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576: Quiet Little Leech

 

00:00:00   So I've been using your vision pro a lot this week? Are you asking genuinely or are you I feel like I'm walking into something

00:00:06   And I don't know what I'm a little scared. No, I've been using it a medium amount. I feel a little bad

00:00:12   Because I haven't really been using the vision pro and I feel like I'm being a bad Apple fan and a bad

00:00:20   Developer and a bad podcaster by not really using it much, but you think we haven't talked enough about vision pro. Is that what you're worried about?

00:00:28   I

00:00:30   Don't know cuz like I so so finally like I so I've been in this, you know, we're doing our house renovations

00:00:36   It's taking forever. So we've been in this rental

00:00:39   I don't want to like buy my new desk and set it up here only to move it in a few weeks or whenever we actually

00:00:45   Finally get out of here any day now any day now, right? Can I interrupt you? Can I interrupt you right there?

00:00:49   So I'm guessing the end of the story is not only have you bought a desk

00:00:53   But you have somehow ended up with a bespoke monitor just for this just for this purpose not entirely wrong, but not right

00:01:00   All right settle in everyone let's let's hear so I had all these hopes of like, okay when the vision pro comes out

00:01:07   I'll use the Mac mirroring mode and cuz like I had the rental has this like, you know crappy basic

00:01:13   You know one of those particle board staples $50 desks

00:01:16   It's fine for most people but it's too high like desks for me

00:01:22   I one of the reasons I get standing desks is because they're also

00:01:25   Adjustable height desks easily. Most desks are too high for comfortable computer use for me

00:01:31   And I would argue correct ergonomics for almost anybody, but that's a separate discussion

00:01:35   so anyway, so I'm you know, I'm at this like particle board rectangle and

00:01:40   It's too high and my wrists are all hurting and I'm not able to use my good keyboard

00:01:44   I don't have space to like lay everything out on the tiny little thing and I'm like I should just

00:01:48   Should I just order my my new desk early and but it's gonna be heavy

00:01:52   I don't want to like move it, you know, just in a few weeks

00:01:55   Yeah, but Marco the desk is too damn high

00:01:57   I know and and then secondly the monitor situation like, you know

00:02:00   Not having my giant monitor and I was gonna try the vision pro thing

00:02:04   I just work in that for like a month. And again, it's just it's kind of just not compatible with my eyes

00:02:08   Much. I realize like wait a minute

00:02:11   Somewhere in our garage full of stuff that we moved out of the old house

00:02:14   That's still all in boxes and moving blankets somewhere in there. There's an old IKEA desk frame and somewhere else in there

00:02:22   There's a big plank of wood

00:02:24   That that TIFF was using as like a fake desktop on top of some other stuff

00:02:27   I'm like if I can find those two things I can have an a lightweight easily moved desk

00:02:33   That will be the right size and the right height like so anyway long story short dug through the garage

00:02:39   It was an adventure, but I got it and I also a few months back

00:02:46   Because we were about to move into our new house

00:02:48   in the fall

00:02:51   I also ordered another protos play XDR because that's the read the reason I mailed you the LG ultra fine

00:02:58   Which I'm very thankful for I'm looking at it. Literally as we speak it is plugged into my computer right this very moment

00:03:04   Yeah, so the reason I made it to you is that I intended to once we moved to replace it with another XDR

00:03:11   And I was hoping they would update the XDR in the meantime

00:03:13   They haven't and I was also hoping to have been moved in five months ago. That hasn't happened

00:03:18   So it's been sitting in the box like waiting to be used again same same rationale like do I do I want to like?

00:03:23   Unpack this giant monitor from its giant box and set it up just to have to move it again in a few weeks

00:03:29   I'll just use the vision Pro Mac screen-sharing mode that didn't pan out the desk ergonomics sucked a few days ago

00:03:36   I finally was like, you know what? I think we're gonna be in this house for like three more weeks

00:03:39   I am just gonna set this stuff up even though it's only for three weeks

00:03:43   Like I'm just gonna set up the stupid desk and set up a stupid giant monitor

00:03:47   Maybe I'll waste an afternoon and have to waste another afternoon taking them all down and moving them in three weeks

00:03:53   But maybe it'll be worth it. I

00:03:55   Am so happy I did

00:03:59   Not surprising at all. It is a thousand percent worth it

00:04:01   I wish I would have done it weeks ago or a couple months ago even oh my god working on a correct height desk

00:04:08   With a giant monitor. I am so happy for the people out there for whom the vision Pro Mac screen-sharing mode is working

00:04:17   Well, that's wonderful for you. I'm so happy for you

00:04:19   It's not the case for me. And so now that I have like the real thing again. Oh my god. What a difference

00:04:26   Night and day in terms of comfort ergonomics my productivity my eyes working. Oh my god, it's

00:04:33   Fantastic. So long story short. I finally moved some furniture around that was really worth it. It's a super exciting story

00:04:40   I'd answer the question that you were originally asking perhaps as an excuse to tell this story, which I don't I don't begrudge you for

00:04:47   I

00:04:49   Have been using my vision Pro. I have certainly been using it less than I had in the first couple of weeks. I had it

00:04:55   but I am actively working on the

00:04:58   Vision Pro version of call sheet and just in the last week

00:05:03   I don't remember if we brought this up last week or not

00:05:05   But in the last week, I've gotten to the point that I've gone from actively embarrassing to well this kind of sucks

00:05:11   but it's at least workable and so

00:05:15   For the select few that are on the test flight and I am NOT looking for more at the moment

00:05:20   But thank you for asking the select few that are on the test flight. Do you have a vision Pro version? My hope?

00:05:25   Not a guarantee in fact probably won't happen. But my hope is that I'll have it done before my birthday

00:05:30   Which is in just a couple of weeks now

00:05:32   But I am actively working on it and I tell you what the easiest way in my personal opinion

00:05:37   To do vision Pro work is to do it using match Mac virtual display in the vision Pro environment

00:05:43   You know with the vision Pro on your face and so on and so forth. I

00:05:46   I still like it. I

00:05:50   Maybe even like it plus plus I certainly don't like it more than three physical 5k monitors that are staring me in the face

00:05:56   Right now giving me a sunburn

00:05:58   but I do like it and

00:05:59   I don't find it burdensome or bothersome in the ways that you do and as we've covered before like that's not to imply that that

00:06:06   Your feelings or story is wrong and mine is right or vice versa, you know

00:06:09   Just like you said a moment ago for some people it does work and for you it doesn't

00:06:11   I'm one of those people does work for so anyways, I have been using it

00:06:16   Some I've gotten sidetracked with other professional nothing bad, but other professional responsibilities

00:06:21   So I haven't been doing as much work this week as I usually do

00:06:24   But I will say that last night Erin had her monthly book club which happens in the evening time

00:06:32   and so I had a couple of hours to kill, you know, once the kids were in bed by myself and

00:06:37   I started by looking at my repertoire within or my

00:06:43   Collection within Apple, you know the Apple TV app in terms of movies that I've bought which really amounts to you know

00:06:49   Movies that I connected with movies everywhere movies anywhere whatever it's called

00:06:53   And well of which there are not many to be honest with you

00:06:55   But heat is one of them and so I watched the scene from heat Marco you have not seen heat

00:07:00   I assume I think I might have no it's a miracle. It's a great movie. But um, anyways, I watched the bank heist scene from heat

00:07:08   Which was amazing and then I just I didn't want to watch the whole movie because I'd seen it relatively recently

00:07:13   So I've been having an itch recently to rewatch

00:07:16   Tron legacy or whatever the sequel is called. I forget what it was called

00:07:20   But it was like 10 years ago now and I watched the first like half an hour of that

00:07:24   It is not 3d or anything like that. It's just a regular 2d movie, but there is a 3d version of it

00:07:29   Okay. Well the version I have is not 3d here. I think I was watching from Disney Plus

00:07:33   I thought maybe I was looking at the wrong one or maybe they might not they might not offer 3d version of it

00:07:38   But I'm pretty sure that that was a there's a 3d version. Okay

00:07:41   Well, whatever whatever ended up happening be that user error, which it very well could have been but the one I was watching was not 3d

00:07:48   But it was pretty delightful, you know, this is not the sort of thing I would do if Erin was with me

00:07:53   I mean she would be happy to watch the movies

00:07:55   I watched but I would not be sitting there with the goggles on my face watching movie while she's next to me

00:08:01   But when I'm by myself, it's pretty great and I did enjoy quite a lot before I forgot

00:08:05   We got a great feedback email from Sam's dad

00:08:08   Who has a pretty good theory about maybe why it's not working out so well for me with the max stuff in the vision pros

00:08:14   other people

00:08:15   Sam's dad says like a few of us Marco is blessed with perfect vision until his 40s because he didn't have to rely on glasses

00:08:21   He's probably more accustomed to moving his eyes than someone like Casey or John who had been burdened with glasses their entire lives

00:08:27   Because I think it is more natural for native eyeglass wearers to change their field of view by moving their head instead of their eyes

00:08:33   I believe the foveated rendering is less evident to them than someone like Marco. I can test this

00:08:38   Why would I not move my eyes? It's not like I don't have glasses. I can't look through the edges

00:08:42   I can look like I'll do right now. I'm looking straight ahead. My head is not moving

00:08:46   I can look at the Apple menu through my glasses and the Apple menu is not warped or bent or broken or blurry or anything

00:08:51   Like that. It's perfectly crisp and clear. Maybe it's because I don't have progressives

00:08:56   Maybe it's because my prescription isn't that bad

00:08:57   But I don't the part that where this the logic falls apart is the idea that because you wear glasses

00:09:02   You're more likely to turn your head

00:09:03   I think multi monitor people are more likely to turn their head because they have to turn their head

00:09:07   Otherwise, they can't see the stuff that's on the far left of their far left monitor, but I'm a single monitor person

00:09:11   So yeah, anyway, so I thought it was an interesting theory, but maybe John is more right than not

00:09:17   You know as like this we're still in such early as you know

00:09:19   We keep seeing some you know various doom and gloom things about vision Pro like oh, it's you know

00:09:23   People are returning or whatever. We had a little bit of that last week and you know

00:09:27   A couple more stories trickling out here and there I personally honestly I have seen a

00:09:31   Somewhat frightening decline in the number of people using overcast on vision Pro over the last two weeks

00:09:37   Using the iPad version of isn't pro to be clear

00:09:40   Yes using the iPad version of an audio only podcast player in a virtual reality headset

00:09:45   So obviously like this is not the ideal test case

00:09:49   but but I've seen you know, basically the week after launch is about twice as many users as I currently have this week now really

00:09:56   Quickly, is that basically how many people and your check-in is not the right turn turn of phrase

00:10:01   But how many people like checked in and open the app each day? Is that how you're computing this?

00:10:05   Yeah, and no matter how I smooth out Lee if I do like, you know weekly rolling average, it's the same pattern

00:10:10   It's you know, I've lost I've lost half the users already

00:10:12   But we are still in such early days of vision Pro

00:10:16   Everyone's still figuring out what it is and what they want to do with it and what it's for and it's gonna take

00:10:21   Probably a couple of years to really start

00:10:24   You know finding its legs and and and finding like the really great things and having those great things

00:10:29   mature into actual developed app markets and content markets if we all buy vision pros and then half of us decide this is not

00:10:37   Doing what I wanted it to do or it turns out this thing

00:10:40   I wanted to do and this doesn't work very well or whatever

00:10:42   That's not like a failure of the product that just means our expectations were a little off

00:10:47   And now we have to figure out what is it good for if anything and I think you know

00:10:51   Every other like major new tech product category. They've all gone through similar arcs

00:10:57   there have been very few exceptions that were just instant hits and instant like perfect market and

00:11:02   Usefulness fits right right at the right at the door, you know, we've had a few complaints

00:11:06   I've seen a few complaints people who are like what you know, I'm so down on division Pro, you know

00:11:11   Why am I such a you know, evil person insulting the work of all these hard engineers or whatever and I don't really see it

00:11:19   That way I think this is a product that has a lot of potential most of which is unrealized so far

00:11:26   Not because it's a flop or a failure, but because it's brand new we try, you know

00:11:31   I've said this many times like we we always whenever a new category is coming out

00:11:35   We always project our needs from the current things. We know onto that

00:11:39   So, oh the watch will replace the smartphone or whatever. I'll get all my work done on my iPad

00:11:44   I wanted to buy a laptop and ever again like that kind of thing and what we see over and over again is

00:11:48   That might be true for some people but not for most and then we figure out what it is good for and it finds its market

00:11:56   We're in the very early stages of this

00:11:58   It's way too soon to declare anything great or terrible for any particular use and it's gonna take time to sort it all out. I

00:12:07   Feel as though and maybe maybe I am in over indexing on my own personal experience

00:12:12   But I feel as though I didn't hear a lot about

00:12:15   Revolutionary is a bit dramatic but like revolutionary apps that that were available at launch day

00:12:22   I haven't had the chance to try black box for example

00:12:25   But I've understood black box is one of those apps and certainly it was amazing on

00:12:29   IOS and I loved it. I haven't had a chance to try it on vision Pro yet, but I've heard it's very very good

00:12:35   But there wasn't too much like crouton is another one that I've heard is that's a recipe app that that does some really cool and great

00:12:42   Stuff with like timers and placing a timer like over the pot you're cooking you saw this enjoy in a Stearns video

00:12:46   Don't forget the television app by sandwich. That's really cool

00:12:49   Well, so that's what I was that's exactly where I was going with. This is that television

00:12:53   I don't think was available at launch although honestly, you know, we're a month later or whatever

00:12:57   so it's not been not even a month later, so it was available shortly thereafter and

00:13:02   Television is definitely very very cool. And my understanding is that YouTube support for it is coming out soon

00:13:08   So, I'm sorry

00:13:08   I should back up television allows you to put one of what feels like an infinite number of TVs like physically set-top

00:13:15   TVs that you would see in the house like when you and you or me or John was growing up

00:13:20   You can just stick that in your space and have it on as like an ambient background noise

00:13:24   Which John has talked quite a bit about how much he hates that but I don't mind it

00:13:28   And so you can stick a TV somewhere put your own, you know video file in it or presumably

00:13:33   YouTube soon and just have that play in the background and it's spatial audio

00:13:37   So you hear it off in the corner of your room if that's where you put it and so on

00:13:40   It has to be in the background. I don't think that's part of the app

00:13:42   You could just put it right in front of you and watch it like it's that is true

00:13:46   That is very strange that you've decided this this is the app to put on a television in the background

00:13:51   Well, that's fair

00:13:53   But in any case another great example this I don't remember the name of the app offhand

00:13:57   but I just tried earlier today some app by for flight that lets you see it puts like a disc with a

00:14:05   Mildly 3d version of the landscape around an airport and we'll show you real-time flights coming in and out of that airport

00:14:13   It's one of those things that's kind of silly and it doesn't really need the vision Pro

00:14:20   But damn if it isn't cool the vision Pro, you know what I mean?

00:14:23   And it's stuff like that should be able to trace the paths for the planes to land with your finger

00:14:27   Yeah, right. Oh, man. I love flight control so much. That was my favorite up to this day might be my favorite

00:14:32   iPhone game that would have been actually a good vision Pro launch app if the people who currently own that IP

00:14:38   Did like flight control and it was basically just flight control but in 3d really hard to do with the hand tracking that Apple offers

00:14:44   Now though I imagine yeah

00:14:46   very true

00:14:47   But anyways, my point that I'm that I'm getting at slowly here is that I feel like we're starting to see a bunch of much

00:14:55   More interesting apps come out and like take call sheet for an example

00:14:59   I'd like to think it's going to be pretty good on vision Pro, but there's nothing

00:15:03   Especially unique about the vision Pro build. Well, all I'm really doing is making the iPad build

00:15:08   Fit in in the platform and follow the platform conventions and things like that

00:15:11   There's nothing that's unique about it for the vision Pro in terms of like, you know

00:15:16   Having it be particularly spatial or anything like that

00:15:19   It's just it's just a very fancy iPad app and and I feel like things like television like this for flight app whose name escapes

00:15:26   Me I think the in crouton in black box. I think those apps are

00:15:31   Better examples of thinking outside the box with vision OS and I suspect over time and I think this is basically what you're saying Marco

00:15:39   Over time we're gonna see more and more of that as we discover

00:15:42   What is this?

00:15:42   What is this device really good for and to quickly answer the question that you've kind of implied?

00:15:48   You sort of asked before like I mean, obviously I didn't return mine

00:15:52   But I don't know that I would have spent the money on one originally if it wasn't for you know

00:15:56   the professional obligation that I feel like I have

00:15:58   But I do like having it like if you if you consider that obscene amount of money awash at this point

00:16:04   I really like having it and I am probably going to be taking some plane travel next month and

00:16:09   Assuming I have the gumption to be that guy

00:16:12   You bet I'm gonna be watching a movie on the plane or doing work or whatever the case may be

00:16:16   So yeah, I it is an extremely cool device and if any of us seem down on it

00:16:20   I think I speak for Marco and seeing this, you know, if we're down on it, we sound like we're down on it

00:16:24   I don't think we mean to at all. It's extremely cool and extremely fun

00:16:27   It's just everyone including the three of us slash two of us are trying to figure out where it fits in our lives

00:16:32   Yeah, exactly. And I think it's gonna be very much like, you know, it's to bring it back to our roots here

00:16:39   Like starting a car in fifth gear like you can do it. It's gonna be a slow start

00:16:45   you know, it's it's it's a little bit challenging, but it is possible to do and

00:16:50   Eventually, you can get something you can get to a pretty great place

00:16:54   And I think this is just gonna have a very slow build up

00:16:58   We don't know what to do with it Apple doesn't know what to do with it, but we can tell it's really cool

00:17:02   Some people have found some things to do with it already and we're gonna just grow them from here and it is largely a dev kit

00:17:08   For developers right now again, like I don't think there's much of an app market to speak of yet

00:17:13   But again, it's so early days. We're not gonna know yet

00:17:17   We're not no one's gonna be able to declare this like oh this thing is great or this thing is terrible

00:17:21   Because there's just so much

00:17:23   so far unrealized potential that will just take a long time to develop like I'm talking on the order of

00:17:29   Probably years not months

00:17:31   like it's probably going to be a couple of years before there's really like a decent amount of stuff on vision Pro decent amount of

00:17:36   Reasons to buy one for most people, you know

00:17:39   And and certainly it's gonna take longer than that for the prices to come down and for the capabilities to get better

00:17:43   So it's gonna be a slow process, but I think it is going to move forward

00:17:49   It's just gonna you know, it might be it might take a while for us to really see that. Yep agreed

00:17:54   But we're not talking about vision Pro this week. No, no

00:17:56   While you were talking I pulled this item which I was gonna say for next week's follow-up

00:18:01   But it is very relevant to what you just discussed

00:18:03   So new top item new top item breaking news vision Pro demand is higher than expected returns down to 1%

00:18:10   Reports 9 to 5 Mac Ming Chi Kuo writes the US shipments are expected to be between 200 and 250,000 units this year better than Apple's

00:18:17   original estimate of 150 to 200,000

00:18:20   Apparently according to 9 to 5 Mac Apple has asked suppliers to increase production which quote which Ming Chi Kuo believes is due to a mix

00:18:26   Of relatively high US demand and plans to roll out sales in other countries in the coming months

00:18:31   I don't know what Ming Chi Kuo would know about Apple's return rates

00:18:34   But I would expect him to know about that Apple has asked suppliers to increase production because that's his beat Apple supply chain

00:18:42   And I feel like this is very counter to the you know

00:18:45   The very predictable story of like people are returning them

00:18:48   No one wants them sales are down or even market was saying you could get one immediately

00:18:51   That means they're doing badly

00:18:52   but whatever Apple's estimates were apparently they either they either did a conservative first order and now are asking for more or

00:18:59   They just really didn't think they would sell this money. So I think it's doing fine

00:19:02   I think it's doing as expected for a year one sales of an expensive weird thing

00:19:06   Anonymous writes I work as an applied cryptographer and have been researching this stuff for several years including deploying it into production systems at my

00:19:12   Jobby job one minor correction to how the PQ hybrid scheme was described

00:19:16   It's not that the data would be encrypted twice once with classical crypto like ECD H and then twice with PQC

00:19:24   rather two separate shared secrets are established one classical one PQC and then combined cryptographically to form a single session key that

00:19:31   inherits the security properties of both crypto systems with a single encrypt operation

00:19:35   That's pretty neat

00:19:36   The reason for this is not entirely to hedge against potential bugs in the PQC implementation

00:19:40   But also to hedge against the selected PQC algorithm itself becoming broken by continued crypt analysis

00:19:45   And that's not such a crazy notion in 2022 one of the finalist algorithms for NIST's

00:19:50   PQC selection process the algorithm is called psych as IKE which I love was broken with a ten-year-old laptop whoopsie-dipsies

00:19:57   So keeping the classical crypto in the equation means that you at least fall back to the security of today

00:20:02   Which is battle-hardened for millions of hours of research attempting unsuccessfully to break it

00:20:06   I thought that was neat like the because a post quantum cryptography is so new it hasn't really been battle tested

00:20:13   So people have ideas we think this will be you know protected against quantum computers and oops

00:20:19   It's not protected against a ten-year-old laptop. Well, let's try let's try again, right?

00:20:23   And so that's you know, I I thought it was like, okay bugs and apples implementation

00:20:27   What if they messed it up or whatever, but it could just be they implemented it perfectly and but the algorithm is so new

00:20:32   That it doesn't perform as expected that happens with all you know

00:20:37   Cryptography things like that all the weaknesses that were found in things that were once considered a state-of-the-art like, you know

00:20:43   the original RSA MD 5 all these things that are

00:20:46   Much less strong now than we thought they were back in the day and that could happen with

00:20:50   Apple selection of their post quantum cryptography thing. So underneath it all is the cryptography

00:20:55   They've been using up till now which has you know, thus far so the test of time continuing another

00:21:00   Peculiarity, I wanted to call out was the choice of security levels in Apple's hybrid construction

00:21:04   They're using the PQC algorithm Kyber 1024

00:21:08   Which is roughly equivalent to the security level of an AES 256 or in NIST's parlance a level 5

00:21:14   But they're combining with the elliptic curve algorithm p256, which is roughly equivalent to AES 128 or level 1 in NIST's

00:21:20   parlance and IST

00:21:22   The level terminology is confusing because Apple seems to have invented their own leveling system. That is unrelated to the levels

00:21:27   I mentioned here, but what that tells me is that they are really skeptical of Kyber

00:21:33   So they are going with the highest security level possible while keeping the lower classical crypto level presumably

00:21:39   This is so that they continue doing their comparatively more efficient per message rekeying on the classical portion of the hybrid construction

00:21:46   Yeah, if there's doubts about the post quantum thing and you have a choice of strength

00:21:50   Just pick the strongest one and cross your fingers and you know

00:21:53   Just keep doing the the classical one in the you know in the way that's efficient and doesn't you know burn more resources and take

00:22:00   More time. I think the Apple's post quantum cryptography approach for messages is

00:22:05   Very sound and well-considered doesn't mean that they're not gonna have to you know, take a second or third pass on it

00:22:11   But it's better to move now for the reasons we talked about last week that like we're not

00:22:15   There's no quantum computers out there now that are able to efficiently crack Apple's systems

00:22:21   But if someone's storing a bunch of iMessage data now by intercepting it and they have this pile of encrypted stuff that they think they

00:22:27   Can't read you don't want them cracking that open 10 20 years from now when they can read it

00:22:32   So the sooner Apple starts the big conversion of like sort of silently in the background kind of like they did with APFS

00:22:37   Silently in the background all your iMessage conversations will start converting to this as long as everyone who's participating them has at least iOS

00:22:43   17.4 or whatever the other equivalent versions of yeah, it's good to get this

00:22:47   transition going

00:22:49   John males writes something I discovered recently you can download your data from Apple in Google takeout style including Apple notes from privacy

00:22:56   Apple calm the notes are downloaded in a format that includes the data importing the data back into notes would be tricky. I presume

00:23:02   If I knew about this already or I forgot about it, but as soon as I saw this

00:23:06   I'm like, I've been looking for something to export notes

00:23:08   I think maybe last time I did it that was using some app or script that exports them as PDF or just exports the text

00:23:13   or whatever, but I took a look at it and it the privacy that Apple like home thing is

00:23:17   Structured very much like Google takeout, which is just sort of like a little, you know form that you fill out

00:23:23   What do you want to export how many files do you want it in?

00:23:26   You can pick like a maximum size give it to me and files no bigger than five gigabytes or whatever you want

00:23:31   And just like Google takeout you finish filling out the form and it says, okay, we're working on your export

00:23:36   We'll send you an email and it's done unlike Google takeout. This seems to take a long time

00:23:40   I requested my notes archive just my notes archive which is not that big

00:23:45   I have maybe a thousand notes not a lot of attachments and then not a lot of images

00:23:48   Two days ago and they're still working on it. So Google takeout

00:23:52   I mean Google takeout does take some amount of time, but I don't think I've ever waited more than 24 hours

00:23:56   For my Google takeout of my like gigs and gigs of Gmail, so I'll tell you how it goes

00:24:00   I did the takeout thing because I wanted to see what format does it give it to me in any format?

00:24:05   It's probably better than nothing. So I may add this to my sort of annual like paranoid data dump backup of online stuff because at this

00:24:12   Point I have a lot of stuff and notes and I would be sad if it all went away due to some weird bug

00:24:17   Is this gonna be a better alternative than just having some app like read the SQLite file in Mac OS and dump it for you?

00:24:24   I will say like I mean part of what's in the notes is I have these nicely formatted documents with like

00:24:29   photos and text coloring and like in inline images and styled text and you know, like they're nice documents and so if I just had like

00:24:37   You know if I just dumped the text file from some blob and sequel light plus a bunch of attachment images

00:24:43   That's not the same thing. You know what I mean? But I will see what for on this isn't it could be equally useless

00:24:47   I'm hoping it is something that

00:24:49   Preserves some of the fidelity of the the work I've put into some of the more complicated documents like

00:24:54   The one where I'm trying to pick out a new couch

00:24:56   It's like seven years old and we still haven't bought a new couch

00:24:58   but there's a lot of pictures of couches in there and URLs and informations and measurements and images and

00:25:03   Map locations for stores that have stuff and yeah, I would want that to be preserved

00:25:08   Wait, are you gonna actually buy new couch? That's major news. I mean signs say no, but

00:25:14   For many years now, I've been trying to buy a new couch and failing most recently we did a tour of like five local furniture

00:25:21   Stores to sit on candidate couches and we still bought nothing. So

00:25:24   Yeah, cuz you know remind the listeners how many new couches have you bought in your entire life never bought a couch never

00:25:32   I'm using my

00:25:35   Grandparents hand-me-down couches currently they bought them. These are their new couches. So they bought them probably in the late 80s early 90s

00:25:42   They're both sleepers and they weigh a ton. Oh, yeah, you're never getting out of your house

00:25:46   I carried them into my house. I carried them from my grandmother's house in New Jersey into into a

00:25:50   You haul like rental truck and then accidentally drove it on the parkway. Sorry everybody

00:25:56   We've all been there. Yeah, I just I just didn't think I'm in a truck now

00:26:01   It's so you know, you know, like I know parkways aren't for trucks

00:26:04   But what kind of any would take a truck on the parkway? Everybody knows that. Oh, I didn't realize I'm a truck now

00:26:10   No, we've been also looking to get a couch not a particularly actively in the same way

00:26:15   It sounds like you are and we have not done so in the last few years and we need to not we don't have

00:26:20   couches from late 80s, but

00:26:22   We are in the market as well. And I don't know. I just I haven't found the one that sticks for me

00:26:27   Yeah, it's couches are tough

00:26:29   Right something got the hardest of line couches

00:26:30   But yeah, they're just and you have to you have to go sit in them

00:26:34   Like you have to find them in a store. I did one on the sitting tour. I was like, this is it

00:26:37   I've candidate couches. They're all like roughly the right measurements. They have all the things I want about them

00:26:42   I'm gonna sit on them and you'd sit on them and you'd be like what I've said to myself was

00:26:45   Grandma's couch that is like torn to shreds and incredibly ugly. It's more comfortable than this

00:26:50   It's sad to say that but it was true

00:26:52   So I'm not gonna pay all this money for a couch that is I mean

00:26:55   It's gonna be less ugly but not as comfortable as the current one. We have it's rough

00:26:59   Yeah

00:26:59   It is shocking how difficult it is to find a couch that

00:27:02   Fits you comfort wise like you have to just go to a big furniture store and sit in a whole bunch of them and you

00:27:07   Usually at the end of that you'll have either one or zero that you like. Yep can confirm

00:27:12   All right, moving right along Adam whirl

00:27:15   Writes that Marco is right. Hey calibration can prevent a magnetic watch band from throwing off the compass

00:27:20   I'm an aerospace engineer and satellites can use magnetometer magnetometers

00:27:25   I hope I pronounced that right to figure out which way they're pointing even with magnets and ferrous metals nearby

00:27:30   The key is that those disturbances are fixed with respect to the satellite or watch while the Earth's magnetic field is locked to the earth

00:27:36   Use GPS to look up the local magnetic field take measurements while rotating the device and solve for the calibration

00:27:41   Parameters normal watch behavior involves a lot of movement and rotation

00:27:44   So this could be entirely transparent to the user or it could be a prompted swirling motion the iPhone compass apps sometimes asked for

00:27:50   Yeah, this is the key bit. We're missing out. I was missing the last one

00:27:54   It's like oh, what about third-party watch bands?

00:27:55   They have magnets that Apple doesn't know the strength of that doesn't matter because the Earth's magnetic field is always in the same place

00:28:03   Right. So even if you put different strength magnets or whatever that Apple didn't anticipate the key is

00:28:08   Whatever those things are pick any strengths you want they're going to be attached to the watch

00:28:13   But the Earth's magnetic field is not attached to the watch

00:28:16   So as the watch moves in your normal usage or if you're asked to swirl it or whatever

00:28:19   The Earth's magnetic field will still always be pointing in the same direction

00:28:22   indeed

00:28:24   Zev Eisenberg writes regarding magnets messing with the magnetometer aka the compass and watches the core motion framework can cancel it out and it's not

00:28:32   Just about calibration of onboard magnets at the factory all iOS devices with magnetometer

00:28:36   Except the original iPad also have a gyroscope core motion takes them both into account to cancel out magnets moving with the device

00:28:42   See mag safe car mounts don't break your compass

00:28:44   Guessing the watch already does the same with two with the same two sensors

00:28:49   So now we can to do it or in theory there is even a framework to do it

00:28:52   So this seems I mean not that this makes it any more plausible that the straps are gonna be attached with magnets

00:28:57   But we'll see at least it doesn't cancel it out

00:28:59   Orlando Herrera writes on a professional cinematographer and camera operator and I dabble with iOS and now vision OS development as a hobby

00:29:05   Based on my observations the pass-through cameras at the are at the heart of the color and motion blur issues when using

00:29:11   Pass-through, I suspect the shutter speed of the cameras is slower possibly to reduce the risk of triggering adverse reactions and individuals who are sensitive to strobing

00:29:19   You can see the degree of motion blur change based on whether or not you are in a well-lit environment versus a dim environment

00:29:25   You can also observe that the pass-through video motion blur is different than the motion blur of vision OS windows

00:29:30   Which further indicates it's the cameras not the OLED screens that causes behavior

00:29:33   Similarly, I think the vibrancy saturation depth of colors when viewing vision OS windows and content is higher than the pass-through because the pass-through color

00:29:41   Bit depth is lower to reduce processing time. So the device can maintain its low latency target

00:29:46   I imagine an improved pair of processors and a future device could increase the color bit depth while maintaining low latency

00:29:52   So the pastor experience could gain HDR and a higher percentage of the p3 gamut

00:29:56   Do you find this ring true to you because I'm asking about the motion blur which I didn't notice myself is the the the pet

00:30:02   Does the pass-through have different motion blur than like window contents?

00:30:06   You're asking the wrong person. I can't I don't see it either. So I'm not sure

00:30:10   I mean this makes sense to me because like that the cameras on the vision Pro are I mean, they're they're fine

00:30:15   But they're not going to be you know

00:30:18   the the fidelity of things that are being drawn in vision OS is obviously going to be as perfect as it can be because they're

00:30:23   Not passing through a camera and a sensor or whatever and yeah cameras with sensors that small especially in the room is dark

00:30:30   They're gonna have to keep the shutters open for a longer period of time to get enough light and that's definitely gonna cause blur

00:30:35   But what I had heard is for some people complaining that there was a blur on things when they move their head

00:30:40   Including things like windows of vision OS applications. Yeah in my in my experience

00:30:45   I I think the any kind of motion blurring is true of the vision OS windows as well

00:30:50   I noticed it in particular when trying to like scroll text and read it in Safari just you know within the vision Pro Safari app

00:30:57   Again, it's not like unusable. But if you notice the motion blur in other areas, you will notice it there, too

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00:33:24   Gottfried chin writes I recently saw an interview using metas version of personas called Kodak avatars. They are

00:33:35   Basically photo realistic, but the scanning process is highly complex and not feasible with consumer hardware

00:33:40   I think it shows that the current technical challenge is the high quality scan

00:33:43   The interview was done using quest Pro which I assume is inferior division Pro regarding device sensors

00:33:48   So I wonder if Apple should offer high quality persona scanning stations in Apple stores

00:33:52   So you can do an optional HD scan if you want

00:33:54   I mean, I don't know one way or the other but I will tell you that I saw

00:33:57   You know a couple of stills from this video and my goodness

00:33:59   The quality is night and day better than the personas and I say this as a persona apologist. Well, so here's the thing about the

00:34:06   Avatars these Kodak avatars obviously, you know setting aside the fact that I don't know what they use to scan them

00:34:13   Maybe they use like the fancy laser scanner or whatever

00:34:15   but it's not you know, as we said last time we discussed this the miracle of the personas as you take the headset that you

00:34:20   Bought you just pointed your face for two seconds and it gives you one. This is something else but

00:34:25   The uncanny value which people just throw out that phrase without re-explaining and just assume everyone knows what it is

00:34:30   But the uncanny value is the idea which I don't think is ever really even proven out

00:34:34   But people just accept it because it feels right to them

00:34:36   But anyway, the idea is that as you make something more and more realistic looking it gets more and more appealing to you

00:34:42   Until you get really really close to it being like perfect like wow

00:34:46   This is totally convincing as a human and you get really really close to it

00:34:49   And then it takes a huge dip and that is the uncanny value. It's like boy

00:34:52   I was liking these avatars more and more as you made them better and better

00:34:55   But then all of a sudden right when you got close to them being perfect now

00:34:59   I don't like it at all because it's a scary death mask, right?

00:35:01   There's a lot of questions with this

00:35:04   How close do you have to get to being perfect for the uncanny value to take place?

00:35:09   If you look at the original paper or whatever

00:35:10   It's just kind of like a wavy line craft and it's like they don't really make any strong stances about how close you have to

00:35:14   Get it's just a general trend. It's like things look better right up until they don't but then after you're perfect again

00:35:20   You know people like them and this is all about how does it feel to a person has it does it appeal to a person?

00:35:24   because you want your avatar to be appealing not repulsive to a person I say all this because these

00:35:30   Much more finely detailed much more photorealistic avatars the the codec avatars from Facebook

00:35:36   Are I think further into the uncanny valley than personas? Oh, they are closer to being perfect

00:35:44   They're better like in that uncanny valley graph

00:35:46   I think they are like over the edge of the rollercoaster thing and screaming down in the middle of it like so

00:35:52   You know the the personas ones what they have going for them. Is that their blurriness and sort of slight cartoonish ness?

00:36:00   Helps keep them in my opinion. Anyway in my personal uncanny valley graph for these

00:36:04   Farther up the hill, you know farther up the big dip that is the uncanny valley in that graph, you know

00:36:10   You can take a look

00:36:12   We'll link to the the paper about this and Facebook's video about it from was it from a couple years ago a couple months ago

00:36:17   You decide whether you think that is farther into your uncanny valley or not

00:36:22   But part of the problem with doing like actual photorealistic humans where there is not a bunch of like fuzzy

00:36:28   Gaussian blur around everything and sort of you know, a little bit of caricature is that as you know

00:36:33   People who make 3d movies and games I've known for many many years

00:36:36   it's really difficult to do convincing humans because we know what they look like and things like subsurface scattering underneath translucent skin a

00:36:43   Technology that was sort of pioneered maybe 15 years ago and is now pretty commonplace is

00:36:48   Necessary for you to not look like you're not made of plastic and I think this is doing that

00:36:54   But doing that well gets expensive real fast. And then if you see these things in motion, they're not

00:37:02   You'll see the video of it but you can see the actual human wearing the headset and then you see their avatar

00:37:07   And I feel like the if you look at the motion of the human the avatar seems

00:37:12   Stiffer like maybe they're not moving all the parts of it

00:37:17   Like maybe the mouth doesn't move quite as much and when the mouth moves like the earlobe doesn't move and you might not think those

00:37:22   are connected but on a person like when you talk

00:37:24   More than just your lips moves and that's very difficult to do unless you carefully model or observe that which is why I think

00:37:31   Apple's personas when you look at this Apple's persona starts to look a lot more like me emojis because they

00:37:36   Apple has chosen the three or four or five

00:37:39   Most important parts that need to move and they've probably put in some simple heuristics of saying look

00:37:44   We can't tell when the earlobe twitches

00:37:46   But basically every time they make this noise at this volume with this mouth sound move the earlobe a little bit or whatever

00:37:52   And I think they're doing a little bit more of like what animators do which is

00:37:55   Just give me the gist of it and use what you know about how people talk to make it convincing

00:38:00   These ones look a little bit more death-masky to me

00:38:03   But hey, everyone has their own opinion on these so you should take a look at it as for the question though

00:38:07   Should Apple have high-quality persona scanning stations?

00:38:09   Well, I think not if they end up looking like this, but either way, it's not it's not feasible

00:38:13   Like if they ever end up selling a whole bunch of vision pros

00:38:16   You can't have people lining up at the the Apple store to get their scans

00:38:20   The whole point is the device should do it for you

00:38:21   So that they should continue to work the solution the way they have you buy the device you take it home you do the scan

00:38:26   The privacy of your own home after you've done your hair and makeup the way you like it

00:38:30   tweak it to your heart's content and

00:38:32   They should just keep making that better rather than saying you need to come in for a three-hour session in our laser scanning booth. I

00:38:37   Disagree with you with regard to these Kodak avatars. I think these look incredible

00:38:42   I really really do and and to me the personas which again I did I am a defender of the personas

00:38:49   I think that they are a pretty good idea and they work pretty well. I think the Kodak avatars look way way better

00:38:54   Do you think they're on the other side of the uncanny valley or they haven't dipped into it yet?

00:38:57   Do you know the only uncanny valley chart I'm talking about? I gotta find. Yeah. Yeah. I think that the Kodak

00:39:01   I'm sorry, the personas are dipping into the uncanny valley

00:39:05   I certainly don't think they're at the bottom of the uncanny valley by any stretch

00:39:08   I think they're dipping in but if you think the personas look better than you like the personas aren't even in the uncanny valley for

00:39:14   You yet, right? Correct. Yep. I would agree with that. I would agree with that

00:39:17   Retelling of my opinion. I don't want to I don't want to imply that you feel the same way

00:39:20   This is kind of like a Bezos trade. I just put a link from the Wikipedia page to the uncanny valley thing and

00:39:25   I

00:39:27   Mean, I guess like where where is the dip? Is it like at 90 ish percent? It's a very fudgy. Yeah. Yeah

00:39:34   No to me in I feel like the personas are starting down the cliff

00:39:40   But they haven't fallen yet

00:39:41   And I feel like this is comfortably on the upswing if not the top on the other side of the valley for me

00:39:47   You're gonna say other side. All right. Well, maybe you need to play more video games

00:39:50   Yeah, actually that's probably true

00:39:52   That's actually a really really good point because these look about as good as like, you know

00:39:56   The cutscenes and last of us part two, for example, you know, that's a really good point

00:40:00   Actually, I think you were saying it kind of tongue-in-cheek, but I think you're right because I very rarely play any video games

00:40:05   I don't know what the state of the art is on this sort of stuff yet, but kind of tangentially related to this

00:40:10   Recently, I did a podcast

00:40:12   with Wojciech

00:40:15   I'm not even gonna try to pronounce his last name

00:40:17   I'm so sorry, but there was a Polish podcast which obviously I don't speak Polish

00:40:21   But you know, he speaks phenomenal English and we did this in the same style as as Gruber in sandwich

00:40:28   Adam Lisagor on the talk show and yeah, we were doing this just with our personas and I've never met him in person

00:40:35   And so I don't know what he looks like and to me his persona looked completely good like completely big great even

00:40:42   But I think that's in no small part

00:40:44   In fact entirely because I don't know what he actually looks like like I've seen photographs of him, you know from time to time

00:40:49   But his hair is not blurry in real life. It was fair, you know

00:40:52   but I think you get the point I'm driving that is when you don't have a

00:40:55   Relationship a physical relationship with this person in so far as you've never been in the same space before it

00:41:01   I thought the personas were great. Actually, it didn't feel unnatural to me at all now

00:41:07   that's probably that would be very different if I was talking to you or Marco or Mike or Jason or what have you but

00:41:14   But for an instance where this person who is not a stranger but is sort of kind of a stranger like I'm underselling our relationship

00:41:21   You get my point

00:41:22   It was very passable to me and then there's a video

00:41:26   There's YouTube video which will English I know it's if you want to see this for yourself, but I thought it was really good

00:41:30   And teach your own

00:41:32   All right, moving right along

00:41:34   There's a gate now for the vision Pro and it's crack gate

00:41:37   some Apple vision Pro units develop an identical crack and the cover glass reports Mac rumors a

00:41:42   Small number of Apple vision Pro owners have claimed that their headsets developed a hairline crack right down the middle of the front cover glass

00:41:48   Despite never having been dropped or mishandled and there's a link in this article that makes it pretty clear what they're talking about

00:41:54   Yeah, I mean this kind of thing like it looks like, you know, it's kind of a standard, you know

00:41:58   Manufacturing defect or weakness with like a certain stress point in the glass that probably is you know

00:42:04   No fault to the people who are using it

00:42:07   Again, it's unfortunate but it's a version one product and of a very very complicated design

00:42:13   so

00:42:14   This kind of stuff happens. They'll fix it. It'll be fine in a long run

00:42:18   All right, there is breaking news. This was just today wasn't it as we record

00:42:23   Apple has officially canceled project Titan ending a decade long and allegedly 10 billion

00:42:31   billion billion dollar efforts this is reported by Bloomberg and also the New York Times will put links in the show notes from

00:42:38   Bloomberg Apple Inc is canceling a decade-long effort to build an electric car according to people with knowledge of the matter

00:42:43   Abandoning one of the most ambitious projects in the history of the company Apple made the disclosure internally Tuesday

00:42:48   Surprising the nearly 2,000 employees working on the project. Was it really that much of a surprise? Yeah, I guess fair fair

00:42:54   The decision was shared by chief operating officer Jeff Williams and Kevin Lynch a vice president in charge of the efforts

00:42:59   the two executives told staffers that the project will begin winding down and that many employees on the team working on the car known as

00:43:05   special projects grouped or SPG will be shifted to the artificial intelligence division under executive John John

00:43:11   Giannandrea something like that. I'm sorry. Those employees will focus on generative AI projects and increasingly key priority for the company

00:43:19   Interesting confluence of events here because this you know

00:43:23   The fact that they're taking some employee first some employees are gonna be leaving the people who knew how to build cars

00:43:27   I'm not sure Apple needs those people but shifting the other employees to AI projects made me think of exactly

00:43:33   You know, I was even thinking of blogging this but enough time because it just came out today how I would sum up

00:43:38   This, you know 10-year foray into the car project as we always called it project Titan

00:43:44   for Apple and it's related to AI

00:43:48   When I was a kid, I read a lot about computers and stuff and I used to read a lot about AI because who wouldn't

00:43:55   It's cool. You watch 2001, you know the you're learning about computers

00:43:59   You want to learn about computers that are like hell 9000, but don't kill people spoiler alert. Yeah, seriously, I've never seen it. Sorry

00:44:06   When our computer is gonna be smart and talk like people that'll be so cool. It's all in all the science fiction

00:44:12   Let me learn about where computers are today. And let me tell you when I was a kid in the 70s

00:44:17   you'd see

00:44:19   Stories on PBS and books that I'd check out of the library and stuff that would they would say like look here's here's this

00:44:25   computer they made and here's what it can do and

00:44:28   People were super excited

00:44:32   Like look what we've made this do I know I know it doesn't seem that smart to you

00:44:36   but I can talk to it and ask it questions and it understands the sentence and it knows what the different parts of the

00:44:40   sentence mean and it can reason about things and make inferences and respond to me and

00:44:44   People were so excited about that and I'd say and you know what look at computer chips

00:44:49   It's 1974 but in 1975 computer chips gonna be even better in the 1976. They're gonna be even better

00:44:54   And if you extrapolate on this those graph

00:44:56   You can see that in the year 2000 computer chips are just gonna be massively more powerful than they are now

00:45:03   And then you look at this AI thing and look what we've done now and it's so it's kind of dumb now

00:45:08   But we're on the right track, right?

00:45:10   and so if we just follow this graph by the year 1988 computers should be smarter than any human on the planet and

00:45:16   This is what I read about when I was a kid and when I got a little bit older

00:45:20   You kind of realized that since the 60s or the 50s or whenever they first tried to do this

00:45:25   Everybody thought how 9000 is gonna be like, you know at most 20 years in the future because just look at this graph, right?

00:45:31   I mean, I didn't know the term Moore's law then or whatever, but I was experiencing the advance of technology

00:45:36   Which was my computers were getting faster and faster all the time and the video games

00:45:41   I played in the 70s were so much worse than the video games. I played in the 80s and 90s or whatever

00:45:45   So you I was living the progression and yet artificial intelligence before the current AI trend that is in a computer that thinks and talks

00:45:53   Like a person like again how 9000 but not murderous or any other things to see in sci-fi

00:45:58   Very smart people

00:46:02   Really believed that you know, although we what we have now is not great in five to ten years

00:46:07   It'll be better and in 20 years

00:46:08   It will be the most intelligent thing on the planet Earth and as part of my you know

00:46:13   Let's talk about this in rectus ages ago the discovering the parameters of the world. Can you move things with your mind?

00:46:19   How big is the universe?

00:46:21   Are we gonna make computers that think one of the parameters of the world was people always kind of think?

00:46:26   breakeven fusion and artificial intelligence are much closer than they actually are and

00:46:31   Excited as I was about it as the years went by

00:46:34   And you saw the same stories and everyone said it's probably five to ten years in the future

00:46:38   You figured out that these people hadn't yet found the right approach

00:46:43   To fit to this problem. We found the right approach to flying which is like fixed-wing aircraft with engines

00:46:49   We found the right approach to doing math because we're getting really good at that with our computer chips that that approach

00:46:55   We just like that. That's the way just start scaling it, you know, and that's served us well up until today

00:47:00   But we haven't yet found the right approach to computers that can think and so with the car project

00:47:09   Apple like like all those excited scientists in the 70s that I was reading about and

00:47:13   like so many other companies in the world decided that

00:47:17   Cars that drive themselves are probably right around the corner. Look what we can do now

00:47:23   It's pretty impressive and if we just extrapolate and say if we just continue along this path and our computing resources get better like in

00:47:30   You know five to ten years

00:47:33   all of our cars are gonna have no steering wheels and they're gonna be driving ourselves because look at our progress and look how

00:47:38   Look what we're already able to do in such a short time

00:47:41   Surely by insert year that has already passed here

00:47:45   All the cars will be self-driving and driving will be obsolete

00:47:49   and

00:47:51   that's why Apple embarked on this project because if that's gonna be a thing that is a big disruption to the

00:47:56   Transportation world and Apple should probably be in on that and they were focusing on

00:48:00   Making a drive that making a car that was autonomous in some way and if you're wondering why Apple thinks they should make a car

00:48:06   It's not because you know, they just wanted to make something in an industry like in a low-margin industry

00:48:11   They wanted to get a part of they're like, well this this industry is about to be disrupted

00:48:15   In fact, we'll put a link in the show notes to Tim Cook an interview in 2017

00:48:19   where the interview was asking him essentially about the car project or about automotive stuff and Tim Cook flat-out says I

00:48:24   Think there's a disruption coming and it's because of autonomy

00:48:27   And you know Apple wants to be in on that and whatever vague way

00:48:31   He said it to not, you know mentioned unreleased products. A

00:48:35   Lot of people thought that uber thought that you know, we we hire drivers now

00:48:39   But kind of like Netflix sent people DVDs for a while

00:48:41   That's just how we're gonna start eventually. We're not gonna need the drivers

00:48:45   The cars will drive themselves so many companies looked at what they had and just like the AI people said

00:48:51   This is amazing. And in five years, it will be so much better

00:48:55   Turns out they did not have the right approach. No, no has the right approach yet

00:49:00   No one knows how to make a car that can drive itself as well as humans can drive in all conditions

00:49:04   It's not like it hasn't gotten better. It's gotten way way better

00:49:08   Waymo has cars that can totally drive themselves in limited circumstances and limited areas doing a pretty good job

00:49:15   but

00:49:17   even Waymo is approaching the limits of the techniques that it has been using so

00:49:22   Apple failing on this project is just a

00:49:25   consequence of us collectively as humans

00:49:29   Having not yet found the correct approach to make a car that drives itself

00:49:34   We can make a car that helps you drive a little bit better and the jury's still out on whether it helps you or not

00:49:39   Based on you know, you actually paying attention or not

00:49:42   But we haven't found the right approach where it's like if we just do this for five more years

00:49:47   We'll be there unlike for example, you know adding numbers together in your CPU

00:49:51   We look on the right approach for that right or planes or whatever and that's disappointing for everybody involved

00:49:57   It's if you're wondering why Apple spent ten billion dollars in ten years doing this

00:50:04   Important people at Apple like Tim Cook or if you read the New York Times story, Johnny Ive

00:50:08   Had convinced themselves or had been convinced by the hype or the other people they respect in the industry

00:50:15   That this was a thing

00:50:17   They thought they could do like they said look look at look at what Tesla's for example been able to do now

00:50:21   We're smarter than them and they're already almost there. Let's get on this

00:50:26   Maybe we can beat them to it because surely one of us is gonna crack this problem in the next five years

00:50:30   And the answer was no no one's gonna cry in the next five years

00:50:34   No one's gonna crack it in the next ten years. When are we gonna crack it?

00:50:37   I don't know is the current approach the right one seems like not you could but maybe it is and we just have to do

00:50:43   It for 20 more years, but like talk to the AI people

00:50:45   Everyone thinks what we've done is amazing. What we've achieved is amazing extrapolate and we'll get there and this is yet another

00:50:52   disappointing instance in my adult life of

00:50:55   Lots large portions of smart people in the world thinking that a thing was right around the corner and it wasn't which is weird because most

00:51:01   of the time if you listen to a tech podcast or you're interested in tech most of the time tech does sort of

00:51:06   Fulfill our dreams even more so like computers really did get way better

00:51:10   video games got so much better like so much if you if you could take like child me and show them like a

00:51:16   Mention again the last of us part two it would have exploded my brain

00:51:20   Right that really did happen just like everyone thought it do in fact maybe even faster the internet the internet look at that

00:51:26   Happened so much faster than people thought it wasn't people underestimated that but sometimes if you think something is around the corner

00:51:33   Sometimes you're gonna be wrong because it turns out you're barking up the wrong tree

00:51:36   And I think all of humanity so far has been barking up the wrong tree and getting cars that can drive themselves as well as humans

00:51:44   in all conditions and that's sad for

00:51:47   The little versions of me who are seven years old checking books out of the library about self-driving cars now

00:51:51   And they're gonna have to learn they guess they just didn't figure it out doesn't mean we're never gonna figure it out

00:51:55   We might eventually but Apple

00:51:57   Let's say Apple is taking a break for a few decades before they take another run at this because if it does become plausible

00:52:04   They should probably dive back in and participate in this industry, but right now

00:52:09   I think even Waymo had a big thing where they were like yeah

00:52:11   We're kind of giving up on the whole self-driving everywhere thing and we're just concentrating on limited circumstances

00:52:16   Everyone who has tried this has as they say in Dune they tried and failed they tried and died well

00:52:21   They didn't die, but you know the projects died, so I think this is

00:52:26   unsurprising but disappointing for little kids everywhere I

00:52:31   Think

00:52:34   You know the car project

00:52:36   We've been saying for a long time now that we didn't really understand why they were doing this obviously

00:52:43   It's very hard to judge with something that this secretive

00:52:46   We don't really know how much progress they were making but it sure has seemed like over time

00:52:51   This project has not been going well

00:52:53   We've heard of a number of reboots and reorganizations and changing directions change. You know there's been so much

00:52:59   You know change in the project trying to I guess get it to go in in a good direction

00:53:05   Well on that though like my 2017 video Tim Cook flat-out says we think there's going to be disruption on the automotive industry

00:53:11   And it's because of self-driving and automation essentially, right?

00:53:13   But then the most recent reboot that we heard about and talked about in the show was Apple said yeah forget about self-driving

00:53:18   We're just gonna do like we're still gonna do a car

00:53:21   But it'll just be like you know current sort of driver aid type stuff

00:53:25   And that is not the that was not the vision according to Tim Cook in 2017

00:53:29   It's not like oh, we saw my car cuz when I make a car

00:53:32   he thought there was going to be disruption related to automation and

00:53:35   that basically turned out to not be the case in the time frame that they cared about and so

00:53:41   You know changing the project like oh, let's reboot it, but now we're just gonna make a plain old car

00:53:46   That's like everyone else's car

00:53:47   It's not an exciting project

00:53:49   And I am very glad that Apple chose not to do it

00:53:51   Even if they had gotten the self-driving part to to progress further and and that was still the plan for the project

00:53:58   Even then I still don't think Apple is the right company to do that for lots of reasons

00:54:04   It doesn't really fit a lot of their their business shape and style and principles

00:54:10   You know we discussed recently how it seemed to be almost impossible to

00:54:14   fit that into their new carbon goals for instance like you know their goal with carbon neutrality is

00:54:19   To have their products be carbon neutral end-to-end over their entire lifetime including the energy they use during their useful lives

00:54:27   That's really hard for a car. Well the rumor is it was gonna be like a hundred grand

00:54:32   So maybe they'd sell so few of them that they could carbon offset every single

00:54:36   Because the volumes would be low, but yeah, it's it's different. I do really wonder

00:54:40   I mean maybe when they made that commitment

00:54:42   They kind of knew that the car project was gonna get canceled because you either

00:54:46   Don't sell a lot of cars and do a lot of carbon offsets

00:54:49   Or you can't meet your goals because they can't transform the world's energy

00:54:54   Infrastructure to be carbon neutral to power all their cars no and so that I feel like the the carbon plan

00:55:00   Was always at direct odds with the car project, and I don't know how they could have possibly ever resolved that and the other thing

00:55:07   Is like we've heard through a few different channels about Tim Cook really believing very strongly

00:55:13   allegedly even saying directly Apple products don't kill people

00:55:18   Period like Apple does not make products that kill people at least you know directly obviously you can text in your phone and crash

00:55:24   But they feel very strongly with that

00:55:25   And I think that's that's a very good thing both for the world and of course on a small level for their brand

00:55:29   And it's a luxury. It's a luxury for their because they're a company that currently doesn't sell things that can directly kill you, right?

00:55:37   And so they're getting they're thinking of getting into a business where you can't avoid that cars people dying car accidents, right?

00:55:43   So I don't know how he would square that stance or that's just like a soundbite really

00:55:48   But like the idea is we don't we don't want to be a company that does that

00:55:51   But we also want to get into the car business. Well. I have some bad news for you about cars

00:55:55   There's no such thing as a car that doesn't sometimes kill people due to car accidents at least not yet

00:56:01   maybe they thought they could make one again with the self-driving thing, but

00:56:05   You know that's that's kind of like you're making that choice like you could just keep making phones and computers

00:56:11   And they're not gonna like crash into you and kill you right, but you're choosing to try for a car

00:56:16   And that's you know that's changing things up again

00:56:19   We've we've been wondering for years why this project was still going on it seemed like it was a

00:56:24   Pretty long shot from the start and it seemed like it was never going super well

00:56:28   So I'm glad to hear that they finally axed it you know obviously

00:56:32   For all the tumult this is gonna cause the actual people working on it including probably a bunch of lost jobs. That's not great

00:56:38   But for the company strategically and and for the leadership to have chosen a direction

00:56:43   I think they made the right call I kind of don't know why they didn't make it years ago

00:56:46   But I'm sure they had their reasons whatever the reasons were now. They've made the right call this project is seemingly

00:56:52   You know really finally dead, and I think it's better that they don't continue to waste all of this

00:56:59   experimental money and and opportunity cost on

00:57:03   A project that's very unlikely to ever be very good for them because now they have freed up that capacity

00:57:09   Maybe not the exact people because it's different specialties, but they've at least freed up like that

00:57:13   Organizational capacity that money how about that sure you know the money is a big part of it of course

00:57:19   But also just you know focus talent. You know like there's other other limited resources. They have

00:57:24   Now they can focus that on

00:57:27   Products and and you know improvements to their other products that are much more likely to actually benefit them and their customers the car project

00:57:34   I was always kind of this you know massive moonshot

00:57:37   It was very very expensive and so if they're now redirecting that towards things like better Siri

00:57:44   You know which is what you know or you know whatever we're gonna call all their new AI efforts

00:57:48   That's way more likely to both a succeed and be to actually benefit their customers in useful ways and to benefit

00:57:55   the rest of their products together like

00:57:58   We see what Apple does they they share a lot of tech they share a lot of advancements

00:58:04   They share a lot of software between all the different platforms

00:58:06   They share parts they share techniques that like they share manufacturing you know strategies and things between all the different platforms

00:58:13   They share supplies and suppliers

00:58:15   With the car it was always kind of like does this have any chance of benefiting their other products not much

00:58:20   You know how would it even fit into their retail strategy who knows I mean?

00:58:24   It's not even clear from the outside how much carplay was shared with project. It seemed like not at all

00:58:29   So like except maybe like some dashboard design concept

00:58:33   Yeah, maybe some underlying stuff like it's it's so hard to tell and on this topic by the way not to get back into vision

00:58:37   Pro, but you know this is something that's come up with all the demos like when you see obviously AR kit and stuff

00:58:43   We saw all that coming out iOS and Mac OS. It's like. Oh, that's gonna be for the headset, right, and I'm yeah

00:58:47   Yes, there's a connection there right, but now that vision Pro is out, and you see universal control

00:58:52   It's easy to just retcon it and say I

00:58:55   Bet they did universal control for the headset, and it can't just came out earlier on Mac and iOS

00:59:01   That could be true, or it could be the reverse they did it on Mac

00:59:05   Oh, I owe an iOS and the headset to interpret team adopted it, but that's the nature of things inside Apple

00:59:09   They will share things

00:59:12   Between their projects when it makes sense to get the most value out of it and from the outside

00:59:17   It's very difficult to tell did for example universal control start with the headset team and and trickle down to iOS and Mac OS

00:59:24   Or was the reverse it doesn't really matter either way

00:59:27   They're getting the most bang for the buck out of that technology

00:59:31   They developed they developed universal control, and it has broad applicability across their products

00:59:35   And so now you look at the car project what things on in Mac OS iOS iPad OS or whatever have broad

00:59:42   Applicability to the car and vice-versa, and you know you go for carplay. It's like well carplay

00:59:47   That's got to be a thing, but because we know so little about the car and because carplay is such a odd duck

00:59:52   It's like maybe not even that was shared so I the best you can come up with is like maybe like whatever real-time

00:59:57   operating system and tooling and stuff they came up with the car they'll find a use for

01:00:00   But it's so hard to tell from the outside and the the synergies are not quite as obvious as like universal control or AR kit

01:00:08   Yeah

01:00:08   and I think there's probably just fewer of them in general and that like that's why I think

01:00:11   axing this project is the right move strategically for the company because

01:00:15   Now whatever the special projects group can work on can be things that

01:00:20   The company might have actual other use for in much larger scales because you know we see with Apple

01:00:27   They historically were very bad at multitasking

01:00:30   They've gotten a lot better in recent years

01:00:32   But still you you don't really want them like as a fan of their products and as a customer their products

01:00:37   You don't really want them to have

01:00:39   Massive distraction projects that don't benefit the products you use with vision Pro

01:00:45   We actually see that there is a decent amount of you know shared innovation between vision Pro and their other products

01:00:51   probably that we as the customers were able to benefit from with the car it seems like

01:00:56   Whatever, we would benefit from that would be much more limited with the other products

01:01:00   That was kind of an advantage though because you felt like well

01:01:02   They hired a lot of new car people to work on the car

01:01:05   So those people weren't even at Apple to begin with so you're not stealing them any people from other teams and because there's so little

01:01:10   Crossover I think for the ten years that this project ran

01:01:13   It was a money pit, and maybe it did suck in some important talent

01:01:19   But it was less of a drain than for example

01:01:21   Ios and the iPhone were or they were jobs came out on stage and said yeah

01:01:26   You're not getting a new version of Mac OS because we put all those people on the phone because it's more important

01:01:29   Sorry, I'm sure that did happen, but to a lesser extent just because so many more people had to be hired from

01:01:35   The car industry so that was that was one blessing

01:01:37   I think that's part of the reason this project lasted so long like the open secret that they were doing this and

01:01:42   Didn't you know it didn't sideline the whole company for a decade right the company continued to do what it was doing

01:01:49   Yes, there was some impact, but like the iPhone

01:01:52   Shoved the whole company off of its previous track and eventually it found a new track

01:01:58   Project Titan didn't do that project Titan was just just like a 10 billion dollar quiet little leech off in the corner, but Apple

01:02:04   Continued to be able to function its main business

01:02:07   I mean, and it's a very different company you know in this in that decade than it was before that as well

01:02:11   So obviously like that's that's a different scenario

01:02:13   But I do think it's interesting to consider like for years we had heard about these two

01:02:18   Giant skunkworks projects the car and the headset well now the car is dead, and we have the headset

01:02:24   What do you think is the next big Apple skunkworks project that we that isn't out yet?

01:02:30   Like I guess you know AI in general could be something like that

01:02:34   And I'm sure we're gonna see more of that as the rumors indicate you know probably this summer and honestly

01:02:39   I'm very much looking forward to whatever this ends up being but

01:02:43   Do we know of any other like large?

01:02:46   Rumored skunkworks projects that seem at all plausible that Apple has been working on

01:02:51   I think this is the time maybe to talk about this which I think will very clearly probably

01:02:56   quickly not happen, and we don't have to think about it, but

01:02:59   because of this announcement

01:03:02   People who really want Apple to make a car have been saying you know Apple if you've decided

01:03:07   That disruption in the automotive market is not imminent due to self-driving which I think is the correct conclusion

01:03:12   But you still want to be in the auto from automotive market because you think

01:03:18   people and your team know how to make cool dashboard things like the new car play or you just want to

01:03:22   You want a new platform that you can own like you want to own the infotainment stack or whatever?

01:03:27   There's still a way

01:03:30   For Apple to be in the car business and part of the thing when we've talked about the car project in the past

01:03:35   We're like Apple's good at making electronic gadgets, and if you squint you can call a car an electronic gadget

01:03:40   But honestly there's a whole bunch of parts of that that are not electronic gadget

01:03:43   Really like suspension and brakes and Apple just doesn't really make anything yeah

01:03:48   That's that's kind of like saying like my oven is electric gadget because it has a control panel on the front of it

01:03:53   Yeah

01:03:53   things that you sit inside that

01:03:55   Travel like the whole the the skill set we're hard to do that, and that's before you even get to stuff like

01:04:01   The batteries which I know Apple has some

01:04:04   Knowledge about from all of its gadgets, but it's a different scale entirely there and electrical motors

01:04:09   Which you know there are there are some in the vision Pro. I guess but not Apple's area of expertise for sure

01:04:15   But if Apple still wants to be in the electric car business

01:04:20   they could buy

01:04:22   lucid and Rivian and have

01:04:25   some cars SUVs and trucks

01:04:28   That would you know suddenly sport carplay

01:04:31   And they would have you know

01:04:35   Instant expertise lucid has the best power trains in the entire industry and the best EV packaging in the entire industry

01:04:40   Oh, we're gonna get so much email. Please don't do that John. You're just

01:04:44   This is this is not a questionable. I think is 100% defensible. Oh god

01:04:49   You're making just based on the just based on the numbers

01:04:51   How big is the engine how much power does it produce how efficient is it lucid has the best electric power trains in the industry?

01:04:57   They might not have the best batteries, but their batteries are pretty good Rivian is really the only game in town for

01:05:04   sort of non mainstream fancy Apple style

01:05:07   pickup trucks and truck like SUVs because you know the mainstream makers make them, but Rivian is the froofy kind of Apple ish brand and

01:05:15   The important thing about Apple buying both of those one. It will probably cost less money than they already spent in project Titan

01:05:21   -

01:05:23   Everything those companies do is stuff that Apple

01:05:25   As far as I know does not know how to do like all the rumors are like they're gonna build their own card like oh

01:05:31   Here's their who's they're gonna build it for him or whatever. I'm like

01:05:33   Do you think Apple's gonna get the cut like the people who started?

01:05:37   Lucid we're all like the lead engineer for the Tesla Model S started lucid like they they cut their teeth at Tesla

01:05:43   And then they came over and did lucid Apple has done none of those things so they think out of the out of the gate

01:05:49   they're gonna come up with a

01:05:50   An electric car that they you know solve all these manufacturing problems before everyone else has such a head start on them

01:05:56   I know they said the same thing about the cell phones

01:05:58   You know the PC people aren't gonna walk in but let me tell you a cell phone is much closer

01:06:01   To a personal computer and then a car is it's a big gap there, right?

01:06:05   so if they wanted to be in this business because they think I mean

01:06:09   I don't know that I think they shouldn't because this is low margin business and Apple products don't kill people in yada yada if they're

01:06:14   Not gonna be self-driving. There's no real point

01:06:16   but if they really want to a

01:06:18   Much faster better way to spend that money is to save these two companies that are currently having some difficulties

01:06:25   harvest the the all the people in technology that they have and

01:06:30   Voila now you have a line of Apple cars

01:06:33   If some if Tim Cook decided he's a CEO and if he and the board think that Apple should be selling EVs

01:06:38   That is I think the only reasonable way to do it in a reasonable time frame

01:06:44   If not again, let's just revisit

01:06:46   you know making a car in 20 to 50 years and maybe the self-driving thing will have will be more plausible then but

01:06:52   Yeah, like I'm with Marco that I'm relieved that they're not doing this because once they're not making a self-driving thing

01:06:58   Which it's been obvious that they're not going to do for a while now

01:07:01   to everyone except for apparently Apple

01:07:03   Just making a car is not something I have any faith that Apple would be any good at

01:07:10   At all like nothing they've done makes me think boy. If only Apple would make a car. They'd be great at it. Nope

01:07:16   absolutely not and

01:07:18   Making car is ask Rivian ask ask Tesla ask lucid making cars is very very difficult

01:07:25   like

01:07:27   It's not something that you get right on the first try or the second try or the third try

01:07:32   car companies have been around for a long time they've had time to work out a lot of this stuff and

01:07:36   Even they get stuck in their ways, which is why people can innovate around them

01:07:40   But like just the first the first several years of Tesla the first several years of living Rivian and lucid

01:07:45   manufacturing big important things like that complying with regulations making them safe reliable

01:07:51   Like just it's really hard and Apple has never done anything like that at that scale and it is so different

01:07:57   Than cell phones and computers that I don't think they could pull it off. So if they really really want to do this

01:08:01   Make some acquisitions by by the this drug. They've tried to buy Tesla

01:08:06   You know, that's you can read the story that they tried to buy Tesla way back when so it's clear

01:08:10   They were open to that idea

01:08:11   But if the if the car dream is still alive at Apple, they should buy lucid and Rivian

01:08:16   I hope the car dream is not alive at Apple and they should just ignore this for another 50 years. Well, I think if anything

01:08:23   First of all, I think you're right. That would be probably the best way for them to get into it at this point

01:08:27   but if anything that shows why they shouldn't get into the car business because suppose tomorrow Apple buys

01:08:34   lucid and Rivian

01:08:36   Okay. Now what like why why did they do that? And then how do they how do they integrate that into the rest of their?

01:08:42   Business. Well, it's still a massive question of like now Apple's a car company great now

01:08:47   Why do they want to be a car company and now now they have to deal with being a car company?

01:08:50   Well, but they already had that would give them two car companies that are already car companies and they're car companies with problems

01:08:56   And you know, there there's a lot of growing pains, but they they jump-start it

01:08:59   Like they don't have to worry like will we make a car that people want will we make a good car?

01:09:02   Those two companies have already made cars that people want that are good. They're just not making money making them

01:09:07   Apple could you know Apple has the runway to has a little bit more runway than those two companies do

01:09:13   To figure out a way to start making them profitable and obviously they would integrate with them

01:09:18   And I think Jeff Johnson had a good snarky tweet about this whole thing, which is snarky

01:09:22   But also I think there's kind of a point in that why Apple might want to be in this historically low margin business

01:09:28   he says I

01:09:30   Bemoaning the the the end of the car product

01:09:33   But I so wanted a car that demanded 30% of every shopping trip and refused to travel to destinations unapproved by the manufacturer

01:09:39   Got him, but like that's the thing

01:09:42   That's the kind of the reason Apple was interested in and this thing is like oh the automotive market is being disrupted

01:09:47   And if the automotive market is being disrupted that is an opportunity

01:09:50   For us to find another place for one of our platforms and modern Apple when they find a place for one of their platforms

01:09:57   They're like we we need to have a platform which we will then leverage to extract, you know, 30% from everybody, right?

01:10:04   That's their mo

01:10:06   Hasn't been going that great, but they got it. They hit it out of the park once with the iPhone

01:10:11   And so they've used that model for every other new platform. They've tried to roll out Apple TV vision Pro

01:10:18   iPad I know those all kind of look like you squint and like oh, that's just an extension of the iPhone, right?

01:10:24   But the inside of the car the inside of any sort of mod inside of cars are becoming more looking more and more

01:10:31   Like a platform that Apple could participate in the trouble is if Apple doesn't isn't literally a car company

01:10:38   It might be difficult to pull a Microsoft and become the plot the software platform for everybody else's hardware

01:10:45   Apple's trying

01:10:47   But there's a little bit of pushback contention there

01:10:49   So why would Apple want to be in the car business at all? I think cars will continue to be low margin, but I think

01:10:55   there is a potential future to

01:10:58   You know using the terminology extracting rents from the plot the software platform that lives inside cars

01:11:06   Certainly every car manufacturer wants to do that. Just ask GM. That's why no one car play in the car

01:11:10   They want to be the one you know

01:11:12   Skimming off the top of everything that happens inside the car that they can I'm not sure there's a business plan there

01:11:19   Apparently it's not selling rental renting heated seats to people like BMW tried

01:11:22   But that is I think that's in the absence of self-driving disruption

01:11:27   Another place for a platform is I think what would still have a chance to attract Apple to cars

01:11:35   But who knows like maybe they maybe the carplay project is that and they don't need to make a car

01:11:39   It's just it's it's too early to tell I

01:11:41   don't know I'm going back to what you were saying about lucid and Rivian and

01:11:45   The co-host of neutral in he says heck. Yeah, that sounds amazing

01:11:50   because I think Rivian is

01:11:52   Arguably more spiritually similar to Apple than Tesla

01:11:56   I think that lucid to your point has some of the best and most advanced technology

01:12:02   So I I agree with you as a car enthusiast as

01:12:09   Someone who at least tries to watch and understand Apple

01:12:14   I can't imagine them saying about a business as you've noted is very low low margin

01:12:20   Which they can't be too keen on to begin with I can't imagine

01:12:23   They're gonna say let's spend a sum total of roughly 20 billion dollars because that's the sum total of the market cap of the two companies

01:12:29   Today, let's spend 20 billion dollars on two companies that are barely keeping themselves afloat

01:12:34   Like what's you you wait a little bit longer lucid will get cheaper, I think

01:12:37   Sure, and so might Rivian but then I mean so so we're buying these

01:12:42   Beleaguered, you know failing companies. Yeah, we're getting them on the cheap. But if they were good, they wouldn't be beleaguered and cheap, you know

01:12:50   No, that's not true at all

01:12:51   like that their problem is they don't like their their problem is they need to get through like the

01:12:56   Scary growth period like the Tesla barely made it through like Tesla almost went out of business several times, too

01:13:01   Right, but there it takes so much capital to sort of get to get the ball rolling to work out

01:13:06   All the kinks and both of them are kind of on the bubble like they're probably gonna make it but Tesla just like barely made

01:13:13   It due to like some savvy fundraising and government mooching from Elon Musk in the right time, right?

01:13:18   Like it's a tough gig in the car business. So I don't think they're beleaguered because they have bad products

01:13:24   They have they have great products

01:13:26   they're just beleaguered because

01:13:28   Making a car cost a lot of money and they're not entirely sure that they'll get past the point where like they're just plowing and plowing

01:13:35   In money and then they're selling a smallish number of cars for a very low or negative margin

01:13:40   Then it's like just kind of like Amazon's let's just give us another decade to not make any profit

01:13:45   But eventually we will and Amazon did eventually and they had that runway

01:13:48   Rivian and lucid remains to be seen if they will be able to find the funding to give himself that runway

01:13:52   But you know who can give him that funding Apple? I mean, that's true

01:13:56   But I just don't think Apple would have that kind of patience

01:13:59   Especially after having been burned by being ten billion dollars in and having not a lot to show for it

01:14:05   Like I just know they did have the patience for that 10-year boondoggle project

01:14:08   It doesn't

01:14:13   Ultimately matter but it is an interesting thought exercise of nothing else. Yeah, I mean honestly

01:14:18   I feel like they'll Apple will not do this because they should they're just I think they're done with cars for a while

01:14:22   Right, but yeah, if if someone inside Apple just demands it like just like no we need to be in cars

01:14:27   Which I don't think it's true because again if Tim Cook's whole reason was that there was it was about self-driving disruption

01:14:31   I think he's now dissuaded of that and he's fine

01:14:33   But if someone demanded it

01:14:34   That would be the only feasible way to do it because if they didn't and they tried to make a car on their own

01:14:38   I think it'd be embarrassing for them because their car would they wouldn't have to worry about losing money because I got so much money

01:14:44   But they'd make a car and that car would have to compete with beleaguered Rivian lucid and then not beleaguered Tesla, right?

01:14:51   and I don't think it would fare that well because I don't think Apple is good at almost any of the things you need to

01:14:56   Be good at to make a good car. So yeah, I just you know, I just I think I should leave it alone

01:15:02   But if they don't leave alone, they should buy Rivian Tesla and heck even if they don't want to be in the car business at all

01:15:06   Apple should just you know, give an investment to lucid and reap it when the company comes roaring back two decades from now

01:15:14   Yeah, I don't know. We'll see where it goes. I think I am certainly in support of Apple

01:15:20   You know letting go and stop trying to make fetch happen

01:15:23   I echo what I think it was Marco who had said, you know

01:15:25   I feel terrible for all these people that are going to now have to find

01:15:28   either new jobs than Apple or new jobs entirely like that that stinks but I think on the whole it's

01:15:35   Better for Apple to go this way. I think it might be interesting seeing people who surely are very good at

01:15:42   You know computer vision and an artificial intelligence thing and things of that nature working on other

01:15:48   projects and problems inside of Apple, I think I

01:15:50   Suspect a lot has been learned from this and I feel like I made the same

01:15:55   Alright, I'd shared the same theory a while back and I feel like somebody to debunk tip

01:16:00   But here I am again thinking that you know

01:16:02   I wonder if the real-time OS or some of the things that they learned building a real-time OS for the car

01:16:07   Or used in the r1 for the vision Pro and I don't know maybe maybe not. Yeah, there was debunked

01:16:13   But like I think you'd have a good point with the computer vision aspect because Apple does now have a platform

01:16:18   That could benefit from computer vision expertise

01:16:20   And so those people on the car project who are probably super isolated from the headset project because why wouldn't they be?

01:16:24   Bring those people to vision Pro now because that is expert even if it's not technology that they're currently using on the cross is over that

01:16:31   Expertise for sure crosses over well and now also like, you know with with this

01:16:36   Talent and budget and executive focus freed up from this project if you think about like what else could they do?

01:16:43   Even without having like good uses of the of like share technology with their other products

01:16:48   They could do something like pour more money into the idea of a glucose monitor for the Apple watch

01:16:53   Yeah, I think they're already doing that

01:16:54   But yeah freeing up the money is good for everything across the board

01:16:57   Of course, if you told me what they should give the money to it's just fixing bugs in Mac OS

01:17:00   But I don't think that's probably gonna be high on their list

01:17:03   But you know just just take a little bit of that 10 billion or you know

01:17:07   Whatever it is 1 billion a year that you just freed up

01:17:09   Slice that into Mac OS bug fixing please. I don't think it would even take that much

01:17:13   yeah, in terms of what the next big thing is like, it's you know, we said this in the

01:17:18   Our first episode in January 2024. We did like what do we expect this year to be for Apple?

01:17:23   And I think one of the things that we got right based on all the stories to come here now

01:17:28   2024 the year when Apple sprinkles AI sauce on a bunch of stuff. I talked in a recent rectum episode about this

01:17:34   It's gonna come out soon. What are they gonna sprinkle it on? What will actually ship this year?

01:17:38   I don't know, but there's gonna be a I saw us and it's gonna be sprinkled and that is

01:17:43   On I don't think that's a you know tomorrow's question. What's the next big thing?

01:17:48   I don't think that's it because kind of like self-driving cars at this point. I would say that

01:17:53   They're like large language model AI stuff has proved its utility kind of like, you know smart lane holding

01:18:00   Better cruise control things have proved their utility in cars

01:18:04   But I also think that we're pretty close to well, I think the jury's still out

01:18:09   But I I would put money on the fact that the current approach to LM is

01:18:13   You can't just do more of that faster and get to how 9,000. Maybe it's a piece of the puzzle

01:18:19   maybe it's totally off in the wrong direction, but the but like I

01:18:23   don't think the next big thing equivalent of the car project is Apple should make a computer that thinks because nobody knows how to do

01:18:30   That and I don't think the current approaches are gonna get us there but all that LM stuff has proven utility

01:18:36   you can do useful things with it if you use it the right way and

01:18:40   Apple needs to use that to make its stuff better in all the ways that everyone else is making their stuff

01:18:47   But make Siri better make image search better maybe like we know like there's no question

01:18:52   It does that forget about how 9,000 you can use this technology Apple to make your current products better

01:18:58   And that is not the car project the headset or whatever

01:19:00   But I think getting a bunch of people put into that part of the organization is a good thing

01:19:07   So like rather than you know, the car project and the headset are both kind of like pie in the sky

01:19:11   We have a great idea. We think this is the future. We're gonna try to do it one of them

01:19:16   They shipped one of them they didn't but they're big pie in the sky things. This is not pie in the sky

01:19:21   This is keeping up with the Joneses. This is hey, have you noticed what everyone else is doing Apple?

01:19:25   you should do that too because you've got a lot of stuff that could benefit from

01:19:28   things that other people are proving the utility of so

01:19:32   That I think is going to happen some of it this year

01:19:35   hopefully more of it next year and

01:19:38   If that's all that came out of this like that Apple never came up with the next new big thing

01:19:42   I think it'll be fine partially because I think you know, oh we got the headset

01:19:46   But we're still waiting for the glasses, right?

01:19:48   like you can extrapolate from vision Pro and say where is this gonna go and unlike self-driving and how

01:19:55   And you can see a fairly straightforward path of like just keep iterating on the vision Pro

01:20:00   With increases in technology that we expect to happen and as you know screens get better

01:20:05   CPUs get better like just we can see that progressing. We don't quite know how to get all the glasses

01:20:10   Because some of the display stuff is questionable at this point

01:20:13   But even if it's just vision Pro but better than the current vision Pro

01:20:18   there is a path to travel there and I think that is a

01:20:22   Big enough project a brand new platform that is very much more ambitious or different than competing platforms

01:20:29   And the other things that it's done

01:20:31   There's 10 years of runway right there anyway

01:20:34   So I don't think

01:20:34   Apple should be out there saying

01:20:36   We need to start something new and it's setting aside all the health stuff that we know they're already doing

01:20:39   I don't think should be like hovercrafts like or we're gonna start an airline or you know, like just

01:20:44   Chill out you got just can we just do the vision Pro for 10 years and see if that works out because there is a runway

01:20:51   There you have so many other platforms that you're working on. You're still trying to do all the health stuff

01:20:55   You got all the services. You got all the antitrust things

01:20:58   You got the app store like I don't think Apple should be looking to you know, have a rebound

01:21:04   project after project Titan

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01:22:26   Joe writes what email clients do you all use these days?

01:22:33   Here's to know how each of you handle this on both iOS and Mac OS and what you feel are the best clients

01:22:37   I feel like this is one of those as John often describes annual or sometimes semi annual

01:22:43   Questions that people always want to know what email clients we use and I don't know that it's changed like

01:22:48   Properly changed for any of us since we started recording the show in 2013 2014 creatures of habit

01:22:54   Yeah, but for me it's mail app. I was

01:22:58   Briefly using whatever that one is is a mail plane that everyone loves something that everyone loves for Gmail

01:23:04   And I was using that for a while

01:23:06   And then when I switched to fast mail I put that aside and went crawling back to mail that app and that's what I use

01:23:11   Everywhere and I thought that was the same for Marco, isn't it? I have actually really never gone for many other mail clients

01:23:18   Sorry, I just meant that you're all in on mail. Yeah. Yeah, I'm all in on mail that app and I am mostly

01:23:25   Fine with it. I wouldn't say I love it

01:23:28   but I don't love email and so I

01:23:31   Treat email as a very kind of functional thing that I have to deal with somewhat reluctantly

01:23:37   And I deal with it as little as possible apples mail apps. Let me do that on their platforms with lots of you know

01:23:43   Various nice little integrations. I appreciate all of that first partiness of them

01:23:48   My problems with email have nothing to do with the client

01:23:52   Like none of the email apps that are out there would do a meaningfully better job at making me hate email less

01:23:59   I just kind of deal with it the way I do the only thing that I

01:24:02   Literally just ran into this earlier today

01:24:06   My one big feature request for Apple's mail apps having used them now for how many years

01:24:11   When the iPhone first shipped and the iPhone had its you know version of mail that app on it

01:24:17   It mostly worked it mostly satisfied my needs

01:24:20   except for one giant area

01:24:23   search

01:24:25   mail search on iOS has always been really rudimentary and really crappy and

01:24:31   Many times I end up having to go search on my Mac mail app instead and it will find things the iOS app will not

01:24:39   Find including this literally just happened today. I assume the reason why is because mail on the Mac

01:24:44   Downloads everything off the IMAP server and indexes everything locally whereas mail on the iPhone appears not to do that

01:24:51   I think mail on the iPhone has always done server-side IMAP search not local search

01:24:56   I assume that's why I'm getting different search results, but

01:24:59   That trade-off made sense in

01:25:02   2007 that trade-off does not make sense in 2024. I

01:25:07   Understand that people's email boxes can be really big. So maybe make it an option

01:25:11   Give me a switch in the Settings app

01:25:13   It says download all mail and let me search all mail in the iOS mail app with the exact same search

01:25:19   Characteristics and results that I would get if I did it on my Mac. It's 2024. I'm pretty sure Apple can make that happen

01:25:25   John you still using the Gmail web client. Yeah, the main sort of performance characteristics that I'm looking for an email client

01:25:32   Date all the way back to you know, my the early days my very first email clients on the Mac

01:25:36   I was super heavy into entourage and

01:25:39   Later when that morphed or Claris emailer which morphed into entourage

01:25:44   and

01:25:46   They what I loved on those things is they had like rules that you could apply to mail that would ferry your mail into various

01:25:52   Folders or whatever, but it was so frustrating when I'd have all those rules set up on my home computer

01:25:57   And then I'd like try to check my home email while I was at work

01:26:00   And so I would like install the same email client on my work computer

01:26:04   but then the rules would be on my home computer and this was before the days of ubiquitous cloud sync and it was

01:26:09   Never quite the same and a lot of times I was using pop

01:26:12   So if you popped it from one location

01:26:14   If you popped it from a second location the second location wouldn't have it because it didn't pop it

01:26:19   So now you have the same message appearing in two different places. They had to be routed the same

01:26:22   We should probably we should probably explain that just a little bit more because everything everything you said was accurate

01:26:27   But this it sounds bananas to people of today

01:26:30   So most email clients or most email servers, excuse me from I don't know 15 20 25 years ago

01:26:36   the way it worked was you used post office protocol or pop and

01:26:40   Generally speaking granted you could tweak this but generally speaking what would happen is your email client would go to the server

01:26:46   It would say okay. What are the new messages?

01:26:47   It would grab the new messages and then it would delete them off the server

01:26:50   So like John was saying let's say you have a machine at home that is checking your email

01:26:56   Generally speaking the machine at home would check your email delete the email and then it would be living or alive

01:27:01   Oh those emails would only be living on that one computer if you went to any other computer because you know

01:27:06   You wouldn't go to a cell phone at this point if you went to any other computer and went to get mail

01:27:09   Well tough noogies it ain't there because it was deleted off the server in this was normal

01:27:14   But if I was smart enough not to do that, but that introduces a second problem

01:27:18   Which if you say okay don't do that leave it on the server now

01:27:21   My home computer would run run a little you know using pop it would check for mail

01:27:25   It would see there's a new message you would download it right now

01:27:27   My work computer would run two seconds later, and it would see that same new message

01:27:32   And it would download it which is why both computers needed to have the same set of rules because as far as they're concerned

01:27:38   It's like the home computer downloads the message and files it away the work computer downloads that same message now these two computers

01:27:44   Are downloading the same message you know and you know pulling it from the server

01:27:48   They better route it to the same place otherwise home and work will slowly get a sink like they're not even connected at all

01:27:54   But it's like a one-way process

01:27:55   but if they don't have the same rules as things flow in they won't go in the same boxes and

01:28:00   By the way if I respond to something at work or market it read it read at work

01:28:05   home has no idea that that happened because their only function is

01:28:08   Using the pop protocol protocol to see if there's new messages and downloading them

01:28:12   There's no reverse direction where when I mark something that's read at work

01:28:15   It sends a message up to the pop server so that when I go home. No no that doesn't happen. It's one way right so

01:28:22   Trying to deal with that just home and work being able to check my my personal email at work

01:28:27   Which is as all working people know is an essential part of your sanity

01:28:30   Yes being able to do that

01:28:33   Was made very difficult, and I and I do like rules

01:28:37   And I do like routing and I do like everything to be the same everywhere right and I map you say well

01:28:42   I map solves this well. I map especially early days was a little bit of a nightmare

01:28:45   It was trying to solve this problem by having two-way communication and everything

01:28:49   But the clients weren't weren't great and there were lots of different

01:28:51   I'm app servers and depending on your ISP and where your email from it was very confusing and annoying

01:28:55   But I'm app was an improvement, but still kind of janky, but anyway

01:28:58   I was using like Claris emailer and Eudora not Eudora

01:29:01   I know Eudora is great

01:29:02   But I wasn't a big fan entourage and Claris emailer back in the day where they did support both pop and I'm up

01:29:07   But then Gmail came along and Gmail said forget about your stupid client

01:29:11   The server is the source of truth. I have all your email that your only email only exists in one place folders rules

01:29:17   Those are all here on the server. Oh, you can look at what's on the server

01:29:21   However, you want say in a web browser try Chrome. It's nice

01:29:24   But don't be fooled

01:29:27   Gmail Google has all your email and all your rules and all your settings and all your preferences and when you mark something is read

01:29:34   Or unread or reply to it

01:29:36   You know your sentiment send mail into sent mail folder

01:29:39   That is all happening on Google servers. And what it did was gave me blessed freedom to say

01:29:44   Wherever I check my email from a phone an iPad an internet cyber cafe

01:29:50   Anywhere I go

01:29:53   Where I don't care whose computer it is

01:29:56   I don't care if it work at home on any computer that I have when I load up at gmail.com

01:30:01   My email looks exactly like it did the last time I left it if I marked a thing as red if I replied

01:30:07   I'm by the way search

01:30:09   Google's really good at that

01:30:11   I can search my email really easily and it also in the back of the day lets you import all your old email

01:30:16   So this is a long-winded way to say gmail. I use the gmail gmail for my email and I use the gmail web interface. I

01:30:24   Like the gmail web interface. I miss you know, the days of entourage and Claris emailer, but I've moved on since then

01:30:32   I don't like Apple mail. I don't like the interface on any platform

01:30:36   So I use the gmail web interface on my phone. I use the Google's gmail app, which is not very good

01:30:42   but it doesn't really matter because

01:30:44   All my mail is there if you know, I can do what I want in there if I don't like it

01:30:47   I just put the phone down pick up literally any other computer log into gmail and there's all my mail

01:30:51   Big proponent of gmail and it's been one of my favorite products over the years and I'll be very sad when a Google eventually cancels it

01:30:58   I don't think they would cancel that but I definitely take your point

01:31:02   No, I bet I think I'll be dead at retired by the time they do that too much valuable data goes through

01:31:07   You know there are people keep gmail around

01:31:09   Warren McKay writes you recently mentioned Marco's love of the Microsoft ergonomic keyboard

01:31:14   Which I've always liked why isn't Marco constructed a do-it-yourself mechanical keyboard in the ergonomic key layout

01:31:19   He prefers with the switches. He wants etc. This seems like exactly the kind of project

01:31:24   He would love and he'd end up with the keyboard customized to his personal specifications

01:31:28   You know, I get this and obviously my name is not Marco, but I mean at least for me

01:31:32   I actually like Apple keyboards and in your case

01:31:35   You like the the Microsoft ergonomic keyboard and I don't know as I get older and more crotchety

01:31:41   I feel like there's less space in my life for fiddly things and I'm assuming that's probably where you are, too

01:31:48   I'm glad that that whole world of keyboards exists if I ever want to dive into it

01:31:54   I will have no hesitation of diving into it

01:31:57   But right now like, you know every few years when my sculpt flakes out

01:32:01   I can spend 60 bucks and get and have that problem just disappear

01:32:06   And the reality is I like the sculpt ergonomic keyboard

01:32:11   there's not a lot about it that I would change it solves my needs very very well and

01:32:16   We're very low effort. And if I were to customize something with the world of like custom keyboard enthusiast kind of stuff. I

01:32:25   Think what I would end up creating would actually be worse for my own preferences

01:32:30   so for instance

01:32:32   Even though I know there's different key switches with different volume levels. All of them are way too loud for me

01:32:38   I've tried them all yes, even the you know, the Cherry MX Brown or you know, whatever whatever every few years

01:32:44   There's a new one and people say oh this one's like this one's quieter or whatever and I try it and it's loud

01:32:47   So that is problem number one is that I I don't really like the the giant mechanical key switch

01:32:53   sound I also don't have any problem with the feedback of the

01:32:58   Relatively standard scissor mechanism of the sculpt ergonomics keys. Like that's not a problem. I'm looking to solve

01:33:05   I understand why people like those things. It's just not that important to me. I don't like the noise trade-off

01:33:10   secondly the sculpt is actually a very compact keyboard for an ergonomic keyboard and

01:33:17   If I would actually create an ergonomic layout that has kind of the two key elements of what makes it help

01:33:24   Which is the split gap and then the kind of curved and reverse tinted shape of it

01:33:30   To actually create that with mechanical key caps

01:33:33   with that kind of keyboard would would be a

01:33:36   Probably a larger overall finished product and I again to create that it's solving problems

01:33:43   I don't have to make a result. That would be worse for my preferences. That's why I don't do it

01:33:50   things might change over time my preferences might change or the

01:33:53   Availability of sculpt ergonomic keyboards as we've discussed. It's kind of in flux right now

01:33:57   So that that could be getting better with like the the Matthias recreation or the was it in case who took over that business

01:34:05   Yeah, I think so. Yeah, so

01:34:07   So, you know their recreations could be fine or could be ruined

01:34:10   You know that the Matthias recreation could be fine or could be ruined. I don't know yet

01:34:14   I've pre-ordered both and we'll see what happens and I still have a few sculpts left from my from my stock

01:34:20   My personal stock so we'll see but right now this is a problem that I don't really need to be solved

01:34:24   Every time I use the sculpt, I'm not thinking like god. I hate this thing. I can't wait for until there's a replacement

01:34:31   No, I actually like it. I prefer it and whenever they die, I just pop a new out of the closet and move on with my life

01:34:38   Anonymous writes as tech enthusiasts. How interested are you in LLM's and generative AI?

01:34:42   Is it something you think you follow from the sidelines?

01:34:44   Or do you actually dive into these topics and do some of your own research and follow up question for which use cases?

01:34:50   Have you been using chat bots like chat GPT if at all and what were your experiences for me?

01:34:55   I'm interested. Certainly. This is the new hot thing and unlike crypto. It doesn't make me want to vomit all over myself

01:35:02   So that's an improvement

01:35:03   I am trying to keep up with it and get at least a

01:35:08   Nominal understanding of how it works and in a very broad and basic understanding of how it works in terms of how I use it

01:35:15   I don't typically do anything with generative, you know, like making images or anything like that

01:35:19   I've tried a couple of times like I think when I was

01:35:21   first trying to come up with a placeholder icon for call sheet then called flick look up I was trying to come up with a

01:35:28   An icon that was at least passable not to ship with but just to ship like a beta with and I

01:35:35   Couldn't even get something that looked even remotely what like what I wanted at the time and they all that very well could have been user

01:35:41   Ish a user error on my part, but nevertheless I do use

01:35:45   chat GPT

01:35:47   every once in a while typically to solve some sort of programming problem with something that I'm not familiar with or a great example of

01:35:54   this a wonderful use of chat GPT is

01:35:57   how do I do this particular ffmpeg incantation because I know a lot of the things that I do regularly and

01:36:03   I like to think as people go I know a fair bit about ffmpeg

01:36:07   But there's a ton of things that it does in almost infinite amount of things that it does that I don't know how to do

01:36:13   And I do have a folder in Apple Notes speaking of Apple Notes John

01:36:16   I have a folder in Apple Notes with you know individual notes of like different recipes if you will for ffmpeg

01:36:21   But there's certainly times that I'm like, well how the heck do you do that and chat GPT?

01:36:27   Oftentimes, we'll either get it right or get me close enough that I can get it right quickly

01:36:30   And that's actually applicable to a lot of programming problems. So that's how that's how I've been using it

01:36:35   I feel like I picked on Marco first a lot recently. So John. What are you doing with this?

01:36:39   I do use I'm interested in these things. I'm interested in understand how they work

01:36:43   it's kind of you know, I tried to learn as much about them as I could without actually having any reason to

01:36:50   Make anything like this. It's difficult to follow sometimes

01:36:53   It's not my area of expertise, but I think I have somewhat of a handle on what their approach is

01:36:58   but the most important thing like the distinction between crypto is that these these things is large language models in generative AI

01:37:05   Have practical utility you can use them to do useful things. It's very obvious to everybody

01:37:11   That's why people are excited about this again

01:37:13   I'm like crypto where it's like the useful thing is make a bunch of people a lot of money, you know

01:37:17   Like okay, but like does this help me with my work? No, not really

01:37:21   I use these things

01:37:23   kind of in as a

01:37:26   Augmentation to Google search right? So anything that I'm doing where I would be using Google

01:37:31   I will throw in these various large language model things into the competition just like I may I

01:37:38   You know put all my little voice cylinders in the house against each other and I asked them all the same question to see how

01:37:44   They do I'm trying to see who's going to be the most useful

01:37:47   So sometimes you know when I'm programming is a great example when I'm programming very often you Google for things, right?

01:37:53   Oh, I don't know what that is. How do you do this?

01:37:55   You know, what is the what is the order of arguments to this function? I can't remember right?

01:38:01   You can use Google for that and you find a stack overflow question or you find the reference documentation or you know

01:38:06   If you're an Xcode, you can go directly to it with just a right-click or whatever

01:38:09   But yeah, I'll throw in chat GPT

01:38:13   Google's bard thing the Bing thing to see how they do

01:38:17   Because sometimes even though I know the answer is in the reference documentation

01:38:21   sometimes reading the reference documentation like if you're trying to look like the

01:38:26   Select system call and pearl and you want to know what what are those bit?

01:38:30   What are the constants that you use in the bit masks?

01:38:32   and is it the right bits then the read bits or the read bits than the right bits and

01:38:36   You know, you could look this up in the reference docs

01:38:39   It's gonna tell you the order of the things you're gonna be able to find the constants

01:38:42   then you can look them up and just like you get I know exactly where the answer is and

01:38:46   You could Google for it and it will probably point you to the reference docs that you can read to get that answer

01:38:50   one of the utilities that things like chat GPT provides is you could just ask them for the call that you want to make and

01:38:58   it will

01:39:00   essentially not do that work for you, but

01:39:02   summarize

01:39:04   That it'll say okay

01:39:06   Use this bit mask for the first argument use this bit mask for the second or even based on what you asked me

01:39:11   So it already has found the the what order the arguments are in and it found their credit

01:39:17   Correct bit mask things to order together and the right things and it gives you me the result faster than if I had done that work

01:39:23   myself

01:39:24   One of the things I don't use

01:39:26   Any of these large language model things for is anything based on facts?

01:39:31   Because I'm like the like the line of code

01:39:35   Where I can just run it and find out if it does the thing that I wanted to do

01:39:39   I could step through it in the debugger. I can see yes, it's working. No, it's not working, right?

01:39:42   I can tell whether it compiles or is it made up a function or whatever?

01:39:45   Using it for facts. I don't find useful, you know

01:39:49   What year did this movie come out?

01:39:51   It'll give me an answer and the answer will be plausible

01:39:54   But the problem is if I knew what the answer was already

01:39:56   I wouldn't have asked and so now I'm faced with the answer says all this movie came out in this year. Is that right?

01:40:02   Maybe looks like it could be right

01:40:05   But now I have to go check somewhere to see if it actually is right and if I'm gonna go check somewhere

01:40:10   Anyway, I might as well just start in Google and end up at the Wikipedia page or the IMDb page or whatever

01:40:15   Now is Wikipedia right is IMDb, right? I don't know but at least I have a foundation

01:40:20   For setting a level of trust. How much do I trust Wikipedia?

01:40:25   How much do I trust IMDb when it comes to the release date of movies, right?

01:40:28   How much do I just you know this result from the New York Times or The Verge or whatever?

01:40:34   With large language models when it just gives me the answer for fact-based things. It's useless to me because I

01:40:41   mean I can just stare at that and go that might be the answer but I

01:40:47   Don't know where that answer came from. And if it's right or if it's wrong, like there's no

01:40:53   The LM's don't know don't care like that's not that's not their job

01:40:58   They're just smooshing together a bunch of stuff and spitting out something that is plausibly an answer to the question asked

01:41:05   and so that makes them an

01:41:07   Entire useless for me in that area and I would say also dangerous because you might think you're getting the answer and even like when Google

01:41:14   Does the general results at the top of it search results?

01:41:16   I tend to ignore those two for the same reason

01:41:18   Kind of for the same reason I've been ignoring the thing that Google's been doing for many years before generative AI which is like

01:41:23   Don't worry about the search results. We've extracted the answer for you

01:41:26   I'm like, yeah, but like I kind of need to see where you got that answer from

01:41:30   So I just ignore it and I go to the plain old search results and then I have to make the judgment myself

01:41:34   Like do I trust this SEO spam page?

01:41:37   It's in the first ten results are all like that or do I want to actually go to something more?

01:41:42   authoritative or if I go to the Wikipedia page is this page constantly being in edit wars and the talk page shows there's a much

01:41:48   Controversy about this. Does everyone agree that this movie came out on this date, right? So I do use it

01:41:53   I think it there is there is a bright future of utility for things like this and the the image generators the same type of thing

01:42:01   Because it's setting aside the legal and ethical implications there

01:42:05   people do agree that being able to type in a

01:42:08   Description of an image and get an image back is a useful thing to do if we can get the rest of the stuff worked out

01:42:12   So yeah, I'm definitely incorporating it into my into my normal workflows and I have found things

01:42:20   Kind of like Steve Jobs said about the iPad like there should be something where the iPad is the best device to use it

01:42:24   There are things that I do

01:42:27   when you know programming for example, where a chat GPT is better than Google for

01:42:33   Getting me what I need faster. There are also things where Google is still better

01:42:39   There are things where right-clicking and looking it up in the reference docs is faster

01:42:41   but very quickly things like chat GPT have become a sibling to

01:42:48   Direct lookups and reference documentation blind Google searches and now right alongside there ask a large language model

01:42:54   Marco so personally I have used generative AI

01:42:58   Relatively little I did make that icon for my fire island driving app

01:43:04   I made that with generative AI because that's an app that had

01:43:08   Zero budget and I any time spent on it was time

01:43:12   I shouldn't have been spending on it really and so I had I need something quick and dirty

01:43:16   That would be seen by about 70 people and it was perfect for that

01:43:20   I I don't really have a lot of need to generate a bunch of BS on a regular basis

01:43:25   So I tend not to use it that much but it's a tool that I'm glad it's there when I need it

01:43:30   I'm more looking forward to

01:43:32   And some of this is already out there tools that use generative AI

01:43:37   Functionality and techniques in ways that I actually do use on a more regular basis

01:43:42   So for instance, like if I'm editing a photo of myself and I want to you know, remove like the pimple on my forehead

01:43:48   You know, we've had various techniques to do that in image editors for a long time now

01:43:52   but if you

01:43:53   Involve generative AI in that kind of feature you can usually do a better job of it or other things other kind of image

01:43:59   manipulation things like you you have a low res image and you want to make a high res version of it and you want to

01:44:04   You know do whatever you can to extrapolate whatever the details might have been in a higher resolution of that image great

01:44:09   That's a great use of a lot of these generative AI type techniques to do things like that

01:44:14   So these features by themselves in like the current, you know standalone products that we see them in

01:44:20   They have utility to a lot of people no question, but I don't see a lot of that myself

01:44:25   but I'm looking forward to and and I already still currently benefiting from some of the

01:44:30   implementations of those techniques into tools that I use so again other instances like you know

01:44:36   If if Apple ever realized that there's five of us out there who use logic to edit podcasts

01:44:42   They can probably add a whole bunch of really interesting useful features to logic to make editing podcast better

01:44:48   Some of which would be AI based and another example of that is like the world of audio

01:44:54   Transcription algorithms has been radically improved by the open AI whisper model

01:44:59   it doesn't get as much attention as the other open AI stuff, but whisper has been a

01:45:05   Massive transformation no pun intended in in audio transcription

01:45:09   I'm looking forward to advances like that, you know that being integrated into more things like one of the big hopes

01:45:16   I have for whatever Apple's AI sauce sprinkling process looks like this summer is

01:45:21   Apple has a built-in API to transcribe audio. It's not that good

01:45:27   I'm hoping that this year it gets substantially better because maybe they're using some AI type models to to you know

01:45:34   Improve their transcription. They've already been going in that direction in you know small steps here and there. So that's the kind of thing

01:45:41   I'm looking forward to is

01:45:42   You know, yeah

01:45:43   There's gonna be fun new problems that arise that we didn't even think about that they can all of a sudden solve and it revolutionizes

01:45:49   Everything etc. But most of what we do in our computing lives is

01:45:54   Boring tasks that we've done for a long time things like as mentioned before answering emails, you know doing various media manipulation

01:46:03   Tact, you know tasks and stuff like that

01:46:05   there's lots of opportunities in tons of computing for

01:46:09   Those features and those tools to get better

01:46:13   Within the capabilities of what we already know AI can do like we don't need it to get

01:46:17   So much better that it can answer all of John's questions with factual accuracy

01:46:21   that'll be nice if it you know, if it goes in that direction it should but

01:46:24   Even with what we know it can do today

01:46:27   There's tons of possible applications for the existing AI techniques even the existing models that have already been built in

01:46:35   ways that we that we haven't seen it be either because

01:46:39   They kind of can't get built without somebody okaying it like in the case of Apple being a gatekeeper over their platforms

01:46:45   Like for instance, I would love the option to have chat GPT

01:46:49   respond to my Siri questions whenever they're about knowledge because

01:46:54   Even though it is a BS generator. It tends to generate more accurate answers than Siri

01:47:00   Does the vast majority of the time for informational questions? Well, I wouldn't say it's more accurate

01:47:04   You're more likely to get an answer and Siri will just be like, sorry

01:47:07   I can't help you or go look on the web. But honestly, I that's more that's that's the writer answer

01:47:13   I don't want something just giving me plausible BS when I ask a question if you can't answer it don't answer it

01:47:17   Well, just just ask a man

01:47:20   I do not want plausible BS when I when I asked him when that movie was released Alexa should tell me the real answer not

01:47:25   the plausible BS answer

01:47:27   Anyway, so I'm looking forward to just the the integration of

01:47:32   These awesome new AI techniques and models into the rest of our boring computing lives making them a lot better

01:47:40   That's where I see the most promise and yeah, we'll have some cool products along the way that are more exciting than that

01:47:45   But in the grand scheme of like how is it going to impact most people? I think it's gonna be more like the former more

01:47:52   Just making our everyday tasks better and making the tools that would that do them better

01:47:56   And to be clear Apple has been doing that for years and years back before the AI buzzword. They used ml, right?

01:48:04   The magic thing where you can I don't even know if this would even qualify for a quote-unquote AI table like subject detection where?

01:48:09   You can drag the picture your dog out of the photo

01:48:12   Apple's photo search where you can search for like, you know tin can or whatever and as I has a set of work like

01:48:16   That was ml and not AI but that's exactly the type of stuff we're talking about and what we're saying is hey

01:48:22   State of the art has moved on and you could make all those things better

01:48:26   I really because in photo search if you ever try this in Apple photos

01:48:29   You can search for things like dog or cat or bed or spoon or car or parking lot, right?

01:48:36   But if you try clipboard you might see that. Oh, the autocomplete isn't bringing up clipboard

01:48:41   Well, can't I just type clipboard and the answer is no Apple has decided there's a fixed number of things where you can search for well

01:48:45   Technology is marched on and you can do text-based photo search a little bit better than Apple's doing it with quote-unquote AI

01:48:53   Technologies instead of the quote-unquote ml that they use for that before just make your existing features better mark out the transcription is a perfect

01:49:01   Example they're already doing that with quote-unquote ml

01:49:03   Just do it with AI and it will you know

01:49:06   But we're just saying like keep up with the Joneses people are doing cool stuff and Apple is being left behind

01:49:10   And by the way, as I saw someone toot this today, this is a website

01:49:14   Fast no, it's it's fast SD XL dot AI. It's a demo of another

01:49:20   Way, these things could be interesting. It's just that you know, you type words and it makes an image. Let's go

01:49:26   it's like an image generator like stable diffusion or

01:49:28   Mid journey or like oh, you know this all sorts of things that can generate images for you

01:49:35   But there is this sub-genre of them. It says we're not as interested in generating

01:49:40   Every image really perfectly or whatever our thing is speed

01:49:45   This thing tries to generate images for you as fast as you can type

01:49:49   So you just start typing and it's generating images and you add another word another word and add generates it generates it generates

01:49:55   And you might think oh, that's a fun party trick, but I'd rather have it rather let you can

01:49:59   I just type a whole sentence then you generate really really awesome. I don't need you to do it to me fast

01:50:04   but

01:50:05   Being having the thing react to you in real time with like a smaller faster model does change how the interactions feel

01:50:12   and this is just another example of like, you know, when I think about Apple doing stuff on device or

01:50:16   You know, what's the advantage of doing it locally, especially if your model needs to be smaller

01:50:20   Sometimes you want that trade-off sometimes?

01:50:23   Doing it quickly locally not as well is better than doing it in the cloud

01:50:30   Expensively requiring a network round-trip or whatever just depends on the thing that you're trying to do

01:50:34   So I'm very optimistic that Apple can find many many places and it's existing products where it can use these technologies

01:50:42   Which everybody knows Apple has been working on to make all of its products better in I guess

01:50:47   What mark I would describe as boring ways, but honestly, it's not boring to me if my image my photo search starts working better

01:50:53   Thanks to our members who supported us this entire episode this week

01:50:57   You can join us and become a member at ATP FM slash join. We will talk to you next week

01:51:04   Now the show is over they didn't even mean to begin because it was accidental

01:51:13   It was accidental

01:51:16   John

01:51:19   Marco and Casey wouldn't let him because it was accidental

01:51:23   Was accidental

01:51:27   And you can find the show notes at ATP

01:51:30   FM and if you're into Twitter

01:51:35   You can follow them at

01:51:38   CAS

01:51:40   EYL

01:51:41   ISS so that's Casey lists. Ma RC Oh a RM

01:51:46   Auntie Marco are men. Si are

01:51:50   AC

01:51:52   USA, Syracuse

01:51:54   It's accidental

01:51:56   I'm looking forward to WBC this year like all these rumors coming out about you know

01:52:11   Maybe a slight updated design but also like tons of AI stuff. I am looking forward to this

01:52:15   Yeah, but what I talked about in the rectus episode was like what stuff will they have ready for this year, right?

01:52:21   Cuz they're you know, I'm sure tons of stuff that they're doing, you know

01:52:24   Someone's gonna come next year. Someone's gonna come out the year after that

01:52:26   What can they get done in this year?

01:52:28   And the big question for me is is this the year where they do the apology Siri essentially and say Siri

01:52:34   It doesn't suck now because that seems like the hardest one like Siri is the hardest one making like, you know, transcribing audio better. I

01:52:41   Think they can ship that this year right making image search better

01:52:45   They could probably ship this year, but the Siri one is the big one and I honestly it's a kind of a distraction

01:52:50   But marketing wise and PR wise like because I would be perfectly happy if it's like this isn't the year we make Siri better

01:52:56   Siri still sucks, but everything else is a little bit better auto-complete

01:52:59   We already changed that to a transformer model last year, but guess what now it's a little bit better and searching your mail

01:53:04   It's a little bit better like this so many places where they can apply this to just make it a little bit better

01:53:09   It's not as citing as saying Siri - now it doesn't suck

01:53:13   But I'll be perfectly happy with a WWDC this year or every single piece of every single OS

01:53:18   Has some of that AI sauce sprinkled on it and just gets a little bit better

01:53:22   Even if Siri still isn't any good because I have faith that in a year or two or three

01:53:28   Siri will get what it deserves, which is a complete replacement

01:53:32   Last year was the year that we all were saying

01:53:36   Well, all this new AI stuff is breaking on the scene, but it's a little too new for Apple to do much with it

01:53:42   You know, they've had a while now

01:53:44   They've had you know generative AI stuff and LLMs have been really like broken into the scene now for

01:53:49   What about two years now or a year and a half, you know, it's it's been it's been enough time that

01:53:55   Apple has had time to

01:53:58   Get caught off guard

01:53:59   Realize they have to put a bunch of effort into this as everyone passes them by

01:54:02   Start dumping money into it and to start to see results like it now

01:54:07   This is the summer that we're going to start seeing the first

01:54:11   Probably bigger scale efforts from Apple in this front. Yeah, like I said, they did do the LLM base auto complete

01:54:16   And what was it iOS 16 17?

01:54:19   Like so that they're like despite the fact that they weren't caught off guard

01:54:22   They've already shipped some stuff that says hey, we've found a way to use this tech to make something in our OS better

01:54:28   It's just it was just so tiny but this is gonna be the big coming out

01:54:31   I think exactly and it's not gonna be the last big coming out of this stuff

01:54:35   Like we're gonna see this over the over the following few years. I would expect I do expect to see a whole bunch of

01:54:40   Those like, you know, as you mentioned like little stuff around the system features already existed

01:54:45   Maybe that are just now better. That's what I want to see and honestly as a developer like

01:54:49   Yeah, I guess I probably should have gotten into this with my answer. I guess we're doing this now in the after show

01:54:53   I've been hesitant to adopt much of this stuff in my apps so far for two big reasons

01:54:59   Number one is that I just don't have the time right now

01:55:02   I'm in the middle of this rewrite laying the groundwork for it to be easier for me in the future to make bigger changes

01:55:09   But during this time of relaying groundwork, I can't make those bigger changes. I don't have the time but in the future

01:55:15   I will hopefully but number two

01:55:17   Most of the AI features I could add right now

01:55:22   Would require me to do the work on the server. That is something that I could invest into

01:55:28   But I don't think it would be a great use of my time and I think it would be very expensive for me

01:55:34   Even if I wasn't running like the most cutting-edge models or the biggest models or whatever

01:55:39   it is a very high cost for a one-person operation and

01:55:43   it's probably not going to be worth it to me and when I look at what I would want out of

01:55:48   Some kind of server based AI stuff or any kind of AI based stuff in my app

01:55:52   what I'd most likely want would be transcription and

01:55:56   Recommending systems like like the recommending algorithms that that would be the two major areas of value for overcast

01:56:04   But those are actually like relative to what people expect out of my app. Those are not

01:56:11   massive

01:56:13   Percentages of the value so to speak I want to have transcription and I want to have you know

01:56:18   A more sophisticated recommendation algorithm, but if I never do those things, it's not the other world for my product

01:56:24   And so therefore it is not worth investing a huge amount of time and money on the server end

01:56:29   To try to make these two kind of ancillary features if it's gonna be that expensive

01:56:34   whereas if

01:56:36   Apple is building in a lot more stuff into the device side of things

01:56:40   I would expect much of that to be exposed through API's for instance the you know, the the speech transcription

01:56:47   Algorithm has been part of the public API now for a while

01:56:51   I think something like six or seven years if they improve the on-device

01:56:56   Transcription algorithms with AI stuff I would expect I could probably use that

01:57:01   Locally on device for all the same reasons that I don't want to run a whole bunch of AI stuff on my servers

01:57:06   Apple doesn't either on their servers because the scale they would be dealing with with

01:57:11   Every iPhone owner having access to feature XYZ

01:57:15   That is a massive scale to deploy in Apple's data centers and massive costs to pay

01:57:21   I don't even know if there are enough GPUs in the world to handle that kind of load

01:57:24   Well, they're already doing a small subset of this with podcast transcription on the server side, right?

01:57:29   But that's not inspiring response to customers requests for service

01:57:33   They just they just transcribe all their own podcasts once and then everyone every customer gets the benefit as opposed to essentially letting users say

01:57:40   Take this image and make a description of it for me or something. Yeah, you don't have to transcribe everyone's videos

01:57:47   They have recorded on all of their iPhones forever

01:57:49   like that's in server side at least and so, you know what Apple has Apple has this massive asset of

01:57:55   All of these iPhones out there in the world that are pretty capable hardware devices that they don't have to pay server time to run

01:58:03   So Apple has a huge interest for multiple reasons in

01:58:07   Pushing as much of this as possible to the device side to because they have this this fleet of computing capacity

01:58:14   That's out there in the world. That is just you know, the value there is immense

01:58:18   I also have a smaller version of that a much smaller version of that with overcast like as I lean into AI based

01:58:25   Features in the app. I would so much rather do things client-side than server side

01:58:31   and right now the client-side versions of these things either don't exist or

01:58:35   require me to bring in custom models like for instance the open AI whisper models and

01:58:40   That is possible. There are a few apps that integrate whisper in certain certain, you know features

01:58:45   But it's a big thing like whisper is a huge model

01:58:49   It comes in different sizes

01:58:51   But even even the small ones on the phone are pretty substantial and a pretty heavy lift

01:58:56   Computationally, but you know if Apple got in there and optimize things with you know

01:59:01   Their optimization techniques to run on their hardware with their models

01:59:04   They could do a much better job of it if they chose to and I hope they do

01:59:08   So anyway, I'm hoping that as I finish my rewrite over, you know, hopefully this year

01:59:13   Hopefully that gives Apple enough time to

01:59:15   Deploy iOS 18 with some really nice features that I can use for my first like feature update after them after the main rewrite release

01:59:22   And I would love to be able to do stuff like live transcription

01:59:26   Transcription search if possible, you know, there's there's so many things I could do if it was on device

01:59:31   that I would probably

01:59:34   never really have the

01:59:36   the prioritization and the budget and the time to do server side

01:59:40   [beep beep beep]

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