Upgrade - 533: A Conversation With Your Teeth

Episode Date: October 14, 2024

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Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 from relay this is upgrade episode 533 for october 14th 2024 today's show is brought to you by delete me uni pizza ovens vitally and tip top my name is mike hurley and I'm joined by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason. Hi, Mike. Five, three, three, uh, was, uh, we,
Starting point is 00:00:27 we are now, I can't believe I didn't mention this last week. Five, three, two, and five, three, three were our phone numbers when I was a kid.
Starting point is 00:00:33 We had a five, three, three number, five, three, three, oh, five,
Starting point is 00:00:35 oh, one, and five, three, two, six, seven, five,
Starting point is 00:00:37 three was my phone number. And, uh, don't tell those numbers now. Um, there might be somebody else. Not. And if you would,
Starting point is 00:00:44 and I, I haven't revealed the area code specifically to make it slightly more obscure for people but don't call those numbers uh the people aren't there anymore um my parents don't have that number my mom's number is a cell phone that she got when they moved into a motor home because back then number portability wasn't a thing and when i was given my first corporate cell phone whenever even that was i assume at idg um who knew that the number that they were uh assigning me randomly at that time would be presumably my phone number for the rest of my life so weird times anyway but uh classic so shout out to 533 and 532 shout out uh i have a snow talk question for you that
Starting point is 00:01:23 comes from ben who wants to know what is your footwear of choice when at home weird weird weird question look maybe ben has a thing and he just wants to know about it that's all okay um i wear socks a lot oh okay bear i want a little more cushion than bare feet. So unless it's really hot, I wear socks a lot. In the winter, and we're not a shoes-off house, so I will also just leave my shoes on sometimes for whatever logistical reasons. And then my other answer is that I've got these slippers that you told me about. Oh, the Mojaves?
Starting point is 00:02:07 Yes. Yeah. Is that what they are? Yep. With the rubber on the front? Yeah. Yeah, Mojave slippers. I've been wearing Mojaves for years.
Starting point is 00:02:16 I love Mojaves. Yeah. So I have those. And in the winter, I wear those. I used to wear slippers that uh like little sheepskin slippers that were really really nice but they i i wore them so much that they fell apart and it was very hard to find a replacement and i didn't like all the replacements had soles like flat soles and instead of it just sort of being a soft bottom which i didn't like uh but these slippers uh and
Starting point is 00:02:43 you're gonna have to put a link in the show notes i will these slippers now um they are uh they're nice and even though they've got flat soles they're they're different because they're you know slip-ons and all of that so they have rubber tips on them sometimes or yeah i like them a lot i've been a fan of my hobbies for years they have a bunch of different ones these have the rubber tips and uh they're comfy so i wear those and especially i wear those to um for me a lot of it is temperature regulations like in when in the winter and it's cold and damp sometimes in my house and my feet get cold sometimes especially i'm just sitting at my desk my feet get cold so it's nice like i have them on right now because
Starting point is 00:03:20 i was feeling like it's a little cooler in here than usual and my feet are cold and so why don't i get the slippers out which i haven't worn in a while so we're in slipper weather now so that's done you know it's a variety it's a variety do you have a footwear of choice when you are at home always my i'm wearing my hobbies now in the studio and i wear my hobbies at home too um oh wow you have you have like a studio pair of slippers i actually have two pairs of slippers at the studio so i had an original pair that I bought when I first moved into the studio here. And something that I noticed was
Starting point is 00:03:52 the very fronts of them were getting worn away. And I think it's because when I'm sitting at the desk recording, I kind of kick my feet on the ground in a way that I don't... I move a lot. Anybody that watches the video knows this. I fidget constantly when I'm recording.
Starting point is 00:04:06 I don't know what it is that makes me do that, but I do. And so they were wearing away a little. So then I was going to buy a new pair and then saw that Mojave's now make these ones where the rubber goes over the toe, so that wouldn't happen. So now I have my in the studio pair and then I also have my going to the bathroom pair because i don't have a
Starting point is 00:04:26 bathroom in my studio i have to go out or like going to fill up my water bottle whatever so i put those ones on to leave and then i have my good ones for when i'm here um so yeah lots of slippers oh wow this is i just want to say you you are when you come into work and you've got slippers to put on there you are getting so close to being Mr. Rogers. Okay. Like I need a cardigan too when I get in? Yeah. Well, that's what I was going to say is your next thing is that you need to take off your jacket or whatever else you're wearing and put on a nice cardigan.
Starting point is 00:04:55 I actually do do that sometimes. I have hoodies that are just studio hoodies. And so I'll take off whatever I'm wearing and put on a studio hoodie which can either be a cortex hoodie or an upgrade hoodie depending on how cold it is oh boy look it's really lovely here in the neighborhood i don't know i can't i cannot wait to one day visit the land of make-believe by which i mean mega studio that's amazing i also have a sock recommendation while we're on it okay oh yeah Oh, yeah, sure. I really like and I subscribe to the Awesome Socks Club, which is from Hank and John Green. And I'll put a link to that
Starting point is 00:05:30 in the show notes too. They have really weird and fun socks. I like socks subscriptions. I cannot let this go without making a couple of sock recommendations myself. Yeah, we've come to that.
Starting point is 00:05:39 It has. We're dueling sock recommendations. I really like, for people in the US, American Trench makes really nice socks, although they have gotten kind of away from the stripy socks.
Starting point is 00:05:49 I bought them because I really like the stripy socks. And now they seem to have decided that they don't like stripes anymore. And it makes me sad. But you know who does like stripes is another made in America company, Zcano. Z-K-A-N-O. And I've been buying socks from them, and they are really good too.
Starting point is 00:06:08 So I'm a big fan of finding non-generic socks that come in interesting patterns and stripes and stuff like that. And they're pretty great. So those are my two favorites. You might like the Awesome Socks Club. It can be a bit weird sometimes, but I like it. Final sock recommendation, bomba socks bomba socks they're like uh they're like ankle socks uh are incredible and every couple of years i'll buy myself like 20 of them and i'll just use those lauren and sometimes a sponsor um lauren
Starting point is 00:06:39 love love love the bomba socks i've never gotten the right size so they've ended up taking them because i can never get them to fit because that's part of it too but the um but the problem with the the novelty socks is that often the socks aren't very good they like they're it's a fun pattern because i got a sock subscription at one point and it was really fun and i liked those socks but they were kind of thin and i just i I really didn't like them and I like the, I like them stripy and I like them, some of them like plush, like fuzzy.
Starting point is 00:07:11 That's also kind of nice. Especially since I'm wearing around the house as we, which brings us all the way back around to the original Snell Talk question. This is great.
Starting point is 00:07:17 We've done some good work here. I feel like we could just knock off from the day right now and not, but I guess we got to do a whole upgrade. Unfortunately so. It can't all be about socks. Can it? Let's find out. all be about socks can it it could be but i think i might run out of steam in about two minutes addict
Starting point is 00:07:31 it's a new podcast we're gonna have to start sock addict uh if you would like to send in a question of your own and obviously it can be about anything just go to upgradefeedback.com and help us start the show with a snow talk thank you to ben for that fun question i have some follow-up for you uh jason and everybody uh we had a great time on connected last week you joined me and federico and we had a really fun time so if you've not listened to that you should go listen to that i think people would enjoy it was a really good episode of connected the worst thing about that episode was that i didn't have an episode of connected to listen to last week yeah because i usually listen so i couldn't yourself
Starting point is 00:08:12 i did i did listen live yes but in it right active live yeah yeah but then it came into my into my overcast and i was like nope also but by the way i just not to not to pat ourselves on the back here but i consider that one of the all-time great podcast titles yeah it was real good i i consume all of my dark secrets yeah yeah yeah which makes sense in context and otherwise does not anyway very good so i hope people listen if they haven't uh the screen recording security dialogue prompt in mac os sequoia has been changed this is a quote from mac rumors which i believe was from apple saying users will see fewer dialogues if they regularly use apps in which they have already acknowledged and accepted the risks. This was the exact middle ground that we were hoping for.
Starting point is 00:09:25 the can down the road here where you, you know, it's like the timer starts and then you launch it and it goes, all right. And it resets the timer. And I don't know if there's an ultimately a non-resettable extension of that. I don't know the details. It's very hard to tell because this is all about like letting things happen over time, but, um, better. It's a little bit silly, right? That we are, we are at this point, but what, what it suggests truthfully is that Apple built a new thing and said, this is the new thing. Everybody needs to do it. And we're going to deprecate the old thing and throw up a thing that yells at users because their developer did something, which is always a bad idea. Throw the developer under the bus. Right. But then they got feedback, which was like, yeah, but you made, you made this decision in, in error because
Starting point is 00:10:04 there's actually a problem. There's a whole bunch of apps that people use that don't fit into your solution. And so what are they supposed to do? And to Apple's credit, they didn't say, well, forget about it. They said, no, the reasons we're going ahead with this, but since we didn't take these other things into account,
Starting point is 00:10:22 let's mitigate that for now. And the next step is they need to adjust their trajectory with these features to get those other things to work in a way that works for users, works for developers, and works for Apple security people. So it's not great because it's a sign that they weren't paying attention to some of these details early enough and didn't think them through. But it's good in that they seem to have listened to the criticism and that's that's uh that's good for users who have a lot of apps that uh use the screen recording permissions to do things that are not recording you know sharing windows over zoom and uh so it's better not not ideal and kind of ridiculous that we got to this point, but at least this happened.
Starting point is 00:11:07 I mean, this is a issue, Sarah. I actually think this is a really good system for dealing with this, like being smart about what I'm doing. Again, we'll see how it goes, right? Yeah. I wanted to mention something that I've been really enjoying. Just a little change that I noticed with my AirPods Pro. This either happened in iOS 18 or maybe it's in 18.1. I'm not sure exactly when, but I have noticed that the responsiveness to loud noises has significantly improved. Like for example, if I'm listening to a podcast and I use a hand dryer, the audio level goes up immediately.
Starting point is 00:11:47 Something has happened, at least with my specific setup, in that the kind of what it's supposed to be doing, like increasing the volume when it hears loud noises, just in general, that has been significantly better for me since I was 18. So I'm really happy about that. Like it was always pretty good, but now it's really good. And I think that's great. Yeah. I wanted to do a little, while we're on this subject, I wanted to do a little follow-up. A little follow-out, rather.
Starting point is 00:12:20 Follow-out. Because there are... ATP has been talking about this a little bit and I've seen it in other places too I don't want to just say it's ATP but I've discovered that I seem to not be looking at the the different modes of noise canceling in AirPods Pro the same way other people do okay and I I'm trying to phrase it that way because maybe it's me maybe it's not them but I use Okay. profile, right? I've got a busy road a couple blocks away and a freeway about like five blocks away. And so there's some background noise as well as busy road noise at different points in the walk and at other points in the walk, it's quieter. And then I've got cars, you know, I'm walking on
Starting point is 00:13:17 streets. So there are cars going by. There's a school in the back of my neighborhood. So there are people driving back in the back streets where I walk the dog to get to the school. So there's some traffic. Anyway, I feel like for what it's worth, take us for what it's worth. There are these three modes that seem to be confusing people. There's transparency, adaptive, which is new, and noise cancellation. And the part that made me wonder if I was going nuts was Casey Liss saying, friend of the show, good friend of the show, saying he tried to use adaptive mode to mow the lawn. And I just thought, no, Casey. No, you wouldn't do that. Mowing the lawn is noisy. Put it in noise canceling mode.
Starting point is 00:14:04 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Adaptive is not that good. Right. I don't think it's't do that. Mowing the lawn is noisy. Put it in noise canceling mode. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Adaptive is not that good, right? I don't think it's made for that. So here's how I view it. And maybe this is not how Apple views it, although I think it is, but maybe it's not. Transparency and noise canceling. The idea there was it's a quick toggle.
Starting point is 00:14:18 Since they've got microphones on it, they've got a very clever quick toggle. If you're concerned about being able to hear the world around you while you've got your AirPods in, you put it in transparency mode. And I know there are people like Stephen Hackett who just, that's not good enough. I used to walk down the streets of San Francisco with in-ear headphones in. Super dangerous, by the way. At one point, I actually bought a little box that Shure made that was like in line with a little microphone to let you let in some of the noise from outside but really practically it was too much it was too silly um it's like analog transparency yeah yeah that's what it was that's exactly what it was so
Starting point is 00:14:55 um for me airpods pro and airpods in my ears i feel like they let in so much audio compared to the in-ear headphones okay so transparency mode is very clever though because it lets that stuff go through which is why i don't really understand steven not having one of his air airpods in because i feel like when when you've got when you've got airpods in in transparency mode unless your stuff is turned up too high or whatever like you can can hear everything. And if you pause your audio, you can hear everything. It's like being, you know, with, with nothing in your ears. That's what transparency is. It's, it's, it's Apple trying to simulate all the audio it's blocking. It's, it's repassing it through. It's, it's this virtual transparency. Okay, great. And then noise canceling is we're going to listen to every noise out there in the world,
Starting point is 00:15:44 and we're going to nullify it so that you can't hear any of it. And it works pretty well. Not perfectly, obviously, but pretty well. Adaptive, I believe, adaptive is what Apple would like transparency to be. I believe Apple thinks that adaptive is transparency 2.0 100 yes because because what adaptive is trying to do is let through variable noises like a car going by but smooth out so in my neighborhood right adaptive takes the freeway hum away because the freeway hum is just a background you know broadband noise it it has no information it's just a noise in the background that's meaningless and it takes it out and it's great and it allows more clarity in what i'm listening to whereas transparency lets it through but when i'm walking and everybody's going to be different, but when I'm walking with the dog on the streets using adaptive mode, I can hear every car coming from behind me
Starting point is 00:16:51 before it passes me by. I know where all the cars are. I can hear clearly every kind of random noise that are the noises that I need to hear to be safe. That's why I love adaptive mode and why when I walk the dog, 98% of the time, I'm in adaptive mode. a guy with a weed whacker or a guy with a blower or something like that where there's like noise like loud noise or there's a bulldozer or there's a you know anything like that then i will put it noise canceling and go past them and then go back into adaptive but i think adaptive is the best but the way to think about it is it's transparency but better because there's some noises and
Starting point is 00:17:44 transparency that you just that you don't need to better because there's some noises and transparency that you, that you don't need to hear because they're not meaningful. And if the reason that you're letting noise in to your AirPods is to keep you safe and to hear the world around you, then that's why I think adaptive, I think Apple nailed it because I can, it gives me everything I need to hear and nothing I don't. And like, thumbs up. That is how that's supposed to work. So I would never use it to mow the lawn. Lawn mowing is a noise canceling experience. Blowing leaves off of my patio is a noise canceling experience. But adaptive is great for walking the dog outside. Yeah, I have my AirPods Pro in adaptive mode as the default.
Starting point is 00:18:24 I never use transparency mode. And then I use noise cancellation for when I'm specifically trying to get rid of the most amount of noise, right? Yes. So like, for example, when I'm cooking, we have like a, you know, like a hob fan, like, you know, like a hood fan.
Starting point is 00:18:40 Yes. I don't like that noise. So I go into noise canceling and it cuts it out. Yes. Right? Same. No, I cook with noise canceling on because i don't need to hear there is not i'm not at least i'm not the kind of person who cooks meals who's like oh the the nature of the sizzle
Starting point is 00:18:54 from the pan will tell me it's like no it's not i just need to chop some onions and have the fan going and all of those things yeah absolutely yeah so. Yeah. So anyway, I mean, use it how you like it. But like Adaptive, the goal of Adaptive is to be a better transparency that it makes it a more pleasant experience to listen to whatever audio you're listening to while still letting through what's important, right? That's the whole idea there. Yep. I agree.
Starting point is 00:19:20 I agree. Don't mow your lawn with it, Casey. Come on. No. I mean, you know, give it a go. Like, you see what happens but don't I wouldn't expect that to be what it's not great it's not going to do the job not no I also use conversational awareness to just put that out there yeah I can't do that
Starting point is 00:19:36 we talked about this on the show before but like I can't do that because I am giving my dog feedback yeah and it will it will it will lower the volume and stuff every time because I'm telling the dog to go that it's because she does things like you know we come up to a curb and she's supposed to stop and then I say okay and then she then she crosses the street and every time I do that not to mention that her name is Maisie and if I say Maisy a certain way, the vowel sounds sound like the name of a certain personal assistant. Maisy and H-E-Y-S-I-R-I are very similar. And sometimes that triggers something too, which is also bad. So anyway, yeah, I don't use that. I wish I could because conversational awareness is very clever, but it doesn't know that I'm talking to a dog.
Starting point is 00:20:26 I want to give Apple a challenge. I want to give the AirPods team a challenge. Okay. Conversational awareness that knows I'm singing. Oh. Right? Like, if I'm wearing my AirPods Pro, I can't sing along to what I'm listening to. Because it dips the volume. Because it dips the volume and pauses it. That's not what I thought you were going for, because I thought you were going for what
Starting point is 00:20:51 my challenge is. Here's my challenge to Apple. Now that we praised them for adaptive, my challenge is conversational awareness should be about dialogue, not monologue. So conversational awareness should be able to hear me talk and not worry about it. Cause I can hear me talk. It should detect when someone else talks in a way that's very,
Starting point is 00:21:14 and I know that's hard, but like in a way that's very clever, like somebody else directly, you know, nearby who is talking and that, and maybe it's after I've said something there's, there's a way to trigger it but that's what i would like because if i'm just muttering to myself or talking to my dog or
Starting point is 00:21:29 singing along that's not a conversation so you need to be more aware that it's a it's a dialogue and there are other voices present and then you're like oh your little machine learning algorithm says oh there's people around yeah i'm not sure how it works. Because like, for example, sometimes, you know, if I have my AirPods in and I'm brushing my teeth, that can actually lower the volume. So I'm not sure if it's even, I mean, I don't know.
Starting point is 00:21:53 I'm not sure it's actually listening for speaking at all. What is that but a conversation between the toothbrush? Me and the toothbrush. And you know what? That is a really good point. Like brushing your teeth,
Starting point is 00:22:03 you're really just having a conversation with your teeth if you think about it. That's right. It is a really good point. Like brushing your teeth, you're really just having a conversation with your teeth if you think about it. That's right. It makes a lot of sense. It really does. Yeah, we've done, boy, this episode, we haven't even come to the first break yet.
Starting point is 00:22:14 My word. This is an award-winning segment right here. This segment alone would be enough, but no, there's a whole other podcast to come. We haven't even started yet. No. Next week. The value. Next week week we're doing a
Starting point is 00:22:27 presumptive draft for an october apple event we expect there's gonna be one yeah uh so next week we're gonna do the draft i mean it's possible that by the next episode we know there's gonna be an event anyway but even if we don't know we're drafting next week yeah so that's the idea is that we think there's probably something the week of the 28th and so we're drafting next week yeah so that's the idea is that we think there's probably something the week of the 28th and so we're just going to go ahead next week and do this and there are still a couple of ways where this could trip us up if they decide they're going to do it next week and they tell us tomorrow we might have to do an emergency draft episode we'll figure it out but like i i think we we've done this in the past actually if i had thought about this a little
Starting point is 00:23:02 earlier we would have done it this week because Cause I think that would have been fine, but we didn't have enough time to plan it that way. But I don't mind. We've been successful so far. In fact, you could argue that doing it a little bit in advance is better because there are more, there's a little more mystery in the draft.
Starting point is 00:23:18 So we're going to do it next week regardless. And, uh, I'm looking forward to it. That'll be a fun one. So I'll get get i'll get a chance to redeem myself we'll see a chance i said a chance this episode of upgrade is brought to you by delete me privacy is important to a lot of us it should actually be important to all of us
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Starting point is 00:26:12 for their support of this show and Relay. Room around up time, Jason Snell. Yeehaw! Saddle up, giddy up. Mark Gurman is reporting that Dan Riccio, Apple's previous Senior Vice President of Hard hardware, has retired. So a bit of background.
Starting point is 00:26:29 Riccio had been SVP of hardware for a long time, and we'd seen him in tons of iPhone videos, like the Johnny Ive iPhone videos and lots of other products. He stepped down as senior vice president of hardware in 2021, and John Turner took the role. as Senior Vice President of Hardware in 2021, and John Turner stood the role. Since this time, and it was announced that he was going to be moving to, quote, a new project that reported directly to Tim, and it was later learned that this was the Vision Pro.
Starting point is 00:26:53 So he was kind of like overseeing the Vision Pro. So like he sat, say, above Mike Rockwell, for example. The Vision Group now, led by Mike Rockwell on a day-to-day basis, reports to John Ternus. So it's kind of like left the special projects area and it's just part of the overall hardware stuff. he divulged it during a um like a presentation that he was making to an event at mit and he was just like i've retired and i'm leaving on friday like that was last week wow so why not i mean i love it like the guy's just living his life like this is kind of how i believe these should be able to live their lives rather than pretending it's all a secret all the time we've talked about this before and i think it's one of my favorite things that we talk about because it's not there's not a lot of conversation about that in our sphere
Starting point is 00:27:48 which is how apple deals with not just things like succession planning but like dealing with corporate executives who've been there a long time and have been at a very senior level and had a lot of stock options and it basically made so much money that they don't need to work anymore and what do you do with them? And I think there's a few, I mean, Bob Mansfield, he retired and then they called him back and he went back for a little while and then he retired again. Dan Riccio, I think you could really argue that when he was no longer SVP of hardware, that was part of the path to retirement, but they're like, no, no, no, don't leave yet leave yet Dan we've got a problem we'd
Starting point is 00:28:26 like you to work on can you do this Vision Pro thing for a little while and then retire and he's like sure I can do that and they give him some more money and he's like yeah I'll start building the retirement home It's what Johnny did too right so like they gave him that new role which really looked like a big
Starting point is 00:28:42 promotion but it was actually to give him more freedom in his life and not have to be so hands-on slowly kind of uncouple from apple because you get the sense too that some of this stuff it's like really high pressure and it's very intense and then you get to a point where like i can't do this intensity anymore and that's when i think very intelligently for a company that's got a lot of money you should do this which is you mean like it's it's a senior executive retention program essentially and the idea there is look you can step off the grind the step off the bus of all of this stuff that's super intense as svp hardware but we want to keep your mind around so can we give you kind of like a special project a little
Starting point is 00:29:21 bit less to do and i know that sometimes that's perceived as being like, we're, we're putting you in a window somewhere to stare and, you know, not do anything. But I don't, I don't think that's the intent because they could just leave then if that's what they wanted to, but it's more like you can wind down, but we can still tab your expertise. Maybe I give you a project to work on. Maybe we just keep you around to answer, answer questions and work on little things and all that. But it's a way out the door to retirement that is not peak. Everything's super intense and then boom, it's done and we never hear from you again. Because those people are really valuable.
Starting point is 00:29:58 But the truth is, beyond a certain point, you can't retain them. At least you can't do anything to retain them you can retain them phil schiller it feels like to me is never gonna leave apple like they're gonna have to drag him out right like but and he doesn't need the money as far as i can tell phil schiller doing great he's been been there longer than anybody else yeah except chris espinoza and a few like as a senior exec he's been there the longest and else. Yeah. Except Chris Espinoza. And if you like, as a senior exec, he's been there the longest and he's like an Apple fellow now, but he's still actively involved in all sorts of parts of what Apple is
Starting point is 00:30:32 doing. So like, but, but this is my point is he wants to be there. Otherwise he wouldn't be there. So if you can find some way to keep somebody who's great around in some role where they want to be there. Great.
Starting point is 00:30:42 But ultimately these people have made so much money that if they want to go, you kind of can't keep them. No, because it becomes a problem. Yeah, so you make it easy. And it's a brain drain, right? So you try to make it easy on them to stay as long as they're willing to. And then at some point, they will still walk away.
Starting point is 00:31:02 But at least you got to disengage and they got to spread you know share their knowledge with others because there's that dangerous moment when like oh no dan riccio is the only person who knows how to do yes exactly it gives them that what do we do to to help the people that are going to come up and replace him i've told you this story before but um really quickly my uncle was the svp of hr for a 500 company. And at one point his accountant or his financial planner basically said to him, given your pension system and all of that, you every year you stay after this year,
Starting point is 00:31:33 you are going to lose money. So he retired. Yeah. And like six months later, the company came to him and said, can we hire you as a consultant? Cause we don't know how to do these union negotiations. he's like sure and they paid him more money plus his retirement as a consultant but like that's it's that thing is you don't want to get you don't want to have
Starting point is 00:31:54 to make that call right where you're or big bob manson please come back right like so you do this you do this kind of glide path to retirement i think it's really interesting i think it's again we don't know the details from the outside, but I think in general, it's really smart for Apple to do this because first off, they can afford it. And second off, this is a real problem for them. They made a lot of their senior people very, very rich, and those people don't need to work anymore. And so what do you do? You want to develop the next generation of talent, but you also don't want to lose the people who have this um important knowledge and apple is unlike you know unlike many other companies apple doesn't do a lot of hiring from outside because their culture is so different and so you really need
Starting point is 00:32:34 to bring people up from within and retain those senior people as long as you can so it's really i mean it's really interesting but then at the same time you can't keep these people forever because then you can't lose the people that would take those roles because they will go somewhere else. And so you have to encourage. And I think what Tim Cook has actually started to do, I wouldn't be surprised if he is encouraging his senior leaders to consider these changes because it's happening more and more. Go on the glide path. Yeah. No, there's definitely been a lot of retirements lately.
Starting point is 00:33:03 And I think you're right. I think that the other part of this is you identify stars that are up and coming within your company and you say, and this, I mean, this happens when I was a manager. I mean, you, you identify the stars, you want to identify the talent, the ones you don't want to lose and the ones that you want to bring along and give experience to. And, you know, I suspect that is what, you know, what's been going on with John Ternus as Mark Gurman is reporting is that they think he's a rising star and they're trying to give him a lot of seasoning regardless of where, you know, if he ends up as CEO or something else, like that, that's what goes on and that's, that's developing your people.
Starting point is 00:33:35 It's great. But there does come a moment where you say, we got this guy hanging on and, uh, our star needs a new challenge. And that may be the kind, that may be when you go to Dan Riccio and say, Dan, we're really, you know, we really need to bump John up. And, you know, and he may or may not express an interest in retirement, but you're like, let's, you know,
Starting point is 00:33:58 you've been here a long time. You're not going to stay here very much longer. You can stay as long as you want, but we want to put Ternus in this role so that he can, you so that he can get that. And so, yeah, some of it could be a little... I mean, you should be active because I think that there would otherwise be a tendency for somebody to just stay in their role even as they're disengaging and getting ready to retire and all of that. And then, yeah, if I'm Apple and if I'm Deirdre O'Brien and if I'm Tim Cook, I'm looking at that and saying, I want my senior people who are starting to think about drifting away, I want to put them in a special magic bin of people that are still here and still working on stuff, but are not at that pinnacle because the pinnacle needs to be somebody who's a hundred percent engaged.
Starting point is 00:34:48 And I do believe that it's true that you get to a point when you start to think about retirement, you're not probably a hundred percent engaged at that point. So part of the job here is to identify those people and say, we don't want you to leave stay as long as you like, but we want to give you the opportunity to disengage a little bit and give an up and coming star their chance to grow into this job. stay as long as you like, but we want to give you the opportunity to disengage a little bit and give an up and coming star their chance to grow into this job. And I mean, different people will react differently to that and all of that. That's the hard thing about managing people. But I think it's, Apple's got an extra special challenge because they can't really recruit
Starting point is 00:35:18 from the outside. And they've got all these people who've been made very, very rich by this, where if they really just want to go sit on a beach somewhere in Hawaii for the rest of their lives, they can do that. No problem. So what, you know, how it's I don't envy them. This is really tough stuff. And it's tougher for Apple than almost anybody else. I think it is a testament to Tim Cook that these people stay around. Honestly.
Starting point is 00:35:44 I think and the apple culture in general too i think i mean like i think that that look schiller he believes in it right like that yeah phil schiller i really i don't i've not seen into his finances but given some of his his stuff like his work at at uh at what is it boston College? Boston University? I can't, forgive me, Phil. Like, I get the sense, given how long he's been there, that he's probably financially just fine, right? But he stays.
Starting point is 00:36:13 The Shiller Institute is at Boston College. Yeah, Boston College. That's right. Yes, he's got an institute named for him because of his donations, right? He's doing fine, right? At BC, on the board of trustees. So why does he stay? And he stays because he believes in it. And I think that there's some,
Starting point is 00:36:30 it's about the culture. It's about the sort of the mission of Apple. And yeah, and also about leadership. The idea, look, if I was thinking of retiring and Tim Cook came to me and said, I know you can retire, but what if we make it easier on you, but we keep you around? Because we really, like what can we do to make this something that you want to do for another five years? Like there are circumstances where the answer is,
Starting point is 00:36:58 there's literally nothing you can do. Goodbye. Thank you. It's been great. I'm going to Hanalei and I'm going to go to the beach and do some boogie boarding and goodbye right like that is a thing you could put it into to context the uh the schiller institute was named after him after he committed a multi-year total gift of 25 million
Starting point is 00:37:19 dollars yeah so i think he's got more than that i think he's got a lot more no i mean obviously give all of his money to the no no i'm just saying that's that seems actually a little light to me i mean i don't think he's a billionaire but i think he's got hundreds of millions yeah for sure so anyway i think it's a really interesting challenge because i think a lot of us would say well if you had the money that an apple exec has what would you do and the answer is i'd quit my job and retire i don't think i would but some i understand that this is the thing some people would but some people wouldn't some people would be like well well no i i like my think i would but some i understand that this is the thing some people would but some people wouldn't some people would be like well no i i like my job i want to keep doing it it would
Starting point is 00:37:51 like if i got that kind of money i would still do some stuff i would probably not do the 10 different things i do right now sure and i would probably do some of them from hawaii yeah yeah but uh but yeah everybody's different so it's just it's so i look at this and i think this is this is an interesting problem that apple continues to have where they've got senior people that they have to deal with retention and retirement and all of that and so we've got the case now where they brought in turnus he stayed on for a while um worked on vision pro and is now kind of like moving away and funding a program at mit back to another one back to boston uh and that's that's i mean congratulations to him and again really interesting problem for apple to solve in terms of their brain
Starting point is 00:38:39 drain nine to five mac is reporting on some potential details of the upcoming iPhone SE 4 that we spoke about last week based on some early case designs that are coming out. Very simple stuff. It would mean, if these are to be believed that these are correct, the iPhone SE 4 will have a single camera, a physical mute switch, not an action button, and no camera control. Yeah. And there was a rumor about an action button but but now it looks like no action button yeah and i i don't think this is surprising i think that like those are all the bells and whistles yeah you keep all that stuff off you you save a lot uh in terms of not having those parts and the whole idea of the se is to save but and besides which they're putting some of their their uh their price and their margin
Starting point is 00:39:24 presumably into using a more advanced processor and having more RAM so that they can do Apple intelligence, which I think is probably a given. So there's the, where we say it was the notch, it's going to have a notch with Face ID sensor. So, yeah. You'll probably get an action button on the iPhone SE 5 or whatever. Maybe, yeah. Things move forward. Eventually. Mark Gurman has given a round up in his newsletter
Starting point is 00:39:50 Power On of the products in development in Apple's Vision Group, which is now being overseen by John Ternus. Mark is aware of four products that this group is working on. This group is now getting some additional additional
Starting point is 00:40:07 focus and attention inside due to what matt has been up to which makes sense good um and also he mentions that like a lot of people moved to this group from the car team and stuff like that like they've moved a lot of engineers around so the four products that are on deck include a cheaper vision headset with cheaper materials to lower the price slower processor and no eyesight feature so it removes that oled display on the front this is set to launch as soon as next year but they're aiming for a two thousand dollar price tag which is like in our notes i just wrote lol sorry because it's like people are thinking and hoping that this cheaper vision headset would mean that there it's going to be within a range that you're
Starting point is 00:40:51 you know you'd be willing to buy it but i don't see that if we consider the current vision pro kind of a developer kit and a a view of the future but it's just not here yet which i think is the only way to view it it's it's you know know, that's the only way to view it. It costs too much and it does too little. Even though what it does is amazing, it costs too much and it does too little. I would never recommend it for anybody at this point. So getting it down to $2,000, first off, I remember when those rumors of it costing, the original one costing $2,000 and me saying it's too much. And now here we are where the cheaper one will cost $2,000.
Starting point is 00:41:26 too much. And now here we are where the cheaper one will cost $2,000. Yeah. It just, on one level, yes, there's a line in Gurman's piece that I really liked, which is with the lower price, Apple is expecting unit sales of the device to be at least double the level of the Vision Pro, but that's not saying much. And I think that's exactly nailed it, which is one of the things that this will do. If we're lamenting the state of affairs in the Vision Pro where there aren't that many developers and there aren't that many users and we know that it's early days, but it's such a high bar, taking it down to $2,000 lowers the bar. It's still a very high bar, but it's a lot lower. It's a low bar. And I think if you're viewing this as a long game, having a cheaper way into this product line in order to get some more users and also to get some more developers with their hands on it. Great. Like, I don't think Apple's plan for vision products needs there to be a $500 vision product i don't because i i think that they're trying to to keep maintain a level of
Starting point is 00:42:26 quality that also keeps your eye on like the future where this product category is going at least not yet not yet right well that's true that's true in the long run sure but we're not anywhere close to that and so people who want to judge these things based on like that they're regular apple products like they're really not like they're, they're not, they're not even close. Uh, the value proposition is not there. So I look at this and think, uh, great. Like it would be better if it was 1500, obviously it'd be better if it was a thousand, but 2000 is better than 3,500, especially if they have some more compelling content. So they pick up some more users and developers who are more skeptical can actually get in and have it be a little bit better.
Starting point is 00:43:07 I also think that the HomePod thing is happening here. One of those bullet points you read out is cheaper materials. And it's like, you know, they made a really nice luxury headset with the Vision Pro, but a lot of that stuff is not necessary. It's nice, but it's not necessary. And getting the price down is going to be helpful even though it doesn't solve the problem you know it's a better place to be with a two thousand dollar headset than a thirty five hundred dollar headset it you know not not great but better i'm sure we said this
Starting point is 00:43:35 already but the idea just popped into my head so i want to reiterate it again like there's you know with the with the orion the meta orion there was so much talk from Meta and then just spoken about by everyone where they were like, oh, this costs so much money. Costs $10,000 to make it. We would sell it for $10,000. Costs $10,000 to make one. It costs so much money that they were like, we're just not going to do this.
Starting point is 00:43:59 Can't do it. I think with the Vision Pro app, we're like, this costs so much money, but we're going to do it anyway. Because essentially, the Orion is their vision of the future. I think the Vision Pro
Starting point is 00:44:14 has some of those elements to it, but Apple just decided to get it to the point where they could just ship it. Ship the OS. Everybody knows it's too much money. Everybody knows that. Like they know that.
Starting point is 00:44:28 That's the problem I have with reporting. It's like, oh, this is a real flop. And it's like, if there's anybody at Apple who thought that the $3,500 headset that doesn't do a whole lot was going to be an enormous hit, those people should be relieved of their duties because it's a delusion.
Starting point is 00:44:41 It's very clear that this is playing by completely different rules from other Apple products. And that's fine. Also, I'll point out again, Mark Gurman did a report last January, January of 23, that said Apple also had an AR glasses project like project Orion. And they were like, there's no way we can ship this. It will be too expensive and it'll take too long. And let's do vision pro instead. Not thinking, oh, Vision Pro is the solution and people are going to be wearing these down the street, but thinking this gets us a product in the market
Starting point is 00:45:09 that people can start playing with. Maybe we'll figure out killer apps for it. We'll experiment with content with the idea that in, you know, in five years, maybe this is more of a thing. And that is, we have an Ask Upgrade question that maybe we'll get to this week that's more about this, but it's that idea of like, well, which is their better approach to not ship something, but show it to the public and say it's coming or do what Apple did, which is ship something, but not talk about the other thing that, I think would be good for what Apple is doing, but is not the solution to the problem of why are millions of people not buying Vision Pros. I think nor is it intended to be.
Starting point is 00:45:59 But it's certainly, like Gurman wrote, more people, more than double the people who bought the Vision Pro would buy a cheaper Vision. I think that's true. Especially if they can come up with something that's a killer app for it, whether it's entertainment or sports or whatever. I also think as well, right, I think some of the things, something that people get really stuck up on and did is that Apple, when they release the product, they kind of make as much noise as they would any of their other products right like yeah it got the whole big launch and like because they actually cannot do it another way like they can't they can't apple cannot release a new product and not do the whole song and dance like they have to do that they put in probably more budget into like the launch marketing for that than they would
Starting point is 00:46:46 have any of their macs any of their ipads and maybe the iphone like they really went heavy on it because that's just what they have to do no matter what the end result will be because it's who they are it's the type of company that they are because it's apple doesn't do anything can't do it half hard yeah they're they're too big at this point and there's too much attention on them for to do anything quietly yeah literally they can't wearing hardware meta can't do this right it's easier for them to do this because they're not the same company anyway moving back to this mark german report uh also speaks of a second generation vision pro that would have a faster processor to be released in 2026 at the earliest okay there is a version of smart glasses
Starting point is 00:47:35 in the form of like meta ray bands in their kind of like function on deck for 2027 which in my opinion is too far i agree and i'm i'm a little i mean maybe this is just because this is the apple process but like it feels like this is existing tech that they've got in a lot of ways in terms of cameras and connections to iphones and airpods and all of those things and that creating you know airpods that are glasses essentially is what we're saying here right they're airpods that are glasses they've got cameras and they've got speakers or bone conduction or whatever and you could use a lot of the same techniques that you use for airpods and connect to your phone and connect to your your personal assistant and all of that it does it does seem like having to wait three years is a bit much for this and
Starting point is 00:48:25 yeah yeah because i'm i'm i mean i don't know what they're working on but like for a product of this class i'm not sure that they really will produce something that is so mind-blowing right that like it's so significantly better than the company that at this point you know with meta would have been doing this for years, right? Like, what is Meta, what is the Meta Ray-Ban product in 2027? You know what I mean? Like, what have they gotten it to?
Starting point is 00:48:53 If I were a person at Apple who believed in this product category, which there must be because they're thinking of doing them, I would say, how can we get a product ship by the end of next year? Yes.
Starting point is 00:49:03 And I know that's really fast, but I would say, what is that product and how can we do it? Because I think they could do it, but they've got to actually do it. They've got to try. 2026 for a pair of glasses that have decent speakers in them, which they know how to do even that kind of thing from the ear pods, whatever they're called audio pods on the vision pro right like that yeah kind of thing of like angling it to you
Starting point is 00:49:30 with decent cameras in them and connected to your iphone like an apple watch is like apple i know how hard this is i 100 believe that you have the ability to do that within the next 18 months yeah i think i think they've got the technology to do it and i think the the danger and this is this is a constant danger with modern apple and like i said i think the the home pod showed this and i think that the vision pro shows this which is they need to when especially with new products they need to be a little more considerate of what the minimum viable product is and not what the perfect product is. Because when I see we're going to do smart glasses in 2027,
Starting point is 00:50:13 I think you've over-engineered what you think these smart glasses should be. And I am thinking, here's what they should be. They should connect to your phone. They should have a camera. They should have audio output they kind of like airpods whatever you're working on with the we're about to talk about it the all those rumors of cameras on airpods it's the same idea whatever you're working on with visual
Starting point is 00:50:35 intelligence on the iphone it's the same idea you make a connection to your phone it's a peripheral it's a wearable you've got all the pieces here don't overthink this right just ship something and and then iterate because iterating is what you do best so ship something don't overthink it don't make it over over respect and overpriced get something out the door that's i'm not saying bad i'm saying something out the door that's good but is not the perfect thing like you you have a partnership of an optic company now right you you you have the pieces in place to do this right you can work with the opticians that you're working with to create the vision lens the vision pro lenses to help you
Starting point is 00:51:18 create lenses for this product right like the pieces are there you've got to bring it together because meta are taking this market like this is theirs now right like they own it and it's cool it is a cool product that is a problem right like it's not just like this is a nerdy thing they have legitimately created a product that people think is cool and and if they continue pushing down that road that becomes harder and harder to work against like and so that this is an area they should go into you mentioned airpods or cameras that's another thing for 2027 and for both of these products as well as the visual intelligence feature that's coming at some point to the iphone where you can point your iphone and say like what's this mark says quote the idea is to salvage the billions of dollars spent on the Vision Pro's visual intelligence technology,
Starting point is 00:52:08 which can scan the environment around a user, supply useful data. I don't really know what that means. But fine. I don't know. I don't know. Because it doesn't seem very intelligent now, but perhaps that's a thing that's being worked on.
Starting point is 00:52:22 Or it's just not exposed, right? That, like, the Vision Pro is aware of so much stuff that's around us on or it's just not exposed right that like division pro is aware of so much stuff that's around us and it's identifying things but it's not like we don't need to know that but like the the hardware knows what this sounds like though is that apple is doing the apple thing where they're like we are we are thinking of what if there are cameras on airpods what if there are glasses what if you have a camera that you can point at things and then you've got a device i think one of the challenges too is it's got to be a device that works with your iPhone, which is fine because that's like Apple's primary thing.
Starting point is 00:52:52 I don't think it even needs to be as intelligent as an Apple watch. I think it could really be a connection to an iPhone and it's sending, you know, it sends the images back to the iPhone when you ask or when you're taking a picture or whatever. It basically is an iPhone peripheral. But they've got the pieces. I think that the AirPods with cameras project is interesting. It is going down a lot of the same paths that this is. I'm not entirely convinced.
Starting point is 00:53:20 Meta is ahead, but it is still a pretty niche product. But I think the challenge is this is the point where you, I think, have enough signal of how that product is being received to say this is a thing and we should be there if you're Apple. And it sounds like they do think that they should be there, but I wonder about the urgency of it. I think this is a product that, first off, Apple should have probably embraced this idea sooner because it's actually a very good idea. I'm skeptical of how good AirPods with cameras on them are actually going to be at capturing the world. I don't really know what that's for yet. Whereas glasses make sense.
Starting point is 00:53:55 I'm not sure I know what that specifically is for. But this is the thing. How well is the Meta Ray-Bans doing? I don't know. They're actually not even saying. But it is a product that is the thing. How well is the Meta Ray-Bans doing? I don't know. They're actually not even saying. But it is a product that is gaining momentum. And I think another three years from now, where are we at that point?
Starting point is 00:54:17 And is that then a much harder challenge to fight against? We'll see. I mean, who knows what the department of justice will have to say by 2027 right because if if something happens there and apple is forced to open up to peripherals which is like a specific thing in the department of justice case then where are the meta ray bands like if they have the ability to be able to talk more directly via a set of apis like an apple watch can then that makes apple's job significantly harder right because then you haven't even got depending look i'm this is a lot of pie in the sky thinking here but like if if they're not able to as easily
Starting point is 00:55:00 be like they well get the apple ones because it connects to all your stuff. If that becomes a harder sell, this is an even more complicated project for them, I think. Sure. This episode is brought to you by our friends over Ooni Pizza Ovens. Ooni is the world's number one pizza oven company that lets you
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Starting point is 00:57:56 Yes. So we spoke about this a little bit last week, and it was announced that Apple have now released their first short film, shot completely for Vision Pro with all of the immersive technology cameras that they have. There's a pretty cool making of as well that they put on YouTube that I'll put in the show notes.
Starting point is 00:58:17 You watched it and wrote about it last week. I watched it today. I wanted to watch it before we recorded, so it would be freshest in my mind. This is a very, very effective piece of media i think so too i think i i was fascinated by like how it was made but i also really enjoyed it and at the end i felt like i would watch more of that right like it was it was i i did not have the feeling i'm like we got to the end it's great it was, I did not have the feeling of like, whew, we got to the end. It's great. It was more like, oh, I could see how there could be another hour of this movie with intense bits that are set pieces and also character things that are going on. And, you know, it was, I was not sure what I was thinking it would be. I wondered if it would be a little more kind of like, aha, it's a submarine.
Starting point is 00:59:00 Oh, there's water. Like very kind of like, I don't know showing off those details of it and it wasn't it was i think it was really well done really effectively made the one of the things of this type of technology and it's the same for all uh vr stuff is balancing movement like how you handle movement yeah physical movement through space like video games do this in a lot of ways where you're actually mostly just fixed on a specific spot and you like kind of teleport between place to place this is a very hard thing to do to to capture motion sickness um and i think everyone that i've heard or seen watched it including me had at least one point where it was like this is an
Starting point is 00:59:40 uncomfortable feeling right now like a a movement so So Edward Berger, the director who did All Quiet on the Western Front, which is a good movie, he obviously, like I came away with a lot of respect for him because he obviously has given a lot of thought to how this is different from a regular movie. But one of the choices he made, and I was surprised, is how do you do camera movement in a in a format that you potentially are giving people motion sickness or vertigo or weird feelings when you move the camera and he tried a bunch of things he's got some slow push-ins that i think work really well in fact there's one where it slowly pushes in and turns a little bit and i was like that's fine he's got some slow pullbacks that i thought that works pretty well most of the movie doesn't
Starting point is 01:00:26 the cameras don't move he has some setups where it's like one angle and then there's like a reverse angle or there's one angle and then you are at a close-up but you're in the close-up for again a long time they definitely learn the lesson you can't do quick takes they have to be long takes long the amount of time per cut is very high in this movie. A lot of lingering. However, yes, yes. And it's fine. He also does a couple of fast pushes in and fast pulls back. And for me, the fast push in, I was like, oh, we're doing this. Okay.
Starting point is 01:00:58 And the fast pull back, I was like, I don't know. Right? Where he was a little more aggressive. And I think that's really an interesting data point of like can you move the camera i think maybe you can can you move it really fast maybe you shouldn't i don't know there is a level where that movement provided you do it right and i'm sure there'll be a lot of people trying to learn how to do this right well you can instill a feeling in someone
Starting point is 01:01:25 right that maybe you want someone to the viewer to feel uneased by what is happening sure there's i mean it's a real fine line you've got to walk between that and absolute motion sickness but i would like the audience to vomit like no don't do it but there is i'm sure a level right where like i don't get it. But there is, I'm sure, a level, right? Where like, I don't get motion sickness, but there were parts of it where I've never really suffered from it.
Starting point is 01:01:49 There were parts of it where I was like, whoa, I don't know about this. Oh, I feel a little funny about that one, yeah.
Starting point is 01:01:53 That was part of it. The behind the scenes stuff is really interesting too. And like, I've got to hand it to Edward Berger because this was an incredibly difficult job to be given
Starting point is 01:02:04 to do this. He is essentially a pioneer a pioneer like nobody's done this before and like you know apple came to him with a bag of money and said would you be interested in doing this and he's like okay was that a bag of money let me let me yeah i was having a thought on this right like because they were talking about the sets like the sets were very very detailed because they kind of had to adjust because the actual image quality was incredible like i've not seen something in vr where the camera quality was so good so i think they did the right job in like trying to build this technology with partners because it looked amazing but that and but because of the fact that you're able to really you're able to choose where you want to look to make it look good the sets need to be very highly detailed it felt very much like going to disneyland yes to one you know a where they have to build the
Starting point is 01:02:58 entire thing whereas on a movie you don't you only have to build little parts of it they had to build the entire thing because you can look around. Just like if you're in a line at an amusement park or you're on the Star Wars, you know, the Star Wars ride or whatever, like they're not building a movie set now. They're building an environment that people are going to stand in and you can't have parts of it that fall down because people will look wherever they want. And that's true here too. So that was one of the thoughts I had is I felt like i was in the two things that it reminded me of were one being in something like rise of the resistance where you're you know it's not just a ride you you are you know you exit in a movie a portion yeah you exit a
Starting point is 01:03:37 portion of the of the ride and then you're in like sets and you move on to the next part and and it so it reminded me of that and then the other thing it reminded me of is theater like the fact that you have these takes where there's a character or there are two characters and they're just sitting there's a guy getting up out of his bunk and all of that like that felt very much like theater because it's a long take and and and so really it's down to the physical performance of an actor it's not what we usually see from movies because in movies it's not just the actor it's the actor and the director and the editor yeah making a story in individual shots whereas this it's like i'm sitting in a
Starting point is 01:04:17 theater where the set is the bunks on the submarine and i can look wherever i want but all the physicality all the movement everything that's happening in that scene is the actor and what he's doing and it's not not movie like at all but it's theater like it is familiar in a way and so this is i mean it just struck me like this is a movie but it's also a bunch of different other things it's it's a new thing it's a new thing but like one of the things they were saying like and again about the expense is unlike a regular set they actually can't they have to integrate the lighting and the audio yeah into the set and it's like the audio a lot the audio is being recorded of the people actually moving which is not typically how you can't how you would like create the audio for yeah you can't
Starting point is 01:05:12 hang microphones up you can't have any equipment in the front 180 right because they'll be in the shot yeah and and that means lighting and all that it's it's um i'm reminded of in citizen kane famously there are ceilings and it's like movie sets don't have ceilings so you very rarely see ceilings in movie sets but in citizen kane there are ceilings and how they did it was they're like they're basically like sheets that are that are lit to make it look like it's a solid ceiling, but it's not, it's a, it's a fake, but that's the only way.
Starting point is 01:05:48 I mean, it's very hard to do it where you don't, where you don't have a traditional thing where we can hang lights and all that, like, and they couldn't do it. So they have to have a lot of onset lighting and, and also it wouldn't be realistic,
Starting point is 01:06:01 right? It wouldn't look in a 180 degree environment. It would not look realistic to have a big light blasting on't be realistic, right? It wouldn't look, in a 180-degree environment, it would not look realistic to have a big light blasting on somebody from somewhere, right? Because that's not what the space would be like. So it completely changes, again, it completely changes the way you have to stage this. And yeah, it's just very different.
Starting point is 01:06:18 But it made me think there is this weird, I think weird sometimes, anti-CGI movement online where people are like, everything was practical, sometimes anti CGI movement, right. Online or people are like, everything was practical. That meant it was better. And like, well, I think if you are one of those people,
Starting point is 01:06:32 uh, this is the format for you, right. You want more immersive content. I mean, yeah, yeah. Except,
Starting point is 01:06:39 except one way to solve some of these technical issues is to use VFX to clear out things. Right. But I just thought it was very funny when I was watching it and like seeing the sets that they built. It was funny to me. But it also, I think, indicated that I expect it was essentially a blank check for this project. It feels like. It feels like.
Starting point is 01:07:01 Just like what is. Let's build a floodable all metal submarine set it kind of had that feeling to it but like i think for good reason i think this this movie serves to do what we are currently doing right like it is essentially a marketing piece for people like us who have these and talk about this stuff to share with people like this is cool, right? Like, cause this is what we're asking for and have been asking for,
Starting point is 01:07:30 for all year. Right. Give us cool stuff to talk about. And like, this is a cool thing, a very, very cool thing to talk about. It is.
Starting point is 01:07:40 Also, I would say, um, I have to assume that there are a lot of filmmakers who are watching this thing and going huh yeah like yeah interesting and one of those filmmakers will be the next person to talk to apple yeah about making something in this format yeah so someone's gonna watch this and be like i would like to play i would like to play in that toy box for yeah for a nice chunk of change right like yeah there's going to be more short i really hope but but i
Starting point is 01:08:11 think this is successful enough in fact i think it is very successful like i found myself quite emotionally attached to the story by the end of it and it's only like a yeah 15 minute story but i really wanted everybody to do well and i want to know more about these characters and i want to know where they go to next because i felt very intimate with these characters like i am very much with them and that is you mentioned it in your piece it's not just the visuals the audio as well like that combination really really sells this piece yeah also um one of the things that impressed me, because I know that some people will say, well, you know, it's good for spectacle and you can make an action set piece here. But I really do believe that one of the things about this that I like is the range of it.
Starting point is 01:08:56 That it's a character piece. It's a suspense piece. And it's an action piece. And the character piece is good because again, it's theater life. I know a lot of people don't go to live theater. We have a subscription to our local theater company and we go to live theater, you know, six, seven, eight times a year, something like that. Cause we'll throw in a couple in San Francisco.
Starting point is 01:09:16 Lauren really likes live theater and I've come to, I really like it too. It's, it's again, a completely different medium and is very interesting. So it has some aspects of that that I really like. You do make a connection with those guys. You're sitting there watching. You're in the room with them as they're eating their pickles and whatever else the terrible food is why when I got to the end, I also had that feeling of like, I could see a more hunt for red October or crimson tide or whatever else, another,
Starting point is 01:09:51 you know, claustrophobic submarine movie or something like that. I could see that because it would again have the pacing of there's some action set pieces and there's some character stuff and that you put it all together and does it work? I think it does. This is a short, short, short story because it's,
Starting point is 01:10:11 it is limited to a couple of character bits and then an action set piece. And then that's the end of the movie. But I came up to, up to the surface afterward, uh, uh, was no longer submerged wondering, you know,
Starting point is 01:10:23 like, well, where does this go from here and and i would love to see more like not just i don't need a sequel to submerge but like the idea of like if this had been longer i would have been in on on the ride and i love so i loved i loved it as an experience and i also loved it to see a smart director trying to figure out and his team trying to figure out what is an immersive movie? Like literally, like what do we do here?
Starting point is 01:10:48 And I think a lot of the choices I, we have mentioned, I mentioned in my piece, I think a lot of the particular shots he chooses are very interesting too. There's some closeups and I thought, and there's some shots where the depth of field is very limited. So everything in the background is super blurry. And I thought these are really smart film grammar things of saying how do you focus people's eyes on one thing when they've got a whole 180 degree range and the answer is you move the camera really close to the actor yeah and there's nothing but blur in the background and all you can do is look at the actor's face and i thought that's really effective
Starting point is 01:11:21 right like that i'm not distracted i know where to look now and that's really effective, right? Like that, I'm not distracted. I know where to look now. And that's a different technique than you'd use in a regular 16 by nine, you know, kind of film. But I thought it was effective. And so it was a real joy to see all of these decisions being made because, you know, everybody's learning this. And we learned from the MLS highlights.
Starting point is 01:11:42 We learned what not to do with sports highlights as an immersive. Because they have another sports thing coming, right? They do. They have NBA All-Star Weekend. All-Star Weekend, which was, again, eight months ago. And it's just coming out. I don't know what's going on with the production time here.
Starting point is 01:12:01 Yeah, they're messing around with it. So we'll see how that looks. We'll see how that looks. We'll see how that looks and see if they made some different decisions over the MLS highlights thing. The Super Bowl thing that they did, I thought was better. I thought that the Super Bowl thing was calmer.
Starting point is 01:12:16 Yeah. But I don't know. I don't know. Apple, I have a pitch. If you want to bring the money truck to me, I have a pitch. I would like to make an immersive uh movie version of one of my favorite films glengarry glen ross oh wow work very well because
Starting point is 01:12:33 like that movie you're essentially just in one room it's a play it's a play it's a play it was a play adapted to a movie and it still uses a play but also i in a lot of places you're just in different parts of the same office. So you have these like set pieces. I would say something similar, which is I want to see a theatrical experience here in an immersive. It doesn't necessarily have to literally be a stage show
Starting point is 01:12:57 turned into immersive like Hamilton, where it's like live from the theater, but it also doesn't need to be a movie. What I'm thinking is, could you make a play but build the whole set? Yeah, you don't have to sit in the audience. You can just be with the specific scene.
Starting point is 01:13:16 You can just be in that scene. Ideally in the very small number of sets that are used because plays can't really change the set. That would be another way to do it. I think trying it out just as a play where you've got the best seat in the house and you're just at a play would be cool. But I think that maybe there is some experimentation to do there. But that is one of the takeaways I have from Submerged is the live theater vibe is real and it's good. It's different, but I really like it. I love the fact that I was watching that guy.
Starting point is 01:13:43 I was very aware of it, but I'm aware of that when I watch live theater too. I'm aware that I'm watching a performance, especially at the start. But I just like me and that guy and that guy is performing and he's all that's moving on screen and it's his whole body and he's giving a performance and like that is i really got some strong theater vibes from that and i think that there that is something i want to see apple and creators explore with this format. The way that the format kind of exists and works kind of allows for a little more mundanity to occur, right? Like things you can kind of sit in the moment a little bit more. Yeah, I like it. I think it's really interesting.
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Starting point is 01:15:46 and Relay. So, it was announced last week at the, I think at the Bloomberg Screen Time event, which is put on by Lucas Shore at Bloomberg, that Apple TV Plus is going to be made
Starting point is 01:16:02 available as an Amazon Prime channel. So this means that you will be able to subscribe for nine dollars and 99 cents a month via amazon prime to get apple shows yeah why do you think apple would do this i think Apple's strategy. Okay. So originally the strategy was we thought like, Oh, get,
Starting point is 01:16:30 get people to buy Apple products and use content on Apple products. But then they extended the TV app to other, other streaming boxes and stuff. Okay. Now it's, you don't even need the TV app. You can just get it within prime. So I think the idea is probably that Apple is really tired of having such a tiny audience
Starting point is 01:16:50 for their content. And they have enough content now that they're trying to find more people to watch it. Because if you look, I think as well as they're doing creatively, if you look at the numbers from like Nielsen and other otherwise they are not being viewed right very except for ted lasso well even even ted lasso right it usually scores pretty well and has scored well in the streaming chance like i remember yeah anything but right right but that's for an individual show but if you look at overall like who's watching apple tv plus it's just the the subscription
Starting point is 01:17:30 numbers are just not there yeah so i think what they've decided is they want more viewers i think that is the bottom line and they're like look if we can get more viewers via Amazon channels, let's do it. Let's just do it. And so it's an interesting experiment. But they want, so basically Amazon has this thing where you can sign up for other streaming services inside the Prime Video app and just watch them there. And all the shows, you can do Paramount Plus and, you know, whatever else, and you can just get them right there. So we'll see. I guess it asks the question,
Starting point is 01:18:05 and I think it kind of answers it, but it's still an interesting question anyway, as to whether Apple at this point truly see TV Plus as a standalone service that people would seek out specifically rather than part of the bundle, the Apple bundle. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:18:23 It's interesting. I think this is a little bit of just realism, which is Apple's making TV Plus content for certain reasons, including having content that's associated with its brand, having content that's available in its app, having content that's available in its services bundle. All of that is true. I think what they've realized is it's not going to be enough, right? Like, even if it fulfills 100% of their strategy, it's still going to be a tiny percentage of people. broaden and get more interest in your platform and more interest in your content is by having it available elsewhere. So does this really, I would argue putting on an Amazon does not cut into potential future bundle sales, right? Apple one sales probably doesn't even cut into future Apple TV sales. Although part of the challenge here is also like the perception that Apple to use Apple TV plus you have to of the challenge here is also like the perception
Starting point is 01:19:25 that Apple to use Apple TV Plus, you have to be in Apple, right? You have to be in the Apple thing and it's going to be in Prime Video. So anybody who uses Prime Video is like, oh, I can just get Apple here. And even though the answer is you could have gotten Apple anyway,
Starting point is 01:19:39 like forget about that. Forget about that. You can get it. You can get it here and you can watch it here and that that broadens their audience for it. So I think it's You can get it here and you can watch it here and that that broadens their audience for it.
Starting point is 01:19:45 So I think it's, that's, that's my take on it. At least right now is that they are, they are reaching the audience that they can reach and it's not enough. They feel for various reasons. And I, I, you know, maybe it's not enough for the creators. It's not enough for the money they spend. And like, it's all kind of experimental anyway so why not experiment with this i don't think apple tv plus was ever meant
Starting point is 01:20:10 to be like a brick wall where it's like unless you're in our ecosystem you can't watch ted lasso i don't think that was ever really the idea was more like to make the ecosystem shinier and nicer and make everybody feel good about being in it and maybe drawing some people in and getting them to pay a little more money to apple but i don't think it was ever really intended as being we're over here and you can't watch this thing um and ultimately they do want more people to watch apple tv plus and they have gotten to the point that they genuinely can put up a subscription in other places and be like there is enough good content for you here like it's not going to be coming as quickly as a netflix but like there is good prestige content available on this service like without a doubt so yeah they can do it it's a good it's good i mean it helps now that it's now right now i mean I know it's $10 and not $5 anymore, but now there's a library.
Starting point is 01:21:08 They actually have. We've been doing this long enough talking about it. There's a library. So now they can actually say, come and we've got all these seasons of Slow Horses and all of Ted Lasso and all of Foundation and two seasons of shrinking and we've got severance coming back and and amazon you know what amazon's pretty good as a marketer right like there's advantages to being in the amazon ecosystem because when severance comes back amazon will promote it because amazon does that amazon doesn't just like hide all these things and only promote their own stuff because they get money they do promote stuff that's on channels. And if you search for Severance or Ted Lasso on Amazon,
Starting point is 01:21:49 when Apple's in channels, it will come up and say, yes, it is available. Click here to subscribe to TV Plus within channels and you get that show. And so there's lots of side benefits because it turns out Amazon, yeah, they're all about the marketing.
Starting point is 01:22:03 I saw, I think it was Benjamin Mayo from 9to5Mac talking about this, and it's just like a funny thought. Amazon has succeeded at becoming the all-in-one TV service in a way that Apple wanted to, right? Like, I think, they don't have everything, but like, this is what Apple wanted. This is what a TV app was supposed to do. And there are channels in there, but it feels like Amazon has succeeded more with Prime. Yeah. I think unsurprisingly, I mean, it's a little different because Apple's goal is about, I think in the TV app is about data. I don't think they need to sell you a channel, although they do have them. And I think Amazon has been more successful at that than Apple. I think the real challenge is
Starting point is 01:22:45 that you don't have to be a partner of Apple's in terms of reselling your service. You just have to be on their platform and share their data. And the problem of course is that Netflix doesn't share with anybody. And you can't buy Netflix inside of Amazon Prime either, right? Because it's just Netflix doesn't't want it doesn't need to doesn't need to so that is a challenge netflix wants to just be the be all end all because it's number one but um but it is true like i don't know i don't know how much of reselling channels was really apple's primary strategy versus just having all the apps remember like that that's the question right is an app is a channel kind of even if you're paying for max somewhere else if you've got the max app on your apple tv uh or on your ipad or
Starting point is 01:23:31 your iphone in the tv app it'll you know it works together it all works that the apps are like channels um so it's okay right um it's okay yes, Amazon seems to have done a better job, probably in part because a lot of Prime Video customers are just there because they got Prime, and so they have Prime Video, so they've got the app. And then Amazon's good at marketing, and so reselling services fits into what Amazon does. Yeah. I wanted to mention as well,
Starting point is 01:23:59 you published your iPhone 16 review, 16 Pro review. Yeah. And there were two things I wanted to pull out. The long last. Yeah, you know, it's how it goes sometimes. We're busy. Well, after, you know, the embargo reviews come out and it's like everybody's had more than a week
Starting point is 01:24:14 or, you know, to deal with them. And then what can I add having just gotten it? Yeah. If I wait a week, then I'm giving you a week late what everybody gave you a week ago. And so I end up turning it into what I described on social media as being a series of essays about aspects of the iphone 16 because that's after you know several weeks that's what i'm left with there were two things i want to talk about one was just you know you mentioned that you know people get a bit bored
Starting point is 01:24:41 or again we get bored of the way the ip looks. But next year could be the monumental phone, you know, like whether it's this skinny phone or whether they do the flip phone or whether that comes a year or two after. But like this phone design that we have now, the way that it looks actually might be something akin to the iPhone 7 or the iPhone 8 of 8 of like hey they're going to look different after this one and that could be interesting um and that also the idea of the iphone ultra that's gone like we were talking about that right like are they going to do this ultra phone uh but it doesn't look like that is the case anymore in that regard of like the most iphone where they might actually be going in a different direction with this super skinny phone.
Starting point is 01:25:25 Right, exactly. The Max has come back to the regular Pro, and it feels like, based on the reports, this is the last year of this, potentially, of this very, very long cycle where we are using sort of the same phone. Whatever that phone ends up being and and it'll be expensive and all that but a new look iphone you know it just doesn't come the distance keeps getting
Starting point is 01:25:51 longer um but it may be that in the next couple of years we'll actually have some really surprising iphones but i feel like basic iphone design apple feels is more or less solved it's it feels very much like the laptop thing where apple's like no it's a it's a metal laptop in a monochrome color i mean it's like you know what it is it was the macbook air back in 2011 and now it's basically all laptops look like that and from apple and they're satisfied with that more or less a tinker around the edges but nothing huge the generations was like original iPhone, iPhone 4, iPhone 6, iPhone 10, and 12. Like these are like the ways in which they have changed design. And so it's actually been quite a long time. Yeah, the original iPhone and then the 3 and the 3GS.
Starting point is 01:26:39 And then the 4 and the 5 were the same. Yes, they are different. But I think like there is enough similarities between the original and the 3G that you. Yes, they are different, but I think there is enough similarities between the original and the 3G that you could kind of just wrap them together. That's sure. And then you get the 4.5. And then you get the 678. And then things get a little bit muddy because 10 is similar to 12.
Starting point is 01:27:00 And the 10R, which came out the same year as the 10S, is sort of like the base model a couple years later. So it's a little bit muddied. But I feel like from the X on, you've kind of got a bunch of phones that are the same. But certainly from the XII on. I think the flat-sided XII, it had enough of difference going on. That's when it resolved into a single product line after a little bit of muddiness, which I think we're about to do again. I feel like if, if Mark Gurman's reports are right, we're about to enter a muddy time where the old design is available and there's a new design.
Starting point is 01:27:31 And then there's a, the next year there's another design. And then how do those resolve down to being more like a, a little tighter set of products that are available probably takes three or four years to get there. I think that's where we're headed. Give me the mess. So this is, this is the end of kind of, and,
Starting point is 01:27:47 and again, the point I make in the review is I actually say like, here are all the iterations you get if you're coming from a 12 or a 13 or a 14, right? Like there are a lot of changes that have happened since the iPhone 12 and you forget how many of them there are. That's the iteration kind of thing.
Starting point is 01:28:05 And that's why people don't, you know, maybe our listeners do, but most people don't buy a phone every year. It is every two, three, four years, and they get a nice big upgrade, but it's also not as must-have as it used to be, because those upgrades are all smaller, which is why you wait four years, and then you get a really juicy upgrade. The other thing, the main thing I think that you focus on in the video, in the review, is camera. The righty-o. Yeah, the righty. The wordsy is camera control.
Starting point is 01:28:35 Your kind of thesis is you don't feel like the camera control is bad but just wasn't executed as well as it could have been. Yeah, that's exactly it. I like the impulse to do camera control. I like the impulse of putting a hardware button on and saying, it works like the button you would have on a camera. Remember cameras, everybody? Which some people don't, but cameras had buttons. And if you pushed it all the way down, it took a picture. And then a lot of them, if you pushed it half the way down, it would focus. And some of them had a little ring or a little uh for a mode or a little wheel that you could dial and stuff like that and so i get what they're
Starting point is 01:29:11 trying to go here but it's a couple of things first off what i said was i think they plussed it too much you know that's that disney concept which is you take a thing and then you're like let's add a thing and another thing and another thing and now it's really amazing because we added all these jokes and this little extra whizzy thing and all that. And I think that's a good instinct, but I think that sometimes you can go too far. And we've been talking about Apple's tendency to overdo with something like the HomePod
Starting point is 01:29:34 or the Vision Pro. And I would say the camera control got overdone because that is a button. It does not need to be a button with a haptic, with a force sensor, and with a touch sensitive swipe control on the top. It's a lot. And I'm impressed that they do it. Yes, the prowess of the hardware design team is amazing, but is it too much? I would say it didn't necessarily need to be all of that. But my big problem too, is then on the software side. And this is why when
Starting point is 01:30:06 we were in Memphis, I said, uh, it had touch bar vibes is I think the software side is really misguided. I think that I think while you can learn it, it's way too complicated. It's too easy to get wrong. And as a pro feature, great. As the default feature for regular people, I just think it's a mistake. I can't. And as I was writing it, I was increasingly like thinking about this and thinking like, why is it this way? By default camera button, push it halfway down to focus. Now I know your iPhone is smart at auto focuses, but the idea
Starting point is 01:30:45 is modern cameras are smart too when they still do this. Because the idea is there's like a little crosshair somewhere. And you're basically telling the camera, no, no, no, I want you to, I'm going to put it halfway down. I want you to focus on this thing in the foreground, and then I'm going to move it to the background or focus on this thing in the background or in the midfield. And that's the center focus point. And it's a metaphor. It's a very commonly used thing. And Apple has said that that feature is coming to camera control in a software update in the future. I do not understand why that was not the first feature.
Starting point is 01:31:18 I do not understand why flipping around through photographic styles or zooming or switching cameras is the thing that shipped by default but that the replicating classic camera look and feel was not the first thing to try and then introduce more complexity for people who want more complexity at the very least though yeah a zoom or what i have it set to is switching between the cameras. Yeah, which is good. Which is, it's fine. But anyway, this is my feeling.
Starting point is 01:31:54 The good news is camera control can be fixed in software updates to be better. But I do question Apple's choices. I think that they made some questionable choices. Love the ambition. Love the impulse to build a piece of hardware. ambition, love the impulse to build a piece of hardware, but fundamentally, the more I've thought about it, the more I think the camera control wasn't really executed right. Because I think by default, it's too fiddly. It's too messy. It's too hard to learn. And while you can learn it and it's a great, ultimately it's a great power user feature that it that should not be in the faces of people who are using it as a regular person because i think it over complicates it it's too easy to get it
Starting point is 01:32:31 wrong and it's going to turn people off and i think it would be better if it was simple and that normal people could use it simply and that more advanced people could say oh oh did you read that story or i guess okay did you see that tiktok about how you can enable this setting that lets you change the styles as you it's like yes that's what this should be but it's almost like they're so proud of the fact that they packed all that technology in that button that they're like let's turn it all on by default and i think it's a mistake i just i do I think that they overdid it and they made something that should be broadly usable because the whole idea of the button is it's a button you push down and they made it too much. And I think that they, I just, I think they blew it.
Starting point is 01:33:14 I think that it is, they need to do some extra work. And the good news is they can. They can change a lot of the conception of camera control with software because again, impulse good, some of the execution bad, you with software because again, impulse good, some of the execution bad, you can fix the execution and software updates. This episode is brought to you by TipTop. TipTop is a completely new way to pay that makes everything you buy more affordable and sustainable with trade-in at checkout. The way it works is incredibly easy. When you're making a purchase of TipTop, you simply select any item that you own that you want to trade in from TipTop's catalog of over
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Starting point is 01:34:56 Let's finish out with some Ask Upgrade questions. First one comes from Brayden. This is a big question, but it's a good question. Okay. Braden says, following your recent discussion on the Meta Orion tech demo
Starting point is 01:35:10 and not knowing what Apple is working on fully behind the scenes, do you think that it would benefit Apple to come from a more open approach in the future? I'm not saying they should talk about products in the near-term pipeline, but should maybe do more things like the Knowledge Navigator demo from 1987
Starting point is 01:35:26 to show how tech could benefit human life and well-being without revealing specifics about future products. Um, okay. I mean, it would be a huge cultural shift. The problem that I have with it is when you're doing something like Knowledge Navigator, I mean, it's cool, but what does it mean? Like, it's not real. It's more like this is our vision of the future, and this is where you'll be someday.
Starting point is 01:35:58 And while that's fun to look back, like Knowledge Navigator, like, it's fun to look back at it. But Apple of 1987 was not capable of navigator like it's fun to look back at it but apple of 1987 was not capable of doing anything like it right and so it ends up being what it's brand marketing yeah and and i see you could make the argument that it's brand marketing i think what apple would tell you is that companies that need to show you stuff that's not shipping and might never ship are trying to justify their existence and they've got nothing to ship. And I would say that Steve Jobs coming back to Apple really intensified that, right? It's real hard to ship. The product of shipping is what matters. I will agree. Vision Pro is a great example where
Starting point is 01:36:43 they would probably have been better off doing a low key. You know, we're working on this thing. We're going to make developer kits available. They're very expensive, but this is a direction we're going in the future. And I feel like given, as we said earlier today, given Apple's stature, the focus on Apple, it's almost impossible for them to actually do that. Nothing they do is low key. Nothing they do can be low key. It will never be low key. So they just kind of like do what they're going to do i think there's a good argument to be made potentially that if it hurts you to have meta out there doing orion when you've got that you've done that work and you've got it internally if it hurts you you in some way, could you discuss disclosing it
Starting point is 01:37:26 and saying, here is where we think the future of this product are going and we're on it? But I think I would argue, if I was inside Apple, that if we have it and are confident that we're going to get there around the same time meta is, do we need to show it i guess the answer would be if there's a reason if you want to motivate developers if you want to get give people reasons that to view vision pro differently as a stepping stone to something else like you could do it but i think always the argument inside apple and i think it's mostly a good argument is companies don't show products that don't exist out of a position of strength. They do it out of position of weakness. Now, the question is like, well, was Meta showing weakness
Starting point is 01:38:13 when they showed Orion? And my answer is yes. Meta was perceived as have wasted money on their entire VR and AR project. It was a Markuckerberg joke where people are like oh he should have been spending money on ai and instead he was spending it on the stupid vr stuff that nobody cares about and he changed the name of the company and it's dumb why did he do it and also meta is perceived as having lesser products than vision pro all they tried a high-end model right which you bought and uh it was a flop and they killed it and now they're selling on like a 300 dollar vr helmet which is great it's fun those games are fun and all of that. But like, there's this perception that they're down in the kind of junk area making a games console and Apple
Starting point is 01:38:54 is making this sophisticated thing that's the future and all of that. So I think there were some reasons why the meta felt like they were in a position of weakness. They said, we've got this thing. We need to show people that we actually are on this and we're doing amazing stuff. And so they showed it. My question is, does Apple feel like they're ever in a position that's so weak that they need to release something or show something that they're working on in order to justify their existence? And I would say thus far, modern, rich, post Steve Jobs return, Apple has never felt that way. And so I guess that's my argument is it would be fun, but I can tell you having covered nineties, Apple nineties, Apple was in dire straits. They were a mess. They were spending
Starting point is 01:39:42 money on all sorts of things that were never going to ship. And 1990s Apple was great at showing you things from their design lab and product concepts. They did it all the time. We put on the cover of Mac user, they put on the cover of Mac world, like mid nineties, Apple was like, sure, here are eight Macs that we're thinking of shipping someday or not. And, you know, a couple of them looked kind of like what the 20th anniversary Mac ended up being, but they just put it out there. 90s Apple was about to die, right? Like it was not a good sign. It was fun, but it was not a good sign.
Starting point is 01:40:15 So I get how exciting it would be and how we all want Apple to say what their plan is in the long run for Vision OS and Vision Pro, but they're not going to do it. And if they do it, I'd actually be really worried because that's bad, right? Because they're coming from a position of weakness. They can't dazzle you with what they're doing today and they're afraid you're going to go away and stop paying attention to them. So they're going to show you something shiny, even though the shiny thing is not something
Starting point is 01:40:41 that they're going to sell. I just don't see it. even though the shiny thing is not something that they're going to sell i just i just don't see it aaron asks how does the idea of products like meta ray-bans compared to google glass from 10 years ago is it that we've come far enough in technical capabilities for these products to be explored more or is it that these things are becoming more socially acceptable like why does the ray-banan succeed where Google Glass failed? Um, I know this is going to be weird,
Starting point is 01:41:15 but part of it is Google Glass was five or six years out from the first iPhone. Yeah. And now it's 2024. Yeah. We've had a decade or more where every single person around you has a camera. Yep. And when their phone is out of their pocket, they are taking pictures, basically. And so I think culturally it's very different. Also, I would say Meta Ray Bans, especially because they're not AR products at all. Meta Ray Bans are sunglasses with a camera in them. What they're not AR products at all. Meta Ray-Bans are sunglasses with a camera in them.
Starting point is 01:41:45 What they're not is glasses with like a weird screen thing where you look like a cyborg. Part of it is that they're more stealthy. And I know you could say that they're sneaky, but I'd say they aren't as disruptive to it. And on top of that, we're all used to this. I mean, that's, that for me, that's certainly my feeling now is back then it was like, who does this guy think he is walking into this meeting and taking video of all of us. And now it's like, everybody, everybody in this meeting has three different devices that can record audio and video. Like it's kind of over, but also i think they don't look as disruptive and that
Starting point is 01:42:27 that's part of it and that you know if you were and that's going to be one of the challenges in the long run with things like orion or whatever apple might want to do is they do need to not look disruptive if they look if it looks like there's a cyborg coming down the street people are going to react much worse than if it's somebody with ray-bborg coming down the street people are going to react much worse than if it's somebody with ray-bans with a little circle in it like i mean because people wearing airpods people have a reaction to that right like especially in the early days people were like oh you're wearing you got these weird things in your ears the apple watched it was like oh like people you know you're checking your watch a lot you're not paying any attention
Starting point is 01:43:03 i just have to get over it we do the biggest change i agree with you like the what people think about is their privacy i think on the whole has changed and it's become less about you in the real world and more your information that's online or in private places like i think the idea that somebody would have a camera and they can take a picture of you i i think that that we have passed that like we have passed that line a long time ago now like a long long time right or wrong yeah right or wrong and i i would argue that yes of course there's still nuance here in terms of um what's the right behavior what's the etiquette what what is being transgressive versus being normal and like absolutely they're they're conversations but i feel like it's just
Starting point is 01:43:53 more accepted that your the doorbells have cameras and and houses have cameras pointing out at the street and everybody's got a camera in their pocket which means any kind of behavior that can happen good or bad can be captured and and like the world has has just changed where i think probably wrongly in a lot of cases the perception back in 2013 was that public space was kind of free from that, even though it probably wasn't that much. But like, if you,
Starting point is 01:44:33 if you behave like a jerk on the street or in a park or something, guess what? There will be dozens of videos of your behavior because that's the world we live in now. That's going to happen. Like, I know there's that, there's that video. I know people are going to world we live in now that's going to happen like i know there's that there's that video i know people are going to send it to us i'm going to talk i'm going to talk about it or just just trying to stop it like those uh harvard students who did that thing where they were wearing meta ray bands and it was streaming live to an instagram
Starting point is 01:44:58 page and they were able to use the facial detection yeah like yeah that stuff is wild but like also i could just do it it my phone and like i know it's less exactly it's it's less obtrusive when i'm just doing it with cameras on my face but like the technology that they were using was just coming to an iphone like that's what was going on yeah their stunt is literally it was not about meta ray bands. It was about how much facial recognition technology exists on the internet and how much data about every individual person is on the internet. Yeah. The glasses were immaterial because you could absolutely just do it with your phone. Or just set a physical camera.
Starting point is 01:45:37 You said put a ring doorbell. Yeah. Just there and just have it running all the time. There are so many ways to do it. There are issues there. Yeah. But yeah, that's not it. And I assume, right? it running exactly like there are so many ways issues there but yeah but but yeah that's but that's not and i i assume right like i just this is this is the world we live in is it's the
Starting point is 01:45:50 panopticon right it is literally everything is being viewed and recorded or could be and and so i think at that level when you're living in that world having some glasses that have a camera on it is not that, I mean, like everything's got a camera on it and everything's got a microphone on it. And that's just how we are. And it's only going to be more because as more of this, these AI features take off, that's what we're going to get is who is that person? You know, what was the conversation that was had? Like, I feel like we talk about the companies that have talked about Like, I feel like we talk about the companies that have talked about doing like, we'll record everything you do. And then you can play back a transcript of everything you do later. And it was like,
Starting point is 01:46:33 oh, well, that sounds illegal and bad and all that. And it's like, yes, but I totally see a future where your personal assistant may not be able to give you a full transcript of that conversation you had. But we'll say at 1030, you had a brief conversation with so-and-so about this thing, a summary, right? And like, that stuff's going to happen. It's just, it's all going to happen. And yeah, that's so, I'm not making a value judgment necessarily, but just saying, I think that's the answer to aaron's question is that the world has changed in terms of this stuff and cultural acceptance of this stuff has changed at least a bit plus i i say don't undersell the cyborg thing which is i think google glass
Starting point is 01:47:17 looked weird and ray-bans don't if you would like to send in a question for us to answer in a future episode or you have any feedback or follow-up just go to upgradefeedback.com and you can send them in there. If you want to read Jason's review or check out his other work, go to sixcolors.com and you can hear him here on Relay and at theincomparable.com as well. You can listen to my shows here on Relay. You can check out my product work at cortexbrand.com. You can find us online. Jason is at jsnell. I am at imike. You can watch clips of this show
Starting point is 01:47:49 on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. We are at Upgrade Relay. Thank you to our members who support us with Upgrade Plus. I think this week we're going to talk a little bit about some prep for the draft that we're going to do.
Starting point is 01:47:58 Maybe set some rules. I don't know. We'll see. Thank you to our sponsors, Tip Top, Vitally, Uni, and Delete Me for their support of this show. But most of all, thank you for listening. Until next time, say goodbye, Jason Snow.
Starting point is 01:48:12 Goodbye, Mike Hurley.

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