Upgrade - 519: The Intelligent Trinity

Episode Date: July 1, 2024

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 519 for july 1st 2024 today's show is brought to you by express vpn and factor my name is mike hurley it is the summer Summer of Fun. Summer of Fun! And I'm joined by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason. Hi, Mike. Happy July. Happy July to you, too. Yeah, we're deep into the Summer of Fun now, I feel like. I feel like we really got it. We don't get to see what we're wearing, because we don't have video on during the recording of this, but we do record the video and then post it. Yes. I'm wearing

my summer of fun t-shirt today i'm dongle town og dongle town orange dongle town t-shirt today beauty all right i like it that we we often wear upgrade i always wear upgrade t-shirts on mondays unless i've had like a meeting or something and i'm wearing something a little nicer i'll always wear an upgrade t-shirt on mondays i mean what's nicer than an upgrade t-shirt but i get your uh you have to understand the context of it we were we pre-recorded something for a future episode on friday and uh and and that we did with video on for reasons that we'll get into uh later we have some special guests coming up but when the video popped up it revealed that mike and i were both wearing our Upgrade Colors R t-shirts. So that was hilarious.

I love it. I have a Snell Talk question for you, Jason. All right. It comes from Yoni, who wants to know, will the 4th of July Lawn Tube Man be making an appearance this year? Okay, I think we need to explain this question. This is good Upgrade Law, this one, I think. Yeah, I have a blower and an inflatable tube man they're called air dancers i guess you know they it's like you see them in front of businesses and they they wave around and stuff and i have one that is uh and then you can buy like a it's like

a sock that goes on it and then that's the tube man so the blower it can have different tube men put on it so at halloween i have an orange one and I put the orange tube men out there and the trick or treaters love it. They would, I could create a whole religion or cult out of children in my neighborhood, worshiping the tube men. Okay. It is catnip for the kids. But, and then I have a Santa. So at Christmas time, I will put out the Santa. And I think that's a fun little twist on it.

So we talked about the idea that maybe I would get the Uncle Sam or the Eagle or really probably the American flag tube man. He's kind of got a blue face and then there's stars below him and then red and white stripes below that. And I believe when we talked about this maybe last year or the year before, then I went to the website and saw that it was like 50 bucks. And I was like, man, do I really want that for, do I want to, and I just didn't have the enthusiasm to do it. So once again, the, the answer is no, I will not be doing it, uh, because I didn't buy the uncle Sam. Why are you so enthused about Santa and Halloween, but not about Uncle Sam? I don't know. I just got the idea that I bought the tube man because I thought it would be fun.

Yes. And Jamie and I had talked for years about getting a tube man, much to the consternation of Lauren. Jamie and I were like, oh, we could get a tube man. I thought, yes, we could. We could. The danger of talking to me, if you're in my family, about something that that seems ridiculous but you all share a laugh about it is that in the background i'm thinking i could actually do that we could actually do that that's yeah wouldn't it be

funny if we got a tube man um i could buy a tube man uh so yeah i i don't know i just i i have i'm often often we are not here on the fourth of july and we are this year and i could have gotten it and i just uh i just uh i look at the price and i think do i want to do this and it's always after fourth of july and i'm like do i want to store this away for a future i should absolutely do it though but um we'll we'll figure it out oh but mike you know speaking of the fourth of july yep it's time for the american quiz mike oh no what is the capital what is the capital of the united states is it new york washington dc los angeles or chicago washington dc all right correct uh in which year did the united states declare its independence was it 1776 1789 1812 or 1607 17 1776 reference acknowledge uh

it was on on the fourth of j now? Are we doing this now? And one more for now. Which river is the longest in the United States? Is it the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Colorado, or the Ohio? Mississippi River. Correct. Mississippi River. You got three out of three on this portion of the Upgrade American quiz. But good news, everybody.

In Upgrade Plus plus today if you're an upgrade plus subscriber we will continue the american quiz with my little monkey sound that appears to oh the monkey died like you win you're the victor the monkey died wow we're deep in the law now like so last year on upgrade plus on the 4th of July week episode, Jason surprised me with a big American quiz. I think it was the American citizenship test. Yeah, we've done that. I had you identify states in a previous one. Yeah, this is what happens here.

Look forward to the return of the great American quiz. No sound, thank you. Of Upgradeplus.com and jason's going to try and get that horrible monkey sound to work which upsets me greatly so we're just going to move on now thank you so much to snell of the yoni for that snell talk question as we move in to some follow-up so we've got a bunch of follow-up about the vision pro and a cheaper vision pro which was a conversation we had on the last episode. Robert wrote in and said,

A Vision product at the $500 price point is important for a bunch of reasons, but it all comes back to price elasticity of demand. The Vision is and will be an accessory product for a long time. That is how Apple designed it. They don't want it to replace anything. Normal consumers won't pay over $1,000 for an accessory to their $1,500 laptop to use software running on the laptop. This is like the HomePod all over again. I want to read the second thing because I think I kind of got together a little bit. Matt says, I have to disagree with quite a few aspects of your discussion about the Vision Pro, specifically around its job to be done and the price. Apple has said that the

Vision Pro is the future of computing. At any point in the past 20 years, Apple's current vision of computing has cost anywhere from $1,000 to $2,000. Given that, would you expect them to ever sell a $500 MacBook? Well, so is it an accessory or is it a computer is part of the question here? Indeed. Yeah. I don't think I buy, given how they pitch it right now, I don't really buy that it is an accessory. I think that if it was priced as a $500 device, it would be probably considered more of an accessory. But I think that this is part of what Apple is grappling with is what is it? Where does it fit?

They don't know one rumor that i saw was that they were even considering maybe going back to the idea of having it be partially driven by an iphone or a mac in the low cost version uh which is bananas to me but like that would certainly put it as firmly as an accessory i i think if it's the future of computing, then sure, it would cost a lot. The problem is the reality, which is getting people to buy a Vision Pro as the future of computing. Right now, they're not going to do that. They're going to buy a laptop. They're not going to buy a Vision Pro. Like, oh, should I buy a laptop or a Vision Pro? The answer is going to be almost always a laptop, right? So how do you do this in the long run? How do you make this product something that

has room to evolve over time and become whatever it needs to be? And I think one thing, what we were talking about last time is they need more users. They need this thing to have more activity in it. Otherwise, it will be hard for it to grow so one of the reasons you build a cheaper product is because the lower that price is the more people you'll get on board with it yeah i think it's like i understand where both uh robert and matt are coming from because you've got the how is apple talking about it and what are coming from. Because you've got the, how is Apple talking about it, and what are they actually doing with it? And those are actually different

things. I think realistically, Vision Pro will be the future of computing in the way that the iPad was. In the sense that for some people, for a large amount of people, it provides a good enough experience

to be their primary computer, but it doesn't really replace en masse what came before it. And I think the Vision Pro will be a similar thing. So yes, you would ideally want to put it into the pricing bucket of an iPad, which would be around $1,500. We also got a selection of feedback across Mastodon and Threads

in the feedback form about the idea of... You know, because I've said that I don't believe that $1,500 is really a good enough price still to make a meaningful difference for the Vision Pro, right? Like, that was this price that we're talking about last week that i'm not sure how much of a difference 1500 is to 3500 and a bunch of people wrote in to say like well you know a laptop costs 1500 but kind of my counterpoint to that is there but there's a lot of stuff on mac os there's a lot of stuff yeah right and there's a

big inbuilt platform of apps and experiences that are known to work in that environment. Plus there is all of the inbuilt social contract around using a laptop. You could use all of your web apps inside of a Vision Pro but you're going to do that

at the office? At the moment I'm not really sure that the Vision pro replaces it and neither is there really enough of a unique software uh ecosystem like enough of one to justify it and i don't know if 1500 as a price point would actually get there so i want to actually read a quote from an article that you wrote, kind of, I think, informed by the conversation we had last week, where you said, Apple needs to invest more in getting developers to build their apps on VisionOS. And since the size of the near-term market opportunity sure won't, some other

inducement, like maybe even money, might be a good idea. It's like, that's, I think, the thing. There needs to be more apps. And I don't know if a $1,500 vision pro is going to excite enough developers more than the $3,500 vision pro. I think what Apple needs to do is actually give the developer kits that they seem to suggest they would give. And they seemingly never did in a, in a large enough kind of uh i don't think you have enough of them out basically and i think that could could be something that could make a difference you need more applications maybe a way to do that is to give a bunch of developers free vision pros

maybe that will encourage them enough to do it right it might not even need to be a public program it could literally be approaching interesting app developers and saying, we see you haven't done anything with Vision Pro. We can get you one, please. And yeah, that would be a way. Apple Arcade is a way that you can drive some of this because that's a place where Apple actually does pay developers essentially to do apps on their platform. I wonder, though, if there should be some more maybe even behind the scenes deals made to induce other developers to actually make apps for the platform. And the idea here, and productivity apps, entertainment apps, the idea here really is that a few months into Vision Pro, it seems like the biggest challenge with Vision Pro is content. Like you said, you need things on it.

content is like you said you need things on it and and the chicken egg problem is for fifteen hundred dollars as a as a user i'll buy it for fifteen hundred dollars maybe more readily than i'd buy it for thirty five hundred dollars i mean certainly that's the case but you're still also coming up against what's on it and so when we talk about apple not doing much immersive video and that they're not being a lot of 3d video on there and that there are not a lot of apps on there and that even like apps, a lot of Apple's apps aren't on there, which is part of the problem here. But there's a broader problem too. If you're going to lean in on spatial computing, you really need apps to be there. If you're going to talk about entertainment, which they have talked about some, I think it's the best thing on it. They need more content there. And the other piece of this is they also need better game content because that's content.

Again, Apple and gaming, I know it's a complicated thing, but I'll tell you the one thing that has sold VR headsets to people is games. Traditionally in this market, right? It emerged from games and Apple, I think for some understandable reasons, when they launched the Vision Pro, they're like basically saying, no, we're not. Famously in their demo or in their video, when they introduced it, they said, look, here is an iPad game being played with a handheld controller in vision pro. That was their game story. And there are some games on the platform.

The ones, but the problem is there's a whole class of games that was traditionally the best games for other VR headsets that are not on the platform. And again, I'm not saying I understand why Apple released the vision pro with just hand tracking and every other VR headset comes with handheld controllers, right? Or I don't know about every other. The Quest certainly does, right?

Handheld controllers have a lot of advantages. There's precision. You don't even need to see your hands because they have their own tracking in them. So it's very precise about where your hands are. And your hands are on controller buttons that you can use. And there's haptic feedback so that you get responses to what you do in space. And I understand why Apple didn't do that because they're like, no, no, no, we have really great hand tracking and they do. And I think as, as, uh, it was, uh, somebody suggested to me last week, a little bit like

forcing the original Mac out without arrow keys. Cause it was like, we want you to use the mouse. I think Apple wanted to say, this is not just a game platform because at $3,500, it doesn't make sense as a game platform. And we're really proud of our hand tracking and it's good for productivity. And you know, every time I put on the Vision Pro, I still am so grateful that I don't have to do the thing I do with the Quest where I have to not just put on the headset, but get the controllers and put them nearby and then pick them up and make sure they've got their batteries in them. And then I'm good to go. In the Vision Pro, I just put it on and then I can run the whole thing. And I know that the hand tracking has gotten better on the Quest. Quest 3's hand tracking

is fine. It's not as good as Apple's. But the problem is that they're missing all of the titles, all of the software that could get ported to Vision Pro and be good because they have decided to not either build optional hand controllers or build an API so that third parties can build hand controllers. And what I'm saying is I understand why Apple wanted to go out the door without them but it would be a really quick win for the platform if there was an api or there were apple hand controllers as an option so that you could bring a load of cool fun interesting games into the store The ones that have been brought over, like the simulators, the job simulator and all that, are kind of wonky.

What was it? The Fruit Ninja one that they did, I think it's terrible. Like, I just can't do it. And I am coming from somebody who's used a Quest and like, I know how good this should be, and it's not.

And it's because, as good as apple's hand tracking is it's missing a bunch of things that these that make these games really good in terms of precision input from your movements and from pressing things as well as having the the haptics there so like this is one of those things where it's like apple got a little i understand why apple's proud of its hand tracking uh and but it tracking, but it can't be dogmatic. I'm really reminded of the whole idea of the Apple Pencil, right? Remember, if you see a stylus, they blew it, right?

The whole point of that was a touchscreen shouldn't have to have a stylus. It shouldn't be mandatory. Well, a VR headset shouldn't have to have hand controllers. Absolutely true, 100%. However, the Apple Pencil makes the iPad way better and it's not a condemnation of the touch on the iPad. It's because there's certain things

where you want a little more precision and the ergonomics make more sense. And so optionally, you can add the Apple Pencil. And if I'm looking at what they could do to Vision Pro as they're trying to get the price down to make it more valuable,

allowing hand controllers to exist for the platform so that you get a bunch of games in there on top of your immersive video that is coming, right? It's coming, right? There's going to be more of that and more 3d video. And also yes, productivity apps,

all those things. Like at this point, if you're in charge of vision pro, I feel like you need to be finding every possible way to sell a $1,500 headset by the end of next year. And that includes getting a bunch of those games. They've got that relationship with ILM Interactive. They did What If? Well, could they get Vader Immortal to come over? That's a lightsaber game. You can't really do it without hand controllers. But could they?

I don't know what the contracts are with Meta or whatever, if there are limits on that. But porting a bunch of really great games or even knocking them off in the case of things that are owned by Meta and aren't coming to the platform, it just seems like this needs to be Apple's prime motivation to keep this thing going and growing which is you know i know that they're playing the long game here but they also need some signs of life and some progress in the in the next 18 months so if they did this right they were like oh you know you can come and play this game but it requires hand controllers do you think that that is a a hurdle like do you think that is a a problem like the requirement it's not ideal that it's not in every box but i had a bunch of people write to

me after i wrote this article saying it's actually exactly what happened with the apple tv where the apple tv they made it that every game that was on the apple tv at the beginning, other than Guitar Hero, had to use the Siri remote. Yes. Oh my God, yes. No, like no, no, no, no. So I get it. But if Apple's not willing to put controllers in the box and it's already a very expensive product, that's fine.

I think they need to be good with the idea that there are a bunch of game experiences that get better if you unlock the third-party controller or the Apple controller that is an option. Apple has had no problem selling straps and selling puffy cases and selling optical inserts and other things for the Vision Pro. So why not sell some hand trackers you can boast about

that you built or you built for Belkin or whatever? So I get it, right? It's not as clean as saying these games are available because it's these games are available asterisk. But right now they're already having to tell the story of, well, this game plays a lot better if you pair a controller to it, right? They literally had a paired third-party controller. Well, the Apple TV has some games

that only work with a controller. For sure. Now. Yeah. Now. Currently. Now. Like, you have to have, like, a proper controller, right?

So, like, there just isn't anything else. It's like you need an Xbox controller or a PlayStation controller or whatever to play, like, one of the NBA basketball games that they have in Apple Arcade or something like that. So, yeah, it's not unheard of. Right. Now, if they want to get creative

and have it be two Pencil Pros that you hold in your hands and they have haptic and they have position, like, okay, we could talk about that. But I feel like they got to do something. And this is just, again, I'm not saying, oh no, the Apple Pencil or the Apple Pencil, the Vision Pro is doomed without hand controllers.

That's not quite what I'm saying. I'm saying for momentum to be built with the Vision Pro, I think at this point, as you're going toward a $1,500, $1,000, whatever it is, lower cost version, you just gotta turn over the couch cushions and like look in there for anything that will motivate people to come to the platform.

And some of it is video content, and some of it is apps, and motivating developers to be on the platform is part of the story. And this, to me, seems like another quick win. I'm not saying it's easy, but I'm saying it looks like the amount of effort required to do it would probably get paid back by the amount of software you'd be able to put on your platform. The Vision Pro is now available to buy in China, Hong Kong, Japan, and Singapore. And pre-orders are available for Australia, Canada, France, Germany, and the UK.

So a lot of people pointing this out on threads and Mastodon that in the photos that Apple put in their newsroom piece for the Asian launches, all of the people using the devices were using the dual loop band, not the solo loop band for their demos. Mark Gurman has confirmed this is actually an official change for comfort reasons with Apple retail, that by and large, customers prefer comfort-wise the dual loop band rather than the solo loop band. Mark Gurman has also shared that Apple has changed the demo experience worldwide with this release. You can now, if you go in for a demo, rather than

looking at stock photos or videos on the Vision Pro, you can send your own photos or videos to the device to look at those so you can get a more personal experience. And additionally, the retail employees are being told that if a user wants to spend more time of a specific part of the experience, they're being given more freedom to do so, to kind of go deep on,

as they're calling it, on a particular app or part of uh vision os so they're trying to do more it seems yeah this goes back to our conversation about the ways that apple retail is adapting to selling the vision pro right because we talked about how there was a perception that they the can demo took too long and they got again and i i go back to the inception of this product. Clearly, there were a bunch of, you know, points, philosophical points that became kind of tentpoles of this product. And the screen that faces out is one of them. Oh, we don't want to, you know, we don't want to lose connection with this product. So we're going to put eyes on the front of it and all of that. We're going to put eyes on the front of it and all of that. One of them was, we're going to have a very particular way that we introduce this to people in retail stores. And we're going to have a whole script and we're going to get everybody trained. And now they're reacting to it where, as we talked about a few weeks ago, they have shortened it up because they want to just like get it on everybody's head.

Because once you see it, you can be blown away by it. And so it's interesting for this report that also we will find a way for you to see your photos and videos and be blown away by that, which is pretty great. So they're learning, right? They're learning. But when we talk about some of the technical stuff, when we talk about lack of a lack of hand controller option or some of the other things they're doing or trying to take things off of it like that front face display, presumably to make a cheaper version. I think it's all the same, which is there were some very strong held beliefs about this product that I would say don't necessarily make sense, but I understand how they probably emerged from an ongoing internal conversation. And I don't want to be so reductive as to say there were a bunch of people who were like, as reports would suggest, Johnny Ive saying

sort of like very highfalutin things about, oh, we don't want to cut people off and they really need to understand it. And that's part of Apple's personality is being that kind of like controlling and visionary and not necessarily as realistic as maybe they should be. And then, you know, and then reality hits. And so it's good to see Apple adapting and saying, oh yeah, uh, maybe they should see their own photos and maybe we can't do the full 30 minutes. And, and also maybe if they want to go a little longer, I mean, do you have 10 other people waiting to use the vision pro maybe let them play around a little bit longer if you're closing the sale here. So that all, it all, it's, it's a good sign.

I think the longer somebody uses a Vision Pro, the more likely they are to buy one. 100%. 100% true. Yeah. I've been using mine more since the 2.0 beta came out. Yeah. I've written a bunch of articles on it. Yep.

And like you, every time I... Like when you're in it. Yeah, I suppose. Yeah. And like you, I also find very much like, once I'm in there, I kind of want to stay in there. So I'm like, what else can I do while I'm in here? Yeah.

I like play around, like, you know, go to the apps and stuff. I'm excited that now the uk uh is coming online soon i'll be able to actually use my cloud account uh which will be great right my app store account i should say uh i also ordered a second solo band so i can do the solo top thing that everybody does all right it's good i really like it for those who don't know that's the there's a little 3d printed adapter you can buy on Etsy or whatever, and you put another solo, one of those adjustable solo bands on the the uh in the low priced lower priced vision pro next year will be they'll just use the cheap dual band i mean the cheap dual band seems to yeah like and that's another case where i think that that 3d knitted band was very kind of over engineered and very precious and beautiful and then people use

it and they're like i need something more and and they're like all right we made this dual strap thing for you and then you'll have to buy a nice strap separate if you want yeah there are some weird ways they could get the price down right it could be like all right this is the starting price it doesn't include it includes one band and no battery you can plug it in right and keep like to power or you can buy a battery if you want to be mobile with it. There are a bunch of weird ways that could get that starting price down but it would degrade the experience but that might be what

they need to do if they want to kind of get that price down. Get more people out there. This episode is brought to you by ExpressVPN. Going online without ExpressVPN could be a little like leaving your laptop unattended while you're going and you know buying something at a coffee shop most of the time be fine you could see it

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ExpressVPN for free. Secure your online data today. Go to expressvpn.com slash upgrade. Our thanks to ExpressVPN for their support of this show and RelayFM. It's time to lawyer up, Jason Snell. Clunk, clunk. So we mentioned on the last episode that we were recording a few days in advance and we expected that the European Union would be publishing something, and they did. The EU has found Apple in breach of the DMA over a variety of reasons, including their anti-steering rules. They have also announced that they are investigating the

core technology fee and all of the steps that Apple make users go through to install alternative app marketplaces, which is another form of steering. The European Union is essentially unhappy with the ways in which they're saying Apple is limiting the ability for developers to freely enable alternative payment methods and sideloading of apps without also needing to accept the new business terms, which they are also unhappy with. When I was reading through the European Union's press release that they put out, it felt like they were taking every element that Apple has done to comply and say, we're not happy with this. And what it kept bringing me back to was the term malicious

compliance, right? Which we were talking about when Apple first put out their DMA response, where for weeks, me and you were sitting here on this show and picking it apart and being like, I don't know about that. I'm not sure about that. And this term was being used a lot online about malicious compliance which is like they're essentially complying with what the european union is asking to do but they're doing it in such a way that makes it very unattractive for developers to want to opt into this or users to want to opt into this and it seems like the european union is saying exactly that. Right. Yeah. I mean, this is the question is how do they handle this? And we talked about Apple's approach here of basically doing as little as possible and engineering things in a way that it changes what Apple does as little as possible. that the DMA is written and the way the regulation works, where it seems like they're basically expecting a company to embrace what they've been told to do to the fullest extent and do it.

And I look at that and think, how would you expect a company to react to that? It's unrealistic. Of course, Apple's going to do the minimum it can to fulfill the law while retaining as much control as possible of course they're going to do that and so you what you know you need a system where there's a little more clarity and and they come to some agreement on it and that's not the system that's happening with apple in the eu where they've come to any agreement on anything. It's more like Apple will try to slide something through and then see what gets flagged. And then we go from there and everybody figures out what the next steps are. And there's somewhat of a lack of clarity. And then there's also Apple just trying to pick

apart. Again, Apple's not interested in the spirit of the law. And I think that the European Commission is interested in the spirit of the law. Apple's not. Apple's like, look, you said to do this thing, you didn't say we couldn't add a core technology fee. So we're going to do that. And that is the challenge in regulating them is you, you need to, if you're a regulator, you need to be able to point to the language in your document and make your rulings about policy and say, no, you missed the point here. And if they are able to do that, then Apple will have to change its ways. But this is why this is so messy, is that Apple's not going to go along with it. And I know all of us can say, look, Apple, this could all have been avoided if you had just behaved in a different way.

I think Apple's approach is, no, why should we? We're just going to keep fighting it. And I think it's different in some place like China where Apple also complies with regulations. But I think that Apple is told what is required in China, and it's very clear. clear and also china is a an authoritarian state where you can't really appeal to the public in the way that you maybe could in europe and hope that they make changes like it's a different system but here you know in this case apple's looking at the the ec and the dma and saying well this is how we're going to play it and i think it's up to the EC to provide more clarity about what they want Apple to do. Because right now we're in this weird game where they're sort of like winking and making hand signals.

And Apple's like, okay, you know, I'm not going to, Apple doesn't want to give away anything it isn't forced to, essentially. I don't begrudge in this scenario, Apple attempting to do what they're attempting to do, right? Which is be legal, but within the ways that protect them the most. But if you're going to do that, you're opening yourself up to a lot of criticism, which I'm also very happy to give. Right. Right. And the danger that you will be ultimately forced to do more than you would have been, right.

If you would have had to do this in good faith, you may have been able to make some concessions where if you come to this in what is considered bad faith, you may be forced to do things that you didn't want to do, which actually this just goes back to what we've been saying on the show for years, where maybe if Apple would have made concessions earlier on, they wouldn't be in this place anyway. The DMA may never have existed if Apple were maybe different about the way that they run the App Store, but they wanted to do things the way that was given to 9to5Mac from Apple where they say they are confident our plan complies with the law and estimate more than 99% of developers would pay the same or less in fees to Apple under new business terms. But there are two things going on here, which is one, the EU Commission has had their preliminary findings where they're unhappy with steering. And they're now opening another investigation, which includes the CTF, which includes eligibility requirements for developers, like the membership of good standing wording they're unhappy with and also how complicated it is to download an alternative app marketplace

where what they have found them in breach for is the business terms which kind of restrict developers you know like you you can only opt into this and it completely changes everything the way that alternative payment methods have all the scare sheets they're unhappy with those and also some in-app purchase fee stuff. So it's a lot, honestly. Like, this is what I mean. When you actually read through it, which again, I will credit that I said this last time, I'll say it again.

The European Union's press releases are very readable in a way that I wouldn't have expected from a government body. Like you can just read them and they're very clear. They're essentially unhappy with every single part of it so this continues this will and will continue to go on for a long time eu competition regulator margaret vestiger has said that apple's decision to withhold apple intelligence in the european union is a stunning open declaration of their anti-competitive behavior. I want to read the

full quote that she gave. Yes. I find that very interesting that they say, we will now deploy AI where we're not obliged to enable competition. I think that this is the most stunning open declaration that they know 100% that this is another way of disabling competition where they have a stronghold already. So this is not dissimilar to, I think, our initial take on this news that came out during last episode, right? When we were recording, this news dropped, and there was, I think, as I will speak for myself,

had the take of like, oh, this is like another card they can play to maybe try and drum up support amongst European users to be in opposition to the DMA. And I've been reflecting since last week's episode, and my opinions have changed slightly. Like I kind of now hold two opinions about this where i still think that apple are using these features as a way to maybe try and get a leg up on europe however i think i can see more of some legitimate concern from them about any new feature, big new feature that includes data of any kind or any kind of system, like an ecosystem play, they need to be very hesitant about bringing those features into any country that wants to attack their interoperability. Without confirmation from the European Union, how does Apple know if Apple intelligence will comply with what the DMA wants? And if the DMA would require them to change it in some way, would that be an issue for their privacy part of like secure the private cloud stuff?

stuff like because at the core the dma is going after apple's interoperability like that's what they want to break but so does the department of justice right we've got to remember that case still like floating out there their whole thing is wanting to to break up apple's interoperability even with like the apple watch and stuff so i don't know basically Basically, I think Apple's taken advantage of this for where they can, but I can see a scenario in which they do not feel inclined to mess with this legally, especially considering they're on the cutting edge,

the bleeding edge of Apple intelligence. Any more work they need to do to get Apple intelligence out the door than they thought they would is going to be a problem for them. So maybe they're just going to hold it off in their places, but they're not sure if they can launch it. So that's kind of my thoughts and reflection. I don't know what you think.

Now we have a week and a bit. Well, this statement from Margaret Vestager is a moment where I have been very open to some of what the EC is trying to do um because it's a lot of addressing a lot of criticisms that we've had about Apple's control over its over its market and over the app store and some of the arbitrary rules that it sets that we think are unfair and so I've been inclined to say, yeah, you know, shake it up, right? Like make Apple, you're right. These things are kind of unfair and Apple should do better.

But this quote makes me realize that the vision that she has and perhaps that the regulators, you know, that work in this group have is much broader than that. And I think I'm deeply troubled by it because what first off, what she's saying here is anytime Apple with withholds any feature from the from the EU, they are telling on themselves that they are revealing that that is a plan to disable competition. Everything Apple has withheld is they're doing it because it was another feature designed to disable competition. And she's really kind of patting herself on the back here about like protecting people from evil Apple, where everything that they do is another way,

using her words, of disabling competition. The problem with that is what you said is true. What Apple is doing is trying to ship features and build features and ship them. And in this case with AI, they are on a desperate push to ship features quickly and what she's saying is oh it's all part of a scheme by apple and the truth is no it's a tech company building features in this case very quickly and i don't know what what she wants

i think i i mean i don't know because if what she wants is that Apple should, where's the competition? Apple should allow other models access to the personal data that's being kept on your device, or is it other models should be able to be used instead of Apple's model? should be able to be used instead of Apple's model. I don't know where this goes, but I think it suggests an attitude that tech companies who have been named as gatekeepers should no longer launch features that aren't completely open to competition,

which sort of turns Apple's maintenance of iOS into running a public utility instead of being a tech company that is competing with another large tech company for control and success in this platform, you know, in smartphones. And making Apple some sort of electric company where the idea is, oh, well, you've got a lot of regulation and you're a public utility and everything you go through has to be approved and all of that. And Apple's shipping new features. Tech companies can't ship new features that are just an open slot. We don't know whether those features will work or not.

Will anyone care or not? Once you ship an API, you're sort of going to maintain it or do they have to maintain it forever what if they have to change it is that any competitive to change it and make all their alternatives change to sort the new api like it this statement by her suggests a level of uh contempt for apple doing what it does which is build products thinking that they are the ones the regulators are the ones who can tell tech companies how to make software features work and it's i think delusional so i i will see what happens here i think the truth is that Apple,

I also think they're bent out of shape because Apple announced a bunch of features without talking to them first, because Apple's not going to talk to them first. It's going to release it on its own schedule. The risk for Apple is that this all comes to pass. The risk for Apple is that what the EU says is, no, you read it right. You are going to have to internalize us and build every feature you're going to build on this plan of open competition. That is the future. You are going to be building a public service

in your operating system. And the danger is that not only do they have to do that in the EU, but then they start to have to do that in lots of other parts of the world until ever. And I'm not saying, I mean, there's a way to say it was what's the danger in competition. And what I would say is, no, I mean, competition is good, but Apple's whole thing is that they build interesting features that people want to use. And I'm telling you that if what Apple has to start building are public utility features that are mandated, where it's an empty box that you can plug something in from Apple or something else,

they're going to build a lot fewer features and they aren't going to be very good. Because that's not what Apple does. Apple's trying to build an integrated product. And what you want to stop is Apple abusing its power in one area to break companies in other areas. But what you should not do is prevent Apple from making features. And this is what the danger is here. So I was open last week to the idea of like, oh, well, Apple's doing some politics here, but also presumably that they will analyze this and they'll talk to the regulators and they'll say, you know, does this comply or not? And that they're giving the regulators the opportunity to say, you know, that screen sharing thing is fine. Don't worry about it. Just go ahead and ship it.

But when I see this comment and she's going out, you know, she's been fighting them a long time. I'm sure she's frustrated and she's not, you know, she's not going to have this job. I think much longer. I think she's going to get replaced. I think she's, her term is ending or something like that. But I do not like the way that she phrases this because it comes across as I'm not here to help people who are being troubled by Apple's policies. This is more like, oh, everything Apple does is out to get you. And again, it's politics, it's rhetoric, but it very much makes me look at what they're doing more negatively than I have before.

I see this statement kind of, to me, is similar to an opportunity that she's taking see this statement kind of to me is like similar to an opportunity that she's taking in the same way that Apple took its opportunity to hold these features back. I think this is all politics or grandstanding, right?

Oh yeah, 100%. She's punching back. She's punching back, right? And she's like, look at them. But I find that there is a possibility in the statement that she's making where what she's kind of drawing to is that she believes Apple have a duty to release these AI features in the EU. And I am uncomfortable with the idea of a company being compelled to do

something from a government, right. In that way where like they can say, if you want to have this feature here, you must comply with our laws is very different to you should do that. No, we, you got to do that.

You know what I mean? Like like i think there is a fine line there that's why it's so interesting and the way that apple did this i think it's why it's impossible to say oh apple just did this for technical reasons this is an important moment because everything up to now has been existing Apple features, existing Apple policy. This is the first true post-DMA feature drop. Yep. But given the DMA, they either need to build all their features to be DMA compliant and everybody in the world is going to get that feature the same way, which is what Europe wants, I think. I think that's what the EC wants. Or Apple's going to build the most compelling product they can and then figure out whether it's going to be okay in Europe or not.

And the result is going to be that Europe is going to lag behind in some of these features now to be fair this is us english only and apple doesn't ship a lot of things in a lot of eu countries and i mean there's there's so much stuff that they don't do right like like apple tv is still not even available in certain countries yeah oh yeah absolutely so so it's. So it's more of that. But I think it is also Apple saying, you know, this is how we're going to play our game is we're going to build our features the way we want. And then we'll figure out whether we need to make,

like, we're not going to delay a feature for a year, especially not AI where they absolutely have to ship it. We're not going to delay a feature in order to build it up with all of the things that we think that the European Commission might have a problem with. That is no way to build a feature. So I think Apple is saying, we're just going to build our features and you tell us what's wrong with them and then we'll see. And so then logically the regulator's response to that is to stamp her feet and throw a tantrum because she wants Apple to do what she wants.

And Apple saying, no, we're not going to do it that way. And we are going to withhold features. She knows that makes them look bad. does make them look bad because now they are put in a position of being the ones who are not protecting european citizens from big bad apple by making apple reform but the people who are standing in the way of new features yeah and you know it may not be a big deal but it's a thing and so her response i think is logical in the sense that it's basically punching back and saying, oh, well, they're doing this. It's on them. They're doing this because they're evil, basically, instead of they're doing this because we have a very confusing set of rules and they don't know what to do, even if that's the case. But again, it's politics. I get it. I hope that there's a mechanism behind the scenes for features like this once they've been announced to have that conversation and say, what do you think?

Will this fly? Because that's at the core of this is, you know, Apple's basically putting down features and saying, this is our feature. And do you object? And there's no structure for that. Apparently, it's just backroom dealings, meetings. I don't know. for that. Apparently it's just backroom dealings, meetings. I don't know.

I also just wanted to note, just because I think this is an interesting thing to be aware of for now and see where it goes over the next few months, Epic have submitted the Epic Game Store app marketplace and Fortnite to Apple for notarization.

So they have said publicly they've done that, and they're saying they're planning to launch both within the coming months in the EU. We'll see what happens. We'll see, right? Because this is the shame of what has happened with those emulators, is

for years now Apple has been notarizing Mac apps in a way that people were worried was going to be a de facto App Store approval for all Mac apps. And they never did it. They never did it. And when they brought it to iOS, they said in the EU, they said, well, it's going to be a little more stringent. Okay.

stringent okay but now everybody looks at notarization and says is apple gonna play favorites is apple gonna enforce app store rules outside the app store um sure seems like some of that is going on with the emulators so how do they feel about epic which you know they hate right so we'll see what could be argued the whole reason all of this is happening in the first place right is this yeah right yeah right but all eyes are on them and and there is legal history between them and they are they are in the one percent not the 99 of that apple statement right about 99 of people won't care and then there's the one percent like epic games is a large portion of that percent so yeah we'll see what happens. They may not be able to mess with them

because it would be such a thing, but I've been surprised by Apple's behavior before. Yeah, exactly. This episode is brought to you by Factor. Warmer, sunnier days are calling. Fuel up for them with Factor's no prep, no mess meals. You can meet your wellness goals in time for summer thanks to the menu of chef crafted meals that Factor have available with options like calorie smart, protein plus and keto.

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She goes to the library where she works, and she's got to have a lunch every day. And those factor meals were like, look, I get a lot of podcast stuff that comes in and people are like, you know, oh, you get free podcast stuff. Well, yeah, it varies. You know, you're like, oh, what's the weird thing that the podcast industry has said is this week for an advertisement. So try the factor stuff. And she was immediately like, no, this is really good. This is the most positive reaction she's had to any of these things. And very rapidly, I could not have very many of them for my lunches because she just took them away because they're that good. And

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slash upgrade50 and you'll get 50% off your first box plus 20% off your next month while your subscription is active. Our thanks to Factor for their support of this show and RelayFM. Room around up time. Yeehaw! Got a bunch of stuff here today. It's a bit scattered. We'll start with Mark Gurman who is reporting that Apple is

working on bringing Apple intelligence to the Vision Pro but it won't be launching this year Gurman says that the hardware capability in the Vision Pro is there so we were wondering about this right that like the chips in theory seem like they would be powerful enough but are they being overused?

But Kermit says that the user interface is actually the main challenge here, getting that design right for the Vision Pro. Interesting. Reading between the lines is also like it's not their main focus and that they are, you know. Well, it's lower priority than the iPhone and the iPad and the Mac. It's lower priority than the iPhone and the iPad and the Mac. And then, but as we thought, actually, when they announced Vision OS 2, I think the Vision OS track is just very different. First off, the product's only been out for a few months. And I think there's going to be more going on with Vision Pro, hopefully over the next

year. And this is a great example of that, which is Apple not comfortable talking about Apple intelligence on Vision Pro. I'm sure it's on the list, but they don't know how the next year is going to go. I'm sure it's on the list. Right. And, and so this report says, yeah, they're thinking about it too. Of course they are, but you know, number one is to get it on the iPhone. That is number one. And then number two is the Mac and the iPadad and then other stuff so i get it i it is good news though right i mean there was some fear that it was not going to be up to the challenge and it sounds like uh he did some deking and that uh it is up to the challenge of supporting apple intelligence

so speaking of the list of priorities something that may not be on that list at all is the home pod marcus shared that apple is currently not working on adding these features to the current HomePods because technically it just can't. Which is not a surprise. It's underpowered. Not enough RAM, not enough processor. Why would you build... I mean, a bunch of last year's iPhones don't support it, let alone a HomePod from a while ago. This is a really interesting question. I think I'm going to write an article about this.

Is Siri fragmentation, right? The idea that we're going to enter an era where some of our devices have new Siri and some don't, right? Maybe if you've got a qualifying Mac and iPad and iPhone, you'll have it on all. But what if you have like an M1 Mac, but an iPhone 15 and an M2 iPad? And so like your iPhone doesn't have it, but your iPad and your Mac do. And then you throw in the HomePod and the Apple Watch and it gets even wilder right maybe you bought the latest and greatest and all of your mac ipod ipad iphone the trio have it the trio the trinity the trinity apple trinity the intelligent trinity but who's on the other side of that right who's on the outside well the homepod and the watch are on the outside and they're both sir driven, at least in part devices. They're devices that where Siri matters way more than it does on those other devices. What are they going to do?

And I think it's a really interesting question that they did not address at all. And I had a few ideas of how they could do it. They could just not do it and say, you know what? Yeah. Siri sucks on the HomePod. Sorry. Stay tuned for four years from now when we do something there. 16 gigabytes of RAM in a HomePod. Well, it feels like it's not going to happen, right? And the Apple Watch is not going to have a chip. It's not going to be able to have a chip

that's capable of doing that level of on-device. So here's my theory. Or there are a couple of them. You know the concept with the HomePod of personal requests? Yeah. The idea there is that you're linking your iPhone, essentially the HomePod and it can make requests and it's essentially using the information on your iPhone to do it. I wonder if there is a way to revise the HomePod's firmware so that if there is a device on the network with Apple intelligence, it basically farms it out, right? It basically says, Hey, here's the, here's the command. Give me back the response

and have it. And if they could do that and have it be low enough latency, that the HomePod is basically a conduit for an iPad or a phone or even a Mac, but probably just like a phone that the HomePod would then be smarter. Now, it does mean that if that phone leaves the house and somebody wants to use the HomePod, it's dumb again, Siri fragmentation again, but it would be good to do that. The other way to do it would be to adjust their thing where they, you know, you've got five different Apple devices listening for your command all at once. And then it figures out contextually kind of like what device is supposed to actually get that command. You could tweak that if you were Apple so that in situations

where there was a device listening with Apple intelligence, that it would always take it over the other devices, right? It's like, oh, there's a watch, a HomePod, and an iPhone 15 Pro. And I say, hey, lady, ahoy, telephone, play this song. And have it go to the iPhone always because the iPhone is more capable. And maybe it says, do you want me to play that on this HomePod that's here in the room with us and that would be great so i feel like there are ways that apple can do this and the watch would be a similar sort of thing the watch if it's connected to its phone now again cellular watch that's a lot harder can it phone home with cellular that what are the delays there maybe it just gets dumb if it's not near its phone buddy

but i feel like there's some stuff they could do the question is will they do any of that or are they like no too busy too busy on just shipping it we're not going to worry about those other devices and my guess is that it's going to be both my guess is this is all going to ship and it's just going to be siri fragmentation all the way down and that's just how it is it's going to be a mess for a while but i could see how maybe next year at wwdc they say here's a new thing we're going to do where we're going to intelligently process based on what device you've got where the apple intelligence processing happens um it's also possible that they could do something where they send it to the cloud, right? Because that's a thing that they're not doing now, where some devices, they could, but they're not doing now the idea that, you know, right now,

a model will process it right now. I mean, in the future when this actually happens, but model process it and says, oh, this is going to be in the private cloud compute, and this is going to be local and all the devices are the same for that right the the iphone 15 pro and an m4 ipad and an m2 max mac all will just do the same thing it'll either be on device or remote but you could have an update for the watch that just if there's no phone nearby or even if there is just does private cloud compute for all of it. But again, they're too busy building those servers now just to do the certain tasks. They're not there yet.

So that's my guess, is that they're going to do something that allows HomePods and Apple Watches to partake of Apple intelligence without actually running it the same way that these other devices do. But it's not going to happen this cycle, probably, because Apple is just working hard as they can to even ship it. And then maybe next June, they're like, hey, new feature of next year's watchOS, next year's HomePod OS is they

will talk to a device that does Apple intelligence, or they'll talk to the cloud. I think that's how they're going to have to do it. Because I't think they're going to ship uh a home pod with eight gigs of ram and an m1 processor i just i just don't think they are and i don't either unless you know this really is the future of computing and we all and every device has to take this massive jump right to never say never yeah never say never but i i think that given the cost of the home pod and the market that it's in they'd probably rather find a way to use your other apple devices or the cloud rather than put all of the hardware specs in a music player and the watch is another problem right like the watch just the battery i mean you can't you can't these specs

are beyond anything that a watch can do now or I think in the reasonable future. So better off finding a hybrid approach to that. But it's just not going to be there for a while, I think. And we're going to have these stories, these Siri fragmentation stories are going to happen where it's like, oh, I said this thing and dumb Siri answered. And that's going to be a thing. It's going to happen. I think the savior of this scenario where they have these devices that just can't do it is that there are logical ways of dealing with this, right? As you laid out, right? Which is that you either go to the cloud for everything from a certain type of device or you find the device

that can answer the question. And it's not like, especially with the Apple Watch, like Apple's been here before. that was what the apple watch was completely and still still sometimes is depending on what you want for sure and there's a precedent here with the personal request thing on the home pod of saying i need information that a home pod doesn't have can i attach this so you could do that um joe steel points out the apple tv is another example of this too like you could have that idea of our and it would be a setting right so you'd be like no no i don't want this to know about all the stuff that's on my phone it's like

okay you don't have to do that but if you set that up that apple would be able to have its constellation of like these ancillary devices either go to the cloud or go to the smart device that's in your network that's right over there. And in the background, say, I'm using your iPhone's brain here, and I'm using the semantic index on that iPhone to answer your question, even though I'm an Apple TV or an Apple Watch or a HomePod. Mark Gurman has also shared that Apple continues to work with Google on a Gemini partnership for iOS 18 and it could be ready to announce this fall.

This feels to me like something that they would be pretty well fit and I imagine they would probably like to try and match up to do during the iPhone keynote like when they reintroduce iOS 18 again. So we also now have Google Gemini as an option as well as ChatGPT. Although i don't think google gemini has the uh social awareness and interest no chat gpt has

but it's at least something else they can offer google does have a hardware event next month in august i think it's going to be really interesting to see because it's Pixels, right? What their response is going to be with Gemini baked into their devices. I think that's going to be interesting. Gummine has another report at Bloomberg saying that Meta has been ruled out from a partnership

perspective that Apple believes Meta's privacy policies are not stringent enough to be trusted through a partnership for integrating their llama model yes also they hate them this is what it is i mean honestly like this just feels like something where they just these companies don't like each other because i don't i would be very keen to understand how meta is worse at their privacy with with uh llms than open ai google or any of the other potential companies

like Anthropic that they might work with. Like, I don't, realistically, like, I don't know what is Meta doing that Google's not doing, for example, right, for privacy. I don't buy this. This just feels to me very much like Tim Cook and Mark Zuckerberg hate each other.

And that's just the way this is going to roll. I think that Apple, and Apple more broadly, just just views meta as a company that doesn't value privacy and at the same level that apple does and will not and and this is following up by the way there was a wall street journal i think report that said apple talked to meta which is very weird because it wasn't like when or what and then german just came out the next day and said, that's not happening. So whatever their source was, somebody had met. It was like, yeah, we called Apple about using our AI. We haven't heard back, but you never know.

And then Gurman's like, no, that's not going to happen. Moving on from Apple intelligence, the Elec, which is a Korean website, has reported that Apple is looking for new suppliers for the type of OLED display that they use in the Vision Pro. These are the inside panels, so what you're looking at with your eyes, not the outside panels. These screens are interesting because they have Apple Silicon chips on the reverse side of them. I think the M.2 chip is on one eye and the R1 chip is on the other eye, and that is helpful for latency and stuff like that. As long-time listeners of the show will know, Sony is currently producing the panels in the Vision Pro, but it has long been

said that they have a production limit of like 900,000 screens, which is like 450,000 sets of screens per year, with a lack of expansion opportunities. Apple has apparently contacted both LG and Samsung's display divisions with you to create some new panels, but they have differing specs to what's in the Vision Pro. Essentially larger, a little bit, quite a bit larger, but at a lower resolution. So the current panels in the Vision Pro have a pixel density of 3,400 ppi. These new panels, it would be 1,700 ppi. So from this, I guess we could assume that they're investigating how to produce a lower cost, lower spec version of the Vision Pro. Yeah, I mean, it's possible that it's a larger panel that they would fit in um so and use optical things to make it further

in your field of view i mean who knows right because pixel density doesn't say it could be a larger thing if it's it's also possible that yeah this is make us a cheaper a thing that we can ship in volume and put in a 1500 thing right because Because one of the biggest costs, as far as we can tell, of the Vision Pro in terms of hardware are those displays. So a clear way to make a more affordable product is to use a more affordable pair of panels

on the inside. But this comes back to how does it look and is it good enough for Apple's standards? Because if you are a company making an item and another company will buy every single one that you make you can charge them a lot of money for that part right like the power lies with sony in this scenario like if apple's buying all of the panels that sony can make and they're hard to make Sony's going to make them expensive right it's like you know why wouldn't you do that uh so interesting yeah as you said like I don't I don't know at first glance I'd assume maybe this is

for a cheaper version but yeah maybe it actually could just be for all of them and they're able to even though it's a different spec would would be able to produce a similar result i i really don't know but it's interesting to see them doing this because it and it's also interesting to me to see that like this thing that we've been talking about for the last year or so about this this production uh um kind of ceiling that they have hasn't changed at all but also it could be potentially that i don't know maybe apple can't order more than them than that amount anyway so sony isn't necessarily that inclined because it's not that the vision pro is ever sold out right so right yeah so it's interesting to see this but we'll see what that ends up coming to. And Ming-Chi Kuo is reporting that Apple is working on a new version of AirPods that feature infrared cameras.

Kuo says that these cameras are specifically to be used for spatial computing enhancements. I'm going to read a quote here from Ming-Chi Kuo's Medium site. Because I just need to read this quote because I don't know how to explain this otherwise. because I just need to read this quote because I don't know how to explain this otherwise. So Minchiko says, the new AirPods are expected to be used in Vision Pro and future Apple headsets to enhance the user experience of spatial audio

and strengthen the spatial computing ecosystem. For example, when a user is watching a video with Vision Pro and wearing these new AirPods, if a user turns their head looking a specific direction, the sound source in that direction can be emphasized to enhance the spatial audio computing experience. Interesting.

It does this already. Yeah. It does this already. He's just described spatial audio. Spatial audio. Which exists already on the Vision Pro and on AirPods. Already exists. This is...

Remember, we talk a lot here on the vision pro and on airpods yeah already exists this is um remember we talk about a lot here on the upgrade program about consider your source and consider what they know ming chi kuo has very good supply chain sources supply chains that's parts right so what he knows knows is that there is an infrared camera part that apple is considering is trying out is using in in samples is talking to a factory about you know doing a bulk purchase like the hard invisible work that comes into assembling a product that ships in volume from apple you've got to they don't make a lot of those parts they got to source them that's why the supply chain leaks okay what ming chi quo is not does not have great sources about is why and maybe people were told something by apple but I would be surprised by that. I would think that Apple would say as little as possible

about why they're using any part, right? Because that's the secret sauce, is Apple's going to have software, and it's going to integrate this, and it's going to do amazing things. And then you go to a company that makes a very small infrared camera, and you're negotiating,

and you're asking about the specs, and you want samples. What are you going to say? So maybe this is part of that story, camera and you're negotiating and you're asking about the specs and you want samples, what are you going to say? So maybe this is part of that story, or maybe it's an extrapolation by somebody that Ming-Chi Kuo talked to, or maybe it's just Ming-Chi Kuo trying to put this in a context of it could do this. But the actual explanation is literally a feature that already exists. So I think it's really interesting because we've talked a lot about the idea that having Apple devices be able to see when they're in your pocket or when they,

you know, or on your wrist and don't have a camera, one way to do that would be to put them in AirPods. Although you've got lots of issues there about hair and you know but still it's an interesting idea to have some cameras so that your apple intelligence iphone when you're walking down the street with airpods in it can see and that's probably good for some features that you could imagine where it can actually see the world around you and interpret what you're doing so i can imagine a whole lot of things but this doesn't make sense right that's interesting i because i've been like all day being like i don't understand what this would be for but i guess yeah if you if you're not actually taking pictures but you just need the device to see it like an infrared camera could do that still

right i can see and maybe with with a very things see through hair even maybe right see through any of those distractions and just get you a a view of the world around you so that that would be another input it's like when we were talking about the humane pin right the one thing the humane pin had that i thought was very interesting was a camera looking at the world so that it could use that in its interpretation you could ask it things right so that's interesting that's an interesting idea you don't need it for spatial audio though no this is no i mean look all right let's just imagine for us for a second that he's correct right that that would do this, that's not enough of a reason

to put the cameras in the AirPods, right? Like that, even if this was the case, that this enabled better sound with a Vision Pro, that is actually not a good enough reason to put these sensors in AirPods. Maybe you'd put these sensors in the Vision Pro, right?

But like you wouldn't put them because he also says that these cameras could assist with in-air gesture recognition again sure but like airpods are not an essential part of the vision pro like you don't need them and so you can't it wouldn't make any sense to to to do to pair them in that way right now more likely you do gestures like the Vision Pro with other Apple devices, right? That's a more likely scenario. Yes.

Is that you wear these and then you can put your hand up and go and tap your fingers together and it does something. It pauses what's playing or something like that. So you don't even need to squeeze your earbuds. That's what it would be for,

not Vision Pro. The AirPods are not going to, you're not going to put a new sensor in one of your best-selling products that is essential for your least-selling product. It doesn't make sense. No. No, but so again, take the report for what it is,

which is a report from the supply chain that Apple is talking about putting infrared cameras and AirPods. What does that mean? Which I, again, it comes from Ming-Chi Kuo. I believe it. I do believe it. This is true. It doesn't mean that it will happen, but it probably means that it's far enough along for him to report it, which means that, yeah, it's, they probably got samples

and they built samples and it's probably, I mean, right. Because just sniffing around, Apple probably does a lot of that. So it's further down the road of product development. So I do, I, I believe that I believe that, that Apple is working on this, but for what, I don't believe what he says. It doesn't make sense. No. For what? I don't believe what he says. Doesn't make sense. No. If you enjoy this show and you would like more of this show,

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and you want to support the show, please go to getupgradeplus.com and you can sign up there and we appreciate if you will. Let's finish out today with some Ask Upgrade questions. First comes from Matthew, who says,

this is a big question, but I just wanted to get your first thoughts on it. Do you think Apple will ever make another product as successful as the iPhone? If I have to answer yes or no, I'll say no. I would say no. I think the smartphone is a generation-defining product. That was the logical outcome of all of apple's work with

personal computing over the years and while there are going to be other products the chances of another tech products being bigger than the smartphone and Apple being a major player at the moment when that happens are low, not impossible. And I know Apple spends a lot of money so that if all of us just wear computer glasses in 30 years, that they're going to be based on all the work Apple's been doing up to now with vision pro like I get it, but I think the chances are that it will be somebody else and who knows how long that will even be i don't know about what that product everybody wants to know and everybody likes to imagine that it's just around the corner but it may be that the smartphone is the thing for a long time so um i just i i can't when when do you get the chance to go from a product category, basically not

existing to basically, I know not everybody in the world, but a large percentage of people in the world having the product over an incredibly short amount of time that doesn't happen very often. And it happened with a smartphone. I don't think it's going to happen again for a while. And if it does, what are the chances that Apple is there? zero but i wouldn't i wouldn't bet on it so i'll give a little spicy take on this all right so i also say no and i think apple would be a better company and would make better products if they were able to let go of this idea. I also think they would be more likely

to make a product as successful as the iPhone if they stopped trying. Interesting. Yeah, I mean, there's something to be said for how much diversion Apple has done on cars and on Vision Pro and things like that instead of their core products. And would their core products more naturally emerge if they weren't busy playing the those

big bets you know on on the on the deep stuff that may never happen i i i think that's an interesting take i i no way to prove it right or wrong but yeah there's a question like maybe apple being apple like i don't think that apple made the ipod thinking well this will get us into mobile devices and rehab our brand and eventually we'll be able to make a phone like i don't think the apple made the ipod thinking well this will get us into mobile devices and rehab our brand and eventually we'll be able to make a phone like i don't think they did that they i think they did that where they're like hey do you see this hard drive we could we we have like a music player right we just bought that music player sound jam and made itunes like let's let's do it we can make a product around this hard drive like that's it emerged from kind of nowhere and went somewhere and similarly right the the iphone

was like they were trying to make a tablet computer right and they couldn't do it so they made a phone instead start with a phone yeah yeah yeah so there's there's an argument that there's some serendipity involved and that placing a big bet on a category that you just sort of think might be something later is not going to give you serendipity yep what i'm saying is stop trying to make iphone happen essentially it's essentially what happened jad asks are you guys planning on giving the new apple mail a chance? Oh. I use Apple Mail on the iPhone and the iPad, so I will use it there and give it a try.

But honestly, if MimeStream comes out for iOS, it might not be a try for very long. My, you know, fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, shame on Apple. That's what I say. What? No, that's not a saying. Well, anyway, I've tried to, I've tried Apple mail too many times and it's failed me too many times. And it frustrates me every time I get a new message and I tap on it and it says, uh, there, I don't, I haven't downloaded the content of the new message yet. I just get so mad at it. So I can't see it. I've moved on from Apple Mail.

So I may end up using it on my phone and my iPad, but that's it. What about you? It's interesting. I have a currently changing relationship with email, like where I'm using it and what I'm doing with it. At the moment, where I'm doing my email is on my Mac and sometimes on my iPad, not on my iPhone. And I use Spark for this. The reason I use Spark initially had been for team sharing features.

to use spark initially had been for team sharing features and i still do that but increasingly less as my responsibilities have changed at relay so like i am initially there was a lot more conversation between me and carrie who deals with who was at the time kind of like my advertising assistant about the way that things are done but now now that Carrie runs that part of our business entirely, I am less involved in sharing emails back and forth with her that I'm receiving about ads. But now I use Spark for a bunch of other things that it does as well, like their automatic categorization of messages.

Well, Apple Mail, they're saying it will do that. So that's interesting to me. And I am intrigued about their email summarization stuff. I think that that is, it could be pretty cool. So I'm willing, I am actually willing to give it a chance. Like I want to see what it's all about when it launches, because I think it will give me everything I need except for team sharing. But over time, my requirement for team sharing is becoming less and less and less, where really now I could just forward an email to Kerry like you would back in the old days, you know, because we don't really, we used to have a lot of inline conversations about emails, but that is happening way less frequently. So I'm willing to give it a shot because I think

for the first time in years, they've actually announced some genuine features for mail, which are interesting to me, and some stuff that I've not seen other people do, like the idea of giving you the summary in the inbox of an email instead of the first couple of lines of a message, which I think is genuinely a very smart thing to do. So I'll be willing to give it a go. All right. I mean, like I said I I use it on my phone and my iPad and so I look forward to seeing those features there and I I'm not so sure about

my Mac I yeah I'll try it out for the purposes of the review but I'm very happy with my third party mail client at this point I like MimeStream I just can't use it as my only email yeah client because i also use icloud email so it just i just can't i can't use it uh and john wants to know have you put on your quest since you bought the apple vision pro i have okay um i i have not used it as much as i actually would like because i kind of miss some of the stuff that I used to use it with. It's just it's very hard for me to like find headset time in general. And then I feel like if I'm going to do headset time, I need to do Vision Pro headset time. But I do miss some of the games, especially.

I have tried it, though. Um, I have tried it though. And, um, what struck me about it is that it's, it's better than I thought having used the vision pro. I think it's fine. I think for the price, it's actually kind of great. Um, the quality isn't as good. Obviously the hand, the, the, uh The hand tracking without controllers is not as good, but it's functional in a way that when I got the Quest 2,

especially like it was not. They've obviously put some work into having you be able to use hand tracking and not use the controllers, but really it is a controller first, I would say, experience. And they're trying more mixed reality things like it it's fine i did not put it on and go oh this is terrible and you know get it away i didn't do that um but i do find i mean i'll i'll reference my rant earlier about hand controllers just to say um that's what i miss with division pro is all those games that are really enabled by precision input

that it doesn't offer so that's like the pink my ping pong game beat saber stuff like that so i had a quest pro which i was using mostly for work and meeting stuff. I've not put it on since I got Division Pro. And that was, for me, the big thing is that if I use the Quest Pro for an hour, I would get a headache. I don't know what exactly it was that was making that happen, but it is not a thing I feel with Division Pro at all. And I have used Division Pro for much longer periods of time. But I do miss Horizon Workrooms,

which was the app that me and Gray would sometimes use to have meetings. I like the focus that it had around working and everything you needed was inside of the application. Like I know that and I have had, you know, calls and meetings of people using Spatial Personas. Like we had one just last week. And I can replicate all of the features individually with different apps and experiences. But Workrooms did a really good job of making everything right there. So like there was a whiteboard feature that you could just bring up inside of it. They had like these office environments that you would sit in,

which just felt good. Like there were desks and stuff. Like it felt like a meeting more than like we're hanging out on the beach together, which the Vision Pro is like um they were like you know you're in a shared space you could bring your computer like in front of you you could share it with other people really easy like it was just a it was a purpose-built app for meetings which i have not found something that replicates those features on the vision pro but i way prefer a spatial persona call and how they look and feel to how the the horizon workrooms calls look like i don't like the avatars and stuff like that i

much prefer actually the floating heads and hands of my friends and me and jason can high five now and it makes fun sound effects when you do it i mean it does make a sound effect when they if you headbutt somebody or you put some your hand in their face it does not make makes fun sound effects when you do it. It does make a sound effect. If you headbutt somebody or you put your hand in their face, it does not make a fun sound effect. But if you touch hands, it does. It should just be like if you do that. To try and stop you from doing it.

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You can check out Jason over at sixcolors.com. You can hear his shows here on RelayFM and theincomparable.com. You can hear me on RelayFM too. You can check out my product work at cortexbrand.com. Jason is at jsnau, J-S-N-E-L-L. I am at iMike, I-M-Y-K-E. If you would like to watch video clips of the show and see the upgrade t-shirts that we wear every single week. And also, I'm assuming there will be a clip of when Jason launched the America

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for the support of this episode. But most of all, thank you for listening. Until next time, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.