Upgrade - 498: Leap the Uncanny Valley

Episode Date: February 5, 2024

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 498 for february 5th 2024 this episode is brought to you by fitbod express vpn and squarespace my name is mike hurley i am currently in new york city i'm joined by Jason Snell, but we are both in a brand new era. Hi, Jason Snell. Am I talking to you or your digital persona right now? Who could tell? We're in our vision era now, Jason. That's the vision era. That's right. 498 onward. The vision era. But just because we're in our new era, things still stay the same.

Like the Snow Talk question for this week that comes from Mark who says, what is your preferred time of day to record a podcast? This is a very interesting question because preferred is a word that... I mean, when would I prefer to record all my podcasts? I'm not sure. What I found is that I record all my podcasts at 9 a.m. But do you like doing that? Well, I mean, it gets me up out of bed ready to go for the day.

We do this. We do the Six Colors podcast. I sometimes schedule other podcasts at 9 a.m. It's not a bad time. I have a lot of collaborators who are further east than me. I don't know. who are further east than me i don't know and the incomparable tends to get recorded in the evening like six or seven my time which is hard on those east coasters because it's so late for them but um i don't know i mean as it turns out um both have their advantages i do downstream in

the middle of the day usually it's like a two in the afternoon and it's actually kind of weird so the simple answer the question is 9 a.m pacific noon eastern 5 p.m london when we do upgrade yep i prefer what i'm doing right now which is like 12 o'clock in the afternoon that's wonderful but i so rarely get to do it really i only record at the time I want to record when I'm in America. When I'm at home, I don't want to record at the time that I record.

But such is life. That is just when it is. And it's fine. You have all the American collaborators, so you have to record late. That's just how it is. I sure do. If you would like to send in a question of your own

to help us open a future episode of Upgrade, just go to upgradefeedback.com and send in a Snell talk. Now, of course, we do have a lot to cover today with the Vision Pro, but we have other things first that we want to do, and then we can get all high in the sky and talk about the Vision Pro. The first is some follow-up about the Digital Markets Act. Now, we are going to be talking about this a lot, I still think, over the next few months. But we had four pieces of feedback at upgradefeedback.com that I wanted to talk about, maybe to clarify some things we were talking about and to also

add some different perspectives. Scott said, I appreciate you both covering the DMA news, but I take issue with one thing that you said. You went hard about how a 50 cent per user fee is not hard to make up for a proper business model. I don't disagree, but the bigger issue is now apps must have business models. I know that you're both business owners, and I am too, but I also know there are tons of people who want to make their work 100% free on principle, and now they either can't or hope they don't get popular. I'm going to disagree back with Scott.

We were discussing if you accept Apple's terms. you don't have to accept Apple's terms. So anybody who has no business model, the way that this works is you don't accept the terms and you can stay free in the app store. You just can't leave the app store. And I believe what we said in the episode. So again, I'm going to disagree a little bit with Scott here. I think one of the points that I made in that episode is that what this does is effectively keep those apps in the App Store. If the idea is to have competition, the apps that Scott describes, basically, they don't want to risk exiting the App Store. Although, again, you'd need more than a million users at that point. exiting the app store. Although again, you'd need more than a million users at that point. But yeah, for an app that just wants to stay free, you can just stay in the app store and do it.

The problem with the way it's currently constituted is those apps don't have a choice if they want to stay risk-free and cost-free. Again, the cost is after a million, but still, there is a real danger there for a hobby project that somebody is suddenly going to be on the hook for a big bill so um but but don't forget the fact that you can just opt not to take the new terms and stay free in the app store and because the way it's working right now or it's proposed to work right now uh that's what all of those apps will do is just stay in the app store for free yeah and i definitely feel that as the two of us i was leaning more on i think that the core technology fee is kind of how the app store should work but maybe i didn't cover this fully but like if you have no intention of ever making money from an application you shouldn't have to pay it i don't feel like but if you want to make money from an app i think it makes sense to have just like a flat fee that everybody pays rather

than a percentage of anything but that's just my, but it's a good view from Scott. Mark says, correct me if I'm wrong, but don't developers pay Apple an annual fee to be able to put apps in the App Store? Isn't that how Apple makes money from free apps? Yes. Like, it's true. It's a thing.

They make money from free apps that way. $99 if you want to submit it to the app store although even then i think if you're like an education or non-profit or whatever that there's a you get it for free or there's a discount or something it's not i mean does apple make money at 99 a year off of a free app i mean come on but don't forget now, in the EU, that $99 pays for your first million installs, right? Without the core technology fee being applied to it. That's true. So that's what it's paying for now.

I doubt Apple views the $99 a year developer fee, which used to be mandatory, and now I think it's only if you're going to be in the App Store, otherwise it's free, I want to say. That's not a big profit center for them no and i was talking about uh i was laughing about the idea of apple providing refunds as a as like a thing that you won't get if you use an app marketplace potentially molly's wrote in to say i requested a refund for an in-app purchase last month it was fairly easy

to do so on the phone and apple approved it in 24 hours the day after the money appeared on my credit card balance i remember how this used to be very bothersome but it's not anymore at least not in the eu i have no idea if that's a factor but i suppose it could be so i'll say a couple of things one at 100 is a factor like if it's easier it's because they're but also apple do it but they don't like really do it like it's not like they're very oh hey do you want a refund like it i don't believe that they're the way that apple pitches the idea of refunds as being a benefit of the app store is like as real as it actually is in reality yes you can get them but can you and alexi writes in to say, I had some thoughts on the quote we were saying,

why is the 15 or 30% still a thing? Like, why does Apple still get a commission? It's worth mentioning all the regional tax and other regulations that Apple takes care of for developers. The complexity of accounting, if your app is distributed in worldwide markets, is enough by itself for me to find value in what Apple provides. So this is a good point

but apple's not the only company that could provide this service they just do and so other companies do and can provide this kind of stuff like i think stripe do a lot of this stuff and they don't take 30 so yeah it well yes they do a lot of things for you, but they take a much higher percentage than a competing company would. And ultimately, this is about competition. One of the reasons the 15-30% is still a thing is that Apple has no competition. Apple has made it that they are the only game in town for this up to now. And they're still setting a bunch of rules. And that, I think, is one of the big reasons that it's still a thing.

And they're still setting a bunch of rules. And that, I think, is one of the big reasons that it's still a thing is is just that there's no. Yes, I'm not. I don't think we ever saying like Apple doesn't do anything but pass along the credit card fee. Right. Like they they host everything. They do marketing. They have a whole app store, you know, marketing team, editorial team. They do all sorts of stuff that they spend money on for the app store it is not zero but i do think it's very much debatable if if 30 off of an in-app purchase of a game that somebody's playing it is really earned by what apple provides or not and we can't tell because there's no competition nope so that's the dma for today we'll come back to the DMA again. DMA today. DMA today. Let's not make that a segment. No, let's do it. Come on, DMA today. DMA today.

It comes on after Snow Talk, right? Good morning. Yeah, that's right. All right, Mike, how'd you do this week? How are you feeling? All right, well, let's get to the DMA news. I have just renamed this chapter in my document to DMA today. DMA today.

All right, alert, alert jd it's time for some custom dma today art looks like today's show has got a little rainbow we'll see about that a eu flag uh jason i ticked off a bucket list item a couple of days ago oh man this is like okay what was the most exciting thing about your friday was it getting the apple vision pro or something else i met tim cook yeah it was pretty awesome it was pretty awesome so i'm in new york right now that's where uh i went for my uh apps to get the vision pro and i did the fifth avenue store because i thought it would be the one that would have the most stock when i was trying to buy yeah why not uh but also i thought

that it would be a cool experience to see right that like it would be very big and vibrant and a lot going on which is definitely the case it was amazing in there plus that was the store where they put up the big vision like outline right like that was the store that apple chose to dress up uh and when i got to the store i came down the stairs and i saw uh greg josriak just standing there talking to a few people and then i saw probably a hundred a group of about 150 people in a huddle. And I was like, Tim's here. And he was. I went into the store. I did my whole thing.

And was kind of like hanging around, talking to some friends who were there too. Saw a wonderful friend and contacted Apple PR, said to me, would you like to meet Tim? Which I was like, okay. It was a very nervewracking thing for me because i didn't really know what to do like what do you say to him right in an environment like that so i was pulled through this huddle of people and i was standing there and they said to me can you

just hold on for one moment i was like yep and then neil patrick harris comes up he just and he starts having a conversation i'm standing in front of tim cook and neil patrick harris having a conversation about the vision pro and i was it was just one of these things i was like what is happening right you know like i felt like an out-of-body experience it's like like what is actually happening right now this is very peculiar uh and so i waited for a moment they were very nice and so i didn't have anything planned i didn't know what to say and so i just said to tim like what an amazing day like this is super cool like i'm really excited and this you know and he was you know and he was saying like yeah we're really excited about this too like it's such an amazing product and i was like this store is incredible because it

looked so great and people were so excited and he was like oh this is like the perfect place to to do some things we love it i then said something else that i don't remember like i just don't remember what happened after that um we were talking for like a minute and then i asked if we could take a selfie which he was like so good at it's like yeah of course and took a selfie took a bunch of pictures i said thank you i shook his hand twice which is kind of cool and then i just ran off into the night um and then i went just then i went to joss and like to joss i was like oh i'm mike i work with jason he's like oh we love jason i was like me too he's the best and we were just chatting a bit and so joss says hi the uh thank you uh yeah i love joss joss goes

back a million years. Everybody knows him now. He's in the videos. He's Dark iPhone Man, right? He's the Night iPhone. He's the Batman of the iPhone. But he was like a PowerBook product manager back when I was a very junior editor. He's been doing it forever.

Well, that's really great. I have never met Tim Cook cook although i have been in the scrum by tim cook but you know it's also i'm doing my job and and also uh no pr people have said would you like to meet tim so i haven't had that conversation yet but um that's great it's possible the thing that you blurted out that you don't remember was something like oh you put my podcast art back oh so jason this is my regret if i would have thought i would have had that picture to show him like that's that's my only regret of it but also like i don't like you know it's one of those things like really

what he would have said it's like oh that's cool okay also i didn't really want to get into who i am promote exactly like exactly it's a different thing right right because i know like you had just spoken to jaws right like two weeks ago and so like we had that connection and if it was like someone like phil schiller i would do a very similar thing but like i know that no one i know knows tim like you know what i mean it's like we don't even have that level and like there's many layers between you and but let me tell you exactly i've been watching the west wing i choose whenever i fly i choose like a show that i work through and i've been working through the west wing

and it looked like the president like in the sense of like there were people handling people around him the scrum yeah it was real it was the scrumum is real. They're the handlers and the kind of like perimeter people. There's the PR. They're not even PR. You got led there by a PR person, but he has executive relations, which is a different thing. Yep. And that's a whole structure. By the way, you did it exactly right.

You are a pro at this. Because whenever I have been brought into an awkward situation where I'm talking to a senior Apple executive, especially when it's usually around a product launch, what do you say to that person? Yeah. And I always say, congratulations. It's a big day. I know you guys have worked really hard on this, right? For me, that is the generic answer because it's always true, right? I ran into Phil Schiller after – I was at an event with Phil Schiller after WWDC one year on day one. And he's got a

beer and I got a beer and we're standing outside in San Jose. And I said, Phil, congratulations. Good to see you. And I mean, I've been in meetings with Phil and talked to Phil going back again a long time now, early days of OS 10 kind of time. And he vaguely knows who I am, I think. And I said, I said, congratulations on your big product launch, because because i know that one it's a huge effort to do any any product launch event and two what else am i going to say to them right like i'm not going to say like hey phil i have opinions about your product launch no or i could just be like i'm not gonna say that hey tim that core technology fee you know what i mean like what are you gonna you going to do? Really? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. That's the last thing.

Although you could have said, I loved all the color that you added to the analyst call yesterday. You could have said that. I could have said that. I'd be like, what's Wampy Mohan really like? How's AI? Like, so, but you know. Oh, yeah. I'm happy you thought that way.

Because to me, it's just like, look, I'm just going to be in this moment. I'm a human talking to another human. Like, that's all I am. And he was so gracious, so lovely. He's a famous person. Yeah. Famous person, doesn't owe you any time. No.

Kind of generous to have the time. He's there for work. But it's like, I feel like it's not like you ran into him on the street where you might even be like, I'm just not going to say anything. Cause he's walking his dog or whatever. But, but yeah, what do you, it's, it's a,

it's a little interaction with a, essentially a famous person who's so far up in the chain that like, and, and is at a corporate event that like, what are you, what are you even going to say? It's more like you got to meet him and he got to meet you. And that sort of was the whole point of the thing was that. And I was happy.

I'm so, so happy because I'd never do this on my own. Like I would never walk up to him. Like I would never, ever do that. Like I've fortunately, we know PR people who are fundamentally extroverts. Like years ago, I was at an Apple store and Johnny Ive was there. Do you remember that? Yeah. And I just left him alone.

It's like, I'm not going to go near him. But this was like a thing that was arranged. And I'm so thankful for the person that did it because it was like wow so amazing like just like for me like i really wanted to come here and pick up the thing because i wanted to have it as soon as possible but this is just like another check in the box of like was it a good idea for me to come to new york to get the vision pro rather than trying to get it shipped to me and yeah the answer is yeah it was pretty great yeah yeah i think so bonus last thing before we get to vision pro you mentioned the analyst call it's money money money money money time money money money money quickly and we must talk about it quickly i'm gonna go

through this overall revenue for q1 2024 was up two percent year over year iphone was up six percent year over year the mac was up one percent year over year the mac was up one percent year over year breaking a four-quarter streak where it's been down down down down in comparison so that's great ipad is down 25 year over year my just to stop you on the ipad seven seven billion in revenue down 25 year over year all i have to say is actually maybe not that bad for a pro for literally every product that was bought with that seven billion dollars is at least yeah 10 months old if not older this is this is the one to me i've been seeing people talk about us online being like oh look at these ipad numbers that is as you say it's incredible they didn't release a new one seven billion

dollars in stale ipads this is the first not so bad holiday it's a quarter right or like q1 and the same with the holidays where apple has had an ipad and no ipad no new ipad for sale in its entire product history and so the fact that they're only a quarter down is kind of i think actually shows the power of the ipad as a gift that still so many people bought one even though there wasn't a new one there were no yeah well there were fewer upgrades right like these were mostly i expect new or upgrading a really old ipad it's not like some people who upgrade every year or whatever because there was nothing to upgrade to that that's a good point it is it shows you the power of the product cycle that we think in a year-over-year way and and do people do hold right like it's how should i put this um a new product motivates

buyers right like a new product you're like oh i'm gonna get the new thing but there is in the background there is a whole huge other chunk of the market that doesn't pay attention to new products at all and they're all just about the cycle um or some combination right where it's like it's got to be long on the tooth and they've probably got to be prompted. But when you look at the $7 billion, well, they weren't prompted, right? There's been no iPad news in a year. So this is all product cycle. This is all people who are like, I would like to get either an iPad for the first time or a new iPad to replace this old iPad. I mean, again, I'm not trying to make light of the fact that it's 25% down year over year.

They had a very good holiday quarter last year. It was their best quarter ever. So there's a reason that they were not going to ever hit that number. But still, $7 billion is not terrible for a product line that is completely stale. That's my iPad note. Wearables are down 11% year over year. Woof.

I don't think Vision Pro is going to help this. Yeah, I don't know what's going on. I think the Apple Watch and AirPods are just kind of stale right now. I think that's what's going on there. What time period does this quarter run over? Like these results? This is October through

the end of December. It's the last three months of the year. Do you think there's any possibility that part of that is like a chilling effect of the Apple Watch, that people weren't buying them because of the Massimo thing? It's possible, because of the Massimo. I guess it's possible.

I doubt it really had a huge impact, but I guess it's possible. I don't think it would be 11%, right? No, no. I think it's more that, you know, the Ultra 2 is just the Ultra again. The Series 8 or whatever, or Series 9, it's just the, it's all, I think the Apple Watch feels kind of warmed over, which means that not that there isn't a buying cycle, but a lot of people bought a lot of Apple Watches in the last five years. So are they really going to update those, especially when the trajectory isn't that much? And then AirPods Pro similarly, or AirPods in general, that line has not really given Apple... Apple hasn't given anybody a reason to upgrade. And then let's not even talk about...

Home is also part of this category. And home is basically like an empty wasteland for Apple, too. So my quick response here is to look at wearables, home, and accessories and say, this is like me writing on the top of their paper, like, see me after class. Like, this needs more attention to this category. This category feels lonely. Now, I know Vision Pro is going to be in it, but again, how much impact can Vision Pro

make even if they, per quarter, like, you can make a little bit of an impact, but it's going to be less than a billion dollars. It is not going to dramatically move a category that was 12 billion dollars not in the near term anyway no and i think it says services up 11 year over year which fine like we expect services yeah and it's not a it's not a seasonal category i took the little black uh four uh quarter rolling average line off of this based on some feedback last time when somebody pointed out to me you know it's not seasonal it's like you're right it's not i don't need to smooth that out it's a pretty smooth chart already it's just the four quarter rolling average is just a

line going up and to the right kind of just chasing it just chases the bars they go up together it's not that interesting two interesting tidbits i'll start with maybe the least interesting one to us which is um sales in china specifically fell by 15 percent and lucas maestri stated that revenue will decline in the next quarter by they're expecting about five billion year over year so it'll be less than q2 um they state that it's kind of i put this word in a tough compare uh due to last year because there was some pent-up iphone demand and it's actually going to be more in line with q2 22 thank you to 23 i i think i think that's the message that they're getting out there which

is basically like apple had some good times like a year plus ago and then and they're they're not gonna match they're gonna be more like a year before and this and they're not going to match. They're going to be more like a year before. And this is, look, this is where Apple is right now. They set all those records for all those quarters. The problem is the bar is set so high

and they're going to come off of it a little bit. And if you're an analyst or an investor who wants to see growth, you're not going to get it really. But, you know, they keep making the profits and spending a lot of money on, not only do they boost the stock price with buyback because of all those profits and dividends, but also they're investing in new categories like Vision Pro, maybe like a car at some point. And, you know, they've got a story to tell, but it's not going to be, it's going to be down next quarter. The guidance is down and then the last thing is uh apple tim stated there will

be more to come later this year on ai man yeah i think apple is so insecure about being viewed as being behind on ai even though as we've said here they're behind on parts of ai right like they have actually done a lot with the neural engine. They built it into their chips for a long time. They've used ML modeling and lots of different features. But what they miss the boat on is generative AI and large language models. And those are the ones that have captured the world's attention. And they're behind on them. And so remember, the analyst call is an hour-long

exercise in financial industry people trying to bamboozle Tim Cook into secretly revealing things about future products. And it is hilarious because it never works. And they mostly learn, but then every now and then one of them flies a little too close to the sun and gets to be smacked down again, and they're much laughter, or they try to reword it in a clever way. And this, in his prepared statement, Tim Cook said, as we look ahead, we will continue to invest in technologies that will shape the future. This includes artificial intelligence, where we continue to spend a tremendous amount of time and effort, and we're excited to share the details of our ongoing work in that space later this year. It's a product tease from Tim Cook, scripted in the analyst call. That doesn't happen that often.

He does the little nod like, oh, AR is an area of interest, or the wrist is an area of interest, but here is like, stay tuned for AI, wink. I think this made sense. I think this is a good idea like it's not really saying anything but what you're saying is like hey at this time but don't stonewall them right like the last it doesn't serve apple for you to be like we're not everybody's like hey i please apple are you behind our head we don't know they're like we won't tell you until june ha ha ha and all it does is hurt them so they're like yeah yeah yeah we're on it watch literally watch this space well because if you think about wall street right like uh they look at meta right meta invest all that money changed the name of their company because of the metaverse and their headsets and then they moved on to ai and now apple's just released a headset i think like if they don't say we're working on AI

there could be a perception that they are quote-unquote like behind the curve right yeah yeah yeah if all of technology is moving to AI now they want to kind of say we're doing that too as well as this other thing that we're up to so I think it was a good I think it was good to do yeah I also liked and this is always one of the things I actually like the best from these analyst calls is that you get to hear Apple, like you and I and all of our colleagues, like we analyze Apple, we learn their behavior. We explain to people, like, you've got to understand about Apple, especially in our, I would say in our external, like actual lives, people are like, what's Apple doing with this? And you're like, okay, let me tell you how Apple works. Right. this and you're like okay let me tell you how apple works right but it is refreshing and also i would say affirming to have an apple executive state clearly the thing that you have been trying

to interpret from their behavior every now and then they just say it and you're like there it is and so what tim cook said was our mo has always been to do work and then talk about work and not get out in front of ourselves like that's it he said but we got things we're excited about that we'll talk about later this year so then he kind of goes back away from it a little bit but like he says it right there it's like look you got to understand we don't pre-announce things we do the work and then we talk about the work and that has been true of apple since steve jobs came back but he wants to like like say yeah so i know i just want to reassure you we're doing it but we're not going to talk about it and i like that um i think that's i you know again i just enjoy it when they say the thing that we've

all been thinking or talking about and like you like, you know, I think Apple works this way. And then Apple says, let me tell you. Tim Cook just stands up on a call and goes, this is how we do it. We're like, yeah, that's it. I told you. It's good to hear from your good friend. My good friend. My new buddy.

He had a meeting with Mike in his future. Also, somebody asked what product the Vision Pro was going to be the most like, what previous Apple product launch it was going to be most like. And Tim gave the most Tim answer because he basically said he loves all his children equally. He's like, every product has its own journey, which they should put on a T-shirt. Each product has its own journey. Yeah, you know, little Jimmy, he's not like his big sister and that's okay. He's going to have his own little journey and we'll see what happens, but we're not going to get ahead of ourselves. We're going to do the work and talk about it later. This episode is brought to you by FitBud. When you want to change

your fitness level, it's hard to know where to get started, which is why I'm pleased to let you know that FitBud is an easy, affordable, and approachable way to build a fitness plan just for you. Everybody's fitness path is different, which is why FitBod uses tons of data to make sure they customize everything to suit you perfectly, adapting as you move and improve so each workout will be challenging, pushing you to make the progress you're looking for. Superior results are achieved when a workout program is tailored to fit you exactly. This is your body, your experience, your environment, and the goals that you want to achieve. This is all stored within your FitBod gym profile.

FitBod tracks your muscle recovery so you can avoid burnout and keep up your momentum, and it builds your best possible workout by combining AI with exercise science. FitBot have analyzed billions of data points that have been fine-tuned by certified personal trainers to make sure that you have exactly what you need. And you can be sure that you're learning every new movement the right way, thanks to more than 1,000 demonstration videos. Your muscles improve when they work together with your entire muscular system, so overworking some muscles while underworking others will negatively impact your overall results.

This is why FitBud tracks your muscle fatigue and recovery to design a well-balanced workout routine. You're never going to get bored too because the app will mix up your workouts with new exercises, new rep schemes, supersets, and circuits. The app is super easy to use. You can stay informed with their tracking charts, weekly reports, and sharing cards so that you keep track of your achievements and your personal bests and also share them with the people in your life. And it also integrates with your Apple Watch, Wearer, Smartwatch, and apps like Strava, Fitbit, and Apple Health. I'm traveling right now. FitBot's

super helpful in these instances too because I don't have access to whatever it is I'm doing at home. You know, maybe I'm used to going to the gym and using FitBod there, but I can easily use just body weight workouts in FitBod, do them in my hotel room or use the gym in the hotel and FitBod will adapt to me and exactly what I'm doing because I have my personal trainer in my pocket. Personalized training of this quality can be expensive. FitBod is just $12.99 a month or $17.99 a year. And you can also get yourself 25% off your membership by signing up today at fitbod.me slash upgrade. So go now and get your customized fitness plan at fitbod.me slash upgrade.

That is F-I-T-B-O-D dot me slash upgrade for 25% off. Our thanks to FitBod for their support of this show and RelayFM. So now is the time we need to give our impressions of our first four days of the Apple Vision Pro and I think Jason I'm going to do the thing

I think I'm going to put it on for this segment you're going to put it on I think so I think I'm going to do this segment wearing the Vision Pro give me one second while I take off my headphones and strap in. Okay. Have you done that or have you done any podcasts with it on yet?

No. No, I haven't. All right, so I've taken off my AirPods Max because I'm going full strength here. AirPods Max and Vision Pro. Take off my glasses. Because I got my prescription. Alright.

I'm back with you. Alright. And now, okay, now I have my show notes in front of me. And I'm looking out at Haleakala right now. Oh. Oh. Yeah.

Well, I mean, you're in a hotel room. That's not that exciting. Oh, it's pretty exciting. All right, I'm in as well. Yes, let's do it. Let's go. All right, now I need to check. Where am I?

I'm at Joshua Tree. Oh, is that your favorite? I think so. It's got pretty clouds. I like Haleakala. It's California. I like looking out on the mountain and I find it to be.ala is great i've been there i've actually been to where that picture is from yeah of course yeah all right put my mac over there i got my show notes in front of

me uh so i wanted to kind of just say to start like i am finding talking about this product to be difficult because it feels so monumental and so huge and even just using it is like sensory overload like i find myself wanting to do something i'm like oh i'll go check this thing out and then i get lost because i get excited about trying something else like i feel like i knew this anyway but it's going to take more than four days of using this thing to fully form on my opinions about it right would you agree yes i would agree i feel like it's going to take um a lot of time this is i said this on i think mac break weekly last week that i actually appreciate that marquez brownlee has done multiple videos over the course of the last

week because i feel like that is really the ultimate strategy here is that even if you had this thing for six days and as an advanced reviewer you're just still processing it and i feel the same way like i wrote a little faq story over the weekend but the truth is i'm i've taken lots of notes and i've done a lot of thinking but it is it's an entire platform with an entire new interaction model and that's going to take some getting used to i guess we should probably start by talking about the comfort of the product right and the hardware itself what strap have you been using dual strap yeah me too dual strap away here i tried the solar strap and i like it um but if you're using it for multiple hours at a time which i have been like i've been using this product for

hours and at a time it's been fine um you need the support of the top strap and and i am disappointed that they did not find a way to combine the straps because at wwdc that was what we had it was the solo knit strap with a top band to it as well but that seems like the only place that that ever showed up and i wish that there was that option because i like the comfort and the look and the feel of the solo knit strap but it just doesn't provide enough support for for long periods for uh the record i've taken it off again now because i think i think i want to give this my i'm still getting used to i haven't done a podcast with before.

I'm not going to do that. Yet. Yet. Because this is so important and I want to focus and it like it's sitting on my cheeks and it feels a little weird when I talk. All right. I'm going to join you. We tried.

We tried our best. We tried our best. We'll do a special thing at the end where we have digital personas and people can find it probably on YouTube or something and we'll figure something out um but it is it is i feel like this is so important that we actually need to talk about it while we're not messing around i'm back with you now i'm back in the real world so so people who close followers of upgrade i don't i don't know in june we got our demos and that was with uh solo strap i think with a with the strap coming over the top anyway it hurt my face it hurt my face it hurt my forehead the whole half hour i

was uncomfortable and then i was in a demo a couple weeks ago with a dual strap and it didn't hurt my face and i reported that back last week So I got it out of the box and I, I put, I had the solar strap was on it and I put it on my face with the solar strap and it immediately started hurting my forehead the same way. And I was like, Oh, this is how it hurt in June.

You know, like I had forgotten, I remembered that it hurt, but I had forgotten the details of it. And then the moment that I felt that I was like, Oh, this is it. So I just took it off and put on the dual strap

and the dual strap has been fine. In fact, I used it for like six total hours on Friday and probably close to that on Saturday. It wasn't really a problem. It wasn't a problem. I just, in general, I am surprised how long I can use this and feel comfortable compared to other headsets I've tried.

And I think what it's come down to, to me, is the clarity of the display. I think any problem I've had with VR headsets in the past has been eye strain and headaches. And I think that has come from not having clear text. And I will also say, I've never used a headset with uh vision corrected lenses and for the first day i didn't have my lenses and when i put them in the next day

everything felt really good but the first day wasn't a problem either but like things are just clearer my vision's not that bad um but it was clearer and that was helpful. But I would say that it's definitely more comfortable for me to use this for long stretches of time than any other product I've tried like this before. Yeah, I think I might agree with that. They obviously took a great deal of care with this. And like I said, I just couldn't be more impressed with the feel on the dual band. The dual band really just solved it for me in a way that... And it's not that there isn't weight there. There absolutely is.

And you do sort of have to get used to it. But I was able to settle in and use it for extended periods of time. And it wasn't a big deal. Yeah. Every time I put it on, I'm a bit surprised by the weight. And then I get used to it. So it's like, to me, it's like every time i put it on i'm a bit surprised by the weight and then i get used to it so it's like to me it's like every time i put it on i'm like oh that is heavier than i remember which kind of tells me that how i find it comfortable that over a long period of time i just don't even think about it anymore yeah like that i got that

that top strap adjusted right because the top strap bearing a lot of the weight really helps get it off of my face and i don't mind it so much being kind of like spread out across my whole head but when it's really just kind of burrowing in to my face um you know and the pulling from the back in order to hold it in place it's just not not great so the top strap helps a lot i would say as well i've uh i've already come around to the look on this thing i think just think it looks cool i just think it looks cool i think it is a cool piece of technology really interestingly designed i actually think it looks good on people like i started to come around on this when the reviews were coming out and seeing reviewers use it and it's like oh yeah i actually think this thing looks pretty good i mean for what it is i agree

having a quest 3 the quest 3 looks dumb it looks dumber than the quest 2 it's got like so i was i'll say this there's a lot of debate about the idea of eyesight and having your little virtual eyes peeking through and having the glowing thing on the screen on the front and all that worth a conversation but i will say this having it be dark in the front instead of it or a screen instead of it being what meta is which is sort of like light plastic with sensors like it's better it feels less alien and feels more like ski goggles than the meta uh at least the quest 3 which so i think it is a better look yeah i think like rid the eyesight thing it does not look as good as we as like apple led us to believe that it was going to look but i think it does the job and i think it's fine like i've seen my eyes in a mirror um i've been

talking to adina she's here with me, right? And when I've been wearing it, she's tried it on and like I've seen kind of how it can look without the eyes and stuff. I actually think it's fine. It does the job of what they're attempting to do.

It isn't particularly impressive, but I still stand by their thinking and would like to see them continue to improve it. The idea that you can very easily indicate to somebody that something is on and it's working and you're doing something and when they can see you and when you can see them,

I think that there is merit in that idea for looking at a device like this. I do think it makes sense. Just the execution leaves something to be a bit desired in version one, but it is version one after all. Yeah. I'm not entirely convinced that there isn't a way to do this.

That's simpler and less costly to indicate presence or absence rather than having a screen with the lenticular or lenticular layer and all of that stuff. Like, is this, I like like i like the idea like you said of can i see you can i not see you and all that not sure you need a whole screen with a rendered set of eyes to do that but um that'll be the debate on the inside especially if you could save money and cut the price yeah that way be a way you could do that. And the weight and exactly, and the power consumption, the whole and processing time and all of that.

But we'll see. I've been seeing a lot of conversation about the field of view. Like when you've actually got the headset on, how much you're able to see. And like the fact that there is kind of this border around it. You've got the foveated rendering, which can create some fuzziness. What is your impression and what are your feelings about when you've got the headset on and you're using it, how it looks? Like, just looks, the overall screen that you have in front of you.

Right, on the inside. Yeah, I will tell you, I wonder if you felt this way too. My memory of June is that it was a much wider field of view than it actually is. Yeah. memory of June is that it was a much wider field of view than it actually is. I think, I think I was so blown away by the whole experience in June that I, you know, thinking back, I was like remembering how amazing it was and not really having that moment where I, I, I kind of look at the field of view and compare it to my regular vision and all that. Although I wear glasses.

to my regular vision and all that. Although I wear glasses. So the field of view is actually quite similar to what I see through my glasses. It's just that I've got peripheral, fuzzy peripheral vision out on the outside where I don't have that with this. So it's noticeably narrow. I think Marcus Brownlee said that his number one thing that he would want improved on this is the field of view.

And I agree. I think that it breaks the illusion a little bit, although you get used to it. I don't think it's a killer. I don't think it's a deal breaker. we're coming up with a constructive list of things for apple to work on for version two finding a way to widen the field of view would be on the list because i it would be a better experience if you could see in the periphery um more than you can well there's like a simple metaphor for it which is look at every device apple's ever made all we ever want them to do is make the screen bigger right like the apple watch the iphone the mac like you always want the screen to get bigger

and the bezels to get smaller this is the same thing you just want the screen to get bigger and the bezels to be smaller because that's what it is right now like this kind of binocular like effect is effectively the screen bezel is what it is analogous like but to me it doesn't bother me like i feel like i have such a why like because the difference with with this product to the others is i can turn my head and get more screen right which i can't do with other things so yes exactly the screen's there you just you just can't see it out of the corner of your eye and the screen itself is amazing like looking at that screen i thought to myself this is this is i mean this is why they they don't have that many they're going to be able to make this screen or screens one per eye is so good and i know i'm coming from like the quest two and three but even if you look through the

the cameras at the ar kind of stuff the things around you especially in the light that we often live in because we don't live in super brightly lit places regular people don't need that because their eyes can see but cameras do so everything's a little grainy it's just natural that's just sort of how it's going to work with the pass-through it's going to look a little grainy. It's just natural. That's just sort of how it's going to work with the pass-through. It's going to look a little grainy. Anybody who's had a Quest 2, it's like, oh, it's in color

and you can see objects and it's not terrible. Yeah, this is all true. But my point here is, but the screen is way better than that. Like I was watching a YouTube video. I was actually watching Marcus Brownlee's latest video

in the Vision Pro using that app that, uh, Juno, Christian Selig. Yeah. It's really good. Christian Selig,

uh, which is just a YouTube player. It's nothing fancy, but it's nice. Cause it's a vision pro app. Like having MKBHD up in front of me in vision pro, I was, I was looking at his face and like his skin tone and

and totally listening to his content too but also just like marveling it looked so good yeah and that's that so that and that was that moment and you sometimes you look at the 3d movies and stuff and you're like okay but like they're we're not used to looking at 3d movies so sometimes the novelty of the 3d is there in the immersive videos sometimes the novelty of the immersion gets you with a flat 2d youtube video i was able to just sit there and appreciate this looks great like this the displays are absolutely spectacular. My moment like that was just looking at photos, not spatial ones,

just like photos we have taken on this trip. I was just flicking through them. I was like, this is the best device I have to look at my photos on because it's massive. The colors are incredible. And I get that like dark, like it goes dark around. My images that I take on my iPhone

look spectacular on this device and for me it's just like, oh, this is just an incredible way to look at the images that I've taken. Let alone all the things it can do with panoramas and special just like standard photos. Yeah, you're right. The screens are

incredible and like similarly the clarity of text i don't understand how they've done it like because i you know we every device i have used in this class text is hard to read it is it is so and it's not It's not as clear if you're using the Mac screen sharing. Yeah, that's true. Although it's usable. It's good. It's quite usable. What I would say, I mean, we'll talk about Mac sharing in a bit.

But what I am impressed by is that on native apps and iOS apps, iPad apps, the text is very clear. I'm also surprised because my initial response to Safari back in June was that I didn't think the text was very clear. It's, I'm also surprised because my initial response to Safari back in June was that I didn't think the text was good enough. And I think that they must've made some changes because it is good enough now, which is it's that I heard through the grapevine, somebody who's told me that like, it was good to read on,

on it. And I thought, well, that can't be, but I can see it now. Like, I feel like it's unnecessary to use a Vision Pro just to read a book or something, but you could do it and the text would look good because the text really does look very nice.

Do you have any different opinions to what we had thought previously about the eye and hand tracking? One that keeps coming to me, having used the Oculusculus quest is that i have one of those remember that iMac ad with there's no there's no step three remember that um this is like that where i put on the vision pro and there's no step two whereas with the with the quest you can't just put on the headset. You also have to pick up the hand controllers and put them in your hands. And I know they do hand tracking. It's not very good. But really, you want to just have the controllers.

And so while I realize they've given up some precision by not having controllers and that they should probably at some point support maybe a third party precision controller for certain games or something but like i'm actually really happy that i don't need anything but the headset to use the headset to its fullest yeah eye tracking is the key like the yes the eye and hand tracking is the key if this is going to be a computer because i want to use a keyboard i can't use a keyboard if every time i need to select part of the interface i have to pick up a controller to do it right right because then i can't keep working i'm like pick click, put down. And it's different to using, say, a mouse or a trackpad in that way.

The eye tracking is, I feel, closer to that than trying to point at something and click it with a remote. The eye and hand tracking is fantastic. In using it for the time that we've used it, I've noticed it sometimes, it just doesn't work the way you want it to. I don't know why. You know, like I'm looking at a thing

and it's not doing it. And the thing right next to it is selected. You're like, come on. Around the edges, I especially noticed that, right? Where I'm like up a little bit high and I actually have to move my head up, which puts it more in the center. And then the tracking is a little more accurate and then it gets it. So there are those moments where I think, oh,

see around the edges, sometimes you end up just a little bit, like I can't get that little bit more until I kind of lift up and then it, and then it goes to the next item and hand tracking. Similarly, it's easy, especially if you're not paying attention to where your hand is. Like I have that too, where your hand is like i have that too where sometimes i'm like i'm sitting and i'm doing the hand gestures and it's all working fine and then i look to my left and i do the hand gesture and it stops working the reason is my hand hasn't moved but the vision pro is moved and now it can't see my hand and and some of that is just body language and learning learning the language of it but it

is noticing like oh you can't you can't have your hand covered up you can't uh have your hand all the way over to the right while you're looking all the way to the left because it's not going to be able to pick it up and just kind of keeping that you don't have to have it right in front of your face but you do need to have it somewhere where it's visible. And I have to remind myself of that from time to time. Have you had any issues with the hardware? Has it let you down in any spot? So the surprising issue that I've had, and I don't even know enough. I'm kind of hopeful that they will get feedback from their logs as people use this and they will improve this.

Because I don't know how to report. I guess I could file a feedback about it. I don't know. The big hardware issue I've had is optic ID. So when I set it up the first time, it said, okay, look at this thing for optic ID. And it's got a little animation and it goes, do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do.

It didn't work. Try again. Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do. It didn't work. Try again. It didn't work like 10 times. So I'm like, okay, I don't really want to enter a six digit passcode. I'll do that. I continued with the thing. I ran the software update on it to go to 1.0.2 or whatever. Hilarious. We'll get to it. But like hilarious how all of your Apple skills just translate to this thing. Open the settings app, go to software update. Oh, there is a software update.

Let's run that. Let's reboot our face. And then we'll see what happens next. Set up optic ID on the new version. Still didn't do it. Eventually I like repositioned the headset and I opened my eyes and what I would describe as like a glare like like i'm glaring at you and i got it to train and but even then a lot of times optic id fails for me

especially when i first put this first put the device on and i feel like i i then have to kind of like move it around a little bit and again do the little glare and eventually i can get it to recognize me with optic id but my experience with optic id is that it was hard to train and not not uh consistent and so i'm a little frustrated by that when you set it up the first time did you have your lenses yes yes because i set mine up without my lenses and then i've really struggled to set it up, because you can do a second. Yeah, because it's supposed to change how it does optic ID based on your lens.

Different lenses have different optic ID. And it was failing time after time to actually set that up. Then I rebooted it, and it worked. I don't know why. But yeah, I was having to. This is obviously a very new way of them doing this stuff. And I wonder if there's like a thing with your eyes

that it's tripping up on. So my eyes are unusual and I wonder if they haven't, and this is why I don't know what to do other than talk about it and maybe file a feedback about it. But like one of my eyelids droops, one of my pupils is bigger than the other one most of the time.

So I have unusual eye things. And I wonder if some of my unusual eye things are what are making Optic ID go like, oh, I don't know. I don't know who this guy is. I don't know. I can't. Or even I can't train on this guy, which is weird. So I hope that this gets better because I would like it to be more reliable for me.

When it works, it's great, right? When it works, it's really nice to not do anything. And it's like, oh, one password needs to enter a password here. Done. Like you just don't do anything. Just have your eyes with you. And I do usually. So that part is great.

It's just that that initial, it's usually when I put it on because then it's positioned kind of wrong and maybe it's pushing on my eyes a little differently and my eyelids and whatever else and it's getting in a weird state and then I have to kind of struggle with it to get it to unlock and then usually once I get to that point it's good

after that yeah this is I'm pleased that it works for you once you get it working because if it doesn't if it didn't work that would be really yeah awkward it's unfun to i type uh access code every time yeah not fun should talk about talk about personas for a bit? Yeah, let's talk about it. What do you think of the personas? They are simultaneously impressive and weird.

Yep. And I've seen some other reviewers say the same thing, which is, I kind of can't believe that Apple is able to generate a passable digital replica it's not perfect by any means it's not even great like they look weird but it looks like me in a video game, right? Like it doesn't look like me. It looks like me in a video game, which is still pretty cool. It's just not me. Right. And so the fact that they can do that with like a quick scan of your face and they can build a 3d replica of you and your clothing like i think it's amazing

technology it is weird people some people are not going to like it i will say it is better off than i wouldn't want to not be able to do a facetime or a video call in the vision pro i'm sure it will get better i have some criticisms of the policy which is that there's no way to use sort of like an alternate character or something that's not you as a like a for people who are unhappy with their appearance to be able to not use it but um i'm impressed with the technology i think it'll get better i don't love how i even even my digital personas i've come around to thinking they're okay no i think i also took like six of them i think you look really good i think my latest one is the best one yeah you look like you to me like genuinely like i look at him like oh that's

jason that is the question is is do do you look like you i think i do too i have an i have a particular problem um in normal conversation the mouth of my persona does not move it is a problem i have i have no mouth and i must scream you do have a mouth it just doesn't open and it's like you're talking yeah that's what it looks like i can get the mouth to open if i open my mouth wide and i believed to be the case and have spoken some people who seem to know some things who agree beards are problems beards are problems and so i i uh submitted a feedback which you can do there's actually a direct thing in the persona part settings to submit feedback about your persona it's a really interesting process where

it asks it shows you this is a capture of your persona and then it shows you a photo that the vision pro takes of you while you're doing the capture And it says can we submit both of those? I say yes. It then asks you a bunch of questions which are just like and this is where I think it kind of falls down a little bit. It's like you just tick a bunch of boxes like what do you like? What do you don't like? It's like a survey but you can't

communicate to them anything. My mouse does not move. Which I need to tell them but it doesn't show me that in the options. But because I know how this works, I then go to the feedback app and I can add some more text in, which I've done. This is one of those things

where they just need more data, I expect, right? They need to see more people with more types of facial hair to allow them to understand how to make this work. And so like, this is why this is a beta. This is how I feel about optic ID is the same thing, actually, which is, and and i mean we can talk about it more later but like one of my main observations in using this for three days is it's a 1.0 os and like you get in the corners and you

run into things where you're like well this is just a bug right like this is obviously they this is they had to ship it and like i i don't know maybe it's 30 years of writing about software and 40 years of using software maybe but like you get that spider sense right which is like oh yeah it's like this just this got left behind this got shipped but they know it's probably they probably know it's broken or this got shipped because it worked okay. And they know they need to fix it. And then people are going to tell them how it's broken. But like, I get that vibe a lot.

I'm not saying that it's super buggy, but I'm saying that I get those moments where I'm in the corners of the OS and I think, oh yeah. Okay. Yeah. Like that's just, it's a bug. It like, I do, there are just things that that it's a new OS on a new device. And like that stuff happens, even if you're working on it for a decade,

like you ship it and there's stuff in it. The personas, they even labeled it with beta. So they're really like, yes, we know. I just, I'll go back to what I said before,

which is it would be nice if they let you have, if they built some characters that were obviously not people, real people, but that people could inhabit. I think that that would be good because not everybody wants to inhabit their, their particular body. And that would be a good thing for them to do for those people. But, um, I'm sure the personas will get better and they definitely have to solve the beard problem for sure for sure um but i will say look i was super low on personas like because in my wwc experience the persona i was talking to broke in a pretty catastrophic way i am a persona believer like i've had multiple FaceTime calls with people now.

And to me, I think they look great. Like considering what you do, which is, it's so simple. Like it takes a minute and it generates them in like a minute. I thought it would be like come back tomorrow and it will be ready for you or something. And the amount of when i talk to people is a better experience for me talking to people and the people talking to me uh there's so much expression in the faces and it the expressions that the faces make look like my

friends like i've had like four calls now with four different people and like in you know most of these calls have lasted a little while because we're kind of just like using it me and you had quite a long call and by the end of it it was just like me and jason are just hanging out right now and it really felt that way i didn't have that same experience because your mouth didn't move yeah pretty upset yes i agree so there are a couple things going on here one it's your actual voice two it looks like you three it does have some facial expressions four you don't see yourself you're just the with the person you um five am i up to that now you can bring them close and it's like a 3d window into their face uh but you can also move them around it's like you're moving the camera when they're off to the side you're looking off to the side it has this kind of uh spatial uh skeuomorphism

kind of thing going on there i I think there's a lot to be said for it that I think we talked a lot about the uncanny valley of personas and they are viewed out of context uncanny. In context, we kind of like leap the uncanny valley a little bit because of all those other things I listed. Because you're talking, it's their voice, it looks more or less like them, it is making real facial expressions. I'm not sure you ever think it's a video, right? I'm sure that will happen, where somebody will call a family member

and they won't know that they're using a persona. I think we're also very critical. It's like looking at Tarkin in Rogue One, and everybody who knows that that's a CGI character and that Peter Cushing died a long time ago. You look for the flaws. But if you talk to somebody who doesn't know who Peter Cushing is and just has a recollection of him as being in Star Wars and you see him in Rogue One, those people, by all accounts, don't notice because they're like, oh, yeah, it's that guy. And they just move on. And I think that there is some truth in that here, too too that we're kind of looking for the flaws there are flaws

but the added context of the conversation um i think makes them makes them if not go away it certainly mitigates them yeah and what i love about the persona calls is you don't see yourself which i really like because i think that that has a lot in those videos and then also like yes in that in that thought you can look however you want if you're going to have one of these calls to someone you don't need to get ready you know so i i was gonna say i do a lot of podcasts um especially like but but most of them are audio only. When I do a podcast that's video, like Total Party Kill, this one, right? I have to take a shower. But Total Party Kill is a good example because we play Dungeons and Dragons. We do that on video and it is a very gender balanced podcast. is a very gender balanced podcast. And when I talk to my women friends who are on that podcast, one of the things that always comes up is the fact that, and I can basically roll out of bed and do a podcast, but socially they have to put on makeup and make sure that their appearance is

acceptable because that is how society judges women. And this is not a podcast about society, but I will just say this. I believe the way this works is if you dress up and primp and get a haircut and shave or put on makeup or whatever you need to do and then make your digital persona they look like that forever yeah i was really surprised that's really cool it takes your clothing and uses that yeah yeah i ended up putting on a t-shirt and a hoodie in my most recent one because i wanted to be like super on brand but i have thought about like tuxedo persona and you can only save one which is another problem right it would be interesting if you could down the road save different ones with different clothing or different makeup or whatever

you wanted to do but i have thought like oh you could like do a shirt and tie persona for your business call and then you don't have to wear a shirt and tie but it would be in your persona because my ucsd t-shirt and my Navy hoodie are in my current persona. Yeah. Like I realized that when I was talking to Steven and he had a RelayFM t-shirt on, I'm like, hang on a minute. Like it was like,

cause I just figured it just put you in something like what Memoji have, right? Where it's just like- Right, generic clothing. Generic t-shirt, generic sweatshirt, whatever. Yeah. Look, I've been totally surprised by this part of the product and

i'm actually pretty excited about it and where it's going to go because as well there's that whole thing they spoke about wwdc spatial personas yeah that's the missing piece here right which is they're still in a window and i think what you ultimately want is what you and Gray have talked about on Cortex, which is ultimately you want to be in the same room with these people you're talking to. And again, we can talk about what the fidelity is like, and they can't map your whole body and all that. So how do you show that? And do they have legs? That was a whole Facebook thing that came up, right? But the one thing that's

missing is there they are spatial but they are floating in a little square and you're not sharing a common space and those are the two things that i when i look at this that i think are are the uh the immediate things that need to be addressed is i need to be able to share a space with them and not not you know use share play or some or icloud to connect to a document in an app that's shared and then we each have each other on a window but literally like a consensual set of items that we see together which is you know right like i want to be in the space with them looking at the same object as them it sounds like zoom is working on that too right like which is yeah well zoom's got that weird thing where they like they cut out your back your your background and then put you in a painting or something like that right like they have that

that technology so they are working on that um i you know it's going to be zoom like it's probably going to be weird, but, um, but it's not bad, but like Apple should do that too, because that should be, I appreciate that,

that clearly things like share play, like all that stuff is, is stuff that is laying the foundation for what they're going to be able to do with collaboration on and sharing on this platform. But, um, that's the thing that jumps out to me is I want to be in the same room as the people I'm talking to if that's possible. This episode is brought to you by ExpressVPN. Watching Netflix

without using ExpressVPN is like playing your favorite video game and not using all the power ups available to you. Why limit yourself when there's so much more fun to be had? Services like Netflix have tons of shows across different countries, but if you're not using a VPN, you just get access to the stuff that's in your country. With ExpressVPN, you can unblock those shows by amending where it thinks you're located, and it works with other streaming services too.

This means that I could watch all of... If you were in the US and you were connected to UK Netflix, you could watch all of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. It's on UK Netflix. But I could connect to Canadian Netflix and watch all of The Office if I wanted to.

It is as simple as opening the ExpressVPN app, choosing the country, refreshing the service that you're using, and you're ready to go. Like for me right now while I'm traveling, I can't get access to the stuff that I'm watching on my UK services. So when I'm in the US, I can use ExpressVPN, tell it that I'm back in the UK and get access to the shows that I was already wanting to catch up on. There are so many reasons to choose ExpressVPN for this. Super fast speeds,

you can stream in HD with zero buffering. It's compatible with phones, laptops, media consoles, smart TVs, Apple TV, and so many more devices. They have servers in over 94 different countries, so you can connect to many more to gain access to tons of new content, and it works with many services, many websites, that kind of stuff. You can stop paying for full price for streaming services and just get access to a fraction of the content

and get your money's worth at ExpressVPN.com slash upgrade. That is E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash upgrade. Go there, you'll get an extra three months of ExpressVPN for free and support the show. A thanks to ExpressVPN for their support of this show and all of RelayFM.

So there's this thing called environments, which are basically full, or can be full VR worlds that you can be in. Apple has a selection. Some other apps have them too. What has been your experience of environments so far?

I like them. I feel like they're contextual, right? Like there are moments where I find my surroundings distracting and it's nice to be able to dial that in. I also had a moment where I like dialed it in halfway. I think using the digital crown,

at the time I thought, well, this is a weird choice of the digital crown to have it be this. And is dialing in. I also had a moment where I like dialed it in halfway. I think using the digital crown at the time, I thought, well, this is a weird choice of the digital crown to have it be this and is dialing in environments. Is this going to be a thing or are they going to discard this and say, okay, we take it back. That's a dumb idea. After having used it for a few days, I don't think it's a dumb idea. I actually think it's a real, really smart idea. The idea that you can reach up physically and say, I want to drop in or out of this virtual environment. By the way, if you press the digital crown, it drops you out. If you immediately need to go, it'll like it, it, there are, you can short circuit this in a few ways, but I, um, I, I like them. I think it

is funny that a bunch of them are just coming soon. So like they shipped with a smaller number of them that they're going to have that is so weird to me there are two right and it just says coming soon it's like coming soon what is that why is that here you could just not have them yeah also strange other other apps apply them there should probably be and maybe this is the first time i've ever said this about vision os so congratulations vision os you're a real operating system now. There should probably be an API that allows developers to supply their environments to the system. Because right now, apps can have environments now, but they're only in those apps.

And it leads to some weird situations where, like, if you want a disney movie in avengers tower or at the disney plus theater you have to go to the disney plus app and then play because if you are in the tv app and it says oh would you like to resume avengers endgame you can you can click that um but it it doesn't it just plays it in the existing environment like and so you end up in these weird things also where like, hey, I really like the Avengers Tower and would like to work there. You can't, you can only use it for Disney Plus. And I feel like you should be able to contribute to the system, right?

And it's obvious that they will do that. It's coming soon. But I likened it to, in my little FAQ piece that I wrote, I think I mentioned this. When I write sometimes and I really need to focus, I put in headphones and crank up music, even if I'm working by myself in my house and there's nobody else here. And I could just put it on the speakers. I don't. I put in the headphones. And it's isolating and focusing in a strange way. Something in my brain kind of ticks at that moment.

I've already had a couple of moments where I thought, would I focus a little bit better if I dialed out my surroundings right now and went to one of these empty spaces that is an environment? And I think maybe, I think maybe. There are also other times where like I'm looking at something and Lauren's in the other room and she's probably going to come in at some point and tell me that it's time to start making dinner or whatever. And I want to see her in the doorway. So she's probably going to come in at some point and tell me that it's time to start making dinner or whatever. And I want to see her in the doorway, so I'm not going to dial it in, right? Like that also is a thing that can happen. So I think they're really nice. They're high quality.

They have subtle animations that are really fun. And sound. I want more of them and the ability for, again, developers to build them. Yeah, subtle sounds, but very nice sounds i really i really do like them even though i only use them some of the time but i think that's the whole point of the digital crown is you only use it some of the time i use an amount of environment the majority of the time that i've been using it like i kind of dial it into about 50 or 60 percent

so it's mostly just in front of me you are in a hotel room right yeah it might be different at home maybe and like that so that is actually really nice right we're like right now i kind of wish that i had the headset on because it's nicer to look out over haliakala than to be sitting and looking at just the television in my hotel room like just this blank screen um i i really like it and i like i like the dialing in too because they haven't done keyboard occlusion which they should do so if you have an external keyboard Apple should, they know the keyboard's

there because they detect it and put their little thing above the top so you can see a text entry which is very clever. But they're not showing me the keyboard, they're showing me my hands but I can't see the keyboard so when I see the keyboard I kind of dial it into about 60 or 70% which I kind of like anyway and then I can see my keyboard in front of me i can look around and see what's behind me but in front of me is just this beautiful mountainscape and i actually for window management

really like it because it just feels more natural if i have this what looks like an infinite space in front of me that i can just put my windows wherever i want like it kind of the mental model makes more sense for me to have these huge windows or loads of windows all over the place in a almost infinite space if i had looking at an infinite space it kind of helps me kind of lock in a bit more i do wonder this is is a sort of separate thing, panoramas. I have some spectacular panoramas, and I know panoramas aren't immersive, right? They're not animated. They don't have sound and all of that. I do wonder if maybe allowing users to take their panoramas and make them in an environment might be a thing that you could do just like almost like wallpaper but i think generally these are going to be not commonly made because they are full 360 renders with sound and subtle animation they obviously take an enormous amount to make but um more would

be better although like i love in joshua tree i did the thing you know so there's a vanity fair article that came out where tim cook said he watched a whole movie on the ceiling while laying in bed yeah and uh somebody asked me if you could do that and so i did it i i opened the disney plus app and i uh put moana on the ceiling and i was watching that and uh i was in joshua tree i wasn't using one of the disney plus uh spaces And I dialed in Joshua Tree. And since I was looking up, it was just blue sky with clouds. And Mike, I almost turned off the movie. And just looked at the blue sky with clouds because I was like, oh, that's so nice.

It's just pleasant. And that's the point, right? Is that whether you're blocking out the outside world, Apple philosophically doesn't want this device to be something that completely blocks out the outside world, but if you're going to do it, there needs to be a purpose. And it's sort of like to block out distractions and to relax you or make you focus. And I think they're really good. I just, yeah, I want more of them.

And it's saying coming soon. I guess that's a promise for more of them, but it does seem a little bit weird. it's saying coming soon i guess that's a promise for more of them but it does seem a little bit weird and it's also not just these um like vr landscapes either like there are a set of them just color your room with different types of light so which is just like really so like you're just looking through the pass-through but they've got like a morning i think it's like a morning light and like a summer light yeah and it also changes the sound that comes through the what are they called ear pods are they called no there's a sound pods sound pods um so there's kind of like there's like a wintry one where you got like it's like a you hear like a crackling of a fire like then they're also nice because it's

like imagine you want still to have the signal to you of like, oh, I write in the morning light or whatever, and it gets you in, like you're saying with music, but you're still seeing everything. You don't have to be locked off to the world. So like, I like that balance, but yes, I want more of them. And I want to be able to have third party ones too that are available for me. Like I want to record a podcast sitting in Avengers Tower.

I want to do that. Oh man. I want to do that. Yeah, I agree. I agree. And right now that. I want to do that. Yeah, I agree. I agree. And right now, that's also probably coming soon.

But it feels like it's a... And then you get the benefit of being, you know... I assume, depending on how they want to do that, it's like if you're a Disney Plus person,

you get to be in this environment. You get... That's a benefit of having Disney Plus is that you get those environments. I like that. I think that's a fun idea. It's plus yeah is that you get those environments i like

that i think that's a fun idea it's branding for disney and also the idea that like oh yeah i just work in i work on the scare floor now that's what i do that's great like let's let's let's do that that's careful one is great too like if you look up you can see dust particles floating it's like oh you you really went all out on these that they are amazing this is a computer this is spatial computing what is your computing experience being like away from the novelty of it like right doing work in vision os what has that been like for you am i wrong in thinking that this basically feels like a 3d ipad with windows man window management like well that i mean that's the 3d part it is so this feels so much like ipad os it feels like an ipad where everywhere is screen everywhere around you and you can place windows anywhere you want because the ipad has fought this right this is one of the unique things about

the vision pro is actually for tech nerds anyway it's the first completely arbitrary multi-window placement device that apple has made since the mac yeah like all of the work on iphone and then ipad about like simplify one app at a time maybe two apps at a time maybe you could go into a special windowing mode but it's limited and it's got all these things this one one's like, nope. Want more windows? Great. Put them wherever you want. Stack them in front of each other. You have to stand up to find that other window because it's behind the other one. We don't care.

Go ahead. Do it. There's no expose. There probably should be some window management, actually. I think that's going to come. I do lose windows from time to time. Yeah. But although if you look at the close box on a window and you hold, it actually lets

you hide all the other apps, which is, that's actually good sometimes. But it just, it feels very iPadOS. The iPad apps feel actually not that far from being at home in this environment. They're fine to use. They don't feel broken, not being full VisionOS apps. And I think that's because VisionOS is adding some effects and some extra things you can do with 3d and with translucency and things like that but the fact is if you are comfortable and the apps that you use have not opted out if you're comfortable on an ipad vision os is like all the ipads you can you could want in one place at one time. And that is, I think,

that's when I got that moment of like, oh yeah, spatial computing. I see what you mean now. Because that's kind of what it is. It's like a spatial iPad. And I mean that in a good way. I like the iPad. The iPad is limited, but I like that.

And then you can also do the thing where you connect to a Mac and then have all the other app windows around you. And then you've got both going on um it is so for me yeah i i feel like spatial computing like i get why they have talked about it in those terms because that's really what it is is what if you could put windows everywhere but it's ipad windows more than it is like mac windows like the mac doesn't there's no spatial mode when you connect to a mac where you can take individual windows on the mac and play some places they just go on a 2d plane of your screen yeah but you can

have ipad and vision os apps everywhere else yeah i i like the feeling of like at the moment like setting up my workspace right like all right i'm gonna open this i'm gonna put over here and i put it down there oh let me put that right up there like i like that feeling of like grabbing and moving these windows around me like there is a physicality to doing it it's like feels good like i like that the window persistence is really great too right like you've used it you take it off you put it back on your windows are back the problem is when you have to reboot the device they will go away and because of the battery life on this device you reboot it frequently and so yeah well yeah i mean not necessarily if you if you can keep it plugged in or whatever and not like totally power it down but if you reboot it yeah they got to fix that right like

that's that's like high on the list of things to fix is like the mac knows my windows mostly i mean it doesn't do a good job with stage manager actually is terrible like if you reboot a Mac and use Stage Manager, it just forgets where everything goes. But if you do it regularly, it remembers the windows that are open and reopens them again on a Mac. And so Vision OS needs that, too. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. The text input is broken. That is one of the most 1.0 things about this whole platform is that text input. I think the platform isn't very good at text input.

I think that adding a keyboard or a keyboard and a trackpad or universal control, which we can talk about in a minute, I think that helps a lot making this thing navigable, especially just even just adding a keyboard because looking and tapping with your fingers will get you a long way but text input the floating like eye typing or finger typing on a virtual keyboard is doable but it's not good no and then i would say there are also bugs like if you have a bluetooth keyboard attached it works really well but in many, it still puts up that floating keyboard and it occludes your content.

Yeah, I don't know why it does that. It floats right in front of your face and it needs to go. I mean, this feels like one of those things that's going to be fixed soon because it's so obviously busted. It like, I've got a keyboard. I'm typing in this window.

Suddenly another window appears. It's like clippy. Another window appears in front of it and goes, hey, I got a keyboard for you. And I'm like, okay, one, I have a keyboard.

Hey, I see you like keyboards. Do you want another one? You want another one? Let's fill the screen with keyboards. It is. And it's right in your field. It's in your view.

Like I know they want it to be like where you can type on it, but it's also blocking the thing I want to type. And that I find that very frustrating. And again, I know that they're trying to come up with the answer to like, how do you input text when you don't have another means? I don't think it's great. I think it's also really confusing because you have this proxy keyboard and it's got a dictation icon on it. And what happens is when you dictate, it dictates into the proxy keyboard. It's also

entering that text into the app that the text input is going into, which you may not be able to see. So I had several instances where I was trying to dictate something into messages and was frustrated that it wasn't working. And then I realized I was actually dictating into messages via the proxy keyboard, but I couldn't see it because it covers the window of messages yeah and then also if you want to edit that text it's so hard it's so hard basically selecting that text yeah the the all of the means of text entry for that are contained within vision os itself are for simple things only yes if you want to use if you want to do any kind of text entry you need a keyboard and so like to me you either you either always need to use a mac and

use a universal control or you need a keyboard yeah yeah i use the magic keyboard with it and it worked great it even does it doesn't do command tab which bothers me i don't know what it would do but it bothers me that it doesn't be command tab but it me i don't know what it would do but it bothers me that it doesn't have but it but it does command space spotlight exists in vision os however however in my experience spotlight doesn't want to go away so like oh interesting you i open spotlight i open an app the app opens spotlight spotlight's like what are we gonna do next buddy what do you want bud i'm still here if you need me it's like no spotlight we're done now like me and you we're fine and then spotlights yeah but like spotlights waiting for a tip you're in a hotel spotlights waiting for a tip right like oh you gotta tip me before i leave here yeah i haven't had that experience i love that spotlight exists there but i agree with you um could they do a

better job uh certainly i know it's a hard job but like i keep thinking there's got to be a way to do sort of like a voice driven text input i know you don't always want to use your voice you're in a public place or whatever um but yes i think bluetooth keyboard is your friend that's number one and they do some amazing things you mentioned it before it recognizes your keyboard and puts a floater that's like attached to the top of the keyboard so that if you're typing and not looking at where you're typing because you're not a touch typist and you're looking down, it will show you what you're typing. And it's just like that one is really brilliant and cool. It's the other one

that's not so great. So Bluetooth keyboard is your friend. And then also that's where the passwords exist too right like it's the quick type bar so if you're using a keyboard and you want to enter a password that little guy is floating there and you can just look at it and be like yeah so like it's really good but there are tweaks right that i should say there are bugs and like the fact that the software keyboard just keeps popping up and it seems to always be where you don't want it which is very funny but like i just find if you are for me if you're doing some content consumption stuff which this thing is incredible for just use the on-screen keyboard if you are

looking to do any kind of work you need a keyboard and but to me though that is exactly how i kind of expected it to be anyway and the thing is it works really well that's the thing other than get the text input getting in the way sometimes like if depending on what you want you want to do if all you have with you is vision pro and a bluetooth keyboard you can go a long way a long way like it's like using an ipad like that's what you're doing at that point in space i uh i was i meant to bring a trackpad with me and i forgot to bring my trackpad but i have my mac and i i would say that like using the trackpad is good but it's also just a keyboard and and eye tracking work great together then it's like a really yeah there is a very cool um combo actually of like i look where i want to type

and start typing i look at another window and i start and it's like it follows you around that is really cool like that combination the combination of eye tracking and a physical keyboard is pretty sick like i i'm digging it i found myself doing a lot of like i'm typing i'm typing and then i need to use a a mouse, basically, right? And instead I go look, tap, move, slide, whatever, and then I'm back to typing. And it's different, but it's natural. So then, you know, you're using those gaze and hand movement gestures as your trackpad or mouse, but you're still using the keyboard as the keyboard. your trackpad or mouse but you're still using the keyboard as the keyboard yeah we didn't even really talk about the gestures i've been getting on with them pretty fine like i'm still learning some and like trying to work out like how much of a gesture do i need to do for scrolling and stuff like that um but i've i've found it to be something i've gotten used to very quickly like the look and pinch look and pinch look and double and double tap, like long press. As you say, like these things,

you're really just taking like a thing you already know and translating it to a different gesture in a way. Somebody asked me if it was fatiguing. It's not. I would say they're more natural gestures than using a mouse or a trackpad. I think you're probably less likely to get RSI from them. I think it's fatiguing at first because you you you over act it right like when you first use it

you're like your arms are like come on we're gonna scroll here but the more you get used to it the more comfortable the the it starts to feel as it becomes a little more subtle gesture you know what's the same with your eyes too. Like when you first use this thing, you're moving your eyes way more than you need to. Yeah, staring daggers at every icon everywhere. You're like, I got you now. You can't get away from me. I don't need to do that.

Just glance. Just, yeah. So obviously we're Mac users and this has a very cool integration with the Mac where you can bring a Mac into the Vision Pro and use the Mac, use the Mac's keyboard and trackpad, use continuity and universal control, which I'm so thrilled that they added to this device

because I didn't know they were going to do that. Feels very much to me like one of those reveals of like, oh, this is why universal control exists. Yeah. And so what, you know, i would say i reckon i'm just going to guess we have very different experiences right now because i am currently on a 13 inch macbook air in a hotel room yes so the idea of being able to get a 30 inch screen for my mac where i can actually do my window management how I like. It's been very cool and very appealing to me. Yeah.

I did the thing where I took the screen of a Mac attached to a, and it works with any Mac that's running, maybe it has to be Apple Silicon, but it's running Sonoma desktop laptop. There's this weird thing going around where people are like, oh, it doesn't work with desktops. It's not true. I was just using it with my Mac Studio. But I did the thing

where I connected and I resized the window and I had it be exactly where my monitor was, but using the window. And you don't want to do that. If all you're doing is using a Mac and you've got a 27-inch Retina Studio display, you're fine. Just use the real display at that point. However, there are lots of scenarios where you don't have or have, are not with your nice monitor.

And you gave that perfect example. I did a bunch of Mac work this weekend with my MacBook air in my lap, but a giant screen that I actually positioned sort of like right where the MacBook air screen was. So it was like MacBook air keyboard. And then giant screen comes sort of like right where the MacBook air screen was. So it was like MacBook air keyboard and then giant screen comes out of the top of the MacBook air. And that is really nice. And then of course you can also add stuff to the sides and,

and have a whole kind of experience happening inside the vision pro separate. And the, the latency is low and it's a, and it's a, it's a pretty good experience using a mac i mean honestly to me i don't feel like there is any latency like the only thing is is just the crispness of the text um and i've been just been doing some things to mitigate that so like i was doing some work in google docs i just increased the zoom level of google docs and it was great

so rather than 100 125 i can also make the window bigger if i want to because it's it's not as it's not as clear as it is if it's a native app but it's still pretty good and they're yeah they're basically it feels like you're using the mac the illusion is perfect yeah and um there are so many scenarios where it's better than the mac experience that you would otherwise have yeah and so that's that's pretty great and then and then universal control like it is mind-blowing to have that moment where you've got an app a vision os app off to the left and your mac screen is in front of you and you move the the trackpad on your mac and the cursor flies off the edge of the mac and pops as a little ip cursor onto the Vision OS app and behaves just as an iPad app

when you're attached to a magic keyboard would work. And you can do that in a 3D space. It never floats in space. It pops to the window you're headed for, essentially. I did have some bugs. I had a moment, I had to reboot, basically. I had a moment where I couldn't see the pointer anymore. I could see what was highlighting. That at one point a reboot fixed it but that was one of those moments like that's a bug that's a bug you don't even have to do the dragging like you can just be on the mac and then you go over there and look at notes and move the trackpad and it's there like yeah yeah i genuinely cannot get my head around how they've made that work. Like there is a thing to me where it's like,

if I have a Mac and an iPad, these are two physical things in the world. They can be maybe aware of where each other are. Like, you know, they're doing whatever they're doing. But the idea that I have a Mac in front of me and I can take the screen and put it on the right and then go left and I'm on the notes window on the left. It is absolutely mind bending toending to me it's like magic

it is like actual magic like i cannot work out how they're able to do that it is really really really cool but not just cool really useful like that you have this kind of like macintosh escape hatch for all the things that vision os can't do i just have this window it's right there and you know what i need a keyboard anyway and i have that so i got my keyboard i truly bravo to whoever it was who had to fight really hard to get this to be the thing it can do because it it immediately elevates this product to being able to be usable by more people to get their work done. Because you can have an environment where you have whatever app it is in your Mac that you need open, and then surround it with native VisionOS apps.

And you now have eight monitors that you're getting your work done with in this one little package. It's really cool. It's really cool. one little package is really cool. It's really cool. So my tech issue here is that I saw the connect button one time. It's very flaky for me too. So generally what happens and when it,

when it happened, that was awesome because it's also a kind of one of these cool AR tricks where it's floating right over your laptop. It's detected where your laptop is. It sees it. It knows it can connect to it. But that only happened to me one time. I've had times where it hasn't listed the Mac that's literally in my lap. All the settings are right. It used to connect. Now it doesn't. I've rebooted things and eventually it comes back. But the good news is you can use Control Center, which you get to by looking up and a little firefly appears

that expands into Control Center and you tap on it and it opens. And there's a connect to a Mac button in Control Center. And it shows all the Macs that are nearby that you can connect to. And that has worked much more reliably. Although again, I've had moments where my MacBook Air just doesn't show up

and it's sitting in my lap and I don't know what that is. Feels very of a kind with some of Apple's other continuity features that sometimes are a little flaky, right? It's like, oh, why is this shared clipboard not working? And the answer is, I don't know. I guess there's a reason,

but when it works, it's great. And the auto connect is really nice. The one thing I'll say is, I don't know. I guess there's a reason, but when it works, it's great. And the auto connect is really nice. The only one, the one thing I'll say is if you've got a Mac that doesn't have input devices on it, you can't really drive your Mac with your eyes. So it really is for laptops or for desktops that have keyboards and trackpads attached.'s not a VNC client you really want to be right there with it but it works really great I'm really excited about it and like I would say like I've had to

do the control center trick a bunch of times too but it actually just works really easily like I never have that part fail right and I'm happy that they did I don't know why they put that in there but I feel like they know it doesn't work 100% of the time. So there's two ways to get it. Clearly. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. With Squarespace, you have an all-in-one platform

for building your brand and growing your business online. You can stand out from the crowd of a beautiful website, engage directly with your audience and sell your products, services, or even the content you create. Squarespace has everything you need all in one place. You can make the most of Fluid Engine, Squarespace's next generation web design system, to unlock your creativity more easily than ever before. Start with a best-in-class website template, customize every design detail with reimagined drag-and-drop technology for desktop or mobile, and you can stretch your imagination online with fluid engine it is built in and ready to go on any new squarespace site you can start selling your products in an online store whether you sell physical or digital goods

squarespace has all of the tools that you need to start selling online your customers can have flexible payment options you can make checkout seamless for them with simple but powerful tools you can accept credit cards paypal and apple, and also offer customers the option to buy now and pay later with Afterpay and ClearPay, and you have access to really awesome best-in-class analytics to help you grow your business. You can learn where your site visitors and sales are coming from, analyze which channels are most effective for you, improve your website, and build a marketing strategy based on your top keywords or most popular products and content. If you have an idea that you want to get to the world, a business that you want to begin,

Squarespace is the place to go to get it online. It's so simple, so easy. It could be great for you. It could be great for a friend or family member too. It is fantastic. They have everything. Go to squarespace.com upgrade and you could sign up for a free trial today. When you're ready to launch, use the code upgrade and you will save 10% of your first purchase of a website or domain. That is squarespace.com upgrade

and the code upgrade when you sign up, you'll get 10% of your first purchase and show your support for the show. Thanks to Squarespace for the continued support of this show and all of RelayFM. A thanks to Squarespace for the continued support of this show and all of RelayFM. Now, obviously, this is a truly fantastic content consumption device. You mentioned Moana already, but what has been your media experience like in the Vision Pro?

Let's start with the immersive videos, right? So Apple has offered a series, like this this first episodes of various series of these things so they're they're short but there are these immersive videos we've seen there's the there's the real actually if you go to search and tap on immersive you can actually get the like the highlight reel that they the demo reel is available too that's got a bunch of stuff that is not currently in the store that's where the soccer goal and the baseball play is like what we saw yeah uh it's actually it's actually the version that i saw it's a little different from what we saw in june it's the version i saw a couple weeks ago they've changed some of it but uh very similar and so they've rolled those out

and those are like 180 degree-ish 3D immersive scenes. And so this is the woman who puts the lines across the, you know, in the fjord with like hundreds of feet below her. And then she walks across it. And it's very impressive. Or it's Alicia Keys singing to you. That one's really interesting. Alicia Keys singing at you. At the beginning really interesting. Alicia Keys singing at you. At the beginning.

Yeah, I don't like it. Yeah, it's a little, yeah, all your social cues are like, why me? No, no, Alicia, not me. But that scene has three cameras and you can actually see there are these little white kiosks

in the room. And one of them is cropped out at one point, but then they switch to the other view and you're like, oh, that's what my previous view was. And there are one of them is is cropped out at one point but uh then they switch to the other view and you're like oh they're that's what my previous view was and there are three of them so you can see that they for that one at least they built a little thing to capture this um also with the prodding of will carroll the sports writer i did figure out the what baseball game that one shot is from in the in the demo reel it's an apple tv plus game what a surprise that they were apple was already there when they captured that so those things which is

apparently this proprietary capture technology that apple has built they are so impressive like the rhinos are amazing the woman who is out over the fjord is amazing. Like the dinosaur stuff was cool. Although again, a completely CGI capture is not as impressive to me as something that is from the real world, but still very impressive. The Alicia Keys thing is, is you're just a fly on the wall,

except when she's looking at you and that's a little disturbing. I, so those are amazing right and those are the fully immersive like this is not something you could go to a movie theater and see it's like you're in the room um i found those pretty incredible what did you think of those i haven't done many of them yet i only i just played around with uh encounter dinosaurs again because that one was fun which is interactive so it's not actually a video. It's a little more than that.

I haven't watched the immersive videos yet. I had Lauren run Encounter Dinosaurs when she was in guest mode and that was amazing to watch her react to the dinosaur coming in and all that. I think that's the demo. I really do. I think that's the demo. That's why it's there.

That's why they broke that one out as an app right like it's yeah it's it's meant to be experienced yeah because it's because it is interactive it has to be an app but um but it is immersive so yeah anyway i think the immersive videos are great i think my question is what's going to get shot in this format did you see uh tim cook and and uh the nba commissioners nate silver is that his name no that's adam silver nate silver is a different guy nate silver is the is the 538 guy close yeah close yeah uh they were together a couple of days ago and we're kind of talking about like yes this is the thing we're gonna work on this and you know it seems like that's the thing nba has a nba has an app that um you know where you can see you can have multiple

games it's definitely like the quad box gone completely wild but um uh but yeah that is my open question about immersive is can you do i, I'm sure you could do immersive highlights. Can you do immersive live or is it just too much data? And I don't know. In the future, sure, right? Like it feels like something you can get to, but yeah, maybe you have to wait a day and then you can watch the basketball game using that.

And maybe that will be worth it for some people. That was when I got HDtv for the first time um it was so early in hdtv that they had hd from the olympics but you got the you got it the next day which is i thought was really funny like you gotta wait so yeah maybe or it'll be highlights or something like that but still i would think that they're going to be doing a lot of experimentation with that, probably with MLS and Major League Baseball and the NBA. These are all good partners for Apple. And there are also some media partners like there's a Max app. And Max is a media partner of the NBA.

So you can see that there are scenarios where these different groups come together. And of course, Disney is ESPN. So there are a lot of Apple partners on Vision Pro that are also rights holders, plus the leagues are interested in. There's an MLB and NBA app on there on day one. The MLB app, by the way, right now what it does is it plays you

the ninth inning of game one of the World Series last year. But in addition to the video, you've got like a 3D space where the pitches go. So you can see where the pitches were or you can switch to a 3D space of the field and you can see where all the fielders are

as they move, sync to the video. It's a depth tech demo. I haven't tried it yet, but I've downloaded the PGA app because they've got some like some previous golf games, matches.

Some golf content as well. It's all you experimental you can watch the where the shots go on a map like a 3d map as you're watching the game like and a thousand people have sent me that f1 concept right and i think that that kind of thing could happen in the future because f1 is also a very data rich sport so you could have like a live 3d map of the cars going around and watch like i think that is actually the really the way to consume a lot of sports is like not necessarily like you could do the immersive thing there's also this other thing of like using the data that you have about the game as it's being played to give cool ancillary content that is really interesting to help you like further your experience of watching the game and be like right uh active participant in it without moving your head left and right to watch where the ball's

going or whatever like there are two different ways to do this and it's interesting to see how these are going to roll out but i've i've watched some 3d movies and you know a bunch of stuff in the disney stuff i haven't watched anything in full but i've watched lots of clips it's so good it's so good like i've never seen 3d look this good because the color is bright and also the spatial audio i was watching what i did first as i went to the disney plus app sat down in avengers tower freaked out because i could not believe it it was so good looking around and seeing all the little easter eggs then i put the climactic fight scene of avengers endgame is what i wanted to watch and so i watched that scene in 3d with spatial audio

on this huge screen at night you know it's funny i'm in new york and i'm looking at new york right which is also kind of funny but yeah that that experience is so so good and like my plan is i haven't had the time yet i'm probably gonna wait till i'm home now i'm gonna watch avatar in it like i wanted to do that apparently it's really good i'm gonna watch avatar in it yeah i i agree um for those who don't know the way 3d movies are projected in movie theaters is uh they have to project two images which means that you lose half the light yeah and so they're often very dim yep very dim and and you have to project two images, which means you lose half the light. Yeah. And so they're often very dim. Yep, very dim.

And you have to wear, you know, the 3D glasses. Glasses over glasses, right? Right. So this is a superior experience because both eyes are full brightness and you don't have glasses over glasses and it's a good display display so they look really good in a way i don't love 3d movies as a concept but i like them a whole lot more in this context and

even on even on the quest i would watch 3d movies that i would like rip from a blu-ray because it was interesting but also it was not a bad experience and it's way better on this. So I think it's going to be interesting to see. There's a lot of 3D content out there. It's mostly movies because there are 3D versions of movies in theaters. They're never turned into home video anymore, right? Because 3D TVs didn't work. I would imagine that everybody's going to dust off all their 3D content and make it available. I think the questions are, what's available for rent or purchase in the TV app? What's available on apps? So Disney's got 3D content now.

The Max app doesn't have 3D content. But Warner has lots of 3D movies that they could put in Max if they wanted to. I don't know whether they do or not. This is the question. I also did run into a bug which is interesting and i i don't know what form resolving it will take but if i go into my library in the tv app and show 3d it shows me like nine movies that i bought that are in 3d and i play them and they're in 3d and it asks you it says do you want to play this in 2d or 3d yeah which is nice if i go into their store where they list everything they've got in 3d some of the movies in that list are movies i own but they're not in my list of library

3d movies so like into the spider verse so i tap on into the spider verse and it brings it up and it says well you own this do you want to watch it in 3d and i say yes there's actually even a a tile playing 2d playing 3d i tap play decide whether this is a technical issue or if sony hasn't licensed existing purchasers of into the spider verse on apple tv to get access to the 3d version but also it's not possible for me to buy the 3d version because i already own it i'm sure it'll get resolved either either it'll show up or sony will ask me to pay more money to upgrade it to 3d inside the tv app i don't know what it's going to be it's a bummer because that's a really great movie in 3d um into the spider verse because it's like it's just beautiful it's beautiful anyway but it's extra beautiful in 3d it's one of verse because it's like it's just beautiful it's beautiful anyway but

it's extra beautiful in 3d it's one of one of those kind of like really good movies to watch in 3d so they've got they've got a story issue there where there are movies that are marked as 3d but you don't they don't show up in your library as 3d and you don't have access to them as 3d so that's kind of a bummer um but there's still a bunch of 3d content and i hope there's more and it makes me want Apple to at the very least start shooting some of their TV shows in 3D but I don't know if they'll do that because it does

cost to do a 3D conversion costs even if you don't shoot it in 3D to convert it it does make me wonder if they're going to go back and like convert Ted Lasso to 3D or something like that I don't know they could do it it's all a post production conversion they could do it it's all a post post-production conversion they could do it if they want to do that would be weird uh more likely

they're going to have like an they're going to like work with sony and license it and whatever they have to do to make like an immersive environment of the locker room or something or the field oh i want to watch for all mankind sitting in jonestown instead of just being on the moon which is a little more sterile be right there saying hi bob yeah hi bob so so all that's good um and and i'm i'm curious about them i have a note about speaking of the quad box and the multi box and the infinibox uh that's possible with this one of the issues is i said it was basically ipad os As we know, iOS and iPadOS really don't want to play more than one thing at a time.

And so sometimes something will play and your music stops or your video stops, even if you're multitasking. So I tested this out a little bit on VisionOS native apps playing video at the same time, not getting immersive in any way, it works. I was able to get like the Max app and I forget what the other app was. I was able to get two native VisionOS apps to play video in different places at the same time. I was like, yes. Because that's a thing you can't do on the iPad. However, if I used the Fubo app, which is an iPad app

running in VisionOS, it stopped other video or stopped itself. Right, okay. There's still some stuff to be worked out, but the dream is alive right and this is the thing that i really want to see yeah that's it's there right because the fun that's the hardest thing is to get the fundamental thing to work right so what we need is the ability to

have multiple video players playing simultaneously in a space because and separate from that when you generate if if you're a video app on on vision os you need to be able to support multiple windows as well right you shouldn't be locked into one so if i want if i'm in the max app let's say and i want to put up CNN in one window and a live NBA game from Bleacher Report in another window, both in the Max app, I should be able to do that. And then if I want to add an MLS match from the TV app, and I don't want to be immersive, I just want to show me the soccer match, I should be able to open that app and have three of them running. I really should be able to open even more. I know that at some point the processor will yell at me and the network will yell at me and it's going to have to manage that.

But this should be a way of doing that. Because with VisionOS, we're in a multi-window space and all the apps need to work at once. Talking about media, do you have any thoughts on the battery life? Has it been a concern or a problem for you? I've been mostly tethered, so it hasn't been. At one point, I was using it thinking I was tethered, but technically, we're always tethered to the battery, right?

Yeah. Which it's a learning experience of like, where am I going to put the battery in a pocket next to me? If you put it next to you and you stand up, then like, oh no, the battery has to come with me. There's a learning curve there. there it's not ideal it's a little awkward you you learn it but it you know obviously in the long run you don't want to have the external battery that's just where we are now um but i did leave it unplugged at one point and i got the little chime the little sad chime that comes from airpods that said oh you're at 20 or whatever i was like oh okay i'll plug it in i haven't tested the

battery life in terms of like timing it i've just been trying to test the interface but it's yeah i think i think it gives you enough time to spend a couple of hours if you're completely untouched i will say that in most contexts these days you actually have a place to plug in a usb device yeah even like on airplanes and and in cars and well you know whatever else wherever else you might be in the back seat of course um but but yeah it seems fine to me other than just being awkward yeah i it hasn't the battery the battery is not a problem like just having the physical thing for me because i'm like stationary when i'm using a device so i'm getting up walking around so it's not an issue and the battery life again as you say like i haven't

found it to be a problem because i can if anywhere that i can imagine myself realistically wanting to use this i have access to power like and i think that that is fine and we'll see how that goes in time right like we might have different feelings on that a month from now and that's that goes for all of this like this is oh yeah not a review right like we have not earlier days this these are our impressions and like there's so much stuff that i've and you i'm sure we've had lots of things we haven't even touched on today this is going to take a lot of time to talk about like i have a question like my final question i'm going to ask ourselves today is what will we use it for and i just don't know if we can realistically answer that right now but at the moment my answer is i'm trying everything right and seeing how this episode today, I found out I don't think it's good to record a podcast with this thing on.

But I'll work that out. Maybe in a month, I will know how to do that. And it will be very comfortable for me. And it will be a great way for me to record podcasts with one of these things on. But at the moment, I'm trying everything. And I will know in time what i want to use it for yeah i look this is early days i think one of the challenges here is people are going to view this through the lens of so many products that we talk about which is should i buy it

and this is an immature product in an immature product category. So should you buy it? Like, should you buy it for real practical purposes is going to be a tough sell given the price, even though it's very capable. I think there's an element of, I want this because it's the future that has to be calculated for it to make sense. Cause otherwise you got plenty, you got a supercomputer that lives in your pocket. You got incredibly powerful computers that you can buy. planet. You got a supercomputer that lives in your pocket. You got incredibly powerful computers that you can buy. Like this thing is the future. And that's why you buy it because you want to get a taste of the future or you have a very specific use case where it makes sense. But for the most part, this is exploratory. This is the beginning of a journey. This is a new product in a relatively

young category. It's super cutting edge. It's very impressive. impressive but you know a lot of the reviewers the the reviews that have already happened are it's incredibly impressive in fact i would say we haven't really talked about this i think the reviews are way more positive than i ever expected for this i i was way more yeah because it is such a weird product and it's so expensive but you know pretty much all the reviewers have said it's, it's very impressive, which it is. It is Apple,

like MKBHD said something in a couple of his videos that I thought was so great. It's like people complain all the time about, Oh, it's just another speed bump. It's just another minor incremental update. When will they do something new and interesting? And then this comes out and there's a reaction from some people that is like oh this stupid thing it's like no no no you don't understand

this is what we've been asking for this is apple making a wild new product that is not like anything it's really made before in some ways and and and trying to figure out what it is and what it's for and and like we that's i think that's why so many of us got into this business is the exploration of like cutting edge. We don't even know what it's for. Let's all figure it out together kind of stuff. And that's what this product is. So, um, I'm, I'm excited by it. I don't know what it's for either. The use cases that I keep thinking up are when you're, you know, one is travel or when you're in a space where you don't have your stuff, right? Maybe you've got a laptop, but you don't have a big screen. Uh, you know, if you're in a hotel room, I think that's really a good thing. Maybe

if you're on an airplane, although there will be the social issues of being the person who's wearing the headset, that'll maybe go away at some point i don't know but it'll be there for a while um i feel like that's that is a use case clearly the entertainment part works like the the screens are great now in terms of that part of it but the price and the availability of like content for it is still a question mark but that i feel like that is you know for a product that apple i think wants to be part of a long journey to a, a future product line. One of the tricks you have to do is you have to make it like, what do we get for people to buy a now that keeps us alive for the future where we know we're going. And I think entertainment really is not, you know, the immersive stuff, the 3d stuff, and and just the quality of it as a video player for privacy and travel and things like that.

I think it's pretty good. And then, yeah, as a computing device that gives you much more screen space, that's a thing where I think is a winner now for some people. And beyond that, I mean, who knows? I still don't know. I, I, and I've been using it a lot. So I, I'm sure that over the weekend, I've been using this in ways that are not the ways that I would normally use it because I'm pushing it because I'm trying to learn about it. It, it, it remains to be seen what use cases i will embrace for it um beyond you know a a night where you know lauren's working late and i'm watching a movie by myself in 3d that i want to see that she doesn't want to see stuff like that but you can rest assured we're going to be talking about it here on the show over the next four weeks months years I guess this is our era now. We're in the vision era.

But in the meantime, if you want to see what we're talking about, what we're thinking, you can find us online. Jason's at sixcolors.com. I'm sure he'll be writing about a bunch of stuff there. He is at jsnell on zeppelin.flights, on Mastodon.

I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E, on myke.social, and on threads and all those kinds of places. I've been posting stuff on Instagram too, which you can go check out like photos and videos of me using this stuff. If you want to find video versions of this show

and clips, you can go to YouTube. You can see the entire video there. We are at Upgrade Relay. We're also on Instagram. We're at Upgrade Relay. You want to see clips and also on TikTok as well where at Upgrade Relay. You want to see clips. And also on TikTok as well, where you can find us. Thanks to our sponsors this week. The fine people over at Squarespace,

ExpressVPN, and FitBard. Thank you to our members who support us of Upgrade Plus. You can get longer, ad-free versions of the show every week by going to getupgradeplus.com. If you have feedback, follow-up, or you'd like to ask us some questions, especially ask Upgrade for next week. We ran way too long for us, Upgrade, this week.

But if you have questions about the Vision Pro, go to upgradefeedback.com, send us in there, and we'll do our best to answer as many of them as we can over the coming weeks. Until next time, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.