0:00:00So 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
0:00:06And I don't know what I'm a little scared. No, I've been using it a medium amount. I feel a little bad
0:00:12Because I haven't really been using the vision pro and I feel like I'm being a bad Apple fan and a bad
0:00:20Developer 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?
0:00:30Don't know cuz like I so so finally like I so I've been in this, you know, we're doing our house renovations
0:00:36It's taking forever. So we've been in this rental
0:00:39I 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
0:00:45Finally get out of here any day now any day now, right? Can I interrupt you? Can I interrupt you right there?
0:00:49So I'm guessing the end of the story is not only have you bought a desk
0:00:53But you have somehow ended up with a bespoke monitor just for this just for this purpose not entirely wrong, but not right
0:01:00All right settle in everyone let's let's hear so I had all these hopes of like, okay when the vision pro comes out
0:01:07I'll use the Mac mirroring mode and cuz like I had the rental has this like, you know crappy basic
0:01:13You know one of those particle board staples $50 desks
0:01:16It's fine for most people but it's too high like desks for me
0:01:22I one of the reasons I get standing desks is because they're also
0:01:25Adjustable height desks easily. Most desks are too high for comfortable computer use for me
0:01:31And I would argue correct ergonomics for almost anybody, but that's a separate discussion
0:01:35so anyway, so I'm you know, I'm at this like particle board rectangle and
0:01:40It's too high and my wrists are all hurting and I'm not able to use my good keyboard
0:01:44I don't have space to like lay everything out on the tiny little thing and I'm like I should just
0:01:48Should I just order my my new desk early and but it's gonna be heavy
0:01:52I don't want to like move it, you know, just in a few weeks
0:01:55Yeah, but Marco the desk is too damn high
0:01:57I know and and then secondly the monitor situation like, you know
0:02:00Not having my giant monitor and I was gonna try the vision pro thing
0:02:04I just work in that for like a month. And again, it's just it's kind of just not compatible with my eyes
0:02:08Much. I realize like wait a minute
0:02:11Somewhere in our garage full of stuff that we moved out of the old house
0:02:14That's still all in boxes and moving blankets somewhere in there. There's an old IKEA desk frame and somewhere else in there
0:02:22There's a big plank of wood
0:02:24That that TIFF was using as like a fake desktop on top of some other stuff
0:02:27I'm like if I can find those two things I can have an a lightweight easily moved desk
0:02:33That will be the right size and the right height like so anyway long story short dug through the garage
0:02:39It was an adventure, but I got it and I also a few months back
0:02:46Because we were about to move into our new house
0:02:48in the fall
0:02:51I also ordered another protos play XDR because that's the read the reason I mailed you the LG ultra fine
0:02:58Which I'm very thankful for I'm looking at it. Literally as we speak it is plugged into my computer right this very moment
0:03:04Yeah, so the reason I made it to you is that I intended to once we moved to replace it with another XDR
0:03:11And I was hoping they would update the XDR in the meantime
0:03:13They haven't and I was also hoping to have been moved in five months ago. That hasn't happened
0:03:18So it's been sitting in the box like waiting to be used again same same rationale like do I do I want to like?
0:03:23Unpack this giant monitor from its giant box and set it up just to have to move it again in a few weeks
0:03:29I'll just use the vision Pro Mac screen-sharing mode that didn't pan out the desk ergonomics sucked a few days ago
0:03:36I finally was like, you know what? I think we're gonna be in this house for like three more weeks
0:03:39I am just gonna set this stuff up even though it's only for three weeks
0:03:43Like I'm just gonna set up the stupid desk and set up a stupid giant monitor
0:03:47Maybe I'll waste an afternoon and have to waste another afternoon taking them all down and moving them in three weeks
0:03:53But maybe it'll be worth it. I
0:03:55Am so happy I did
0:03:59Not surprising at all. It is a thousand percent worth it
0:04:01I wish I would have done it weeks ago or a couple months ago even oh my god working on a correct height desk
0:04:08With a giant monitor. I am so happy for the people out there for whom the vision Pro Mac screen-sharing mode is working
0:04:17Well, that's wonderful for you. I'm so happy for you
0:04:19It's not the case for me. And so now that I have like the real thing again. Oh my god. What a difference
0:04:26Night and day in terms of comfort ergonomics my productivity my eyes working. Oh my god, it's
0:04:33Fantastic. So long story short. I finally moved some furniture around that was really worth it. It's a super exciting story
0:04:40I'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
0:04:49Have been using my vision Pro. I have certainly been using it less than I had in the first couple of weeks. I had it
0:04:55but I am actively working on the
0:04:58Vision Pro version of call sheet and just in the last week
0:05:03I don't remember if we brought this up last week or not
0:05:05But in the last week, I've gotten to the point that I've gone from actively embarrassing to well this kind of sucks
0:05:11but it's at least workable and so
0:05:15For the select few that are on the test flight and I am NOT looking for more at the moment
0:05:20But thank you for asking the select few that are on the test flight. Do you have a vision Pro version? My hope?
0:05:25Not a guarantee in fact probably won't happen. But my hope is that I'll have it done before my birthday
0:05:30Which is in just a couple of weeks now
0:05:32But I am actively working on it and I tell you what the easiest way in my personal opinion
0:05:37To do vision Pro work is to do it using match Mac virtual display in the vision Pro environment
0:05:43You know with the vision Pro on your face and so on and so forth. I
0:05:46I still like it. I
0:05:50Maybe even like it plus plus I certainly don't like it more than three physical 5k monitors that are staring me in the face
0:05:56Right now giving me a sunburn
0:05:58but I do like it and
0:05:59I 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
0:06:06Your feelings or story is wrong and mine is right or vice versa, you know
0:06:09Just like you said a moment ago for some people it does work and for you it doesn't
0:06:11I'm one of those people does work for so anyways, I have been using it
0:06:16Some I've gotten sidetracked with other professional nothing bad, but other professional responsibilities
0:06:21So I haven't been doing as much work this week as I usually do
0:06:24But I will say that last night Erin had her monthly book club which happens in the evening time
0:06:32and so I had a couple of hours to kill, you know, once the kids were in bed by myself and
0:06:37I started by looking at my repertoire within or my
0:06:43Collection within Apple, you know the Apple TV app in terms of movies that I've bought which really amounts to you know
0:06:49Movies that I connected with movies everywhere movies anywhere whatever it's called
0:06:53And well of which there are not many to be honest with you
0:06:55But heat is one of them and so I watched the scene from heat Marco you have not seen heat
0:07:00I 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
0:07:08Which was amazing and then I just I didn't want to watch the whole movie because I'd seen it relatively recently
0:07:13So I've been having an itch recently to rewatch
0:07:16Tron legacy or whatever the sequel is called. I forget what it was called
0:07:20But it was like 10 years ago now and I watched the first like half an hour of that
0:07:24It is not 3d or anything like that. It's just a regular 2d movie, but there is a 3d version of it
0:07:29Okay. Well the version I have is not 3d here. I think I was watching from Disney Plus
0:07:33I thought maybe I was looking at the wrong one or maybe they might not they might not offer 3d version of it
0:07:38But I'm pretty sure that that was a there's a 3d version. Okay
0:07:41Well, 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
0:07:48But it was pretty delightful, you know, this is not the sort of thing I would do if Erin was with me
0:07:53I mean she would be happy to watch the movies
0:07:55I watched but I would not be sitting there with the goggles on my face watching movie while she's next to me
0:08:01But when I'm by myself, it's pretty great and I did enjoy quite a lot before I forgot
0:08:05We got a great feedback email from Sam's dad
0:08:08Who 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
0:08:14other people
0:08:15Sam'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
0:08:21He's probably more accustomed to moving his eyes than someone like Casey or John who had been burdened with glasses their entire lives
0:08:27Because I think it is more natural for native eyeglass wearers to change their field of view by moving their head instead of their eyes
0:08:33I believe the foveated rendering is less evident to them than someone like Marco. I can test this
0:08:38Why would I not move my eyes? It's not like I don't have glasses. I can't look through the edges
0:08:42I can look like I'll do right now. I'm looking straight ahead. My head is not moving
0:08:46I can look at the Apple menu through my glasses and the Apple menu is not warped or bent or broken or blurry or anything
0:08:51Like that. It's perfectly crisp and clear. Maybe it's because I don't have progressives
0:08:56Maybe it's because my prescription isn't that bad
0:08:57But I don't the part that where this the logic falls apart is the idea that because you wear glasses
0:09:02You're more likely to turn your head
0:09:03I think multi monitor people are more likely to turn their head because they have to turn their head
0:09:07Otherwise, they can't see the stuff that's on the far left of their far left monitor, but I'm a single monitor person
0:09:11So yeah, anyway, so I thought it was an interesting theory, but maybe John is more right than not
0:09:17You know as like this we're still in such early as you know
0:09:19We keep seeing some you know various doom and gloom things about vision Pro like oh, it's you know
0:09:23People are returning or whatever. We had a little bit of that last week and you know
0:09:27A couple more stories trickling out here and there I personally honestly I have seen a
0:09:31Somewhat frightening decline in the number of people using overcast on vision Pro over the last two weeks
0:09:37Using the iPad version of isn't pro to be clear
0:09:40Yes using the iPad version of an audio only podcast player in a virtual reality headset
0:09:45So obviously like this is not the ideal test case
0:09:49but 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
0:09:56Quickly, is that basically how many people and your check-in is not the right turn turn of phrase
0:10:01But how many people like checked in and open the app each day? Is that how you're computing this?
0:10:05Yeah, and no matter how I smooth out Lee if I do like, you know weekly rolling average, it's the same pattern
0:10:10It's you know, I've lost I've lost half the users already
0:10:12But we are still in such early days of vision Pro
0:10:16Everyone'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
0:10:21Probably a couple of years to really start
0:10:24You know finding its legs and and and finding like the really great things and having those great things
0:10:29mature into actual developed app markets and content markets if we all buy vision pros and then half of us decide this is not
0:10:37Doing what I wanted it to do or it turns out this thing
0:10:40I wanted to do and this doesn't work very well or whatever
0:10:42That's not like a failure of the product that just means our expectations were a little off
0:10:47And now we have to figure out what is it good for if anything and I think you know
0:10:51Every other like major new tech product category. They've all gone through similar arcs
0:10:57there have been very few exceptions that were just instant hits and instant like perfect market and
0:11:02Usefulness fits right right at the right at the door, you know, we've had a few complaints
0:11:06I've seen a few complaints people who are like what you know, I'm so down on division Pro, you know
0:11:11Why 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
0:11:19That way I think this is a product that has a lot of potential most of which is unrealized so far
0:11:26Not because it's a flop or a failure, but because it's brand new we try, you know
0:11:31I've said this many times like we we always whenever a new category is coming out
0:11:35We always project our needs from the current things. We know onto that
0:11:39So, oh the watch will replace the smartphone or whatever. I'll get all my work done on my iPad
0:11:44I wanted to buy a laptop and ever again like that kind of thing and what we see over and over again is
0:11:48That 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
0:11:56We're in the very early stages of this
0:11:58It'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
0:12:07Feel as though and maybe maybe I am in over indexing on my own personal experience
0:12:12But I feel as though I didn't hear a lot about
0:12:15Revolutionary is a bit dramatic but like revolutionary apps that that were available at launch day
0:12:22I haven't had the chance to try black box for example
0:12:25But I've understood black box is one of those apps and certainly it was amazing on
0:12:29IOS 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
0:12:35But 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
0:12:42Stuff with like timers and placing a timer like over the pot you're cooking you saw this enjoy in a Stearns video
0:12:46Don't forget the television app by sandwich. That's really cool
0:12:49Well, so that's what I was that's exactly where I was going with. This is that television
0:12:53I don't think was available at launch although honestly, you know, we're a month later or whatever
0:12:57so it's not been not even a month later, so it was available shortly thereafter and
0:13:02Television is definitely very very cool. And my understanding is that YouTube support for it is coming out soon
0:13:08So, I'm sorry
0:13:08I should back up television allows you to put one of what feels like an infinite number of TVs like physically set-top
0:13:15TVs that you would see in the house like when you and you or me or John was growing up
0:13:20You can just stick that in your space and have it on as like an ambient background noise
0:13:24Which John has talked quite a bit about how much he hates that but I don't mind it
0:13:28And so you can stick a TV somewhere put your own, you know video file in it or presumably
0:13:33YouTube soon and just have that play in the background and it's spatial audio
0:13:37So you hear it off in the corner of your room if that's where you put it and so on
0:13:40It has to be in the background. I don't think that's part of the app
0:13:42You could just put it right in front of you and watch it like it's that is true
0:13:46That is very strange that you've decided this this is the app to put on a television in the background
0:13:51Well, that's fair
0:13:53But in any case another great example this I don't remember the name of the app offhand
0:13:57but I just tried earlier today some app by for flight that lets you see it puts like a disc with a
0:14:05Mildly 3d version of the landscape around an airport and we'll show you real-time flights coming in and out of that airport
0:14:13It's one of those things that's kind of silly and it doesn't really need the vision Pro
0:14:20But damn if it isn't cool the vision Pro, you know what I mean?
0:14:23And it's stuff like that should be able to trace the paths for the planes to land with your finger
0:14:27Yeah, right. Oh, man. I love flight control so much. That was my favorite up to this day might be my favorite
0:14:32iPhone game that would have been actually a good vision Pro launch app if the people who currently own that IP
0:14:38Did like flight control and it was basically just flight control but in 3d really hard to do with the hand tracking that Apple offers
0:14:44Now though I imagine yeah
0:14:46very true
0:14:47But 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
0:14:55More interesting apps come out and like take call sheet for an example
0:14:59I'd like to think it's going to be pretty good on vision Pro, but there's nothing
0:15:03Especially unique about the vision Pro build. Well, all I'm really doing is making the iPad build
0:15:08Fit in in the platform and follow the platform conventions and things like that
0:15:11There's nothing that's unique about it for the vision Pro in terms of like, you know
0:15:16Having it be particularly spatial or anything like that
0:15:19It'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
0:15:26Me I think the in crouton in black box. I think those apps are
0:15:31Better 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
0:15:39Over time we're gonna see more and more of that as we discover
0:15:42What is this?
0:15:42What is this device really good for and to quickly answer the question that you've kind of implied?
0:15:48You sort of asked before like I mean, obviously I didn't return mine
0:15:52But I don't know that I would have spent the money on one originally if it wasn't for you know
0:15:56the professional obligation that I feel like I have
0:15:58But I do like having it like if you if you consider that obscene amount of money awash at this point
0:16:04I really like having it and I am probably going to be taking some plane travel next month and
0:16:09Assuming I have the gumption to be that guy
0:16:12You bet I'm gonna be watching a movie on the plane or doing work or whatever the case may be
0:16:16So yeah, I it is an extremely cool device and if any of us seem down on it
0:16:20I think I speak for Marco and seeing this, you know, if we're down on it, we sound like we're down on it
0:16:24I don't think we mean to at all. It's extremely cool and extremely fun
0:16:27It's just everyone including the three of us slash two of us are trying to figure out where it fits in our lives
0:16:32Yeah, exactly. And I think it's gonna be very much like, you know, it's to bring it back to our roots here
0:16:39Like starting a car in fifth gear like you can do it. It's gonna be a slow start
0:16:45you know, it's it's it's a little bit challenging, but it is possible to do and
0:16:50Eventually, you can get something you can get to a pretty great place
0:16:54And I think this is just gonna have a very slow build up
0:16:58We 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
0:17:02Some 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
0:17:08For developers right now again, like I don't think there's much of an app market to speak of yet
0:17:13But again, it's so early days. We're not gonna know yet
0:17:17We're not no one's gonna be able to declare this like oh this thing is great or this thing is terrible
0:17:21Because there's just so much
0:17:23so far unrealized potential that will just take a long time to develop like I'm talking on the order of
0:17:29Probably years not months
0:17:31like 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
0:17:36Reasons to buy one for most people, you know
0:17:39And and certainly it's gonna take longer than that for the prices to come down and for the capabilities to get better
0:17:43So it's gonna be a slow process, but I think it is going to move forward
0:17:49It's just gonna you know, it might be it might take a while for us to really see that. Yep agreed
0:17:54But we're not talking about vision Pro this week. No, no
0:17:56While you were talking I pulled this item which I was gonna say for next week's follow-up
0:18:01But it is very relevant to what you just discussed
0:18:03So new top item new top item breaking news vision Pro demand is higher than expected returns down to 1%
0:18:10Reports 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
0:18:17original estimate of 150 to 200,000
0:18:20Apparently 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
0:18:26Of relatively high US demand and plans to roll out sales in other countries in the coming months
0:18:31I don't know what Ming Chi Kuo would know about Apple's return rates
0:18:34But I would expect him to know about that Apple has asked suppliers to increase production because that's his beat Apple supply chain
0:18:42And I feel like this is very counter to the you know
0:18:45The very predictable story of like people are returning them
0:18:48No one wants them sales are down or even market was saying you could get one immediately
0:18:51That means they're doing badly
0:18:52but whatever Apple's estimates were apparently they either they either did a conservative first order and now are asking for more or
0:18:59They just really didn't think they would sell this money. So I think it's doing fine
0:19:02I think it's doing as expected for a year one sales of an expensive weird thing
0:19:06Anonymous writes I work as an applied cryptographer and have been researching this stuff for several years including deploying it into production systems at my
0:19:12Jobby job one minor correction to how the PQ hybrid scheme was described
0:19:16It's not that the data would be encrypted twice once with classical crypto like ECD H and then twice with PQC
0:19:24rather two separate shared secrets are established one classical one PQC and then combined cryptographically to form a single session key that
0:19:31inherits the security properties of both crypto systems with a single encrypt operation
0:19:35That's pretty neat
0:19:36The reason for this is not entirely to hedge against potential bugs in the PQC implementation
0:19:40But also to hedge against the selected PQC algorithm itself becoming broken by continued crypt analysis
0:19:45And that's not such a crazy notion in 2022 one of the finalist algorithms for NIST's
0:19:50PQC selection process the algorithm is called psych as IKE which I love was broken with a ten-year-old laptop whoopsie-dipsies
0:19:57So keeping the classical crypto in the equation means that you at least fall back to the security of today
0:20:02Which is battle-hardened for millions of hours of research attempting unsuccessfully to break it
0:20:06I thought that was neat like the because a post quantum cryptography is so new it hasn't really been battle tested
0:20:13So people have ideas we think this will be you know protected against quantum computers and oops
0:20:19It's not protected against a ten-year-old laptop. Well, let's try let's try again, right?
0:20:23And so that's you know, I I thought it was like, okay bugs and apples implementation
0:20:27What if they messed it up or whatever, but it could just be they implemented it perfectly and but the algorithm is so new
0:20:32That it doesn't perform as expected that happens with all you know
0:20:37Cryptography things like that all the weaknesses that were found in things that were once considered a state-of-the-art like, you know
0:20:43the original RSA MD 5 all these things that are
0:20:46Much less strong now than we thought they were back in the day and that could happen with
0:20:50Apple selection of their post quantum cryptography thing. So underneath it all is the cryptography
0:20:55They've been using up till now which has you know, thus far so the test of time continuing another
0:21:00Peculiarity, I wanted to call out was the choice of security levels in Apple's hybrid construction
0:21:04They're using the PQC algorithm Kyber 1024
0:21:08Which is roughly equivalent to the security level of an AES 256 or in NIST's parlance a level 5
0:21:14But they're combining with the elliptic curve algorithm p256, which is roughly equivalent to AES 128 or level 1 in NIST's
0:21:20parlance and IST
0:21:22The level terminology is confusing because Apple seems to have invented their own leveling system. That is unrelated to the levels
0:21:27I mentioned here, but what that tells me is that they are really skeptical of Kyber
0:21:33So they are going with the highest security level possible while keeping the lower classical crypto level presumably
0:21:39This is so that they continue doing their comparatively more efficient per message rekeying on the classical portion of the hybrid construction
0:21:46Yeah, if there's doubts about the post quantum thing and you have a choice of strength
0:21:50Just pick the strongest one and cross your fingers and you know
0:21:53Just 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
0:22:00More time. I think the Apple's post quantum cryptography approach for messages is
0:22:05Very sound and well-considered doesn't mean that they're not gonna have to you know, take a second or third pass on it
0:22:11But it's better to move now for the reasons we talked about last week that like we're not
0:22:15There's no quantum computers out there now that are able to efficiently crack Apple's systems
0:22:21But 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
0:22:27Can't read you don't want them cracking that open 10 20 years from now when they can read it
0:22:32So the sooner Apple starts the big conversion of like sort of silently in the background kind of like they did with APFS
0:22:37Silently in the background all your iMessage conversations will start converting to this as long as everyone who's participating them has at least iOS
0:22:4317.4 or whatever the other equivalent versions of yeah, it's good to get this
0:22:47transition going
0:22:49John males writes something I discovered recently you can download your data from Apple in Google takeout style including Apple notes from privacy
0:22:56Apple calm the notes are downloaded in a format that includes the data importing the data back into notes would be tricky. I presume
0:23:02If I knew about this already or I forgot about it, but as soon as I saw this
0:23:06I'm like, I've been looking for something to export notes
0:23:08I think maybe last time I did it that was using some app or script that exports them as PDF or just exports the text
0:23:13or whatever, but I took a look at it and it the privacy that Apple like home thing is
0:23:17Structured very much like Google takeout, which is just sort of like a little, you know form that you fill out
0:23:23What do you want to export how many files do you want it in?
0:23:26You can pick like a maximum size give it to me and files no bigger than five gigabytes or whatever you want
0:23:31And just like Google takeout you finish filling out the form and it says, okay, we're working on your export
0:23:36We'll send you an email and it's done unlike Google takeout. This seems to take a long time
0:23:40I requested my notes archive just my notes archive which is not that big
0:23:45I have maybe a thousand notes not a lot of attachments and then not a lot of images
0:23:48Two days ago and they're still working on it. So Google takeout
0:23:52I mean Google takeout does take some amount of time, but I don't think I've ever waited more than 24 hours
0:23:56For my Google takeout of my like gigs and gigs of Gmail, so I'll tell you how it goes
0:24:00I did the takeout thing because I wanted to see what format does it give it to me in any format?
0:24:05It'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
0:24:12Point I have a lot of stuff and notes and I would be sad if it all went away due to some weird bug
0:24:17Is this gonna be a better alternative than just having some app like read the SQLite file in Mac OS and dump it for you?
0:24:24I will say like I mean part of what's in the notes is I have these nicely formatted documents with like
0:24:29photos 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
0:24:37You know if I just dumped the text file from some blob and sequel light plus a bunch of attachment images
0:24:43That'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
0:24:47I'm hoping it is something that
0:24:49Preserves some of the fidelity of the the work I've put into some of the more complicated documents like
0:24:54The one where I'm trying to pick out a new couch
0:24:56It's like seven years old and we still haven't bought a new couch
0:24:58but there's a lot of pictures of couches in there and URLs and informations and measurements and images and
0:25:03Map locations for stores that have stuff and yeah, I would want that to be preserved
0:25:08Wait, are you gonna actually buy new couch? That's major news. I mean signs say no, but
0:25:14For 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
0:25:21Stores to sit on candidate couches and we still bought nothing. So
0:25:24Yeah, cuz you know remind the listeners how many new couches have you bought in your entire life never bought a couch never
0:25:32I'm using my
0:25:35Grandparents hand-me-down couches currently they bought them. These are their new couches. So they bought them probably in the late 80s early 90s
0:25:42They're both sleepers and they weigh a ton. Oh, yeah, you're never getting out of your house
0:25:46I carried them into my house. I carried them from my grandmother's house in New Jersey into into a
0:25:50You haul like rental truck and then accidentally drove it on the parkway. Sorry everybody
0:25:56We've all been there. Yeah, I just I just didn't think I'm in a truck now
0:26:01It's so you know, you know, like I know parkways aren't for trucks
0:26:04But what kind of any would take a truck on the parkway? Everybody knows that. Oh, I didn't realize I'm a truck now
0:26:10No, we've been also looking to get a couch not a particularly actively in the same way
0:26:15It sounds like you are and we have not done so in the last few years and we need to not we don't have
0:26:20couches from late 80s, but
0:26:22We are in the market as well. And I don't know. I just I haven't found the one that sticks for me
0:26:27Yeah, it's couches are tough
0:26:29Right something got the hardest of line couches
0:26:30But yeah, they're just and you have to you have to go sit in them
0:26:34Like you have to find them in a store. I did one on the sitting tour. I was like, this is it
0:26:37I've candidate couches. They're all like roughly the right measurements. They have all the things I want about them
0:26:42I'm gonna sit on them and you'd sit on them and you'd be like what I've said to myself was
0:26:45Grandma's couch that is like torn to shreds and incredibly ugly. It's more comfortable than this
0:26:50It's sad to say that but it was true
0:26:52So I'm not gonna pay all this money for a couch that is I mean
0:26:55It's gonna be less ugly but not as comfortable as the current one. We have it's rough
0:26:59Yeah
0:26:59It is shocking how difficult it is to find a couch that
0:27:02Fits you comfort wise like you have to just go to a big furniture store and sit in a whole bunch of them and you
0:27:07Usually at the end of that you'll have either one or zero that you like. Yep can confirm
0:27:12All right, moving right along Adam whirl
0:27:15Writes that Marco is right. Hey calibration can prevent a magnetic watch band from throwing off the compass
0:27:20I'm an aerospace engineer and satellites can use magnetometer magnetometers
0:27:25I hope I pronounced that right to figure out which way they're pointing even with magnets and ferrous metals nearby
0:27:30The 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
0:27:36Use GPS to look up the local magnetic field take measurements while rotating the device and solve for the calibration
0:27:41Parameters normal watch behavior involves a lot of movement and rotation
0:27:44So this could be entirely transparent to the user or it could be a prompted swirling motion the iPhone compass apps sometimes asked for
0:27:50Yeah, this is the key bit. We're missing out. I was missing the last one
0:27:54It's like oh, what about third-party watch bands?
0:27:55They 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
0:28:03Right. So even if you put different strength magnets or whatever that Apple didn't anticipate the key is
0:28:08Whatever those things are pick any strengths you want they're going to be attached to the watch
0:28:13But the Earth's magnetic field is not attached to the watch
0:28:16So as the watch moves in your normal usage or if you're asked to swirl it or whatever
0:28:19The Earth's magnetic field will still always be pointing in the same direction
0:28:22indeed
0:28:24Zev 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
0:28:32Just about calibration of onboard magnets at the factory all iOS devices with magnetometer
0:28:36Except the original iPad also have a gyroscope core motion takes them both into account to cancel out magnets moving with the device
0:28:42See mag safe car mounts don't break your compass
0:28:44Guessing the watch already does the same with two with the same two sensors
0:28:49So now we can to do it or in theory there is even a framework to do it
0:28:52So this seems I mean not that this makes it any more plausible that the straps are gonna be attached with magnets
0:28:57But we'll see at least it doesn't cancel it out
0:28:59Orlando Herrera writes on a professional cinematographer and camera operator and I dabble with iOS and now vision OS development as a hobby
0:29:05Based on my observations the pass-through cameras at the are at the heart of the color and motion blur issues when using
0:29:11Pass-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
0:29:19You can see the degree of motion blur change based on whether or not you are in a well-lit environment versus a dim environment
0:29:25You can also observe that the pass-through video motion blur is different than the motion blur of vision OS windows
0:29:30Which further indicates it's the cameras not the OLED screens that causes behavior
0:29:33Similarly, 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
0:29:41Bit depth is lower to reduce processing time. So the device can maintain its low latency target
0:29:46I imagine an improved pair of processors and a future device could increase the color bit depth while maintaining low latency
0:29:52So the pastor experience could gain HDR and a higher percentage of the p3 gamut
0:29:56Do 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
0:30:02Does the pass-through have different motion blur than like window contents?
0:30:06You're asking the wrong person. I can't I don't see it either. So I'm not sure
0:30:10I mean this makes sense to me because like that the cameras on the vision Pro are I mean, they're they're fine
0:30:15But they're not going to be you know
0:30:18the 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
0:30:23Not passing through a camera and a sensor or whatever and yeah cameras with sensors that small especially in the room is dark
0:30:30They'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
0:30:35But what I had heard is for some people complaining that there was a blur on things when they move their head
0:30:40Including things like windows of vision OS applications. Yeah in my in my experience
0:30:45I I think the any kind of motion blurring is true of the vision OS windows as well
0:30:50I noticed it in particular when trying to like scroll text and read it in Safari just you know within the vision Pro Safari app
0:30:57Again, it's not like unusable. But if you notice the motion blur in other areas, you will notice it there, too
0:31:04We are brought to you this week exclusively by ATP members, please consider joining and becoming a member today
0:31:13Here's why you might want to do that. So for me personally
0:31:15I listen to a lot of podcasts and my favorite shows if they offer a membership program
0:31:19I will almost always buy it because what they usually offer is an ad-free version of the show and
0:31:24Usually also a little bit of bonus content and to me
0:31:27Those are the two reasons to buy a membership our membership here at ATP offers both of those plus a few other things as well
0:31:33So the ad-free version of the show nice and easy you get the same show everyone else gets but with the ads removed
0:31:39So it's very convenient. I always love that
0:31:41I kind of feel like it's a premium experience when I'm listening to a show and there's no ads in it
0:31:44I have to like, you know, skip over or whatever then we also do bonus episodes
0:31:49These are episodes exclusively for members that come out about once a month on a pretty wide variety of topics
0:31:54We do like tier rankings of different tech products. We do movie reviews
0:31:58We do a couple of other like, you know food things and a couple other fun things
0:32:01So it's always a lot of fun
0:32:03And if you like us and you like our content
0:32:05You'll probably like a little bit more of it and especially with the freedom to go off in a couple of different directions
0:32:10We wouldn't normally cover on the main show. That's what the bonus episodes do and we offer a bootleg feed
0:32:15This gives you the unedited live stream recording. So this is everything that we record from beginning to end on the live episodes
0:32:22It's basically the unedited raw version of the show
0:32:25So you have a bit of bonus stuff on the meeting and end of that any any topic or feedback that we end up cutting
0:32:30From the in the edit will remain in the bootleg
0:32:32You have to hear Casey swearing you get to hear any of my jokes that don't land that I edit out of the publisher
0:32:37To make myself sound funnier and all that's available in the bootleg and you get the bootleg right after we finish recording
0:32:42So it comes out usually about 12 to 16 hours before the main show
0:32:46You get a little bit early release in a more raw version of it and a lot of our members actually prefer listen that way
0:32:52I think it's kind of cool actually
0:32:54so anyway
0:32:54That's the main thing you're getting with our membership and free version of the show
0:32:58Access to the bootleg if you want it and the bonus episodes for exclusive member content. Check it out today ATP FM
0:33:06Slash-join, you can get it for just eight bucks a month or you know equivalents and a couple other currencies
0:33:11We also have annual plans gift memberships all sorts of fun stuff. So once again ATP
0:33:16FM slash join become a member today. It is by far the best way to support the show
0:33:22Thank you so much and now back to the show
0:33:24Gottfried chin writes I recently saw an interview using metas version of personas called Kodak avatars. They are
0:33:35Basically photo realistic, but the scanning process is highly complex and not feasible with consumer hardware
0:33:40I think it shows that the current technical challenge is the high quality scan
0:33:43The interview was done using quest Pro which I assume is inferior division Pro regarding device sensors
0:33:48So I wonder if Apple should offer high quality persona scanning stations in Apple stores
0:33:52So you can do an optional HD scan if you want
0:33:54I mean, I don't know one way or the other but I will tell you that I saw
0:33:57You know a couple of stills from this video and my goodness
0:33:59The 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
0:34:06Avatars these Kodak avatars obviously, you know setting aside the fact that I don't know what they use to scan them
0:34:13Maybe they use like the fancy laser scanner or whatever
0:34:15but 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
0:34:20Bought you just pointed your face for two seconds and it gives you one. This is something else but
0:34:25The uncanny value which people just throw out that phrase without re-explaining and just assume everyone knows what it is
0:34:30But the uncanny value is the idea which I don't think is ever really even proven out
0:34:34But people just accept it because it feels right to them
0:34:36But anyway, the idea is that as you make something more and more realistic looking it gets more and more appealing to you
0:34:42Until you get really really close to it being like perfect like wow
0:34:46This is totally convincing as a human and you get really really close to it
0:34:49And then it takes a huge dip and that is the uncanny value. It's like boy
0:34:52I was liking these avatars more and more as you made them better and better
0:34:55But then all of a sudden right when you got close to them being perfect now
0:34:59I don't like it at all because it's a scary death mask, right?
0:35:01There's a lot of questions with this
0:35:04How close do you have to get to being perfect for the uncanny value to take place?
0:35:09If you look at the original paper or whatever
0:35:10It'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
0:35:14Get 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
0:35:20You know people like them and this is all about how does it feel to a person has it does it appeal to a person?
0:35:24because you want your avatar to be appealing not repulsive to a person I say all this because these
0:35:30Much more finely detailed much more photorealistic avatars the the codec avatars from Facebook
0:35:36Are I think further into the uncanny valley than personas? Oh, they are closer to being perfect
0:35:44They're better like in that uncanny valley graph
0:35:46I think they are like over the edge of the rollercoaster thing and screaming down in the middle of it like so
0:35:52You know the the personas ones what they have going for them. Is that their blurriness and sort of slight cartoonish ness?
0:36:00Helps keep them in my opinion. Anyway in my personal uncanny valley graph for these
0:36:04Farther up the hill, you know farther up the big dip that is the uncanny valley in that graph, you know
0:36:10You can take a look
0:36:12We'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
0:36:17You decide whether you think that is farther into your uncanny valley or not
0:36:22But part of the problem with doing like actual photorealistic humans where there is not a bunch of like fuzzy
0:36:28Gaussian blur around everything and sort of you know, a little bit of caricature is that as you know
0:36:33People who make 3d movies and games I've known for many many years
0:36:36it's really difficult to do convincing humans because we know what they look like and things like subsurface scattering underneath translucent skin a
0:36:43Technology that was sort of pioneered maybe 15 years ago and is now pretty commonplace is
0:36:48Necessary for you to not look like you're not made of plastic and I think this is doing that
0:36:54But doing that well gets expensive real fast. And then if you see these things in motion, they're not
0:37:02You'll see the video of it but you can see the actual human wearing the headset and then you see their avatar
0:37:07And I feel like the if you look at the motion of the human the avatar seems
0:37:12Stiffer like maybe they're not moving all the parts of it
0:37:17Like 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
0:37:22are connected but on a person like when you talk
0:37:24More than just your lips moves and that's very difficult to do unless you carefully model or observe that which is why I think
0:37:31Apple's personas when you look at this Apple's persona starts to look a lot more like me emojis because they
0:37:36Apple has chosen the three or four or five
0:37:39Most important parts that need to move and they've probably put in some simple heuristics of saying look
0:37:44We can't tell when the earlobe twitches
0:37:46But basically every time they make this noise at this volume with this mouth sound move the earlobe a little bit or whatever
0:37:52And I think they're doing a little bit more of like what animators do which is
0:37:55Just give me the gist of it and use what you know about how people talk to make it convincing
0:38:00These ones look a little bit more death-masky to me
0:38:03But hey, everyone has their own opinion on these so you should take a look at it as for the question though
0:38:07Should Apple have high-quality persona scanning stations?
0:38:09Well, I think not if they end up looking like this, but either way, it's not it's not feasible
0:38:13Like if they ever end up selling a whole bunch of vision pros
0:38:16You can't have people lining up at the the Apple store to get their scans
0:38:20The whole point is the device should do it for you
0:38:21So that they should continue to work the solution the way they have you buy the device you take it home you do the scan
0:38:26The privacy of your own home after you've done your hair and makeup the way you like it
0:38:30tweak it to your heart's content and
0:38:32They 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
0:38:37Disagree with you with regard to these Kodak avatars. I think these look incredible
0:38:42I really really do and and to me the personas which again I did I am a defender of the personas
0:38:49I think that they are a pretty good idea and they work pretty well. I think the Kodak avatars look way way better
0:38:54Do you think they're on the other side of the uncanny valley or they haven't dipped into it yet?
0:38:57Do you know the only uncanny valley chart I'm talking about? I gotta find. Yeah. Yeah. I think that the Kodak
0:39:01I'm sorry, the personas are dipping into the uncanny valley
0:39:05I certainly don't think they're at the bottom of the uncanny valley by any stretch
0:39:08I 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
0:39:14You yet, right? Correct. Yep. I would agree with that. I would agree with that
0:39:17Retelling of my opinion. I don't want to I don't want to imply that you feel the same way
0:39:20This is kind of like a Bezos trade. I just put a link from the Wikipedia page to the uncanny valley thing and
0:39:27Mean, I guess like where where is the dip? Is it like at 90 ish percent? It's a very fudgy. Yeah. Yeah
0:39:34No to me in I feel like the personas are starting down the cliff
0:39:40But they haven't fallen yet
0:39:41And I feel like this is comfortably on the upswing if not the top on the other side of the valley for me
0:39:47You're gonna say other side. All right. Well, maybe you need to play more video games
0:39:50Yeah, actually that's probably true
0:39:52That's actually a really really good point because these look about as good as like, you know
0:39:56The cutscenes and last of us part two, for example, you know, that's a really good point
0:40:00Actually, 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
0:40:05I don't know what the state of the art is on this sort of stuff yet, but kind of tangentially related to this
0:40:10Recently, I did a podcast
0:40:12with Wojciech
0:40:15I'm not even gonna try to pronounce his last name
0:40:17I'm so sorry, but there was a Polish podcast which obviously I don't speak Polish
0:40:21But you know, he speaks phenomenal English and we did this in the same style as as Gruber in sandwich
0:40:28Adam Lisagor on the talk show and yeah, we were doing this just with our personas and I've never met him in person
0:40:35And so I don't know what he looks like and to me his persona looked completely good like completely big great even
0:40:42But I think that's in no small part
0:40:44In 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
0:40:49But his hair is not blurry in real life. It was fair, you know
0:40:52but I think you get the point I'm driving that is when you don't have a
0:40:55Relationship a physical relationship with this person in so far as you've never been in the same space before it
0:41:01I thought the personas were great. Actually, it didn't feel unnatural to me at all now
0:41:07that's probably that would be very different if I was talking to you or Marco or Mike or Jason or what have you but
0:41:14But 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
0:41:21You get my point
0:41:22It was very passable to me and then there's a video
0:41:26There'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
0:41:30And teach your own
0:41:32All right, moving right along
0:41:34There's a gate now for the vision Pro and it's crack gate
0:41:37some Apple vision Pro units develop an identical crack and the cover glass reports Mac rumors a
0:41:42Small number of Apple vision Pro owners have claimed that their headsets developed a hairline crack right down the middle of the front cover glass
0:41:48Despite never having been dropped or mishandled and there's a link in this article that makes it pretty clear what they're talking about
0:41:54Yeah, I mean this kind of thing like it looks like, you know, it's kind of a standard, you know
0:41:58Manufacturing defect or weakness with like a certain stress point in the glass that probably is you know
0:42:04No fault to the people who are using it
0:42:07Again, it's unfortunate but it's a version one product and of a very very complicated design
0:42:13so
0:42:14This kind of stuff happens. They'll fix it. It'll be fine in a long run
0:42:18All right, there is breaking news. This was just today wasn't it as we record
0:42:23Apple has officially canceled project Titan ending a decade long and allegedly 10 billion
0:42:31billion billion dollar efforts this is reported by Bloomberg and also the New York Times will put links in the show notes from
0:42:38Bloomberg Apple Inc is canceling a decade-long effort to build an electric car according to people with knowledge of the matter
0:42:43Abandoning one of the most ambitious projects in the history of the company Apple made the disclosure internally Tuesday
0:42:48Surprising the nearly 2,000 employees working on the project. Was it really that much of a surprise? Yeah, I guess fair fair
0:42:54The decision was shared by chief operating officer Jeff Williams and Kevin Lynch a vice president in charge of the efforts
0:42:59the two executives told staffers that the project will begin winding down and that many employees on the team working on the car known as
0:43:05special projects grouped or SPG will be shifted to the artificial intelligence division under executive John John
0:43:11Giannandrea something like that. I'm sorry. Those employees will focus on generative AI projects and increasingly key priority for the company
0:43:19Interesting confluence of events here because this you know
0:43:23The fact that they're taking some employee first some employees are gonna be leaving the people who knew how to build cars
0:43:27I'm not sure Apple needs those people but shifting the other employees to AI projects made me think of exactly
0:43:33You know, I was even thinking of blogging this but enough time because it just came out today how I would sum up
0:43:38This, you know 10-year foray into the car project as we always called it project Titan
0:43:44for Apple and it's related to AI
0:43:48When 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
0:43:55It's cool. You watch 2001, you know the you're learning about computers
0:43:59You 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
0:44:06When our computer is gonna be smart and talk like people that'll be so cool. It's all in all the science fiction
0:44:12Let me learn about where computers are today. And let me tell you when I was a kid in the 70s
0:44:17you'd see
0:44:19Stories 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
0:44:25computer they made and here's what it can do and
0:44:28People were super excited
0:44:32Like look what we've made this do I know I know it doesn't seem that smart to you
0:44:36but I can talk to it and ask it questions and it understands the sentence and it knows what the different parts of the
0:44:40sentence mean and it can reason about things and make inferences and respond to me and
0:44:44People were so excited about that and I'd say and you know what look at computer chips
0:44:49It's 1974 but in 1975 computer chips gonna be even better in the 1976. They're gonna be even better
0:44:54And if you extrapolate on this those graph
0:44:56You can see that in the year 2000 computer chips are just gonna be massively more powerful than they are now
0:45:03And then you look at this AI thing and look what we've done now and it's so it's kind of dumb now
0:45:08But we're on the right track, right?
0:45:10and so if we just follow this graph by the year 1988 computers should be smarter than any human on the planet and
0:45:16This is what I read about when I was a kid and when I got a little bit older
0:45:20You kind of realized that since the 60s or the 50s or whenever they first tried to do this
0:45:25Everybody thought how 9000 is gonna be like, you know at most 20 years in the future because just look at this graph, right?
0:45:31I mean, I didn't know the term Moore's law then or whatever, but I was experiencing the advance of technology
0:45:36Which was my computers were getting faster and faster all the time and the video games
0:45:41I played in the 70s were so much worse than the video games. I played in the 80s and 90s or whatever
0:45:45So you I was living the progression and yet artificial intelligence before the current AI trend that is in a computer that thinks and talks
0:45:53Like a person like again how 9000 but not murderous or any other things to see in sci-fi
0:45:58Very smart people
0:46:02Really believed that you know, although we what we have now is not great in five to ten years
0:46:07It'll be better and in 20 years
0:46:08It will be the most intelligent thing on the planet Earth and as part of my you know
0:46:13Let's talk about this in rectus ages ago the discovering the parameters of the world. Can you move things with your mind?
0:46:19How big is the universe?
0:46:21Are we gonna make computers that think one of the parameters of the world was people always kind of think?
0:46:26breakeven fusion and artificial intelligence are much closer than they actually are and
0:46:31Excited as I was about it as the years went by
0:46:34And you saw the same stories and everyone said it's probably five to ten years in the future
0:46:38You figured out that these people hadn't yet found the right approach
0:46:43To fit to this problem. We found the right approach to flying which is like fixed-wing aircraft with engines
0:46:49We found the right approach to doing math because we're getting really good at that with our computer chips that that approach
0:46:55We just like that. That's the way just start scaling it, you know, and that's served us well up until today
0:47:00But we haven't yet found the right approach to computers that can think and so with the car project
0:47:09Apple like like all those excited scientists in the 70s that I was reading about and
0:47:13like so many other companies in the world decided that
0:47:17Cars that drive themselves are probably right around the corner. Look what we can do now
0:47:23It'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
0:47:30You know five to ten years
0:47:33all of our cars are gonna have no steering wheels and they're gonna be driving ourselves because look at our progress and look how
0:47:38Look what we're already able to do in such a short time
0:47:41Surely by insert year that has already passed here
0:47:45All the cars will be self-driving and driving will be obsolete
0:47:49and
0:47:51that's why Apple embarked on this project because if that's gonna be a thing that is a big disruption to the
0:47:56Transportation world and Apple should probably be in on that and they were focusing on
0:48:00Making 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
0:48:06It's not because you know, they just wanted to make something in an industry like in a low-margin industry
0:48:11They wanted to get a part of they're like, well this this industry is about to be disrupted
0:48:15In fact, we'll put a link in the show notes to Tim Cook an interview in 2017
0:48:19where the interview was asking him essentially about the car project or about automotive stuff and Tim Cook flat-out says I
0:48:24Think there's a disruption coming and it's because of autonomy
0:48:27And you know Apple wants to be in on that and whatever vague way
0:48:31He said it to not, you know mentioned unreleased products. A
0:48:35Lot of people thought that uber thought that you know, we we hire drivers now
0:48:39But kind of like Netflix sent people DVDs for a while
0:48:41That's just how we're gonna start eventually. We're not gonna need the drivers
0:48:45The cars will drive themselves so many companies looked at what they had and just like the AI people said
0:48:51This is amazing. And in five years, it will be so much better
0:48:55Turns out they did not have the right approach. No, no has the right approach yet
0:49:00No one knows how to make a car that can drive itself as well as humans can drive in all conditions
0:49:04It's not like it hasn't gotten better. It's gotten way way better
0:49:08Waymo has cars that can totally drive themselves in limited circumstances and limited areas doing a pretty good job
0:49:15but
0:49:17even Waymo is approaching the limits of the techniques that it has been using so
0:49:22Apple failing on this project is just a
0:49:25consequence of us collectively as humans
0:49:29Having not yet found the correct approach to make a car that drives itself
0:49:34We 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
0:49:39Based on you know, you actually paying attention or not
0:49:42But we haven't found the right approach where it's like if we just do this for five more years
0:49:47We'll be there unlike for example, you know adding numbers together in your CPU
0:49:51We look on the right approach for that right or planes or whatever and that's disappointing for everybody involved
0:49:57It's if you're wondering why Apple spent ten billion dollars in ten years doing this
0:50:04Important people at Apple like Tim Cook or if you read the New York Times story, Johnny Ive
0:50:08Had convinced themselves or had been convinced by the hype or the other people they respect in the industry
0:50:15That this was a thing
0:50:17They thought they could do like they said look look at look at what Tesla's for example been able to do now
0:50:21We're smarter than them and they're already almost there. Let's get on this
0:50:26Maybe we can beat them to it because surely one of us is gonna crack this problem in the next five years
0:50:30And the answer was no no one's gonna cry in the next five years
0:50:34No one's gonna crack it in the next ten years. When are we gonna crack it?
0:50:37I 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
0:50:43It for 20 more years, but like talk to the AI people
0:50:45Everyone thinks what we've done is amazing. What we've achieved is amazing extrapolate and we'll get there and this is yet another
0:50:52disappointing instance in my adult life of
0:50:55Lots 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
0:51:01of the time if you listen to a tech podcast or you're interested in tech most of the time tech does sort of
0:51:06Fulfill our dreams even more so like computers really did get way better
0:51:10video games got so much better like so much if you if you could take like child me and show them like a
0:51:16Mention again the last of us part two it would have exploded my brain
0:51:20Right that really did happen just like everyone thought it do in fact maybe even faster the internet the internet look at that
0:51:26Happened so much faster than people thought it wasn't people underestimated that but sometimes if you think something is around the corner
0:51:33Sometimes you're gonna be wrong because it turns out you're barking up the wrong tree
0:51:36And 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
0:51:44in all conditions and that's sad for
0:51:47The little versions of me who are seven years old checking books out of the library about self-driving cars now
0:51:51And 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
0:51:55We might eventually but Apple
0:51:57Let's say Apple is taking a break for a few decades before they take another run at this because if it does become plausible
0:52:04They should probably dive back in and participate in this industry, but right now
0:52:09I think even Waymo had a big thing where they were like yeah
0:52:11We're kind of giving up on the whole self-driving everywhere thing and we're just concentrating on limited circumstances
0:52:16Everyone who has tried this has as they say in Dune they tried and failed they tried and died well
0:52:21They didn't die, but you know the projects died, so I think this is
0:52:26unsurprising but disappointing for little kids everywhere I
0:52:31Think
0:52:34You know the car project
0:52:36We've been saying for a long time now that we didn't really understand why they were doing this obviously
0:52:43It's very hard to judge with something that this secretive
0:52:46We don't really know how much progress they were making but it sure has seemed like over time
0:52:51This project has not been going well
0:52:53We've heard of a number of reboots and reorganizations and changing directions change. You know there's been so much
0:52:59You know change in the project trying to I guess get it to go in in a good direction
0:53:05Well on that though like my 2017 video Tim Cook flat-out says we think there's going to be disruption on the automotive industry
0:53:11And it's because of self-driving and automation essentially, right?
0:53:13But then the most recent reboot that we heard about and talked about in the show was Apple said yeah forget about self-driving
0:53:18We're just gonna do like we're still gonna do a car
0:53:21But it'll just be like you know current sort of driver aid type stuff
0:53:25And that is not the that was not the vision according to Tim Cook in 2017
0:53:29It's not like oh, we saw my car cuz when I make a car
0:53:32he thought there was going to be disruption related to automation and
0:53:35that basically turned out to not be the case in the time frame that they cared about and so
0:53:41You know changing the project like oh, let's reboot it, but now we're just gonna make a plain old car
0:53:46That's like everyone else's car
0:53:47It's not an exciting project
0:53:49And I am very glad that Apple chose not to do it
0:53:51Even if they had gotten the self-driving part to to progress further and and that was still the plan for the project
0:53:58Even then I still don't think Apple is the right company to do that for lots of reasons
0:54:04It doesn't really fit a lot of their their business shape and style and principles
0:54:10You know we discussed recently how it seemed to be almost impossible to
0:54:14fit that into their new carbon goals for instance like you know their goal with carbon neutrality is
0:54:19To have their products be carbon neutral end-to-end over their entire lifetime including the energy they use during their useful lives
0:54:27That's really hard for a car. Well the rumor is it was gonna be like a hundred grand
0:54:32So maybe they'd sell so few of them that they could carbon offset every single
0:54:36Because the volumes would be low, but yeah, it's it's different. I do really wonder
0:54:40I mean maybe when they made that commitment
0:54:42They kind of knew that the car project was gonna get canceled because you either
0:54:46Don't sell a lot of cars and do a lot of carbon offsets
0:54:49Or you can't meet your goals because they can't transform the world's energy
0:54:54Infrastructure to be carbon neutral to power all their cars no and so that I feel like the the carbon plan
0:55:00Was 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
0:55:07Is like we've heard through a few different channels about Tim Cook really believing very strongly
0:55:13allegedly even saying directly Apple products don't kill people
0:55:18Period like Apple does not make products that kill people at least you know directly obviously you can text in your phone and crash
0:55:24But they feel very strongly with that
0:55:25And I think that's that's a very good thing both for the world and of course on a small level for their brand
0:55:29And 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?
0:55:37And so they're getting they're thinking of getting into a business where you can't avoid that cars people dying car accidents, right?
0:55:43So I don't know how he would square that stance or that's just like a soundbite really
0:55:48But like the idea is we don't we don't want to be a company that does that
0:55:51But we also want to get into the car business. Well. I have some bad news for you about cars
0:55:55There's no such thing as a car that doesn't sometimes kill people due to car accidents at least not yet
0:56:01maybe they thought they could make one again with the self-driving thing, but
0:56:05You know that's that's kind of like you're making that choice like you could just keep making phones and computers
0:56:11And they're not gonna like crash into you and kill you right, but you're choosing to try for a car
0:56:16And that's you know that's changing things up again
0:56:19We've we've been wondering for years why this project was still going on it seemed like it was a
0:56:24Pretty long shot from the start and it seemed like it was never going super well
0:56:28So I'm glad to hear that they finally axed it you know obviously
0:56:32For all the tumult this is gonna cause the actual people working on it including probably a bunch of lost jobs. That's not great
0:56:38But for the company strategically and and for the leadership to have chosen a direction
0:56:43I think they made the right call I kind of don't know why they didn't make it years ago
0:56:46But I'm sure they had their reasons whatever the reasons were now. They've made the right call this project is seemingly
0:56:52You know really finally dead, and I think it's better that they don't continue to waste all of this
0:56:59experimental money and and opportunity cost on
0:57:03A project that's very unlikely to ever be very good for them because now they have freed up that capacity
0:57:09Maybe not the exact people because it's different specialties, but they've at least freed up like that
0:57:13Organizational capacity that money how about that sure you know the money is a big part of it of course
0:57:19But also just you know focus talent. You know like there's other other limited resources. They have
0:57:24Now they can focus that on
0:57:27Products and and you know improvements to their other products that are much more likely to actually benefit them and their customers the car project
0:57:34I was always kind of this you know massive moonshot
0:57:37It was very very expensive and so if they're now redirecting that towards things like better Siri
0:57:44You know which is what you know or you know whatever we're gonna call all their new AI efforts
0:57:48That's way more likely to both a succeed and be to actually benefit their customers in useful ways and to benefit
0:57:55the rest of their products together like
0:57:58We see what Apple does they they share a lot of tech they share a lot of advancements
0:58:04They share a lot of software between all the different platforms
0:58:06They share parts they share techniques that like they share manufacturing you know strategies and things between all the different platforms
0:58:13They share supplies and suppliers
0:58:15With the car it was always kind of like does this have any chance of benefiting their other products not much
0:58:20You know how would it even fit into their retail strategy who knows I mean?
0:58:24It's not even clear from the outside how much carplay was shared with project. It seemed like not at all
0:58:29So like except maybe like some dashboard design concept
0:58:33Yeah, 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
0:58:37Pro, but you know this is something that's come up with all the demos like when you see obviously AR kit and stuff
0:58:43We 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
0:58:47Yes, there's a connection there right, but now that vision Pro is out, and you see universal control
0:58:52It's easy to just retcon it and say I
0:58:55Bet they did universal control for the headset, and it can't just came out earlier on Mac and iOS
0:59:01That could be true, or it could be the reverse they did it on Mac
0:59:05Oh, I owe an iOS and the headset to interpret team adopted it, but that's the nature of things inside Apple
0:59:09They will share things
0:59:12Between their projects when it makes sense to get the most value out of it and from the outside
0:59:17It's very difficult to tell did for example universal control start with the headset team and and trickle down to iOS and Mac OS
0:59:24Or was the reverse it doesn't really matter either way
0:59:27They're getting the most bang for the buck out of that technology
0:59:31They developed they developed universal control, and it has broad applicability across their products
0:59:35And so now you look at the car project what things on in Mac OS iOS iPad OS or whatever have broad
0:59:42Applicability to the car and vice-versa, and you know you go for carplay. It's like well carplay
0:59:47That's got to be a thing, but because we know so little about the car and because carplay is such a odd duck
0:59:52It's like maybe not even that was shared so I the best you can come up with is like maybe like whatever real-time
0:59:57operating system and tooling and stuff they came up with the car they'll find a use for
1:00:00But 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
1:00:08Yeah
1:00:08and I think there's probably just fewer of them in general and that like that's why I think
1:00:11axing this project is the right move strategically for the company because
1:00:15Now whatever the special projects group can work on can be things that
1:00:20The company might have actual other use for in much larger scales because you know we see with Apple
1:00:27They historically were very bad at multitasking
1:00:30They've gotten a lot better in recent years
1:00:32But still you you don't really want them like as a fan of their products and as a customer their products
1:00:37You don't really want them to have
1:00:39Massive distraction projects that don't benefit the products you use with vision Pro
1:00:45We actually see that there is a decent amount of you know shared innovation between vision Pro and their other products
1:00:51probably that we as the customers were able to benefit from with the car it seems like
1:00:56Whatever, we would benefit from that would be much more limited with the other products
1:01:00That was kind of an advantage though because you felt like well
1:01:02They hired a lot of new car people to work on the car
1:01:05So 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
1:01:10Crossover I think for the ten years that this project ran
1:01:13It was a money pit, and maybe it did suck in some important talent
1:01:19But it was less of a drain than for example
1:01:21Ios and the iPhone were or they were jobs came out on stage and said yeah
1:01:26You're not getting a new version of Mac OS because we put all those people on the phone because it's more important
1:01:29Sorry, I'm sure that did happen, but to a lesser extent just because so many more people had to be hired from
1:01:35The car industry so that was that was one blessing
1:01:37I think that's part of the reason this project lasted so long like the open secret that they were doing this and
1:01:42Didn't you know it didn't sideline the whole company for a decade right the company continued to do what it was doing
1:01:49Yes, there was some impact, but like the iPhone
1:01:52Shoved the whole company off of its previous track and eventually it found a new track
1:01:58Project Titan didn't do that project Titan was just just like a 10 billion dollar quiet little leech off in the corner, but Apple
1:02:04Continued to be able to function its main business
1:02:07I mean, and it's a very different company you know in this in that decade than it was before that as well
1:02:11So obviously like that's that's a different scenario
1:02:13But I do think it's interesting to consider like for years we had heard about these two
1:02:18Giant skunkworks projects the car and the headset well now the car is dead, and we have the headset
1:02:24What do you think is the next big Apple skunkworks project that we that isn't out yet?
1:02:30Like I guess you know AI in general could be something like that
1:02:34And I'm sure we're gonna see more of that as the rumors indicate you know probably this summer and honestly
1:02:39I'm very much looking forward to whatever this ends up being but
1:02:43Do we know of any other like large?
1:02:46Rumored skunkworks projects that seem at all plausible that Apple has been working on
1:02:51I think this is the time maybe to talk about this which I think will very clearly probably
1:02:56quickly not happen, and we don't have to think about it, but
1:02:59because of this announcement
1:03:02People who really want Apple to make a car have been saying you know Apple if you've decided
1:03:07That disruption in the automotive market is not imminent due to self-driving which I think is the correct conclusion
1:03:12But you still want to be in the auto from automotive market because you think
1:03:18people and your team know how to make cool dashboard things like the new car play or you just want to
1:03:22You want a new platform that you can own like you want to own the infotainment stack or whatever?
1:03:27There's still a way
1:03:30For Apple to be in the car business and part of the thing when we've talked about the car project in the past
1:03:35We're like Apple's good at making electronic gadgets, and if you squint you can call a car an electronic gadget
1:03:40But honestly there's a whole bunch of parts of that that are not electronic gadget
1:03:43Really like suspension and brakes and Apple just doesn't really make anything yeah
1:03:48That's that's kind of like saying like my oven is electric gadget because it has a control panel on the front of it
1:03:53Yeah
1:03:53things that you sit inside that
1:03:55Travel like the whole the the skill set we're hard to do that, and that's before you even get to stuff like
1:04:01The batteries which I know Apple has some
1:04:04Knowledge about from all of its gadgets, but it's a different scale entirely there and electrical motors
1:04:09Which you know there are there are some in the vision Pro. I guess but not Apple's area of expertise for sure
1:04:15But if Apple still wants to be in the electric car business
1:04:20they could buy
1:04:22lucid and Rivian and have
1:04:25some cars SUVs and trucks
1:04:28That would you know suddenly sport carplay
1:04:31And they would have you know
1:04:35Instant expertise lucid has the best power trains in the entire industry and the best EV packaging in the entire industry
1:04:40Oh, we're gonna get so much email. Please don't do that John. You're just
1:04:44This is this is not a questionable. I think is 100% defensible. Oh god
1:04:49You're making just based on the just based on the numbers
1:04:51How big is the engine how much power does it produce how efficient is it lucid has the best electric power trains in the industry?
1:04:57They might not have the best batteries, but their batteries are pretty good Rivian is really the only game in town for
1:05:04sort of non mainstream fancy Apple style
1:05:07pickup trucks and truck like SUVs because you know the mainstream makers make them, but Rivian is the froofy kind of Apple ish brand and
1:05:15The important thing about Apple buying both of those one. It will probably cost less money than they already spent in project Titan
1:05:23Everything those companies do is stuff that Apple
1:05:25As 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
1:05:31Here's their who's they're gonna build it for him or whatever. I'm like
1:05:33Do you think Apple's gonna get the cut like the people who started?
1:05:37Lucid we're all like the lead engineer for the Tesla Model S started lucid like they they cut their teeth at Tesla
1:05:43And then they came over and did lucid Apple has done none of those things so they think out of the out of the gate
1:05:49they're gonna come up with a
1:05:50An electric car that they you know solve all these manufacturing problems before everyone else has such a head start on them
1:05:56I know they said the same thing about the cell phones
1:05:58You know the PC people aren't gonna walk in but let me tell you a cell phone is much closer
1:06:01To a personal computer and then a car is it's a big gap there, right?
1:06:05so if they wanted to be in this business because they think I mean
1:06:09I 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
1:06:14Not gonna be self-driving. There's no real point
1:06:16but if they really want to a
1:06:18Much faster better way to spend that money is to save these two companies that are currently having some difficulties
1:06:25harvest the the all the people in technology that they have and
1:06:30Voila now you have a line of Apple cars
1:06:33If some if Tim Cook decided he's a CEO and if he and the board think that Apple should be selling EVs
1:06:38That is I think the only reasonable way to do it in a reasonable time frame
1:06:44If not again, let's just revisit
1:06:46you know making a car in 20 to 50 years and maybe the self-driving thing will have will be more plausible then but
1:06:52Yeah, 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
1:06:58Which it's been obvious that they're not going to do for a while now
1:07:01to everyone except for apparently Apple
1:07:03Just making a car is not something I have any faith that Apple would be any good at
1:07:10At all like nothing they've done makes me think boy. If only Apple would make a car. They'd be great at it. Nope
1:07:16absolutely not and
1:07:18Making car is ask Rivian ask ask Tesla ask lucid making cars is very very difficult
1:07:25like
1:07:27It's not something that you get right on the first try or the second try or the third try
1:07:32car companies have been around for a long time they've had time to work out a lot of this stuff and
1:07:36Even they get stuck in their ways, which is why people can innovate around them
1:07:40But like just the first the first several years of Tesla the first several years of living Rivian and lucid
1:07:45manufacturing big important things like that complying with regulations making them safe reliable
1:07:51Like just it's really hard and Apple has never done anything like that at that scale and it is so different
1:07:57Than cell phones and computers that I don't think they could pull it off. So if they really really want to do this
1:08:01Make some acquisitions by by the this drug. They've tried to buy Tesla
1:08:06You know, that's you can read the story that they tried to buy Tesla way back when so it's clear
1:08:10They were open to that idea
1:08:11But if the if the car dream is still alive at Apple, they should buy lucid and Rivian
1:08:16I hope the car dream is not alive at Apple and they should just ignore this for another 50 years. Well, I think if anything
1:08:23First of all, I think you're right. That would be probably the best way for them to get into it at this point
1:08:27but if anything that shows why they shouldn't get into the car business because suppose tomorrow Apple buys
1:08:34lucid and Rivian
1:08:36Okay. Now what like why why did they do that? And then how do they how do they integrate that into the rest of their?
1:08:42Business. Well, it's still a massive question of like now Apple's a car company great now
1:08:47Why do they want to be a car company and now now they have to deal with being a car company?
1:08:50Well, but they already had that would give them two car companies that are already car companies and they're car companies with problems
1:08:56And you know, there there's a lot of growing pains, but they they jump-start it
1:08:59Like they don't have to worry like will we make a car that people want will we make a good car?
1:09:02Those two companies have already made cars that people want that are good. They're just not making money making them
1:09:07Apple could you know Apple has the runway to has a little bit more runway than those two companies do
1:09:13To figure out a way to start making them profitable and obviously they would integrate with them
1:09:18And I think Jeff Johnson had a good snarky tweet about this whole thing, which is snarky
1:09:22But also I think there's kind of a point in that why Apple might want to be in this historically low margin business
1:09:28he says I
1:09:30Bemoaning the the the end of the car product
1:09:33But I so wanted a car that demanded 30% of every shopping trip and refused to travel to destinations unapproved by the manufacturer
1:09:39Got him, but like that's the thing
1:09:42That's the kind of the reason Apple was interested in and this thing is like oh the automotive market is being disrupted
1:09:47And if the automotive market is being disrupted that is an opportunity
1:09:50For us to find another place for one of our platforms and modern Apple when they find a place for one of their platforms
1:09:57They're like we we need to have a platform which we will then leverage to extract, you know, 30% from everybody, right?
1:10:04That's their mo
1:10:06Hasn't been going that great, but they got it. They hit it out of the park once with the iPhone
1:10:11And so they've used that model for every other new platform. They've tried to roll out Apple TV vision Pro
1:10:18iPad I know those all kind of look like you squint and like oh, that's just an extension of the iPhone, right?
1:10:24But the inside of the car the inside of any sort of mod inside of cars are becoming more looking more and more
1:10:31Like a platform that Apple could participate in the trouble is if Apple doesn't isn't literally a car company
1:10:38It might be difficult to pull a Microsoft and become the plot the software platform for everybody else's hardware
1:10:45Apple's trying
1:10:47But there's a little bit of pushback contention there
1:10:49So why would Apple want to be in the car business at all? I think cars will continue to be low margin, but I think
1:10:55there is a potential future to
1:10:58You know using the terminology extracting rents from the plot the software platform that lives inside cars
1:11:06Certainly every car manufacturer wants to do that. Just ask GM. That's why no one car play in the car
1:11:10They want to be the one you know
1:11:12Skimming off the top of everything that happens inside the car that they can I'm not sure there's a business plan there
1:11:19Apparently it's not selling rental renting heated seats to people like BMW tried
1:11:22But that is I think that's in the absence of self-driving disruption
1:11:27Another place for a platform is I think what would still have a chance to attract Apple to cars
1:11:35But who knows like maybe they maybe the carplay project is that and they don't need to make a car
1:11:39It's just it's it's too early to tell I
1:11:41don't know I'm going back to what you were saying about lucid and Rivian and
1:11:45The co-host of neutral in he says heck. Yeah, that sounds amazing
1:11:50because I think Rivian is
1:11:52Arguably more spiritually similar to Apple than Tesla
1:11:56I think that lucid to your point has some of the best and most advanced technology
1:12:02So I I agree with you as a car enthusiast as
1:12:09Someone who at least tries to watch and understand Apple
1:12:14I can't imagine them saying about a business as you've noted is very low low margin
1:12:20Which they can't be too keen on to begin with I can't imagine
1:12:23They'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
1:12:29Today, let's spend 20 billion dollars on two companies that are barely keeping themselves afloat
1:12:34Like what's you you wait a little bit longer lucid will get cheaper, I think
1:12:37Sure, and so might Rivian but then I mean so so we're buying these
1:12:42Beleaguered, 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
1:12:50No, that's not true at all
1:12:51like that their problem is they don't like their their problem is they need to get through like the
1:12:56Scary growth period like the Tesla barely made it through like Tesla almost went out of business several times, too
1:13:01Right, but there it takes so much capital to sort of get to get the ball rolling to work out
1:13:06All 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
1:13:13It due to like some savvy fundraising and government mooching from Elon Musk in the right time, right?
1:13:18Like it's a tough gig in the car business. So I don't think they're beleaguered because they have bad products
1:13:24They have they have great products
1:13:26they're just beleaguered because
1:13:28Making 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
1:13:35In money and then they're selling a smallish number of cars for a very low or negative margin
1:13:40Then it's like just kind of like Amazon's let's just give us another decade to not make any profit
1:13:45But eventually we will and Amazon did eventually and they had that runway
1:13:48Rivian and lucid remains to be seen if they will be able to find the funding to give himself that runway
1:13:52But you know who can give him that funding Apple? I mean, that's true
1:13:56But I just don't think Apple would have that kind of patience
1:13:59Especially after having been burned by being ten billion dollars in and having not a lot to show for it
1:14:05Like I just know they did have the patience for that 10-year boondoggle project
1:14:08It doesn't
1:14:13Ultimately matter but it is an interesting thought exercise of nothing else. Yeah, I mean honestly
1:14:18I 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
1:14:22Right, but yeah, if if someone inside Apple just demands it like just like no we need to be in cars
1:14:27Which 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
1:14:31I think he's now dissuaded of that and he's fine
1:14:33But if someone demanded it
1:14:34That would be the only feasible way to do it because if they didn't and they tried to make a car on their own
1:14:38I 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
1:14:44But they'd make a car and that car would have to compete with beleaguered Rivian lucid and then not beleaguered Tesla, right?
1:14:51and 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
1:14:56Be good at to make a good car. So yeah, I just you know, I just I think I should leave it alone
1:15:02But 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
1:15:06Apple should just you know, give an investment to lucid and reap it when the company comes roaring back two decades from now
1:15:14Yeah, I don't know. We'll see where it goes. I think I am certainly in support of Apple
1:15:20You know letting go and stop trying to make fetch happen
1:15:23I echo what I think it was Marco who had said, you know
1:15:25I feel terrible for all these people that are going to now have to find
1:15:28either new jobs than Apple or new jobs entirely like that that stinks but I think on the whole it's
1:15:35Better for Apple to go this way. I think it might be interesting seeing people who surely are very good at
1:15:42You know computer vision and an artificial intelligence thing and things of that nature working on other
1:15:48projects and problems inside of Apple, I think I
1:15:50Suspect a lot has been learned from this and I feel like I made the same
1:15:55Alright, I'd shared the same theory a while back and I feel like somebody to debunk tip
1:16:00But here I am again thinking that you know
1:16:02I wonder if the real-time OS or some of the things that they learned building a real-time OS for the car
1:16:07Or used in the r1 for the vision Pro and I don't know maybe maybe not. Yeah, there was debunked
1:16:13But like I think you'd have a good point with the computer vision aspect because Apple does now have a platform
1:16:18That could benefit from computer vision expertise
1:16:20And so those people on the car project who are probably super isolated from the headset project because why wouldn't they be?
1:16:24Bring 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
1:16:31Expertise for sure crosses over well and now also like, you know with with this
1:16:36Talent and budget and executive focus freed up from this project if you think about like what else could they do?
1:16:43Even without having like good uses of the of like share technology with their other products
1:16:48They could do something like pour more money into the idea of a glucose monitor for the Apple watch
1:16:53Yeah, I think they're already doing that
1:16:54But yeah freeing up the money is good for everything across the board
1:16:57Of course, if you told me what they should give the money to it's just fixing bugs in Mac OS
1:17:00But I don't think that's probably gonna be high on their list
1:17:03But you know just just take a little bit of that 10 billion or you know
1:17:07Whatever it is 1 billion a year that you just freed up
1:17:09Slice that into Mac OS bug fixing please. I don't think it would even take that much
1:17:13yeah, in terms of what the next big thing is like, it's you know, we said this in the
1:17:18Our first episode in January 2024. We did like what do we expect this year to be for Apple?
1:17:23And I think one of the things that we got right based on all the stories to come here now
1:17:282024 the year when Apple sprinkles AI sauce on a bunch of stuff. I talked in a recent rectum episode about this
1:17:34It's gonna come out soon. What are they gonna sprinkle it on? What will actually ship this year?
1:17:38I don't know, but there's gonna be a I saw us and it's gonna be sprinkled and that is
1:17:43On I don't think that's a you know tomorrow's question. What's the next big thing?
1:17:48I don't think that's it because kind of like self-driving cars at this point. I would say that
1:17:53They're like large language model AI stuff has proved its utility kind of like, you know smart lane holding
1:18:00Better cruise control things have proved their utility in cars
1:18:04But I also think that we're pretty close to well, I think the jury's still out
1:18:09But I I would put money on the fact that the current approach to LM is
1:18:13You can't just do more of that faster and get to how 9,000. Maybe it's a piece of the puzzle
1:18:19maybe it's totally off in the wrong direction, but the but like I
1:18:23don'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
1:18:30That and I don't think the current approaches are gonna get us there but all that LM stuff has proven utility
1:18:36you can do useful things with it if you use it the right way and
1:18:40Apple needs to use that to make its stuff better in all the ways that everyone else is making their stuff
1:18:47But make Siri better make image search better maybe like we know like there's no question
1:18:52It does that forget about how 9,000 you can use this technology Apple to make your current products better
1:18:58And that is not the car project the headset or whatever
1:19:00But I think getting a bunch of people put into that part of the organization is a good thing
1:19:07So like rather than you know, the car project and the headset are both kind of like pie in the sky
1:19:11We have a great idea. We think this is the future. We're gonna try to do it one of them
1:19:16They shipped one of them they didn't but they're big pie in the sky things. This is not pie in the sky
1:19:21This is keeping up with the Joneses. This is hey, have you noticed what everyone else is doing Apple?
1:19:25you should do that too because you've got a lot of stuff that could benefit from
1:19:28things that other people are proving the utility of so
1:19:32That I think is going to happen some of it this year
1:19:35hopefully more of it next year and
1:19:38If that's all that came out of this like that Apple never came up with the next new big thing
1:19:42I think it'll be fine partially because I think you know, oh we got the headset
1:19:46But we're still waiting for the glasses, right?
1:19:48like you can extrapolate from vision Pro and say where is this gonna go and unlike self-driving and how
1:19:55And you can see a fairly straightforward path of like just keep iterating on the vision Pro
1:20:00With increases in technology that we expect to happen and as you know screens get better
1:20:05CPUs get better like just we can see that progressing. We don't quite know how to get all the glasses
1:20:10Because some of the display stuff is questionable at this point
1:20:13But even if it's just vision Pro but better than the current vision Pro
1:20:18there is a path to travel there and I think that is a
1:20:22Big enough project a brand new platform that is very much more ambitious or different than competing platforms
1:20:29And the other things that it's done
1:20:31There's 10 years of runway right there anyway
1:20:34So I don't think
1:20:34Apple should be out there saying
1:20:36We need to start something new and it's setting aside all the health stuff that we know they're already doing
1:20:39I don't think should be like hovercrafts like or we're gonna start an airline or you know, like just
1:20:44Chill 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
1:20:51There you have so many other platforms that you're working on. You're still trying to do all the health stuff
1:20:55You got all the services. You got all the antitrust things
1:20:58You got the app store like I don't think Apple should be looking to you know, have a rebound
1:21:04project after project Titan
1:21:07Hey me again, we are still sponsored exclusively by ATP members
1:21:13Please consider joining and becoming a member today
1:21:16You will get a version of the show that does not have these membership ads is stuck in the middle of it
1:21:20You will also get the bootleg fee with the unedited livestream as mentioned earlier and you get the bonus episodes
1:21:26Also as mentioned earlier that are exclusive member content for us doing all sorts of tech stuff non tech stuff
1:21:32You know, even some feeling stuff here and there it's a lot of fun
1:21:35We also have a couple of those small bonus things as well
1:21:37So for instance when we do our like time limited big sales of new t-shirts and stuff in the ATP store
1:21:43You get 15% off that if you can support us. This is by far the best way to support the show
1:21:48so we would really appreciate if you consider it atp.fm slash join and it's eight bucks a month or
1:21:5488 bucks a year or a couple other different currency options here and there again. We support gift memberships now
1:22:00Thanks to John's hard work on that. I didn't do any of it
1:22:02John gets full credit for the gift membership system, but it's really cool. You can do that as well
1:22:07So check it out today ATP FM slash join once again ad free version unedited the raw bootleg feed
1:22:15Bonus episodes the discount during our sales. So eight bucks a month atp.fm slash join
1:22:21It is the best way to support the show. Thank you so much for your consideration and let's go back to the show
1:22:26Joe writes what email clients do you all use these days?
1:22:33Here's to know how each of you handle this on both iOS and Mac OS and what you feel are the best clients
1:22:37I feel like this is one of those as John often describes annual or sometimes semi annual
1:22:43Questions that people always want to know what email clients we use and I don't know that it's changed like
1:22:48Properly changed for any of us since we started recording the show in 2013 2014 creatures of habit
1:22:54Yeah, but for me it's mail app. I was
1:22:58Briefly using whatever that one is is a mail plane that everyone loves something that everyone loves for Gmail
1:23:04And I was using that for a while
1:23:06And 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
1:23:11Everywhere and I thought that was the same for Marco, isn't it? I have actually really never gone for many other mail clients
1:23:18Sorry, I just meant that you're all in on mail. Yeah. Yeah, I'm all in on mail that app and I am mostly
1:23:25Fine with it. I wouldn't say I love it
1:23:28but I don't love email and so I
1:23:31Treat email as a very kind of functional thing that I have to deal with somewhat reluctantly
1:23:37And I deal with it as little as possible apples mail apps. Let me do that on their platforms with lots of you know
1:23:43Various nice little integrations. I appreciate all of that first partiness of them
1:23:48My problems with email have nothing to do with the client
1:23:52Like none of the email apps that are out there would do a meaningfully better job at making me hate email less
1:23:59I just kind of deal with it the way I do the only thing that I
1:24:02Literally just ran into this earlier today
1:24:06My one big feature request for Apple's mail apps having used them now for how many years
1:24:11When the iPhone first shipped and the iPhone had its you know version of mail that app on it
1:24:17It mostly worked it mostly satisfied my needs
1:24:20except for one giant area
1:24:23search
1:24:25mail search on iOS has always been really rudimentary and really crappy and
1:24:31Many times I end up having to go search on my Mac mail app instead and it will find things the iOS app will not
1:24:39Find including this literally just happened today. I assume the reason why is because mail on the Mac
1:24:44Downloads everything off the IMAP server and indexes everything locally whereas mail on the iPhone appears not to do that
1:24:51I think mail on the iPhone has always done server-side IMAP search not local search
1:24:56I assume that's why I'm getting different search results, but
1:24:59That trade-off made sense in
1:25:022007 that trade-off does not make sense in 2024. I
1:25:07Understand that people's email boxes can be really big. So maybe make it an option
1:25:11Give me a switch in the Settings app
1:25:13It says download all mail and let me search all mail in the iOS mail app with the exact same search
1:25:19Characteristics 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
1:25:25John you still using the Gmail web client. Yeah, the main sort of performance characteristics that I'm looking for an email client
1:25:32Date all the way back to you know, my the early days my very first email clients on the Mac
1:25:36I was super heavy into entourage and
1:25:39Later when that morphed or Claris emailer which morphed into entourage
1:25:44and
1:25:46They what I loved on those things is they had like rules that you could apply to mail that would ferry your mail into various
1:25:52Folders or whatever, but it was so frustrating when I'd have all those rules set up on my home computer
1:25:57And then I'd like try to check my home email while I was at work
1:26:00And so I would like install the same email client on my work computer
1:26:04but then the rules would be on my home computer and this was before the days of ubiquitous cloud sync and it was
1:26:09Never quite the same and a lot of times I was using pop
1:26:12So if you popped it from one location
1:26:14If you popped it from a second location the second location wouldn't have it because it didn't pop it
1:26:19So now you have the same message appearing in two different places. They had to be routed the same
1:26:22We should probably we should probably explain that just a little bit more because everything everything you said was accurate
1:26:27But this it sounds bananas to people of today
1:26:30So most email clients or most email servers, excuse me from I don't know 15 20 25 years ago
1:26:36the way it worked was you used post office protocol or pop and
1:26:40Generally speaking granted you could tweak this but generally speaking what would happen is your email client would go to the server
1:26:46It would say okay. What are the new messages?
1:26:47It would grab the new messages and then it would delete them off the server
1:26:50So like John was saying let's say you have a machine at home that is checking your email
1:26:56Generally speaking the machine at home would check your email delete the email and then it would be living or alive
1:27:01Oh those emails would only be living on that one computer if you went to any other computer because you know
1:27:06You wouldn't go to a cell phone at this point if you went to any other computer and went to get mail
1:27:09Well tough noogies it ain't there because it was deleted off the server in this was normal
1:27:14But if I was smart enough not to do that, but that introduces a second problem
1:27:18Which if you say okay don't do that leave it on the server now
1:27:21My home computer would run run a little you know using pop it would check for mail
1:27:25It would see there's a new message you would download it right now
1:27:27My work computer would run two seconds later, and it would see that same new message
1:27:32And it would download it which is why both computers needed to have the same set of rules because as far as they're concerned
1:27:38It's like the home computer downloads the message and files it away the work computer downloads that same message now these two computers
1:27:44Are downloading the same message you know and you know pulling it from the server
1:27:48They better route it to the same place otherwise home and work will slowly get a sink like they're not even connected at all
1:27:54But it's like a one-way process
1:27:55but if they don't have the same rules as things flow in they won't go in the same boxes and
1:28:00By the way if I respond to something at work or market it read it read at work
1:28:05home has no idea that that happened because their only function is
1:28:08Using the pop protocol protocol to see if there's new messages and downloading them
1:28:12There's no reverse direction where when I mark something that's read at work
1:28:15It 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
1:28:22Trying to deal with that just home and work being able to check my my personal email at work
1:28:27Which is as all working people know is an essential part of your sanity
1:28:30Yes being able to do that
1:28:33Was made very difficult, and I and I do like rules
1:28:37And I do like routing and I do like everything to be the same everywhere right and I map you say well
1:28:42I map solves this well. I map especially early days was a little bit of a nightmare
1:28:45It was trying to solve this problem by having two-way communication and everything
1:28:49But the clients weren't weren't great and there were lots of different
1:28:51I'm app servers and depending on your ISP and where your email from it was very confusing and annoying
1:28:55But I'm app was an improvement, but still kind of janky, but anyway
1:28:58I was using like Claris emailer and Eudora not Eudora
1:29:01I know Eudora is great
1:29:02But I wasn't a big fan entourage and Claris emailer back in the day where they did support both pop and I'm up
1:29:07But then Gmail came along and Gmail said forget about your stupid client
1:29:11The server is the source of truth. I have all your email that your only email only exists in one place folders rules
1:29:17Those are all here on the server. Oh, you can look at what's on the server
1:29:21However, you want say in a web browser try Chrome. It's nice
1:29:24But don't be fooled
1:29:27Gmail Google has all your email and all your rules and all your settings and all your preferences and when you mark something is read
1:29:34Or unread or reply to it
1:29:36You know your sentiment send mail into sent mail folder
1:29:39That is all happening on Google servers. And what it did was gave me blessed freedom to say
1:29:44Wherever I check my email from a phone an iPad an internet cyber cafe
1:29:50Anywhere I go
1:29:53Where I don't care whose computer it is
1:29:56I don't care if it work at home on any computer that I have when I load up at gmail.com
1:30:01My email looks exactly like it did the last time I left it if I marked a thing as red if I replied
1:30:07I'm by the way search
1:30:09Google's really good at that
1:30:11I can search my email really easily and it also in the back of the day lets you import all your old email
1:30:16So 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
1:30:24Like the gmail web interface. I miss you know, the days of entourage and Claris emailer, but I've moved on since then
1:30:32I don't like Apple mail. I don't like the interface on any platform
1:30:36So I use the gmail web interface on my phone. I use the Google's gmail app, which is not very good
1:30:42but it doesn't really matter because
1:30:44All my mail is there if you know, I can do what I want in there if I don't like it
1:30:47I just put the phone down pick up literally any other computer log into gmail and there's all my mail
1:30:51Big 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
1:30:58I don't think they would cancel that but I definitely take your point
1:31:02No, I bet I think I'll be dead at retired by the time they do that too much valuable data goes through
1:31:07You know there are people keep gmail around
1:31:09Warren McKay writes you recently mentioned Marco's love of the Microsoft ergonomic keyboard
1:31:14Which I've always liked why isn't Marco constructed a do-it-yourself mechanical keyboard in the ergonomic key layout
1:31:19He prefers with the switches. He wants etc. This seems like exactly the kind of project
1:31:24He would love and he'd end up with the keyboard customized to his personal specifications
1:31:28You know, I get this and obviously my name is not Marco, but I mean at least for me
1:31:32I actually like Apple keyboards and in your case
1:31:35You like the the Microsoft ergonomic keyboard and I don't know as I get older and more crotchety
1:31:41I feel like there's less space in my life for fiddly things and I'm assuming that's probably where you are, too
1:31:48I'm glad that that whole world of keyboards exists if I ever want to dive into it
1:31:54I will have no hesitation of diving into it
1:31:57But right now like, you know every few years when my sculpt flakes out
1:32:01I can spend 60 bucks and get and have that problem just disappear
1:32:06And the reality is I like the sculpt ergonomic keyboard
1:32:11there's not a lot about it that I would change it solves my needs very very well and
1:32:16We're very low effort. And if I were to customize something with the world of like custom keyboard enthusiast kind of stuff. I
1:32:25Think what I would end up creating would actually be worse for my own preferences
1:32:30so for instance
1:32:32Even though I know there's different key switches with different volume levels. All of them are way too loud for me
1:32:38I've tried them all yes, even the you know, the Cherry MX Brown or you know, whatever whatever every few years
1:32:44There'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
1:32:47So that is problem number one is that I I don't really like the the giant mechanical key switch
1:32:53sound I also don't have any problem with the feedback of the
1:32:58Relatively standard scissor mechanism of the sculpt ergonomics keys. Like that's not a problem. I'm looking to solve
1:33:05I understand why people like those things. It's just not that important to me. I don't like the noise trade-off
1:33:10secondly the sculpt is actually a very compact keyboard for an ergonomic keyboard and
1:33:17If I would actually create an ergonomic layout that has kind of the two key elements of what makes it help
1:33:24Which is the split gap and then the kind of curved and reverse tinted shape of it
1:33:30To actually create that with mechanical key caps
1:33:33with that kind of keyboard would would be a
1:33:36Probably a larger overall finished product and I again to create that it's solving problems
1:33:43I don't have to make a result. That would be worse for my preferences. That's why I don't do it
1:33:50things might change over time my preferences might change or the
1:33:53Availability of sculpt ergonomic keyboards as we've discussed. It's kind of in flux right now
1:33:57So that that could be getting better with like the the Matthias recreation or the was it in case who took over that business
1:34:05Yeah, I think so. Yeah, so
1:34:07So, you know their recreations could be fine or could be ruined
1:34:10You know that the Matthias recreation could be fine or could be ruined. I don't know yet
1:34:14I've pre-ordered both and we'll see what happens and I still have a few sculpts left from my from my stock
1:34:20My personal stock so we'll see but right now this is a problem that I don't really need to be solved
1:34:24Every 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
1:34:31No, 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
1:34:38Anonymous writes as tech enthusiasts. How interested are you in LLM's and generative AI?
1:34:42Is it something you think you follow from the sidelines?
1:34:44Or do you actually dive into these topics and do some of your own research and follow up question for which use cases?
1:34:50Have you been using chat bots like chat GPT if at all and what were your experiences for me?
1:34:55I'm interested. Certainly. This is the new hot thing and unlike crypto. It doesn't make me want to vomit all over myself
1:35:02So that's an improvement
1:35:03I am trying to keep up with it and get at least a
1:35:08Nominal understanding of how it works and in a very broad and basic understanding of how it works in terms of how I use it
1:35:15I don't typically do anything with generative, you know, like making images or anything like that
1:35:19I've tried a couple of times like I think when I was
1:35:21first trying to come up with a placeholder icon for call sheet then called flick look up I was trying to come up with a
1:35:28An icon that was at least passable not to ship with but just to ship like a beta with and I
1:35:35Couldn'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
1:35:41Ish a user error on my part, but nevertheless I do use
1:35:45chat GPT
1:35:47every 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
1:35:54this a wonderful use of chat GPT is
1:35:57how do I do this particular ffmpeg incantation because I know a lot of the things that I do regularly and
1:36:03I like to think as people go I know a fair bit about ffmpeg
1:36:07But 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
1:36:13And I do have a folder in Apple Notes speaking of Apple Notes John
1:36:16I have a folder in Apple Notes with you know individual notes of like different recipes if you will for ffmpeg
1:36:21But there's certainly times that I'm like, well how the heck do you do that and chat GPT?
1:36:27Oftentimes, we'll either get it right or get me close enough that I can get it right quickly
1:36:30And that's actually applicable to a lot of programming problems. So that's how that's how I've been using it
1:36:35I feel like I picked on Marco first a lot recently. So John. What are you doing with this?
1:36:39I do use I'm interested in these things. I'm interested in understand how they work
1:36:43it's kind of you know, I tried to learn as much about them as I could without actually having any reason to
1:36:50Make anything like this. It's difficult to follow sometimes
1:36:53It's not my area of expertise, but I think I have somewhat of a handle on what their approach is
1:36:58but the most important thing like the distinction between crypto is that these these things is large language models in generative AI
1:37:05Have practical utility you can use them to do useful things. It's very obvious to everybody
1:37:11That's why people are excited about this again
1:37:13I'm like crypto where it's like the useful thing is make a bunch of people a lot of money, you know
1:37:17Like okay, but like does this help me with my work? No, not really
1:37:21I use these things
1:37:23kind of in as a
1:37:26Augmentation to Google search right? So anything that I'm doing where I would be using Google
1:37:31I will throw in these various large language model things into the competition just like I may I
1:37:38You know put all my little voice cylinders in the house against each other and I asked them all the same question to see how
1:37:44They do I'm trying to see who's going to be the most useful
1:37:47So sometimes you know when I'm programming is a great example when I'm programming very often you Google for things, right?
1:37:53Oh, I don't know what that is. How do you do this?
1:37:55You know, what is the what is the order of arguments to this function? I can't remember right?
1:38:01You can use Google for that and you find a stack overflow question or you find the reference documentation or you know
1:38:06If you're an Xcode, you can go directly to it with just a right-click or whatever
1:38:09But yeah, I'll throw in chat GPT
1:38:13Google's bard thing the Bing thing to see how they do
1:38:17Because sometimes even though I know the answer is in the reference documentation
1:38:21sometimes reading the reference documentation like if you're trying to look like the
1:38:26Select system call and pearl and you want to know what what are those bit?
1:38:30What are the constants that you use in the bit masks?
1:38:32and is it the right bits then the read bits or the read bits than the right bits and
1:38:36You know, you could look this up in the reference docs
1:38:39It's gonna tell you the order of the things you're gonna be able to find the constants
1:38:42then you can look them up and just like you get I know exactly where the answer is and
1:38:46You could Google for it and it will probably point you to the reference docs that you can read to get that answer
1:38:50one of the utilities that things like chat GPT provides is you could just ask them for the call that you want to make and
1:38:58it will
1:39:00essentially not do that work for you, but
1:39:02summarize
1:39:04That it'll say okay
1:39:06Use this bit mask for the first argument use this bit mask for the second or even based on what you asked me
1:39:11So it already has found the the what order the arguments are in and it found their credit
1:39:17Correct 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
1:39:23myself
1:39:24One of the things I don't use
1:39:26Any of these large language model things for is anything based on facts?
1:39:31Because I'm like the like the line of code
1:39:35Where I can just run it and find out if it does the thing that I wanted to do
1:39:39I could step through it in the debugger. I can see yes, it's working. No, it's not working, right?
1:39:42I can tell whether it compiles or is it made up a function or whatever?
1:39:45Using it for facts. I don't find useful, you know
1:39:49What year did this movie come out?
1:39:51It'll give me an answer and the answer will be plausible
1:39:54But the problem is if I knew what the answer was already
1:39:56I 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?
1:40:02Maybe looks like it could be right
1:40:05But now I have to go check somewhere to see if it actually is right and if I'm gonna go check somewhere
1:40:10Anyway, I might as well just start in Google and end up at the Wikipedia page or the IMDb page or whatever
1:40:15Now is Wikipedia right is IMDb, right? I don't know but at least I have a foundation
1:40:20For setting a level of trust. How much do I trust Wikipedia?
1:40:25How much do I trust IMDb when it comes to the release date of movies, right?
1:40:28How much do I just you know this result from the New York Times or The Verge or whatever?
1:40:34With large language models when it just gives me the answer for fact-based things. It's useless to me because I
1:40:41mean I can just stare at that and go that might be the answer but I
1:40:47Don't know where that answer came from. And if it's right or if it's wrong, like there's no
1:40:53The LM's don't know don't care like that's not that's not their job
1:40:58They're just smooshing together a bunch of stuff and spitting out something that is plausibly an answer to the question asked
1:41:05and so that makes them an
1:41:07Entire 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
1:41:14Does the general results at the top of it search results?
1:41:16I tend to ignore those two for the same reason
1:41:18Kind 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
1:41:23Don't worry about the search results. We've extracted the answer for you
1:41:26I'm like, yeah, but like I kind of need to see where you got that answer from
1:41:30So I just ignore it and I go to the plain old search results and then I have to make the judgment myself
1:41:34Like do I trust this SEO spam page?
1:41:37It's in the first ten results are all like that or do I want to actually go to something more?
1:41:42authoritative 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
1:41:48Controversy about this. Does everyone agree that this movie came out on this date, right? So I do use it
1:41:53I 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
1:42:01Because it's setting aside the legal and ethical implications there
1:42:05people do agree that being able to type in a
1:42:08Description 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
1:42:12So yeah, I'm definitely incorporating it into my into my normal workflows and I have found things
1:42:20Kind of like Steve Jobs said about the iPad like there should be something where the iPad is the best device to use it
1:42:24There are things that I do
1:42:27when you know programming for example, where a chat GPT is better than Google for
1:42:33Getting me what I need faster. There are also things where Google is still better
1:42:39There are things where right-clicking and looking it up in the reference docs is faster
1:42:41but very quickly things like chat GPT have become a sibling to
1:42:48Direct lookups and reference documentation blind Google searches and now right alongside there ask a large language model
1:42:54Marco so personally I have used generative AI
1:42:58Relatively little I did make that icon for my fire island driving app
1:43:04I made that with generative AI because that's an app that had
1:43:08Zero budget and I any time spent on it was time
1:43:12I shouldn't have been spending on it really and so I had I need something quick and dirty
1:43:16That would be seen by about 70 people and it was perfect for that
1:43:20I I don't really have a lot of need to generate a bunch of BS on a regular basis
1:43:25So I tend not to use it that much but it's a tool that I'm glad it's there when I need it
1:43:30I'm more looking forward to
1:43:32And some of this is already out there tools that use generative AI
1:43:37Functionality and techniques in ways that I actually do use on a more regular basis
1:43:42So for instance, like if I'm editing a photo of myself and I want to you know, remove like the pimple on my forehead
1:43:48You know, we've had various techniques to do that in image editors for a long time now
1:43:52but if you
1:43:53Involve generative AI in that kind of feature you can usually do a better job of it or other things other kind of image
1:43:59manipulation things like you you have a low res image and you want to make a high res version of it and you want to
1:44:04You know do whatever you can to extrapolate whatever the details might have been in a higher resolution of that image great
1:44:09That's a great use of a lot of these generative AI type techniques to do things like that
1:44:14So these features by themselves in like the current, you know standalone products that we see them in
1:44:20They have utility to a lot of people no question, but I don't see a lot of that myself
1:44:25but I'm looking forward to and and I already still currently benefiting from some of the
1:44:30implementations of those techniques into tools that I use so again other instances like you know
1:44:36If if Apple ever realized that there's five of us out there who use logic to edit podcasts
1:44:42They can probably add a whole bunch of really interesting useful features to logic to make editing podcast better
1:44:48Some of which would be AI based and another example of that is like the world of audio
1:44:54Transcription algorithms has been radically improved by the open AI whisper model
1:44:59it doesn't get as much attention as the other open AI stuff, but whisper has been a
1:45:05Massive transformation no pun intended in in audio transcription
1:45:09I'm looking forward to advances like that, you know that being integrated into more things like one of the big hopes
1:45:16I have for whatever Apple's AI sauce sprinkling process looks like this summer is
1:45:21Apple has a built-in API to transcribe audio. It's not that good
1:45:27I'm hoping that this year it gets substantially better because maybe they're using some AI type models to to you know
1:45:34Improve 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
1:45:41I'm looking forward to is
1:45:42You know, yeah
1:45:43There'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
1:45:49Everything etc. But most of what we do in our computing lives is
1:45:54Boring tasks that we've done for a long time things like as mentioned before answering emails, you know doing various media manipulation
1:46:03Tact, you know tasks and stuff like that
1:46:05there's lots of opportunities in tons of computing for
1:46:09Those features and those tools to get better
1:46:13Within the capabilities of what we already know AI can do like we don't need it to get
1:46:17So much better that it can answer all of John's questions with factual accuracy
1:46:21that'll be nice if it you know, if it goes in that direction it should but
1:46:24Even with what we know it can do today
1:46:27There's tons of possible applications for the existing AI techniques even the existing models that have already been built in
1:46:35ways that we that we haven't seen it be either because
1:46:39They kind of can't get built without somebody okaying it like in the case of Apple being a gatekeeper over their platforms
1:46:45Like for instance, I would love the option to have chat GPT
1:46:49respond to my Siri questions whenever they're about knowledge because
1:46:54Even though it is a BS generator. It tends to generate more accurate answers than Siri
1:47:00Does the vast majority of the time for informational questions? Well, I wouldn't say it's more accurate
1:47:04You're more likely to get an answer and Siri will just be like, sorry
1:47:07I can't help you or go look on the web. But honestly, I that's more that's that's the writer answer
1:47:13I don't want something just giving me plausible BS when I ask a question if you can't answer it don't answer it
1:47:17Well, just just ask a man
1:47:20I do not want plausible BS when I when I asked him when that movie was released Alexa should tell me the real answer not
1:47:25the plausible BS answer
1:47:27Anyway, so I'm looking forward to just the the integration of
1:47:32These awesome new AI techniques and models into the rest of our boring computing lives making them a lot better
1:47:40That's where I see the most promise and yeah, we'll have some cool products along the way that are more exciting than that
1:47:45But 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
1:47:52Just making our everyday tasks better and making the tools that would that do them better
1:47:56And to be clear Apple has been doing that for years and years back before the AI buzzword. They used ml, right?
1:48:04The 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?
1:48:09You can drag the picture your dog out of the photo
1:48:12Apple's photo search where you can search for like, you know tin can or whatever and as I has a set of work like
1:48:16That was ml and not AI but that's exactly the type of stuff we're talking about and what we're saying is hey
1:48:22State of the art has moved on and you could make all those things better
1:48:26I really because in photo search if you ever try this in Apple photos
1:48:29You can search for things like dog or cat or bed or spoon or car or parking lot, right?
1:48:36But if you try clipboard you might see that. Oh, the autocomplete isn't bringing up clipboard
1:48:41Well, 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
1:48:45Technology is marched on and you can do text-based photo search a little bit better than Apple's doing it with quote-unquote AI
1:48:53Technologies 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
1:49:01Example they're already doing that with quote-unquote ml
1:49:03Just do it with AI and it will you know
1:49:06But we're just saying like keep up with the Joneses people are doing cool stuff and Apple is being left behind
1:49:10And by the way, as I saw someone toot this today, this is a website
1:49:14Fast no, it's it's fast SD XL dot AI. It's a demo of another
1:49:20Way, these things could be interesting. It's just that you know, you type words and it makes an image. Let's go
1:49:26it's like an image generator like stable diffusion or
1:49:28Mid journey or like oh, you know this all sorts of things that can generate images for you
1:49:35But there is this sub-genre of them. It says we're not as interested in generating
1:49:40Every image really perfectly or whatever our thing is speed
1:49:45This thing tries to generate images for you as fast as you can type
1:49:49So you just start typing and it's generating images and you add another word another word and add generates it generates it generates
1:49:55And you might think oh, that's a fun party trick, but I'd rather have it rather let you can
1:49:59I just type a whole sentence then you generate really really awesome. I don't need you to do it to me fast
1:50:04but
1:50:05Being having the thing react to you in real time with like a smaller faster model does change how the interactions feel
1:50:12and this is just another example of like, you know, when I think about Apple doing stuff on device or
1:50:16You know, what's the advantage of doing it locally, especially if your model needs to be smaller
1:50:20Sometimes you want that trade-off sometimes?
1:50:23Doing it quickly locally not as well is better than doing it in the cloud
1:50:30Expensively requiring a network round-trip or whatever just depends on the thing that you're trying to do
1:50:34So I'm very optimistic that Apple can find many many places and it's existing products where it can use these technologies
1:50:42Which everybody knows Apple has been working on to make all of its products better in I guess
1:50:47What mark I would describe as boring ways, but honestly, it's not boring to me if my image my photo search starts working better
1:50:53Thanks to our members who supported us this entire episode this week
1:50:57You can join us and become a member at ATP FM slash join. We will talk to you next week
1:51:04Now the show is over they didn't even mean to begin because it was accidental
1:51:13It was accidental
1:51:16John
1:51:19Marco and Casey wouldn't let him because it was accidental
1:51:23Was accidental
1:51:27And you can find the show notes at ATP
1:51:30FM and if you're into Twitter
1:51:35You can follow them at
1:51:38CAS
1:51:40EYL
1:51:41ISS so that's Casey lists. Ma RC Oh a RM
1:51:46Auntie Marco are men. Si are
1:51:50AC
1:51:52USA, Syracuse
1:51:54It's accidental
1:51:56I'm looking forward to WBC this year like all these rumors coming out about you know
1:52:11Maybe a slight updated design but also like tons of AI stuff. I am looking forward to this
1:52:15Yeah, but what I talked about in the rectus episode was like what stuff will they have ready for this year, right?
1:52:21Cuz they're you know, I'm sure tons of stuff that they're doing, you know
1:52:24Someone's gonna come next year. Someone's gonna come out the year after that
1:52:26What can they get done in this year?
1:52:28And the big question for me is is this the year where they do the apology Siri essentially and say Siri
1:52:34It 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
1:52:41Think they can ship that this year right making image search better
1:52:45They could probably ship this year, but the Siri one is the big one and I honestly it's a kind of a distraction
1:52:50But 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
1:52:56Siri still sucks, but everything else is a little bit better auto-complete
1:52:59We already changed that to a transformer model last year, but guess what now it's a little bit better and searching your mail
1:53:04It's a little bit better like this so many places where they can apply this to just make it a little bit better
1:53:09It's not as citing as saying Siri - now it doesn't suck
1:53:13But I'll be perfectly happy with a WWDC this year or every single piece of every single OS
1:53:18Has some of that AI sauce sprinkled on it and just gets a little bit better
1:53:22Even if Siri still isn't any good because I have faith that in a year or two or three
1:53:28Siri will get what it deserves, which is a complete replacement
1:53:32Last year was the year that we all were saying
1:53:36Well, all this new AI stuff is breaking on the scene, but it's a little too new for Apple to do much with it
1:53:42You know, they've had a while now
1:53:44They've had you know generative AI stuff and LLMs have been really like broken into the scene now for
1:53:49What about two years now or a year and a half, you know, it's it's been it's been enough time that
1:53:55Apple has had time to
1:53:58Get caught off guard
1:53:59Realize they have to put a bunch of effort into this as everyone passes them by
1:54:02Start dumping money into it and to start to see results like it now
1:54:07This is the summer that we're going to start seeing the first
1:54:11Probably bigger scale efforts from Apple in this front. Yeah, like I said, they did do the LLM base auto complete
1:54:16And what was it iOS 16 17?
1:54:19Like so that they're like despite the fact that they weren't caught off guard
1:54:22They've already shipped some stuff that says hey, we've found a way to use this tech to make something in our OS better
1:54:28It's just it was just so tiny but this is gonna be the big coming out
1:54:31I think exactly and it's not gonna be the last big coming out of this stuff
1:54:35Like we're gonna see this over the over the following few years. I would expect I do expect to see a whole bunch of
1:54:40Those like, you know, as you mentioned like little stuff around the system features already existed
1:54:45Maybe that are just now better. That's what I want to see and honestly as a developer like
1:54:49Yeah, I guess I probably should have gotten into this with my answer. I guess we're doing this now in the after show
1:54:53I've been hesitant to adopt much of this stuff in my apps so far for two big reasons
1:54:59Number one is that I just don't have the time right now
1:55:02I'm in the middle of this rewrite laying the groundwork for it to be easier for me in the future to make bigger changes
1:55:09But during this time of relaying groundwork, I can't make those bigger changes. I don't have the time but in the future
1:55:15I will hopefully but number two
1:55:17Most of the AI features I could add right now
1:55:22Would require me to do the work on the server. That is something that I could invest into
1:55:28But I don't think it would be a great use of my time and I think it would be very expensive for me
1:55:34Even if I wasn't running like the most cutting-edge models or the biggest models or whatever
1:55:39it is a very high cost for a one-person operation and
1:55:43it's probably not going to be worth it to me and when I look at what I would want out of
1:55:48Some kind of server based AI stuff or any kind of AI based stuff in my app
1:55:52what I'd most likely want would be transcription and
1:55:56Recommending systems like like the recommending algorithms that that would be the two major areas of value for overcast
1:56:04But those are actually like relative to what people expect out of my app. Those are not
1:56:11massive
1:56:13Percentages of the value so to speak I want to have transcription and I want to have you know
1:56:18A more sophisticated recommendation algorithm, but if I never do those things, it's not the other world for my product
1:56:24And so therefore it is not worth investing a huge amount of time and money on the server end
1:56:29To try to make these two kind of ancillary features if it's gonna be that expensive
1:56:34whereas if
1:56:36Apple is building in a lot more stuff into the device side of things
1:56:40I would expect much of that to be exposed through API's for instance the you know, the the speech transcription
1:56:47Algorithm has been part of the public API now for a while
1:56:51I think something like six or seven years if they improve the on-device
1:56:56Transcription algorithms with AI stuff I would expect I could probably use that
1:57:01Locally on device for all the same reasons that I don't want to run a whole bunch of AI stuff on my servers
1:57:06Apple doesn't either on their servers because the scale they would be dealing with with
1:57:11Every iPhone owner having access to feature XYZ
1:57:15That is a massive scale to deploy in Apple's data centers and massive costs to pay
1:57:21I don't even know if there are enough GPUs in the world to handle that kind of load
1:57:24Well, they're already doing a small subset of this with podcast transcription on the server side, right?
1:57:29But that's not inspiring response to customers requests for service
1:57:33They just they just transcribe all their own podcasts once and then everyone every customer gets the benefit as opposed to essentially letting users say
1:57:40Take this image and make a description of it for me or something. Yeah, you don't have to transcribe everyone's videos
1:57:47They have recorded on all of their iPhones forever
1:57:49like that's in server side at least and so, you know what Apple has Apple has this massive asset of
1:57:55All 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
1:58:03So Apple has a huge interest for multiple reasons in
1:58:07Pushing as much of this as possible to the device side to because they have this this fleet of computing capacity
1:58:14That's out there in the world. That is just you know, the value there is immense
1:58:18I also have a smaller version of that a much smaller version of that with overcast like as I lean into AI based
1:58:25Features in the app. I would so much rather do things client-side than server side
1:58:31and right now the client-side versions of these things either don't exist or
1:58:35require me to bring in custom models like for instance the open AI whisper models and
1:58:40That is possible. There are a few apps that integrate whisper in certain certain, you know features
1:58:45But it's a big thing like whisper is a huge model
1:58:49It comes in different sizes
1:58:51But even even the small ones on the phone are pretty substantial and a pretty heavy lift
1:58:56Computationally, but you know if Apple got in there and optimize things with you know
1:59:01Their optimization techniques to run on their hardware with their models
1:59:04They could do a much better job of it if they chose to and I hope they do
1:59:08So anyway, I'm hoping that as I finish my rewrite over, you know, hopefully this year
1:59:13Hopefully that gives Apple enough time to
1:59:15Deploy iOS 18 with some really nice features that I can use for my first like feature update after them after the main rewrite release
1:59:22And I would love to be able to do stuff like live transcription
1:59:26Transcription search if possible, you know, there's there's so many things I could do if it was on device
1:59:31that I would probably
1:59:34never really have the
1:59:36the prioritization and the budget and the time to do server side
1:59:40[beep beep beep]
1:59:42(beep)