old days, right? Where if you're a photographer, if you ever had a camera, you probably know that you can just go like, in the old days, turn it on and then put your finger where the shutter is and then halfway down and click and you're taking pictures. There's no like,

well, first you got to turn on the camera and then you've got to tap on the, on the, on the back of it in order to like that. No, it's muscle memory. It's, it's physical. And there's great power in that, especially for something like capturing video or stills where your eyes are not really on the phone and you don't want them to be on the phone. You want them to be on the subject. So I, you know, I don't know where this comes from, that Apple is just suddenly adding buttons everywhere, but I love it. Like, bring it on.

Bring on the all-button phone. Fine. We'll figure it out. We'll, you know. But like a few discrete buttons, you don't want to overwhelm people with buttons. Then it's like the Apollo lunar lander, right? Like it's like, there's maybe too many buttons.

But surely a few more buttons would be welcome for things like capture. This is great. I love this rumor. I look forward to the disasters of cases again. Oh man. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, you know, case making is a lucrative business and nobody said it would be easy. You gotta toughen up case makers. This episode is brought to you by Vitally. Customer success teams are facing a problem. How do they connect customer data back to their work? Vitally changes this. It's a new kind of customer success platform,

an all-in-one collaborative workspace that combines your customer data with all the capabilities you expect from today's project management and work platforms. Because Vitaly is designed for today's customer success team, that's why it operates with unparalleled efficiency, improves net revenue retention, and delivers best-in-class customer experiences. Vitaly is the solution to helping your customer success teams keep a better pulse on your customers,

which maximizes productivity, visibility, and collaboration. You can boost your bottom line by driving more revenue per customer with Vitally. And if you take a qualified demo of Vitally, you'll get a free pair of AirPods Pro. So if you're a customer success decision maker, actively seeking CS solutions, working at a B2B software as a service company with 50 to 1,000 employees, and you're willing to explore changing customer success platforms if you already have one in place, schedule your call today by visiting vitally.io slash upgrade and get that free pair of AirPods Pro. That is vitally.io slash upgrade vitally.io slash upgrade forally dot I-O slash upgrade for a free pair of AirPods Pro

when you schedule a qualified meeting. Our thanks to Vitally for their support of this show and RelayFM. So let's look ahead a little bit to the rest of this year and the Vision Pro specifically. So here's my kind of imagination for how this thing plays out roughly right okay

we're going to start the year with an announcement of some kind right however that happens doesn't really make too much of a difference for the fact that it will happen then units will start going out to reviewers presumably there would then be reviews before customers buy them. Customers will buy them. Apps will be released. Then WWDC rolls around presumably for operating system improvements. I expect we'll see some in WWDC. Then later on in the year, a new version of the OS

and moving forward. I cannot imagine any more hardware this year, but by the end of the year, more countries would start to potentially be receiving the ability to buy this product so this year no matter what is the story right like we are going to be talking about the vision pro throughout all of 2024 like with the product actually existing not just the way we've been doing it for the last couple of years

where we've been talking about what it might be and then talking about our experiences and then wondering more about it. But we should see it in January, probably. This is when this stuff will start to kick off. And then it is the entire year, right? Yeah, the whole year. Yeah, for sure.

Are you excited about that prospect? Yeah, this is it, right? Whenever we were talking about looking forward to 2024, what I keep saying is it's going to be a great year. I heard you guys talking about this on Connected last week, that it doesn't matter how it goes. It doesn't matter how it goes. I was trying to tell this to Leo Laporte, who's a real skeptic on MacBreak Weekly, a real skeptic about the Vision Pro.

And my point is, it's okay to be a skeptic. It's a weird product in a weird category that Apple's never done before. And they're trying a bunch of stuff. But the point is, first off, they are trying a lot of stuff. This is not a half-baked product. This is cutting-edge. You and I both used it. It is amazing technically. It is an amazing piece of hardware. So this is the world's number one technology company spending years building a

product that is basically the best product money can buy to do this thing that people think many people think is going to be the future of computing and that's why they're doing it is because they think this is a future direction now are they wrong what are the it's a 1.0 product it's guaranteed because it's a 1.0 product that you're going to look back in five years and go, boy, right? Like, because just even if it's successful, because you learn things and the tech marches on, but you got to start somewhere. So regardless, like, look, I, I'm not an Apple investor, right? And I'm not an Apple employee. So I don't have that kind of investment in it where I, oh, it needs to work because I need my stock to go up. I'm not coming from that perspective. But as somebody who is enthusiastic about the kind of march of technology, what a

story this is. Succeed or fail. Because start with, what are the decisions they made? We've gotten now a clue about that with the June announcements and with our 30 minutes each on it. And they were very impressive, but like it was a constrained environment, extremely constrained. We were told what to do for 30 minutes. It was not free form.

So what, what is that broader experience? Like what are the choices they made? Where do they fall down? Where do they succeed? Again, regardless of whether it's a success or a flop because i don't think we're gonna know right like even if it's got a lot of of limitations it's a 1.0 product and i think

they're in this for the long haul so they're gonna be a lot of hot takes right that that's gonna happen but like the big story here is it's an entirely new Apple platform where they've spent a huge amount of time building incredibly cutting edge, not just hardware, but like software user interactions, like the eye tracking based stuff. I can't wait to see it and dig into it and see where it takes us. And that's why 2024 is going to be, I think is going to be great because I'm not saying the product is going to be great, but I'm going to say the product, it's impossible to look at that product and conceive that product and not think of how interesting and particular and peculiar that it's going to be. And I don't think even Apple understands because you never know until it's out there how people are going to use it, how software developers are going to dive into it, the ones that do. All of that is, you can't even conceive of it until you start the clock and start shipping it. There are just fundamental questions that we don't have the answers to.

What is it like to use it for one hour is it uncomfortable is it the same what is it like to use it for 32 minutes right like uh we don't know we don't know like what is it truly like to watch a movie on this thing like is it actually a nice experience like it looks like it would be but we don't know what is it like to write an email you know like what is the keyboard like to use on this thing? Like, there are just all these things that are fundamental to the product that we do not understand yet. And, like, just this whole idea, this idea of spatial computing that Apple is trying to bring to the world here, right, where this thing isn't just a media entertainment device.

It is a full-on computer. You can use it. Like, what is that world truly like? Right, an iPad you put on your face. What is that like? Do you want to spend your afternoon moving your head left, right, up, and down? Like, is it nice or is it not nice?

We don't know these things. That is one of the questions that I really am curious about is if I sit at this desk and instead of using the display, the 27-inch display that's here, I use a big display. Or a great use case for me

is if I go visit my mom in Phoenix and I sit at her dining room table with my MacBook Air, but hovering above it now is a giant screen that is my Mac in Vision Pro. Could I do that? Could I use it that way? They say you can, but they say a lot of things, right? That's when reality meets PR is that that's when we get in there and we're like, okay, well here what the issues are and i don't even i can't even make up what those issues are i don't know is there a is there an amazing workflow where there's like i was thinking about like the fact that it runs uh a lot of common apple apps i thought you know i i can do stuff on the ipad

without having a mac around i can do a lot around. I can do a lot of stuff, not everything, but a lot of stuff. And I thought, I haven't even considered like, what's it going to be like if I can put Slack over here and calendar over here and mail up here and like do my working on the iPad, but I'm on vision pro instead. Like theoretically I can do that. But we don't know whether you do that for half an hour and you're like, nope, forget about it. Or whether it's something you could do for all day or half a day or a couple of hours. doing playing a game like we don't know we just don't know about about that because all we've people inside apple know and maybe some people developers know a little bit more in the developer labs but really nobody on the outside is going to know until we set these things up and use it for minute 31 on we like what are the apps going to be like right like people have been dreaming this stuff up in their minds for a while like what then working in the simulator there is the opportunity for experiences and applications that truly open our minds to what this world can be like i've said

this in a few places now and so i'm apologizing for repeating myself but i am kind of coming to this as this is probably the most important thing that apple has done in my time covering them professionally because it is a brand new thing with large ramifications like the apple watch is the only other thing that was brand new but it was never positioned as being a computer like that's a different that's a different thing right right it's an iphone accessory and and also that was 10 years ago 10 years 10 years ago it was a very different time. This is a computing platform. Yeah, it's a new Apple computing platform.

Completely new. Well, I mean, completely with an asterisk. I guess I would say the last time that there was anything even remotely like this was the iPad introduction. And although the iPad was a lot like the phone, the Vision OS has a lot in common, but it's also 10 years on. So I would say you could make a very easy argument

that this is the biggest Apple hardware introduction since the original iphone and like the way that i have been thinking about this in my mind is like it is adding the third input mechanism right so we had the mouse we have touch we have eye tracking eye tracking which yeah i was over christmas when we were in bucharest there was some some of our friends were asking me about it and i kind of hit on a thing which is how i remember it being and again as i said to them i have not dined out so much on half an hour in my entire career as i have on that 130 minute experience that i got right but as i've reflected on it for the last six months one of the things that i remembered is like the move the the eye tracking almost when you get into the flow of it feels a little bit like mind reading it does because you naturally naturally look where you want to interact with

so the fact that you are like oh i want to look at discord right now and your eyes will just go to discord and then discord is ready for you to interact yeah there is so little delay between these things happening in your brain it just feels like it felt like the device was just ready and working with me and and that is very cool well it's reading your mind. And the reason that it feels like it's reading your mind is because like you're, I mean, people can look at your vision, look at your eyes and, and intuit things from it, but at a very gross level, right? Like, oh, you're looking, you're looking over to the, I'm talking to you and you're looking over to the left and, you know, you're bored or distracted or whatever this isn't like that this is like nobody knows exactly what i'm looking at exactly right it's only me because i i can see like it's it's a private like our gaze is at least i think most

of us categorize our gaze at least specifically as a private like internal thing and the vision pro is like no i know i know where you're looking it knows what word you're looking at in a sentence so that's next level which is why which is why the privacy stuff is so important right because you can imagine bad apps and things um building a profile of you based on where your eyes go and that's gross that's really gross because they're trying to read your mind. But at a system level, what it's doing is it's making the whole landscape around you in the Vision Pro, you know, augmented reality space. It is like your companion who knows exactly what you're thinking at that moment. And I don't want to overstate it, but you are exactly right.

It's like you think about doing something and tap your fingers together and the thing happens. Now, what you're actually doing is you're looking at it and tapping your fingers and the thing happens. But there is a leap, I think, that our brains make of thought to sight to action. thought to sight to action. And by Vision Pro being able to take that jump to sight, it's like it's connecting thought to action directly. And I think that that is going to be the thing that surprises people the most. I think that will be the thing that when people use it, they will be kind of blown away by is the accuracy. Again, if it truly is as accurate as our experience was right and it does need to be for it to to have that effect um but it was very good when we used it and it was that

part in the demo where they kind of stopped telling you what to do and it's a very clever trick that they play really well that could first like look over here and do that and then eventually it's like just click photos for me and like you just go and do it like there is a because it ends up becoming quite intuitive that's what i expect will be quite startling to people how kind of how good it is um but yeah i i'm i'm very excited for this year i think that the opportunities for content are massive for us. I'm so excited for what we will be able to talk about. I am very excited about it. I mean, we do okay when nothing's going on,

but it's great when stuff is going on. It's like even better. And my only thing now is just like, how long until I get one? Trying to plan this out in my year is the most complicated part, but I will try everything possible within my power. Time for another visit to the United States, I guess.

I mean, that is my plan, right? My plan is order one and then book a flight. Schedule a pickup, book a flight. Yeah. I wanted to say the one thing that I'm most interested in seeing, I'm sure there are going to be a lot of things that are in the shipping version of the Vision Pro that surprise us, that Apple has withheld, that they perhaps will even mention.

I'd be actually a little disappointed if they're like, nope, everything we showed in June is all that there is and the rest of it we took out. I would be a little disappointed. I want there to be some more stuff that they withheld. But the one thing that I'm sure they withheld that I'm really curious about is voice

control. Because we didn't see any indication of Siri or anything like that. And when you start to think about stuff, especially what I think about is text input, right? But also, you know, more abstract commands in general. I can see how you can go really fast with Vision Pro with your eyes and with your hands. But I wonder if you can really take a leap production wise productivity wise if you can add your voice to the mix yeah because they said it

was possible but they they never showed it they never showed anything right and tapping on a keyboard like if i want to answer somebody's text uh who sent me a message i i will see but like i have a hard time imagining that my preference is going to be to tap on a virtual keyboard instead of being able to dictate the answer yeah and and i i just will that be iphone level or will there be some quirks and interesting things that make that elevated a little bit because if you okay this is a little unfair but like if you have to break out the keyboard and the trackpad they blew it right like that you you shouldn't have to do that like if you want to be like oh i need to type a lot i'm going to bring out a bluetooth keyboard and go and i'm typing into

something and it shows up in the vision pro great great do that if you need to do that but like i i if i'm tapping things out on the little virtual keyboard inside uh like there needs to be some more so i'm anyway i'm curious about how well that integrates and if it's just iphone level siri or if there's some extra stuff going on there i'm digging around on the page and again this is nothing in while but they're like dictate, you just look at the microphone button and start speaking is one of the things on the page. Yeah, baby. See? See?

And we didn't get to use that. But that's that mind reading thing again, right? Which is you look at the microphone and you give a command and then you look away. And it's not, it's not, I don't know, it feels, that feels different to me than having to sort of take a deep breath and call the assistant to you. Ahoy, telephone. I give you a command now, right? And instead, it's sort of like you just look and go this thing. And then you move to the next thing.

And it's just, it becomes part of the user interface. That's really interesting, depending on how they execute it. It's probably not, it's not long now not long now not long now not long no it's uh i love that we don't really understand how the rollout's gonna go that's also exciting but uh but like this month like weeks away if not days now very exciting This episode is brought to you by Nom Nom. Nom Nom really cares about your dog's digestion. They have a specially extensive pet microbiome database to help create better recipes for every breed, size, and digestive sensitivity. Nom Nom delivers freshly made dog food with every portion personalized to your dog's needs so you can bring out their best and it's all made with real wholesome ingredients you can see

and recognize without any additives or fillers that contribute to bloating and low energy that's because nom nom uses the latest science and insights to make real good food for dogs their nutrient-packed recipes are designed by board-certified veterinary nutritionists, freshly made and shipped free to your door. Jason, I have had the pleasure of meeting your lovely dog. In fact, we'll call it Upgrade Dog, you know, because they've been present during certain episodes and I think they're always present with you. Yes, yes, they were.

And had to be taken away and consoled by Adina at one point, too. So, yeah. How important is your dog's nutrition? It's very important. And Maisie, you know, in fact, what happened is Nom Nom shipped us some food, and then Maisie took it to work with her. Wait a second. That's a different story. No, wait.

I got it wrong. No, I fed it to her, and she loved it. Like, I mean, again, when we got her, she was malnourished. it like i mean again this is that we got when we got her she was malnourished and and it was very important for us to get her good nutrition because she was a rescue and she was on the streets living rough on the streets and um we just had a year with her and we have a before and after picture with her and it's pretty remarkable the difference so it's super important nom nom have already delivered over 40 million meals to good dogs like yours, inspiring millions of clean bowls and tail wags. Plus, Nom Nom comes with a money-back guarantee. If your dog's tail isn't wagging within 30 days,

Nom Nom will refund your first order. No fillers, no nonsense, just Nom Nom. Go right now to get 50% off your no-risk two-week trial at trynom.com upgrade. two-week trial at trynom.com slash upgrade. That is spelled T-R-Y-N-O-M dot com slash upgrade for 50% off. That is trynom dot com slash upgrade. Our thanks

to NomNom for their support of this show and RelayFM. It is time for some Ask Upgrade questions. I was worried that there could have been a backfiring you know because well they had to power up yeah they haven't been used in a little while so they get shut off to save some power we shut them off at the end of the year but now they're back yep back for a new year powered up the lasers carbon neutral so we turn them off when they're not needed oh yeah they're recycled 100 recycled lasers yeah they just fire around a container.

We just capture them. Yeah, yeah. It's like, yeah, well, it's solar power. So we get the light from there and then we generate the lasers. Connor asks, I'm looking to upgrade my Intel MacBook Air and I'm looking at either the M2 MacBook Air

or the M3 Pro MacBook Pro. Cost is a factor, but I also don't want to hit a ceiling in a few years. I'm on Zoom all day for work with an external display. Then I use Xcode at night for my side project. I travel about once a month on average, so weight is a consideration, but not a huge one. I'm mostly worried about performance. What do you think Connor should go with, Jason? Comments, what do you think Connor should go with, Jason? Well, the key phrases I zoom into here are,

I use Xcode and I travel about once a month, so wait is not a huge consideration. And I put those two things together and I say, especially since you are coming from an Intel MacBook Air, look, you could get an M2 Air and you're going to be fine. You're going to be happy. But you also are concerned about hitting a ceiling in a few years and you're using Xcode and you don't travel every week. You're traveling once a month and you're not desperately concerned about weight. And so I'm going to say MacBook Pro. I think Xcode, the performance is a concern for you and Xcode means that you're actually using it pretty

intensely. So that's where I come down is I think you could get an error and it would be fine, but I think you're going to be happier in the long run with the pro because of that Xcode use and because the weight isn't super sensitive for you. Yeah. While I am definitely a team MacBook Air, I do think in this particular circumstance like if you can stretch to the m3 pro macbook pro you'll probably get more out of it yeah the x code was the flag for me if he hadn't said x code i've been like you know the air is going to be fine it's going to be good enough for performance and battery and it's nice and light and it's fine x kind of like okay yeah probably you should try to get a macbook pro but i pro m3 pro like he said yeah i

do i do still pause a little bit on and i am one of these people just because how my circumstances ended out which is using the macbook pro with an external display because the display on the macbook pro is so good it's almost like you're robbing yourself or something which is fresh it's frustrating i can i am still frustrated that apple have not released a standalone display with the same uh specs as the macbook pro display right with promotion and stuff like that i think it's you're you're taking this beautiful display and closing it and then plugging it into an inferior display which is what i do and so many people do it and i think it's a shame but when you do use it as a laptop when you're traveling you'll have a great time with that display yeah darian writes in and says what do you guys think of my prediction given the max 40th anniversary

on january 24th and accordingly the anniversary of the famous 1984 big brother ad at the super bowl combined with the launch of the vision pro early early this year what if we combine all of these things together apple will revisit that history of another super bowl ad that introduces the largest audience on earth to the new vision of spatial computing while calling back to the big brother ad and honoring the 40th anniversary all in one shot. Well, okay, largest audience on Earth doesn't see the ads. They only see the game. So that's the first thing.

It is the highest rated, I think, thing. I mean, the Olympics are this year, so it might not be the highest, but pretty close. In Durin's defense, the ads of the Super Bowl are like an event of its own. They are an audience unto themselves. That's true. I think the Apple Super Bowl ad, an event of its own. They are an audience unto themselves. That's true. I think the Apple Super Bowl ad, I think yes, probably. Tied to the 40th anniversary and the Big Brother ad with Vision Pro.

I mean, it's not impossible that they'll do something like that. I would have a hard time imagining that Vision Pro will... I don't know. I think there'll be an Apple Super Bowl ad. Vision Pro may be involved. It may not be. They may just be like iPhone. We got to sell more iPhones. Because the iPhone is

where they're gonna make their money. But it wouldn't... My answer to Darren is maybe. Like, I wouldn't bet against it. But it's a very specific prediction, right? I will eat a hat. You'll eat a hat? I will eat a hat if they do a Big Brother ad.

Are you kidding me? They are Big Brother now. They are kidding me? They are Big Brother now. They are Big Brother. Nobody mentioned Big Brother anymore. Nobody mentioned Big Brother. They can't do that. The last time we saw the Big Brother ad and what I think more people living today

referencing to is when Fortnite ripped it off about Apple. About Apple. Yep. And i don't i i don't pro vision pro i mean who knows but i would say uh remember the apple did the thing where they where they put the ipod and the head earbuds in her ears you remember that where apple defaced their own ad no i don't remember that oh yeah they did it in the ipod era they did it they did a version of the ad where she's wearing the white earbuds yeah but that was still pre-iphone right yeah yeah no i'm just saying that they've they've

tread that ground i don't i don't i don't think i think there will be an apple ad in the superbowl and it might be for vision pro but that's about all as far as i would be willing to go be an apple ad in the super bowl and it might be for vision pro but that's about all as far as i would be willing to go brandon asks what do you think the storage tiers will be for the vision pro i hope there are none i hope it's yeah one configuration please don't make me choose right like it should have a lot more than enough it costs three and a half thousand dollars don't make me choose like the only things that should add expense to this are my prescription lenses and any accessories i want to buy yes there should not be multiple storage tiers i think when it starts at 34.99 i agree i

think probably not storage tiers and instead you you got to pay for the lenses you got to pay for the cover you got to pay for an extra battery or an extra cable like there are there are accessory issues that you'll pay extra for but i i agree with you i hope and i can't even conceive of what the tiers would be but like the idea of like well for 34.99 you only get 512 but if you're really going to use the storage, the disk, on the headset, then we'll bump it up to a terabyte.

I have no idea why I even... What am I doing with it? Why would I need storage? I'm downloading a movie, but you probably just stream it, right? So, yeah. I hope not. I'm with you. I hope not. And Kevin asks, My current television is a 50 inch 1080p plasma instead of dropping thousands on the latest greatest television do

you think i should just wait and get a vision pro i live alone so family use is not involved oh kevin buy a television kevin yeah i think so like i think so because then it's just on you can you can have it when you're cooking dinner when you're you know you're not gonna have a thing on your face all the time right like you know yeah you buy a television honestly if you're really concerned um and you've got a plasma now like you you get an oled for fairly reasonable you can get a enormous uh regular non-oled backlit display that does hdr and has local dimming for under a thousand dollars that's way larger than your current tv so you could also just get a nice 4k hdr tv and save the rest of your money for a few more years until this all gets shaken out but i would even if you want to buy a a pricey

oled i would buy a pricey oled buy it just buy it nice just just treat yourself by tv television and like maybe yeah yourself there will be years for a vision but i i really don't think it's going to be the only way you'd want to watch stuff was with that i can't conceive of i can't conceive of that no no and we also don't know the story about like what apps are going to be there because like it's disney bob eiger says disney plus will be there but like right is your tv provider going to be there is netflix going to be there like what's going to be there and are those going to be good and and you're going to be tethered because the battery only lasts so long like don't don't do it don't

do it's too early there may come a day where we all say, you know what? Single people who never watch media with other people don't even need a TV anymore because of the Vision Pro. I don't think we're there yet. And I don't think this new version, this first version is going to bring us to that point. They'll even be like, oh, it's cheap enough that everyone in the house has one, like a phone. And we can share play and just watch it. There is a world in which that happens. But we're years away from that. not anytime soon yeah right if you would like to send us in your feedback follow-up and questions for ask upgrade you can always go to upgradefeedback.com until next week

you can check out jason's work over at sixcolors.com and you can hear him on podcasts here on relay fm and at the what happens next week does my am i am i getting fired from six colors next week we'll have to wait and see we're on a we're on a seven-day rolling contract right now talk to my talk to my boss talk to your agent you can listen to me here on relay fm and check out my work at cortex brand.com you can find us week until next week but maybe and i have to talk to look it has been known over the last future is promised to no one just real quick aside it was one of the weirdest experiences that i've had while listening to a podcast which was at the end of the episode of the talk show where john syracuse was on they were talking about me not being on upgrade much in december huh and that was a very weird thing to hear people talk about was like referring

to the fact that john stepped in for me and also i was like i think they compare me to johnny carson which was funny it was very funny to me but yeah that was just like a strange thing but yes i'm here now uh you can find us on mastodon j. Jason is at jsnell on zeppelin.flights. I am at imike, I-M-Y-K-E, on mike.social. You can find the show as upgrade at relayfm.social. You can watch video clips of the show there that we produce every week. We have loads of really fun clips,

the best moments in the show every single week. But these are also on TikTok and Instagram and YouTube where we are at Upgrade Relay I am on threads, is that iMike? I am YKE, Jason is at jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L thank you to our members who support us with Upgrade Plus, thank you to

our sponsors, the fine folk over at NomNom, Vitally and Factor we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Happy New Year, everybody.