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533: A Conversation With Your Teeth

 

00:00:00   (music)

00:00:08   From Relay, this is Upgrade, episode 533 for October 14th, 2024.

00:00:15   Today's show is brought to you by Delete Me, Uni-Pizza Ovens, Vitally, and Tip Top.

00:00:20   My name is Mike Hurley and I'm joined by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason!

00:00:24   Hi, Mike. 533 was... we are now... I can't believe I didn't mention this last week.

00:00:29   532 and 533 were our phone numbers when I was a kid.

00:00:33   We had a 533 number, 5330501, and 5326753 was my phone number in high school.

00:00:39   Don't tell all those numbers now. They might be sent to somebody else.

00:00:43   Probably not, and if you would... and I haven't revealed the area code specifically to make it slightly more obscure for people,

00:00:49   but don't call those numbers. The people aren't there anymore.

00:00:53   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,

00:00:59   because back then, number portability wasn't a thing, and when I was given my first corporate cell phone,

00:01:05   whenever even that was, I assume at IDG, who knew that the number that they were assigning me randomly at that time

00:01:12   would be presumably my phone number for the rest of my life, so weird times.

00:01:16   Anyway, but classic, so shout out to 533 and 532.

00:01:20   Shout out. I have a Snell Talk question for you that comes from Ben who wants to know,

00:01:25   "What is your footwear of choice when at home?"

00:01:28   Weird question.

00:01:30   Look, maybe Ben has a thing, and he just wants to know about it. That's all.

00:01:33   Okay. I wear socks a lot.

00:01:40   Oh, okay.

00:01:42   I want a little more cushion than bare feet, so unless it's really hot, I wear socks a lot.

00:01:48   In the winter, and we're not a shoes-off house, so I will also just leave my shoes on sometimes

00:01:56   for logistical reasons, and then my other answer is that I've got these slippers that you told me about.

00:02:05   Oh, the Mojave's?

00:02:07   Yes.

00:02:07   Yeah.

00:02:08   Is that what they are?

00:02:10   Yep, with the rubber on the front?

00:02:12   Yeah.

00:02:12   Yeah, Mojave slippers. I've been wearing Mojave's for years. I love Mojave's.

00:02:17   Yeah, so I have those, and in the winter, I wear those.

00:02:21   I used to wear slippers that were like little sheepskin slippers that were really, really nice,

00:02:28   but I wore them so much that they fell apart, and it was very hard to find a replacement.

00:02:33   And all the replacements had soles, like flat soles, instead of it just being a soft bottom, which I didn't like.

00:02:41   But these slippers, and you're going to have to put a link in the show notes to these slippers now,

00:02:47   they are nice, and even though they've got flat soles, they're different because they're slip-ons and all of that.

00:02:54   They have little rubber tips on them sometimes? Yeah, I like them a lot.

00:02:58   I've been a fan of Mojave's for years. They have a bunch of different ones.

00:03:01   These have the rubber tips, and they're comfy, so I wear those, and especially I wear those to...

00:03:08   For me, a lot of it is temperature regulations, like in the winter, and it's cold and damp sometimes in my house,

00:03:14   and my feet get cold sometimes, especially if I'm just sitting at my desk, my feet get cold.

00:03:18   So it's nice, like I have them on right now, because I was feeling like it's a little cooler in here than usual,

00:03:23   and my feet are cold, and so why don't I get the slippers out, which I haven't worn in a while.

00:03:27   So we're in slipper weather now. So that's, you know, it's a variety. It's a variety.

00:03:32   Do you have a footwear of choice when you were at home?

00:03:34   Always Mojave. I'm wearing Mojave's now in the studio, and I wear Mojave's at home too.

00:03:38   Oh wow, you have like a studio pair of slippers?

00:03:41   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,

00:03:49   and something that I noticed was the very fronts of them were getting walled away,

00:03:54   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...

00:04:01   I move a lot. Anybody that watches the video knows this. I fidget constantly when I'm recording.

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.

00:04:10   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.

00:04:17   So now I have my in the studio pair, and then I also have my like going to the bathroom pair,

00:04:25   because I don't have a bathroom in my studio. I have to go out or like going to fill up my water bottle or whatever.

00:04:30   So I put those ones on to leave, and then I have my good ones for when I'm here. So yeah, lots of slippers.

00:04:36   Oh wow, this is... I just want to say, you are... when you come in to work and you've got slippers to put on there,

00:04:43   you are getting so close to being Mr. Rogers.

00:04:46   Okay, like I need a cardigan too, and again?

00:04:49   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.

00:04:55   I actually do do that sometimes, like when it's cold in up here. I have hoodies that are just studio hoodies,

00:05:01   and so like I'll take off whatever I'm wearing and put on the studio hoodie, which could either be a cortex hoodie or an upgrade hoodie, depending on how cold it is.

00:05:08   Oh boy.

00:05:09   Look, it's really lovely here in the neighborhood. I don't know what to tell you.

00:05:12   I cannot wait to one day visit the land of make-believe, by which I mean mega studio.

00:05:17   It's amazing.

00:05:18   I also have a sock recommendation while we're on it.

00:05:21   Okay, oh yeah, sure.

00:05:22   I really like and I subscribe to the Awesome Socks Club, which is from Hank and John Green,

00:05:29   and I'll put a link to that in the show notes too. They have really weird and fun socks.

00:05:33   I like sock subscriptions.

00:05:34   I cannot let this go without making a couple of sock recommendations myself.

00:05:38   Yeah, we've come to that. It has, or dueling sock recommendations.

00:05:41   I really like, for people in the US, American Trench makes really nice socks,

00:05:46   although they have gotten kind of away from the stripey socks.

00:05:49   I bought them because I really like the stripey socks,

00:05:52   and now they seem to have decided that they don't like stripes anymore, and it makes me sad.

00:05:58   But you know who does like stripes is another made in America company, Zkano.

00:06:04   And I've been buying socks from them, and they are really good too.

00:06:08   So I'm a big fan of finding non-generic socks that come in interesting patterns and stripeys

00:06:14   and stuff like that, and they're pretty great. So those are my two favorites.

00:06:17   You might like the Awesome Socks Club.

00:06:19   They can be a bit weird sometimes, but I like it.

00:06:21   Final sock recommendation, Bomba Socks.

00:06:25   Bomba Socks, they're like ankle socks, are incredible.

00:06:31   And every couple of years, I'll buy myself like 20 of them, and I'll just use those.

00:06:36   Lauren, and sometimes a sponsor, Lauren and Julian both love, love, love the Bomba Socks.

00:06:42   I've never gotten the right size, so they've ended up taking them,

00:06:46   because I can never get them to fit, because that's part of it too.

00:06:49   But the problem with the novelty socks is that often the socks aren't very good.

00:06:55   They like, it's a fun pattern, because I got a sock subscription at one point,

00:06:58   and it was really fun, and I liked those socks, but they were kind of thin,

00:07:02   and I just, I really didn't like them. And I like them stripey, and I like them,

00:07:07   some of them like plush, like fuzzy. That's also kind of nice.

00:07:12   Especially since I'm wearing them around the house,

00:07:13   which brings us all the way back around to the original Snell Talk question.

00:07:17   This is great. We've done some good work here.

00:07:18   I feel like we could just knock off from the day right now,

00:07:21   and not, but I guess we've got to do a whole upgrade.

00:07:23   It can't all be socks, can it? Well, I mean, it could be,

00:07:28   but I think I might run out of steam in about two minutes.

00:07:30   It's the sock addict. It's a new podcast we're going to have to start. Sock addict.

00:07:34   If you would like to send in a question of your own,

00:07:38   and obviously it can be about anything, just go to upgradefeedback.com,

00:07:43   and help us start the show with a Snell Talk. Thank you to Ben for that fun question.

00:07:47   I have some follow-up for you, Jason and everybody.

00:07:51   We had a great time on Connected last week. You joined me in Federico,

00:07:54   and we had a really fun time, so if you've not listened to that,

00:07:57   you should go listen to that. I think people would enjoy it.

00:07:59   It was a really good episode of Connected.

00:08:01   The worst thing about that episode was that I didn't have an episode

00:08:05   of Connected to listen to last week. Yeah.

00:08:09   Because I usually listen. I did listen live.

00:08:15   Yes, but in an active live. Yeah, but then it came into my overcast,

00:08:23   and I was like, nope. Also, by the way, just not to pat ourselves on the back here,

00:08:28   but I consider that one of the all-time great podcast titles.

00:08:32   Yeah, it was real good. I consume all of my dark secrets,

00:08:37   which makes sense in context and otherwise does not. Anyway, I hope people listen if they haven't.

00:08:44   The screen recording security dialogue prompt in macOS Sequoia has been changed.

00:08:51   This is a quote from MacRumors, which I believe was from Apple, saying, "Users will see fewer

00:08:56   dialogues if they regularly use apps in which they have already acknowledged and accepted the risks."

00:09:02   This was the exact middle ground that we were hoping for.

00:09:05   Yeah, so it's trying to basically say, if you use this app that uses these permissions

00:09:11   on a regular basis, we are going to reduce how much we annoy you by this. Like I said,

00:09:17   my understanding is that there's some degree of kicking the can down the road here where

00:09:21   it's like the timer starts, and then you launch it, and it goes, all right, and it resets the

00:09:27   timer. And I don't know if there's ultimately a non-resettable extension of that. I don't know

00:09:33   the details, and it's very hard to tell because this is all about letting things happen over time.

00:09:37   But better, it's a little bit silly, right, that we are at this point. But what it suggests,

00:09:43   truthfully, is that Apple built a new thing and said, this is the new thing, everybody needs to

00:09:48   do it, and we're going to deprecate the old thing and throw up a thing that yells at users because

00:09:52   their developer did something, which is always a bad idea. Throw the developer under the bus, right?

00:09:57   But then they got feedback, which is like, yeah, but you made this decision in error because there's

00:10:04   actually a problem. There's a whole bunch of apps that people use that don't fit into your solution.

00:10:10   And so what are they supposed to do? And to Apple's credit, they didn't say, well,

00:10:16   forget about it. They said, no, the reasons we're going ahead with this, but since we didn't take

00:10:21   these other things into account, let's mitigate that for now. And the next step is they need to

00:10:27   adjust their trajectory with these features to get those other things to work in a way that works for

00:10:33   users, works for developers, and works for Apple security people. So it's not great because it's

00:10:39   a sign that they weren't paying attention to some of these details early enough and didn't think

00:10:43   them through, but it's good in that they seem to have listened to the criticism. And that's good

00:10:48   for users who have a lot of apps that use these screen recording permissions to do things that

00:10:54   are not sharing windows over Zoom. And so it's better, not ideal and kind of ridiculous that we

00:11:03   got to this point, but, um, at least this happened. I mean, this is, as you say, right? Like if you're

00:11:09   going to, I actually think this is a really good system for dealing with this, like being smart

00:11:15   about what I'm doing. Uh, again, we'll see how it goes, right? Yeah. I wanted to mention something

00:11:22   that I've been really enjoying. Um, just a little change that I noticed with my AirPods Pro. This

00:11:27   either happened in iOS 18 or maybe it's in 18.1. I'm not sure exactly when. Um, but I have noticed

00:11:34   that the responsiveness to loud noises has significantly improved. Like for example,

00:11:39   if I'm listening to a podcast and I use a hand dryer, the audio level goes up immediately.

00:11:46   Um, like I've noticed something, something has happened at least with my specific setup in that

00:11:54   the, the kind of what it's supposed to be doing, like increasing the volume when it hears loud

00:11:59   noises just in general, that has been significantly better for me since, uh, I was 18. So I'm really

00:12:06   happy about that. Like it was always pretty good, but now I'm now it's really good. And I think

00:12:11   that's great. Yeah. Um, I wanted to do a little while we're on this subject, I wanted to do a

00:12:16   little follow up, a little follow out rather follow out because there are ATP has been talking about

00:12:25   this a little bit and I've seen it in other places too. I don't want to just say it's ATP,

00:12:29   but I've discovered that I seem to not be looking at the, the, um, different modes of noise canceling

00:12:37   in AirPods Pro the same way other people do. Okay. And I, I'm trying to phrase it that way because

00:12:43   maybe it's me, maybe it's not them, but I use AirPods Pro 2 every day to walk the dog. It's

00:12:51   just me and the dog. And so I've had a chance to try this out. And I, I will admit it is in my

00:12:57   noise, neighborhood noise profile, right? I've got a busy road, a couple blocks away and a freeway

00:13:05   about like five blocks away. And so there's a, there's some background noise as well as busy

00:13:10   road noise at different points in the walk and another points in the walk. It's quieter.

00:13:14   And then I've got cars, you know, I'm, I'm walking on streets, so there are cars going by. There's

00:13:19   a school in the back of my neighborhood. So there are people driving back in the back streets where

00:13:22   I walk the dog to get to the school. So there's some traffic. Anyway, I feel like for what it's

00:13:29   worth, take us for what it's worth. There, there are these three modes that seem to be confusing

00:13:33   people. There's transparency, adaptive, which is new and, and noise cancellation. And the part that

00:13:41   made me wonder if I was going nuts was Casey Liss saying, friend of the show, good friend of the

00:13:50   show, friend of the show, saying he tried to use adaptive mode to mow the lawn. And I just thought,

00:13:58   no, Casey. No, you wouldn't do that. Mowing the lawn is noisy. Put it in noise canceling mode.

00:14:04   Yeah. Adaptive is not that good, right? I don't think it's made for that. So, so here's, here's

00:14:09   how I view it. And maybe this is not how Apple views it, although I think it is, but maybe it's

00:14:14   not. Transparency and noise canceling. The idea there was it's a quick toggle since they've got

00:14:19   microphones on it. They've got a very clever quick toggle. If you're concerned about being able to

00:14:24   hear the world around you while you've got your AirPods in, you put it in transparency mode. And

00:14:28   I know there are people like Steven Hackett who just, that's not good enough. I used to walk down

00:14:32   the streets of San Francisco with in-ear headphones in. Super dangerous, by the way.

00:14:38   At one point I actually bought a little box that the Shore made that was like in line with a little

00:14:43   microphone to let you let in some of the noise from outside. But really practically it was too

00:14:48   much. It was too silly. It's like analog transparency. Yeah. Yeah. That's what it was.

00:14:53   That's exactly what it was. So for me, AirPods Pro and AirPods in my ears, I feel like they let in so

00:15:03   much audio compared to the in-ear headphones. Okay. So transparency mode is very clever though,

00:15:09   because it lets that stuff go through, which is why I don't really understand Steven not having

00:15:13   one of his AirPods in because I feel like when you've got AirPods in in transparency mode,

00:15:19   unless your stuff is turned up too high or whatever, like you can hear everything. And if you

00:15:23   pause your audio, you can hear everything. It's like being, you know, with nothing in your ears.

00:15:30   That's what transparency is. It's Apple trying to simulate all the audio it's blocking. It's

00:15:36   re-passing it through. It's this virtual transparency. Okay, great. And then noise

00:15:41   canceling is we're going to listen to every noise out there in the world and we're going to nullify

00:15:45   it so that you can't hear any of it. And it works pretty well. Not perfectly, obviously,

00:15:49   but pretty well. I believe adaptive is what Apple would like transparency to be. I believe Apple

00:16:01   thinks that adaptive is transparency 2.0. 100%. Yes. Because what adaptive is trying to do is let

00:16:10   through variable noises like a car going by, but smooth out. So in my neighborhood, right,

00:16:18   adaptive takes the freeway hum away because the freeway hum is just a background, you know,

00:16:26   broadband noise. It has no information. It's just a noise in the background that's meaningless

00:16:33   and it takes it out and it's great and it allows more clarity in what I'm listening to.

00:16:40   Whereas transparency lets it through. But when I'm walking and everybody's going to be different,

00:16:44   but when I'm walking with the dog on the streets using adaptive mode, I can hear every car coming

00:16:50   from behind me before it passes me by. I know where all the cars are. I can hear clearly every

00:16:58   kind of random noise that are the noises that I need to hear to be safe. That's why I love

00:17:05   adaptive mode and why when I walk the dog 100%, well no, 98% of the time I'm in adaptive mode.

00:17:12   The other 2% is I'm not on a busy street and there's like a guy with a weed whacker or a guy

00:17:24   with a blower or something like that where there's like noise, like loud noise or there's a bulldozer

00:17:30   or there's a, you know, anything like that. Then I will put it in noise canceling and go past them

00:17:35   and then go back into adaptive. I think adaptive is the best, but the way to think about it is

00:17:40   it's transparency but better because there's some noises in transparency that you don't need to hear

00:17:46   because they're not meaningful. And if the reason that you're letting noise in to your AirPods is to

00:17:51   keep you safe and to hear the world around you, then that's why I think adaptive. I think Apple

00:17:58   nailed it because it gives me everything I need to hear and nothing I don't. And like thumbs up,

00:18:04   that is how that's supposed to work. So I would never use it to mow the lawn. Lawn mowing is a

00:18:09   noise canceling experience. Blowing leaves off of my patio is a noise canceling experience.

00:18:15   But adaptive is great for walking the dog outside. I have my AirPods Pro in adaptive mode as the

00:18:23   default. I never use transparency mode. And then I use noise cancellation for when I'm specifically

00:18:29   trying to get rid of the most amount of noise. So for example, when I'm cooking, we have a hob

00:18:37   fan, like a hood fan. I don't like that noise, so I go into noise canceling and it cuts it out.

00:18:43   No, I cook with noise canceling on because I don't need to hear. I'm not the kind of person

00:18:51   who cooks meals who's like, "Oh, the nature of the sizzle from the pan will tell me." It's like,

00:18:57   no, it's not. I just need to chop some onions and have the fan going and all of those things.

00:19:02   Yeah, absolutely. So anyway, use it how you like it. But the goal of adaptive is to be a better

00:19:09   transparency that it makes it a more pleasant experience to listen to whatever audio you're

00:19:14   listening to while still letting through what's important. That's the whole idea there for what

00:19:19   it's worth. I agree. Don't mow your lawn with it, Casey. Come on. No. Give it a go. You see what

00:19:25   happens, but I wouldn't expect that to be what you... It's not great. It's not going to do the job.

00:19:29   No. I also use conversational awareness to just put that out there. Yeah, I can't do that. We

00:19:37   talked about this on the show before, but I can't do that because I am giving my dog feedback and it

00:19:42   will lower the volume and stuff every time because I'm telling the dog to go... Because she does

00:19:49   things like we come up to a curb and she's supposed to stop. And then I say, "Okay." And then she

00:19:56   crosses the street. And every time I do that, not to mention that her name is Maisie. And if I say

00:20:01   Maisie a certain way, the vowel sounds sound like the name of a certain personal assistant. Maisie

00:20:09   and H-E-Y-S-I-R-I are very similar. And sometimes that triggers something too, which is also bad.

00:20:18   So anyway, yeah, I don't use that. I wish I could because conversational awareness is very clever,

00:20:23   but it doesn't know that I'm talking to a dog. I want to give Apple a challenge. I want to give

00:20:28   the AirPods team a challenge. Okay. Conversational awareness that knows I'm singing. Oh. Right? Like

00:20:37   if I'm wearing my AirPods Pro, I can't sing along to what I'm listening to. Because it dips the

00:20:45   volume. Because it dips the volume and pulls it. That's not what I thought you were going for.

00:20:49   Because I thought you were going for what my challenge is. Here's my challenge to Apple.

00:20:53   Now that we praise them for adaptive, my challenge is conversational awareness should be about

00:20:59   dialogue, not monologue. So conversational awareness should be able to hear me talk

00:21:04   and not worry about it because I can hear me talk. It should detect when someone else talks

00:21:12   in a way that's very clever. I know that's hard, but like in a way that's very clever. Like somebody

00:21:17   else directly nearby who is talking and maybe it's after I've said something, there's a way

00:21:24   to trigger it. But that's what I would like because if I'm just muttering to myself or talking to my

00:21:29   dog or singing along, that's not a conversation. So you need to be more aware that it's a dialogue

00:21:35   and there are other voices present. And then you're like, oh, your little machine learning

00:21:39   algorithm says, oh, there's people around. I'm not sure how it works because like, for example,

00:21:43   sometimes, you know, if I have my AirPods in and I'm brushing my teeth, that can actually lower

00:21:49   the volume. So I'm not sure if it's even, I mean, I don't know. I'm not sure it's actually listening

00:21:54   for speaking at all. What is that but a conversation between the toothbrush and the

00:21:59   toothbrush? And you know what? That is a really good point. Brushing your teeth, you're really

00:22:04   just having a conversation with your teeth if you think about it. That's right. It makes a lot of

00:22:09   sense. Yeah, boy, this episode, we haven't even come to the first break yet. My word. This is an

00:22:15   award-winning segment right here. This segment alone would be enough, but no, there's a whole

00:22:19   other podcast to come. We haven't even started yet. No. Next week, the value. Next week, we're

00:22:26   doing a presumptive draft for an October Apple event. We expect there's going to be one. Yeah.

00:22:32   So next week, we're going to do the draft. I mean, it's possible that by the next episode,

00:22:37   we know there's going to be an event anyway. But even if we don't know, we're drafting next week.

00:22:41   Yeah. So that's the idea is that we think there's probably something the week of the 28th. And so

00:22:46   we're just going to go ahead next week and do this. And there are still a couple of ways where

00:22:50   this could trip us up if they decide they're going to do it next week. And they tell us tomorrow,

00:22:54   we might have to do an emergency draft episode. We'll figure it out. But like, I think we've done

00:23:00   this in the past. Actually, if I had thought about this a little earlier, we would have done

00:23:03   it this week because I think that would have been fine, but we didn't have enough time to plan it

00:23:07   that way. But I don't mind. We've been successful so far. In fact, you could argue that doing it a

00:23:12   little bit in advance is better because there's a little more mystery in the draft. So we're going

00:23:19   to do it next week regardless. And I'm looking forward to it. That'll be a fun one. So I'll get

00:23:25   a chance to redeem myself. We'll see. A chance. I said a chance.

00:23:30   -

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00:26:16   Remember roundup time, Jason Snow. Saddle up, giddy up. Mark Gurman is reporting that Dan Riccio,

00:26:22   Apple's previous senior vice president of hardware has retired. So a bit of background, Riccio

00:26:30   had been a SVP of hardware for a long time and we'd seen him in tons of iPhone videos, you know,

00:26:36   like the Johnny Ive iPhone videos and lots of other products. He stepped down as senior vice

00:26:41   president of hardware in 2021 and John Ternus took the role since this time. And it was announced

00:26:47   that he was going to be moving to quote a new project that reported directly to Tim. And it

00:26:51   was later learned that this was the Vision Pro. So he was kind of like overseeing the Vision Pro.

00:26:56   So like he sat say above Mike Rockwell, for example, the Vision Group now led by Mike

00:27:03   Rockwell on a day to day basis reports to John Ternus. So it's kind of like left the special

00:27:09   projects area and it's just part of the overall hardware stuff. Interestingly, the way this

00:27:17   information was found out was Dan Riccio divulged it during a like a presentation that he was making

00:27:24   to an event at MIT. And he was just like, I'm retired and I'm leaving on Friday. That was last

00:27:31   week. So why not? I mean, I love it. Like the guys just live in his life. Like this is kind of how I

00:27:36   believe these should be able to live their lives rather than pretending it's all a secret all the

00:27:40   time. We've talked about this before and I think it's one of my favorite things that we talk about

00:27:45   because there's not a lot of conversation about that in our sphere, which is how Apple deals with

00:27:50   not just things like succession planning, but like dealing with corporate executives who've been

00:27:55   there a long time and have been at a very senior level and it had a lot of stock options and it

00:27:59   basically made so much money that they don't need to work anymore. And what do you do with them? And

00:28:06   I think there's a few, I mean, Bob Mansfield, he retired and then they called them back and

00:28:10   he went back for a little while and then he retired again. Dan Riccio, I think you could

00:28:16   really argue that when he was no longer SVP of hardware, that was part of the path to retirement,

00:28:22   but they're like, no, no, no, don't leave yet, Dan. We've got a problem we'd like you to work on.

00:28:26   Can you do this vision pro thing for a little while and then retire? And he's like, sure.

00:28:30   I can do that. And they give him some more money and he's like, yeah, I'll, you know,

00:28:34   I'll start building the retirement home now. It's what Johnny did too, right? So like they,

00:28:38   they gave him that new role, which really looked like a big promotion, but it was actually

00:28:44   to give him more freedom in his life and not have to be so hands on. Slowly kind of uncouple from

00:28:50   Apple. Cause you get the sense too, that some of this stuff it's like really high pressure and it's

00:28:54   very intense. And then you get to a point where like, I can't do this intensity anymore. And

00:28:58   that's when I think very intelligently for a company that's got a lot of money, you should

00:29:01   do this, which is you main, like it's, it's a senior executive retention program essentially.

00:29:07   And the idea there is look, you can step off the grind that step off the bus of all of this stuff.

00:29:14   That's super intense as SVP hardware, but we want to keep your mind around. So can we give you kind

00:29:19   of like a special project, a little bit less to do. And I know that sometimes that's perceived

00:29:23   as being like, we're, we're putting you in a window somewhere to stare and, you know,

00:29:28   not do anything, but I don't, I don't think that's the intent cause they could just leave then if

00:29:31   that's what they wanted to, but it's more like you can wind down, but we can still tab your expertise.

00:29:37   Maybe I give you a project to work on. Maybe we just keep you around to answer, answer questions

00:29:43   and work on little things and all that. But it's like a, it's, it's a way out the door to

00:29:47   retirement. That is not peak. Everything's super intense. And then boom, it's done. And we never

00:29:54   hear from you again because those people are really valuable. But, but, but the truth is

00:29:59   beyond a certain point, you can't retain them. At least you can't do anything to retain them.

00:30:05   You can retain them. Phil Schiller, it feels like to me is never going to leave Apple. Like they're

00:30:11   going to have to drag him out. Right. Like, but, and he doesn't need the money as far as I can tell

00:30:18   Phil Schiller doing great. He's been, he's been there longer than anybody else except Chris

00:30:23   Espinosa. And if you like as a senior exec, he's been there the longest and he's like an Apple

00:30:28   fellow now, but it's still actively involved in all sorts of parts of what Apple is doing. So like,

00:30:33   but, but this is my point is he wants to be there, otherwise he wouldn't be there. So if you can find

00:30:38   some way to keep somebody who's great around in some role where they want to be there. Great.

00:30:42   But ultimately these people have made so much money that if they want to go, you kind of can't

00:30:48   keep them. Yeah. So you make it easy. It's a, and it's a brain drain, right? So you try to make it

00:30:55   easy on them to stay as long as they're willing to. And then at some point they will still walk

00:31:01   away, but at least you got to disengage and they got to spread, you know, share their knowledge

00:31:05   with others. Cause there's that dangerous moment when like, Oh no, Dan Riccio is the only person

00:31:10   who knows how to do X. It gives them that kind of path to help the people that are going to come up

00:31:15   and replace him. I've told you the story before, but, um, really quickly, my uncle was the SVP of

00:31:22   HR for a fortune 500 company. And at one point his accountant or his financial planner basically

00:31:28   said to him, given your pension system and all of that, uh, you, every year you stay after this year,

00:31:33   you are going to lose money. So he retired and like six months later, the company came to him

00:31:41   and said, can we hire you as a consultant? Cause we don't know how to do these union negotiations.

00:31:46   And he's like, sure. And they paid him more money plus his retirement as a consultant. But like,

00:31:51   that's, it's that thing is you don't want to get, you don't want to have to make that call, right?

00:31:55   Or big Bob Mansfield, please come back. Right? Like, so you do this, you do this kind of glide

00:32:01   path to retirement. I think it's really interesting. I think it's, again, we don't know the

00:32:05   details from the outside, but I think in general, it's really smart for Apple to do this because

00:32:09   first off they can afford it. And second off, this is a real problem for them. They made a lot of

00:32:13   their senior people very, very rich and those people don't need to work anymore. And so what

00:32:19   do you do? You want to develop the next generation of talent, but you also don't want to lose the

00:32:23   people who have this, um, important knowledge. And Apple is unlike, you know, unlike many other

00:32:28   companies, Apple doesn't do a lot of hiring from outside because their culture is so different.

00:32:32   And so you really need to bring people up from within and retain those senior people as long as

00:32:37   you can. So it's really, I mean, it's really interesting. But then at the same time, you can't

00:32:41   keep these people forever because then you can't lose the people that would take those roles

00:32:46   because they will go somewhere else. And so like you have to encourage. And I think, I think what

00:32:51   Tim Cook has actually started to do, I wouldn't be surprised if he is encouraging his senior leaders

00:32:56   to consider these changes because it's happening more and more to go on the glide path. Yeah. Yeah.

00:33:01   No, there's definitely been a lot of retirements lady lately. And I think you're right. I think

00:33:04   that the other part of this is you identify stars that are up and coming within your company.

00:33:09   And you say, and this, I mean, this happens when I was a manager. I mean, you, you identify the stars,

00:33:16   you want to identify the talent, the ones you don't want to lose and the ones that you want

00:33:19   to bring along and give experience to. And, you know, I suspect that is what, you know,

00:33:23   what's been going on with John Ternus as Mark Gurman is reporting is that they think he's a

00:33:26   rising star and they're trying to give him a lot of seasoning regardless of where, you know,

00:33:30   if he ends up as CEO or something else like that, that's what goes on. And that's, that's developing

00:33:35   your people. It's great. But there does come a moment where you say, we got this guy hanging on

00:33:39   and our star needs a new challenge. And that may be the kind that, that may be when you go

00:33:46   to Dan Riccio and say, Dan, we're really, you know, we really need to bump John up. And, you

00:33:53   know, and he may or may not express an interest in retirement, but you're like, let's, you know,

00:33:58   you, you've been here a long time. You're not going to stay here very much longer. You can

00:34:02   stay as long as you want, but we want to put Ternus in this role so that he can, you know,

00:34:06   he can get that. And, and, and so, yeah, some of it could be a little, I mean, you should be active

00:34:12   because I think that there would otherwise be a tendency for somebody to just stay in their role,

00:34:16   even as they're disengaging and getting ready to retire and all of that. And then, yeah, if I'm

00:34:21   Apple and if I'm, I'm Deirdre O'Brien and if I'm Tim Cook, I'm looking at that and saying,

00:34:27   I want my senior, senior people who are starting to think about drifting away.

00:34:33   I want to put them in a special magic bin of people that are still here and still working on stuff,

00:34:41   but are not at that pinnacle because the pinnacle needs to be somebody who's a hundred percent

00:34:47   engaged. And I do believe that it's true that you get to a point when you start to think about

00:34:52   retirement, you are not probably a hundred percent engaged at that point. So part of the job here is

00:34:57   to identify those people and say, we don't want you to leave, stay as long as you like, but we

00:35:02   want to give you the opportunity to disengage a little bit and give an up and coming star their

00:35:07   chance to grow into this job. And I mean, different people will react differently to that and all of

00:35:12   that. That's the hard thing about managing people, but I think it's, Apple's got an extra special

00:35:16   challenge because they can't really recruit from the outside. And they've got all these people

00:35:20   who've been made very, very rich by this where if they really just want to go sit on a beach

00:35:24   somewhere in Hawaii for the rest of their lives, they can do that. No problem. So what, you know,

00:35:33   how it's, I don't envy them. This is really tough stuff and it's tougher for Apple than almost

00:35:38   anybody else. I think it is a testament to Tim Cook that these people stay around, honestly.

00:35:44   I think, and the Apple culture in general too. I think that, look Schiller, he believes in it,

00:35:52   right? Phil Schiller, I really, I don't, I've not seen into his finances, but given some of his

00:35:58   his stuff, like his work at, what is it? Boston college, Boston university. I can't forgive me,

00:36:05   Phil. I get the sense given how long he's been there that he's probably financially justified,

00:36:11   right? But he stays. The Schiller Institute is at Boston college. Yeah, Boston college. That's

00:36:17   right. Yes. He's got an institute named for him because of his donations, right? He's doing fine,

00:36:22   right? At BC on the trustee board of trustees. So why does he stay? And he stays because he believes

00:36:29   in it. And I think that there's some, it's about the culture. It's about the sort of the mission

00:36:33   of Apple and yeah, and also about leadership. The idea, look, if I was thinking of retiring

00:36:40   and Tim Cook came to me and said, I know you can retire, but what if we make it easier on you,

00:36:47   but we keep you around. Cause we really like, what can we do to make this something that you

00:36:51   want to do for another five years? Like that there are circumstances where the answer is

00:36:58   there's literally nothing you can do. Goodbye. Thank you. It's been great. I'm going to Hanalei

00:37:03   and I'm going to go to the beach and do some boogie boarding and goodbye. Right? Like that is

00:37:09   a thing you could put it into context. The, uh, the Schiller Institute was named after

00:37:15   him after he committed a multi-year total gift of $25 million. Yeah. So I think he's got more than

00:37:22   that. I think he's got a lot more than that. I mean, obviously give all of his money to the,

00:37:25   no, no, I'm just saying that's, that seems actually a little light to me. I mean,

00:37:29   I don't think he's a billionaire, but I think he's got hundreds of millions of dollars. Yeah,

00:37:31   for sure. So anyway, I think it's a really interesting challenge because I think a lot

00:37:35   of us would say, well, if you had the money that an Apple exec has, what would you do?

00:37:38   And the answer is I quit my job and retire. I don't think I would, but some, I understand that

00:37:43   this is the thing. Some people would, but some people wouldn't, some people would be like, well,

00:37:47   no, I, I like my job. I want to keep doing it. It was like, if I got that kind of money,

00:37:52   I would still do some stuff. I would probably not do the 10 different things I do right now.

00:37:58   Sure. And I would probably do some of them from Hawaii. Yeah. Yeah. But, uh, but yeah,

00:38:06   everybody's different. So it's just, it's, so I look at this and I think this is, this is an

00:38:11   interesting problem that Apple continues to have where they've got senior people that they have to

00:38:15   deal with retention and retirement and all of that. And so we've got the case now where

00:38:19   they brought in Ternus. He stayed on for a while, um, worked on vision pro and is now kind of like

00:38:25   moving away and funding a program at MIT back to another one back to Boston. Uh, and that's,

00:38:33   that's, I mean, congratulations to him. And again, really interesting problem for Apple

00:38:37   to solve in terms of their brain drain. Nine to five Mac is reporting on some potential details

00:38:43   of the upcoming iPhone se four that we spoke about last week based on some early case designs that

00:38:50   are coming out. Uh, very simple stuff. It include would, it would mean if there's to be a belief

00:38:56   that these are correct. The iPhone se four will have a single camera, a physical mute switch,

00:39:00   not an action button and no camera control. Yeah. And no, and there was a rumor about an action

00:39:05   button, but, but now it looks like no action button. And I don't think this is surprising.

00:39:09   I think that like those are all the bells and whistles. You keep all that stuff off. You,

00:39:14   you save a lot, uh, in terms of not having those parts and the whole idea of the se is to save,

00:39:19   but, and besides which they're putting some of their, their, uh, their price and their margin,

00:39:24   presumably into using a more advanced processor and having more RAM so that they can do Apple

00:39:29   intelligence, which I think is a, is probably a given. So there's the, where we say it was the

00:39:33   notch. It's going to have a notch with face ID sensor. So yeah, you'll probably get a action

00:39:39   button on the iPhone se five or whatever. I mean, maybe, yeah. Things move forward

00:39:45   eventually. Mark Herman has given a roundup in his newsletter power on of the products in

00:39:52   development in Apple's vision group, which is now being overseen by John Ternus. Um, Mark is aware

00:39:59   of four products that this group is working on. Um, this group is now getting some additional

00:40:06   additional focus and attention inside due to what Matt has been up to, which makes sense. Um, and

00:40:13   also he mentioned that like a lot of people moved to this group from the car team and stuff like

00:40:18   that. Like they've, they've moved a lot of engineers around. So the four products that are on deck

00:40:23   include a cheaper vision headset. We have cheaper materials to lower the price, slower processor,

00:40:30   and no eyesight feature. So it removes that OLED display on the front. This is set to launch as

00:40:35   soon as next year, but they're aiming for a $2,000 price tag, which is like, in our notes, I just

00:40:42   wrote LOL, sorry, because it's like people are thinking and hoping that this cheaper vision

00:40:47   headset mean that there it's going to be within a range that you're, you know, you'd be willing to

00:40:52   buy it. But I don't see that. If we consider the current vision pro kind of a developer kit and a

00:40:58   view of the future, but it's just not here yet, which I think is the only way to view it. It's,

00:41:03   it's, you know, it's, that's the only way to view it. It's, it costs too much and it does too little,

00:41:08   even though what it does is amazing. It costs too much and it does too little. I'll never recommend

00:41:12   it for anybody at this point. So getting it down to 2000, first off, I remember when those rumors

00:41:17   of it costing the original one, costing 2000, me saying it's too much. Now here we are where the

00:41:21   cheaper one will cost $2,000. It, yeah, it just, on one level, yes, there's a line in German's piece

00:41:29   that I really liked, which is with the lower price, Apple is expecting unit sales of the device

00:41:33   to be at least double the level of the vision pro, but that's not saying much. And I think that's,

00:41:39   I think that's exactly nailed it, which is one of the things that this will do if we're lamenting

00:41:45   the state of affairs on the vision pro where there aren't that many developers and there aren't that

00:41:48   many users. And it's like, and we know that it's early days, but it's such a high bar taking it

00:41:54   down to $2,000 lowers the bar. It's still a very high bar, but it's a lot lower. And I think if

00:42:01   you're viewing this as a long game, having a cheaper way into this product line in order to

00:42:07   get some more users and also to get some more developers with their hands on it. Great. Like,

00:42:12   I don't think Apple's plan for vision products needs there to be a $500 vision product. I don't,

00:42:22   because I think that they're trying to keep, maintain a level of quality that also keeps your

00:42:27   eye on like the future where this product category is going. At least not yet. Not yet. Right. Well,

00:42:32   that's true. That's true in the long run. Sure. But we're not anywhere close to that. And so people

00:42:37   who want to judge these things based on like that, their regular Apple products, like they're really

00:42:41   not like they're not, they're not even close. The value proposition is not there. So I look at this

00:42:49   and think, great, like it would be better if it was $1,500, obviously it'd be better if it was

00:42:55   $1,000, but $2,000 is better than $3,500, especially if they have some more compelling

00:42:59   content. So they pick up some more users and developers who are more skeptical can actually

00:43:04   get in and have it be a little bit better. I also think that the HomePod thing is happening here.

00:43:09   One of those bullet points you read out is cheaper materials. And it's like, they made a really nice

00:43:14   luxury headset with the Vision Pro, but a lot of that stuff is not necessary. It's nice, but it's

00:43:20   not necessary. And getting the price down is going to be helpful, even though it doesn't solve the

00:43:26   problem. It's a better place to be with a $2,000 headset than a $3,500 headset. Not great, but

00:43:34   better. I'm sure we said this already, but the idea just popped into my head. So I want to reiterate

00:43:38   again, with the Orion, the Metta Orion, there was so much talk from Metta and then just like spoken

00:43:45   about by everyone where they were like, oh, this costs so much money. It costs $10,000 to make it,

00:43:51   not we would sell it for $10,000. It costs $10,000 to make one. It costs so much money that they were

00:43:57   like, we're just not going to do this. We can't do it. I think with the Vision Pro Apple like this

00:44:03   costs so much money, but we're going to do it anyway. The Orion is their vision of the future.

00:44:12   I think the Vision Pro has some of those elements to it, but Apple just decided to get it to the

00:44:19   point where they could just ship it. Ship it, ship the OS. No, everybody knows that's too much money.

00:44:26   Everybody knows that. They know that. That's the problem I have with reporting that's like, oh,

00:44:30   this is a real flop. It's like, if there's anybody at Apple who thought that the $3,500 headset that

00:44:34   doesn't do a whole lot was going to be an enormous hit, those people should be relieved of their

00:44:39   duties because it's a delusion. It's very clear that this is playing by completely different

00:44:43   rules from other Apple products. And that's fine. Also, I'll point out again, Mark Gurman did a

00:44:49   report last January, January of '23, that said Apple also had an AR glasses project like Project

00:44:55   Orion. And they were like, there's no way we can ship this. It will be too expensive and it'll take

00:45:00   too long. And let's do Vision Pro instead, not thinking, oh, Vision Pro is the solution and

00:45:05   people are going to be wearing these down the street, but thinking this gets us a product in

00:45:09   the market that people can start playing with. Maybe we'll figure out killer apps for it. We'll

00:45:13   experiment with content with the idea that in five years, maybe this is more of a thing. And that is,

00:45:20   we have an ask upgrade question that maybe we'll get to this week that's more about this, but it's

00:45:24   that idea of like, well, which is the better approach to not ship something, but show it to

00:45:28   the public and say it's coming or do what Apple did, which is ship something, but not talk about

00:45:33   the other thing that is where they eventually want to go because Apple never talks about

00:45:37   future products. And that's, it's, you know, anyway, it is, it, it, a $2,000 Vision non-pro

00:45:46   would be welcome, I think would be good for what Apple is doing, but is not the solution to the

00:45:54   problem of why are millions of people not buying Vision Pros, I think, nor is it intended to be,

00:45:59   but it's certainly, certainly like Gurman wrote more people, more than double the people who bought

00:46:05   the Vision Pro would buy a cheaper vision. I think that's true, especially if they can come up with

00:46:09   something that's a killer app for it, whether it's entertainment or sports or, you know, whatever.

00:46:13   - Like, I also think as well, right, I think some of the things,

00:46:17   something that people get really stuck up on and did is that Apple, when they release the product,

00:46:22   they kind of make as much noise as they would any of their other products, right? Like it got the

00:46:28   whole big launch and like, because they actually cannot do it another way. Like they can't. Apple

00:46:34   cannot release a new product and not do the whole song and dance. Like they have to do that. They

00:46:41   put in probably more budget into like the launch marketing for that than they would have any of

00:46:47   their Macs, any of their iPads, and maybe the iPhone. Like they really went heavy on it because

00:46:52   that's just what they have to do no matter what the end result will be because it's who they are,

00:46:58   it's the type of company that they are. - Because it's, Apple doesn't do anything.

00:47:01   - Can't do it half hard. - They're too big at this point and there's

00:47:07   too much attention on them for to do anything quietly. Literally they can't.

00:47:11   - Wearing hardware, Meta can't do this, right? It's easier for them to do this because they're

00:47:18   not the same company. Anyway, moving back to this Mark Gurman report, also speaks of a second

00:47:25   generation vision pro that would have a faster processor to be released in 2026 at the earliest.

00:47:33   There is a version of smart glasses in the form of like meta Ray-Bans in there kind of like function

00:47:39   on deck for 2027, which in my opinion is too far. - I agree and I'm a little, I mean, maybe this is

00:47:48   just because this is the Apple process, but like it feels like this is existing tech that they've

00:47:54   got in a lot of ways in terms of cameras and connections to iPhones and AirPods and all of

00:47:59   those things and that creating AirPods that are glasses essentially is what we're saying here,

00:48:05   right? They're AirPods that are glasses. They've got cameras and they've got speakers or bone

00:48:11   conduction or whatever. And you could use a lot of the same techniques that you use for AirPods

00:48:16   and connect to your phone and connect to your personal assistant and all of that.

00:48:21   It does seem like having to wait three years is a bit much for this and yeah.

00:48:25   - Yeah, because I'm, I mean, I don't know what they're working on, but like for a product of

00:48:31   this class, I'm not sure that they really will produce something that is so mind blowing,

00:48:36   right? That like it's so significantly better than the company that at this point, you know,

00:48:42   with meta would have been doing this for years, right? Like what is the meta Ray-Ban product in

00:48:48   2027? You know what I mean? Like what have they gotten it to? - If I were a person at Apple who

00:48:55   believed in this product category, which there must be because they're thinking of doing them,

00:48:59   I would say, how can we get a product shipped by the end of next year? And I know that's really

00:49:04   fast, but I would say, what is that product and how can we do it? Because I think they could do

00:49:08   it, but they've got to actually like, they got to do it. They got to try. - 2026 for a pair of

00:49:16   glasses that have decent speakers in them, which they know how to do even that kind of thing from

00:49:23   the ear pods, whatever they're called, the audio pods on the vision pro, right? Like that kind of

00:49:28   thing of like angling it to you with decent cameras in them and connected to your iPhone,

00:49:33   like an Apple watch is like Apple, I know how hard this is. I 100% believe that you have the ability

00:49:40   to do that within the next 18 months. - Yeah, I think they've got the technology to do it. And I

00:49:45   think the danger, and this is a constant danger with modern Apple. And like I said, I think the

00:49:52   home pod showed this. And I think that the vision pro shows this, which is they need to, especially

00:50:00   with new products, they need to be a little more considerate of what the minimum viable product is

00:50:05   and not what the perfect product is. Because when I see we're going to do smart glasses in 2027,

00:50:13   I think you've over-engineered what you think these smart glasses should be. And I'm thinking,

00:50:19   here's what they should be. They should connect to your phone. They should have a camera. They

00:50:24   should have audio output. They kind of like AirPods. Whatever you're working on with the,

00:50:29   we're about to talk about it, all those rumors of cameras on AirPods, it's the same idea.

00:50:34   Whatever you're working on with visual intelligence on the iPhone, it's the same idea.

00:50:38   You make a connection to your phone. It's a peripheral, it's a wearable. You've got all

00:50:43   the pieces here. Don't overthink this. Just ship something and then iterate because iterating is

00:50:50   what you do best. So ship something, don't overthink it. Don't make it over specked and

00:50:56   overpriced. Get something out the door that's, I'm not saying bad, I'm saying something out the door

00:51:01   that's good, but is not the perfect thing. You have a partnership with an optic company now.

00:51:08   You have the pieces in place to do this. You can work with the opticians that you're working with

00:51:14   to create the Vision Pro lenses to help you create lenses for this product. The pieces are there,

00:51:22   you've got to bring it together because Meta are taking this market. This is theirs now.

00:51:28   They own it and it is a cool product. That is a problem. It's not just like this is a nerdy thing.

00:51:37   They have legitimately created a product that people think is cool. If they continue pushing

00:51:43   down that road, that becomes harder and harder to work against. This is an area they should go in.

00:51:50   You mentioned AirPods or cameras, that's another thing for 2027. For both of these products,

00:51:55   as well as the visual intelligence feature that's coming at some point to the iPhone,

00:51:59   where you can point your iPhone and say, "What's this?" Mark says, "The idea is to salvage the

00:52:04   billions of dollars spent on the Vision Pro's visual intelligence technology,

00:52:08   which can scan the environment around a user and supply useful data." I don't really know

00:52:12   what that means, but fine. I don't know because it doesn't seem very intelligent now, but perhaps

00:52:19   that's a thing that's being worked on. Or it's just not exposed. The Vision Pro is aware of so

00:52:26   much stuff that's around us and it's identifying things, but we don't need to know that, but the

00:52:32   hardware knows. What this sounds like though is that Apple is doing the Apple thing where they're

00:52:37   like, "We are thinking of what if there are cameras on AirPods? What if there are glasses? What if you

00:52:42   have a camera that you can point at things and then you've got a device?" I think one of the

00:52:45   challenges too is it's got to be a device that works with your iPhone, which is fine because

00:52:50   that's Apple's primary thing. I don't think it even needs to be as intelligent as an Apple watch.

00:52:55   I think it could really be a connection to an iPhone and it sends the images back to the iPhone

00:53:02   when you ask or when you're taking a picture or whatever. It basically is an iPhone peripheral,

00:53:09   but they've got the pieces. I think that the AirPods with Cameras project is interesting.

00:53:13   It is going down a lot of the same paths that this is. I'm not entirely convinced.

00:53:20   Meta is ahead, but it is still a pretty niche-y product. I think the challenge is

00:53:27   this is the point where you, I think, have enough signal of how that product is being received to

00:53:32   say, "This is a thing and we should be there if you're Apple." It sounds like they do think that

00:53:36   they should be there, but I wonder about the urgency of it. I think this is a product that,

00:53:41   first off, Apple should have probably embraced this idea sooner because it's actually a very

00:53:46   good idea. I'm skeptical of how good AirPods with cameras on them are actually going to be at

00:53:51   capturing the world, whereas glasses make sense. I'm not sure I know what that specifically is for,

00:53:59   but this is the thing. How well is the Meta Ray-Ban's doing? I don't know. They're actually

00:54:05   not even saying, but it is a product that is gaining momentum. I think another three years

00:54:13   from now, where are we at that point? Is that then a much harder challenge to fight against?

00:54:22   We'll see. I mean, who knows what the Department of Justice would have to say by 2027, right?

00:54:27   No kidding. Because if something happens there and Apple is forced to open up to peripherals,

00:54:34   which is a specific thing in the Department of Justice case, then where are the Meta Ray-Bans?

00:54:39   If they have the ability to be able to talk more directly via a set of APIs like an Apple Watch can,

00:54:47   then that makes Apple's job significantly harder, right? Because then you haven't even got...

00:54:53   Depending on... Look, this is a lot of pie-in-the-sky thinking here, but if they're not

00:54:59   able to as easily be like, "Well, get the Apple ones because it connects to all your stuff." If

00:55:04   that becomes a harder sell, this is an even more complicated project for them, I think.

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00:57:50   So, Submerged. Submerged, yes.

00:57:57   So we spoke about this a little bit last week when it was announced, but Apple have now released

00:58:01   their first short film shot completely for Vision Pro with all of the immersive technology cameras

00:58:10   that they have. There's a pretty cool making of as well that they put on YouTube that I'll put

00:58:15   in the show notes. You watched it and wrote about it last week. I watched it today. I wanted to

00:58:20   watch it before we recorded so it would be freshest in my mind. This is a very, very effective

00:58:27   piece of media. I think so too. I think I was fascinated by like how it was made, but I also

00:58:34   really enjoyed it and at the end I felt like I would watch more of that, right? Like it was,

00:58:40   it was, I did not have the feeling I'm like, "Whew, we got to the end, it's great." It was

00:58:44   more like, "Oh, I could see how there could be another hour of this movie with intense bits that

00:58:49   are set pieces and also character things that are going on." I was not sure what I was thinking it

00:58:56   would be. I wondered if it would be a little more kind of like, "Aha, it's a submarine. Oh,

00:59:01   there's water." Like very kind of like, I don't know, showing off those details of it and it

00:59:06   wasn't. I think it was really well done, really effectively made. One of the things of this type

00:59:11   of technology, and it's the same for all VR stuff, is balancing movement, like how you handle movement,

00:59:20   physical movement through space. Like video games do this in a lot of ways where you're actually

00:59:24   mostly just fixed on a specific spot and you like kind of teleport between place to place. This is a

00:59:30   very hard thing to do to capture motion sickness. And I think everyone that I've heard or seen,

00:59:36   watched it, including me, had at least one point where it was like, "This is an uncomfortable

00:59:41   feeling right now, like a movement." So Edward Berger, the director who did All Quiet on the

00:59:45   Western Front, which is a good movie, he obviously, like I came away with a lot of respect for him

00:59:52   because he obviously has given a lot of thought to how this is different from a regular movie. But

00:59:57   one of the choices he made, and I was surprised, is how do you do camera movement in a format that

01:00:04   you potentially are giving people motion sickness or vertigo or weird feelings when you move the

01:00:10   camera? And he tried a bunch of things. He's got some slow push-ins that I think work really well.

01:00:15   In fact, there's one where it slowly pushes in and turns a little bit. And I was like, "That's fine."

01:00:20   He's got some slow pullbacks that I thought, "That works pretty well." Most of the movie doesn't,

01:00:26   the cameras don't move. He has some setups where it's like one angle and then there's like a

01:00:30   reverse angle, or there's one angle and then you are at a close-up, but you're in the close-up for

01:00:34   again, a long time. They definitely learned the lesson. You can't do quick takes. They have to be

01:00:39   long takes. The amount of time per cut is very high in this movie. And it's fine. He also does

01:00:49   a couple of fast pushes in and fast pulls back. And for me, the fast push in, I was like, "Oh,

01:00:57   we're doing this. Okay." And the fast pull back, I was like, "I don't know." Where he was a little

01:01:04   more aggressive. And I think that's really an interesting data point of like, "Can you move

01:01:07   the camera? I think maybe you can. Can you move it really fast? Maybe you shouldn't? I don't know."

01:01:13   - There is a level where that movement, provided you do it right, and I'm sure there'll be a lot

01:01:20   of people trying to learn how to do this right, where you can instill a feeling in someone,

01:01:25   right? That maybe you want someone, the viewer to feel uneased by what's happening. There's a

01:01:32   real fine line you've got to walk between that and absolute motion sickness. - I would like the

01:01:39   audience to vomit. - But there is, I'm sure, a level, right? Where like, I don't get motion

01:01:46   sickness, but there were parts of it. I've never really suffered from it. There were parts of it.

01:01:50   I was like, "Whoa, I don't know about this." That was part of it. The behind the scenes stuff is

01:01:58   really interesting too. I've got to hand it to Edward Berger because this was an incredibly

01:02:03   difficult job to be given to do this. He is essentially a pioneer. Nobody's done this before.

01:02:09   - Apple came to him with a bag of money and said, "Would you be interested in doing this?"

01:02:14   And he's like, "Okay, let's do it." - Was that a bag of money? I was having a thought on this,

01:02:19   right? Because they were talking about the sets. The sets were very, very detailed because

01:02:24   they kind of had to adjust because the actual image quality was incredible. I've not seen

01:02:31   something in VR where the camera quality was so good. I think they did the right job in trying

01:02:37   to build this technology with partners because it looked amazing. But because of the fact that

01:02:45   you're able to choose where you want to look, to make it look good, the sets need to be very

01:02:50   highly detailed. - It felt very much like going to Disneyland where they have to build the entire

01:02:59   thing. Whereas on a movie, you only have to build little parts of it. They had to build the entire

01:03:03   thing because you can look around. Just like if you're in a line of an amusement park or you're

01:03:08   on the Star Wars ride or whatever, they're not building a movie set now. They're building an

01:03:13   environment that people are going to stand in and you can't have parts of it that fall down because

01:03:18   people will look wherever they want. That's true here too. That was one of the thoughts I had.

01:03:23   The two things that it reminded me of were, one, being in something like Rise of the Resistance.

01:03:30   It's not just a ride. You exit a portion of the ride and then you're in sets and you move on to

01:03:41   the next part. It reminded me of that. The other thing it reminded me of is theater. The fact that

01:03:50   you have these takes where there's a character or there are two characters and they're just sitting

01:03:54   there, it's a guy getting up out of his bunk and all of that. That felt very much like theater

01:03:59   because it's a long take and so really it's down to the physical performance of an actor.

01:04:04   It's not what we usually see from movies because in movies it's not just the actor. It's the actor

01:04:10   and the director and the editor making a story in individual shots. Whereas this, it's like I'm

01:04:16   sitting in a theater where the set is the bunks on the submarine and I can look wherever I want

01:04:24   but all the physicality, all the movement, everything that's happening in that scene

01:04:28   is the actor and what he's doing. It's not movie-like at all but it's theater-like. It is

01:04:35   familiar in a way and so this is, I mean, it just struck me like this is a movie but it's also a

01:04:42   bunch of different other things. It's a new thing. It's a new thing. But like one of the things

01:04:47   they were saying like and again about the expense is unlike a regular set they actually can't,

01:04:54   they have to integrate the lighting and the audio into the set and it's like the audio a lot,

01:05:02   the audio is being recorded of the people actually moving which is not typically how you would like

01:05:10   create the audio for. You can't hang microphones up. You can't have any equipment in the front

01:05:15   180 because they'll be in the shot and that means lighting and all that. I'm reminded of

01:05:22   in Citizen Kane famously there are ceilings and it's like movie sets don't have ceilings

01:05:30   so you very rarely see ceilings in movie sets but in Citizen Kane there are ceilings and how

01:05:35   they did it was they're basically like sheets that are lit to make it look like it's a solid ceiling

01:05:44   but it's not. It's a fake but that's the only way. I mean it's very hard to do it where you don't

01:05:51   have a traditional thing where we can hang lights and all that and they couldn't do it so they have

01:05:57   to have a lot of on-set lighting and also it wouldn't be realistic. It wouldn't look in a 180

01:06:03   degree environment it would not look realistic to have a big light blasting on somebody from

01:06:08   somewhere because that's not what the space would be like so completely changes again it completely

01:06:12   changes the way you have to stage this and yeah it's just very different. But it made me think

01:06:19   there is this like weird I think weird sometimes anti-CGI movement right online where people are

01:06:26   like everything was practical that meant it was better and like well I think well if you are one

01:06:30   of those people this is the format for you right you want more immersive content. I mean yeah

01:06:39   except one way to solve some of these technical issues is to use VFX to clear out things right.

01:06:46   But I just thought it was very funny when I was watching it and like seeing the sets that they

01:06:50   built it was funny to me and but it also I think indicated that I expect it was essentially a blank

01:06:58   check for this project right. It feels like it just like what is let's let's build a floodable

01:07:05   all metal submarine set. It kind of had that feeling to it but like I think for good reason

01:07:11   I think this movie serves to do what we are currently doing right like it is essentially

01:07:20   a marketing piece for people like us who have these and talk about this stuff to share with

01:07:25   people like this is cool right like because this is what we're asking for and have been asking for

01:07:30   for all year right give us cool stuff to talk about and like this is a cool thing a very very

01:07:38   cool thing to talk about. It is also I would say I have to assume that there are a lot of filmmakers

01:07:47   who are watching this thing and going huh yeah like yeah interesting and one of those filmmakers

01:07:54   will be the next person to talk to Apple about making something in this format. Yeah so someone's

01:07:59   going to watch this and be like I would like to play I would like to play in that toy box

01:08:05   for yeah for a nice chunk of change right like yeah there's going to be more short I really hope

01:08:10   but I think this is successful enough in fact I think it is very successful like I found myself

01:08:16   quite emotionally attached to the story by the end of it and it's only like a yeah 15 minute story

01:08:22   but I really wanted everybody to do well and I want to know more about these characters and I

01:08:26   want to know where they go to next because I felt very intimate with these characters like I am very

01:08:33   much with them and that is you mentioned it in your piece it's not just the visuals the audio

01:08:39   as well like that combination really really sells this piece. Yeah also one of the things that

01:08:45   impressed me because I know that some people will say well you know it's good for spectacle and you

01:08:50   can make an action set piece here but I really do believe that one of the things about this that I

01:08:54   like is the range of it that it's a character piece it's a suspense piece and it's an action

01:09:02   piece and the character piece is good because again it's theater. I know a lot of people don't

01:09:07   go to live theater we have a subscription to our local theater company and we go to live theater

01:09:12   you know six seven eight times a year something like that because we'll throw in a couple in San

01:09:15   Francisco. Lauren really likes live theater and I've come to I really like it too it's it's again

01:09:20   a completely different medium and is very interesting so it has some aspects of that that

01:09:26   I really like you do make a connection with those guys you're sitting there watching you know you're

01:09:30   in the room with them as they're eating their like pickles and whatever else the terrible food is

01:09:35   that they've stolen from the from the mess like it's really effective in doing that which is why

01:09:43   when I got to the end I also had that feeling of like I could see a more hunt for red October

01:09:48   or crimson tide or whatever else another you know claustrophobic submarine movie or something like

01:09:55   that I could see that because it would again have the pacing of there's some action set pieces and

01:10:03   there's some character stuff and that you put it all together and does it work I think it does this

01:10:08   is a short short short story because it's very it is limited to a couple of character bits and then

01:10:14   an action set piece and then that's the end of the movie but I came up to up to the surface afterward

01:10:19   uh uh was no longer submerged wondering you know like well where does this go from here and and I

01:10:25   would love to see more like not just I don't need a sequel to submerge but like the idea of like if

01:10:30   this had been longer I would have been in on on the ride and I love so I loved I loved it as an

01:10:35   experience and I also loved it to see a smart director trying to figure out and his team trying

01:10:42   to figure out what is an immersive movie like literally like what do we do here and I think a

01:10:48   lot of the choices I we haven't mentioned I mentioned in my piece I think a lot of the

01:10:53   particular shots he chooses are very interesting too there's some close-ups and I thought and

01:10:56   there's some shots where the depth of field is very limited so everything in the background is

01:11:00   super blurry and I thought these are really smart film grammar things of saying how do you focus

01:11:05   people's eyes on one thing when they've got a whole 180 degree range and the answer is you move

01:11:12   the camera really close to the actor yeah and there's nothing but blur in the background and

01:11:17   all you can do is look at the actor's face and I thought that's really effective right like that

01:11:22   I'm not distracted I know where to look now and that's a different technique than you'd use

01:11:27   in a regular 16 by 9 you know kind of film but I thought it was effective and so it was it was a

01:11:34   real joy to see all of these decisions being made because you know everybody's learning this and we

01:11:41   learned from the MLS highlights we learned what not to do with sports highlights as an immersive

01:11:46   because they have another sports thing coming right they do they have NBA All-Star Weekend

01:11:52   All-Star Weekend which was again eight months ago and it's just coming out I don't know what's going

01:11:58   on with the production they're just playing here right yeah they're messing around with it and so

01:12:03   we'll see how that looks we'll see how that looks and see if they made some different decisions

01:12:07   over the MLS highlights thing the Super Bowl thing maybe that they did I thought was better I thought

01:12:14   that the Super Bowl thing was was calmer yeah but I don't know I don't know Apple I have a pitch if

01:12:20   you want to bring the money truck to me I have a pitch I would like to make an immersive movie

01:12:27   version of one of my favorite films Glengarry Glen Ross oh wow worked very well because like that

01:12:33   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

01:12:39   to a movie and it still uses a play but also I in a lot of places you're just in different parts of

01:12:45   the same office so you have these like set pieces I would say something similar which is I want to

01:12:49   see a theatrical experience here on an immersive it doesn't necessarily have to literally be a

01:12:56   stage show turned into immersive like Hamilton where it's like live from the theater but it

01:13:03   also doesn't need to be a movie what I'm thinking is could you make a play but build the whole set

01:13:11   yeah you don't have to sit in the audience you could just be right of the specific scene you can

01:13:16   just be in that scene ideally in the very small number of sets that are used because plays can't

01:13:22   really change the set that that would be another way to do it I think trying it out just as a play

01:13:26   where you've got the best seat in the house and you're just at a play would be cool but I think

01:13:30   that maybe there is some experimentation to do there but that is one of the takeaways I have

01:13:34   from Submerged is that live theater vibe is real and it's good like it's different but I really

01:13:40   like it I love the the fact that I was watching that guy I was very aware of it but I'm aware of

01:13:45   that when I watch live theater too I'm aware that I'm watching a performance especially when at the

01:13:50   start but I really enjoyed the fact that that actor you know he is just in a short film right

01:13:56   like you wouldn't really make a connection to that actor in film but in theater or in Submerged

01:14:03   it's just like me and that guy and that guy is performing and he's all that's moving on screen

01:14:10   and it's his whole body and he's giving a performance and like that is I really got some

01:14:16   strong theater vibes from that and I think that there that is something I want to see

01:14:20   apple and creators explore with this format the way that the format kind of exists and works kind

01:14:27   of allows for a little more mundanity to occur right like things you can kind of sit in the

01:14:33   moment a little bit more yeah I like it I think it's really interesting yep this episode is

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01:15:40   for a free pair of airpods pro when you schedule a qualified meeting and thanks to vitally for

01:15:45   their support of this show and relay so it was announced last week at the i think at the bloomberg

01:15:54   screen time event which is put on by lucas shore at bloomberg that apple tv plus is going to be

01:16:01   made available as an amazon prime channel so this means that you will be able to subscribe for nine

01:16:09   dollars and 99 cents a month via amazon prime to get apple shows yeah why do you think apple would

01:16:19   do this i think apple's strategy okay so originally the strategy was we thought like oh get get people

01:16:31   to buy apple products and use content on apple products but then they extended the tv app to

01:16:36   other other streaming boxes and stuff okay now it's you don't even need the tv app you can just

01:16:42   get it within prime so i think the idea is probably that apple is really tired of having

01:16:48   such a tiny audience for their content and they have enough content now that they're trying to

01:16:55   find more people to watch it because if you look as as i think as well as they're doing creatively

01:17:01   if you look at the numbers from like neilson and other otherwise they are not being viewed

01:17:09   right very except for ted lasso well even even ted lasso right it usually scores pretty well and

01:17:17   has scored well in the streaming chance like i remember yeah anything but right right but that's

01:17:24   for an individual show but if you look at overall like who's watching apple tv it's not plus it's

01:17:29   just the the subscription numbers are just not there yeah so i think what they've decided is

01:17:35   they want more viewers i think that is the bottom line and they're like look if we can get more

01:17:41   viewers via amazon channels let's do it let's just do it and so it's an interesting experiment but

01:17:48   they they want so basically amazon has this thing where you can sign up for other streaming services

01:17:53   inside the prime video app and just watch them there and all the all the shows you can do paramount

01:17:59   plus and you know whatever else and you can just get them right there so we'll see i guess it asks

01:18:05   the question and i think it kind of answers it but it's still an interesting question anyway

01:18:09   as to whether apple at this point truly see tv plus as a standalone service that people

01:18:16   would seek out specifically rather than part of the bundle the apple bundle yeah it's interesting

01:18:25   i think this is a little bit of just realism which is apple apple's making tv plus content for

01:18:32   certain reasons including having content that's associated with its brand having content that's

01:18:38   available in its app having content that's available in its services bundle all of that

01:18:42   is true i think what they've realized is it's not gonna be enough right like like even if it

01:18:53   fulfills a hundred percent of their strategy it's still going to be a tiny percentage of people

01:18:58   and one way you broaden and get more interest in your platform and more interest in your

01:19:05   content is by having it available elsewhere so does this really i would argue putting on

01:19:12   amazon does not cut into potential future bundle sales right apple one sales probably doesn't even

01:19:20   cut into future apple tv sales although part of the challenge here is also like the perception

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

01:19:31   it's going to be in prime video so anybody who uses prime video is like oh i can just get apple

01:19:35   here and even though the answer is you could have gotten apple anyway like forget about that forget

01:19:40   about that you can get it you can get it here and you can watch it here and that that broadens their

01:19:45   audience for it so i i think it's that's that it's my take on it at least right now is that they are

01:19:51   they are reaching the audience that they can reach and it's not enough they feel for various reasons

01:19:58   and i i you know maybe it's not enough for the creators it's not enough for the money they spend

01:20:03   and like it's all kind of experimental anyway so why not experiment with this i don't think

01:20:09   apple tv plus was ever meant to be like a brick wall where it's like unless you're in our ecosystem

01:20:13   you can't watch ted lasso i don't think that was ever really the idea was more like to make

01:20:18   the ecosystem shinier and nicer and make everybody feel good about being in it and maybe drawing some

01:20:24   people in and getting them to pay a little more money to apple but i don't think it was ever

01:20:27   really intended as being we're over here and you can't watch this thing um and ultimately they do

01:20:33   want more people to watch apple tv plus and they have gotten to the point that they genuinely can

01:20:40   put up a subscription in other places and be like there is enough good content for you here

01:20:45   like it's not going to be coming as quickly as a netflix but like there is good prestige content

01:20:53   available on this service like without a doubt so yeah they can do it it's a good it's good i mean

01:21:00   it helps now that it's now right now i mean i know it's ten dollars and not five dollars anymore but

01:21:05   like now there's a library they actually have we've been doing this long enough talking about

01:21:11   it that there's a library so now they can actually say you know come and we've got all these seasons

01:21:18   of slow horses and all of ted lasso and all of foundation and two seasons of shrinking and we've

01:21:24   got severance coming back and and amazon you know what amazon's pretty good as a marketer right like

01:21:30   there's advantages to being in the amazon ecosystem because when severance comes back amazon will

01:21:35   promote it because amazon does that amazon doesn't just like hide all these things and only promote

01:21:40   their own stuff because they do promote stuff that's on channels and if you search for for

01:21:45   for severance or ted lasso on amazon when apple's in channels it will come up and say yes it is

01:21:53   available click here to subscribe to tv plus within channels and you get that show and so

01:21:58   there's lots of side benefits because it turns out amazon yeah they're all about the marketing

01:22:02   i saw i think it was benjamin mayo from nine to five mac talking about this and it's just like

01:22:07   a funny thought uh amazon has succeeded at becoming the all-in-one tv service in a way

01:22:13   that apple wanted to right like i think i don't have everything but like this is what apple wanted

01:22:19   this is what a tv app was supposed to do and there are channels in there but it feels like amazon

01:22:25   has succeeded more with prime yeah i think unsurprisingly i mean it it's a little different

01:22:33   because apple's goal is about i think in the tv app is about data i don't think they need to

01:22:37   sell you a channel although they do have them and i think amazon has been more successful at that

01:22:43   than apple i think the real challenge is that you don't have to be a partner of apple's in terms of

01:22:49   selling reselling your service you just have to be on their platform and share their data and the

01:22:53   problem of course is that nobody netflix doesn't share with anybody and you know you can't buy

01:22:58   netflix inside of of of amazon prime either right because it's just netflix doesn't want

01:23:04   it doesn't need to doesn't need to so that is a challenge netflix wants to just be the be-all

01:23:09   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

01:23:15   reselling channels was really apple's primary strategy versus just having all the apps remember

01:23:21   like that that's the question right is an app is a channel kind of even if you're paying for max

01:23:25   somewhere else if you've got the max app on your apple tv uh or on your ipad or your iphone in the

01:23:32   tv app it'll you know it works together it all works that the apps are like channels um so it's

01:23:39   okay right um it's okay but yes amazon seems to have done a better job probably in part because

01:23:45   a lot of prime video customers are just there because they got prime and so they have prime

01:23:50   video so they've got the app and then amazon's good at marketing and so reselling services fits

01:23:55   into what amazon does yeah i'm going to mention as well you published your iphone 16 review 16 pro

01:24:03   review yeah um and there were two things i wanted to pull out long last yeah you know it's time to

01:24:08   go sometimes we were busy well after you know the embargo reviews come out and it's like everybody's

01:24:13   had more than a week or you know to deal with them and then what can i add having just gotten it yeah

01:24:19   if i wait a week then i'm i'm giving you a week late what everybody gave you a week ago and so

01:24:24   i end up turning it into what i described on social media as being a series of essays about

01:24:28   aspects of the iphone 16 because that's after you know several weeks that's what i'm left with

01:24:33   no there were two things i want to talk about one was just you know you mentioned that you know

01:24:38   people get a bit bored that or again we get bored of the way the iphone looks but next year

01:24:47   could be the monumental phone you know like whether it's this skinny phone or whether they

01:24:51   do the flip phone or whether that comes a year or two after but like this phone design that we

01:24:56   have now the way that it looks actually might be something akin to the iphone 7 or the iphone 8 of

01:25:02   like hey they're going to look different after this one and that could be interesting um and

01:25:08   that also the idea of the iphone ultra that's gone like we were talking about that right like

01:25:14   are they going to do this ultra phone uh but it doesn't look like that is the case anymore in that

01:25:19   regard of like the most iphone where they might actually be going in a different direction with

01:25:23   this super skinny phone right exactly that the the max has come back to the regular pro and it feels

01:25:31   like based on the reports this is the last year of this potentially of of this very very long cycle

01:25:39   where we are using sort of the same phone um whatever that phone ends up being and and it'll

01:25:46   be expensive and all that but a new look iphone you know it just doesn't come the distance keeps

01:25:51   getting longer um but it may be that in the next couple of years we'll actually have some really

01:25:55   surprising iphones but i feel like basic iphone design apple feels is more or less solved it's it

01:26:01   feels very much like the laptop thing where apple's like no it's a it's a metal laptop in a monochrome

01:26:06   color i mean it's like you know what it is it was the macbook air back in 2011 and now it's basically

01:26:12   all laptops look like that and from apple and they're satisfied with that more or less they

01:26:17   tinker around the edges but nothing huge the generations was like original iphone iphone 4

01:26:23   iphone 6 iphone 10 and 12 like these are like the the ways in which they have changed design

01:26:34   and so it's actually been quite a long time yeah yeah the original iphone and then the 3 and the

01:26:38   3gs and then the 4 and the 5 were the same yes they are different but i think like there are

01:26:44   there is enough similarities in the original and the 3g that you could kind of just like wrap them

01:26:49   together that's sure that's sure and then you get the four five yeah and then you get the 679

01:26:53   and then and then things get a little bit money because 10 or muddy because 10 is similar to 12

01:27:00   um and the 10 10r went which came out the same year as the 10s is sort of like the the base model

01:27:06   a couple years later so it's a little bit muddied but i feel like from the 10 on you've kind of got

01:27:11   a bunch of phones that are the same yeah but certainly from the 12 on i think i think the

01:27:15   flat side of 12 like it had enough of difference that's when it resolved into like a single product

01:27:21   line after a little bit of muddiness which i think we're about to do again i feel like if if

01:27:25   mark german's reports are right yeah we're about to enter a muddy time where the old design is

01:27:30   available and there's a new design and then there's a the next year there's another design

01:27:34   and then how do those resolve down to being more like a great a a little tighter set of products

01:27:39   that are available probably takes three or four years to get there i think that's where we're

01:27:44   headed give me the mess so this is this is the end of kind of and and again the point i make in

01:27:49   the review is i actually say like here are all the iterations you get if you're coming from a 12

01:27:54   or a 13 or a 14 right like there are a lot of changes that have happened since the iphone 12

01:28:01   and you forget how many of them there are that's the iteration kind of thing and that's why people

01:28:06   don't you know maybe our listeners do but most people don't buy a phone every year it is every

01:28:10   two three four years and they get a nice big upgrade but it's also not as must have as it

01:28:16   used to be because those upgrades are all smaller which is why you wait four years and then you get

01:28:21   a really juicy upgrade the other thing the main thing i think that you focus on in the video

01:28:26   but video in the review uh is the right the radio yeah the righty uh the words is camera control

01:28:34   where yeah your kind of like thesis is you don't feel like cam the camera control

01:28:40   is bad but just wasn't executed as well as it could have been yeah that's that's exactly it i

01:28:48   like the impulse to do camera control i like the impulse of putting a hardware button on and saying

01:28:53   it works like the button you would have on a camera remember cameras everybody which some

01:28:57   people don't but you know cameras had buttons and if you pushed it all the way down it took a

01:29:01   picture and then a lot of them if you pushed it half the way down it would focus and some of them

01:29:05   had a little ring or a little uh for a mode or a little wheel that you could dial and stuff like

01:29:09   that and so i get what they're trying to go here but it's a couple of things first off what i said

01:29:14   was i think they plussed it too much you know that's that disney concept which is you take a

01:29:18   thing and then you're like let's add a thing and another thing and another thing and now it's

01:29:21   really amazing because we added all these jokes and this little extra whizzy thing and all that

01:29:25   and i think that's a good instinct but i think that sometimes you can go too far and you know

01:29:29   we've been talking about apple's tendency to overdo with something like the home pod or the vision pro

01:29:35   and i would say the camera control got overdone because that is a button it does not need to be

01:29:42   a button with a haptic with a force sensor and with a touch sensitive swipe control on the top

01:29:50   it's a lot and i'm impressed that they do it yes the prowess of the hardware design team is amazing

01:29:55   but is it too much i would say they didn't necessarily need to be all of that but my big

01:30:02   problem too is then on the software side and this is why when we were in memphis i said uh

01:30:08   it had touch bar vibes is i think the software side is really misguided i think that i i think

01:30:15   while you can learn it it's way too complicated it's too easy to get wrong and as a pro feature

01:30:22   great as the default feature for regular people i just think it's a mistake i can't and as i was

01:30:32   writing it i was increasingly like thinking about this and thinking like why is it this way

01:30:37   by default camera button push it halfway down to focus now i know your iphone is smart it

01:30:43   autofocuses but the idea is modern cameras are smart too when they still do this because the

01:30:47   idea is there's like a little crosshair somewhere and you're you're basically telling the camera no

01:30:52   no no i want you to i'm going to put it halfway down i want you to focus on this thing in the

01:30:55   foreground and then i'm going to move it to the background or focus on this thing in the background

01:30:59   or in the midfield and that's the center focus point and it's a it's a metaphor it's like a it's

01:31:04   a it's a very commonly used thing and apple has said that that feature is coming to camera control

01:31:12   in a software update in the future i do not understand why that was not the first feature

01:31:17   i do not understand why flipping around through photographic styles or zooming or switching

01:31:23   cameras is the thing that shipped by default but that the replicating classic camera look and feel

01:31:31   feel was not the first thing to try and then introduce more complexity for people who want

01:31:37   more complexity at the very least though yeah a zoom or what i have it set to is switching between

01:31:43   the cameras yeah which is not not a not which is it's fine um but anyway this is my feeling the

01:31:49   good news is camera control can be fixed in software updates to be better but i do i do

01:31:56   question apple's choices i think that they made some questionable choices love the ambition love

01:32:01   the impulse to build a piece of hardware but fundamentally the more i've thought about it

01:32:07   the more i think the camera control wasn't really executed right because i think by default it's too

01:32:14   fiddly it's too messy it's too hard to learn and while you can learn it and it's a great

01:32:19   ultimately it's a great power user feature that it that should not be in the faces of people who

01:32:27   are using it as a regular person because i think it over complicates it it's too easy to get it wrong

01:32:32   and it's going to turn people off and i think it would be better if it was simple and that normal

01:32:39   people could use it simply and that more advanced people could say oh oh did you read that story or

01:32:47   i guess okay did you see that tick tock about how you can enable this setting that lets you change

01:32:51   the styles as you it's like yes that's what this should be but it's almost like they're so proud

01:32:56   of the fact that they packed all that technology in that button that they're like let's turn it

01:33:00   all on by default and i think it's a mistake i just i do i think that they overdid it and they

01:33:05   made something that should be broadly usable because the whole idea of the button is it's a

01:33:10   button you push down and they made it too much and i think that they i just i think they blew it i

01:33:14   think that it is they they need to do some extra work i and the good news is they can they can

01:33:19   change a lot of the conception of camera control with software because again impulse good some of

01:33:25   the execution bad you can fix the execution and software updates this episode is brought to you by

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01:34:53   let's finish out with some ask upgrade questions

01:34:58   first one comes from braden this is a big question but it's a good question okay braden says following

01:35:07   your recent discussion on the meta orion tech demo and not knowing what apple is working on

01:35:13   fully behind the scenes do you think that it would benefit apple to come from a more open approach in

01:35:18   the future i'm not saying they should talk about products in the near-term pipeline but should

01:35:23   maybe do more things like the knowledge navigator demo from 1987 to show how tech could benefit

01:35:28   human life and well-being without revealing specifics about future products um okay i mean

01:35:36   it would be a huge cultural shift the problem that i have with it is

01:35:41   when you're doing something like knowledge navigator i mean it's cool but what does it mean

01:35:48   like it's not real it's more like a this is our vision of the future and this is where you'll be

01:35:56   someday and while that's fun to look back like knowledge navigator like it's fun to look back

01:36:02   it's fun to look back at it but apple of 1987 was not capable of doing anything like it

01:36:09   right and so it ends up being what it's brand marketing yeah and and i see you could make the

01:36:18   argument that it's brand marketing i think what apple would tell you is that companies that need

01:36:22   to show you stuff that's not shipping and might never ship are trying to justify their existence

01:36:29   and they've got nothing to ship and i would say that steve jobs coming back to apple really

01:36:33   intensified that right it's real hard to ship the product is shipping is what matters i i will agree

01:36:40   vision pro is a great example where they would probably have been better off doing a low-key

01:36:46   you know we're working on this thing we're going to make developer kits available they're very

01:36:50   expensive but this is a direction we're going in the future and i feel like given as we said

01:36:55   earlier today given apple stature the focus on apple it's almost impossible for them to

01:36:59   actually do that nothing they do is low-key nothing they can't do can be low-key it will

01:37:04   never be low-key so they just kind of like do what they're going to do i think there's a good

01:37:09   argument to be made potentially that if it hurts you to have meta out there doing orion when you've

01:37:18   got that you've done that work and you've got it internally if it hurts you in some way could you

01:37:25   discuss disclosing it and saying here's here is where we think the future of this products are

01:37:29   going and we're on it but i think i would argue if i was inside apple that if we have it and are

01:37:39   confident that we're going to get there around the same time meta is why do we need to show it

01:37:45   i guess the answer would be if there's a reason if you want to motivate developers if you want to get

01:37:50   give people reasons that to view vision pro differently as a stepping stone to something else

01:37:55   like you could do it but i think always the argument inside apple and i think it's mostly

01:37:59   a good argument is companies don't show products that don't exist out of a position of strength

01:38:07   they do it out of position of weakness now the question is like well was meta showing weakness

01:38:14   when they showed orion and my answer is yes meta was perceived as have wasted money on their entire

01:38:21   vr and ar project it was a mark zuckerberg joke where people are like oh he should have been

01:38:26   spending money on ai and instead he was spending it on the stupid vr stuff that nobody cares about

01:38:30   and he changed the name of the company and it's dumb why did he do it and also meta is perceived

01:38:34   as having lesser products than vision pro all they tried a high-end model right which you bought

01:38:41   and uh it was a flop and they killed it and now they're selling on like a 300

01:38:44   vr helmet which is great it's fun those games are fun and all of that but like there's this

01:38:49   perception that they're down in the kind of junk area making a games console and apple is making

01:38:55   this sophisticated thing that's the future and all of that so i think there were some reasons why

01:38:59   meta felt like they were in a position of weakness they said we've got this thing we need to show

01:39:04   people that we actually are on this and we're doing amazing stuff and so they showed it my

01:39:09   question is does apple feel like they're ever in a position that's so weak that they need to

01:39:15   release something or show something that they're working on in order to justify their existence

01:39:20   and i would say the thus far modern rich post steve jobs return apple has never felt that way

01:39:30   and so i i guess that's my argument is it would be fun but i can tell you haven't covered 90s apple

01:39:39   90s apple was in dire straits they were a mess they were spending money on all sorts of things

01:39:43   that were never going to ship and 1990s apple was great at showing you things from their design lab

01:39:51   and product concepts they did it all the time we put on the cover of mac user they put on the cover

01:39:56   of mac world like mid 90s apple was like sure here are eight max that we're thinking of shipping

01:40:02   someday or not and you know a couple of them looked kind of like what the 20th anniversary

01:40:07   mac ended up being but they just put it out there 90s apple was about to die right like it was not

01:40:12   a good sign it was fun but it was not a good sign so i i i get the how exciting it would be and how

01:40:19   we all want apple to say what their plan is in the long run for vision os and vision pro

01:40:24   but they're not going to do it and if they do it i'd actually be really worried because that that's

01:40:30   bad right because they're coming from a position of weakness they they have to they they can't

01:40:34   dazzle you with what they're doing today and they're afraid you're going to go away and stop

01:40:37   paying attention to them so they're going to show you something shiny even though the shiny thing is

01:40:41   not something that they're going to sell i just i just don't see it aaron asks how does the idea

01:40:47   of products like meta ray bands compared to google glass from 10 years ago is it that we've come far

01:40:52   enough in technical capabilities for these products to be explored more or is it that

01:40:56   these things are becoming more socially acceptable like why does the ray band succeed where google

01:41:03   glass failed um i know this is going to be weird but part of it is google glass

01:41:11   was five or six years out from the first iphone yeah and now it's 2024 yeah we've had a decade or

01:41:23   more where every single person around you has a camera and when their phone is out of their pocket

01:41:31   they are taking pictures basically and so i think culturally it's very different also i would say

01:41:38   meta ray bands especially because they're not ar products at all meta ray bands are sunglasses with

01:41:44   a camera in them what they're not is glasses with like a weird screen thing and a and a and a like

01:41:52   that where you look like a cyborg part of it is that they're they're more stealthy and i know you

01:41:57   could say that's they're sneaky but i'd say they aren't as disruptive to it and on top of that we

01:42:05   are all used to this i mean that's that for me that's certainly my feeling now is back then it

01:42:10   was like who does this guy think he is walking into this meeting and taking video of all of us

01:42:14   and now it's like everybody everybody in this meeting has three different devices that can

01:42:19   record audio and video like it's kind of over but also i think they don't look as disruptive and

01:42:27   that that's part of it and that you know if you were and that's going to be one of the challenges

01:42:31   in the long run with things like orion or whatever apple might want to do is they do need to not look

01:42:37   disruptive if they look if it looks like there's a cyborg coming down the street people are going

01:42:44   to react much worse than if it's somebody with ray bands with a little circle in it like i mean

01:42:49   because people wearing air pods people have a reaction to that right like especially in the

01:42:54   early days people were like oh you're wearing you have these weird things in your ears the apple

01:42:58   watched it was like oh like people you know you're checking your watch a lot you're not paying any

01:43:02   attention i i just we get over it we do the biggest change i agree with you like the what

01:43:08   people think about is their privacy i think on the whole has changed and it has become less about you

01:43:13   in the real world and more your information that's online or in private places like i think the idea

01:43:19   that somebody would have a camera and they can take a picture of you i i think that that we have

01:43:25   passed that like we have passed that line a long time ago now like a long long long time ago right

01:43:31   or wrong yeah right or wrong and i i would argue that yes of course there's still nuance here in

01:43:39   terms of um what's the right behavior what's the etiquette what what is being transgressive versus

01:43:47   being normal and like absolutely they're they're conversations but i feel like it's just more

01:43:54   accepted that your the doorbells have cameras and and houses have cameras pointing out at the street

01:44:04   and everybody's got a camera in their pocket which means any kind of behavior that can happen good or

01:44:09   bad can be captured and and like the world has has just changed where i think probably wrongly in a

01:44:18   lot of cases the perception back in 2013 was that public space was kind of free from that even though

01:44:29   it probably wasn't that much but like if you if you behave like a jerk on the street or in a park

01:44:36   or something guess what there will be dozens of videos of your behavior because that's the world

01:44:43   we live in now that's going to happen like i know there's that there's that video i know people are

01:44:48   going to send it to us and we'll talk about it or just just try and stop it like those uh harvard

01:44:52   students who did that thing where they were wearing meta ray bands and it was streaming

01:44:56   live to an instagram page to instagram detection like yeah that stuff is wild but like also i could

01:45:04   just do it my phone and like i know it's less exactly it's it's less obtrusive when i'm just

01:45:09   doing it with cameras on my face but like the technology that they were using was just coming

01:45:14   to an iphone like that's what was going on yeah their stunt is literally it was not about meta

01:45:21   ray bands it was about how much facial recognition technology exists on the internet and how much

01:45:29   data about every individual person is on the internet yeah the glasses were immaterial because

01:45:33   you could absolutely just do it with your phone or just set a physical camera instead of put a

01:45:37   ring doorbell yeah just there and just have it running exactly like there are so many issues

01:45:42   there but yeah but but yeah that's but that's not it and i i assume right like i just this is this

01:45:48   is the world we live in is it's the panopticon right it is literally everything is being viewed

01:45:54   and recorded or could be and and so i think at that level when you're living in that world

01:46:00   having some glasses that have a camera on it is not that i mean like everything's got a camera on

01:46:09   it and everything's got a microphone on it and that's just how we are and it's only going to

01:46:12   be more because as more of this these ai features take off that's what we're going to get is who is

01:46:18   that person uh you know what was the conversation that that was had like i i feel like we talk about

01:46:25   the companies that have talked about doing like we'll record everything you do and then you can

01:46:30   play back a transcript of everything you do later and it was like oh well that sounds illegal and

01:46:34   bad and all that and it's like yes but i i totally see a future where your personal assistant may not

01:46:41   be able to give you a full transcript of that conversation you had but we'll say at 10 30 you

01:46:47   had a brief conversation with so and so about this thing a summary right and like that stuff's going

01:46:52   to happen it's just it's all going to happen and yeah yeah that's so i'm not making a value judgment

01:47:00   necessarily but just saying i think that's the answer to aaron's question is that the world has

01:47:06   changed in terms of this stuff and cultural acceptance of this stuff has changed at least

01:47:12   a bit plus i i say don't undersell the cyborg thing which is i think google glass looked weird

01:47:18   and ravens don't if you would like to send in a question for us to answer in a future episode or

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01:47:28   there if you want to read jason's review or check out his other work go to sixcolors.com

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01:47:50   we are at upgrade relay thank you to our members who support us with upgrade plus i think this week

01:47:55   we're going to talk a little bit about some prep for the draft that we're going to do maybe set

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01:48:05   for their support of this show but most of all thank you for listening until next time

01:48:10   say goodbye jason snow goodbye my hurling