ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► I installed my first Windows malware in a long time.

00:00:02 ◼   ► - Oh, well that's fun.

00:00:04 ◼   ► - Like a real malware or a sarcastic malware?

00:00:07 ◼   ► - No, well, I don't know the extent of it yet.

00:00:10 ◼   ► So there was some saga with my son's gaming PC.

00:00:14 ◼   ► In trying to figure out what was going on

00:00:17 ◼   ► with his laptop's cooling system or thermals or whatever,

00:00:22 ◼   ► I wanted to know like what do people use on Windows

00:00:26 ◼   ► to show CPU and GPU temperatures to themselves?

00:00:30 ◼   ► And this is one thing, honestly,

00:00:31 ◼   ► I have found the web in general

00:00:34 ◼   ► to be absolutely horrific at this,

00:00:36 ◼   ► but ChatGPT to be pretty good

00:00:38 ◼   ► at recommending stuff like this.

00:00:39 ◼   ► Like what do people use for software type X?

00:00:42 ◼   ► That would be something I would normally just search

00:00:45 ◼   ► the app store of the device on,

00:00:47 ◼   ► which I tried and there's nothing,

00:00:49 ◼   ► or search the web and it's useless garbage constantly.

00:00:54 ◼   ► So I actually got pretty good results.

00:00:55 ◼   ► And so there's a program called CPU ID,

00:00:58 ◼   ► HW monitor or something that everybody uses.

00:01:00 ◼   ► And I'm like, okay, I remember that

00:01:02 ◼   ► from my old hard OCP days.

00:01:03 ◼   ► That still exists, okay, great, I'll download that.

00:01:06 ◼   ► And it's one of those things where like the download link

00:01:09 ◼   ► opens up like an overlay on the page

00:01:12 ◼   ► that looks like a download link,

00:01:13 ◼   ► but it's actually an ad that is made

00:01:15 ◼   ► to look like a download link, but it's--

00:01:16 ◼   ► - It's like trying to download Minecraft mods.

00:01:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's constant just like,

00:01:20 ◼   ► okay, here's the real download link, download now,

00:01:22 ◼   ► but it's like that's not really the download link.

00:01:23 ◼   ► You have to close the ad,

00:01:24 ◼   ► the download's behind it or something, anyway.

00:01:26 ◼   ► Through all the logistics of trying to find

00:01:28 ◼   ► the real download link to this app,

00:01:30 ◼   ► I had one wrong try and I installed apparently PC App Store,

00:01:35 ◼   ► which messed up all of his browser search parameters

00:01:41 ◼   ► and stuff, it was a whole thing.

00:01:42 ◼   ► So now I gotta figure out like how do I get rid of this now?

00:01:45 ◼   ► Like of course Windows Defender is like everything's fine.

00:01:47 ◼   ► It's like no, trust me, everything's not fine.

00:01:49 ◼   ► So now I have to like do something else.

00:01:51 ◼   ► I guess like malware bytes?

00:01:53 ◼   ► It's like what do people do?

00:01:55 ◼   ► Do you know like what do people do on Windows now?

00:01:58 ◼   ► - I've already forgotten.

00:01:59 ◼   ► What was the name of the thing

00:02:00 ◼   ► that caused the big downtime recently?

00:02:02 ◼   ► CrowdStrike. - CrowdStrike.

00:02:04 ◼   ► Yeah, so no, we're not gonna do CrowdStrike.

00:02:06 ◼   ► No, that's, it seems like a bad idea.

00:02:09 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:02:11 ◼   ► Also, isn't that like expensive enterprise-y stuff?

00:02:14 ◼   ► I don't know. - I don't know.

00:02:15 ◼   ► Maybe it's a free trial.

00:02:15 ◼   ► - All of these secure, all these like PC security things

00:02:18 ◼   ► are all like guys with guns in the desert.

00:02:20 ◼   ► I'm just like I don't wanna, you know,

00:02:23 ◼   ► it's very easy to make a wrong step here.

00:02:26 ◼   ► Anyway, so I think I've removed some of it.

00:02:29 ◼   ► I would love recommendations on what people,

00:02:30 ◼   ► like what do people who are not guys with guns in deserts,

00:02:33 ◼   ► what do you use to just keep malware off of Windows PCs

00:02:37 ◼   ► that your kid is using for gaming?

00:02:39 ◼   ► - I think people just live with it

00:02:40 ◼   ► and have 800 toolbars in their browser.

00:02:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, and you know, and he also like,

00:02:44 ◼   ► he'll install stuff like, you know,

00:02:45 ◼   ► from random, you know, discords that tell him,

00:02:48 ◼   ► oh, use this auto-clicker tool to cheat in this game

00:02:50 ◼   ► so like God knows what else is on this PC.

00:02:53 ◼   ► So I just, but like I just,

00:02:54 ◼   ► I want something that just like is a little bit decent.

00:02:57 ◼   ► Like I don't know.

00:02:58 ◼   ► - I'm sorry, I moved to the Mac roundabouts of 2008

00:03:03 ◼   ► and I think that's right

00:03:07 ◼   ► and I was still a Windows developer by trade until,

00:03:12 ◼   ► oh geez, 2016 or so,

00:03:15 ◼   ► but I don't think I've spent more than five minutes

00:03:17 ◼   ► using Windows since I left, since I left that job,

00:03:21 ◼   ► not the most recent job,

00:03:23 ◼   ► since when I got my most recent job.

00:03:24 ◼   ► So I haven't really used Windows since 2016.

00:03:27 ◼   ► It's been almost 10 years and it's glorious.

00:03:30 ◼   ► It's so great 'cause I don't have to worry about this.

00:03:33 ◼   ► I just don't care, do not care.

00:03:34 ◼   ► And I know this is coming for me

00:03:36 ◼   ► because there's probably gonna be a gaming PC in my future,

00:03:38 ◼   ► little do I know, but right now, ignorance is less.

00:03:42 ◼   ► Oh, it's so great.

00:03:43 ◼   ► - And the thing is like after not using Windows for so long,

00:03:46 ◼   ► I too, I thought, I assumed like,

00:03:48 ◼   ► surely things have gotten a lot better

00:03:50 ◼   ► and like they're a little bit different.

00:03:52 ◼   ► I wouldn't say they're better.

00:03:54 ◼   ► They're just different.

00:03:55 ◼   ► - All right, let's do some follow up

00:04:00 ◼   ► and we have to start with a genuine and heartfelt thank you

00:04:03 ◼   ► to our ATP listeners.

00:04:06 ◼   ► It is no longer September.

00:04:08 ◼   ► So it is no longer Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.

00:04:10 ◼   ► However, during the month of September,

00:04:13 ◼   ► Relay and ATP, but mostly Relay,

00:04:16 ◼   ► raised over $1 million.

00:04:21 ◼   ► As I sit here tonight, $1,061,652.04.

00:04:24 ◼   ► And that is truly incredible.

00:04:30 ◼   ► The last year record,

00:04:32 ◼   ► last year was the previous record for Relay

00:04:34 ◼   ► and that was somewhere to the order of $776,000.

00:04:38 ◼   ► Here we are a year later, over a million dollars.

00:04:43 ◼   ► And I want to say from the bottom of my heart,

00:04:45 ◼   ► and I know I speak for you too,

00:04:47 ◼   ► thank you so much to everyone who gave $1, $5, $10,

00:04:51 ◼   ► doesn't matter, any amount of money.

00:04:52 ◼   ► Thank you to all of you.

00:04:53 ◼   ► Look at what we have accomplished together.

00:04:57 ◼   ► Truly, we have accomplished this together

00:04:59 ◼   ► and that's something to be extremely, extremely proud of.

00:05:01 ◼   ► And I hope that anyone who donated

00:05:03 ◼   ► feels some amount of ownership over this

00:05:04 ◼   ► because you do have some amount of ownership over this.

00:05:07 ◼   ► I will, as a final note for this year,

00:05:09 ◼   ► I will remind you that corporate matching is a thing.

00:05:12 ◼   ► And if you go to St. Jude.org/Relay,

00:05:16 ◼   ► there's a little bit of information about employer matching

00:05:18 ◼   ► and how you can get credit or how Relay can get credit

00:05:21 ◼   ► for an employer match perhaps based on your own donation.

00:05:25 ◼   ► So please check it out.

00:05:26 ◼   ► But don't feel like you can't donate

00:05:29 ◼   ► for the rest of the year or the beginning of next year.

00:05:30 ◼   ► You certainly can, that's fine.

00:05:32 ◼   ► Nobody's gonna complain.

00:05:33 ◼   ► But genuinely, thank you so very much

00:05:35 ◼   ► for the incredible amount of money that we all raised.

00:05:38 ◼   ► I am incredibly proud of all of us

00:05:40 ◼   ► and thankful to all of you.

00:05:41 ◼   ► So thank you.

00:05:43 ◼   ► We have some anonymous feedback

00:05:44 ◼   ► with regard to the hardwired camera indicator light

00:05:47 ◼   ► from years past.

00:05:49 ◼   ► Anonymous writes, when the first built-in camera

00:05:51 ◼   ► was designed for the first Intel iMac,

00:05:53 ◼   ► user notification was designed into the hardware.

00:05:56 ◼   ► The camera board was separate,

00:05:57 ◼   ► not integrated into the computing board.

00:06:00 ◼   ► At the specific direction of a key individual,

00:06:02 ◼   ► the light was hardwired directly

00:06:03 ◼   ► into the board's power circuit.

00:06:05 ◼   ► If the board was receiving power, the light was turned on.

00:06:08 ◼   ► If the board was not receiving power, the light was off.

00:06:10 ◼   ► No software was involved.

00:06:12 ◼   ► This design was passed on to the laptop team.

00:06:15 ◼   ► And yeah, this is just anti-laptop propaganda.

00:06:17 ◼   ► I don't want to read the rest of this.

00:06:19 ◼   ► The design was passed on to the laptop team.

00:06:21 ◼   ► Don't extrapolate that laptops are bad

00:06:22 ◼   ► just from this one example.

00:06:23 ◼   ► I can hear Jon-

00:06:24 ◼   ► - That's not an inclusion I drew.

00:06:25 ◼   ► I feel like you're getting defensive for no reason.

00:06:27 ◼   ► - Because I know you.

00:06:29 ◼   ► - I didn't write this.

00:06:31 ◼   ► - This design was passed on to the laptop team.

00:06:33 ◼   ► Much later, news of the camera light hack

00:06:35 ◼   ► mentioned on the previous episode of ATP went around Apple.

00:06:38 ◼   ► Alarms went off, circuit designs were laid out on tables,

00:06:40 ◼   ► and a lot of shouting happened.

00:06:41 ◼   ► Turns out the laptop team had later quote unquote

00:06:44 ◼   ► improved the design,

00:06:47 ◼   ► accidentally making this hack possible.

00:06:49 ◼   ► It's amusing to think that this quote unquote

00:06:51 ◼   ► secure exclave is a return to the spirit

00:06:53 ◼   ► of the original design requirement.

00:06:55 ◼   ► - This is big companies, you know.

00:06:57 ◼   ► It's hard to make sure that things are communicated

00:07:01 ◼   ► across groups, you know, across years,

00:07:04 ◼   ► across different hardware platforms.

00:07:05 ◼   ► So it is interesting to know that the design initially,

00:07:09 ◼   ► at least according to this person, was sound.

00:07:11 ◼   ► It just sort of got,

00:07:12 ◼   ► the soundness kind of got lost in translation,

00:07:14 ◼   ► and eventually they shipped a thing

00:07:16 ◼   ► that was supposed to be hack proof,

00:07:17 ◼   ► but was in fact hackable.

00:07:19 ◼   ► - Indeed.

00:07:20 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a bummer, but like you said,

00:07:22 ◼   ► that's big business for you.

00:07:24 ◼   ► Wayne Dixon writes with regard to AirPods 4,

00:07:27 ◼   ► the base on the AirPods 4 with ANC

00:07:29 ◼   ► is definitely heavier than the AirPods 3, according to Wayne.

00:07:32 ◼   ► I have no personal experience.

00:07:33 ◼   ► I'll take Wayne's word on this.

00:07:35 ◼   ► Wayne continues, also the new MagSafe Puck

00:07:37 ◼   ► does not align itself with the AirPods 4 case either,

00:07:40 ◼   ► despite being slightly smaller than the old Puck.

00:07:42 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, and Marco was asking

00:07:43 ◼   ► how to tell the difference between the two of them.

00:07:44 ◼   ► Someone wrote in to say that the new ones

00:07:46 ◼   ► have braided cables and the old ones don't.

00:07:47 ◼   ► I'm not sure if that's true,

00:07:48 ◼   ► but that was a suggestion from a listener.

00:07:51 ◼   ► - A friend of the show, Quinn Nelson,

00:07:52 ◼   ► with regard to the ear sensors in AirPods 4.

00:07:57 ◼   ► This is quoting from a YouTube video,

00:07:59 ◼   ► which we will link in the show notes.

00:08:00 ◼   ► These buds use Apple's old optical detection sensor.

00:08:04 ◼   ► So anything opaque that modifies light to this spot

00:08:07 ◼   ► will pause and resume music.

00:08:09 ◼   ► Apple does appear to be using the onboard accelerometers

00:08:11 ◼   ► to prevent music from being resumed

00:08:13 ◼   ► when the buds are at opposing angles.

00:08:16 ◼   ► So you would think that it might be okay in your pocket,

00:08:18 ◼   ► but it's not bulletproof.

00:08:20 ◼   ► Placing one or both earbuds in my pocket

00:08:21 ◼   ► will often resume music unexpectedly.

00:08:24 ◼   ► This was a solved problem.

00:08:25 ◼   ► The outgoing AirPods 3 had a sensor

00:08:26 ◼   ► that only responded to capacitive skin.

00:08:29 ◼   ► It's a real bummer of a downgrade

00:08:31 ◼   ► and a compromise that I hope was only made

00:08:33 ◼   ► for that thinner fitment comfort

00:08:34 ◼   ► rather than to save a buck

00:08:35 ◼   ► or to artificially segment the lineup.

00:08:38 ◼   ► - For whatever it's worth,

00:08:38 ◼   ► I have this problem on the AirPods Pros.

00:08:42 ◼   ► I think the AirPods Pro don't have skin sensing.

00:08:45 ◼   ► I could be wrong, but I will often have,

00:08:49 ◼   ► I'll put 'em in my pants pocket

00:08:50 ◼   ► for a minute as I'm going in a building or something,

00:08:52 ◼   ► and I will sometimes find out

00:08:54 ◼   ► that it has been playing in my pocket.

00:08:56 ◼   ► So I don't know if this is just a rumor or not.

00:08:58 ◼   ► - You can do an experiment and use your finger

00:08:59 ◼   ► versus covering it with a piece of cardboard or something.

00:09:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's too much work.

00:09:03 ◼   ► - Wow.

00:09:05 ◼   ► - John, do you wanna tell us about discoveries

00:09:06 ◼   ► with regard to the A18 and A18 Pro, please?

00:09:09 ◼   ► - So the real hardware folks are finally getting

00:09:12 ◼   ► to give us the hardware answers that we crave

00:09:14 ◼   ► in these next two items.

00:09:15 ◼   ► The first one is something that we talked about

00:09:17 ◼   ► when these phones were announced.

00:09:18 ◼   ► Based on the specs that Apple gave,

00:09:20 ◼   ► it was like, boy, the A18 and the A18 Pro

00:09:22 ◼   ► seem very similar.

00:09:24 ◼   ► And some people were speculating that the A18 Pro,

00:09:27 ◼   ► A18 might be just a binned version of the A18 Pro

00:09:29 ◼   ► based on like, oh, you know,

00:09:30 ◼   ► the A18 Pro has six GPU cores and the A18 has five.

00:09:33 ◼   ► Maybe they're just binned.

00:09:34 ◼   ► And I went through all the differences

00:09:36 ◼   ► on the announcement show and the differences were many

00:09:39 ◼   ► besides just the GPU cores.

00:09:41 ◼   ► And I was like, technically,

00:09:42 ◼   ► it could technically be a binned one,

00:09:44 ◼   ► but there's so much that is different about the A18 Pro

00:09:47 ◼   ► that it seems it would be totally unprecedented

00:09:50 ◼   ► for them to be intentionally disabling so much of the chip.

00:09:54 ◼   ► So now we have actual die shots of someone

00:09:56 ◼   ► who cut the A18 and the A18 Pro open

00:09:58 ◼   ► and lo and behold, they are different chips.

00:10:00 ◼   ► They look pretty similar, but they're not the same chip.

00:10:03 ◼   ► So no, the A18 is not a binned A18 Pro.

00:10:05 ◼   ► They're just two similar chips.

00:10:07 ◼   ► And you can look, this is from chipwise.tech.

00:10:10 ◼   ► You can look at their die shots.

00:10:12 ◼   ► And then Fabian Haussler also put in

00:10:14 ◼   ► like a sort of a markup interpretation,

00:10:16 ◼   ► labeling the parts of the chips to see what they are,

00:10:19 ◼   ► and then put in an M4 for reference as well.

00:10:22 ◼   ► So A18 and A18 Pro, two separate chips.

00:10:25 ◼   ► - Well, and this actually,

00:10:27 ◼   ► I didn't mention this when we first were talking about these

00:10:28 ◼   ► but I kind of regretted afterwards not mentioning it,

00:10:31 ◼   ► that like if you look at why they might be doing this,

00:10:34 ◼   ► like the A18 being its own special chip,

00:10:37 ◼   ► it's now the smallest and most likely therefore cheapest

00:10:41 ◼   ► chip in Apple's lineup that can run Apple intelligence.

00:10:45 ◼   ► So this is not just going to be in the iPhone 16.

00:10:48 ◼   ► Like it is most likely going to also be

00:10:52 ◼   ► in all upcoming Apple products

00:10:54 ◼   ► that don't have a need for massive CPU power otherwise,

00:10:58 ◼   ► but want to run Apple intelligence.

00:11:00 ◼   ► So think about things like future home pods,

00:11:03 ◼   ► like the rumored home pod with the screen

00:11:04 ◼   ► or the robot arm thing, whatever that's going to be,

00:11:06 ◼   ► like you know, that kind of thing.

00:11:08 ◼   ► Low-end iPads, maybe possibly the next Apple TV, who knows?

00:11:12 ◼   ► Like there's lots of products across Apple's lineup

00:11:15 ◼   ► that they're going to want to put Apple intelligence in,

00:11:19 ◼   ► you know, maybe because they are Siri-based,

00:11:20 ◼   ► like a home pod or things like that.

00:11:22 ◼   ► Like they're going to want that

00:11:23 ◼   ► across as much of their product line as possible

00:11:26 ◼   ► as quickly as possible.

00:11:27 ◼   ► So I'm guessing the base A18 is most likely

00:11:31 ◼   ► going to be the next chip in lots of different things,

00:11:34 ◼   ► probably all releasing over the following year or two.

00:11:36 ◼   ► And we'll probably find out first

00:11:38 ◼   ► when we get an update to the low-end iPad,

00:11:40 ◼   ► 'cause I bet it'll be powering that.

00:11:42 ◼   ► - I hope that's true, and I know Apple probably says

00:11:44 ◼   ► that the A18 is the minimum chip

00:11:45 ◼   ► that can run Apple intelligence,

00:11:46 ◼   ► but I don't think the neural engine in the A18

00:11:48 ◼   ► is actually any faster than the 17 or maybe even the 16

00:11:52 ◼   ► when we're looking at the TFLOPS or whatever.

00:11:54 ◼   ► I forget if there was a big difference.

00:11:57 ◼   ► Obviously the GPU is slower,

00:11:58 ◼   ► the CPUs are slower, whatever.

00:11:59 ◼   ► It just seems to me that RAM is the real limiting factor,

00:12:02 ◼   ► 'cause it's not like you can't run Apple intelligence

00:12:04 ◼   ► on older chips, it will just obviously be slower.

00:12:05 ◼   ► The limiting factor that would make it

00:12:07 ◼   ► so you literally can't is RAM.

00:12:09 ◼   ► But you know, practically speaking,

00:12:10 ◼   ► they might just say A18 is the minimum spec going forward,

00:12:13 ◼   ► and yeah, these chips tend to live on for a long time.

00:12:15 ◼   ► And the ones that live on are not the pro chips.

00:12:17 ◼   ► So yeah, A18 hopefully is in our future.

00:12:20 ◼   ► I mean, I'm saying hopefully,

00:12:21 ◼   ► but I don't want them to like,

00:12:23 ◼   ► like historically the home pod line has not received

00:12:26 ◼   ► the cream of the crop of chips.

00:12:29 ◼   ► And even though A18 is the, you know,

00:12:31 ◼   ► maybe is Apple's current minimum spec for Apple intelligence

00:12:34 ◼   ► due to the RAM associated with it

00:12:36 ◼   ► and whatever stuff they claim about the minimum speed

00:12:38 ◼   ► required for the GPU and neural engine and CPU,

00:12:42 ◼   ► I can see them shipping like, for example,

00:12:43 ◼   ► that robot arm thing with a chip older than the A18.

00:12:46 ◼   ► I hope I'm wrong, I hope they don't do that, but we'll see.

00:12:49 ◼   ► - And in the same spirit,

00:12:50 ◼   ► it turns out there is a tiny hardware difference

00:12:54 ◼   ► between the two of these AirPods.

00:12:56 ◼   ► So John, what's going on here?

00:12:58 ◼   ► - iFixit took apart the AirPods 4 painfully

00:13:01 ◼   ► 'cause they do not come apart easily.

00:13:03 ◼   ► And here's what they had to say in a video

00:13:04 ◼   ► we will link in the show notes.

00:13:06 ◼   ► Both versions, talking about both versions of the AirPods 4

00:13:08 ◼   ► are the ones with and without ANC.

00:13:10 ◼   ► Both versions have the exact same system and package

00:13:12 ◼   ► or SIP housing the brains.

00:13:13 ◼   ► In fact, they said we won't be tearing down the AirPods 4

00:13:16 ◼   ► with ANC because the only difference between the two AirBuds

00:13:18 ◼   ► appears to be a single outward facing microphone,

00:13:21 ◼   ► the ANC version having a bigger beefier mic.

00:13:24 ◼   ► So we'll link to the video and you can look.

00:13:27 ◼   ► These products, as far as iFixit can tell,

00:13:30 ◼   ► are identical right down to the number of microphones.

00:13:33 ◼   ► The only difference is the AirPods 4 with ANC,

00:13:35 ◼   ► one of the microphones is bigger

00:13:37 ◼   ► than it is in the AirPods 4.

00:13:39 ◼   ► Which if this is true, I mean,

00:13:40 ◼   ► obviously they can't tell every single minute component,

00:13:42 ◼   ► but they can tell the SIP, they can tell,

00:13:45 ◼   ► they can count the things that are in it.

00:13:46 ◼   ► They have whatever this weird scanning microscope thing

00:13:49 ◼   ► that shows them all the guts or whatever.

00:13:51 ◼   ► Like now I'm looking at it and I'm thinking,

00:13:52 ◼   ► why didn't Apple make the hardware the same?

00:13:55 ◼   ► Like they estimated,

00:13:56 ◼   ► I don't know if it's a sarcastic thing,

00:13:57 ◼   ► estimated as a $2 part, that's the difference between them.

00:14:00 ◼   ► And I guess maybe that adds up like,

00:14:02 ◼   ► and they said it's a $2 part.

00:14:03 ◼   ► So maybe the other one in the AirPods 4 is a $1 part.

00:14:05 ◼   ► So it's a $1 difference.

00:14:06 ◼   ► I suppose when you're making millions and millions of things

00:14:08 ◼   ► that $1 really does add up.

00:14:09 ◼   ► So they should make them separate, but wow.

00:14:12 ◼   ► Like these really are, you know, for the $50 difference,

00:14:15 ◼   ► you get a different case, which we'll get to in a second.

00:14:18 ◼   ► And you get a slightly bigger microphone

00:14:20 ◼   ► in one of the places, pretty amazing.

00:14:22 ◼   ► I mean, maybe they did it this way

00:14:24 ◼   ► so that it wouldn't be some big scandal

00:14:26 ◼   ► that it's just like a software lockout kind of thing.

00:14:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:14:29 ◼   ► - Oh, that's an interesting point.

00:14:30 ◼   ► - I mean, again, it could just be that $1 difference

00:14:32 ◼   ► that, you know, I don't know, iFixit's off end comment.

00:14:35 ◼   ► One or $2 difference times millions of AirPods

00:14:39 ◼   ► is millions of dollars.

00:14:40 ◼   ► So there's that.

00:14:41 ◼   ► - And then additionally from iFixit,

00:14:43 ◼   ► if we take a look at the X-rays

00:14:45 ◼   ► of the ANC version of the case,

00:14:47 ◼   ► we can again see the exact same PCB,

00:14:50 ◼   ► but with a speaker inside the housing.

00:14:53 ◼   ► This is another component that contributes

00:14:54 ◼   ► to the extra $50 you'd pay for the ANC version.

00:14:57 ◼   ► As far as I can tell, those are the only two differences.

00:15:00 ◼   ► - So they kept the guts of the case the same too,

00:15:02 ◼   ► except for obviously, I mean, the case itself,

00:15:05 ◼   ► I think is different 'cause it's got holes for the speaker.

00:15:07 ◼   ► So there's one hardware difference.

00:15:08 ◼   ► And the second one is, hey,

00:15:09 ◼   ► there's a speaker behind those holes.

00:15:10 ◼   ► And so, you know, for the $50 for the AirPods for the ANC,

00:15:14 ◼   ► you get, one of the microphones is bigger in each earbud

00:15:18 ◼   ► and you get a single speaker component

00:15:20 ◼   ► that is not, and the three holes

00:15:21 ◼   ► that it talks through in the case.

00:15:23 ◼   ► And that's it.

00:15:24 ◼   ► Everything else about them is the same.

00:15:26 ◼   ► Good profit margins on the high-end product.

00:15:28 ◼   ► What else is new from Apple?

00:15:31 ◼   ► - All right, and then Tom's Hardware or Tom's Guide,

00:15:33 ◼   ► whatever they're calling themselves these days,

00:15:34 ◼   ► did a large test of the iPhone's 16 battery life.

00:15:39 ◼   ► And they have a summary table that Jon has been kind enough

00:15:43 ◼   ► to put in the show notes for me.

00:15:44 ◼   ► - They didn't have a summary table.

00:15:45 ◼   ► I made a summary table.

00:15:46 ◼   ► They just had a bunch of numbers.

00:15:48 ◼   ► - And that's the thing.

00:15:50 ◼   ► When these people do reviews, it always boggles my mind

00:15:52 ◼   ► that they spend all the time to do these tests.

00:15:54 ◼   ► They do all this hard work

00:15:55 ◼   ► and they have all these measurements

00:15:56 ◼   ► and they put them in a bunch of tables.

00:15:58 ◼   ► And it's like, you gotta do the final step,

00:16:01 ◼   ► which is like, sum it up, tell me what this means.

00:16:05 ◼   ► Don't make me do the math, which I had to do for all of this

00:16:07 ◼   ► to find out the actual important information.

00:16:10 ◼   ► - Here it was, I was trying to credit you

00:16:11 ◼   ► and apparently I did not give you sufficient credit.

00:16:13 ◼   ► So I apologize.

00:16:14 ◼   ► - You didn't yell at Tom's Guide enough.

00:16:17 ◼   ► - Okay, I see.

00:16:18 ◼   ► Follow-up copyright 2011, Jon Sarcusa.

00:16:20 ◼   ► So anyway, battery size for the iPhone 16, it's up 6.3%.

00:16:25 ◼   ► Battery life up almost 15%.

00:16:29 ◼   ► Battery size for the 16 Plus up almost 7%.

00:16:33 ◼   ► Battery life up almost 16%.

00:16:36 ◼   ► 16 Pro gets about 9% and 30% increased battery life.

00:16:41 ◼   ► 16 Pro Max, 6% battery size increase.

00:16:45 ◼   ► And again, about 30% battery life increase.

00:16:48 ◼   ► That is quite impressive.

00:16:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, and so the reason why this,

00:16:50 ◼   ► these are the things you should put in,

00:16:52 ◼   ► like this is sort of the bottom line,

00:16:53 ◼   ► sum it up for me, is how much bigger did the battery get?

00:16:56 ◼   ► And yeah, I did the math on like how many milliamp hours

00:16:58 ◼   ► or whatever, but you really wanna know percentage-wise.

00:17:01 ◼   ► Yeah, and this is all versus its predecessors.

00:17:02 ◼   ► So it's 16 versus 15, 16 Plus versus 15 Plus,

00:17:05 ◼   ► 16 Pro versus, you know,

00:17:06 ◼   ► it's directly versus their predecessors

00:17:09 ◼   ► 'cause there are direct predecessors for all these phones.

00:17:11 ◼   ► It's like, what percentage bigger did the battery get?

00:17:14 ◼   ► And then for that increase in battery size,

00:17:17 ◼   ► what percentage better is the battery life?

00:17:19 ◼   ► And Tom's Hardware is in a position to do that.

00:17:20 ◼   ► They put the numbers in for these different phones

00:17:22 ◼   ► because presumably they ran the same test on all the 15s

00:17:25 ◼   ► that they did on the 16s.

00:17:26 ◼   ► And they come up with the number that's, you know,

00:17:28 ◼   ► representative of whatever their test is.

00:17:31 ◼   ► So in all these cases, the battery got some percent bigger,

00:17:34 ◼   ► but the battery life increased much more

00:17:37 ◼   ► than the battery size increase.

00:17:39 ◼   ► So, you know, again, the 16 Pro got a 10% bigger battery,

00:17:43 ◼   ► but 30% bigger battery life.

00:17:45 ◼   ► That is huge.

00:17:46 ◼   ► And then I put the absolute values here.

00:17:47 ◼   ► It's like, what does that even mean?

00:17:48 ◼   ► So the increased battery life in terms of wall clock time,

00:17:51 ◼   ► for the iPhone 16 is an hour 38.

00:17:53 ◼   ► For the 16 Plus, it's two hours and 15 minutes.

00:17:56 ◼   ► 16 Pro is three hours and 14 minutes.

00:17:58 ◼   ► And 16 Pro Max is four hours and four minutes.

00:18:00 ◼   ► These are not small battery increases.

00:18:02 ◼   ► Like, oh, you get extra 10 minutes to 30 minutes.

00:18:04 ◼   ► Again, how representative is this Tom's Guide test?

00:18:07 ◼   ► Like, is it light web browsing?

00:18:09 ◼   ► Is it representative of how you use your phones?

00:18:11 ◼   ► But they made all the batteries bigger

00:18:13 ◼   ► by a significant percentage,

00:18:15 ◼   ► and the battery life got way bigger

00:18:17 ◼   ► than the percentage increase.

00:18:19 ◼   ► And you will feel those for most of these things,

00:18:22 ◼   ► 'cause they're measured in,

00:18:23 ◼   ► only one of them is a single hour,

00:18:24 ◼   ► and all the other ones are in multiple hours.

00:18:26 ◼   ► And this brings me to the next topic.

00:18:28 ◼   ► I have a 16 Pro, which apparently gets 30% better

00:18:32 ◼   ► battery life than the 15 Pro did,

00:18:34 ◼   ► which equates to an extra three hours and 14 minutes

00:18:37 ◼   ► of battery life in the Tom's test.

00:18:40 ◼   ► What I did, after having my phone for a day or two,

00:18:42 ◼   ► was I put on the 80% battery limit.

00:18:45 ◼   ► I said, I don't think I need to charge this thing to 100%.

00:18:49 ◼   ► So in the battery, this is the first time

00:18:50 ◼   ► I've had a phone that supports this setting,

00:18:51 ◼   ► 'cause my 14 Pro didn't support it.

00:18:53 ◼   ► So I went into battery or whatever and I said,

00:18:55 ◼   ► never charge yourself more than 80%.

00:18:57 ◼   ► And then for the next several days,

00:18:58 ◼   ► I intentionally did not charge my phone during the day,

00:19:01 ◼   ► even though I could have, like I could plug it in

00:19:03 ◼   ► when I'm doing dishes or whatever.

00:19:04 ◼   ► I intentionally didn't do that just to see,

00:19:06 ◼   ► is 80% enough to get me through a regular day?

00:19:09 ◼   ► And right now on a brand new 16 Pro,

00:19:11 ◼   ► 80% is more than enough, intentionally not charging,

00:19:14 ◼   ► like I would normally would during the day.

00:19:17 ◼   ► And so I'm currently on the 80% plan.

00:19:20 ◼   ► And there's been lots of debate about this.

00:19:22 ◼   ► People saying, oh, that's a waste.

00:19:24 ◼   ► You're never getting the full capacity of your phone.

00:19:25 ◼   ► You should charge it to 100%.

00:19:27 ◼   ► Don't worry about it or whatever.

00:19:29 ◼   ► But if I don't need to charge it to 100%,

00:19:31 ◼   ► I am making my battery last longer,

00:19:34 ◼   ► especially since I keep my phone for two years

00:19:36 ◼   ► than if I did otherwise.

00:19:37 ◼   ► So that's my plan.

00:19:39 ◼   ► And we'll put a link in the show notes

00:19:40 ◼   ► to some sort of anecdotal from Nick here

00:19:43 ◼   ► who had like a survey of like 100 people and said,

00:19:45 ◼   ► hey, are you charging to 80%?

00:19:47 ◼   ► And if so, you know, how's it going for you or whatever?

00:19:50 ◼   ► I think this is something people should at least consider

00:19:55 ◼   ► might be a possibility for them.

00:19:56 ◼   ► And you know, everyone knows your own life.

00:19:57 ◼   ► If you're on a commute and you have no place to charge

00:19:59 ◼   ► during the day and you barely make it through 100%,

00:20:01 ◼   ► charge to 100%, like by all means.

00:20:03 ◼   ► But I thought I could make it with 80% and so far I can.

00:20:07 ◼   ► And so I'm gonna keep it there.

00:20:07 ◼   ► And if it turns out I can't make it with 80%,

00:20:10 ◼   ► I'll probably crank it to 90 and then go up to 100.

00:20:13 ◼   ► And we'll see at the end of my two years

00:20:14 ◼   ► how my battery life is doing.

00:20:15 ◼   ► - Can you crank it to 90 or 100?

00:20:17 ◼   ► I thought it was either 80 or nothing.

00:20:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's like a slider.

00:20:19 ◼   ► Like maybe you can even go by fives, I don't remember.

00:20:22 ◼   ► But yeah, there's like a little slider bar in the settings.

00:20:25 ◼   ► - Well, for some reason, I thought it was the same.

00:20:27 ◼   ► I think the laptops are 80 or 100

00:20:29 ◼   ► and I thought it was the same on the phone.

00:20:30 ◼   ► So I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm wrong.

00:20:32 ◼   ► I just, I didn't realize.

00:20:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, and on laptops, people always recommend this

00:20:35 ◼   ► and I forget to write it down.

00:20:35 ◼   ► But there are programs for the Mac

00:20:37 ◼   ► that give you even more control over this,

00:20:39 ◼   ► that like not just the OS things.

00:20:41 ◼   ► What does that one call this?

00:20:42 ◼   ► Maybe it's coconut battery, maybe it's something else.

00:20:43 ◼   ► There's a bunch of Mac OS programs

00:20:45 ◼   ► that let you do the same thing for your laptop battery

00:20:48 ◼   ► and choose what you wanna limit to

00:20:49 ◼   ► and do all these fancy stuff.

00:20:51 ◼   ► - Al dente is the one that I think most people recommend.

00:20:54 ◼   ► A-L-D-E-N-T-E, I will put it in the show notes.

00:20:58 ◼   ► David Schaub has some input or correction really.

00:21:03 ◼   ► We were talking last episode or the episode before

00:21:06 ◼   ► about the glue that becomes not so sticky

00:21:10 ◼   ► when you apply a voltage to it.

00:21:12 ◼   ► And remind me what exactly we said would happen

00:21:15 ◼   ► if you reverse polarity.

00:21:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, I was trying to remember what happened

00:21:18 ◼   ► if you reverse the polarity and I misinterpreted the,

00:21:20 ◼   ► or misremembered the iFixit video that was explaining this.

00:21:24 ◼   ► So David wrote in with the correction.

00:21:25 ◼   ► - So David writes, "When making the positive

00:21:27 ◼   ► and negative electrical connections

00:21:28 ◼   ► to release an iPhone 16 battery,

00:21:29 ◼   ► the polarity determines which side the glue residue

00:21:32 ◼   ► is left on when it unsticks.

00:21:33 ◼   ► If you mistakenly reverse the positive

00:21:36 ◼   ► and negative connections, the residue is left on the chassis

00:21:39 ◼   ► which is hard to clean instead of the battery

00:21:41 ◼   ► which is where you want it."

00:21:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, so it's like the sticky gunk.

00:21:44 ◼   ► Apparently there is sticky gunk

00:21:45 ◼   ► and you get to choose where it's left

00:21:46 ◼   ► and you don't want it to be in the phone.

00:21:47 ◼   ► So that's why you have to be careful about the polarity

00:21:49 ◼   ► but it will not like re-stick.

00:21:51 ◼   ► - Indeed.

00:21:52 ◼   ► And then Eric Westland writes in to corroborate your story

00:21:55 ◼   ► with regard to Verizon activation problems.

00:21:58 ◼   ► Eric writes, "I bought my iPhone unlocked from Apple."

00:22:00 ◼   ► As did I.

00:22:01 ◼   ► "I had the exact same experience as John.

00:22:03 ◼   ► My last phone was three years ago

00:22:04 ◼   ► and I had the same problem then too.

00:22:05 ◼   ► Verizon just stinks at this."

00:22:07 ◼   ► I will interject as me now.

00:22:08 ◼   ► Hi, this is Casey.

00:22:09 ◼   ► - Wow, keep cut.

00:22:12 ◼   ► - I'll say that for me, I think we talked last week

00:22:16 ◼   ► about how it did not, my phone did not activate initially.

00:22:21 ◼   ► And then if memory serves, it was like once I got

00:22:23 ◼   ► to the standard Springboard iOS screen,

00:22:26 ◼   ► I think it was at that point, it was like,

00:22:27 ◼   ► "Hey, you're not activated.

00:22:28 ◼   ► You want to do it again?"

00:22:29 ◼   ► I said, "Yeah."

00:22:31 ◼   ► And then it worked no problem the second time.

00:22:33 ◼   ► For Aaron's phone, I did the exact same stuff

00:22:36 ◼   ► that I did on my phone and it worked no sweat.

00:22:38 ◼   ► Now hers was Tuesday or Wednesday after release,

00:22:42 ◼   ► I think it was, whereas I was doing it the Sunday,

00:22:44 ◼   ► the weekend of release.

00:22:46 ◼   ► So I would imagine things were still a bit busy

00:22:48 ◼   ► on both the carrier and Apple sides of things.

00:22:50 ◼   ► So maybe it was just that it was,

00:22:52 ◼   ► things were overwhelmed when John was trying to do it

00:22:54 ◼   ► and Eric apparently, but who knows?

00:22:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm sure that's what it was.

00:22:56 ◼   ► Like I always, I'm doing it like the phones are arriving

00:22:58 ◼   ► at people's doorsteps that day, right?

00:23:00 ◼   ► And so it's the worst possible time to do it.

00:23:01 ◼   ► But yeah, Verizon is apparently very bad at this.

00:23:03 ◼   ► And by the way, I think Eric said

00:23:05 ◼   ► he did it in two different states.

00:23:06 ◼   ► I think one, like Massachusetts and Iowa

00:23:08 ◼   ► had the same problem.

00:23:09 ◼   ► So yeah, the moral of the story is,

00:23:11 ◼   ► even if you get an unlock phone from Verizon,

00:23:13 ◼   ► if you get it on day one and you try to do activation,

00:23:15 ◼   ► good luck.

00:23:16 ◼   ► - We are brought to you this episode by QA Wolf.

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00:23:59 ◼   ► Thank you so much to QA Wolf for sponsoring our show.

00:24:02 ◼   ► - John, I believe this is your case review

00:24:08 ◼   ► that we would like to talk about next.

00:24:09 ◼   ► - And Marco's got the same case.

00:24:10 ◼   ► We can both talk about it.

00:24:11 ◼   ► But yeah, I got the leather bull strap case

00:24:13 ◼   ► with the open bottom on it.

00:24:15 ◼   ► We'll put a link in the show notes.

00:24:16 ◼   ► This is the one that has a hole for the camera control

00:24:19 ◼   ► as do nearly all, but not all third-party cases.

00:24:23 ◼   ► Previously, I was using the Beats case,

00:24:24 ◼   ► which I talked about on the earlier show.

00:24:26 ◼   ► And so here's my review of the bull strap case.

00:24:29 ◼   ► Leather is nicer than the material

00:24:32 ◼   ► for as far as I'm concerned than the Beats case.

00:24:36 ◼   ► I do think this one, the corners had some wrinkles on them.

00:24:38 ◼   ► That's a little bit unpleasing,

00:24:40 ◼   ► but you know, it's a artisanal product.

00:24:42 ◼   ► Everyone is a little bit different.

00:24:44 ◼   ► Everything about it is the same as my iPhone 14 Pro case,

00:24:46 ◼   ► obviously, except for the camera control cutout.

00:24:49 ◼   ► Marco talked about the peak design camera control cutout,

00:24:52 ◼   ► which had sort of like a sloping on all sides

00:24:54 ◼   ► to get down to the camera control,

00:24:55 ◼   ► and that was not pleasing to him.

00:24:57 ◼   ► Bull strap has decided to try to avoid that problem,

00:25:00 ◼   ► which I think is smart of them,

00:25:02 ◼   ► by not making it so there's like sloping things on all sides

00:25:05 ◼   ► so you have to kind of shove your fleshy finger

00:25:07 ◼   ► into this little valley to get to the thing.

00:25:09 ◼   ► They decided one of the sides is not going to exist.

00:25:13 ◼   ► So if you look at the phone from the front,

00:25:14 ◼   ► it's just a regular, you know,

00:25:16 ◼   ► you see the case going all the way around.

00:25:17 ◼   ► But if you look at the phone from the back,

00:25:18 ◼   ► you see part of the sidewall of the case

00:25:20 ◼   ► has been notched out, right?

00:25:22 ◼   ► So it's not symmetrical.

00:25:23 ◼   ► It is not a symmetrical hole in the side of your case.

00:25:26 ◼   ► There is a wall on the screen side,

00:25:28 ◼   ► then there's the hole for the camera button,

00:25:29 ◼   ► and there's no wall on the other side.

00:25:31 ◼   ► Like basically the bottom of the case

00:25:32 ◼   ► just comes to an end and that's it.

00:25:34 ◼   ► And it's not really,

00:25:36 ◼   ► it doesn't really center the camera control either.

00:25:39 ◼   ► So it's interesting.

00:25:40 ◼   ► There is, it feels flimsier on that side.

00:25:43 ◼   ► It feels like there's a gigantic notch

00:25:45 ◼   ► taken out of the side of the phone,

00:25:46 ◼   ► because there is a gigantic notch

00:25:47 ◼   ► taken out of the side of the phone.

00:25:48 ◼   ► The sort of little stick or pole or whatever

00:25:52 ◼   ► that is the front of the sidewall over the camera control

00:25:57 ◼   ► seems delicate and fidgety and creaky.

00:26:01 ◼   ► And I just generally hate this.

00:26:03 ◼   ► I don't like the hole in the side of the case at all.

00:26:07 ◼   ► I can get to the camera control, I can press it,

00:26:10 ◼   ► but it is annoying to do so.

00:26:12 ◼   ► And now, well, so I'm going to leave this on the phone,

00:26:16 ◼   ► because I'm like, I don't know if I can handle this.

00:26:17 ◼   ► Maybe I'm gonna go back to the Beats case.

00:26:18 ◼   ► But after having it for like a week or so,

00:26:20 ◼   ► I've decided the advantages of the leather,

00:26:23 ◼   ► the grippiness of the leather,

00:26:25 ◼   ► outweigh the terribleness of this hole

00:26:28 ◼   ► in the side of the thing.

00:26:29 ◼   ► So I'm going to keep this on until or unless it breaks.

00:26:32 ◼   ► But as of right now, what I am looking for

00:26:35 ◼   ► is basically this case, a leather case with an open bottom,

00:26:39 ◼   ► but with the pass-through camera control.

00:26:42 ◼   ► And third parties, I think there's like two or three

00:26:45 ◼   ► or maybe four third-party case manufacturers

00:26:48 ◼   ► that do have pass-through.

00:26:49 ◼   ► One of them I saw doesn't even use the quartz thing.

00:26:52 ◼   ► It uses a piece of plastic

00:26:53 ◼   ► with a bunch of little copper wires going through it

00:26:55 ◼   ► to do the conductance thing.

00:26:58 ◼   ► Look, whatever you gotta do with third-party cases.

00:27:01 ◼   ► But I'm out here saying, "Bullstrap, Ryan London,"

00:27:04 ◼   ► and then the five other manufacturers

00:27:05 ◼   ► who apparently sell this exact same case

00:27:07 ◼   ► for differing prices.

00:27:09 ◼   ► I know you had to do the thing with the hole on day one.

00:27:11 ◼   ► You couldn't, maybe you couldn't figure it,

00:27:12 ◼   ► like everyone else had to do too.

00:27:13 ◼   ► I get it.

00:27:14 ◼   ► I bought your case at great expense.

00:27:15 ◼   ► I'm using it on my phone.

00:27:16 ◼   ► But please, somebody, somebody out there,

00:27:19 ◼   ► make a leather open bottom case

00:27:23 ◼   ► with a quartz pass-through for the camera control.

00:27:25 ◼   ► That's what I want.

00:27:26 ◼   ► And until then, I'm just gonna have a gigantic wound

00:27:28 ◼   ► in the side of my phone that I feel every day

00:27:31 ◼   ► and it makes it slightly less satisfying.

00:27:33 ◼   ► Marco, what do you think of the Bullstrap case?

00:27:35 ◼   ► - After however many weeks it's been,

00:27:38 ◼   ► one, two, of using the Apple silicone case,

00:27:41 ◼   ► I actually also switched to my Bullstrap case

00:27:44 ◼   ► a couple of days ago

00:27:46 ◼   ► because the silicone case,

00:27:47 ◼   ► it's just too hard getting in and out of jeans pockets.

00:27:51 ◼   ► It pulls the whole pocket liner out with it, you know?

00:27:54 ◼   ► So I wanted to try this.

00:27:56 ◼   ► And yeah, the leather does feel a lot better.

00:27:58 ◼   ► Bullstrap's leather is very, very good.

00:28:01 ◼   ► But yeah, I too hate the camera cutout.

00:28:05 ◼   ► It doesn't feel good, it doesn't work well.

00:28:08 ◼   ► It certainly doesn't look good.

00:28:10 ◼   ► And I too worry about the longevity

00:28:12 ◼   ► of that little thin piece of leather

00:28:14 ◼   ► that comes down across the front edge of it.

00:28:17 ◼   ► This, look, this is all,

00:28:20 ◼   ► no one's gonna have this design next year.

00:28:22 ◼   ► By the time everyone makes their cases

00:28:24 ◼   ► for next year's phones,

00:28:26 ◼   ► no one will be using this design on a good case.

00:28:28 ◼   ► And there's a reason for that.

00:28:28 ◼   ► It's not a good design.

00:28:30 ◼   ► They did what they had to do with day one unknowns.

00:28:32 ◼   ► But yeah, like Jon, I'm hoping for a better version

00:28:37 ◼   ► of this case in the future that has a button cover

00:28:39 ◼   ► for the camera control that works.

00:28:41 ◼   ► - Do you agree that their decision

00:28:43 ◼   ► to omit one of the side walls surrounding the camera control

00:28:47 ◼   ► makes it more comfortable to you

00:28:48 ◼   ► than the Peak Design version of the hole?

00:28:50 ◼   ► - I think it's only more comfortable

00:28:52 ◼   ► because leather is softer than hard plastic.

00:28:55 ◼   ► 'Cause here, I'll pull, I got the Peak Design one right here.

00:28:58 ◼   ► Like the Peak Design one,

00:28:59 ◼   ► it actually has about the same indentation shape.

00:29:03 ◼   ► Like it is just as thin on that little skinny piece

00:29:07 ◼   ► in front of the camera control button.

00:29:08 ◼   ► - But look at the other side of the camera control.

00:29:10 ◼   ► There's no wall there.

00:29:11 ◼   ► - You mean like the back of the phone?

00:29:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, there's not equal size walls

00:29:15 ◼   ► on the front and the back of the phone

00:29:18 ◼   ► in terms of surrounding the camera control.

00:29:19 ◼   ► Do you see what I mean?

00:29:20 ◼   ► - I see what you mean.

00:29:21 ◼   ► It's pretty subtle.

00:29:22 ◼   ► The Peak Design one is symmetric.

00:29:23 ◼   ► But that's a pretty subtle difference.

00:29:25 ◼   ► I don't think that matters.

00:29:27 ◼   ► I think what I didn't like about the Peak Design

00:29:29 ◼   ► is merely that their plastic is harder than leather.

00:29:33 ◼   ► And neither one of these feels good.

00:29:35 ◼   ► But I'm tolerating the bull strap case

00:29:38 ◼   ► because it is the smallest number of bad trade-offs

00:29:43 ◼   ► that I have found yet.

00:29:43 ◼   ► I also have the Apple Clear case.

00:29:46 ◼   ► I thought that would solve my problems.

00:29:48 ◼   ► And it does not.

00:29:50 ◼   ► The Apple Clear case, I found to have very bad buttons.

00:29:54 ◼   ► Like the ones, especially the sleep/wake button,

00:29:56 ◼   ► it's much harder to push than the other cases I have.

00:29:59 ◼   ► And it doesn't have good feedback.

00:30:02 ◼   ► So I think it's just like a lower quality

00:30:04 ◼   ► or maybe it's a materials thing.

00:30:06 ◼   ► So far, the Apple silicone case works the best

00:30:09 ◼   ► and feels the best in use.

00:30:12 ◼   ► It just sucks at going in and out of pockets.

00:30:14 ◼   ► Which is the problem they've always had.

00:30:15 ◼   ► Whereas the bare bottom bull strap case

00:30:20 ◼   ► is the nicest leather case that I have found so far.

00:30:23 ◼   ► But with the exception of that giant thing

00:30:25 ◼   ► that Jon completed about the giant camera cut out.

00:30:27 ◼   ► - By the way, if Apple made an open bottom silicone case,

00:30:29 ◼   ► I would probably be using it instead of the leather one.

00:30:31 ◼   ► Because I don't have so many problems

00:30:32 ◼   ► with getting in and out of pockets.

00:30:34 ◼   ► And I'm desperate to not have this giant hole

00:30:37 ◼   ► in the side of my phone.

00:30:38 ◼   ► It feels like a chicken pox scar.

00:30:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, I hope in a few months,

00:30:42 ◼   ► people have remade these cases with better designs.

00:30:46 ◼   ► - I'm so afraid they're gonna be like,

00:30:47 ◼   ► ah, we'll do that for the next phone.

00:30:49 ◼   ► This phone, tough luck, right?

00:30:50 ◼   ► I really hope that they come out with version two.

00:30:52 ◼   ► It's like, well, we couldn't have them in day one.

00:30:54 ◼   ► But now everyone knows how to do the quartz pads through.

00:30:56 ◼   ► So here's, I'll buy a second case bull strap.

00:30:58 ◼   ► Just put it out.

00:31:00 ◼   ► I don't want them to be like,

00:31:01 ◼   ► well, we can never figure it out for the 16 line.

00:31:03 ◼   ► But for the 17, we'll have the quartz pads through.

00:31:05 ◼   ► That doesn't help me 'cause I'm not cutting a 17.

00:31:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, I hope they do.

00:31:08 ◼   ► I hope they do.

00:31:09 ◼   ► - You say that, and I agree with you in principle.

00:31:11 ◼   ► But last year when I was casting about for a case

00:31:14 ◼   ► for my 15 Pro Max,

00:31:17 ◼   ► I had gotten a peel case, which I loved.

00:31:20 ◼   ► But it had a cutout for the action button,

00:31:23 ◼   ► which at the time most cases were doing.

00:31:25 ◼   ► And I hated that.

00:31:27 ◼   ► And I'm currently going caseless, caseless

00:31:30 ◼   ► on the iPhone 16 that I have.

00:31:32 ◼   ► And I'll probably continue to do that.

00:31:34 ◼   ► But I was looking and I was wondering,

00:31:35 ◼   ► hey, I wonder if since last year did Peak end up doing,

00:31:40 ◼   ► I think it's, no, Peel.

00:31:41 ◼   ► I'm sorry, Peel.

00:31:42 ◼   ► Did Peel end up doing an action button

00:31:45 ◼   ► and how have they handled the camera control?

00:31:48 ◼   ► And the answer is they did not do an action button

00:31:50 ◼   ► and they just have a hole for the camera control

00:31:52 ◼   ► as they do for all of the buttons.

00:31:54 ◼   ► And it's too bad because like the way I remember it,

00:31:57 ◼   ► this was a year ago now,

00:31:58 ◼   ► but the way I remember it, the case felt great.

00:32:00 ◼   ► It was thin because I don't want,

00:32:02 ◼   ► I'm not an OtterBox kind of person.

00:32:04 ◼   ► Like I want something thin, but more than zero

00:32:06 ◼   ► if I'm gonna do a case at all.

00:32:08 ◼   ► And the key to the Peel,

00:32:10 ◼   ► and they say it as a piece of marketing as they should,

00:32:14 ◼   ► say it with me, gentlemen, no branding, no branding.

00:32:17 ◼   ► And I loved that.

00:32:19 ◼   ► And what I ended up doing was returning that case

00:32:21 ◼   ► because I hated the lack of like a fake button,

00:32:24 ◼   ► if you will, for the action button.

00:32:26 ◼   ► And I got a Toras, T-O-R-R-A-S,

00:32:28 ◼   ► which also doesn't have any outward facing branding,

00:32:32 ◼   ► but the case was fine.

00:32:35 ◼   ► Like I didn't like it near as much as I liked the Peel,

00:32:38 ◼   ► but I could not abide by the gaps for the buttons.

00:32:43 ◼   ► And I was hoping so much that by the 16,

00:32:46 ◼   ► they would at least have an action button,

00:32:47 ◼   ► even if they punted on the camera control.

00:32:49 ◼   ► And from everything that I can tell,

00:32:50 ◼   ► nope, it's just a bunch of holes.

00:32:53 ◼   ► Just like your Mac Pro.

00:32:54 ◼   ► - I really hope they update these cases.

00:32:57 ◼   ► If not, I don't know what I'm gonna do.

00:32:58 ◼   ► It was like, if that little delicate thing does break,

00:33:00 ◼   ► what am I gonna go back to the Beats case,

00:33:02 ◼   ► buy a second one of these at great expense?

00:33:04 ◼   ► Although honestly, because all I get on Instagram now

00:33:06 ◼   ► are ads for phone cases, as you can imagine,

00:33:09 ◼   ► I'm really seeing how many different people

00:33:13 ◼   ► resell this exact same Ryan London bull strap,

00:33:16 ◼   ► like I forgot what the other brand I started recently.

00:33:18 ◼   ► It's like at least three or four,

00:33:20 ◼   ► maybe even five different brands

00:33:21 ◼   ► that are clearly selling the same case

00:33:23 ◼   ► that some manufacturer makes in China somewhere, right?

00:33:25 ◼   ► And so we say, oh, bull straps, leather is good.

00:33:27 ◼   ► It's not bull straps, leather.

00:33:28 ◼   ► What they do is stamp the little bull thing on it

00:33:30 ◼   ► and put it in a pretty box and sell it to us

00:33:32 ◼   ► for way more money than everyone else does,

00:33:33 ◼   ► which is fine, like, whatever, I'll take it.

00:33:36 ◼   ► They were the first ones that shipped,

00:33:37 ◼   ► so that's why they got my money.

00:33:38 ◼   ► But please, somebody out there,

00:33:41 ◼   ► open bottom, I'm asking for a lot.

00:33:42 ◼   ► Nobody cares about open bottom but me, right?

00:33:45 ◼   ► Open bottom, leather, quartz, camera control.

00:33:48 ◼   ► Otherwise, I'm gonna be using this weird

00:33:50 ◼   ► scarred case for two years.

00:33:52 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:33:54 ◼   ► - It's sad times.

00:33:55 ◼   ► Part of me wonders if we should try to design a case

00:33:59 ◼   ► that makes all of us happy,

00:34:00 ◼   ► and then I immediately decide

00:34:02 ◼   ► that that's a terrible, terrible, terrible decision.

00:34:04 ◼   ► - Can you imagine trying to design a case

00:34:06 ◼   ► that would please John?

00:34:08 ◼   ► - No.

00:34:08 ◼   ► - It wouldn't actually be that hard,

00:34:09 ◼   ► but the problem is most we'd ever be able to sell,

00:34:14 ◼   ► assuming we sold this as a product to our listeners,

00:34:16 ◼   ► is like a few hundred cases at best, right?

00:34:19 ◼   ► And no one's gonna manufacture you anything

00:34:21 ◼   ► with those kind of small numbers.

00:34:22 ◼   ► That's probably why these companies

00:34:23 ◼   ► are not gonna make a new case

00:34:25 ◼   ► 'cause they have to pre-order like millions,

00:34:27 ◼   ► not millions, but like thousands and thousands of them

00:34:29 ◼   ► to get whatever good price they get on them,

00:34:31 ◼   ► and they can't afford to say, you know,

00:34:34 ◼   ► let's design a whole new case

00:34:36 ◼   ► and buy a few thousand of those.

00:34:37 ◼   ► They have to sell through all these ones

00:34:38 ◼   ► that they made and paid for,

00:34:39 ◼   ► and then by then, it's time for a new phone.

00:34:41 ◼   ► - I mean, hey, we did it for the chicken hat.

00:34:43 ◼   ► Can be done.

00:34:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think the chicken hat

00:34:45 ◼   ► is a little bit easier to manufacture

00:34:46 ◼   ► than something that has to be precisely

00:34:48 ◼   ► fit around an iPhone.

00:34:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, and first of all,

00:34:50 ◼   ► imagine if we had to make the chicken hat,

00:34:52 ◼   ► but we didn't know where people's ears would be

00:34:54 ◼   ► or how big their heads would be

00:34:56 ◼   ► until after they were all made.

00:34:58 ◼   ► And by the way, we did know where people's ears are,

00:35:00 ◼   ► we did know how big people's heads are,

00:35:02 ◼   ► and we still had a lot of fit complaints

00:35:05 ◼   ► about the chicken hat, let's be honest.

00:35:07 ◼   ► - Well, the chicken hat was,

00:35:08 ◼   ► well, the good thing about the chicken hat was,

00:35:10 ◼   ► first of all, the manufacturer that was making it for us

00:35:11 ◼   ► was in the US and had a short turnaround time.

00:35:14 ◼   ► And second of all, we had a prototype,

00:35:16 ◼   ► which is my actual chicken hat,

00:35:18 ◼   ► and the chicken hats we sold,

00:35:19 ◼   ► if you lay them down on top of my actual chicken hat,

00:35:22 ◼   ► they pretty much nailed it.

00:35:23 ◼   ► I've bought several of these hats that we sold,

00:35:25 ◼   ► and I have the original,

00:35:27 ◼   ► and I can just lay them on top of each other.

00:35:28 ◼   ► They're constructed the same way,

00:35:30 ◼   ► they're the same size,

00:35:31 ◼   ► like pretty much down to the millimeter.

00:35:33 ◼   ► Now, again, they ended up being too small

00:35:35 ◼   ► for a lot of people's heads,

00:35:36 ◼   ► because my chicken hat is too small

00:35:37 ◼   ► for a lot of people's heads,

00:35:38 ◼   ► but what you got with the chicken hat

00:35:41 ◼   ► was exactly what we were selling,

00:35:42 ◼   ► which is as close a clone as possible

00:35:44 ◼   ► as we could get to my chicken hat.

00:35:45 ◼   ► And so, I think we did a pretty good job with that,

00:35:48 ◼   ► but yeah, trying to do something like that

00:35:51 ◼   ► with a complicated product like this manufactured,

00:35:53 ◼   ► not in the U.S., with six months turnaround time,

00:35:56 ◼   ► not gonna happen.

00:35:57 ◼   ► But somebody out there, somebody, somebody, please,

00:36:00 ◼   ► find this manufacturer in China

00:36:02 ◼   ► that's making these cases for all these,

00:36:03 ◼   ► and if they sell one with a quartz pass-through on it,

00:36:07 ◼   ► somebody buy 10,000 of those and start selling them,

00:36:09 ◼   ► I will buy one, and then step three, profit?

00:36:12 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:36:13 ◼   ► - Only 9,999 left.

00:36:15 ◼   ► This is the complaint about the Apple Store corner.

00:36:19 ◼   ► Eli Liebman writes, I was planning to upgrade

00:36:22 ◼   ► to the Series 10 watch, but wasn't sure which size to get

00:36:24 ◼   ► and wanted to see them in person before purchasing.

00:36:27 ◼   ► After confirming online that both sizes were available

00:36:29 ◼   ► for pickup at my local store,

00:36:30 ◼   ► I made my way there to choose and purchase my new watch.

00:36:33 ◼   ► I found an employee and asked to purchase the watch.

00:36:35 ◼   ► The conversation went like this.

00:36:37 ◼   ► Marco, actually, would you mind playing the role of Apple

00:36:39 ◼   ► in this little skit for me, please?

00:36:42 ◼   ► - Sure, hold on, let me, wait, should I play it cool?

00:36:45 ◼   ► - Here we go, I'd like to buy this watch, please.

00:36:48 ◼   ► - Do you have an appointment?

00:36:49 ◼   ► - No, I didn't know which one I wanted,

00:36:52 ◼   ► and I wanted to see them before I purchased it.

00:36:55 ◼   ► - All of our new products require an online order

00:36:58 ◼   ► and an appointment to pick it up.

00:37:00 ◼   ► - Huh, I didn't know that, is the watch in stock?

00:37:04 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:37:05 ◼   ► - Jesus, so can I buy it?

00:37:08 ◼   ► - No, first you need to make an appointment.

00:37:11 ◼   ► - Okay, when's the next appointment?

00:37:13 ◼   ► - In two and a half hours.

00:37:15 ◼   ► - So even though the item's in stock,

00:37:18 ◼   ► and I'm standing right here,

00:37:20 ◼   ► I need to come back in two and a half hours

00:37:22 ◼   ► in order to purchase it.

00:37:23 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:37:24 ◼   ► - Thank you, Marco, very well done.

00:37:26 ◼   ► Yeah, so Eli writes, so I left and ordered the watch

00:37:28 ◼   ► on Amazon where it was delivered to me later that same day.

00:37:31 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:37:32 ◼   ► It's just terrible.

00:37:34 ◼   ► Anyway, Eli continues, I can't think of another store

00:37:36 ◼   ► where this would be acceptable.

00:37:37 ◼   ► If they were busy, sure, I wouldn't expect to be helped

00:37:39 ◼   ► before folks who made an appointment,

00:37:41 ◼   ► but the store was empty.

00:37:42 ◼   ► Why is it acceptable to tell a customer

00:37:44 ◼   ► to come back in a few hours to purchase an item

00:37:45 ◼   ► that is in stock?

00:37:47 ◼   ► It seems like they don't value their customer's time.

00:37:49 ◼   ► I have things to do.

00:37:50 ◼   ► I already took time away from work to come to the store.

00:37:52 ◼   ► I've been buying Apple products for almost 20 years,

00:37:54 ◼   ► and this is the first time I've had a negative

00:37:55 ◼   ► in-store experience when trying to purchase something.

00:37:58 ◼   ► What used to be magical, watching the employee

00:38:00 ◼   ► pull out a receipt from under the table was delightful,

00:38:03 ◼   ► is now simply inconvenient.

00:38:04 ◼   ► I truly believed Apple solved the retail experience,

00:38:07 ◼   ► but not anymore.

00:38:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, this is the danger when saying like,

00:38:09 ◼   ► we're re-imagining the experience of retail.

00:38:11 ◼   ► You always picture in your head

00:38:13 ◼   ► that what you're gonna be doing is not accepting

00:38:16 ◼   ► sort of the status quo for all the bad things,

00:38:18 ◼   ► and saying people just accept X, Y, and Z

00:38:20 ◼   ► are just the way stores have to be.

00:38:22 ◼   ► Well, we don't think that way.

00:38:23 ◼   ► Everything's on the table.

00:38:24 ◼   ► We're re-imagining the whole experience,

00:38:26 ◼   ► but if you're not careful,

00:38:27 ◼   ► and you just stick to that philosophy,

00:38:29 ◼   ► and you're like, we're re-imagining the experience,

00:38:31 ◼   ► what you can end up doing

00:38:32 ◼   ► is removing some of the good things,

00:38:34 ◼   ► and re-imagining them to be way, way worse,

00:38:36 ◼   ► and one of the good things is if you walk into a store,

00:38:40 ◼   ► and they have a product in stock,

00:38:41 ◼   ► you can give someone money for it,

00:38:43 ◼   ► and then walk out of the store.

00:38:45 ◼   ► Like, you can buy it.

00:38:46 ◼   ► Like, do you have this product?

00:38:47 ◼   ► Is it in stock?

00:38:48 ◼   ► I'm here, and you're here, and the product is here.

00:38:51 ◼   ► My money is here.

00:38:52 ◼   ► Let's make this happen in an empty store,

00:38:55 ◼   ► and when they say to you,

00:38:56 ◼   ► no, please make an appointment on the app,

00:38:59 ◼   ► and the first appointment is two hours from now,

00:39:01 ◼   ► that is re-imagining the retail experience,

00:39:03 ◼   ► so you are following your philosophy

00:39:04 ◼   ► of re-imagining the retail experience,

00:39:06 ◼   ► but for the worse,

00:39:07 ◼   ► that you get into just ridiculous territory.

00:39:10 ◼   ► Like, I would, you know, we've complained that even

00:39:11 ◼   ► the whole, like, oh, there are no lines

00:39:13 ◼   ► is an example of re-imagining that maybe isn't positive,

00:39:15 ◼   ► but this is definitely not positive.

00:39:17 ◼   ► Like, you should be able to go in there and buy something.

00:39:19 ◼   ► It's like, I have money.

00:39:20 ◼   ► You have product.

00:39:21 ◼   ► Let's make this happen, but they're like,

00:39:23 ◼   ► no, make an appointment.

00:39:24 ◼   ► Come back in two hours.

00:39:25 ◼   ► That's no good.

00:39:26 ◼   ► - It's so bad, and I know that some of this

00:39:29 ◼   ► is just the east coaster in me coming out.

00:39:30 ◼   ► I want a line.

00:39:31 ◼   ► I want a queue.

00:39:32 ◼   ► I want a order.

00:39:33 ◼   ► I want everything to be ordered.

00:39:35 ◼   ► I want to get in, get out as quickly as possible,

00:39:37 ◼   ► but that being said, ugh, it's just,

00:39:40 ◼   ► it's unnecessarily complicated,

00:39:41 ◼   ► and this is the sort of thing that we would just eviscerate

00:39:44 ◼   ► a Microsoft store for, and here it is, Apple doing it.

00:39:47 ◼   ► - I mean, if there was ever too many people

00:39:49 ◼   ► in a Microsoft store that would require

00:39:50 ◼   ► such a system like this.

00:39:51 ◼   ► - Well, that's true.

00:39:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, like, it's just, as I pointed out,

00:39:54 ◼   ► it doesn't value the customer's time.

00:39:56 ◼   ► They drove to the store, came to the place,

00:39:58 ◼   ► brought their money and their wallet,

00:39:59 ◼   ► and they want to, like, look at it and buy a thing,

00:40:01 ◼   ► and you're like, no, make an appointment

00:40:04 ◼   ► for two hours from now?

00:40:05 ◼   ► That doesn't value the time of the person

00:40:07 ◼   ► who made the trip to it, especially if the Apple store

00:40:09 ◼   ► is, like, far away from them.

00:40:10 ◼   ► It's just not acceptable.

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00:42:08 ◼   ► (jazzy music)

00:42:11 ◼   ► I have a small request for two apps that I can't find.

00:42:17 ◼   ► - So build 'em, man.

00:42:19 ◼   ► Come on.

00:42:20 ◼   ► - It's tempting, honestly.

00:42:22 ◼   ► But I have a bit on my plate right now

00:42:23 ◼   ► with the app I do have.

00:42:25 ◼   ► So I don't have time to make these right now.

00:42:28 ◼   ► I assume someone has made them, but I cannot find them.

00:42:31 ◼   ► So number one, I recently started sleep tracking.

00:42:34 ◼   ► I'm just wearing the Apple Watch to bed.

00:42:36 ◼   ► I even discovered the sleep focus mode,

00:42:38 ◼   ► which I'm finally using,

00:42:39 ◼   ► because it makes the screen turn off at night.

00:42:41 ◼   ► I tried, the funny thing is,

00:42:42 ◼   ► before, like I hadn't been using the sleep focus mode

00:42:45 ◼   ► for whatever reason.

00:42:46 ◼   ► I just use auto do not disturb at night.

00:42:48 ◼   ► And I was trying to figure out

00:42:50 ◼   ► how do I make the watch screen turn off while I'm sleeping,

00:42:53 ◼   ► 'cause it was bothering my wife, and so I'm like all right.

00:42:56 ◼   ► - Theater mode.

00:42:57 ◼   ► - That's what I tried, theater mode.

00:42:59 ◼   ► Guess what theater mode turns off?

00:43:01 ◼   ► Alarms.

00:43:02 ◼   ► - Does it?

00:43:03 ◼   ► - Yep, sure does.

00:43:04 ◼   ► - Remember when the alarm went off

00:43:06 ◼   ► when the person was in the theater?

00:43:06 ◼   ► Do you remember that whole controversy?

00:43:08 ◼   ► - Oh, yes I do, yes, yes, yes.

00:43:10 ◼   ► - So one night of that, I'm like okay,

00:43:11 ◼   ► well that's not the answer.

00:43:13 ◼   ► - This is like the equivalent of the shoe bomber.

00:43:16 ◼   ► 25 years later, theater mode still

00:43:18 ◼   ► doesn't let the alarms go off.

00:43:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, anyways, yeah, theater mode's not it.

00:43:21 ◼   ► But this turns out the sleep focus does that.

00:43:24 ◼   ► So all I want to do is I want an app

00:43:27 ◼   ► that every morning I can tag the sleep

00:43:31 ◼   ► I had the night before with arbitrary tags that I input.

00:43:35 ◼   ► Things like whether I stayed up too late

00:43:37 ◼   ► or maybe I had a late meal, or maybe I was sleeping alone

00:43:42 ◼   ► 'cause I was at the beach by myself or something.

00:43:45 ◼   ► I want to have tags that I can tag my sleep.

00:43:48 ◼   ► Late coffee, alcohol consumption, things like that.

00:43:52 ◼   ► And then I want to be able to see in the future,

00:43:55 ◼   ► like I want to be able to pick a tag

00:43:56 ◼   ► and see like okay, with this tag,

00:43:59 ◼   ► your sleeps with this one are 12% better on average

00:44:02 ◼   ► than sleeps that don't have this tag, or 12% worse.

00:44:05 ◼   ► - Remember that app that Merlin always talks about

00:44:07 ◼   ► and makes fun of?

00:44:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:44:09 ◼   ► - It's like when you were in Washington,

00:44:10 ◼   ► you sleep worse, like you weigh more, but sleep worse.

00:44:14 ◼   ► - So I have been looking for apps to do this.

00:44:18 ◼   ► And I have, so thanks to some Chad GPT research,

00:44:23 ◼   ► I installed the top couple of sleep apps.

00:44:26 ◼   ► They have been like super disasters of just gross,

00:44:31 ◼   ► like massive privacy invasion, huge suites of functionality

00:44:35 ◼   ► doing all sorts of stuff I don't need.

00:44:37 ◼   ► There was one app, this is one of the top rated sleep apps

00:44:41 ◼   ► in the App Store that first of all puts you through

00:44:45 ◼   ► a in-app purchase flow immediately

00:44:48 ◼   ► and with no way to get around it.

00:44:50 ◼   ► So I'm pretty sure that actually violates the App Store rule

00:44:53 ◼   ► against minimum functionality.

00:44:55 ◼   ► But the App Store rules are not being enforced here

00:44:57 ◼   ► in lots of ways.

00:44:58 ◼   ► And this is like one, there's like a handful of top

00:45:01 ◼   ► sleep apps in the App Store and this is one of them.

00:45:04 ◼   ► One of them offered me to pay $40 a year

00:45:08 ◼   ► for premium features including I can listen to recordings

00:45:12 ◼   ► of my own farts from my sleep the next morning.

00:45:15 ◼   ► - Nice. - Oh cool.

00:45:16 ◼   ► - And I learned when I saw that for $40 a year,

00:45:19 ◼   ► not only have we really hit App Store bottom here,

00:45:23 ◼   ► but that's when I decided I think I should probably

00:45:24 ◼   ► raise the overcast subscription price,

00:45:27 ◼   ► which is currently a quarter of that.

00:45:29 ◼   ► - How many farts does overcast let you hear?

00:45:31 ◼   ► - None, well it depends, I mean what do people generate?

00:45:33 ◼   ► - Say you know you gotta up your fart game

00:45:35 ◼   ► if you're gonna compete in those leagues.

00:45:37 ◼   ► - Obviously, yeah, maybe I'm just tackling

00:45:39 ◼   ► the wrong feature set apparently.

00:45:40 ◼   ► - We started out with fart apps on the App Store

00:45:42 ◼   ► and we've come full circle, now you have to supply the farts.

00:45:44 ◼   ► - Exactly, real time follow up by the way,

00:45:47 ◼   ► apparently exist.io is the app that Merlin always

00:45:49 ◼   ► talks about, yes I remember that now, so thank you

00:45:51 ◼   ► to people in chat who said that.

00:45:52 ◼   ► But yeah, so anyways, I just want a simple app to do it,

00:45:54 ◼   ► and these apps, they wanna give you a meditation routine

00:45:59 ◼   ► and be custom alarms and tie into,

00:46:02 ◼   ► lay your phone on the pillow and subscribe to our service

00:46:06 ◼   ► so we can life coach your partner, and it's like

00:46:08 ◼   ► oh my god, let me just tag my sleep and see data,

00:46:11 ◼   ► that's it, that's all I want.

00:46:12 ◼   ► So far I have not found anything to do with it.

00:46:14 ◼   ► - Doesn't Underscore have a sleep app?

00:46:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, sleep plus plus.

00:46:17 ◼   ► - Yes, I don't believe it has that feature though.

00:46:19 ◼   ► - Well I think you have a direct line

00:46:20 ◼   ► to getting that feature added.

00:46:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's probably easier than making it myself.

00:46:24 ◼   ► Anyway, so that's one thing I want.

00:46:26 ◼   ► The second thing I want, I finally set up

00:46:28 ◼   ► the rest of my Sonos system, I finally moved

00:46:30 ◼   ► my Sonos speakers out of my office, downstairs

00:46:33 ◼   ► to where they were originally purchased for,

00:46:35 ◼   ► the living room TV, so I have the ARC sound bar,

00:46:37 ◼   ► two ERA 300s as the surrounds, and a sub.

00:46:40 ◼   ► - Good god.

00:46:42 ◼   ► - It is a very nice system, however, the one challenge

00:46:47 ◼   ► with setting up a Sonos sound bar stuff is audio delay.

00:46:52 ◼   ► There, you know, any Sonos input introduces latency,

00:46:56 ◼   ► because of the way their system, you know,

00:46:58 ◼   ► buffers and processes things and has network Wi-Fi stuff,

00:47:00 ◼   ► there's always latency on the input, on the audio.

00:47:03 ◼   ► And TVs have ways to adjust the audio sync.

00:47:06 ◼   ► The Apple TV also has a built-in way,

00:47:09 ◼   ► something like calibrate wireless audio sync,

00:47:11 ◼   ► where if you're using home pods or anything else,

00:47:13 ◼   ► it'll, it's like, alright, place your phone

00:47:15 ◼   ► in front of the Apple TV and we'll figure out

00:47:16 ◼   ► your audio sync for you, which seems to change things,

00:47:21 ◼   ► but not correctly.

00:47:23 ◼   ► Anyway, so, you know, I'm trying to like watch TV

00:47:25 ◼   ► and everyone's lips aren't matching up to their audio,

00:47:26 ◼   ► which is infuriating, and so I'm trying to align it.

00:47:28 ◼   ► My TV also has a built-in control, but it's, you know,

00:47:31 ◼   ► like negative five through positive three or something,

00:47:34 ◼   ► it's, you know, these units make no sense.

00:47:36 ◼   ► And so I'm like, alright, well what is it?

00:47:38 ◼   ► And I've been adjusting it, trying to figure out what it is.

00:47:41 ◼   ► Eventually, I looked at my, there has to be an app

00:47:44 ◼   ► to like automatically like use my phone and the TV

00:47:47 ◼   ► to tell me like, alright, you're 50 milliseconds behind,

00:47:50 ◼   ► you're 30 milliseconds behind, like, you know,

00:47:51 ◼   ► show me an actual number, like play something on the TV,

00:47:55 ◼   ► use the phone to show me an actual number.

00:47:58 ◼   ► And there's even videos on YouTube that will,

00:48:00 ◼   ► that show you like, it like plays beep, beep,

00:48:04 ◼   ► every few seconds, beep, and it shows you like

00:48:05 ◼   ► a little bar going across when it hits the middle,

00:48:07 ◼   ► right when the beep happens, so you can tell

00:48:09 ◼   ► if you use your own phone to shoot video of the TV screen

00:48:14 ◼   ► and then slow-mo through the video to find

00:48:17 ◼   ► where does the beep happen if you can see the waveform.

00:48:20 ◼   ► So here's how I did this.

00:48:21 ◼   ► - Oh, by the way, this all sounds familiar to you listeners

00:48:23 ◼   ► because we talked about this in episode 297 of ATP

00:48:26 ◼   ► when I set up my AV setup, including the,

00:48:29 ◼   ► probably the exact video that Marco was looking at

00:48:31 ◼   ► and me recording on my phone in slow motion

00:48:33 ◼   ► and seeing the waveform in iMovie.

00:48:35 ◼   ► So we'll put a link in the show notes to that episode of ATP

00:48:38 ◼   ► and also to the two apps/videos that I used for that.

00:48:43 ◼   ► - I did the same thing but with Final Cut,

00:48:45 ◼   ► 'cause I didn't have iMovie on my computer,

00:48:47 ◼   ► but I had Final Cut still, so my God,

00:48:48 ◼   ► and this is like such a ridiculous, like overuse of a tool.

00:48:53 ◼   ► Like Final Cut is not, this is not what this is for.

00:48:56 ◼   ► It fights you at every turn.

00:48:57 ◼   ► It should not be doing this, and yet, you know,

00:49:00 ◼   ► that's what I was able to see where the waveform

00:49:03 ◼   ► of the video is while looking at the other--

00:49:05 ◼   ► - And then you still have to make the choice,

00:49:06 ◼   ► like I said, in episode 297.

00:49:08 ◼   ► Then you still have to decide, all right,

00:49:10 ◼   ► so when the little bar is in the middle in the video,

00:49:13 ◼   ► should that be just as the waveform

00:49:15 ◼   ► goes from silent to not silent?

00:49:17 ◼   ► Should it be the peak of the waveform

00:49:19 ◼   ► where the volume, the amplitude is the highest?

00:49:21 ◼   ► You have to make all these judgment calls,

00:49:22 ◼   ► but I can tell you from experience

00:49:24 ◼   ► that no matter how you make the judgment calls,

00:49:26 ◼   ► as long as you do something reasonable,

00:49:27 ◼   ► you can get it so close to being perfect

00:49:29 ◼   ► that you won't notice it anymore.

00:49:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, but what I want,

00:49:32 ◼   ► like this process would be very easy.

00:49:34 ◼   ► So here's what this process should be.

00:49:37 ◼   ► The phone plays a video over AirPlay to the Apple TV,

00:49:42 ◼   ► or you just have a YouTube video

00:49:45 ◼   ► that you can point your app to and say,

00:49:46 ◼   ► play this video on the Apple TV,

00:49:49 ◼   ► and then the phone uses its camera and microphone

00:49:52 ◼   ► to watch for a big white flash on the video

00:49:56 ◼   ► and listen to the microphone and listen to the beep,

00:49:59 ◼   ► and you can see those impulses on the input video

00:50:03 ◼   ► and on the input audio,

00:50:04 ◼   ► and the app should be able to tell you.

00:50:06 ◼   ► Every time it sees flash beep,

00:50:08 ◼   ► every time it should be able to tell you,

00:50:09 ◼   ► you're 35 milliseconds behind.

00:50:11 ◼   ► It can tell you that, that's not hard to write.

00:50:13 ◼   ► I could write it, I just shouldn't write it.

00:50:15 ◼   ► - The tricky part of that is when you get down

00:50:17 ◼   ► to these kind of timings,

00:50:19 ◼   ► that the time between when a photon hits the camera

00:50:23 ◼   ► and the time when an app registered that that took place

00:50:26 ◼   ► is probably a handful of milliseconds,

00:50:28 ◼   ► and you have to account for that,

00:50:29 ◼   ► and it might vary from phone to phone,

00:50:31 ◼   ► so that's a little bit tricky.

00:50:32 ◼   ► - I'm guessing that's probably less than a frame

00:50:35 ◼   ► of time.

00:50:36 ◼   ► - Maybe.

00:50:37 ◼   ► I mean, but again, maybe it varies by device.

00:50:39 ◼   ► Like, it's not something that comes up normally,

00:50:41 ◼   ► like when you're recording video or something like that.

00:50:43 ◼   ► Like, oh, how much lag is there?

00:50:44 ◼   ► How much lag between, again,

00:50:46 ◼   ► photons hitting the lens of the camera

00:50:47 ◼   ► and a program that is watching for that

00:50:49 ◼   ► knowing that that happened?

00:50:50 ◼   ► But yeah, it would definitely be better

00:50:52 ◼   ► than doing it the manual way, which is very annoying.

00:50:55 ◼   ► And why Marco was using Final Cut

00:50:58 ◼   ► and why I was using iMovie

00:50:59 ◼   ► is because you need a visual representation of the audio.

00:51:02 ◼   ► You need to be able to see a waveform,

00:51:04 ◼   ► and I don't think there,

00:51:06 ◼   ► or at least there was no apps that I knew of on the phone

00:51:07 ◼   ► that did that that were not full-fledged video editors,

00:51:10 ◼   ► and honestly, I'd rather just do it on the Mac.

00:51:11 ◼   ► So I was recording videos, coming back to the Mac,

00:51:14 ◼   ► opening the video in iMovie,

00:51:17 ◼   ► watching the slow-motion thing, going frame by frame,

00:51:19 ◼   ► seeing where the waveform is,

00:51:21 ◼   ► and then adjusting the delay until I dialed it in.

00:51:26 ◼   ► And I did that in 2022 and haven't touched a sync,

00:51:28 ◼   ► and it's been great.

00:51:29 ◼   ► So I believe in you, Mark.

00:51:30 ◼   ► You can get over this hump.

00:51:31 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:51:32 ◼   ► Like, I have it set up that it seems okay now,

00:51:36 ◼   ► but it still doesn't seem quite right,

00:51:38 ◼   ► but I think it's so close,

00:51:40 ◼   ► and I have it between negative three

00:51:42 ◼   ► and negative four on my TV,

00:51:44 ◼   ► and if I put it on the next one over, it looks too wrong.

00:51:48 ◼   ► So I think this is about as good as it's gonna get,

00:51:50 ◼   ► but this process took me 40 minutes,

00:51:53 ◼   ► and it could have taken me four minutes.

00:51:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, and the tricky part for you is,

00:51:58 ◼   ► I don't know, maybe it's not tricky.

00:51:59 ◼   ► Maybe it'll be the same,

00:52:00 ◼   ► but what you hope is you get some scenario

00:52:02 ◼   ► where you're tweaking it, right?

00:52:04 ◼   ► And you get it, so you get it right there.

00:52:05 ◼   ► You're like, okay, it's right.

00:52:07 ◼   ► Is it right for all video sources and all output types

00:52:10 ◼   ► and all, for example, if you did it through AirPlay,

00:52:12 ◼   ► does that apply to things you play on Apple TV?

00:52:14 ◼   ► Does that apply to things you watch over regular TV?

00:52:16 ◼   ► If you have any other video source connected,

00:52:18 ◼   ► if you have a video game system connected,

00:52:20 ◼   ► you're hoping that you'll be able to configure this

00:52:23 ◼   ► in one place and it will apply to any picture

00:52:25 ◼   ► that ever shows on your TV,

00:52:26 ◼   ► but you have to be careful of where you're doing it.

00:52:28 ◼   ► For example, if you're doing it on the Apple TV,

00:52:30 ◼   ► it's not going to apply when you're playing a video game

00:52:32 ◼   ► 'cause the Apple TV is not involved

00:52:33 ◼   ► if you're playing like Nintendo Switch or something.

00:52:35 ◼   ► It's not gonna be involved in that.

00:52:36 ◼   ► And so now you have a second place

00:52:37 ◼   ► where you have to dial it in.

00:52:39 ◼   ► And this is one of the places where it comes in handy

00:52:41 ◼   ► to have something like a receiver,

00:52:42 ◼   ► which is the central meeting point

00:52:44 ◼   ► for all the audio and the video.

00:52:45 ◼   ► And that's where I made my adjustment

00:52:47 ◼   ► and everything that goes on my TV screen

00:52:48 ◼   ► goes through my receiver

00:52:49 ◼   ► and my receiver applies the delay

00:52:51 ◼   ► and so far so good for me.

00:52:53 ◼   ► - Yes, but everything else about having a receiver sucks

00:52:54 ◼   ► and I will accept no other contrary arguments.

00:52:57 ◼   ► Anyway, I should note that in the Sonos app,

00:52:59 ◼   ► if you go to the gear in the upper right

00:53:01 ◼   ► and then go to your living room or whatever,

00:53:03 ◼   ► set up and then scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll,

00:53:06 ◼   ► way down in the home theater section,

00:53:09 ◼   ► there's TV dialog sync.

00:53:11 ◼   ► And I have mine cranked to five seconds

00:53:13 ◼   ► for my 2019 LG OLED.

00:53:16 ◼   ► - Five seconds?

00:53:18 ◼   ► - Or five units, sorry, sorry, sorry, five units.

00:53:20 ◼   ► I think I said seconds, five units.

00:53:23 ◼   ► It's zero to five, I believe.

00:53:25 ◼   ► Anyways, and that has worked for me across Switch,

00:53:29 ◼   ► across Wii, across TV.

00:53:31 ◼   ► - I'll have to look at that.

00:53:32 ◼   ► I assume that would,

00:53:33 ◼   ► 'cause it's only like a positive offset.

00:53:36 ◼   ► - Correct.

00:53:36 ◼   ► - I assume that would change it in the wrong direction.

00:53:39 ◼   ► - I mean, give it a shot.

00:53:39 ◼   ► You may not have the good experience I did,

00:53:42 ◼   ► but it can't hurt to try.

00:53:43 ◼   ► - 'Cause what has to happen

00:53:44 ◼   ► is the TV has to hold the video back.

00:53:47 ◼   ► The TV has to buffer the video for a few milliseconds

00:53:50 ◼   ► while the audio catches up

00:53:52 ◼   ► because the audio is where Sonos is introducing latency.

00:53:54 ◼   ► - But yeah, but the TVs also have latency as well,

00:53:57 ◼   ► so it depends on which, adding more latency

00:53:59 ◼   ► and you gotta kind of match them up.

00:54:00 ◼   ► But the audio advice video,

00:54:02 ◼   ► it's a YouTube video that I use to do my adjustment,

00:54:04 ◼   ► has helpful labels on the plus and minus sign

00:54:07 ◼   ► where it says basically like,

00:54:08 ◼   ► it says audio early, increase the delay,

00:54:11 ◼   ► and then audio late, decrease the delay.

00:54:13 ◼   ► But bottom line is,

00:54:14 ◼   ► once you have something that you can measure on,

00:54:16 ◼   ► you just push the delay to the maximum and minimum value

00:54:19 ◼   ► and see which side of the zero it's at,

00:54:21 ◼   ► and then you know which direction you need to adjust it

00:54:23 ◼   ► to get it in.

00:54:24 ◼   ► Mine, I think, was on,

00:54:25 ◼   ► I can't even see it in this picture, it's too blurry.

00:54:27 ◼   ► Mine was like 120, is that milliseconds?

00:54:31 ◼   ► Maybe it's milliseconds, maybe it's microseconds.

00:54:33 ◼   ► - No, it's milliseconds.

00:54:34 ◼   ► - Anyway, 120 milliseconds is what mine is set to

00:54:37 ◼   ► in this image from the show notes from episode 297.

00:54:41 ◼   ► - You said 297, it's actually 497, isn't it?

00:54:44 ◼   ► - 297, oh yeah, 497, sorry, typo, yes.

00:54:47 ◼   ► 497, August 25th, 2022.

00:54:50 ◼   ► - There you go.

00:54:51 ◼   ► All right, we have some breaking-ish news

00:54:54 ◼   ► from a few days ago.

00:54:56 ◼   ► If you remember our friends at Massimo

00:54:59 ◼   ► that do the blood oxygen detection thing

00:55:02 ◼   ► and have a patent for it,

00:55:03 ◼   ► and oh boy, we've patented it,

00:55:05 ◼   ► and so they have been in a bitter fight with Apple

00:55:10 ◼   ► to the point that it went to the courts.

00:55:12 ◼   ► The court said that Apple cannot enable

00:55:15 ◼   ► the blood oxygen detection in new Apple watches,

00:55:19 ◼   ► including the one on my wrist right now,

00:55:21 ◼   ► and they've been battling it out for a while now.

00:55:23 ◼   ► Personally, I don't understand why Apple

00:55:25 ◼   ► doesn't just pay them all the money and make them go away.

00:55:28 ◼   ► Not to say that they're wrong, but just make them go away.

00:55:30 ◼   ► You have all the money in the world.

00:55:31 ◼   ► You have infinite money,

00:55:33 ◼   ► less the 15 billion you just gave to Ireland,

00:55:35 ◼   ► but you have infinite money, just make them go away.

00:55:37 ◼   ► It'll be fine, but here we are.

00:55:40 ◼   ► Anyways, the breaking news a few days ago,

00:55:42 ◼   ► actually a couple weeks ago now, or maybe a week ago,

00:55:44 ◼   ► is that the founder and CEO has resigned

00:55:47 ◼   ► after he was removed from the board.

00:55:49 ◼   ► So Reuters writes, "Massimo said that on September 25,

00:55:53 ◼   ► "founder Joe Chiani has decided to step down

00:55:56 ◼   ► "as the medical device maker CEO days after shareholders

00:55:59 ◼   ► "voted to remove him from the company's board

00:56:01 ◼   ► "following a bitter proxy battle

00:56:03 ◼   ► "with activist hedge fund Politan Capital Management."

00:56:07 ◼   ► - So the answer to your question of like,

00:56:09 ◼   ► I don't understand why Apple doesn't pay this,

00:56:11 ◼   ► one of the rumors is that it's because the CEO

00:56:13 ◼   ► was being unreasonable and would just not accept

00:56:15 ◼   ► any kind of reasonable offer.

00:56:17 ◼   ► And this hedge fund thing here,

00:56:19 ◼   ► like again, I don't know any truth to this,

00:56:20 ◼   ► but some of the things I've heard swirling

00:56:23 ◼   ► as people speculating was that like,

00:56:25 ◼   ► oh, this hedge fund is actually,

00:56:27 ◼   ► the hedge fund and the shareholders,

00:56:28 ◼   ► and basically everybody who's not the CEO were like,

00:56:31 ◼   ► Massimo, take the money.

00:56:33 ◼   ► You've got you won, you've got Apple over a barrel.

00:56:36 ◼   ► They have to pay you.

00:56:37 ◼   ► Maybe they're even offering to pay you.

00:56:39 ◼   ► We as the people who are either current shareholders

00:56:43 ◼   ► and board members of the company,

00:56:44 ◼   ► or speculative shareholders who want to invest

00:56:47 ◼   ► these hedge fund things wherever we, you know, whatever.

00:56:49 ◼   ► Like we think, if you let us be in charge of the company,

00:56:52 ◼   ► we could make you more money,

00:56:53 ◼   ► because we wouldn't be dummies like your CEO,

00:56:55 ◼   ► and we would just take the Apple money and make us all rich.

00:56:57 ◼   ► And so I don't know if any of that is,

00:57:00 ◼   ► if that's just speculation or rumors or whatever,

00:57:02 ◼   ► but it sure looks like from the outside

00:57:05 ◼   ► that there may have been one person,

00:57:06 ◼   ► and one person only, who was stopping this

00:57:09 ◼   ► from being resolved with large amounts of money,

00:57:11 ◼   ► and that was the founder and CEO, and he is out.

00:57:15 ◼   ► And there's more from Matt Levine in Bloomberg,

00:57:17 ◼   ► if you want to read about this.

00:57:19 ◼   ► We'll find out in the coming weeks and months if,

00:57:23 ◼   ► oh, suddenly there's a Massimo deal

00:57:24 ◼   ► between Apple and Massimo, and they get a lot of money.

00:57:27 ◼   ► We'll see if that happens.

00:57:28 ◼   ► It seems like, again, from the outside looking in,

00:57:30 ◼   ► it seems like finally the way is clear

00:57:33 ◼   ► for large amounts of money to change hands.

00:57:36 ◼   ► But if he gets kicked out, and still we go years and years,

00:57:39 ◼   ► and Apple still can't enable this feature in the US,

00:57:41 ◼   ► then I'm out of ideas.

00:57:43 ◼   ► - I mean, it sure seems like Apple

00:57:45 ◼   ► just didn't want to pay anything for it.

00:57:47 ◼   ► So I don't know that this was the problem here,

00:57:50 ◼   ► but we'll find out.

00:57:51 ◼   ► - There's also some news over the last week or so,

00:57:55 ◼   ► Meta, Meta, Meta, whatever you want to call them.

00:57:58 ◼   ► - Meta?

00:57:58 ◼   ► Are you saying Meta?

00:58:00 ◼   ► Does anyone pronounce it that way?

00:58:02 ◼   ► - Sorry, that rhymes.

00:58:03 ◼   ► - Oh my God. - Well, I do sometimes.

00:58:05 ◼   ► Anyways, that company that's Facebook but not,

00:58:10 ◼   ► they have released, or not released, I shouldn't say,

00:58:12 ◼   ► but have demoed some AR glasses

00:58:16 ◼   ► that they're calling Orion.

00:58:17 ◼   ► And apparently this stuff is really freaking slick.

00:58:21 ◼   ► There's a wrap up at The Verge for Meta Connect,

00:58:25 ◼   ► which is their kind of equivalent of WWDC.

00:58:28 ◼   ► There's also a post where one of their authors,

00:58:31 ◼   ► whose name I don't have in front of me, I am so sorry,

00:58:33 ◼   ► Alex Heath, actually got to demo the Orion glasses

00:58:38 ◼   ► in part with Mark Zuckerberg.

00:58:40 ◼   ► And there's also a post over, a couple of posts,

00:58:43 ◼   ► I think over at Stratechery with our friend Ben Thompson.

00:58:47 ◼   ► I will try to dig up a link for the show notes

00:58:49 ◼   ► for at least one of those.

00:58:50 ◼   ► But anyways, everything, I haven't read a lot on this,

00:58:53 ◼   ► but everything I've read on this is,

00:58:55 ◼   ► oh my, this is the future, the Vision Pro is a mistake.

00:58:58 ◼   ► When can we have this?

00:59:00 ◼   ► And the answer is, well, probably not soon.

00:59:02 ◼   ► So let me read some stuff.

00:59:03 ◼   ► So from The Verge, Meta, not Meta,

00:59:06 ◼   ► has revealed its Orion augmented reality glasses.

00:59:09 ◼   ► And they look almost like a trendy pair of frames

00:59:11 ◼   ► you could pick up without all the tech inside.

00:59:13 ◼   ► Orion uses micro LED projectors inside the frame

00:59:15 ◼   ► and beams images in front of your eyes

00:59:17 ◼   ► via wave guides in the lenses.

00:59:20 ◼   ► The glasses pair with a wireless compute puck

00:59:23 ◼   ► and a neural wristband you wear on your arm

00:59:26 ◼   ► that responds to gestures like pinches.

00:59:28 ◼   ► Again, this from the Orion review now.

00:59:32 ◼   ► Orion, Meta's first pair of augmented reality glasses,

00:59:35 ◼   ► was supposed to be a product you could buy.

00:59:37 ◼   ► When the glasses graduated from a Skunk Works project

00:59:39 ◼   ► in Meta's research division back in 2018,

00:59:41 ◼   ► the goal was to start shipping them

00:59:42 ◼   ► in the low tens of thousands by now.

00:59:44 ◼   ► But in 2022, amidst a phase of broader belt tightening

00:59:47 ◼   ► across the company, Zuckerberg made the call

00:59:49 ◼   ► to shelve its release.

00:59:50 ◼   ► As Meta's executives retell it,

00:59:52 ◼   ► the decision to shelve Orion mostly came down

00:59:54 ◼   ► to the device's astronomical cost to build,

00:59:56 ◼   ► which allegedly is in the ballpark of $10,000 per unit.

01:00:00 ◼   ► Most of that cost is due to how difficult and expensive

01:00:02 ◼   ► it is to reliably manufacture the silicon carbide lenses.

01:00:05 ◼   ► When it started designing Orion,

01:00:06 ◼   ► Meta expected the material to become more commonly used

01:00:08 ◼   ► across the industry and therefore cheaper,

01:00:10 ◼   ► but that didn't happen.

01:00:11 ◼   ► Quote, "You can't imagine how horrible the yields are,"

01:00:13 ◼   ► says Meta's CTO, Andrew Bosworth of Lenses.

01:00:16 ◼   ► Instead, the company pivoted to making about 1,000 pairs

01:00:19 ◼   ► of the Orion glasses for internal development

01:00:20 ◼   ► and external demos.

01:00:22 ◼   ► Quote, "It's probably turned out significantly better

01:00:24 ◼   ► than our 50/50 estimates of what it would be,

01:00:26 ◼   ► but we didn't get there on everything we wanted to."

01:00:28 ◼   ► Zuckerberg says to the device, quote,

01:00:30 ◼   ► "We still want it to be a little smaller, a little brighter,

01:00:33 ◼   ► a little bit higher resolution, and a lot more affordable

01:00:35 ◼   ► before we put it out there as a product.

01:00:36 ◼   ► And look, we have a line of sight to all those things."

01:00:40 ◼   ► - This has really shaken up the tech press world

01:00:42 ◼   ► over the last week because--

01:00:43 ◼   ► - And I don't understand why.

01:00:45 ◼   ► - Well-- - That's, I mean,

01:00:46 ◼   ► I'm sure people have had that take, but I said,

01:00:48 ◼   ► "I agree with you that this is like,

01:00:49 ◼   ► the tech press is all over this," and people were like,

01:00:51 ◼   ► "Oh my God, it's this, it's that," but like,

01:00:54 ◼   ► honestly, people, like, there is no new anything here

01:00:59 ◼   ► that changes anything as far as I'm concerned.

01:01:02 ◼   ► - Well, I don't know.

01:01:03 ◼   ► I mean, so what they've shown, this is,

01:01:05 ◼   ► first of all, this is very smart by Meta, I think,

01:01:07 ◼   ► because this goes along with, first of all,

01:01:10 ◼   ► with their overall, you know, pretty, pretty,

01:01:14 ◼   ► I would say successful rebranding efforts.

01:01:18 ◼   ► We are the last people calling them Facebook.

01:01:20 ◼   ► They've rebranded themselves as Meta.

01:01:21 ◼   ► They've dropped their terrible baggage

01:01:23 ◼   ► from the Facebook name to almost everybody.

01:01:26 ◼   ► Mark Zuckerberg is out there, like, rebranding himself

01:01:28 ◼   ► as this, like, cool, normal guy somehow.

01:01:31 ◼   ► - Good luck with that.

01:01:32 ◼   ► - It's working!

01:01:33 ◼   ► - You know, I don't know, man, it's working.

01:01:35 ◼   ► - No, I disagree.

01:01:36 ◼   ► - Rebrands work, like, that's why people do them,

01:01:39 ◼   ► because you can hold on as much as you can to the old one,

01:01:42 ◼   ► but the rest of the world moves on and listens to it.

01:01:45 ◼   ► Like, they work.

01:01:46 ◼   ► - No, the renaming, I think it's going better

01:01:49 ◼   ► than Alphabet, for sure, 'cause everyone just keeps

01:01:51 ◼   ► calling them Google, but like, the whole Meta renaming

01:01:54 ◼   ► was about the Metaverse, which bombed,

01:01:55 ◼   ► and so now they're just a company who doesn't want

01:01:58 ◼   ► to be associated with one product called Facebook,

01:02:00 ◼   ► and so they're renaming themselves Meta, it's fine,

01:02:02 ◼   ► but like, the Metaverse still is not a thing,

01:02:04 ◼   ► and they're the leader in glasses, but they were

01:02:06 ◼   ► before they renamed themselves, too,

01:02:07 ◼   ► because they bought Oculus.

01:02:09 ◼   ► - Well, yeah, but the thing is, well, I mean, that's true,

01:02:11 ◼   ► but I would say, in the same way that, like, yes,

01:02:14 ◼   ► they bought Instagram, they didn't make it from scratch,

01:02:16 ◼   ► but Instagram is way more Facebook now than it's Instagram,

01:02:20 ◼   ► like, you know, in that same way, like, you know,

01:02:23 ◼   ► their VR products are way more Meta

01:02:25 ◼   ► than they were Oculus at this point.

01:02:27 ◼   ► But anyway, they show a very different approach

01:02:30 ◼   ► to AR and VR than what we see from Apple.

01:02:34 ◼   ► What we see, and Microsoft and everyone else who's tried it,

01:02:37 ◼   ► you know, what we see from Meta has been pretty successful

01:02:42 ◼   ► at the low-end gaming market for VR headsets

01:02:45 ◼   ► with some basic pass-through features,

01:02:47 ◼   ► and we see, you know, using that foundation

01:02:50 ◼   ► to slowly build towards something like this.

01:02:54 ◼   ► And what we see from Apple is really,

01:02:56 ◼   ► is like the total opposite approach

01:02:58 ◼   ► with Vision Pro platform and product,

01:03:00 ◼   ► which is like, you know, Apple had,

01:03:02 ◼   ► Apple started at the extraordinarily high-end

01:03:06 ◼   ► with no gaming to speak of, no software to speak of,

01:03:11 ◼   ► really not, seemingly not putting, you know,

01:03:13 ◼   ► much faith in this being a consumer product at all,

01:03:16 ◼   ► but for some reason putting it out there,

01:03:19 ◼   ► which I continue to doubt at this point.

01:03:22 ◼   ► But anyway, Meta is, you know, doing great at the low-end

01:03:26 ◼   ► and the mid-range with their gaming stuff,

01:03:29 ◼   ► and they're not even touching the high-end anymore.

01:03:31 ◼   ► They had a brief time trying to make the Quest Pro happen,

01:03:34 ◼   ► it didn't happen, they backed off of it.

01:03:36 ◼   ► They had a high-end one planned that they canceled

01:03:38 ◼   ► because they saw a Vision Pro and they're like,

01:03:40 ◼   ► "Eh, nah, no thanks."

01:03:42 ◼   ► They're doing fine at the low-end with VR stuff,

01:03:44 ◼   ► with gaming and with kids and everything,

01:03:46 ◼   ► and now they're demoing kind of where they think

01:03:49 ◼   ► the high-end can go, and all of the tech demo,

01:03:52 ◼   ► or all the demos from the people who had them,

01:03:55 ◼   ► the people come away being blown away by them.

01:03:57 ◼   ► Like everyone's like, "Oh my God, this is the future."

01:03:59 ◼   ► Now granted, it's a tech demo, it's not a shipping product.

01:04:02 ◼   ► That is a massive difference, obviously.

01:04:06 ◼   ► But this kind of shows where there is huge value to this

01:04:11 ◼   ► is in the AR glasses format,

01:04:15 ◼   ► in that kind of physical product format.

01:04:17 ◼   ► AR glasses are a thing that people think is very cool

01:04:20 ◼   ► and has a lot of promise.

01:04:21 ◼   ► VR headsets are a different thing

01:04:24 ◼   ► that people also think is cool and has promise,

01:04:27 ◼   ► but for very different reasons

01:04:29 ◼   ► and in very different use cases.

01:04:31 ◼   ► You can kind of see the two companies

01:04:33 ◼   ► trying to solve this from two different ways,

01:04:35 ◼   ► but I think Meta's approach is more likely to succeed,

01:04:39 ◼   ► to be honest.

01:04:40 ◼   ► There are so many physical challenges around these products,

01:04:43 ◼   ► so many technical challenges,

01:04:46 ◼   ► so many fashion and just coolness challenges,

01:04:50 ◼   ► and so many practicality challenges to these products.

01:04:53 ◼   ► Apple took a really big swing

01:04:55 ◼   ► and I think has almost completely missed.

01:04:57 ◼   ► I think they went down almost every wrong path possible

01:05:01 ◼   ► and shipped it out there.

01:05:03 ◼   ► And I think part of the reason

01:05:05 ◼   ► why we're hearing all these rumors

01:05:08 ◼   ► around the Vision Pro launch

01:05:09 ◼   ► that maybe some people in the company

01:05:10 ◼   ► weren't really supportive of it

01:05:12 ◼   ► or they weren't sure if they should release it

01:05:14 ◼   ► or it was divisive within the company,

01:05:15 ◼   ► we've heard that for a long time.

01:05:18 ◼   ► I think we see why.

01:05:19 ◼   ► It's a really hard area to get right.

01:05:22 ◼   ► And the Vision Pro didn't get it right.

01:05:25 ◼   ► And what Meta's showing here doesn't exist yet.

01:05:29 ◼   ► But they're going towards that

01:05:32 ◼   ► and I think what everyone is kind of seeing is,

01:05:34 ◼   ► oh, they have a pretty good chance

01:05:38 ◼   ► of doing something good here.

01:05:40 ◼   ► Whereas what we're seeing from Apple

01:05:42 ◼   ► has not really led us in that direction yet.

01:05:46 ◼   ► At this point, I would be surprised

01:05:50 ◼   ► if we ever saw another Vision hardware release from Apple.

01:05:54 ◼   ► Like, that's how I think the platform

01:05:58 ◼   ► has gotten off on such a wrong foot.

01:06:00 ◼   ► I honestly would be surprised if we ever see a sequel to it.

01:06:03 ◼   ► If they do anything in this space,

01:06:05 ◼   ► I think it will be radically different.

01:06:06 ◼   ► Not the same thing but a little bit better

01:06:09 ◼   ► and a little bit cheaper.

01:06:09 ◼   ► I think it'll be radically different if at all.

01:06:12 ◼   ► And not soon.

01:06:14 ◼   ► But what we see from Meta is like,

01:06:15 ◼   ► they're already succeeding in the VR market

01:06:20 ◼   ► better than anybody else ever has.

01:06:21 ◼   ► They're doing great in that market.

01:06:23 ◼   ► It's still a small market but they're doing great in it.

01:06:25 ◼   ► And they might be doing this thing at the high end.

01:06:28 ◼   ► That's why everyone's excited

01:06:29 ◼   ► 'cause everyone sees it and they're like,

01:06:30 ◼   ► huh, it has some trade-offs, some pretty big trade-offs.

01:06:34 ◼   ► And with the largest asterisk being

01:06:36 ◼   ► it literally is not shipping and is not buyable

01:06:38 ◼   ► and will never ship in this form.

01:06:40 ◼   ► So this is literally just a tech demo.

01:06:42 ◼   ► However, people like it and they're excited by it.

01:06:46 ◼   ► Now that being said, I don't think AR and VR,

01:06:50 ◼   ► even in a great form like this,

01:06:53 ◼   ► I don't think that's going to replace the smartphone.

01:06:56 ◼   ► I don't think it's going to be nearly as big

01:06:59 ◼   ► or as important as a lot of people think

01:07:00 ◼   ► or hope that it will.

01:07:02 ◼   ► What we're seeing with the actual products

01:07:04 ◼   ► that exist in this category is they're fun,

01:07:08 ◼   ► they're useful to certain people,

01:07:10 ◼   ► they're not replacing phones,

01:07:11 ◼   ► they're not replacing game consoles,

01:07:13 ◼   ► they're not replacing TVs in any kind of meaningful numbers.

01:07:16 ◼   ► I think the whole investment in this area is interesting

01:07:21 ◼   ► and in certain ways it's exciting,

01:07:23 ◼   ► but I don't think it's the future of computing.

01:07:25 ◼   ► I think it's the future of more wearables

01:07:28 ◼   ► to add to our lives.

01:07:29 ◼   ► In the same way that the Apple Watch and wearables like it

01:07:31 ◼   ► didn't replace smartphones, they just added to them.

01:07:35 ◼   ► I think AR glasses will add to our computing lives as well.

01:07:38 ◼   ► I don't think they will be replacing nearly anything.

01:07:41 ◼   ► However, if they are to succeed,

01:07:43 ◼   ► the approach Meta is taking,

01:07:45 ◼   ► and they already have the Ray-Ban glasses

01:07:47 ◼   ► that are pretty successful.

01:07:49 ◼   ► I think that approach, like what Meta's doing,

01:07:52 ◼   ► slowly adding things that people will add

01:07:54 ◼   ► to their computing lives, not replace things with,

01:07:57 ◼   ► that's working.

01:07:58 ◼   ► And this is the latest demo of where that's going.

01:08:00 ◼   ► That's working.

01:08:02 ◼   ► And I think what Apple's doing is not working.

01:08:05 ◼   ► - Here's why I think this is a non-story

01:08:10 ◼   ► and I'm very disappointed in the press

01:08:11 ◼   ► for how they've handled this.

01:08:13 ◼   ► Ever since we've been talking about this topic at all

01:08:17 ◼   ► on the show or in the Apple world

01:08:18 ◼   ► or in the entire tech world,

01:08:21 ◼   ► everyone has known that some kind of glasses thing

01:08:25 ◼   ► would be amazing, but it's too bad we can't build that.

01:08:28 ◼   ► And years ago when the rumors were

01:08:30 ◼   ► about Apple's headset thing, it was like,

01:08:32 ◼   ► Apple's not gonna do a headset, they're gonna do glasses

01:08:34 ◼   ► because they know headsets are big and clunky and crappy.

01:08:37 ◼   ► And Tim Cook would just constantly,

01:08:40 ◼   ► anytime he's asked about this for years,

01:08:41 ◼   ► he'd be like, we're interested in AR, not VR.

01:08:44 ◼   ► We're all about augmenting reality.

01:08:46 ◼   ► Have you seen all the AR features we've added

01:08:48 ◼   ► to our phones and iPads over the years?

01:08:50 ◼   ► We don't want to be closed off inside a VR headset.

01:08:53 ◼   ► We're all about augmented reality, right?

01:08:55 ◼   ► The reason Apple was into that,

01:08:58 ◼   ► it's not just like, oh, Apple thought AR would be good.

01:09:00 ◼   ► Everybody thinks AR is good.

01:09:01 ◼   ► Everyone thinks glasses,

01:09:02 ◼   ► where they could let you magically see the world,

01:09:03 ◼   ► but also stuff laid on top of it is a great idea.

01:09:06 ◼   ► It's in science fiction books.

01:09:07 ◼   ► It's in our culture.

01:09:08 ◼   ► It's baked into everything,

01:09:09 ◼   ► and that is an Apple strategy from day one.

01:09:11 ◼   ► When we eventually heard,

01:09:13 ◼   ► actually Apple's gonna ship a VR headset.

01:09:15 ◼   ► You're like, well, what about all that stuff

01:09:16 ◼   ► that Tim Cook's been saying about the glasses?

01:09:17 ◼   ► And the basically consensus was,

01:09:19 ◼   ► well, nobody can make the glasses.

01:09:22 ◼   ► So Apple's gonna ship something.

01:09:24 ◼   ► And what they did ship was their attempt to say,

01:09:26 ◼   ► you know, in typical Apple fashion,

01:09:28 ◼   ► super expensive VR headset, but look, we do,

01:09:32 ◼   ► one of the reasons it's so expensive

01:09:34 ◼   ► is we're trying to give you that AR glasses experience

01:09:37 ◼   ► of like, look, the pass-through is magical.

01:09:38 ◼   ► It's like, you don't even know you're looking

01:09:39 ◼   ► through cameras or whatever,

01:09:40 ◼   ► but of course it's not an AR thing.

01:09:42 ◼   ► You're not actually looking at the room.

01:09:44 ◼   ► We're just applying technology and money

01:09:46 ◼   ► to try to get something out there

01:09:48 ◼   ► that has some desirable attributes

01:09:50 ◼   ► that are better than the competitors

01:09:51 ◼   ► that we try to spin as a computing device and blah, blah,

01:09:53 ◼   ► you get into the whole thing.

01:09:54 ◼   ► But the bottom line is Apple didn't wait

01:09:57 ◼   ► until they could ship glasses.

01:09:59 ◼   ► They shipped a headset that they kind of sort of tried

01:10:03 ◼   ► to push in the AR direction, but wasn't really that.

01:10:05 ◼   ► And setting the Vision Pro aside and all its failures

01:10:07 ◼   ► or whatever, that's what they did.

01:10:09 ◼   ► But at no point during this, did anyone say,

01:10:12 ◼   ► Apple doesn't think AR is the future,

01:10:14 ◼   ► or they shouldn't have said that.

01:10:15 ◼   ► That it was just simply the fact that no one has technology

01:10:19 ◼   ► to ship something that looks like

01:10:21 ◼   ► what the Vision Pro looks like,

01:10:23 ◼   ► but as a pair of glasses that you could see the room through.

01:10:25 ◼   ► That doesn't exist, right?

01:10:28 ◼   ► So here's Facebook and they're like,

01:10:30 ◼   ► they come out with this thing.

01:10:31 ◼   ► Now, first of all, AR glasses have existed for a while.

01:10:33 ◼   ► There was Magic Leap, there was the HoloLens,

01:10:35 ◼   ► one and two, it's very difficult to do this.

01:10:37 ◼   ► Obviously the screen technology is not great.

01:10:40 ◼   ► They come out with their thing and they're like,

01:10:42 ◼   ► look, it's glasses that you can see through.

01:10:45 ◼   ► But it doesn't really change anything

01:10:47 ◼   ► about everything I just laid out.

01:10:48 ◼   ► Everyone knows glasses are gonna be awesome someday.

01:10:50 ◼   ► Everyone also knows we can't actually currently do them.

01:10:53 ◼   ► And I would say a $10,000 device

01:10:55 ◼   ► that doesn't look as good as the Vision Pro

01:10:57 ◼   ► is an example of not being able to do them.

01:10:59 ◼   ► I mean, it's not, you can't ship this to people.

01:11:01 ◼   ► It's not a product and it's not even as good,

01:11:04 ◼   ► it doesn't even look as good as Vision Pro

01:11:06 ◼   ► in terms of the graphics, setting aside the room

01:11:08 ◼   ► that you're actually looking at or whatever, right?

01:11:11 ◼   ► So this is the type of thing I would imagine

01:11:14 ◼   ► that Apple would have and say, well, we can't ship this.

01:11:16 ◼   ► It's not a shippable product.

01:11:17 ◼   ► The only difference is Facebook says, well, okay,

01:11:20 ◼   ► we have something that's not a shippable product.

01:11:21 ◼   ► Let's show it to the world to try to basically

01:11:23 ◼   ► get our investors off our back

01:11:24 ◼   ► because we're spending all this money

01:11:26 ◼   ► and they think we're just burning it

01:11:27 ◼   ► because the metaverse didn't happen

01:11:28 ◼   ► and we're just selling a bunch of Quest headsets

01:11:30 ◼   ► and why do we keep burning these billions of dollars?

01:11:31 ◼   ► And Facebook's gotta come out there and say,

01:11:33 ◼   ► this is why we're burning billions of dollars

01:11:34 ◼   ► 'cause we think someday we'll be able

01:11:36 ◼   ► to make something like this only good and shippable.

01:11:39 ◼   ► And as Zuckerberg says, we have a line of sight on that.

01:11:43 ◼   ► If they had come up with a product that you could buy

01:11:45 ◼   ► that did this stuff, maybe we could say

01:11:47 ◼   ► they're ahead of everybody else.

01:11:48 ◼   ► Apple couldn't find anything that they could ship

01:11:49 ◼   ► but Facebook could.

01:11:51 ◼   ► But they can't ship this.

01:11:52 ◼   ► It's not a shippable thing and even if it was shippable,

01:11:54 ◼   ► certain attributes aren't even as good

01:11:56 ◼   ► as Vision Pro fidelity-wise.

01:11:58 ◼   ► So I don't think this is anything other than Facebook

01:12:02 ◼   ► trying to get some good press out of a thing

01:12:05 ◼   ► that is essentially on par with what everyone else has

01:12:07 ◼   ► in the industry but everyone knows that it's not shippable

01:12:10 ◼   ► and when Apple has something that's not shippable,

01:12:12 ◼   ► they don't talk about it, right?

01:12:14 ◼   ► Now, since we know nothing about what's going on

01:12:16 ◼   ► inside Apple, it is possible that Apple at some point

01:12:19 ◼   ► three years ago diverted all of their resources

01:12:22 ◼   ► into Vision Pro and left their glasses efforts

01:12:26 ◼   ► dying on the vine and Facebook really is ahead of them.

01:12:28 ◼   ► But we don't know that, just like we don't know anything

01:12:31 ◼   ► about what goes on inside Apple.

01:12:32 ◼   ► So we can't say by Facebook showing us this prototype,

01:12:35 ◼   ► they're ahead of Apple, Apple's never gonna catch up.

01:12:37 ◼   ► Apple doesn't have glasses like this.

01:12:39 ◼   ► We just don't know the answer to that question.

01:12:41 ◼   ► I would imagine that if Apple, if you went into an Apple lab

01:12:44 ◼   ► and wanted to get the same experience,

01:12:46 ◼   ► although they might not look as nice as these

01:12:48 ◼   ► with the little frame around them or whatever,

01:12:49 ◼   ► you could probably get something similar

01:12:51 ◼   ► if Apple had continued their AR thing

01:12:53 ◼   ► but we don't know if they continued it.

01:12:55 ◼   ► If you look at this product though, one of the things

01:12:57 ◼   ► that it does seem to take from Vision Pro

01:12:59 ◼   ► is the idea of eye tracking and pinching as your interface.

01:13:02 ◼   ► But interestingly, it doesn't use cameras

01:13:04 ◼   ► to track your hands, it uses the little wristband.

01:13:06 ◼   ► This is something that Apple could maybe see

01:13:09 ◼   ► how that works out, try the prototype,

01:13:11 ◼   ► see how it goes if they haven't already been trying this.

01:13:13 ◼   ► Choosing how you are going to do eye tracking and pinching

01:13:17 ◼   ► is kind of like an implementation detail

01:13:19 ◼   ► versus deciding eye tracking and pinching

01:13:21 ◼   ► is how you should interact with things.

01:13:23 ◼   ► Like in other words, they're not saying,

01:13:24 ◼   ► Orion, it comes with Quest hand controllers.

01:13:26 ◼   ► Quest hand control is great for games,

01:13:28 ◼   ► maybe not so great for what you would imagine

01:13:31 ◼   ► you would do something that's more like a pair of glasses.

01:13:33 ◼   ► These things seem to have like,

01:13:34 ◼   ► the wristband has like a little electrical conductor

01:13:37 ◼   ► sensor thingies that catch your nerve signals or whatever.

01:13:40 ◼   ► It's a nice way to do it that doesn't require you

01:13:43 ◼   ► to have line of sight on your fingers

01:13:45 ◼   ► and doesn't require like these glasses frames

01:13:47 ◼   ► to be bristling with even more cameras

01:13:50 ◼   ► that are tracking where your fingers are

01:13:51 ◼   ► as opposed to the ones that are just tracking your eyeballs.

01:13:54 ◼   ► But anyway, like I don't, like people saying this

01:13:58 ◼   ► and say, were there people out there who were like,

01:14:00 ◼   ► previously, I didn't think augmented reality glasses

01:14:03 ◼   ► would be a good idea,