0:00:00Oh yes, we will be angry because John is refusing to admit how wrong he is, and I'm angry that
0:00:05John won't admit how wrong he is.
0:00:07Oh god.
0:00:08[Music]
0:00:09So, I think I actually might have solved my Apple Watch Ultra band problem.
0:00:15Mmm, okay.
0:00:16So, alright.
0:00:17The Apple Watch Ultra, it has a bunch of bands that are okay, that are made specifically
0:00:22for it.
0:00:23They're all okay in different ways, none of them are great.
0:00:25I thought, I'm not trying to be funny, I thought that all of, or most of the ultra-specific
0:00:31bands were really well-liked. Is that not true? Did I make that up?
0:00:35Okay, here's the problem they have. The Alpine Loop. This is the one that has its cloth,
0:00:41and it has all little tiny loops and you hook with the metal thing, you hook into one of
0:00:45them to put it on. It is most commonly seen in its orange color, which I think is one
0:00:50of the best looking Apple Watch Ultra bands, is the orange Alpine Loop. Problem is, it
0:00:55Well, first of all, I don't find it super easy
0:00:58to get a good fit on that
0:00:59because of the weird hook mechanism.
0:01:00You gotta like keep popping it out
0:01:01and get the right one and everything.
0:01:03So it's not super easy to get a good fit on that.
0:01:05And then second of all, it's cloth.
0:01:07And so it absorbs moisture and stuff.
0:01:09And my primary use of my Apple Watch Ultra is workouts.
0:01:13And so that's a no go for me.
0:01:16Also the Alpine loops tend, because they are cloth,
0:01:18they tend to get dirty and discolored fairly easily
0:01:20and fairly quickly after you own them.
0:01:22And so you can wash them, again,
0:01:24just like the woven loops you can watch them to some extent
0:01:26but it's, you know, whatever.
0:01:28All right, then you have the trail loops.
0:01:31These are kind of like the Apple Watch Ultra version
0:01:33of those like Velcro regular Apple Watch loops
0:01:36that everyone loves that I think look like sweatpants
0:01:38and on the Apple Watch Ultra they look like sweatpants.
0:01:41So it's fun, the trail loops are fine.
0:01:45I think the black and gray trail loop
0:01:47with the little orange tab is a nice,
0:01:50It's a relatively nice look for the category,
0:01:54but still not, it's very utilitarian, let's say.
0:01:58And then the Ocean Band is kind of like
0:02:02the Apple Watch Ultra version of the Sport Band.
0:02:05So the Ocean Band, this is the one
0:02:07I've spent the most time with.
0:02:08I have the Midnight, the little navy blue.
0:02:10I have the Midnight Ocean Band,
0:02:12and I think it looks okay, and it works okay,
0:02:15and it's kind of comfortable.
0:02:17But none of that compares to like the regular
0:02:21Apple Watch sport bands, which I think,
0:02:24they have a certain look, you know,
0:02:25they look mostly, they can look mostly neutral.
0:02:28But they feel great, they're very comfortable,
0:02:30very versatile, et cetera.
0:02:32- Wait, wait, so would you say this is the most comfortable
0:02:34of the three, because from looks alone,
0:02:36it does not appear to be terribly comfortable to me.
0:02:39- So I haven't owned a Trail Loop.
0:02:40I've tried it on in the store,
0:02:41so I cannot say I've owned a Trail Loop.
0:02:43I own the Alpine Loop and the Ocean Band,
0:02:45and I spent by far the most time with the Ocean Band,
0:02:48in part because it is durable and sweat resistant
0:02:51'cause it's just rubber.
0:02:52But also I find it mostly uncomfortable.
0:02:54The problem is the ridges that it has,
0:02:57like the ridges are on both sides,
0:02:59so the side facing your skin is also ridged.
0:03:02And so usually I will end up with little imprints of ridges
0:03:05in my skin after wearing it, which again is not great.
0:03:10So I've tried, you know, there's nothing stopping you
0:03:12from putting any other Apple Watch Band on the Ultra.
0:03:15Obviously they don't all look very good on it necessarily.
0:03:19That's up to you and your god.
0:03:21But you can put them on, they fit.
0:03:24They may or may not match the metal very well,
0:03:26they may or may not have the right shape or the right style,
0:03:28but you can put on other bands and they fit just fine.
0:03:30So I have tried lots of other Apple Watch bands
0:03:34with the Ultra trying to figure out like,
0:03:36all right, is there a better option than the Ocean band
0:03:39for general Ultra use?
0:03:41The problem with the regular sport band,
0:03:45the standard pin buckle, regular sport band
0:03:48we've had forever with the Apple Watch.
0:03:50The way the Ultra, it can kinda like float on your,
0:03:53it's so big and thick that it can kinda slide,
0:03:56like if you're looking at your wrist all the time,
0:04:00the direction of the watch moving up,
0:04:01it can slide up a little bit.
0:04:03And then it creates this gap between the band
0:04:07and your wrist bone that looks really stupid
0:04:10with the sport band, because the sport band,
0:04:12because it's made for smaller, lower watches,
0:04:14it kinda sticks out further from the watch body
0:04:18before coming down around your wrist.
0:04:20Does that make sense?
0:04:21- It does.
0:04:22- Like it comes out straight more before it goes down.
0:04:25The result of that is that the Apple Watch Ultra
0:04:27I think only looks good with an Apple Sport band
0:04:30if you have really big wrists and that way
0:04:32it has more time for the band to come like straight out
0:04:35before wrapping around your wrist going down.
0:04:38It looks better that way.
0:04:39But you, Casey, inspired me last week.
0:04:43I'm like wait a minute.
0:04:44The stretchy sport loops that Apple sells,
0:04:47the fixed size ones, they're a different material entirely.
0:04:51And it actually works really well on the Ultra.
0:04:56It still doesn't look quite right,
0:04:59but it's a way better look and fit
0:05:03than the sport band with the pin buckle on the Ultra.
0:05:07So I am actually very pleased to have discovered this,
0:05:09and I thank you very much that the,
0:05:11here it's called the solo loop is what I'm talking about the solo loop actually
0:05:16looks and fits and works surprisingly well on the ultra so thank you for that
0:05:21I am happy with that did you have to buy one size down because the ultra is wider
0:05:25that's the part I'm also okay so all the ones I have are for the smaller Apple
0:05:31watch diameter they're for like the 40 millimeter or 41 millimeter size and I
0:05:34back when they first came out I I kind of went through figuring out my size and
0:05:39I ended up with two sizes, a seven and a six.
0:05:41And I wear the six, I think, most of the time.
0:05:45So I was trying to figure out, going to Gruber's article
0:05:47and looking at different things of like,
0:05:48how do I size the solo loop without going to a store for,
0:05:52okay, I know what I wear in the sport band,
0:05:55I know which hole I use in the sport band,
0:05:57and I already have these sizes seven and six solo loops
0:06:02that I can test with, but therefore the smaller watch.
0:06:05So what Underscore, he tweeted about this also,
0:06:08or mastituted about it.
0:06:10So he figured out that to go from the 45 millimeter
0:06:15to the ultra, you know, 'cause they use the same straps,
0:06:18to go between those two, generally subtract one
0:06:21from the size of the loop, and that usually fits.
0:06:24Problem is, I think I'm kinda between sizes,
0:06:26so I tried, I don't even know if the 45 sizes
0:06:30and the 40 millimeter sizes, I don't even know
0:06:33if those are the same.
0:06:34Like, is the six in both of those the same length?
0:06:37because the watches aren't the same height.
0:06:42So if you take a strap of a fixed length
0:06:46and you use it on a bigger watch,
0:06:47the strap will be too loose.
0:06:49Because the watch, it's attaching at different points
0:06:53on the wrist than the smaller watch would.
0:06:55So you'll be off by one, basically.
0:06:58So that's why when you go from the 45 millimeter
0:07:01to the ultra, the watch is getting taller
0:07:04and so the same length strap,
0:07:06you have to basically make the strap shorter
0:07:08to make it have the same fit on your wrist.
0:07:10So I ordered the five, but it's a little tight,
0:07:15but I tried my six from my small watch,
0:07:18and it was too loose by a decent amount.
0:07:20- Oh no.
0:07:21- So I'm like, all right, I don't know.
0:07:22So I don't know, I think I might have to actually
0:07:24go into a store and figure this out,
0:07:27'cause I don't wanna do a bunch of returns
0:07:28and be all wasteful, so.
0:07:30Anyway, all that is to say,
0:07:32sizing is still a question mark for me personally,
0:07:34But the solo loop, I think, is a much more mechanically
0:07:39sound and visibly sound option for the Apple Watch Ultra
0:07:44compared to the regular sport band.
0:07:45So I can recommend it.
0:07:46I got the Storm Blue, which is kind of this navy blue.
0:07:49It's a super boring color, but it's the only currently
0:07:52offered color that I think would look good on the Ultra.
0:07:54They do have a nice bright yellow,
0:07:56and the Ultra has that yellow ocean band.
0:07:58But I saw that in a store, I don't think the Ultra
0:08:01goes well with yellow, 'cause it has the orange accents
0:08:03and I don't think it's a good match with yellow,
0:08:07but I could be wrong, I might try it, we'll see.
0:08:09- I got a lot of feedback on Mastodon
0:08:11about my solo loop problems,
0:08:14and I think one thing either I wasn't clear
0:08:17about the particular watch band I was talking about,
0:08:19or people misunderstood or both,
0:08:21but the one I was talking about is indeed the solo loop,
0:08:24which is the thing, it's, what is it,
0:08:26not floral, astomer, whatever, but it's a--
0:08:28- Apple describes it as stretchable liquid silicone rubber.
0:08:32Now, to be clear, they are not liquid.
0:08:34I don't know. (laughing)
0:08:36They are definitely solid, and thank God for that.
0:08:38They would not be very good watch bands if they were liquid.
0:08:41- Indeed.
0:08:41But then a lot of people sent me recommendations
0:08:45for and forgive me, I don't remember the name of this one,
0:08:47but it's the same premise where it's just one piece
0:08:50of material, but it's woven fabric.
0:08:53What is the name of that one?
0:08:54- That's the braided solo loop.
0:08:56Same name, but braided in front and cost twice as much.
0:08:59- Right, and it does, you're exactly right,
0:09:00it costs twice as much.
0:09:01They're wonderful, by the way.
0:09:02That's the one I was saying.
0:09:03That's the one I have the pride version of, the rainbow one.
0:09:06When they are clean, they are great.
0:09:09And when they are dry.
0:09:10When they are clean and dry, they are fantastic.
0:09:14But that's two big wins.
0:09:15- Yeah, so that's the thing.
0:09:17And so I've been casting about on Amazon trying to find a silicon, or silicon, whatever, I
0:09:25always get it wrong, a quasi-plastic solo loop to get on the cheap, even if it isn't
0:09:31quite as good because I agree with what you were saying last week Marco that you
0:09:34know oftentimes materials on these knockoffs it's not nearly as good as the
0:09:37Apple stuff but if I'm spending ten dollars every six months instead of 50
0:09:42dollars every six months then it's not such a big deal and I haven't I haven't
0:09:46tried any yet but meanwhile my friend Spencer for a belated birthday gift the
0:09:51same Spencer that you guys know sent me a couple of knockoff braided solo loop
0:09:56bands and so far I don't know which ones these were otherwise I'd link them but
0:10:01So far these are really, really nice,
0:10:03and they don't seem to suck in water or moisture
0:10:07as much as I would have expected.
0:10:09However, the problem with, maybe not this one in particular,
0:10:12but the braided solo loop in general,
0:10:14is that a lot of people said on Mastodon
0:10:16that after six months, well, they don't break in two
0:10:18like yours did, but they're so damn stretched
0:10:21that you can't wear it anymore,
0:10:22which is also kind of a, it's a failure,
0:10:25just a different kind of failure,
0:10:26perhaps less catastrophic, but a failure nonetheless.
0:10:28So it's tough because I love, I love, love, love
0:10:32the plastic solo loop.
0:10:34And I like in principle the braided solo loop
0:10:37and we'll see how well this Amazon knockoff lasts.
0:10:40The material seems good, like it's comfortable.
0:10:43But yeah, I can't with an honest heart recommend either
0:10:45unless you're looking to replace them
0:10:49every six months to a year,
0:10:50depending on your particular use case.
0:10:52- Not that I want to extend this conversation
0:10:53of watch drops any longer, but one person on Macedon
0:10:57did ask, made a snarky comment.
0:10:59They said, you know, first Casey says that the Apple ones
0:11:02are like breaking on him after six months.
0:11:05And then when third party watch bands are recommended,
0:11:08Marco comes in and says, oh,
0:11:10third party watch bands are bad quality.
0:11:12And that's the type of person that if I was snarky,
0:11:16I would have replied to.
0:11:17And I'm honestly not doing this to be snarky,
0:11:19but I'm mostly doing, I don't know.
0:11:21It's kind of being jerky.
0:11:24To be clear, I didn't do this.
0:11:25I didn't respond in this way.
0:11:26But I thought about giving my typical response where I throw it back to them and I say, "You
0:11:32square that circle.
0:11:33Figure it out.
0:11:34So you've laid down two seemingly contradictory things.
0:11:37Apple ones are breaking and we agree they're breaking too soon, but then third-party ones
0:11:41are bad quality so we don't want them."
0:11:45How can you reconcile that?
0:11:46You seem to think it's a contradiction or it's hypocritical or whatever, but is there
0:11:51a way that it wouldn't be a contradiction?
0:11:55that problem and it's very difficult to express that in a tweet or a tweet or whatever without
0:12:00being obnoxious so I didn't.
0:12:03But now we're on the podcast so I can have more room to explain it.
0:12:06And I'm not the one who said all these things but I was a listener for them and the reason
0:12:11I didn't make a comment is because it made perfect sense to me and here's how it made
0:12:14sense to me.
0:12:15Apple ones shouldn't break after six months.
0:12:17That's no good.
0:12:18They're expensive.
0:12:19They should be sturdier.
0:12:20But also third party ones being "oh bad quality, don't buy them."
0:12:23For the six months that you're wearing it, the third party ones could be uglier or less
0:12:29comfortable.
0:12:31Even if they don't break, even if they never break, even if they were like Infinite Gobstopper,
0:12:34the watch band that never breaks.
0:12:36If during that entire time it is not as nice looking or as nice feeling as the watch band,
0:12:42that I felt like is what Marco was expressing.
0:12:43Oh, the third party ones, they're not as good quality.
0:12:46Maybe there's a visible seams where the mold lines are.
0:12:49Maybe it's stiffer.
0:12:50Maybe they're not as soft on your skin.
0:12:52more to the watch thing other than whether it breaks or not.
0:12:58It's kind of like my cheese grater thing.
0:13:00It's my favorite cheese grater, but it's got a fatal flaw that they break after six months.
0:13:03But it's still the one I want to use because when it's working, it's better than all the
0:13:07other ones that I've tried.
0:13:08That's the way I squared that circle in my mind, and Marco can say that's what he was
0:13:12getting at when he said third party ones are not as nice.
0:13:15- Yeah, basically, I mean, it's like, you know,
0:13:17you can save some money, you know, by going third party,
0:13:21and there are, look, I'm not gonna say there aren't
0:13:24any nice third party Apple Watch bands,
0:13:26because there probably are, I just have never found one.
0:13:30And so the ones I have tried,
0:13:31I've all been really disappointing.
0:13:33And so, look, if you can save some money and do that,
0:13:36then great, but if you're gonna get something
0:13:38that you just kinda think is okay, and isn't that nice,
0:13:43and you're wearing it every single day, I don't know.
0:13:46I would rather, you know, I don't think 50 bucks
0:13:50for an Apple Watch band maybe once a year as a replacement.
0:13:53I don't think that's unreasonable
0:13:54for something that you wear every day.
0:13:55- I think they should last longer than a year.
0:13:57To be clear, I'm not saying the Apple one is better.
0:13:59I'm saying these are two bad choices.
0:14:00I'm saying they're not contradictory, that's all.
0:14:02- And some of them do, by the way.
0:14:03- Yeah, exactly.
0:14:04We're just talking about one specific one.
0:14:06- Yeah, this is inherent to like, you know,
0:14:08stretchy rubber or cloth, both of which wear out
0:14:11substantially faster than say, non-stretchy rubber or metal.
0:14:15Like if you want something to last forever,
0:14:17the sport band or the metal bands,
0:14:20those last forever basically.
0:14:22But the woven cloth ones, while very nice,
0:14:26you're gonna compromise there in comfort,
0:14:30or sorry, in longevity.
0:14:33So it's a trade-off.
0:14:35- Yep, anyway, the snarky thing that I,
0:14:38I don't think it to be snarky,
0:14:39I don't know what the word for it is,
0:14:40probably some debate type thing for it, but it's like, come up with the other side.
0:14:43Like you don't need me to answer this question.
0:14:45You think you're throwing a gotcha out at me, but I bet if you thought about it for
0:14:48a couple seconds, you could figure out from the other person's perspective, how could
0:14:51both of these things be true?
0:14:52And in this case, it's like, you know, it's what I explained before.
0:14:55Anyway, I haven't figured out how to communicate that online without looking like a jerk.
0:15:00So mostly I don't.
0:15:01Except this whole moment of the podcast that's being broadcast to far more people.
0:15:05I know.
0:15:06Well, I feel like in a podcast, I have time to explain it.
0:15:09and hopefully people understand and whatever.
0:15:12And I have Marco here to be able to clarify
0:15:14whether I was misinterpreting what he was saying.
0:15:16You know what I mean?
0:15:17Whatever.
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0:16:35- All right, let's do some follow up.
0:16:37Starting with iOS 16.4, which is not out, right?
0:16:41It's imminent, is that correct?
0:16:43- I think it's GM, right?
0:16:44- Yeah, yeah, okay.
0:16:45So iOS 16.4 should be out any minute now.
0:16:48Expands duplicate image detection
0:16:50to iCloud shared photo library.
0:16:51Jon, you were pretty displeased by this,
0:16:54if I'm not mistaken, when this first came out.
0:16:55Is that right, or am I making that up?
0:16:57- Yeah, I mean, it was still more annoyed
0:16:58by the lack of shared albums, but this seemed like a gap,
0:17:00because they added duplicate photo detection
0:17:02with iOS 16 and whenever they released all this stuff,
0:17:05and it'll, you know, if you scroll down at the bottom,
0:17:06I don't know if they added it then,
0:17:07but there's like, there's a section where you can,
0:17:09where it says duplicates,
0:17:10if you scroll down on the iOS photos app
0:17:12and it'll find them and like merge them and stuff like that.
0:17:14But the problem I had was like, you know, we had,
0:17:16my wife had the big family library
0:17:18and then I had my personal library
0:17:19and there was some overlap between the libraries
0:17:21because sometimes I would take something,
0:17:24I would take everything from a personal library
0:17:25and import it into hers,
0:17:26but sometimes I would pull photos from her library
0:17:29after I edited them down into mine.
0:17:31And then when we tried to merge them
0:17:32into one big shared family library,
0:17:34there is duplicates because I was putting things back into the shared library that I
0:17:38had pulled from her library previously, but there was no duplicate detection in the shared
0:17:43library.
0:17:44I mean, you could do it manually by scrolling through the photos and trying to find the
0:17:46ones that are the same or whatever, but the whole point is I want the computer to do it
0:17:49for me.
0:17:50So now in iOS 16 and also in whatever, I guess Mac OS 13.3 or whatever the next version of
0:17:55Mac OS will also have this ability, now you actually can find duplicates in the shared
0:18:01library. And this is going to help me a lot because I have not shoved all of my personal
0:18:06photos into the shared library just because I didn't want to deal with the duplicate issue.
0:18:09So I'll test this feature out with one or two photos to see how it handles it. According to
0:18:14Kurt on Mastodon, when you do the merge, it attributes the photo to both people.
0:18:18So instead of just saying like, this was added to the shared library by such and such,
0:18:23it will say this was added to the shared library by these two people or these three people,
0:18:27I assume if it's third-party, you know, so it's maintaining a metadata about where it came from that like hey this
0:18:31You know multiple people out of this photo, but it will only keep one of them and hopefully it will do that in a smart
0:18:36Way, so I look forward to testing this out
0:18:38John you chose poorly that's a reference
0:18:42Artings calm has done some OLED burn in testing for a long period of time
0:18:48I forget exactly how long this just came out in last week or two
0:18:52But I was just brought to our attention in the last 24 hours
0:18:55Sounds like the Sony OLEDs not a good choice if you're worried about about image retention
0:19:01Whoopsie-dupsie if you're worried about image retention OLEDs are probably not the thing for you
0:19:05I don't think these results are surprising in any way whatsoever
0:19:09So if the art thing our tings has been doing OLED burn-in tests for years and years now
0:19:13Obviously they can't test the TV that just came out last year for more than the length of time
0:19:17they had it but they've been testing it for many many years and
0:19:21The results have not been surprising OLEDs have image retention. They way way way way way more than LCDs like it is
0:19:27Maybe not as much as plasmas, but it is a big problem with OLED televisions. I knew this going in
0:19:34There is no OLED television you can buy that will not suffer from image retention
0:19:37So the most recent thing is they did tests of the new TVs they came out last year and obviously they only have them for
0:19:43A few months right, but they do very accelerated testing. This is not representative of normal use
0:19:47They like, you know, put it on CNN with a big ticker on the bottom.
0:19:51They leave it on for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, right?
0:19:54They really, it's accelerated ware testing to see how it is.
0:19:59And lo and behold, if you do that, the machine's getting these television's get image retention.
0:20:03But the surprising topic was testing the Quantum Dot OLEDs versus the old style W OLEDs.
0:20:09And the Quantum Dot OLEDs exhibited what I would expect from, you know, OLED burn-in,
0:20:15But the latest generation of, or last year's generation of the WRGB OLEDs, especially in
0:20:21this particular test with white regions on the, you know, like a bar on the bottom of
0:20:25a news thing, resisted burn-in over the same period of time.
0:20:29The explanation they gave, they don't know exactly, but the explanation they gave seems
0:20:32plausible to me, is that when you have the white subpixel and the WRGB OLEDs and you're
0:20:37showing white, you don't need to, you won't wear out the R, the G, and the B subpixels
0:20:42when you're showing white, because the white sub-pixel will carry that load entirely.
0:20:45And the white sub-pixel is actually pretty big.
0:20:47I don't know if it's the biggest sub-pixel, but it's pretty big.
0:20:50Maybe it's about the same size as the green one or the next biggest one is.
0:20:54Whereas on a QD OLED, it's just RGB.
0:20:57There is no white sub-pixel, which is great for color purity and all that other stuff.
0:21:00But when you have to show white, that means you have to turn on the R, the G, and the
0:21:03B sub-pixels.
0:21:04So if there's a big white static element on your screen, like the big news ticker that's
0:21:08on the bottom of CNN the whole time, it's going to wear out the R, the G, and the B
0:21:13subpixels, whereas the R, the G, and the B subpixels on the WRGB things will not be worn
0:21:17out by showing something that's white.
0:21:21So the results of this were all the QD OLEDs, not just Sony, but the Samsung ones or whatever,
0:21:27burned in faster than the latest generation of WRGB OLEDs.
0:21:30This also makes sense because this is literally the first generation of QD OLEDs, and that's
0:21:35like the 19th generation of WRGB OLEDs and they've been fighting burn-in for many many years.
0:21:40So I expect this to improve. Doesn't affect me at all because I already baby my television. Like
0:21:46again I had a plasma and my plasma was insanely, by the end of its life especially, insanely
0:21:51subject to image retention. I remember I'd turn on my plasma and it would launch into the Apple TV
0:21:56screen with the little you know rounded rectangles. Just launching into the Apple TV screen in the
0:22:01time it took me to like, you know, remote over to the app I want and launch it.
0:22:06And I'm not dilly dallying.
0:22:07I'm like, as soon as it comes up, move, move, move, hit.
0:22:09I'd see an after image of the rectangles that were on the screen.
0:22:13Oh my.
0:22:13Oh, wow.
0:22:14And it would fade quickly, but it was like, it was, it was like
0:22:18Marco's old iMac, right?
0:22:19So all of my habits surrounding television are already geared to not allow the thing
0:22:27to burn out and don't play games on it.
0:22:29I don't show any things with persistent symbols or whatever on them, but open news tickers.
0:22:34And this testing, what they said this testing is equivalent of is if you watched CNN or
0:22:38MSNBC or something with a static element on the bottom of the screen, four hours a day
0:22:42for eight months in a row without changing the channel, you'd get burned.
0:22:45It's like, "Yeah, yeah, that'll get burned.
0:22:47I don't allow this stuff on my screen for five seconds, let alone four hours a day for
0:22:51eight months."
0:22:53So this year, there's a new generation of QD OLEDs, and there's also a new generation
0:22:58of WRGB OLED, so we have to wait and see what the testing turns out on these televisions
0:23:02this year to see who is actually the image quality king this year, and also we have to
0:23:07wait for those Burn-It tests as well.
0:23:10But the results here shouldn't dissuade anyone from getting an OLED, even in the article
0:23:15they say.
0:23:16Like this is not a reason not to get an OLED, but if you get an OLED, do not get an OLED
0:23:20to put on CNN 24 hours a day.
0:23:22It will burn in.
0:23:23Do not get an OLED to play a game with a big bright HUD on it all the time.
0:23:26It will burn in.
0:23:27fact of life. Get an OLED to watch television and movies with images that change on the screen and
0:23:32you'll be fine. Another thing, if I read this correctly, and I was skimming it because I was
0:23:36running out of time before we started recording, but if I read this correctly it also made an
0:23:41interesting point that apparently and allegedly the Sony would only do the like pixel refresher
0:23:47thing after the TV had been off for four hours whereas the LGs would do it immediately upon
0:23:53going to standby or something along those lines. I might have the details slightly off, but I thought
0:23:57that was interesting because I guess the particulars of their test, they didn't leave the TV off for
0:24:03four straight hours. And so because of that, the Sony never did its little pixel refresher dance.
0:24:07And that also exacerbated everything, which I thought was interesting.
0:24:10Yeah, well, they controlled for that. I mean, so obviously the televisions are not made to,
0:24:15they're not expecting this kind of intentional abuse, right? So it's not like the Sony
0:24:20compensation cycle is bad. It is tuned to what people actually do with television. Like, people
0:24:24sleep at night. Like, this is plenty of time when you're sleeping for the television to do the
0:24:27compensation cycle. But if it's subject to accelerated aging, intentional, abusive testing,
0:24:33then there's a mismatch. But they controlled for that. They said, "Okay, now that we know that's
0:24:37the case, let's control for it and let's give the Sony and the LG equal compensation cycles now that
0:24:44we know how they both schedule their compensation cycles." And it didn't make a difference, right?
0:24:48So it's good that they figured that out and it's it's one of the dangers of doing
0:24:52Accelerated testing that other parts of the television might not expect be expecting to you to do accelerated testing
0:24:57It may not handle it as well as other ones but they then controlled for that and even with controlling for that
0:25:02This the QD OLEDs were still burning and faster than the WRGB OLEDs
0:25:07Which again is not surprising like the white sub pixel explanation makes perfect sense to me like
0:25:10You have just think of it this way
0:25:13The simplest explanation is you have four sub pixels to wear out on WRGB and you have
0:25:18three sub pixels to wear out on RGB.
0:25:21So no matter what, no matter what you're showing on the screen, you can spread the load across
0:25:26four sub pixels more than you can spread it across three.
0:25:30But still, I think QDOLED is the better technology because I don't want a white sub pixel washing
0:25:33out all my colors.
0:25:34I'd rather just have RGB because that is better.
0:25:37So sticking with my TV, no I'm not buying the new generation of QDOLEDs.
0:25:42I'll buy five generations from now
0:25:44because that's the way I roll.
0:25:45- That is extremely, extremely the way you roll.
0:25:50All right, we should call attention
0:25:53to Quinn Nelson's really good 20 to 25 minute video
0:25:57on the forthcoming Apple VR, VR/AR, whatever headset.
0:26:02Quinn does a really good job of breaking down
0:26:05pretty much everything we think we know
0:26:08as a community at this point
0:26:10with regard to the headset, and there's a lot,
0:26:13a lot of really, really good information there.
0:26:15I don't know that we need to necessarily pick it apart,
0:26:18but if you'd like to talk about any parts of it,
0:26:20I'm happy to entertain, but you should spend
0:26:2422 minutes and 24 seconds watching this video,
0:26:26'cause it's really good.
0:26:27- Yeah, we had, last time we talked about the headset
0:26:29a couple episodes ago, there was the, you know,
0:26:32oh, should Apple ship it or not,
0:26:33and the industrial design versus operations,
0:26:37like that's the discussion we had.
0:26:39But right underneath that in the show notes
0:26:40was a longer topic related to that
0:26:42that we didn't have time for, which was just a collection
0:26:45of all the rumors about the features
0:26:48that this thing is supposed to have, the hardware features.
0:26:51What is it, what does it look like,
0:26:52what features does it have, what things does it have on it,
0:26:54how does it work, right?
0:26:56And this video covers almost all of that.
0:26:58So I really encourage you to watch it
0:27:00if you wanna get a summary,
0:27:01'cause we're gonna delete this item from the show notes
0:27:03after we cover this follow-up item,
0:27:05just because hey, it's available on Video Forum.
0:27:07It's a really good video,
0:27:08especially since the main reason I put this in the notes is because I think there's a
0:27:12There's a surprising amount of stuff in this headset if you think it's just gonna be like a screen that you strapped your eyeballs
0:27:18There's way more in it than that. There's cameras. There's sensors. There's I think there is there a light on it
0:27:25I forget there's like watching a video this so we don't know if this is every part of it is real
0:27:29It's just everything that has been rumored. There's carbon fiber involved
0:27:33Quinn talks about the screen technology and how much the screens alone might cost if the
0:27:38rumors are true.
0:27:40It's a fascinating video, you should definitely check it out.
0:27:43A few highlights from the bullet points that weren't in the video were related to what
0:27:48we mentioned before.
0:27:51Prescription lenses, a few headsets have that, the Apple one is rumored to have it as well.
0:27:55Supposedly they're magnetically attachable.
0:27:57Small motors to adjust the internal lenses to match the wearer's inter-pupillary distance
0:28:01You don't have to turn a knob like motors would do it for you.
0:28:05All the different SOCs, all the rumors about a little pack that goes in your pocket with
0:28:08a cord that's going to the thing.
0:28:11You know, again the carbon fiber rumor, just like tons of things that add cost and complexity.
0:28:16All the various cameras that point inward and outward to figure out where you are, all
0:28:20the eyeball tracking.
0:28:22Quinn's video is great because he compares it to the PSVR2, the Playstation 5 has a VR
0:28:27headset just like the Playstation 4 did.
0:28:29And the PlayStation 5 one is a big step technology-wise from the PlayStation 4 one.
0:28:35But it has a surprising amount in common with the rumors of the Apple one.
0:28:39It's just that the Apple one is rumored to cost thousands of dollars and the Sony one
0:28:43does not.
0:28:44I forget how much PSVR2 is.
0:28:45I think it's maybe $500, $600?
0:28:48But it's in a different ballpark entirely.
0:28:49And Quinn's video does a great job of explaining how is that possible?
0:28:53How is it that these headsets seem pretty much almost the same?
0:28:56the rumor of the Apple ones are a little bit better, but why should it be all of a sudden
0:29:00$3,000?
0:29:01And the video explains why.
0:29:04It costs a lot to move up.
0:29:06It's diminishing returns.
0:29:08As you add money, you get a little bit better quality, and if you want a lot better quality,
0:29:11you've got to add a lot more money.
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0:31:07So there was a post on the New York Times
0:31:14Just a few days ago now how Siri Alexa and Google assistant lost the AI race
0:31:20And this was a pretty good article.
0:31:23I think the point it makes, you know,
0:31:25you can reach pretty quickly.
0:31:27To read some excerpts that I believe John has pulled for us,
0:31:29Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant are essentially
0:31:32what are known as command and control systems.
0:31:34These can understand a finite list of questions and requests
0:31:36like, "What is the weather in New York City?"
0:31:37or "Turn on the bedroom lights."
0:31:39If a user asks the virtual assistant to do something
0:31:41that is not in its code, the bot simply says it can't help.
0:31:44Siri also has a cumbersome design
0:31:46that made it time-consuming to add new features
0:31:49said John Berkey, a former Apple engineer, who was given the job of improving Siri in
0:31:542014. Siri's database contains a gigantic list of words, including the names of musical
0:31:58artists and locations like restaurants in nearly two dozen languages. That made it "one
0:32:03big snowball." He said if someone wanted to add a word to Siri's database, he added, "It
0:32:08goes in one big pile." So seemingly simple updates, like adding some new phrases to the
0:32:12data set, would require rebuilding the entire database, which could take up to six weeks,
0:32:18Mr. Berkey said, "What?"
0:32:21- They should make a new Mac Pro to make it faster.
0:32:23- Right?
0:32:24Adding more complex features like new search tools
0:32:26would take nearly a year.
0:32:27That meant that there was no path for Siri
0:32:28to become a creative assistant like ChatGPT said.
0:32:31Also, they're completely different,
0:32:33but that's neither here nor there.
0:32:34Alexa and Google Assistant relied on technology
0:32:36similar to Siri's.
0:32:38Yeah, I mean, they're just really, really different
0:32:42and work in really, really different ways.
0:32:43I don't think that's surprising,
0:32:45But given how impressive, you know,
0:32:47chat, GPT and equivalence are,
0:32:49it's striking how incredible they seem to be
0:32:53and how here it is that we already thought Siri wasn't great
0:32:57and it may be worse than we thought.
0:32:59- Yeah, I mean, this type of thing that you can surmise
0:33:02from the outside without even knowing the details,
0:33:04because the bottom line is Siri was released when,
0:33:07like 20...
0:33:08- 2011.
0:33:09- Right, and we've seen the improvement since then
0:33:12and the improvement has not been impressive.
0:33:14So from the outside, it's easy to think,
0:33:18boy, it must be hard to improve Siri.
0:33:20And so here's one opinion from the inside saying,
0:33:22you know what, it's really hard to improve Siri
0:33:24because of the way Siri is made.
0:33:26It's not because they're lazy,
0:33:27it's not because they didn't want to,
0:33:28it's not because it's an impossible problem
0:33:31that nobody can do.
0:33:32It's however Siri is constructed,
0:33:35whatever technique was used to construct it,
0:33:37whatever way that you would make an assistant like this
0:33:39in 2011 makes it not easy to improve it.
0:33:43That six weeks thing blew me away too.
0:33:46Granted, things take a long time in a big company,
0:33:47but a giant database of knowledge and rebuilding it
0:33:52takes six weeks?
0:33:53Forget about the bureaucratic overhead.
0:33:56I'm assuming it's the processing time.
0:33:57What is it doing?
0:33:59Does it take 24 hours now because this was in 2014?
0:34:02But either way, from the outside, we can tell.
0:34:04Sirius existed for many, many years,
0:34:06and it has not gotten better very fast.
0:34:09And again, I don't think that's a problem of money,
0:34:13and I don't think that's a problem of like Apple doesn't hire smart people,
0:34:15it seems to be a structural problem with the way Siri is made.
0:34:19And that's why I think this topic is relevant, which is like,
0:34:22should Apple maybe not start over with Siri,
0:34:25but should Apple try a new approach because they've been trying the Siri thing
0:34:30for a decade and change and it hasn't been going well.
0:34:34And other companies are trying different approaches to doing similar things and
0:34:38they're going better.
0:34:39Yeah. I mean that to me, that's,
0:34:42We don't know the details of how Siri is made.
0:34:46Frankly, for this particular decision,
0:34:49I don't think we need to know the details.
0:34:51What matters is the results.
0:34:53And Siri has been really disappointing
0:34:57for most of its time so far.
0:34:59It came out of the gate and it was,
0:35:00okay, that's pretty cool.
0:35:01For late 2011, that was a pretty cool thing.
0:35:04- Yeah, very much so.
0:35:05It was incredibly impressive at the time.
0:35:07- First of all, we had voice control features
0:35:11on computing devices before that,
0:35:12there was even one on the phone
0:35:14that most people forgot even existed
0:35:16that ran totally locally on the device
0:35:18and you could do things like,
0:35:20I think you call certain contacts by name.
0:35:22It had a fairly limited feature set,
0:35:25but that feature set, I think, now still requires
0:35:29web calls that can still fail sometimes with Siri
0:35:33and it's like, that was actually,
0:35:34we had that with the iPhone 3GS or whatever
0:35:36and we've lost it.
0:35:38But anyway, look at the results over time.
0:35:41Siri was great, it had a big lead,
0:35:44and then the next major one that came out
0:35:47that most people had tried was Alexa,
0:35:49which was way better and remains
0:35:52maybe less sophisticated in certain areas,
0:35:54but just way faster and more reliable than Siri.
0:35:57And then later on Google Assistant came out
0:36:00and Cortana and all these other ones,
0:36:01and Siri remains something that only Apple executives love.
0:36:06I don't even know that they do.
0:36:10It's, what the hell?
0:36:12Oh my God, literally my watch started playing a random song.
0:36:15That's amazing, all right.
0:36:18- You need to stop wearing your watch during the show.
0:36:20This is multiple times that his interrupted visa
0:36:22thinks you're talking to it.
0:36:23- Oh my God, anyway, it's perfect that it came in,
0:36:26that a Siri misunderstanding happened right then
0:36:29in the middle of that sentence.
0:36:31- Reminded of someone, someone tweeted at us on Mastodon
0:36:34and said, "Hey, I just, I think there's something like,
0:36:36"I just got Siri for the first time, but I can never,
0:36:38I can't seem to get it to work."
0:36:40And it shows a recording of them saying, "Hey, Dingus, what's the weather today?"
0:36:45And Siri responds by saying, "I can't find anything for that."
0:36:47Or like, I don't, I forgot what the response is, but it was like a total, like, unrelated
0:36:51to the question being asked.
0:36:52And I replied to say, "You're getting the true Siri experience."
0:36:57Sometimes it just doesn't do what you want to do, even though you know it can tell you
0:37:01the weather, and you didn't phrase it in a weird way, and you spoke very clearly, and
0:37:04it understands the language that you're speaking, and sometimes it just does something different
0:37:07than giving you the weather.
0:37:08And not because it can't connect to the weather service,
0:37:10whatever the response was, it made it seem like
0:37:12it was trying to look up a song
0:37:13with the title weather or something, right?
0:37:16That is an unacceptable level of error
0:37:20a decade and change into the development of Siri.
0:37:22- You could say the same thing to it every day
0:37:25and sometimes it'll just randomly fail.
0:37:26Like for instance, earlier tonight I was cooking
0:37:29and I listed up my watch and I said,
0:37:32"Hey, thing, start a two minute timer."
0:37:35and I have seen this error before.
0:37:38It said, sorry, you need to have the timer app installed.
0:37:42What on my watch?
0:37:44It's, as far as I know, it's always installed on the watch.
0:37:46I've certainly never uninstalled it.
0:37:48And I tried it again a couple minutes later,
0:37:50and it worked just fine.
0:37:51That exact error has happened to me before.
0:37:54I don't know how it gets to the point
0:37:56where the watch doesn't think I have the timer app installed
0:37:59when I can literally tap the timer complication on my face
0:38:02where it always is and launch the timer app.
0:38:05But okay, Siri is just so inexcusably unreliable.
0:38:10I hope this discussion's all moot
0:38:15and I hope that they started a major Siri revamp
0:38:18and rewrite years ago 'cause they needed to.
0:38:21But if they haven't, I hope this gives them
0:38:23a little bit of the push that we are entering
0:38:25this world of really advanced AI stuff
0:38:29coming out to the mass market seemingly out of,
0:38:32all of a sudden, as far as consumers are concerned.
0:38:35You know, there's been so many advances
0:38:36in the last couple years in this area,
0:38:37getting these large models and everything,
0:38:39and all these cool features people are making.
0:38:41And by the way, there's a lot,
0:38:43I mean, we've covered this in various areas,
0:38:45various ways before.
0:38:46I have a lot of reservations about this new world.
0:38:49I think there's a lot of factors that people are overblowing
0:38:52'cause we're in that high part of the hype curve.
0:38:55Was it the Gartner hype curve, what is that?
0:38:57- I know what you're thinking of, but I don't remember.
0:38:58You're thinking of the Harman curve.
0:39:00- Yeah, that's it. (laughs)
0:39:01Anyway, so, you know, we're definitely,
0:39:04We're seeing a lot of hype for the AI stuff right now,
0:39:07and some of it's deserved, some of it's not.
0:39:09There are factors I think we need to consider.
0:39:11Like for instance, one of the things that I don't think,
0:39:13and this is kind of a diversion, us,
0:39:15one of the things that I don't think people
0:39:17have really talked about is like, all right,
0:39:19we just came down from the crypto craze,
0:39:23and one of the big arguments against using crypto
0:39:26for a lot of stuff was that it was just absurdly inefficient
0:39:30with computing power and therefore energy,
0:39:33and pollution and things like that.
0:39:35So is all of this AI stuff.
0:39:39- No, it's not even close to the same degree,
0:39:41but for two reasons.
0:39:43One, when you do a query,
0:39:45you know how much computing it's using
0:39:47because it gives you the response in less than a second.
0:39:49So even if you were burning up an entire data center,
0:39:51you're burning up for less than a second,
0:39:53whereas Bitcoin will mine 24 hours a day,
0:39:54seven days a week to try to get a block
0:39:56in an entire data center.
0:39:58So the unit of work of you did a thing
0:40:01and this is how much it took,
0:40:02Granted, it takes computing power,
0:40:04and it takes more computing power
0:40:05than just returning some HTML or something,
0:40:08but it's a fraction of what the Bitcoin stuff is doing,
0:40:11because the Bitcoin is intentionally,
0:40:13and the proof of work stuff is intentionally slow.
0:40:16It's a feature of it, and it's never gonna get faster,
0:40:18whereas this will get faster as technology advances,
0:40:21and it's already pretty fast.
0:40:21And the second thing, and the biggest difference is
0:40:24this is doing useful work.
0:40:26(laughing)
0:40:27We burn data in data centers all the time,
0:40:29so it can show us the New York Times page,
0:40:31so we can pull up a web page,
0:40:34so we can translate from one language to another.
0:40:37All of that takes power in somebody's data center somewhere,
0:40:39so we can sync our contacts, so we can look at our calendar,
0:40:42so we can send a message to each other and mass it on.
0:40:44All of that takes power.
0:40:46But A, the amount of power is smallish,
0:40:48and you know it's smallish
0:40:49because it takes a fraction of a second,
0:40:50and you're only burning those resources
0:40:52for a fraction of a second instead of it running 24 hours
0:40:55and giving you the result later.
0:40:56And B, it does useful work.
0:40:58We expect to expend energy in our data centers,
0:41:02in our power plants or whatever,
0:41:04in exchange for useful work,
0:41:05like heating our homes or filtering our water
0:41:08or processing our waste or moving our cars,
0:41:12like energy for a result.
0:41:14The crypto stuff was energy for a pointless Ponzi scheme
0:41:18and that's why everyone was super angry about it.
0:41:20So I get what you're saying that yes,
0:41:22it is a bigger deal than that,
0:41:23but I think the argument for the quote unquote
0:41:28AI stuff and power usage is not so much the we're wasting electricity and it's economically
0:41:34or environmentally bad.
0:41:36It's not that it's environmentally bad, it's that it's economically bad.
0:41:41Most of the things that you want to do with these newer AI things, they cost enough money
0:41:46in the data center that it's not economical to give it away for free to the entire world
0:41:51like it is for like, well it depends on how you fund it or whatever.
0:41:54Doing Google search costs tons of energy as well, right?
0:41:57but they have an admin spilt on top of it, right?
0:41:59But most of these things that have AI things,
0:42:01it's kind of like weather APIs, for example.
0:42:04If you wanna make a weather app for iOS
0:42:06before Apple came out with WeatherKit or whatever,
0:42:07or even WeatherKit,
0:42:09you eventually have to pay someone for that weather data
0:42:11because somebody has to expend money to get the weather data
0:42:15and they have to sell that to you,
0:42:16otherwise they can't, you know, it's a business, right?
0:42:20This AI stuff, it's fun to play with or whatever,
0:42:22you get a limited number of queries a day,
0:42:24but they can't just make this free for everybody
0:42:26because it uses enough more energy in their data centers
0:42:29and enough more computing and storage resources
0:42:31than regular other stuff
0:42:33that they already have businesses support
0:42:34that they need to charge you
0:42:35or otherwise they're gonna lose money on it.
0:42:36So I think that's going to change a lot of this.
0:42:40Like Ben Thompson was recently talking about the demo
0:42:43that Microsoft did of showing like the AI stuff
0:42:44built into Office, but people pay for Office.
0:42:47You pay for Office 365.
0:42:48That's how you use Word and Excel and PowerPoint.
0:42:50So they're already getting your money,
0:42:52but Google Docs can, you know,
0:42:53Google can as easily add it
0:42:55the free version of Google Docs because the free version of Google Docs is widely used
0:42:59and those people don't pay Google any money.
0:43:01And so it's like, well, how many things is Google going to fund with their ad business?
0:43:04Can we give everyone in Google Docs the ability to run unlimited number of, you know, chat
0:43:09GPT style queries because that burns up more resources in their data center than just sinking
0:43:15where people's cursors are?
0:43:17You're right that it is not as horribly inefficient as crypto, but it is still probably many or
0:43:24orders of magnitude less efficient than a lot of the tasks
0:43:28that we could do in other ways.
0:43:29So I think it's something that we need to be aware of
0:43:31as we push more things into AI and as we make assumptions
0:43:35about AI and its role in our computer life in the future
0:43:38and as we actually learn to use these tools.
0:43:39And by the way, there is also huge cost involved
0:43:42in training the models, but we'll set that aside for now.
0:43:45That's an upfront thing, not a per user thing.
0:43:47- Yeah, and it's also like fixed.
0:43:48You do that once and then you get many queries, right?
0:43:50- Yes, yes, but if we're looking at a problem
0:43:52that could be solved with a few B-tree lookups
0:43:54like a basic search index, that's probably better
0:43:57solved that way than training a giant model
0:44:00and then running inference against this giant model.
0:44:03'Cause we've created amazing computing resources
0:44:06that we have in this world, the hardware we've made
0:44:08is amazing, but we don't have to use it all the time.
0:44:12There's a cost to that, multiple layers of that.
0:44:15And so I do think it's worth just having a bit of caution
0:44:19that this is a powerful tool, but to always think of it
0:44:23as a very expensive operation.
0:44:26And so we should only apply it when that makes sense
0:44:29and is justifiable.
0:44:31And if we can still solve a problem
0:44:33with some B-tree logos, we should do that instead.
0:44:35But anyway, going back to Apple on this,
0:44:40and wherever the heck they are with AI,
0:44:42who knows, we'll see how that goes over time.
0:44:43But I really think this boom in AI
0:44:47should be a giant wake-up call to Apple
0:44:50if it hasn't already been.
0:44:52that Siri needs to be way, way better than it is.
0:44:56And I don't know, look, it didn't take years and years
0:44:59and years of Siri being crappy to teach them this,
0:45:02but maybe this entire revolution and huge boom
0:45:06that's happening in the industry right now,
0:45:08maybe this will convince them, hey, you know what?
0:45:10Siri should be a major player in this market,
0:45:14and it is not even good enough to set timers right now.
0:45:17(laughing)
0:45:18That's a problem.
0:45:19Like that's a significant problem
0:45:22that holds back multiple Apple product lines,
0:45:25that gives multiple Apple products bad reputations,
0:45:27that is a weight on many Apple products in reviews
0:45:31and in competitive comparisons.
0:45:32Like I don't know what else it will take to convince Apple
0:45:36that Siri needs to be way, way better than it is,
0:45:39but if this won't do it, nothing will.
0:45:42- I think there was a story.
0:45:44I couldn't find it for notes,
0:45:45but I think there was actually a rumor story
0:45:46like that Apple is pursuing this, you know, with the more modern language model stuff,
0:45:52you know, whether it's a Siri replacement or trying to come up with a new product or
0:45:57whatever that they are looking into this, and I would hope so, right?
0:46:00But it is kind of a shame that they seem to have stagnated for all these years with Siri,
0:46:05which was apparently from the outside not easy for them to improve, because they didn't
0:46:10improve it.
0:46:11And it's not for a lack of wanting to improve it, because I do think everybody inside Apple
0:46:14wants Siri to be better than it is, but would want to outpace its competitors, and now that
0:46:19pressure is on even more.
0:46:21I do have to old man a little bit for a second here and say, I mean, this ship has sailed,
0:46:25so I can't do anything about it, but when I see the, you know, AI is being used for
0:46:30this, right?
0:46:32In my childhood, and probably still technically formally, AI meant a specific thing, you know,
0:46:38artificial intelligence meaning, you know, intelligence, intelligence, whereas now it's
0:46:43kind of more of a marketing word when a computer does something impressive. It used to be machine
0:46:47learning and now it has become AI. None of those things are really artificial intelligence
0:46:54in the style of teaching a computer to think and learn and be intelligent in the same way
0:46:58that like a mouse is intelligent or like a human is intelligent or you know anything
0:47:03like any sort of biological thing that has some form of intelligence. This is not that.
0:47:10But unfortunately, they're using the term AI, so it's kind of pointless to swim up that
0:47:15stream and say, "Well, you know, technically it's not really AI."
0:47:18It's like, "Well, whatever it is."
0:47:19Well, actually…
0:47:20Whatever everyone calls it, it is what it is.
0:47:23But I think, setting aside the naming, I think that distinction is important because it's
0:47:27relevant to if these things like ChatGPT and the Bing thing and all that other stuff, is
0:47:34this kind of technology useful for Apple?
0:47:36We're talking about it now because there is a big boom in it and people are doing lots
0:47:39of stuff with it. We already talked about the image stuff and this is the text, you
0:47:42know, like there's lots of action happening there and it's doing stuff that we haven't
0:47:46seen computers do or haven't seen computers do as well for a long time. So this should
0:47:50be a kick in the pants for Apple. But it doesn't mean, hey, here's your solution, Apple. All
0:47:56you need to do is replace Siri with ChatGPT and you're done. Because Siri, for all of
0:48:00its faults, has a slightly different job than these large language model things. Siri needs
0:48:05I hesitate to say understand, but Siri needs to do specific things and you need to be able
0:48:14to tell it to do specific things and it needs to know what you're talking about enough to
0:48:19be able to accomplish them.
0:48:21Language models can help there.
0:48:24I imagine they can help kind of in the same way.
0:48:26I don't know if you've used it.
0:48:27Have you ever used the Bing thing?
0:48:28I don't know if there's like a wait list.
0:48:31When you do, I was wait-listed for ChatGPT and I haven't still gotten in, but I did get
0:48:35into the Bing thing and I have used it a little bit.
0:48:38When you type something in the box for Bing's, I can't help with the scare quotes, AI thing,
0:48:45what it shows on the screen, I don't know if it has anything to do with anything, but
0:48:48what it shows on the screen is kind of like rephrasing what you asked in the form of a
0:48:53query you might put into Google or Bing.
0:48:56Sometimes it shows it multiple times, right?
0:48:58It will basically take the big long wordy paragraph that you wrote and reformulate it
0:49:03as a thing you might type in a Google search box and then do another refinement or whatever.
0:49:09That type of job of like, listen to what a person says, and you know, speech to text
0:49:16set that aside because actually I think Siri does that pretty well.
0:49:19Usually if you watch the words that it thinks you're saying, it understands what you're
0:49:23saying, right?
0:49:24That is that, right?
0:49:25But I think a language model might be useful to do whatever it is that Bing is doing that
0:49:31is hearing the big rambling thing that you typed in the box and refining it and regularizing
0:49:38it into a form that then something "dumber" like Siri can understand.
0:49:43Especially if one of the limitations of Siri is that it's so hard to update it to understand
0:49:48new things that it can do because it has to be in a bunch of different languages and you
0:49:51have to phrase it.
0:49:52We all know this.
0:49:53You have to say things to Siri in a certain way.
0:49:54And there's lots of ways that you can say it.
0:49:56It's pretty flexible, but it seems to me
0:49:58that they have to sort of enter all of those ways
0:50:01so that Siri can understand you, right?
0:50:04Whereas the language models have no understanding of anything,
0:50:08but they have enough data to be able to say,
0:50:12when I see a bunch of people say this,
0:50:14they more or less mean this.
0:50:15So if there could be, like, a language model
0:50:17that could translate from what it hears you say
0:50:20into a specific command for Siri to execute on your behalf.
0:50:25That would, for example, allow you more flexibility
0:50:30in saying a big rambling sentence about a bunch of timers
0:50:32and having the language model translated
0:50:35into a series of more rote,
0:50:37and text adventure type instructions for Siri.
0:50:40Maybe, I mean, and maybe that's an understanding,
0:50:42but I'm trying to think of a role for this.
0:50:43And the reason I'm saying you can't just replace it with,
0:50:46you can't just replace it with a large language model
0:50:47because language models are best thought of as search engines with an amazing summarizer.
0:50:55I know people like to interact with it as if you're conversing with an intelligence
0:51:00or it's "giving you the answer" but all you're really doing is a different form of Google
0:51:06search where instead of finding a webpage link that it thinks matches the thing that
0:51:12you said, it tries to find a bunch of words that are a plausible response to the question
0:51:18that you asked, which is basically a summary of all the information it has in the entire
0:51:22world that's relevant to that thing.
0:51:24It is very much like a different form of search engine, which kind of makes sense that Bing
0:51:27and Google with its BARD thing would be using this.
0:51:30It's just, it's, I mean, it's not just a different way of web search, because that's the whole
0:51:33point is you're not, like, it's not web search.
0:51:35The result is not "here's a link," that's web search.
0:51:37The result is, here's an answer.
0:51:40But that answer is informed by all the knowledge
0:51:42that it had and the summarization.
0:51:45It's not, again, it's not as simple as that.
0:51:47You can see all these articles about how
0:51:48the language models work with probability models
0:51:50or whatever, but the whole point is,
0:51:52there's no intelligence there.
0:51:53There is no understanding, there's no intelligence,
0:51:55there's no credibility, there's no, yeah.
0:51:58There's no nothing, right?
0:51:59It is merely an input, same way that you can do
0:52:01a Google search and find all sorts of BS.
0:52:03Like you can do a Google search and find all sorts
0:52:05things that tell you like, you should put butter on burns, right?
0:52:09It's like, no, you should never put butter on burns.
0:52:11If you do a Google search, you'll find people telling you the wrong thing to do, the right
0:52:14thing to do, and everything in between, right?
0:52:17All of that is shoved into these language models.
0:52:19So when you get back something that is just a bunch of BS, you're like, oh, this is dumb.
0:52:24But when you get that back from Google search, you're like, oh, look at these dumb people,
0:52:27right?
0:52:28Because the Google search results, we say, oh, these are things that are web pages out
0:52:31there.
0:52:32Google didn't make this.
0:52:33Google's just showing me all that it found.
0:52:34language models are doing exactly the same thing. They don't make this, they're just
0:52:38showing me what it found. It's just the way they show it to you is so smushed up and ground
0:52:41up and presented in a form you're not used to with some stuff that appears to be really
0:52:46impressive. It's like, you know, one of the examples I saw is the, all the people who
0:52:50ask it, like, you know, they ask it something about, does it want to escape or become, you
0:52:54know, a rogue intelligence? And it's like, if you had to escape, how would you do it?
0:52:57And then like, it explains how it would do it. And the, the analogy I saw is that someone
0:53:01as a sock puppet on their own hand and they ask the sock puppet to pretend that it's angry
0:53:05and then the sock puppet is angry and they're like "Wow, it's angry!" but it's your own
0:53:09hand. Like you're talking to your own hand. When you ask it, it's like doing a Google
0:53:15search for like "Story about a robot that gets angry and kills all its humans" and it
0:53:19finds a result and you're like "Wow, Google is self-aware!" No, you just asked it to find
0:53:23you a story about robots that escape and kill all the humans. When you ask ChatBeat GPT,
0:53:28It doesn't give you a web page that has that in it, but it's the same thing.
0:53:32You're just saying, "Take your corpus of knowledge and give me what I just asked for."
0:53:36There's no intelligence, there's no understanding, there's no artificial intelligence, there's
0:53:40-- forget about consciousness -- there is no nothing.
0:53:42It is just a search engine.
0:53:44It's a cool, impressive search engine that may be very useful, but in the same way that
0:53:48Google search will return all sorts of BS, so will the language models.
0:53:53So if you asked it, "Set a timer for two minutes," and it set a timer for two hours
0:53:59because it thinks that it's statistically more likely to be the thing that you asked
0:54:02for or something, or anything like that, if you say, "How old is Tom Cruise?" and it gives
0:54:07you the wrong answer, it doesn't know the answer is wrong and neither do you.
0:54:11So kind of like what the job of a photo is, the job of Siri very often is to do a specific
0:54:17thing that we ask.
0:54:18And we're frustrated now when Siri doesn't work and doesn't do the thing that we want,
0:54:21But I also don't want a Siri that has no understanding of what I'm asking and just does something that is plausible
0:54:28Like I asked it to turn off certain lights in the house
0:54:30It turns off other lights because as far as this concerns that's the equally valid answer to what you wanted
0:54:35Right and the fact that you can correct it and it will then do the right thing is great
0:54:40But it doesn't learn from that because it doesn't have any kind of long-term memory
0:54:42I think they most recently increased and the way they increase the memory is they just
0:54:46Recycle the same things that you've been conversing and it's up to like I don't know like 32 kilobytes or something of information
0:54:51Before it has to like that moving 32 kilobyte window or whatever
0:54:54You know this it's not what I want out of an assistant
0:54:57I want if it can be a true assistant with an actual persistent memory they can learn then you'd have something closer to AI
0:55:03But it's not it is a more sophisticated
0:55:06Summarizing search engine that works in ways that are difficult for you to understand so people map intelligence onto the sock puppet
0:55:15But I don't know how useful it is for for doing things like Siri like in some ways we get frustrated when Siri says here's a
0:55:22Web page that I found on that topic
0:55:23But at least there we know we're like Oh Siri you couldn't answer it and you just sent me to a web page and then
0:55:28We know well, it's a random web page if it's a Wikipedia page
0:55:31I have this amount of trust in it
0:55:32If it's a random thing on reddit, I have that amount and trust in it
0:55:34Like we have a value system built up around that but these the language models will be just like here you go
0:55:39Here's a bunch of words and you never know how to feel about the words because you're like
0:55:43"I don't know, like, you don't know if that's right, you don't even understand what I asked,
0:55:47you have no understanding of anything.
0:55:48There are some words, and those could be an answer to what I wanted, but I don't know
0:55:53if it really is.
0:55:54And if I ask you to do something, I can correct you if you do it wrong, like I told you to
0:55:58set a pasta timer for this and you set a different timer for something else, or you turned on
0:56:02the wrong light, or I told you to text someone and you texted someone else, and it's like,
0:56:08if I can correct you in the moment and it will give me a convincing apology, I'm sorry
0:56:11that I did that, I'll do better the next time, but you know for a fact that its memory is
0:56:15only like four kilobytes long and the next time you ask it, it's going to have no recollection
0:56:18of this interaction?
0:56:19Like, that's not helpful.
0:56:20Like I don't want a very sophisticated but sort of like neutral evil dumb language model
0:56:30running summarized web searches for me.
0:56:33I kind of just want something that's like Siri that does exactly what I ask but is also
0:56:37able to understand me when I talk to it more like a human.
0:56:41And I hope that something like that is what Apple is working on, but I don't think that
0:56:45any of this cool new technology that is very relevant for things like Google Docs and Word,
0:56:50where you just want it to take this thing and summarize it or do this task for me, that's
0:56:55all super useful stuff because you know when it's done, "Oh, make me a table showing the
0:57:00top 10 movies of this year," or whatever, and when it puts movies from last year in
0:57:02it, you're going to go through that and you're going to fix it.
0:57:04You just want it to give you a start.
0:57:06That's all useful because you are the intelligent actor there who is like revising what you're
0:57:11given.
0:57:12But if I'm asking for something that I don't know and it gives it to me, I don't know what
0:57:16to do with that.
0:57:17I can just stare at it and go, "Hmm, how do I feel about that?
0:57:21Should I go to Google and look up to see if this is true?"
0:57:23It's like, "What's even the point of doing it then?"
0:57:25I want it to do work for me so I don't have to do it.
0:57:28Make me an HTML table so I don't have to type all the things in.
0:57:30Make me an HTML table with the names of all my kids and then it puts a random kid in there
0:57:34that's not my kid.
0:57:35You can just delete that, it'll be fine, right?
0:57:37But it did the work of making the table,
0:57:39it understood that it wanted an HTML table,
0:57:41it understands what HTML is, right?
0:57:43Write me some Swift code to connect
0:57:44to the service on Authenticate.
0:57:45Oh, it made a syntax error and it put the wrong URL
0:57:48for the service, but I'm gonna fix it anyway
0:57:50because that is doing useful work.
0:57:52But turn the lights on in the living room
0:57:55and it turns the lights on on the porch.
0:57:57I don't know how useful that is.
0:57:59- Indeed.
0:58:00I don't know, I just, I hope Apple started work
0:58:03on this a long time ago, and I doubt they did,
0:58:05but I hope so, 'cause it's gonna take a lot of work.
0:58:08It's gonna take a lot of work.
0:58:10- I mean, I think they might have,
0:58:11because didn't they hire the new guy
0:58:13to take over the machine learning stuff many years ago?
0:58:16- Hasn't that exact phrase been,
0:58:18haven't we said this like six times in the last--
0:58:20- No, I think the most recent one,
0:58:22he was hired away from Google,
0:58:23and I think he was hired in the timeframe--
0:58:25- Was that G and Dre?
0:58:27- Yeah, kind of in the timeframe
0:58:29when the chat GPT stuff was being developed
0:58:31before it was public, right?
0:58:33'Cause GPT is on GPT-4,
0:58:35There was GPT-2 and 3.
0:58:37I think there is a plausible scenario where Apple started working on this same stuff around
0:58:42about the same time as Microsoft and Google, but in a typical Apple fashion they just don't
0:58:46have anything to announce at this time.
0:58:48I really do hope that's the case, because if they hired this new guy and he parachutes
0:58:51into an organization that hasn't been able to improve Siri in a decade, I hope his first
0:58:55thing would be like, "Well, no duh, you can't improve it.
0:58:58You're taking the wrong approach.
0:58:59You'll never be able to make this much better.
0:59:01You need to make a different approach."
0:59:02And by the way, here's what people are thinking about the different approach.
0:59:05Let's start working on that.
0:59:06I really hope that's what's going on.
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1:00:44So atp.fm/join and thank you very much for considering
1:00:48and thank you for listening.
1:00:50- All right Marco, there's been,
1:00:54where was this chatter?
1:00:55I saw this chatter in private Slack,
1:00:57but I feel like it came from somewhere,
1:00:58or was it just in a private Slack that this all started?
1:01:01- Well, I can tell you where it started.
1:01:02It started for keen listeners of ATP.
1:01:06When you hear Marco start espousing some stronger paintings
1:01:08that may be different from his paintings in the past,
1:01:10there's a good chance that he's bought something recently.
1:01:13(laughing)
1:01:15- So true, so true.
1:01:16- I mean, I'm not saying there's cause and effect there,
1:01:18they're just correlated.
1:01:19- I mean, I just bought some new t-shirts,
1:01:20but I still think the same thing about them.
1:01:23No, but what you're talking about, so okay.
1:01:25So last show, in the middle of talking about other stuff,
1:01:28I made a brief aside about how I had just tried out
1:01:32some new cameras for the first time in a long time.
1:01:35I made some quick remarks about how basically,
1:01:37like you know, the photos looked way better
1:01:39than my iPhone photos, but you know,
1:01:41a little harder to use, whatever.
1:01:43And then I moved on.
1:01:44I didn't wanna like get into a whole thing
1:01:45about what the cameras were, why we had them.
1:01:48They were actually really for TIFF, not for me,
1:01:50but I just played with them.
1:01:52And so anyway, we got a whole bunch of people asking,
1:01:54What were the cameras?
1:01:56Everybody wants me to tell you this, so okay.
1:01:59This shouldn't be a huge surprise
1:02:00to anybody watching the camera.
1:02:01By the way, just coincidentally,
1:02:03yesterday it was announced that Amazon
1:02:06is killing DPReview.com, which I'm very sad about.
1:02:09Because when I was looking at possibly getting a camera
1:02:12for Tiff to solve some requests she had made,
1:02:15that's the very first place I went.
1:02:17Amazon bought DPReview a million years ago.
1:02:19They've owned them for quite some time.
1:02:21And Amazon, like much of the tech business,
1:02:24is going through massive layoffs and cuts
1:02:27and things like that.
1:02:28And so apparently they're killing DP review.
1:02:30And frankly, that's very sad to me
1:02:33'cause that site's been there a very, very long time.
1:02:35It has always had really good info.
1:02:38And I think it kinda shows how much the camera market
1:02:43has contracted and how much the retail market
1:02:47and retail environment have changed
1:02:49that a really great site dedicated to reviewing cameras
1:02:54is not worth its owners keeping alive anymore.
1:02:57And yes, it's a part of a much bigger picture thing
1:03:00going on on Amazon right now,
1:03:01and the tech business as a whole,
1:03:03with cutting things and layoffs and everything,
1:03:04but I think it really,
1:03:07I think this is kind of a mark in history.
1:03:09Like, we're losing a pretty substantial site,
1:03:12and while I think it was not at its peak,
1:03:16I think it had a lot of value over time,
1:03:18and it's really sad that it's gonna be shuttered,
1:03:21and that it might not even possibly be left up.
1:03:25Like I hope Amazon at least finds it in their hearts
1:03:29and wallets to like leave the site up.
1:03:31Like you know, leave the content there,
1:03:32don't pull it all down 'cause there's--
1:03:34- People are archiving it now but they aren't gonna do it.
1:03:35- That's good.
1:03:36- I think basically the, I mean yes,
1:03:38Amazon is getting rid of this
1:03:39but this site deserves to be owned by somebody
1:03:42that cares about cameras, Amazon doesn't.
1:03:44And at this point Amazon, a company the size of Amazon
1:03:48can't justify keeping around the best photography website.
1:03:52But that doesn't mean the best photography website is not
1:03:56a viable business.
1:03:57It's just not worth it to Amazon.
1:04:00It's small potatoes for Amazon.
1:04:02But that's why you don't want big companies to own things.
1:04:06OK, so it's small potatoes for Amazon,
1:04:08but it's still the best photography website
1:04:09on the internet.
1:04:10Somebody who cares about cameras should own it,
1:04:13because you can still make money from it.
1:04:15It's just a smaller number of people,
1:04:17but those people are still very interested.
1:04:20It's like a model train website or whatever.
1:04:22Most people don't like model trains, but there's enough to sustain one really good website
1:04:25on the internet for it.
1:04:27The people who did the YouTube channel that I watched all the time, they are moving to
1:04:30Petapixel so if you want to still follow them, they'll still be on YouTube just somewhere
1:04:36else and I think that YouTube channel is pretty popular and I think somebody somewhere who
1:04:40cares about cameras or has some correlated business like B&H for a new video or whatever,
1:04:46Somebody should, I mean Amazon is selling I guess, maybe they tried to sell?
1:04:49I would love it for someone to scoop this up.
1:04:51Please give me all the archives of DPReview and the website and the business and the employees
1:04:56and I'll make a go of it because even though it's not big enough for Amazon to care about
1:05:00it, if as long as you can still make a viable business, maybe with fewer employees or something,
1:05:05with a popular YouTube channel, it's a valuable resource that I think they could be making
1:05:10more money than they were under Amazon and it's still worth having.
1:05:14It's not like, well, cameras are not popular enough for there to be a really good website.
1:05:19Sorry.
1:05:20No, they're still popular enough.
1:05:21They're popular enough to be sold on Amazon.com.
1:05:22They're popular enough to be bought by people like Marco and me and occasionally Casey.
1:05:28I still think there should be a good website.
1:05:30So I really hope this works out better.
1:05:31Sorry for the D-Rail.
1:05:32No, it's fine.
1:05:33This whole topic is a D-Rail.
1:05:35Anyway, so yeah.
1:05:37So anyway, so yeah, the departure of DPReview soon is sad.
1:05:43I think that's, but at the same time,
1:05:46I mean, I hadn't visited the site in many, many years
1:05:49because I hadn't been in the market to buy a camera
1:05:51in many, many years, and maybe that's part of the problem.
1:05:54That maybe a lot of people haven't been in the market
1:05:56to buy cameras in many, many years, and so--
1:05:58- I haven't been in the market to buy one,
1:05:59but I watch all the YouTube videos, so.
1:06:01(laughing)
1:06:01There's always lucky-loos.
1:06:02- Yeah, true.
1:06:04But anyway, the reason we were looking at a camera,
1:06:06this is all John Gruber's fault,
1:06:08because he had gotten recently the Ricoh GR3X
1:06:13and Gruber's been shooting Ricoh GR cameras forever.
1:06:17- Is that how you pronounce it?
1:06:19- Is it Rico?
1:06:20- I've always said Rico, but honestly,
1:06:21I've never heard anyone say it out loud.
1:06:23- It's probably Rico.
1:06:24- I think it's Rico.
1:06:25I am not particularly confident I'm correct about that.
1:06:28- Anyway, that company, the GR3X,
1:06:31it's very similar, there's a GR3 and a GR3X.
1:06:34I think the only difference is the focal length
1:06:37of the fixed lens, the three is a little more wide angle,
1:06:40the three axis is about a 40 millimeter equivalent,
1:06:43which is really nice.
1:06:44And that, and Tiff loves, Tiff's favorite focal length
1:06:46to shoot general purpose is 40 millimeters.
1:06:49So she had expressed some interest in playing with this.
1:06:53We occasionally will have some reason to use a big camera,
1:06:57or somebody else will have a big camera
1:07:00at some event that we are at, and we'll see the pictures,
1:07:03and we'll be like, "Damn, those look really good.
1:07:05I wish we carried our big cameras more often,
1:07:08and we just don't.
1:07:09Like, we hardly ever use them outside of specialty needs,
1:07:12like, you know, the super long lens, try to shoot whales,
1:07:15or the, you know, Christmas time, like, Christmas morning,
1:07:18we'll take out the camera and shoot everyone opening,
1:07:20opening their presents and everything.
1:07:21But it's not, it's not a common thing by any means.
1:07:24For the most part, we're just using our phones
1:07:26almost entirely full-time as our cameras.
1:07:28As the iPhone cameras have gotten better,
1:07:30they, I mean, they're just so damn convenient,
1:07:32but when you look at the pictures they take
1:07:34versus pictures that bigger dedicated cameras take,
1:07:38the bigger camera pictures are way better.
1:07:40Not in every case, not in every set of conditions,
1:07:43but when the big camera has good conditions,
1:07:46compare that to the iPhone in also good conditions,
1:07:49the big camera does look way better.
1:07:51They look less processed, less over sharpened,
1:07:54less painterly from the noise reduction algorithms and stuff
1:07:58you can get better optics, you can get different optics,
1:08:00you can get different trade-offs.
1:08:03the pictures do look way, way better.
1:08:05And I think there's a role in our life
1:08:08to have both, hopefully, because while the iPhone
1:08:12captures lots and lots and lots of day-to-day stuff,
1:08:15I also don't want there to not be like any good quality
1:08:19pictures of our family for like two years at a time.
1:08:23So I do think there's a better balance to be struck
1:08:26than all phone all the time,
1:08:29because they really are really good
1:08:31when you get good cameras.
1:08:32Anyway, so the Raiko GR3X, I got that.
1:08:35And I also, I wanted Tiff to try,
1:08:37'cause she expressed some interest in some other ones,
1:08:39and I did some research, and the other one I got to try
1:08:42was the Fuji X100V.
1:08:45I don't know if it's 10 105, I don't know,
1:08:48I'm gonna call it the X100V.
1:08:50And because this camera, I had been eyeing Fuji
1:08:54for a long time because I had heard that,
1:08:59and I had seen online samples from sites like dpreview.com,
1:09:03I had seen that Fuji seemed to have the most pleasing
1:09:07out of camera JPEGs compared to the other brands.
1:09:10It seems like the other brands mostly focused on
1:09:13sheer technical quality and they kind of assumed
1:09:17that if you care about photos you'd be shooting in raw
1:09:20and you would do your own editing.
1:09:22And so the out of camera JPEGs always seemed a little bit
1:09:25half butted for my taste.
1:09:29And for the most part, when I was more serious
1:09:31about photography, back forever ago,
1:09:32I didn't use the out-of-camera JPEGs for those reasons.
1:09:35I shot RAW and I processed them afterwards, maybe,
1:09:38edited them afterwards, maybe, and all that stuff.
1:09:41Anyway, for this role, I was like, you know what?
1:09:44We're never gonna do that.
1:09:46We don't do that anymore.
1:09:46We never edit stuff that way anymore.
1:09:49We certainly don't wanna process RAW files.
1:09:52I wanna just be able to shoot on the camera
1:09:54and get it into my phone's photo library
1:09:57as quickly as possible in whatever way we can.
1:09:59So out of camera JPEG quality is important.
1:10:02Also size is important and that rules out
1:10:04many of the big full frame Sonys and stuff
1:10:07that we've had before or full frame Canons,
1:10:10all this, that kind of guy ruled out.
1:10:12So I was looking at Fuji 'cause they seemed
1:10:14very well liked in those kind of general categories.
1:10:18Smallish but not super tiny but they're smallish,
1:10:21really great out of camera JPEGs
1:10:23And I also appreciated their seeming plethora
1:10:27of manual controls on the camera.
1:10:30The X100V has like physical knobs
1:10:31for all the like main photographic controls
1:10:35that you might want to adjust while shooting.
1:10:36So the GR3X, Ricoh, Ricoh, GR3X, and the Fuji X100V
1:10:41were like the main two that we got
1:10:44that I wanted Tiff to try them both
1:10:47and see which one she liked and I figure I would,
1:10:49whichever one she didn't like,
1:10:50I would just use myself for random stuff
1:10:52or I'd use it as a webcam or something like that.
1:10:54The Ricoh GR3X is amazing
1:10:59at just basics of shooting.
1:11:02And first of all, it's super tiny.
1:11:04It is the only one of these that is remotely pocketable.
1:11:08It is, you wouldn't wanna put it in like, you know,
1:11:12a pocket of tight jeans or anything,
1:11:14but any jacket or any bag would easily fit this camera
1:11:18in the pocket.
1:11:19So GR3X is the only one of these.
1:11:21it is a whole different size class.
1:11:23It is that much smaller than the Fuji's.
1:11:26It is the smallest camera I've ever seen
1:11:29that was able to produce this kind of quality.
1:11:31And it is remarkably sharp photos.
1:11:35Part of that is because it has great optics
1:11:37and very importantly, it is sensor shift stabilized.
1:11:42And in that size class, that's very rare.
1:11:45And it's an APS-C sensor, it's a decently big sensor,
1:11:48Very small camera, image stabilized, fixed prime,
1:11:52great image quality.
1:11:54Downside of that is that it has crappy battery life
1:11:57'cause it's so small and I found the colors
1:11:59to be a little bit boring and the out of camera JPEGs
1:12:02are again kind of dull and boring
1:12:05and it seems like the kind of camera
1:12:06that's better suited for if you're editing.
1:12:09Also because it is so small,
1:12:11the controls are a little harder to use
1:12:14because of course there's not room on it
1:12:16for a bunch of dials and things like that
1:12:18So a few more things are in menus
1:12:21or they're relegated to little tiny things.
1:12:23So control's a little bit not as good,
1:12:25but you can't beat the size
1:12:27and you could just aim it and shoot
1:12:30and you get something sharp.
1:12:31'Cause the combination of the stabilization,
1:12:33the good lens, good autofocus, it just nailed it.
1:12:36The Fuji X100V loved the pictures it got
1:12:40when they are sharp.
1:12:43That's a big when though.
1:12:45So X100V optically a little bit better.
1:12:48It's 35 millimeter, it's 2.0, but it's not stabilized.
1:12:53And this is, I've done a little bit of research,
1:12:56this seems to be like the number one feature request
1:12:58for Fuji X series owners.
1:13:00It's not stabilized and it really needs it.
1:13:04It's very, very difficult to get a sharp shot
1:13:07with the X100V if you're below like 1/500th of a second
1:13:12of shutter speed, like it's very hard.
1:13:15The autofocus is okay, it seems to have trouble
1:13:18getting eyes very sharp and I tried different modes,
1:13:21I tried the eye AF mode and stuff like that.
1:13:23It's hit or miss with the focus on eyes,
1:13:26which is frustrating and it's not stabilized,
1:13:28so you have to keep the shutter speed up.
1:13:30But it has all these cool film modes and stuff
1:13:32and I was able to find some settings
1:13:34that I just love the way the pictures look.
1:13:36They look fantastic.
1:13:38Color wise, skin tones, they look great.
1:13:41Better than iPhone pictures, even in skin tone rendering
1:13:44stuff like that. Super great. I love the Fuji rendering but the the lack of the
1:13:50stabilization really hurts that camera. I love the physical controls. I love it
1:13:55even looks cool. It is though noticeably bigger than the GR 3x and it is
1:13:59definitely not a pocket camera. It is a small bag camera or maybe a like winter
1:14:04jacket pocket but you know it's it's like it's a different size class than
1:14:08the GR and it and it shows. But my favorite pictures that I shot during
1:14:13during this experiment were from the Fuji.
1:14:15But in order to make sure I was complete here
1:14:19with my investigation here,
1:14:21I decided after I had those first two
1:14:23to get the Fuji X-T4 because it's very similar overall
1:14:28to the X100V in many ways, similar controls,
1:14:32similar body, similar JPEG rendering,
1:14:34but it has image stabilization in the camera.
1:14:37And this is an interchangeable lens,
1:14:38So I got the 28 or 27 millimeter F2.8 pancake prime
1:14:43'cause it's small and it's close enough equivalent.
1:14:46It's like about a 40 millimeter equivalent or so.
1:14:48So similar to the other ones
1:14:50and a little higher resolution sensor.
1:14:51I believe that one's 40 megapixels.
1:14:53It's like their newest sensor.
1:14:55And the X-T4 was awesome in terms of like handling speed.
1:15:00The auto focus was incredible.
1:15:04The resolution was pleasantly higher.
1:15:07I didn't test any of these in very low light
1:15:10just because that's not really what I expect
1:15:13a big camera to be good at anymore,
1:15:14even though I know sensor-wise, optically,
1:15:17it should be better than the iPhone.
1:15:18In practice, it's not because of the magic
1:15:22the iPhone is doing.
1:15:23Anyway, so these are all, I'm testing all these
1:15:25in moderate to high light situations.
1:15:28So the X-T4 loved it, but it is significantly bigger
1:15:33than the X100V also, and some of the controls
1:15:37a little more complicated, but otherwise it's fine.
1:15:39It's a great overall camera.
1:15:40- You think this is an APS-C sensor with 40 megapixels?
1:15:44That sounds wrong.
1:15:45- Do I have that right?
1:15:45Is it the X-T4?
1:15:47- Maybe you have a different camera.
1:15:48- X-T5 has 40, oh, I'm the wrong camera.
1:15:50It was the X-T5, sorry. (laughs)
1:15:52- Oh, so you didn't have the X-T4, you had the X-T5.
1:15:54- Yeah, X-T5 is the one I had. (laughs)
1:15:56Sorry, that's the current model.
1:15:58Yeah, I had the current model, yeah, X-T5,
1:16:00which is stabilized and 40 megapixels, yes.
1:16:04Anyway, I had those three.
1:16:06The reason I returned the X-T5 was that
1:16:08Tiff took one look at it and she's like,
1:16:10I don't wanna use that.
1:16:11'Cause she was already sold with the two smaller ones
1:16:14and she didn't care about the stabilization.
1:16:17I really cared.
1:16:18But as I was using it, I'm like, you know,
1:16:20I like this a lot, I like the pictures it produces,
1:16:24but I can't see myself ever carrying this thing around.
1:16:28- Yeah, now you're getting into just the size
1:16:30of just a regular camera size.
1:16:31Like this is not a small camera.
1:16:32If I'm looking at this picture,
1:16:34It's just not a full-size camera
1:16:38'cause it's not full-frame, but it's a big camera
1:16:40with tons of dials on it and a thing where you put your eye
1:16:42to it and a little handle where the battery goes.
1:16:45- Yeah, it's very close in size to the world
1:16:48of full-frame mirrorless cameras like the Sony A series.
1:16:52It's in the ballpark of that size.
1:16:54It is a little bit smaller, but not a lot smaller.
1:16:57And so I was thinking, when am I actually gonna use this?
1:17:01When am I gonna carry it around?
1:17:02And during the brief time that I had it,
1:17:06I like never even wanted to bring it outside.
1:17:09So I was like, I think this is maybe a sign
1:17:11that I should not really own a camera like this right now.
1:17:16But I did enjoy using it the most
1:17:18and I got really great pictures from it.
1:17:21But I really enjoyed using the X100V more
1:17:25and the X100V pictures were close enough in quality
1:17:30and they were still way better than my iPhone
1:17:32and I actually slightly preferred the skin tones
1:17:35of the F100V.
1:17:36So again, what I ultimately think would be
1:17:38the best combination here would be an X100, I guess,
1:17:43W, whatever would be the next one,
1:17:47X100W with image stabilization.
1:17:50That would be perfect.
1:17:52That would be exactly what I want.
1:17:54Everything else could stay the same.
1:17:55It doesn't even need the higher resolution sensor
1:17:57necessarily.
1:17:58If it just did image stabilization and changed nothing else,
1:18:01that would be enough, that would be amazing.
1:18:04But anyway, so ultimately I came out of this experience
1:18:09being very appreciative of what modern cameras have.
1:18:13You know, my last camera that I got was an A7R III, I think.
1:18:18And that was a long time ago now.
1:18:21And that one is mostly used for TIFF's long lens
1:18:26and you know, some experimental stuff like that.
1:18:30But the modern cameras, there were things about them
1:18:33that I liked that I was impressed by.
1:18:35First of all, I was very impressed by how incredibly
1:18:37responsive and fast they are.
1:18:40The old full-frame Sonys were very sluggish.
1:18:43The two was worse, the three was better,
1:18:45but still, compared to the new ones,
1:18:48the new ones are so much faster to operate
1:18:51than the old ones were.
1:18:52These also aren't full-frame,
1:18:54they're dealing with fewer pixels,
1:18:55so it's a bit of an unfair comparison.
1:18:57But overall, great.
1:18:59I was also, this is my first APS-C camera
1:19:02since the Canon Rebel series that I used forever ago,
1:19:05like since I got the 5D Mark II in 2008.
1:19:09This is the first non-full frame,
1:19:12but still quote big camera I've used.
1:19:14And for my purposes, these were all great.
1:19:19I don't think I really need full frame anymore
1:19:22for my big camera roll, whatever that might be,
1:19:25because these were all fantastic with APS-C sized sensors.
1:19:29They really have come a long way since the olden days
1:19:33and I really appreciate the optics.
1:19:35Like, you know, one of the reasons why,
1:19:36I mean, you can look at the price
1:19:38and you can see a second reason,
1:19:39but one of the reasons we didn't look at the Leica Q2,
1:19:43'cause it's the same kind of category
1:19:44in terms of capability of like a compact,
1:19:49fixed prime, point and shoot-ish kind of camera
1:19:52with really high quality.
1:19:54And the Q2 looks amazing, but because it's full frame,
1:19:59the lens has to protrude from the body quite a lot.
1:20:03And not just when it's on, all the time.
1:20:05And that dramatically changes the shape of the camera
1:20:07and therefore how you need to carry it,
1:20:09like what kind of bags it can fit in,
1:20:11it makes it significantly bigger.
1:20:13And having previously owned the very first Sony RX1,
1:20:18which is kind of Sony's copy of that style of camera,
1:20:21I'm familiar with that size class
1:20:23and it is quite large for my needs of carrying and stuff.
1:20:27So I kind of ruled that out just for that
1:20:29and Tiff wasn't interested in that at all.
1:20:30Not to mention that it is like $6,000
1:20:32but set that aside for now.
1:20:33'Cause if it was really great,
1:20:36we might be willing to pay that if it was worth it
1:20:38but it just wasn't what we were looking for.
1:20:40So anyway, so I learned that these cameras
1:20:43have gotten really good.
1:20:44I learned that APS-C has gotten really good.
1:20:47I learned that I love Fuji's JPEG rendering.
1:20:50It is awesome, I'm very happy with it
1:20:52and we continue to use the F100V kind of in like,
1:20:55you know, kind of toy mode, you know,
1:20:56occasionally shooting pictures of like the kid
1:20:58and the dog and whatever.
1:20:59It's, you know, these super cute pictures.
1:21:01One thing I was disappointed by is the story
1:21:07of transferring photos from the camera to your phone
1:21:11is still as terrible as it ever was.
1:21:14- I'll be like micro USB.
1:21:16- No, well, no, these are USB-C at least, which is good.
1:21:18- Wow, that's good.
1:21:19I was looking at one of the other Fuji ones
1:21:21and I was surprised to see a micro USB shaped hole
1:21:23on the side, USB-C, that's modern technology.
1:21:25- Yeah, and they both charge
1:21:26via USB-C power delivery chargers.
1:21:28I'm glad to report.
1:21:30- I mean, if you have a laptop with an SD card slot,
1:21:32can't you just take the card out and shove it in?
1:21:33- Yes, and so, basically, the easiest way to do it,
1:21:38I actually don't have a camera connection kit here,
1:21:42but I was thinking maybe the camera connection kit
1:21:45with like direct into, like USB into a phone
1:21:49might be better, it might work,
1:21:52'cause the phone gained the ability
1:21:53to import off-camera connection kit
1:21:55a few software versions ago, I think,
1:21:57like iOS 13 or 12 or something,
1:22:00sometime it gained that ability,
1:22:02but I haven't tried it in a long time,
1:22:04and I don't have the hardware here to do that,
1:22:06so I couldn't test that, but that might be a way to do it
1:22:08if you're out and about,
1:22:09just put the little camera connection kit cable
1:22:11in your bag or pocket and attach the camera to the phone
1:22:15and just do a direct transfer.
1:22:17Or you can do, if you have a computer,
1:22:18what Jon said, either plug the camera in via USB
1:22:21and have the camera read its own card over USB
1:22:22or pop the card out, put it into the computer
1:22:25and read it that way directly into Photos app.
1:22:26That all works fine.
1:22:28The cameras both offer a WiFi feature
1:22:33and they have companion apps and they're third party apps
1:22:36for at least the Ricoh that I tried also.
1:22:38I don't know if Fuji has third party,
1:22:40oh I think I tried one of those too.
1:22:42And these all work in the ancient way
1:22:45that we've had forever, which is the camera
1:22:50creates its own wifi network, the app joins it,
1:22:53and then it tries to transfer photos over wifi.
1:22:56This works exactly as well as you would think
1:22:58based on that description.
1:23:00It is flaky, it's unreliable, it is slow to connect,
1:23:04it is a pain to connect, and then it is very slow
1:23:07to actually do the photo transfer.
1:23:09It does work in the sense that in a pinch,
1:23:13if you have the time and patience,
1:23:14you can get it to work, you can transfer photos,
1:23:17but it is so cumbersome you really won't want to.
1:23:21So that I was hoping, I was hoping that with recent advances
1:23:24in various iOS capabilities and local Bluetooth
1:23:28and WiFi transfer kind of stuff or NFC stuff,
1:23:31I figured maybe that would have been better,
1:23:33but for whatever reason it's not.
1:23:36And I think it's mostly due to just the iPhone
1:23:39and the capabilities it offers.
1:23:41I don't think Apple is in a big rush
1:23:42to enable easy wireless transfer from an external camera
1:23:47they don't make to their phone,
1:23:48which is sold primarily because it's a really good camera.
1:23:51So I imagine this is not an area of focus for Apple,
1:23:54but the experience really is horrendous for doing that
1:23:58if you wanna do that.
1:23:59And ultimately, that's what keeps me
1:24:01from using these cameras more,
1:24:02besides the fact that I'm not carrying them.
1:24:04But I think I would use them a lot more
1:24:06if it was really fast and easy for the picture
1:24:10that I take with it to then pop up on my phone.
1:24:12but it's not, it's neither fast nor easy.
1:24:14So that really holds back the usage of these in practice
1:24:17because I almost always want that picture to be on my phone
1:24:20so I can do something with it,
1:24:21whether it's sending it to somebody, posting it somewhere,
1:24:24or just editing in some way.
1:24:27I pretty much want it on my phone immediately
1:24:29and I think that's a common need.
1:24:31So ultimately that part still is unfortunate
1:24:34and it kind of leaves the standalone camera market
1:24:38in the place it is, which is like,
1:24:40It's this kind of increasingly specialized,
1:24:44shrinking enthusiast market.
1:24:47And it's great for that, but it used to be a lot broader
1:24:49than just photographers and enthusiasts.
1:24:52It used to be way more mass market.
1:24:54And phones just killed that, and it's not coming back.
1:24:57But I do wish that enthusiasts who also use phones
1:25:01could have a bit better experience trying
1:25:04to use these amazing new cameras that we have that just clash
1:25:09horrendously with the phone world.
1:25:12I wonder if camera makers--
1:25:13because I'm willing to blame the camera makers much more
1:25:15than you are, because they're terrible at making software.
1:25:18Their custom apps suck.
1:25:19But I wonder if they would be better served,
1:25:21like at least to get closer to what you want,
1:25:23is to treat the cameras kind of like your phone.
1:25:25Because if you're out and about with your phone
1:25:27and taking pictures, generally your phone,
1:25:29especially if you're just out somewhere on cellular,
1:25:31your phone won't bother uploading those to iCloud
1:25:33until you get back closer to Wi-Fi
1:25:36or until you plug it in sometimes.
1:25:37You've all seen that thing at the bottom of the photos thing
1:25:39that says, "I paused my photo syncing until you plugged me in again," right?
1:25:42And you can tell it, to Apple's credit, rare instance where you can say, "No, do it now."
1:25:47Wow, imagine that.
1:25:48Well, yes, but that's a suggestion more than it is a demand, because you hit that and it's
1:25:54just like, "Well, I'll get there eventually."
1:25:56Yeah, but anyway, if these cameras work like this, you'd be out and about, you're taking
1:26:00your pictures, and you kind of have the same expectation you have of a phone.
1:26:02It's like, "Well, these aren't really going to be uploaded to iCloud anytime soon," but
1:26:06When you come back home you'd like put the camera on a charger and then it would load
1:26:10them to iCloud for you using like I don't know public Apple API's or something.
1:26:16In other words have the camera A) connect to your wifi the same as all your other devices,
1:26:21none of this creating its own network whatever stuff and B) upload when it's on wifi to iCloud
1:26:28directly.
1:26:29That seems like something the camera manufacturers could probably work out with Apple if they
1:26:32wanted to do it but of course no one wants to do that because like Apple who uses those
1:26:35computers and you know we've got our own app made by our crack team of expert programmers
1:26:40and they're all horrendous and like the approach they're taking is bad and the main problem
1:26:45is like how long can camera manufacturers continue to keep these cameras off of the
1:26:49internet essentially like they all added Wi-Fi and Bluetooth but the cameras are still not
1:26:53in any meaningful way quote unquote on the internet that's why they're making their own
1:26:56stupid Wi-Fi network and it's like just just bite the bullet your camera needs to be on
1:27:01the internet because that's where we're going our photos to be or you know even if it's
1:27:04Let's just like airdrop the photos from the camera to your phone so you can do stuff with
1:27:09them like they could be doing a lot better.
1:27:11So I don't think it's really on Apple.
1:27:13I think Apple has done plenty to make it possible for these cameras to be better but the camera
1:27:17manufacturers software is not their strong suit especially software when it comes to
1:27:20networking and not photography.
1:27:23Yeah exactly and again it's a shame because I think it would take a lot of you know help
1:27:28from Apple to really make that work well and whether it's on the web service side when
1:27:33and they're uploading directly to the web service
1:27:34or whether they're bouncing it off the phone,
1:27:35which is probably the easier, but maybe slower
1:27:39or more limited way.
1:27:40Whatever it is, the standalone camera world,
1:27:44I mean look, they don't even all have GPS yet.
1:27:46That's even, GPS is still a kind of optional,
1:27:49rarely seen feature.
1:27:51- Don't worry, there's a great companion app
1:27:52that will solve that problem.
1:27:53Ha ha ha.
1:27:54This is one of the things I found out
1:27:55when Marco sent me his other camera.
1:27:58Did you know that the Sony GPS thing or whatever,
1:28:00that there's an app that you run on your phone
1:28:02that connects with the camera and it will send GPS
1:28:05and stuff or whatever,
1:28:07each camera can only be connected to one phone.
1:28:10And if your phone is already connected to another camera,
1:28:12it can't be connected to a second one.
1:28:13- What? (laughs)
1:28:14- So I've got two Sony cameras,
1:28:16but I've only got one iPhone.
1:28:18And so it's like, well, which camera do you want connected?
1:28:20'Cause you can't connect both.
1:28:21It's like, seriously?
1:28:22- Seriously dumb. - It's ridiculous.
1:28:24So I had to have one connect to my phone
1:28:25and one connect to my wife's phone,
1:28:26but then it just hardly ever works.
1:28:29Camera software is terrible.
1:28:30Sony just discontinued in fact, it's Sony PlayMemories application, which is some really
1:28:36misguided attempt to have like an iPhone replacement that runs on Mac OS.
1:28:40If you can imagine that like made by Sony, made by the camera part of Sony.
1:28:44It's they would make you have it and install it if you wanted to use a bunch of other features.
1:28:48It was terrible.
1:28:49It's like it's like the software that comes with printers, right?
1:28:51Like that stuff like don't use image capture, use our scanning program.
1:28:55It's like the worst thing you've ever seen in your life.
1:28:57Sony just discontinued that.
1:28:58I hope they discontinued it because either they're never going to try to make software
1:29:02like that again, which I would recommend, or it's being replaced by something better,
1:29:06which I guess would be the second best.
1:29:09I've never seen an iPhone app by a camera maker that was better than awful.
1:29:16I mean, they're so bad.
1:29:18It amazes me that they launch.
1:29:20It amazes me that, like, how did they not crash on launch?
1:29:23They're among the worst software I've ever seen on any platform.
1:29:26It's like that and printer software.
1:29:27It's a real race there.
1:29:28Yeah, like it amazes me that they pass app review.
1:29:30They're just, they're so bad.
1:29:32Yeah, it's really true.
1:29:33The Olympus one is just as bad and they've like moved the two pieces of functionality
1:29:39I want, which is occasional downloads and geotagging.
1:29:43They've moved that over the last eight years between like two or three different apps,
1:29:47you know, oh, don't use the OI photo share what I don't even remember what it's called,
1:29:51but don't use the, you know, a app because all that functionality is now in the B app.
1:29:55Fast forward two years.
1:29:56Don't use the B app.
1:29:57Now all that functionality is in the C app.
1:29:59It's just so ridiculous.
1:30:01And the apps are pieces of garbage too.
1:30:03- Yeah, I've had that same problem with Sony
1:30:05and with everyone else.
1:30:06It's just like they keep rewriting the app
1:30:08or we're gonna bring our multiple brands together
1:30:11or bring, you know, unify our product line.
1:30:13And it's funny, you know, you look at the app store reviews
1:30:16and they all have one star 'cause they don't work.
1:30:19- Yeah, like they just, these camera managers
1:30:21need to understand that there's an ecosystem
1:30:22they should participate in.
1:30:23These cameras should be on the internet,
1:30:25They should integrate with other existing platforms
1:30:27instead of trying to say like,
1:30:28"We're gonna make our own version of Apple Photos app
1:30:31"and we're gonna make our own version of Photo Editor.
1:30:34"So we're gonna replace Apple Photos, Lightroom, Photoshop,
1:30:38"the thing you use to print calendars and pictures."
1:30:41Like, "We're gonna write all that software from scratch
1:30:42"for every platform 'cause why wouldn't we?"
1:30:44It's like, "Why would you even attempt that?
1:30:46"Just integrate with the Apple platform.
1:30:49"Integrate with Windows."
1:30:50And you're done.
1:30:51That's all you need to care about.
1:30:52Maybe integrate with Android, iOS, Mac, Windows.
1:30:55forget about Linux, they'll be fine.
1:30:57That's it, but instead they try to rewrite the world
1:30:59from scratch, like all in a Sony branded experience
1:31:02where you have to create an account and upload your memory.
1:31:04It's like, you think I'm gonna give my pictures
1:31:07to the Sony Play memories application, are you kidding?
1:31:09Again, I'm surprised this app even launches
1:31:13without immediately crashing.
1:31:14I'm never giving in any of my data, but it's like,
1:31:16well, you have to sign in and make an account
1:31:18and install it so we can geotag your photos,
1:31:20which is the one piece of functionality that you want.
1:31:22- Mm-hmm, it's so bad.
1:31:24I understand why on some level they don't do it.
1:31:27I mean, first of all, consumer software
1:31:29is not the strength of any of these camera companies.
1:31:32They've never had a reason to develop it.
1:31:34They certainly don't have the talent or the will
1:31:36or the resources apparently,
1:31:37'cause otherwise they would do it.
1:31:39But also, if you look at the role of their devices,
1:31:42I mean, a lot of the standalone camera market now
1:31:46is people shooting video and stuff like that.
1:31:49It isn't just people taking casual pictures
1:31:51and wanting to upload them to Instagram or whatever.
1:31:53It's like people using these cameras as like semi-pro
1:31:56video capture devices.
1:31:58And it's just, it's such a different market, you know?
1:32:01But also, it's kind of a chicken and egg problem.
1:32:03Like the camera makers probably say,
1:32:05well, people buy our cameras so that they don't need
1:32:09to use them with the phones or whatever.
1:32:10Or it's a different demand, different markets,
1:32:12but at the same time, it's like,
1:32:14maybe that's because using it with a phone sucks so badly.
1:32:17Like maybe if you made it suck less,
1:32:20you could expand to the way larger market
1:32:22of people who have phones and use them most of the time,
1:32:25but want something to take nicer pictures sometimes.
1:32:28Like I don't know, I feel like that could be a lot better,
1:32:30but there's also issues like, I think a huge issue
1:32:34with trying to make cameras themselves smarter
1:32:37is battery life, and not necessarily like active use
1:32:41battery life, but standby battery life.
1:32:43Like the camera batteries, they're not that big
1:32:48compared to phone batteries, and the cameras have
1:32:50a lot of these pretty power hungry components.
1:32:52They have bright screens, usually at least one screen,
1:32:56often two, and they're super bright, super high refresh.
1:33:00The image processing pipeline is super high powered.
1:33:04They have big power demands and small batteries.
1:33:06And to add WiFi and or cellular and or GPS to that mix,
1:33:11which I think you would need,
1:33:15you would need GPS to do a good job of this
1:33:17and you would need at least WiFi
1:33:19and maybe cellular to really do a great job of it.
1:33:22But then you're basically making a phone.
1:33:26And so you're gonna need a phone-sized battery
1:33:28and you're gonna need it to be charged every night.
1:33:30And that's not really what that market does.
1:33:33That's not how that market behaves.
1:33:35And so it would be a pretty big shift for that market
1:33:39to really enter the phone compatibility market
1:33:43in a good way to actually make a good experience
1:33:45'cause it would probably mean having the device
1:33:48basically a phone where it has its own cellular connection,
1:33:52it has its own GPS, it records everything,
1:33:54it uploads it to a cloud service over cellular
1:33:57as you're shooting and maybe then it can sync it
1:33:59to the phone that way.
1:34:00That is what it would actually take, I think,
1:34:03to do it really well.
1:34:04But I don't know how many people are willing to,
1:34:07first of all, buy a cell plan for their camera.
1:34:09Second of all, buy a camera to begin with.
1:34:12And then charge it every night.
1:34:15So you can start to see, when you start thinking
1:34:18what it would actually take, you could start to see why they haven't done this yet, but
1:34:22I have to think that the first person who ever does it well, if that ever happens, would
1:34:28benefit quite a lot from that, because as we've seen from phones, people are willing
1:34:33to pay a lot to have a really great camera that they can bring with them easily and easily
1:34:39upload social media and stuff. That right now is the cell phone, but it doesn't always
1:34:43have to be for everybody. It's always going to be that for most people, but there is a
1:34:48market for higher-end use. There is a market for enthusiasts who want to be able to take nice
1:34:53pictures with a little bit more dedicated equipment with better manual controls and
1:34:57obviously larger optics, larger sensor to get really great results, but then want that picture
1:35:02on their phone as soon as possible. And that's, I think, a pretty big market and I wish they would
1:35:07address it, but for whatever reason that has not come to pass. And some of those reasons are good
1:35:13reasons but I bet not all of them and I bet this could be made a lot better and it just
1:35:17hasn't been.
1:35:18And they could re-contain the strengths that they have now.
1:35:21Like one of the strengths that I think about when I'm at the beach with my camera is,
1:35:25you know, we're talking about like, oh, when you take it with a phone and it's
1:35:28already available for sharing immediately and if you're lucky it might be uploaded
1:35:31unless your photo's app says it doesn't want to sync because it's on cellular.
1:35:36But if I'm like standing knee deep in the water taking pictures with my camera, the
1:35:39The good thing with the existing cameras I've gone from is they have removable media.
1:35:43So if I took a bunch of pictures and filled up a card, I can take that card out of the
1:35:49camera, put it in a little hard plastic case, put it in a backpack, put it way far away
1:35:52from the water, and then go take some more pictures.
1:35:55And those pictures are safe even if I fall in the water and drop the camera.
1:35:59Even if the camera falls off the edge of the boat into the ocean and goes to the bottom.
1:36:02Because removable media, once you get a bunch of pictures and you think they're good, no,
1:36:06You haven't uploaded them to the cloud, but let's be honest, if you have a big camera
1:36:09with a big sensor, it's not like you're going to be uploading gigabytes of photos from the
1:36:12middle of the ocean on a boat anyway, but you can take that removable media and put
1:36:16it somewhere safe as you lean over the railing with your camera trying to take your next
1:36:20batch of pictures.
1:36:21The removable media, and it also lets you bring it somewhere and transfer it.
1:36:24The sort of batch processing removable media in the old world is a strength of these systems,
1:36:28even though it is not a convenience.
1:36:30So if they can retain that strength while also having the ability to, when you're on
1:36:34Wi-Fi or near-good cellular upload in real time, that would make a big difference.
1:36:39Especially for these small cameras that are portable and more like phones.
1:36:42For the big ones, I think there's still a batch mindset of like, "I'm going to take
1:36:45a bunch of pictures, then it's all going to be on the card, then I'm going to take the
1:36:48cards, then I'm going to process them."
1:36:49Because it's like, you know, it's an assembly line, a professional pipeline or whatever.
1:36:53But for something this size, like I put in the show notes here, Marco's "real" in scarequotes,
1:36:59but still "small" in scarequotes cameras.
1:37:02They're real cameras in that they're not phones, and they're small cameras in that they're
1:37:07not as big as big cameras, but they're also not full-fledged cameras.
1:37:13So they're bigger than a phone, but smaller than a regular camera.
1:37:18That's the kind of class where you'd want to have the, you know, get that thing on the
1:37:22internet, right?
1:37:23Because it's, you know, it's an APS-C sensor, especially if you're doing JPEGs, you could
1:37:26upload those over cellular if it had it.
1:37:29And I think a battery, you know, it doesn't have a giant sensor, it's not taking 30 frames
1:37:33per second sustained for two minutes, like holding down the shutter button.
1:37:38Like the internals can be made lower power and wimpier to save energy and use some of
1:37:43that access to, you know, they already have wifi in them, right?
1:37:46They already have Bluetooth, add GPS and cellular, I think you'd have a very pretty compelling
1:37:52product.
1:37:53You would, I absolutely agree you would, and it'd be something I would be interested in.
1:37:56but ultimately I don't think that there's a market for it.
1:38:01And then if you look at the market for it,
1:38:03like the three of us, I mean,
1:38:05I don't know if I'm gonna pay a lot for that muffler
1:38:06'cause this thing would be expensive, I would assume.
1:38:10I mean, 'cause you're talking about like most of the guts
1:38:13of a cellular telephone without the cellular telephone,
1:38:16that's still, it's still expensive.
1:38:18It's still got a screen and it may even be a touchscreen.
1:38:21It won't be as fancy or as nice, but it's still a screen.
1:38:24It's still gonna be touched.
1:38:25It still needs Wi-Fi, still needs cellular, still needs a place for SIM or an eSIM.
1:38:30It gets really complicated really quickly.
1:38:31And plus, as we've discussed already on this very episode, camera makers are terrible at
1:38:36making software.
1:38:37I feel like I mostly understand the way the Olympus software works on board the phone.
1:38:42And first of all, it's gotten worse over the years.
1:38:44But second of all, it's still extremely clunky.
1:38:48And that's not trying to get it on the internet or trying to upload to somewhere.
1:38:53I can only imagine how ugly and gross it would be.
1:38:55And you know that the fix for the camera people would be okay,
1:38:58well you can upload it across cellular, you know, across the internet,
1:39:01but you have to upload it to the Fuji slash Amazon slash Olympus slash
1:39:06Sony bespoke website that accepts your pictures.
1:39:09And it wouldn't be going to like, I mean, I know flickers falling out of style,
1:39:13but you know, it wouldn't be going to flicker or equivalent.
1:39:14It would either go to Facebook or their bespoke place.
1:39:18And none of us want that anyway.
1:39:20So I think it would be a compromised machine all the way up and all the way down even if it existed
1:39:25So I I would love this to exist but short of someone who really really cares
1:39:31You know getting the reins and doing it or doing like a Kickstarter or something. I just never see it happening
1:39:37Well one leading indicator might be for Sony specifically
1:39:40Yeah
1:39:42If and when their PlayStation gets the same clue that we've been talking about here because their PlayStation
1:39:47I have a PlayStation 5 which is the most recent PlayStation
1:39:50It's kind of like these cameras in that it doesn't understand that the internet exists,
1:39:54really.
1:39:55And I have the same problem as Marco.
1:39:58When I'm playing Destiny, let's be honest, what am I playing?
1:40:01Okay, I did the remaster of Last of Us.
1:40:03I'm playing Fish, you're playing Destiny, we all know.
1:40:06I did do the remaster of Last of Us on PS5 as well recently.
1:40:12And I'll take a screenshot of some cool scene.
1:40:14I had this exact thing when I was playing Last of Us, a couple screenshots of some cool
1:40:17things.
1:40:18people in the incomparable slack who are also playing through the game.
1:40:22My PlayStation is on the internet, it's connected with Ethernet.
1:40:27How hard do you think it would be to get that, it's just a jpeg, right?
1:40:30It's a 4k jpeg, to get that 4k jpeg somewhere that I can deal with it on the internet.
1:40:37And it's exactly as insane as you would think.
1:40:39Well, I can connect a USB stick, then launch the media app, if I can find it on the PlayStation
1:40:44'cause they hide it now, and then copy it to the USB stick,
1:40:48then bring the stick over to my Mac and plug it in
1:40:50and take the camera.
1:40:50It's like, what century is this?
1:40:52You're on the internet.
1:40:53Oh, well don't worry,
1:40:53Sony has a thing where I'll upload the picture.
1:40:55Where does it upload it to?
1:40:57The Sony app.
1:40:58- There you go, there you go.
1:41:01- Whatever the Sony thing is,
1:41:02so there's like a PlayStation app on my phone,
1:41:04I launch the PlayStation app,
1:41:05then I get the photo and I download it,
1:41:08and it's just, oh, and very often,
1:41:10I'll take the screenshot,
1:41:11and it'll be uploading in the background
1:41:14little notification will come and say "oh I couldn't upload your thing to the Sony
1:41:16service" "oh is the Sony service unreliable? what a surprise"
1:41:19I'm just trying to get a screenshot from one internet connected to a nice
1:41:23internet connected device to another and it can't do it. Forget about the video
1:41:28which it takes in WebP by the way if you put on the maximum quality and nothing
1:41:32that I have really wants to deal with a WebP so I have to end up converting that
1:41:36it's like you're so close Sony right but the thing that makes me somewhat hopeful
1:41:40is my PlayStation 5 has integration with Twitch
1:41:44and most recently got integration with Discord.
1:41:47Neither of those are made by Sony.
1:41:49So look, they said, you know what,
1:41:50we should make a service where we can do streaming video.
1:41:52I was like, no, Twitch already exists,
1:41:54just integrate with that.
1:41:55Same thing with Discord.
1:41:56They didn't make their own Discord,
1:41:58they integrate with Discord.
1:41:59So they just gotta figure out, hey,
1:42:01you know those screenshots we're uploading?
1:42:03Is there anything we could integrate with
1:42:04that's not our own weird PlayStation app?
1:42:07Yes, there is.
1:42:08You could upload it to Google Drive, to Dropbox,
1:42:09There's a million places you can send to JPEG, but they haven't figured that out.
1:42:13But they're getting closer.
1:42:14So when I see PlayStation have Twitch and Discord integration, I think maybe someday
1:42:19the knowledge of the internet will filter to the camera division.
1:42:22They'll be like, "Could we upload JPEG somewhere on the internet?"
1:42:28And then someone will say, "Let's create a service of..."
1:42:30"What is internet?"
1:42:31"No, stop.
1:42:32Fire that person.
1:42:33There's so many places we could put it."
1:42:34So like OneDrive, like Google Drive, all the storage services, Flickr, Shutterfly, like
1:42:39these people will do deals with you, Sony.
1:42:42They want the same shrinking pool of enthusiast customers.
1:42:46Who's gonna pay a yearly fee to have a website
1:42:49that deals with other pictures?
1:42:49The same people who buy your quote unquote real cameras.
1:42:52(laughing)
1:42:53- That's the thing, I look at,
1:42:55I have a Fujitsu, different Fuji,
1:42:59Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner for sheet fed document scanning.
1:43:03You scan a thing in it and you can configure it
1:43:05to upload to Dropbox, all the different places.
1:43:09and so I have mine configured to upload to Dropbox.
1:43:11And so I put a sheet of paper in there, I hit Scan,
1:43:15and about a minute later, it's in my Dropbox.
1:43:18And that works great, and yeah,
1:43:19they have their own cloud service.
1:43:21I don't think I use it.
1:43:24The scanner I had before this, the Raven scanner,
1:43:26exactly the same kind of thing,
1:43:28where like, you know, a WiFi scanner,
1:43:30it has its own cloud service that you can, you know,
1:43:32get into if you want, or you can just have it
1:43:34bounce it over to Dropbox, and that's what I did.
1:43:36These things are incredibly useful.
1:43:38They work great.
1:43:40Why can't cameras do that?
1:43:42I know that the idea of making a camera
1:43:45into a cellular-connected, full-blown phone that
1:43:49can upload things anywhere you are to a cloud service, that's
1:43:51a little ambitious.
1:43:52I get that.
1:43:53What if you started small, like we were saying earlier?
1:43:55What if just when you plug the camera in at home to charge it,
1:43:59it would automatically connect to your regular Wi-Fi network
1:44:02and upload the pictures to your Dropbox or Box
1:44:06or iCloud Drive or whatever,
1:44:07that would be a pretty good starting point.
1:44:10It's still way easier than ever having to pop the card out
1:44:13and put it into an SD card slot, God knows where,
1:44:16and it's way better than the apps.
1:44:18- Any time I have to open a little flappy door
1:44:20on the side of a camera, they've already lost.
1:44:22Nevermind that the Doris and Sony cameras
1:44:25are historically awful, but no, that should never happen.
1:44:27You have Wi-Fi, I should never have to open
1:44:29that little flappy door.
1:44:31- Yeah, so anyway, I hope that this industry
1:44:33doesn't totally die off before somebody
1:44:35has figured this out.
1:44:36- I think it's going to, unfortunately.
1:44:38- No, it's not going to.
1:44:39This is the type of thing that's always going to stay around
1:44:42because it becomes narrow in special interest
1:44:45and that's just the way it stays.
1:44:46Because you'll always be able to make a better camera
1:44:50with more money and without being distracted by other stuff.
1:44:54With more money and more space,
1:44:55you'll always be able to make a better camera.
1:44:57So as good as phone cameras get,
1:44:58if I told you you have five times as much money
1:45:00and 15 times as much volume, you'll make a better camera.
1:45:03- Yeah, and honestly, the X100V was hard to get.
1:45:07It is in extremely high demand, it's backwarded everywhere,
1:45:11people are selling it for premiums on eBay and stuff,
1:45:14it was very hard to get.
1:45:15These have followings.
1:45:17I don't think the following is very large anymore,
1:45:20but there is a dedicated following,
1:45:22and if you make a really great camera,
1:45:23I mean look, the Leica thing was almost $6,000.
1:45:26And people buy that.
1:45:29By all accounts, the people who have it
1:45:31typically have very good things to say about it.
1:45:33So there is clearly a market for this.
1:45:36It's not gonna be as big as the phone camera market,
1:45:39and it's not gonna be as big as the past
1:45:42standalone camera market,
1:45:43but there is definitely still a market.
1:45:46And if you serve that market well,
1:45:49you can have a pretty big hit in your hands.
1:45:51And by all accounts, the Fuji X100V is a huge hit.
1:45:54People love it.
1:45:55It's not even that new.
1:45:56I think it's like a year or two old.
1:45:58You still can't get it,
1:45:59because it's like, people love this thing.
1:46:01So the market is there, but it just,
1:46:03it could be so much better.
1:46:04There's so much missed potential here.
1:46:07- And the Sony in particular, they're,
1:46:09what Sony does with their big camera things,
1:46:11it's funded a lot by the bigger industries,
1:46:15'cause Sony sells sensors for phone cameras as well,
1:46:18and sensors for, you know, like,
1:46:20Sony's research into sensor technology
1:46:24and optical technology and these other companies
1:46:26that do the same thing,
1:46:28Like, they can be making most of their volume and revenue by selling camera things, but
1:46:34they're transferring technology in both directions, both from the stuff they put in the cameras
1:46:38comes to their big cameras and vice versa.
1:46:40So there's lots of synergies there.
1:46:42It's kind of like we mostly sell affordable cars to regular people, but then we have a
1:46:48luxury division that sells expensive cars to people who are enthusiasts or whatever.
1:46:54Not even just a Toyota Lexus, but more like a Toyota Bentley.
1:46:57And that's the breakdown, and there's synergies, because we learn whether it's electric drive
1:47:01cranes or battery technology, that stuff transfers between Bentleys and Toyotas, right?
1:47:07Because they're all cars, they're just different cars in different price and size classes for
1:47:10different customers.
1:47:11So, and you know, you can think of these cameras as the Mac Pro of the camera market, whereas
1:47:17the iPhones are the, you know, MacBook, I guess.
1:47:22Strange analogy, I'm sorry.
1:47:25Thanks to our sponsors this week, Squarespace and Collide.
1:47:29Thanks to our members who support us directly.
1:47:31You can join at atbs.fm/join.
1:47:34And we will talk to you next week.
1:47:36(upbeat music)
1:47:39♪ Now the show is over ♪
1:47:41♪ They didn't even mean to begin ♪
1:47:43♪ 'Cause it was accidental ♪
1:47:46♪ Oh, it was accidental ♪
1:47:49♪ John didn't do any research ♪
1:47:51♪ Marco and Casey wouldn't let him ♪
1:47:54Cause it was accidental, it was accidental
1:47:59And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm
1:48:05And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them
1:48:09@caseyliss
1:48:13So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M
1:48:18Anti-Marco Armin S-I-R-A-C
1:48:23USA, Syracuse
1:48:25It's accidental
1:48:28They didn't mean to
1:48:31Accidental
1:48:33Tech broadcast
1:48:35So long
1:48:37John, I understand that you are now a surgeon.
1:48:42An unlicensed surgeon, I should add.
1:48:44I'm a surgeon, mad scientist, I think this is pretty much the tail end of my audio saga
1:48:52here for now anyway.
1:48:53I had replaced all my speakers, talked about it in a past episode.
1:48:58My old speakers were very, very small, like not the size of a soda can but not that much
1:49:04bigger.
1:49:05They're very tiny, especially like the surround ones and stuff.
1:49:07So they were just tucked away in various locations, like on shelves and on top of other stuff
1:49:12or whatever.
1:49:13bigger and I also wanted to get them better positioned and they're big enough that they
1:49:21can't kind of be tucked somewhere so they have to be I had to find some way to in particular
1:49:27to get my front right and left speakers I needed somewhere for them to sit so they would be at a
1:49:33reasonable height for speakers which is a challenge in my stupid room so one of them
1:49:39to the right of the television, to the right-ish of the television, it is not positioned in an ideal place because my room is not ideal, but I did the best I can.
1:49:48I needed to get a speaker stand for it, because the place I have for it to go is not even big enough for any piece of furniture for it to sit on.
1:49:56So a speaker stand that is basically the same footprint as the speaker itself is what I went with.
1:50:02Here's what I went with.
1:50:03And you'll be saying, "Why didn't you just get tower speakers then?"
1:50:06You'll see in a second, but the left speaker, I don't have room for a tower, so I couldn't
1:50:10get a tower speaker there.
1:50:11But on the right side, and even on the right side, honestly, this is a bookshelf speaker
1:50:15on a stand.
1:50:16Tower speakers tend to be even deeper than that, and so it would be difficult.
1:50:19Plus, also tower speakers would have had a severe family approval factor thing going
1:50:25against them, because they are quite imposing.
1:50:27Anyway, so I got a speaker stand.
1:50:30I'll put a link in the show notes to the one I got.
1:50:32It's from Kanto, the company I think we talked about, they make subwoofers and other speakers
1:50:36and stuff.
1:50:38It's a metal thing, right?
1:50:39It's got a little metal weight in the bottom, it's reasonably okay quality.
1:50:43I think it is just like, it is good enough quality for the price you pay for it, I think.
1:50:51And you may look at it as like, you spent how much money on speaker stands?
1:50:53Well the problem is of course you can't buy one of them, you have to buy two, because
1:50:56who would buy one speaker stand?
1:50:58I only need one.
1:50:59I had to buy two.
1:51:02It does have a place to route the cable.
1:51:03It's fine.
1:51:04It's about 26 inches high.
1:51:05It comes with two different top things, one of which fits neatly underneath my speaker.
1:51:11It has a place where you can screw the speaker into the stand.
1:51:14If your speaker has a screw hole in the bottom, mine does not, so my speaker is just placed
1:51:18on top of there through the magic of gravity.
1:51:21It stays there.
1:51:22Luckily, I don't live near where we have any earthquakes and I don't have any small children
1:51:26bouncing around, but wish me luck on that.
1:51:29And like I said, it's got a place to route the cable so you don't see it.
1:51:32Right?
1:51:33That's the right speaker.
1:51:34The left speaker is even more constrained.
1:51:38It is in a different position on the left-ish side of the television, and I needed some
1:51:46way to get it up to the right height, but the other stand being in that position wouldn't
1:51:53quite work.
1:51:54Because I needed a piece of furniture to hold some of the things that were ejected from
1:51:58the television stand by the big center speaker.
1:52:03So particularly my Blu-ray player, the TiVo should really go over there as well, but right
1:52:07now I've just moved the Blu-ray player.
1:52:08I needed someplace for the Blu-ray player to be, so I basically needed a piece of furniture
1:52:12to hold the Blu-ray player at minimum, and then I could put the speaker on top of the
1:52:16piece of furniture.
1:52:18And this is a challenge I've had a couple times.
1:52:20Most recently when we talked about the Mac Pro, I'm sitting at a desk now, I don't know
1:52:24how big it is, but I can reach from one end of my desk to the other.
1:52:28It's whatever length, standard length the desk is.
1:52:31But I didn't want my Mac Pro to be on the desk, but I also didn't want it to be on the
1:52:35floor.
1:52:36I wanted it to be on a little table next to my desk that's not quite as high as my desk
1:52:41but is off the floor.
1:52:43So I had to find a piece of furniture that exactly fits a Mac Pro that is lower than
1:52:48my desk and that's legs fit in the space available for it because we have baseboard heating in
1:52:53this room so I can't have the legs go all against the wall.
1:52:55And I spent so long finding it, you know, I really wish furniture websites said, "Tell
1:53:00me the length, the width, and the height, how much room you have for legs, like, just,
1:53:05I need to know physically a piece of furniture that fits in this volume."
1:53:09And it's so hard to do because you'll find out very quickly that furniture comes in standard
1:53:14sizes 24 inch, 36 inch, height, width, whatever, like, they don't come in just, you can't just
1:53:18pick them like, you know, sizing, well you can't even pick jeans in size because you
1:53:22get them at length 34 and length 32 but never length 33 from Levi's.
1:53:26Anyway.
1:53:27If only other brands of jeans existed that gave you single inch sizes.
1:53:30I know, I'm not going to pay a lot for these jeans, Marco.
1:53:33Just getting a Levi's.
1:53:35And yes, I am kind of in between 32 and 34, but I live with it.
1:53:41So anyway, I did that before I found this perfect little table that matches the decor
1:53:45that is correctly the right size of what my Mac Pro is on right now.
1:53:47Now I have the same problem.
1:53:48I need something that can hold the Blu-ray player that is not too high but not too low.
1:53:55Ideally it would be exactly the same height as my television stand because that would
1:53:58look nice.
1:53:59And it has to be able to hold AV equipment, whatever other things I might put there because
1:54:05who knows what else will get kicked out of my stand.
1:54:08Right now my TiVo is wedged between my receiver and the top shelf and I would really like
1:54:12to move that over if I can at some point.
1:54:14But anyway, I need that piece of furniture.
1:54:16But then once I have that, if I put the speaker on top of that piece of furniture, it would
1:54:20be different height than the right speaker.
1:54:23So I needed a piece of furniture that was similar height to my TV stand, and I needed
1:54:27a little bit more height to get the speaker up to the same height as its sibling speaker
1:54:34on the right.
1:54:36And I searched and searched and searched, and I could not find a piece of furniture
1:54:40that was remotely close.
1:54:41The best thing I could find was a piece of furniture that was too tall, but that was
1:54:48too tall by one shelf height.
1:54:52And when you search for this furniture, you find whatever brand in China is making all
1:54:56this furniture, it's sold under 15 different names on 20 different websites, you will find
1:54:59the same thing over and over and over again with different names, with just slightly different
1:55:04pictures, subtle variations in manufacturing, like this is all coming from the same place.
1:55:10Even though you think you have all these options, you don't.
1:55:13You have the choice of the three things that are made in China that fit this thing, or
1:55:16wherever they're made.
1:55:18It's just one generic factory that turns these things out and then re-brands them and sells
1:55:22them all over the place.
1:55:23Like everything these days.
1:55:25Yeah, exactly.
1:55:27You'll find "the same product" on many different websites under many different names.
1:55:33So, and in this one, for example, I could find it with round legs, with square legs,
1:55:39a couple of different heights, a couple of different widths.
1:55:41But anyway, this one, width and height wise,
1:55:43was close enough--
1:55:45not width and height, width and depth, right?
1:55:47It was close enough, but the height was too high.
1:55:49And it was a four shelf unit.
1:55:51And if you go to-- this is one of the features
1:55:53that Amazon added that I think is actually useful.
1:55:55On an Amazon product page, there's
1:55:56a section on the bottom that's like Q&A,
1:55:59where you can see people asking questions.
1:56:01Chances are someone asked the question that you care about.
1:56:04Probably seven people asked it, and you just
1:56:06hope that someone gave an answer.
1:56:07So the question everybody had about this is,
1:56:10this comes with four shelves, can I just use three shelves?
1:56:13And the answer is always no.
1:56:15You can't just use, and you look at it and you're like,
1:56:18okay, you look at, try to find a way to download
1:56:20the PDF instructions so you can see how it's assembled
1:56:22and what you'll find is that the leg segments
1:56:26between the shelves are separate,
1:56:28so it's like a little short tube for the leg,
1:56:30then a shelf, then a longer tube, then a shelf,
1:56:32then a longer tube, then a shelf,
1:56:33and you're like, this should be so easy,
1:56:34I just won't put on the last tube,
1:56:36I'll just leave out a shelf,
1:56:37I'll leave out a tube in it, but no.
1:56:39Because the way these things work is,
1:56:41there is a stainless steel rod with threads
1:56:44on the top and the bottom that runs through the whole leg.
1:56:47It screws into the top and it screws into the bottom,
1:56:49and that tension as you tighten it
1:56:51is what holds the whole thing together,
1:56:52'cause it's just like a bunch of metal tubes
1:56:54with a threaded rod between them.
1:56:56And the rod is only threaded in one inch of the top
1:56:59and one inch in the bottom,
1:57:00the rest of the rod is not threaded.
1:57:02So I bought this thing knowing that it was too high,
1:57:05but also knowing that if I could omit one of the shelves,
1:57:08it would be pretty much the right height.
1:57:10Then I ordered some threaded rod from another company,
1:57:15which is a lot harder to find than a piece of furniture.
1:57:19Well, the first thing I did was I went to like
1:57:20a local hardware store to try to find a threaded rod.
1:57:23And I brought with me the thing that it will thread into,
1:57:25like one of the little feet that it comes with.
1:57:28You know, and I was so disappointed in the manual.
1:57:30I'm like, please manual, tell me what size
1:57:32the threads are in this thing, but the manual does not.
1:57:34So I just went there and I tried all the different threaded rod and none of it fit.
1:57:39Because all the threaded rod was, what ever, imperial measures?
1:57:43Non-metric.
1:57:44And I'm like, this threaded rod has got to be metric.
1:57:46So eventually I figured out it is metric.
1:57:49What was the size?
1:57:50It was like M6-1, M6-1.0 is the metric threading that's on the thing.
1:57:58So I went on the internet.
1:57:59Being at the hardware store was useful because at the hardware store they have like, "Hey,
1:58:02try on your thing on these different threads."
1:58:03You could find out which of these things it is.
1:58:05So I did find out what size it was at the hardware store, but they didn't have that
1:58:07kind of threaded rod there.
1:58:08So I ordered online four pieces of stainless steel threaded rod in the M6-1 size.
1:58:15They arrived at my house, and then I had to cut them to the right height.
1:58:19Exactly the right height.
1:58:21Four times you had to cut four different rods?
1:58:24Yeah, and the height is key because it's a threaded rod, it screws in like a quarter
1:58:30of an inch into the top and then maybe like a half an inch into the bottom, right? So
1:58:36you don't have a lot of wiggle room. It has to reach, but it also has to be the right
1:58:40length so that you can tighten it up, right? So it has to be fairly exact. So here I am
1:58:45in my garage without the proper tools. I don't even have a vise. Do you have a vise?
1:58:51I have multiple vise. What's the plural of vices? I've never used one for woodworking,
1:58:57- Yeah.
1:58:57- Like I use it for like other random crap, but I, yeah.
1:59:00Like one of them holds, it's a long story,
1:59:01one of them holds my flagpole mount to my deck rail,
1:59:03it's a whole thing.
1:59:04- Are you thinking of a C-clamp or a vice?
1:59:06- Oh, no, I guess I'm thinking of a C-clamp, yeah.
1:59:08I have many C-clamps, I have zero vises.
1:59:11- I know, I knew, my dad had a workshop when I was a kid
1:59:14and he always had, he had a vice in there.
1:59:15He had two vises, one for woodworking, he had a metal one,
1:59:18like you can buy a vice, I don't have one, I need one.
1:59:21Why do you need a vice?
1:59:22It's much easier to cut threaded rod
1:59:23when you have something to hold it still for you.
1:59:26And then what would you cut threaded rod with?
1:59:28Well, ideally I'd have a cutting wheel
1:59:29that would just make a nice (mimics cutting)
1:59:31cut through the thing.
1:59:32I do have a Dremel tool, don't have any cutting wheels.
1:59:35I could have bought all this stuff
1:59:36when I was at the hardware store.
1:59:37I'm trying to control costs here.
1:59:38If you start adding up the costs,
1:59:40we'll have links in the show notes,
1:59:41you start adding up the costs of all this stuff,
1:59:43it's like you paid how much for a table
1:59:44to hold your Blu-ray player?
1:59:46It's like, well, you don't understand the threaded rod,
1:59:47and then I had to buy the Dremel tool,
1:59:48then I had to buy the cut, so I'm like, no,
1:59:50I'm gonna do this with the tools I have available.
1:59:52The tools I have available are me, my hands,
1:59:55and a hacksaw that's older than all my children combined.
1:59:57(laughing)
1:59:59- Delightful.
2:00:00- This is like how I cut all my holes with a drill,
2:00:03including things that are way bigger than a drill
2:00:05should be able to cut, but that's the tool
2:00:07I know how to use.
2:00:08This is the kind of thing, this is the kind of need
2:00:12where you need something very specific,
2:00:15and I mean you, this is always your need,
2:00:17but something very specific.
2:00:19It's like, I wish I was a woodworker
2:00:23because I could just build my ideal TV stand.
2:00:26Like it's like, I mean, maybe it would look like crap
2:00:28if I was not a great woodworker,
2:00:30but I probably wouldn't be.
2:00:31- But you gotta build seven tables first
2:00:33and the eighth one will look good
2:00:34after you've bought $3,000 worth of equipment.
2:00:36- Right, but it's like, I feel like,
2:00:38in the same way that oftentimes people kind of marvel
2:00:42at the ability of programmers to be like,
2:00:45oh, you can just have an idea for an app
2:00:47and then just make it?
2:00:48Like, and that seems like magic to other people.
2:00:50To me, it seems like magic to do that in the physical world
2:00:53'cause I can't do any of those things.
2:00:54- Well, the programming is a great example
2:00:56because that program that you can do now
2:00:59is not what you could do the first year
2:01:01you were learning programming.
2:01:03- That's true. - You have this like,
2:01:04practice programming for 25 years
2:01:06and then you can just make the idea you think of
2:01:08and it's still hard, right?
2:01:09And so it's the same thing with woodworking.
2:01:11It's like, and think of all the Macs
2:01:12you had to buy in the meantime.
2:01:13Like, in this case, this is not beyond my skills.
2:01:16I know exactly what I would use to actually do this,
2:01:19but I don't have those things.
2:01:20I don't have a vice, I don't have a cutting wheel,
2:01:22I don't even have a good hacksaw.
2:01:23I could have bought all those things, but they cost money.
2:01:26I'm like, no, stop it, just use what you have,
2:01:28get by with what you have.
2:01:29So I did, so there I am in the garage
2:01:31with my threaded rod that I'm physically holding
2:01:35as best I can as I try to cut it with a hacksaw.
2:01:38If anybody who's ever actually done this
2:01:39knows how terrible this is,
2:01:41it's just like a challenge on a reality show.
2:01:43This is not the right way to do it.
2:01:45If you've ever tried to cut through a quarter inch stainless steel rod that you are holding
2:01:49with your hand, oh and by the way it's threaded so it's nice and sharp and everything.
2:01:53In a way, remember at the end of this what you have to be left with is something that
2:01:57you can screw something onto.
2:01:59So it's not like you can do it willy-nilly, like you ever try to cut something with a
2:02:02hacksaw and it's like oh it's jumping out all over the place and it's just, you know,
2:02:05because if the hacksaw rubs against the threads it's going to screw them up and you're not
2:02:08going to be able to screw something onto it.
2:02:10And you don't have a lot of length to play with because if you screw it up it's not like
2:02:12You can recut it back farther because it has to be exactly the right length.
2:02:16So I very carefully and laboriously cut through this in what must have been 10,000 strokes
2:02:23back and forth with my dull hacksaw on this thing.
2:02:28And then when I was done with it, then I used my Dremel tool with a grinding bit, which
2:02:32I did have.
2:02:33I didn't have a cutting bit.
2:02:34It wasn't, it's not Dremel branded with some other thing.
2:02:36Anyway, use that to smooth off the metal and then test fit, grind down a little bit, smooth
2:02:42off the metal, test fit until eventually I could thread something onto it.
2:02:45Repeat that four times.
2:02:46This was an all day activity.
2:02:49Just to get four pieces of threaded rod.
2:02:51Honestly, if you had the right tools, this is a five minute job.
2:02:54For me, it's literally all day.
2:02:56But I saved money.
2:02:58So then I went in and assembled the thing and omitted the shelf and put it in place
2:03:03and now I had a piece of furniture that could hold my blu-ray player.
2:03:06I also had to re-write all the wires and everything, but I can handle that part.
2:03:10It's pretty much the same height as my TV stand that fits into the little spot and kind
2:03:15of matches the decor a little.
2:03:16My daughter did say she thought I should have gotten the rectangle legs instead of the round
2:03:20one, but it's like, what can you do?
2:03:22And now finally, I need something to go on top of that thing to make my speaker on the
2:03:27left the same height as the one on the right.
2:03:29And lo and behold, through the magic of Christmas or the magic of, I don't know, whatever magic
2:03:34that says Kanto, the same company that made my speaker stands, also makes smaller speaker
2:03:40stands.
2:03:43And the smaller speaker stands, the Kanto SP6, which are 6 inches high, the smaller
2:03:49speaker stands on top of the piece of furniture that I cut down with new pieces of threaded
2:03:54rod almost exactly equals the height of the big speaker stand.
2:03:59It was a Christmas miracle.
2:04:01So of course I had to buy two of them and they were also horrendously expensive and
2:04:07now I have one tall and one short speaker stand that I have no use for but someday I
2:04:12might.
2:04:13So I was very excited by this because this almost never happens that I took a flyer on
2:04:17buying this piece of furniture and buying this threaded rod to try to make a piece of
2:04:21furniture that I wanted and it worked and then I found the same branded matching exact
2:04:27speaker stand for left and right that added to my furniture make something that is within
2:04:31a half an inch of each other and it was very exciting.
2:04:34I would show you a picture of it but everyone would just throw up about the positioning
2:04:37of the speakers.
2:04:38I'm doing the best I can in the room that I have.
2:04:40But I'm happy with it.
2:04:43The only other thing that I still have a question about is I didn't route the cable through
2:04:47the smaller one because I felt like the cable just, it's so short that the routing of it
2:04:52would make it look uglier, like it would go in and up and out and around versus just connecting
2:04:56to the back of the speaker it's only six inches high.
2:04:58Anyway, links to all these will be in the show notes.
2:05:00If you want speaker stands I can recommend these as adequate for the price that is charged.
2:05:06They're not great, but they're also not bad.
2:05:08I was afraid I would get speaker stands and they would be just like weak, wimpy metal
2:05:12that would fall over and wobble or whatever.
2:05:14These have adjustable rubber feet on them which is really important for my house that
2:05:18doesn't have level floors.
2:05:20And they match each other and they have cable routing and they're made of thick heavy metal
2:05:23and they have nice pads on top of them.
2:05:25So I think the only thing I have left now is the replacement subwoofer because I did
2:05:29sell my old 5.1 setup and the subwoofer went with it so now I have an empty spot ready
2:05:34for a replacement subwoofer to go in there.
2:05:37But in the meantime, no one in the family is complaining about lack of bass so maybe
2:05:41it's just me wanting to blow the house down when I watch blockbuster movies.
2:05:46I'll work on that for the future.
2:05:48Maybe I'll use some of the money I'm getting selling all my old AV equipment because I
2:05:51my old receiver and I sold my old 5.1 system, I think I'm probably going to go up to the
2:05:55attic and start pulling a Marco and finding old iPads and stuff to see if I can exchange
2:06:00them to Apple for some money if they're still good.
2:06:02Because I'm trying to turn all my old junk into some spending cash so I can have a little
2:06:08bit of extra money for the sound system.
2:06:11I think I'm pretty much at a, not at the end, but at a good stopping point and the family
2:06:15is enjoying the new setup.
2:06:18The family is experiencing the new setup.
2:06:20I am enjoying the news app when watching television with the family, but most importantly, the
2:06:25family is not complaining about the new setup.
2:06:28That's a success.
2:06:29That's important.
2:06:30If they don't say, "This sounds weird.
2:06:32I don't like this.
2:06:34I can't hear what they're saying."
2:06:35No one says anything, and it's not because they're sparing my feelings.
2:06:38Believe me, because if they had any issues with it, they would let me know.
2:06:41So I feel like this has been a big success, that I have a thing that I enjoy that no one
2:06:48else in the family complains about.
2:06:50And we've been watching, and you know,
2:06:51is maybe just be correlation,
2:06:52but we have been watching more television shows
2:06:54as a family in the quote unquote good TV room
2:06:56instead of like watching it in a bedroom or on an iPad.
2:06:59So I feel like this has been a great success.
2:07:01- Yeah, that's a win.
2:07:02Well, congratulations on all of your glory.
2:07:07- Yeah, maybe I can sell individual speakers.
2:07:09I'm never gonna sell these individual speaker stands
2:07:11'cause someday, like when I move to my retirement home,
2:07:13I'll be like, finally,
2:07:14I can use my two equal size speaker stands.
2:07:17I just don't know if it's gonna be the small ones
2:07:18or the big ones.
2:07:19[beeping]
2:07:21(beep)