463: Respect the Tripod

0:00:00[Music]

0:00:08From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 463. Today's show is brought to you by ExpressVPN,

0:00:15TextExpander and DarkNoise. My name is Mike Hurley, I am joined by Jason Snell. Hi Jason!

0:00:21Hi Mike!

0:00:21I have a Snell Talk question for you, which comes from Ramon who asks,

0:00:26"What does Apple Park smell like?"

0:00:27Well I mean it's lots of flowers and stuff.

0:00:32I was going to say it's floral.

0:00:33It smells like outside, whether you're inside or outside.

0:00:35It smells like outside because they planted all those plants in all those trees,

0:00:39and they circulate all the air sort of through, and then the places we were were basically open

0:00:46to the air because they had opened them up. I mean perhaps if you're in a... As we were taking

0:00:50one of our golf cart rides, I did notice that in further away parts there's just

0:00:56huge swaths of offices and cubicles right up against the window, so they get the light,

0:01:01but also it's sort of like, I don't know if it smells like flowers in there.

0:01:04The one place that had a distinct pleasant smell... So where we recorded the last episode

0:01:11was a recording studio based inside of the fitness center, which was across the street from what was

0:01:20being called I think like Fieldhouse or something, which is where the Vision Pro demos were,

0:01:25which we didn't know that's what that was on Monday when we went up there to record,

0:01:30but it was very clear that was what that was, but none of that had happened for either of us

0:01:34at that point. But where the podcast studio was is a fitness center, and that smelled like a spa.

0:01:40It was amazing in there. It smelled so good in there.

0:01:43Yeah, I went into the locker room because I had to use the bathroom, and the locker room

0:01:46smelled like a locker room, but okay. Well, what else would you want? If it smelled like

0:01:51something else, you'd feel lost. Where am I? Skeuomorphism. I'm looking for the locker room.

0:01:55It smells skeuomorphism. They pipe that in. Yeah. Floral.

0:01:58If you would like to send in a Snell Talk question of your own to help open a future episode,

0:02:02just go to upgradefeedback.com and do so. Thank you to Upgrading Ramon for sending it in.

0:02:07Where are we, Jason Snell? We are in my office.

0:02:10Why are we here, Jason Snell? Well, I have a few answers to that question.

0:02:13Okay. One is because you're still in San Francisco,

0:02:15so we thought we would do a podcast together in person, which is our tradition.

0:02:19That is now the tradition set after what was the only good thing of my WWDC experience last year

0:02:25was getting to record. And we've done that, I think, before,

0:02:28when you've been in town or you've stuck around. We've tried to do it somewhere in person. Whenever

0:02:31we're nearby, we try to do it in person. We're inside and not out with the birds this morning,

0:02:36because one of my neighbors is apparently having their roof redone, and there were very loud

0:02:43scraping. When I started to clean up out there and get it ready to go, there was a very loud

0:02:47scraping sound, and I looked up to discover five men on my neighbor's roof moving gravel around

0:02:52and stuff like that. We're looking for the summer of fun, not the summer of bad audio.

0:02:56Yeah, exactly. So instead, we are not unprecedented for Upgrade to have us in my office.

0:03:01And I had James Thompson in my office here before, so it's a little bit of a setup. It's kind of

0:03:06wild. We have a studio audience because Adina is here and official upgrade video, TikTok video

0:03:12producer, Jeremy Bridges is here. The head of video.

0:03:14Yeah, chief video officer. Chief video officer for Upgrade.

0:03:17Jeremy Bridges here.

0:03:18Yes, and also with the door open and people in here,

0:03:22a dog and cats are roaming freely. That's a little bit wild, but we'll manage.

0:03:27The studio audience is more animals today than humans?

0:03:32It depends on whether the second cat will make an appearance. I doubt it. I think it's going to be

0:03:37even. In fact, right now, one cat has left. And therefore, audience two, animals one.

0:03:46Upgrade your wardrobe dot com. We didn't get to spend a lot of time talking about this last

0:03:50episode because we were at a pressing time limit for ticking clock. Yes. The whole time. So we

0:03:56wanted we were like getting ready. Yes, indeed. We have a selection of T-shirts available for

0:04:02your perusal. They are only available until the 16th of June. So that is the end of this week.

0:04:09So you have until the end of this week to pick up one of all three summer of fun designs.

0:04:16We have the returning summer of fun 2021 design, which is the summer of fun artwork.

0:04:21We have the dongle town surf club team making its return and the introduction of a fantastic

0:04:27new design of the thunderbolt dock surf shop. Thunderbolt dock. It's a place. It's a place.

0:04:34It's a dock in dongle town. Yeah, it's right on the water. Obviously, it's a dock. I think it's

0:04:38sort of like a wood pier that kind of. Oh, definitely. And then there are shops and one

0:04:41of them is a surf shop. And you see their shirts all over town as you do with the surf shop.

0:04:46Because people support the local surf shop. Yeah. And they or or visitors to town buy it as a

0:04:50souvenir. Yeah. And you can too by going to upgrade your wardrobe.com. You only have a few days left

0:04:56to do so. So we really would love it if you check us out. This this. This design is very good. I

0:05:02like it a lot. And it's also the I like the colors a lot. They are very summery. Yes, indeed. There's

0:05:06a yellow and a pink and they're nice. And there's a neutral for people who don't want to commit to a

0:05:12color. Yeah, exactly. So go check it out right now. You is it the last time we can tell you? Yes,

0:05:17you do want them. You have to go get them because it's it's done at the end of this week. And as

0:05:21upgrade your wardrobe.com. We also mentioned last time that there were we were being filmed,

0:05:27the entire episode was filmed last week, which it was. We had some clips that went up on our

0:05:32various channels. But we also put the entire episode on YouTube. So upgrade now has a YouTube

0:05:39channel. Yeah, we will not. We have no plans right now to do this like entire recordings of the show.

0:05:46Who knows? Who knows? Right? Because we're experimenting with video. But Apple Apple like

0:05:51had a director there who was switching. There were eight people. Yeah, it was one of the we record

0:05:57ourselves. Now we're actually doing it today. I have some tripods. I have a tripod that I've had

0:06:01since the 80s that's being used with an iPhone on it. We're recording this to do our little clips

0:06:05that tripod older than me. When were you born? 88. Oh, yeah, it's excellent. Yeah, for sure.

0:06:11I must respect my oldest. respect the tripod. And so we're doing that sort of like in our usual way.

0:06:19But we the difference is we could turn every episode into a video episode if we wanted to.

0:06:25But somebody would have to direct it at least after the fact you could do a multi until AI

0:06:32becomes a director. Yeah, we could do an AI. Which is like a legit thing that we might do in the

0:06:35future. Well, I mean, having you could base it even on the on the audio, right? Who's talking,

0:06:40it switches to that one. Although you'd miss some of the for people who have seen the video clips,

0:06:44which we post on TikTok and Instagram and on Mastodon and will presumably start on our YouTube

0:06:50channel. Might as well. Those little fun clips. I edit those and I am actually like editing in

0:06:55funny reaction shot. Like there's a moment where I say something and you just start laughing and

0:06:59you're silent, but you're you're laughing. You do a good job. And I want to cut that back in because

0:07:02it's funny. Like AI is going to have to advance further in order to do that. But I think it could

0:07:08though. It could. It could. Because that's a combination of like audio and some kind of facial

0:07:13recognition analysis. So and the beauty of it is we're sticking with our commitment to not

0:07:18seeing each other other than now when we actually are seeing each other, but not not seeing each

0:07:22other when we record. So you could still do a video episode of upgrade if you wanted to.

0:07:26That wouldn't affect the audio episode quality, but it's just it's not on our

0:07:30on our real to do list, but it's we've opened the door now. Yeah, who knows? Who knows? And

0:07:35did you notice that the John Gruber's been posting little TikTok clips from the talk show? I saw that.

0:07:41I will note one of the funniest things that happened last week, which we didn't mention

0:07:47time. So we had all these people, right? So they were like three camera operators,

0:07:50a couple of sound engineers, a director, like the whole thing. Before we started, someone came out

0:07:55with a clapper and went, "upgrade, take one." And I had to have all of I sent you a frame

0:08:04of right after that where I can see that thought passing through your mind where I had to like

0:08:08restrain myself so much from laughing because it's like, how many takes are we going to get?

0:08:13And also on that frame, one actually says they wrote down upgrade, take one. It's on the frame.

0:08:19And that was just hilarious to me how we could we could have got halfway through and be like,

0:08:23sorry, gang, take two. We're going to start again. We're going to mess this whole thing up. We're

0:08:26going to start again. Yep. So you can go and get that. I'll put a link in the show notes. If you

0:08:30want to just see what it looked like. It was a really great set that they put together. And the

0:08:34quality of the image is so good. And they did such a good job directing the thing. Like,

0:08:38yeah, honestly, they shot it in 4k and my our drive wasn't big enough to take that file. So

0:08:43so we're we're, we just did it in 1080. You don't need it in 4k. It was, yeah, it was pretty

0:08:49awesome. If you enjoy this show, and you would like more of it, you should subscribe to Upgrade

0:08:54Plus. You will hear no ads, you'll get bonus content every week, you go to get upgrade plus

0:08:58calm and you can sign up. This is kind of around the time, Jason, where the when we started. So

0:09:03we get a lot of annual renewals now. So thank you so much to people that have stuck around with us

0:09:07for another year. We really appreciate you. In today's episode, we're going to talk about the

0:09:11fact that we unexpectedly went to a baseball game yesterday. Oh, excellent. We'll talk about that.

0:09:16So it was WWDCs, WWDCs done now. There are a couple of tidbits that I wanted to talk about

0:09:23with you, Jason, that I saw floating around some things that were of interest to me. One is just

0:09:28reminders in general, Apple was very much leveled up reminders this year. There were two things that

0:09:34caught my eye. And they kind of both based around the idea of being able to put sections in your

0:09:39reminders list. So you could have a list, you can have a bunch of sections in it. One of them now is

0:09:44you could create these sections yourself. And then instead of viewing them just as a list,

0:09:48you can view your reminders kind of list as a Kanban board broken down into these sections.

0:09:54Yeah, the reminders notes teams are killing it. They're on fire right now. And so that is very

0:09:59exciting to me. So Adina and I use Trello for managing some of our home projects. And I think

0:10:05it would be nicer to use reminders, because we have to do sometimes on these Trello things,

0:10:11it's just too I feel like it's too heavyweight. But if we could have them as lists, but also

0:10:15as a Kanban board, it's that is like, fantastic. They call it columns. Yeah, column view. I had

0:10:22never heard Kanban until a couple of years ago. But back in the day, when I started a Mac user,

0:10:28and even the first few years at Macworld, that's actually how we did the whole magazine. There was

0:10:32literally a board with three by five cards. It's part of sprint. And it would move, it would move

0:10:37along the board from, you know, article not in to pages finalized. So you'll be able to do that now

0:10:44in reminders. Thank goodness. I just started a magazine. Yeah, easy, easy. So what I like about

0:10:49that, though, is it is more than just this thing is done or not done, it can be moving through a

0:10:53process. So in reminders, I like that as an idea of, well, it's not completed yet, but it's moved

0:10:59forward in a stage. So you could do that. But also, with these columns, Apple is doing machine

0:11:06learning that if you have a grocery list in reminders, it can automatically categorizes

0:11:13groceries based on produce type, right? So you'll be like, if you had carrots and apples and meat,

0:11:19it would categorize them as fruit and vegetables and some kind of meat poultry in your shopping

0:11:24list for you. So it's easy when you're going through the supermarket. So I use any list for

0:11:27a shopping list. And it does that, right? This is a this is a thing. They've like built that in

0:11:31to. But it's cool to be in reminders. Right, because that's the idea is that if you're going

0:11:36there, then it's sort of going to be vaguely sorted by where it is in the store. Yeah, exactly.

0:11:41Yeah. You're talking about notes. The big thing that everybody's excited about about the notes is

0:11:46you can now link between notes. Yes. Apple notes. And this can be done two ways. There is a button

0:11:51in the text pop up menu. So if you do like the text selection, you can do link to note. But also,

0:11:56if you type two greater than symbols, it pops up the UI. Now that I like that specifically,

0:12:02because that feels like it's very much observing the way that people work, right? Like,

0:12:06obsidian and all of these things have some kind of text command, it's like two open brackets or

0:12:10something. It doesn't do like the wiki style linking in the way of like, you can't if you

0:12:16go to one, you don't get a link to go back to the other automatically, you could do it yourself.

0:12:21But I just like this is a simple thing. There have been times where I've had a note and, you know,

0:12:26like I say, it's like a travel note. I would also like the link to the passport note that I keep in

0:12:30Apple Notes. Well, I could just link those two together. And it's just easy to jump to one and

0:12:34the other. This is that I think they've done this the right way. There were a lot of people that

0:12:39wanted this kind of feature. And I was concerned that it was going to make Apple Notes too

0:12:44complicated. Right. But this is the quintessential Apple way, right? Which is everybody's like, oh,

0:12:48are they Sherlocking obsidian or things like that? It's like, well, no, because they're not going to

0:12:53make it that powerful. Like their idea of a power user feature is a couple of greater thans to make

0:12:58a quick link, not to build an entire automatic backlinking system. And who knows where the future

0:13:04goes? Yeah, I could see them doing a shortcut to bring up your backlinks so that you could do that

0:13:09yourself. But like this is very Apple. It's like they want to, okay, a couple of years ago, I asked

0:13:14them about this because I said, wouldn't it be natural to do notes linking? And they said, we

0:13:19like it as an idea. But the question is always, how do you make it something that they have an

0:13:24idealized user? They're thinking of the general user of iOS. It's like, how do we make it so that

0:13:30the generalized user will find value in it? It's not the same as saying, how do we make it so that

0:13:36we don't want power users to be happy, right? That's not what they're saying. And their idealized

0:13:42user is not, it's somebody who uses third-party apps and wants a little bit more, but they're not

0:13:47necessarily a superpower user. I'm sure they've got like a set of users that they think of. But

0:13:51the key that they were trying to give us was we're thinking about it, but we want to approach it in a

0:13:56way that's the right level for us, the right level of complexity for our users. And this is the

0:14:03result after all that time. Have you heard about the game porting toolkit? I have. I have heard

0:14:08about it. It's basically crossover from CodeWeavers, which is an open source. CodeWeavers posted a note

0:14:16saying something like, "We see that Apple is using our open source tool. Hooray." But I get the sense

0:14:21too that it's sort of like, oh, we got bitten by the open source and Apple has just taken it and

0:14:25is using it too. It's based on Wine. So the idea is it's emulating Windows API so you can more

0:14:30quickly, if you're developing a PC game or a PC port of your console game. I love this because

0:14:38I've seen a lot of discourse about Apple not getting games and gaming on the Mac being

0:14:42irrelevant. And you know, I get it. I mean, there are very few people like Peter Cohen,

0:14:46who I used to work with and used to do Mac games all the time. He knows more about this than I do,

0:14:51but like I have a long track record of seeing Apple sort of say that they cared about Mac

0:14:55games and not ever going anywhere. Like, believe me. I look at this though and I think

0:15:00Apple putting an effort into, because they've got Apple Silicon and because the horsepower is so

0:15:07good. Apple putting an effort in saying, you know, Mac gaming never may be huge, but what we would

0:15:14like is to make it easy for people who are going to PC to say, well, why don't we also put it on

0:15:20Mac? And they said at the talk show with John Gruber, they had the perspective, which I thought

0:15:24was good, which is there are more Macs out there than ever. And today, because of Apple Silicon,

0:15:31every Mac that's Apple Silicon is powerful enough to run PC games. So really what you want to do

0:15:38with your Apple is not evangelize, like make a Mac only game or use metal natively. I mean,

0:15:43those are all great, but those are probably coming from the iOS side. It's can we make it so much

0:15:49easier for you to just commit to saying on Mac and PC instead of on PC and will they succeed at that?

0:15:58I don't know, but like they might when they say it's on Steam, right? There's no asterisk anymore.

0:16:04If it's on Steam, you can run it and you can run on the Mac. So I've seen some performance

0:16:08kind of charts from people that like a couple of YouTubers I've seen put some stuff together.

0:16:14And there are some games where on the right hardware, like on an M2, especially

0:16:17you're hitting more than enough frame rate. And this is not actually ported games,

0:16:23people that run on this stuff. So like these are, there's still an emulation going on.

0:16:27Right. The goal with this kit, which I think is clever, is they're using Wine. It's almost like,

0:16:33well, here's where it runs unmodified. And then I imagine if you're a developer, you kind of triage

0:16:38it and say, what are the things we need to do to make it shippable on Mac? And this is Apple saying,

0:16:45you know, it's okay for you to bring your PC game to the Mac. We're not mad at you

0:16:49if you have aspects of it that are using Wine essentially to take your Windows APIs that you

0:16:55rely on and run it on the Mac. We're not too proud about that. It's okay. And our hardware is good

0:17:00enough that we can handle it. And they're doing some work to translate things to metal and, you

0:17:05know, that's great. So I think that there's a lack of, well, let me rephrase that. I think there's

0:17:14humility going on here that maybe you don't expect to see from Apple, but for games, you just have to

0:17:19be. I think clearly somebody at Apple has become a realist in saying, we're going to make an effort

0:17:24to make it so that if somebody's making a game for Windows, it will be easy to come to the Mac.

0:17:30And that our Mac market is bigger than it used to be and more capable than it used to be. And so

0:17:38put those things together. I don't think the Mac's going to ever become top rated AAA gaming

0:17:43platform. Right. But like all they really need, like you said, with Steam, with a lot of developers

0:17:48is just like, oh, there's a path for us to just do a little bit of work and say it's PC and Mac

0:17:54instead of just PC. I think that's the best Apple can hope for, but I think that's actually pretty

0:17:59good. My expectation is there is someone inside of Apple that runs gaming or Mac gaming or whatever,

0:18:05and they have been emboldened by the power of Apple Silicon to finally put together a plan.

0:18:11That like they are now able to go to their bosses and their higher ups and be like, look,

0:18:16we now have power to spare. Please, can we move this forward? And I wonder if they had to get past

0:18:24some not invented here syndrome, right? Which is like, they should just use the Metal APIs.

0:18:29Why are they using Windows? Why would we encourage them to use Windows? We want to encourage Metal,

0:18:32right? Like that's the goal. But we need to give people the ability to run. This is, I think it was

0:18:37even in the state, even when I did a session about it, where they were showing a demo of like,

0:18:41okay, you're running it in the toolkit, but you can see where you're losing some frames.

0:18:45So then you can use Metal to optimize that particular part of the game.

0:18:50And get it good enough to ship.

0:18:51To get it good enough to ship. And so like that, it's like this idea of, of you can do both.

0:18:56And somebody got empowered at Apple to say it's okay, right? I think that's the key there.

0:19:00Somebody unlocked something where they're like, you know what? It doesn't matter if they're using

0:19:05Windows APIs for some of this. It matters that it's on the Mac.

0:19:10Stage Manager on the iPad seems good now. And this is my biggest surprise for WWDC because it was a

0:19:17year over year improvement where they addressed most of the complaints. So just the top level,

0:19:23obviously Federico did a great write up, which I was actually watching him write using Stage

0:19:28Manager while he was writing it, which is one of the great things about WWDC. Windows now have

0:19:34more sizing and placement options. So you have more flexibility over how big the windows are

0:19:38and where they can go.

0:19:39Yeah. I had the, remember my rant about this was why do you give us windows and then not let us

0:19:45put them where we want? And I had somebody say, Hey, Jason, that thing where you've got one big

0:19:49window in the center and then another one off to the side, you can do that now. And I tried it and

0:19:54you can totally do that now. And that's all, that's what I wanted is like, if I want one window

0:19:58in the middle and one on the side, I don't want the system saying what you really want is two

0:20:01windows side by side. It's like, that's not what I want. So you can do that now.

0:20:05You can basically completely overlap one window over top of them, which is fantastic.

0:20:09It's yeah, they, they, I don't know what, I don't know why it took a year, but yeah, they did it.

0:20:14My expectation is the person, there is a person who had a very particular view of how this should

0:20:24be done. And maybe that person is not on that project anymore because this is fundamentally

0:20:30different.

0:20:31Or, or potentially there was a designer who said, this is my vision for it. And then,

0:20:34and now it's in the hands of the product team. And that they were like, yeah, we're not going

0:20:39to do that.

0:20:39There is so much changed here that I would expect that there has been some kind of opinion that has

0:20:46had to change because realistically, either somebody left, this could have happened before

0:20:50now.

0:20:51Right. I think either somebody left or somebody changed their mind. Somebody was finally convinced

0:20:54that this is what the user thought.

0:20:55There's been some kind of big opinion change. But what I like here is this is a obvious they

0:21:01have listened to what people were saying. Um, I do wonder why they couldn't have done this

0:21:07during the iOS 16 beta cycle. Like, I don't know, but they didn't. But it's done now.

0:21:11Honestly, I think they were stamping on a bunch of bugs, right? I think that maybe they said,

0:21:16why don't we save this feature change for 17 and focus our 16 releases on getting it to be

0:21:21more stable?

0:21:22I would have maybe questioned if they decided that during the period that they should have

0:21:27held it. They just shouldn't have shipped Stage Manager in iOS 16 on the iPad. If a year later,

0:21:33they were actually going to make it what it should have been. But anyway, this we've had

0:21:37this conversation a million times.

0:21:38I think they were midstream. I think they were midstream. And if you're in January and you're

0:21:41saying, well, we can do this thing. I can see a manager saying, why don't we put that in

0:21:4417 and just spend the next few months fixing more bugs in 16.

0:21:48But one of the things that iPad version of Stage Manager has that I need to try and confirm

0:21:52the Mac has, because I want this big time. If you shift click on an app icon anywhere,

0:21:57it opens in your current stage from the dock, from Spotlight. And that's something the Mac

0:22:01doesn't do. So like if I shift click an icon on Ventura, it just opens in its own window.

0:22:08And I would like, because that would stop my finder problem, where opening finder means

0:22:12I'm in a new stage, which doesn't make any sense. So I really hope that that's on the

0:22:16Mac too. But they put that on the iPad, which is fantastic.

0:22:18This is something that we wanted and this is sent to us by Chase. iOS 17 has the option

0:22:26to automatically delete verification. So like the two factor codes, you can now choose

0:22:31that once you filled them, they're just removed. This also includes, which is now a new feature

0:22:36in iOS 17, email. So if you have, I'm assuming you have to use mail. My hope is that maybe

0:22:44if you have your accounts in there, it might work. But I wonder if it mail needs to be

0:22:47open. I don't know. But also if you get a code by mail, you can now fill it in.

0:22:52I hate codes by mail so much. But it also now delete that email. So that's like a great

0:22:56twofer. And one that I wanted to mention, because I think it's really interesting,

0:23:00because we're talking about standby and we're talking about FaceTime continuity camera and

0:23:03how it seemed to appear that at some point in the future now, this is all going to come

0:23:08together into a new Apple product for the home. There is now something called Dock Kit,

0:23:13which is for motorized iPhone stands to use. If you're using the camera, it can now

0:23:21integrate with a dock to follow you around. And so Apple is building that feature into iOS.

0:23:27It used to be like you'd have to open the DJI app if you had like one of the DJI things.

0:23:32And then it would use its own facial tracking and it would move itself around. And this is just

0:23:36like the idea here is there's a standard API. Everybody can build motorized iPhone mounts.

0:23:42You put an iPhone in it and it will just talk to the camera and follow you around. And you can set

0:23:49that remotely. And it's that's yeah, that's pretty cool. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by

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0:26:00and all of Relay FM. Thank you very much. When we recorded this time last week, we were kind of

0:26:09pre-Vision Pro. We are now post-Vision Pro. We are. To catch up gradients up on this, we have both

0:26:18experienced the Apple Vision Pro try-on thing. You wrote a great article. I would like to direct

0:26:25people to an episode of Cortex that I put out. Excellent. Thank you so much. Where my goal for

0:26:30that episode was to go chronologically through what that entire experience is like, I was hoping

0:26:36to kind of try and bring people along with me. Yeah, it was good. I mean, it's amplified by the

0:26:41fact that CGP Grey is like giggling throughout. It's amazing. I'm very proud of that episode.

0:26:48But we have now, not only have we experienced the Apple Vision Pro, it's now been, you know,

0:26:55best part of a week since. Yes. I've been able to get it out of my mind. I've been thinking about it

0:27:01constantly. I keep wanting to reach out to a window and move it. Why not, right? I mean, that,

0:27:06that just felt so natural. Like, oh my God, I just grabbed the window by the bottom and move it. And

0:27:11it's amazing. It's, I feel like, so this is an issue that we, you know, we went to see the talk

0:27:21show and John was having the same problem that I've just experienced now. This is a very hard

0:27:26thing to talk about when you're talking about how it makes you feel. Right. Because it is a very

0:27:31personal experience. And, and it's hard, I think, hard to get across the challenges. You're talking

0:27:39to people who haven't experienced it. And how do you get that visceral reaction over to someone

0:27:44else with words? Because it really is a sensory experience. So it's, it's very hard. I would say,

0:27:51I want to preface this by saying, what has struck me the last few weeks, but certainly after

0:27:58experiencing it for myself, that there are two conversations to be had about this product.

0:28:06And what frustrates me is that people want to conflate the two conversations because there's

0:28:13what the product is as a piece of technology. The Apple vision pro. The Apple vision pro.

0:28:19And then there's the business story, which is did Apple make a mistake in investing seven years in

0:28:26this? They spent a lot of money. Are the, is it ever going to be successful? Is it ever going to

0:28:29sell millions of units? Are people going to want it? Is the price too high? All of which are not

0:28:35unreasonable questions. Having a conversation about business strategy. We talk about business

0:28:40strategy at Apple all the time. I think it's really interesting. And honestly, I think the

0:28:44jury's still out about whether this product will find an audience. I've seen some people who are

0:28:49like, oh, just for watching movies, it's going to be a huge hit. And I'm like, for single people

0:28:54can watch at a time and it's $3,500. Like I see people making assumptions in that direction.

0:28:59I also see people making assumptions and saying, this is going to be a failure. It's already a

0:29:05failure. That's an interesting conversation to have. I think the most interesting conversation

0:29:10to have right now, having seen this, having had it unveiled and having experienced it

0:29:14is the product part, but they're both valid conversations to have. They're different. What

0:29:20I know, and I think what you know, having had this experience, and I know six months before it comes

0:29:25out, it's a wired up demo. It's only the stuff they were comfortable to show us. Although I will

0:29:29say it was in a much better state than when I touched the iPhone in January of 2007.

0:29:33What I haven't seen out there is a lot of discourse about the product. I think in part because

0:29:40if you experience the product, or even if you look at the demos,

0:29:45this is an amazing, remarkable technological accomplishment. I think

0:29:53I didn't expect to come away with quite that reaction for a product that's six months away

0:29:59from even shipping. It feels like this is Apple very carefully imagining their whole platform

0:30:04and building an incredible piece of hardware and having a vision, no pun intended, of what

0:30:11this product should be. It's really coherent. It's incredibly well executed. Some of the technology

0:30:19is mind-boggling. I came away thinking this is one of the best things Apple has ever created.

0:30:32Which is not me saying I think it's going to be a huge hit, and everybody's going to want it,

0:30:36and everybody's going to be wearing these things in two years or something like that. I think the

0:30:40jury's still out on all of that. I think it's worth having that separate conversation. What

0:30:45frustrates me is when we have these conversations about this really remarkable product, and they get

0:30:50short-circuited by people saying, "Eh, $3,500. Nobody wants it. Whatever." It's like, okay,

0:30:55it can be both. It can be both. If we just look at the tech, it's amazing.

0:31:01- I have yet to find a piece that anybody has produced who has experienced this thing,

0:31:07who is not universally positive about it. There are questions. I have questions. You have questions.

0:31:11It was not a perfect experience for me. My demo failed at a certain point. It's heavy. The way

0:31:18that I've described it is I don't know if this is heavier than other headsets that I've used,

0:31:23but it reminds me of AirPods Max. They are usable. I wear them for long, long periods of time,

0:31:29but I know they're heavier than everything else on the market, and this is the same.

0:31:32Here's my question to you. Are you happy to pay $3,500 for this thing?

0:31:39- It's hard because this is our business, right? Of course I'm going to pay $3,500 for this.

0:31:44- Let me put it. Say you're going to pay that, but you would never write about it. Having the

0:31:50experience that you've had, do you want to own that thing for $3,500? I'll tip my hand and say yes.

0:31:56- Yeah. Yes.

0:31:58- This is one of those things where I know that is so much money, but it's worth the money.

0:32:04I have used the MetaQuest Pro, which is basically half the price. This is 20 times the experience

0:32:10in quality. - I was going to take it from the other angle,

0:32:12which is I've watched a movie on the MetaQuest 2, which is terrible quality. It's super grainy and

0:32:18low quality, but even there, the 3D, having that immersive response to watching a movie or to being

0:32:26in a different place, even there, it's really good, and then this thing is just at another level

0:32:33for all of that stuff. So yeah, now this is us talking as technology enthusiasts, right?

0:32:40So for us, it's not too surprising that we might say yes, but I was like, yeah, I don't know. And

0:32:47then I saw it and I was like, oh my God. - This is one of those things where,

0:32:50at that price point where we were talking about it before, where I was like, oh, that's going to

0:32:54sting. But now I can't wait to give it that money. - Let me have it. Let me have it. Let me line it

0:33:00up. - I know it's a lot of money, but it's the price of a computer. - It is also, I would say,

0:33:06if you look at what a Lisa or an original Mac cost in today's dollars, they were really expensive.

0:33:13A lot of stuff has gotten cheaper because it's in volume and they've really optimized things.

0:33:18This is a brand new thing. It's very expensive. It is. It is. And it won't, I would even go so

0:33:22far as to say, I don't think it will become successful as a product line if the only way

0:33:28you can get one is to spend $3,500. - Oh, definitely. - But if you're an early adopter,

0:33:32I don't look at it, and this goes back to my other point about the quality of the product.

0:33:37I do not look at this and say, oh, for $3,500, you're buying a lemon. You're not. You're buying

0:33:42a really kind of remarkable product regardless of whether it becomes, again, the business

0:33:48conversation is a separate conversation. - And again, it's like just experiencing the

0:33:52things that I experienced in that demo. If I spent $3,500 and had no third party apps,

0:33:57I'd still be happy. Because as a way to watch movies, unbelievable. As a way to just browse

0:34:04the web, it's just comfortable and beautiful. We sound mad talking about this. - I know. Well,

0:34:13I would say ergonomically, I think it is a better experience if you're sitting on a couch than using

0:34:17a laptop, for example. - Yeah. - Right? - Yeah. Because you're not hunched over. - You're not

0:34:22hunched over looking down. You're just, you're in a relaxed position. - Yes, you have to have

0:34:26neck strength. That's the thing that we're all going to be building. - Right. - I think it might

0:34:31have been underscore was saying it's like how all the F1 drivers, they like focus on their neck

0:34:34strength and you see them doing all these like neck exercises. - Invest in a good pillow. - But

0:34:39this is again, it's like, why is it $3,500? Why is it called pro? Because this is the top end of

0:34:44a product line that we don't know the bottom end of. - That they can't make the bottom end of.

0:34:48- No. And like Mark Gurman was talking about like 2025 is still the goal. And like, by that point,

0:34:53we'll understand what is the core of the experience. - Right. - We don't know that yet. Like what

0:34:59features can you remove? - Right, because Gurman said the front facing screen with the eyes is a

0:35:06cannot be removed feature, which I thought was a little bizarre, but I understand it philosophically.

0:35:12- But like if you look at what Apple is pitching this product as, their framing is around it not

0:35:19being a closed in experience. - Yes. - Where I was, and that is I think a lot of what makes this

0:35:26product super good is it's not that like closed in experience. - I mean, it can be if you want it to

0:35:32be, but this is, this is the, I know we talked about this last week a little bit, but like,

0:35:38you've got to think about this. This product does everything that every other VR product does. - Yep.

0:35:43- Except when they're talking to developers, then there's all this detail about immersion. - Yep.

0:35:51- And how you can go from a shared space to a, basically like a full screen mode, which is like

0:35:55your space to immersion, where you control the whole world, right? - They have that capability.

0:35:59- It's all there. - Which is important. - It's all there, but they don't want to, they don't want to

0:36:02emphasize it. - This is an AR first product. And so like the idea of that screen on the front

0:36:07is about making sure people are aware of you, you're aware of people, and they have all these

0:36:12sensors to allow for that, like, which is further showing what the future of this product line is to

0:36:17be, which is not this closed in thing. I think ideally for them, they don't get rid of the eyes

0:36:24now because in future, there'll be no screen there, right? - Right, in the long, in the long term.

0:36:28- That is clear. - It may be that the eyes are, you know, are not, are not as good, or it may just be,

0:36:32like I said, I think one way to frame it is they just can't make that product yet. And when it,

0:36:36when they can, they will keep as much of this stuff as they can and price it lower. And it

0:36:41probably won't be $300, right? Even the low end one is not going to be like that. They'll also learn,

0:36:46they'll learn, they'll learn that like, oh, we don't actually need that sensor, right? - No, no,

0:36:50do you need eight cameras rather than 12? Like once you've got use, once you have data of people

0:36:55using these things, can you get away with dropping this sensor and dropping that sensor? Could you,

0:37:00you know, like, for example, one of the things that I was told by the product manager, by the way,

0:37:04did you, you go out and speak to the product manager afterwards, right? - Yes, I talked to

0:37:08Bob Borchers, the, uh, - Did you? I spoke to somebody else who had not met before,

0:37:12who worked on the team, and I found that so difficult to ask questions after having that

0:37:19experience. Like my brain was like just full and I had, I just was really struggling to ask things.

0:37:25- I was reminded of when I, when I had my original iPhone demo, which again, it was like six months

0:37:30before it came out and they wanted, they handed me the phone and wanted to have a conversation

0:37:36with me about the product while I was using it. And they would ask me questions or I would try

0:37:40to ask them questions. It was like, um, uh, blah, blah, meh. - That's what I was like. - Because I was so focused

0:37:46on the product. This was a little bit better because at least I got to do the product and then

0:37:49talk to them. But yeah, they knew, they knew that everybody was coming out there a little dazed and

0:37:55amazed and yeah, exactly. - They thought it was kind of funny. I was like, is everybody doing this?

0:37:59Like, and it's like, yeah, everybody's doing this. But one of the things that we were talking about

0:38:03was, uh, the fact that the, they have an infrared flood illuminator in this thing. So you could use it

0:38:10at night. Well, maybe that's the thing you wouldn't have in a cheaper model. - Right. - Right? - Oh yeah, so

0:38:14you got night vision. - Yes. - These are night vision goggles. - So you could use them in the dark and it would still

0:38:18catch all of the finger movements, which I will also say hands up. Like I was like, I didn't think

0:38:23this was going to work, right? The eye tracking and the hand control. - Oh right, because the Quest, or at least

0:38:27the Quest 2. - Everything else doesn't work that well. - I was playing, I was playing with the Quest 2 in, uh,

0:38:32in a back bedroom here and it was at sunset. And at one point the Quest 2 was like, it's too dark now.

0:38:37I can't use, you can't do this anymore. - Before I tried this thing, I was like, I'm not sure they can

0:38:41make this work. Oh, they've made that work. I'm still not sold on the gaming story. The idea of

0:38:47showing like, oh hey, just play a PlayStation controller. That's not immersive. You've broken

0:38:51the immersion. - My gut feeling is that they will have an MFI, essentially program for controllers

0:39:00that will work with the Vision Pro if you want precise gaming. I don't think they're going to

0:39:05make it themselves, but I think they will make that spec that's available for people who want to build

0:39:13essentially like a MetaQuest hand controllers or Sony hand controllers for this thing. They also,

0:39:19again, imagine if they, if they announced that last week, they would be, first off, it's muddying

0:39:25the message. It is saying something they don't offer and they're highlighting out like a

0:39:30limitation. They're taking the focus away from their hand tracking prowess, which they're very

0:39:36proud of. So I would expect they would like people over the next six months to make hand tracking

0:39:41focus games. Like that's what they would prefer. Because, and look, I'm not particularly opposed

0:39:47to it as such because maybe it allows for a different type of game to be made. - I think

0:39:52they'll also talk to developers of existing VR titles and say, can you do this here? Well,

0:39:57let's try to use our tech. And that will indicate whether how highly they have to prioritize letting

0:40:03third party hand tracking or third party input stuff come to it. Because yeah, if you can't,

0:40:09I mean, if you can play Beat Saber by just holding up your hand and waving it around.

0:40:14- You probably could, Beat Saber is one you could do. You could even, if you wanted,

0:40:19hold onto something probably and it wouldn't, you know, if you wanted to. But Beat Saber is

0:40:24the biggest game and that is probably the easiest to bring with hand tracking.

0:40:28- I would think so. - But there are a lot of experiences that wouldn't

0:40:33translate, but maybe it's not important. Like this is maybe what we're going to learn.

0:40:36- But I can also see them saying, okay, there is a certain percentage of these games that are super

0:40:42intense. And for those, you buy a controller and you don't have to, it doesn't have to be a

0:40:46PlayStation controller. It can just, it can be a hand, a special VR controller. And here's our API

0:40:51for that. - Yeah. But you know, gaming was an asterisk in their kind of presentation as such,

0:40:58like they were focusing more on like something we didn't speak about too much. And it's a phrase

0:41:02that I'm trying to like integrate into my lexicon, the same as vision pro, which I keep messing up,

0:41:08is spatial computing. That's how they focus this. It's not a VR AR device as such, it's a spatial

0:41:14computer. Spatial computing is the idea of having windows in your world that you can see and

0:41:22interact with whilst also still being able to see past to the fireplace in front of you. To be able

0:41:30to have this huge window up and look down and read what's on your iPad. Like the idea of these,

0:41:37I don't want to say ambient because it's more active, but it's like this idea of there is

0:41:42computing just occurring around you that you can bring your Mac into this world. They did confirm

0:41:47by the way, it's one screen for the Mac, which I do think is fine because of the way it works.

0:41:53I was always imagining that maybe if you use the Mac, that was all you could use. But if you can

0:41:58use the Mac in conjunction with the vision OS apps, and I really hope they have some kind of

0:42:05great continuity stuff where you could like drag from the Mac to, right? You feel like they've

0:42:11got to be able to do that. At that point, that works great for me. You have like a huge screen

0:42:15for your Mac and then all of your other apps around you. It's a little like working with a

0:42:19Mac where you've got an iPad next to you that's got some stuff on it. I mean, in the long run,

0:42:22I would love the idea of being able to bring up a Mac and have it show you like the other spaces.

0:42:29I have no doubt that there'll be a developer that will make that up. Yeah, I just, I think that at

0:42:34some point Apple will need to, if that's going to happen, that Apple will do it. And I think that

0:42:39could be very interesting. I also have that moment where I think to myself, at some point, maybe this

0:42:47thing will just run the Mac on it. I mean, they don't have the capability to do that right now.

0:42:52They're obviously pushing this thing to the limit. When they have spare power in the future,

0:42:57right? Like then yes, in theory, it could do that. But maybe, hey, maybe they, maybe we won't care

0:43:03about Mac OS. Maybe not. Maybe vision OS is the future, right? We don't know right now. I

0:43:07definitely saw a take that said, this seems like more, almost more like a Mac replacement than

0:43:12anything else. And I think that there's something to that. I think it's not for everybody, but you

0:43:15could almost view it as being, somebody, and I forget who, there's so many takes.

0:43:21Somebody said, it's almost like a really smart display. And there's some, it is that, it's a lot

0:43:30of other things too, but it is that. And if working like, okay, we're in my office here.

0:43:35I am a person who works, leaving the animals aside for a minute, if it's possible. I am working alone

0:43:42all day in an office. I could see a scenario where instead of having my studio display,

0:43:51I used a virtual display with the Vision Pro. I'm not saying I would do that. It would be a thing

0:43:57that I would definitely test if, you know, when I review this presumably next year, that would be a

0:44:02thing that I would test, but I could see it as a possibility of having that. It wouldn't be the

0:44:08same if I was interacting. I think one of the challenges here is that it is a still a solitary

0:44:14device, even with the pass through. And they pushed it a little bit, but like the bottom line is

0:44:17Lauren and I are not going to be watching movies together on this thing because you can't.

0:44:21You'd have to buy two and then they would, and then SharePlay and stuff like that. It's a single

0:44:27user experience in that way. But I have a lot of my time that is single user when I'm focused on

0:44:34my work and the idea of being able to work in my office or drop it down and be in an environment,

0:44:40but have my Macs and have apps and do all of that kind of thing. I can see that as a potential use

0:44:46case, not necessarily the use case, but I can definitely see it as a possibility of extending

0:44:50my Mac still, still using my Mac, but having it be a part of a larger thing. But in the hotel rooms

0:44:57and airports and stuff like that, where it's like, you don't have the room and you don't have your

0:45:02setup. That's also really interesting. We don't know what it's like to use for an extended period

0:45:07of time. We don't. Because I know that if I use any VR headset currently from one of the couple

0:45:11of hours, I don't feel great. And while this was very comfortable for that half an hour we used it,

0:45:18I left it feeling strange, but I think I was just overwhelmed. For the record, mine was not

0:45:26comfortable the entire time. I had intense pressure on my forehead the entire time. I couldn't get it

0:45:30to balance. I think my light shield thing just didn't fit my face and everything I did with the,

0:45:38I adjusted all the straps and everything I could not get. Now I've had that experience with the

0:45:42meta quest too, where it's like, eventually I figured out exactly how to put it on.

0:45:46Also, they're going to have more of these shields. They emphasize that they only have a few sizes

0:45:52right now and that they're going to be more sizes. And that's what the face ID scanning does. The

0:45:55reason you do the scanning, I talk about that. They will have a range of the light shields that

0:46:02go inside, which is what makes contact with your face. So the way it's going to work is you're going

0:46:06to go into the Apple store and one of the things they're going to do is they're either going to

0:46:09scan or you're going to use the Apple store app to scan your face. And it uses that to say, oh,

0:46:13you should use the, you know, I don't even know what they're going to call them, size eight.

0:46:18Like the Apple watch loop bands. Yeah, exactly. And then that'll be the one and they'll probably

0:46:24have them around to serve for you to test in the store. If you order it online, you would just use

0:46:30whatever they recommend and have it, have it come to you. I don't know. I don't know if you,

0:46:33they said that you will be able to order it online, but you don't have to go pick it up.

0:46:38What they said is no, what they said is that it'll be in the Apple store app.

0:46:42That you'll scan your face in the Apple store app and it will use that. Do you know how the

0:46:47prescription lenses are working from a store perspective? I think, okay. So legally, at least

0:46:53in the US, and this is only in the US for now, prescription lenses are a medical device. And so

0:46:59you have to have, it's just like how I got my Quest lenses from a third party optical store.

0:47:04So you won't buy those from Apple? So you don't buy those from Apple, you buy them from Zeiss or

0:47:08from a Zeiss like retailer that stocks them and you will present them with your valid prescription.

0:47:15And then they will sell you the lenses. This is why I think if I try and get one of these early,

0:47:20I'm going to need to get contact lenses. Cause I don't think Zeiss is going to accept my

0:47:24filthy British prescription. Again, or yeah, or you're going to have to just come, you're going

0:47:28to need big American optometry buddy. Yeah, but someone's going to need my prescription.

0:47:33You got to find your eye double. Okay. I'll work on that. Work on an eye double.

0:47:37Put posted on the internet and say, here's my eye prescription. Who's a close match? And

0:47:40they'll volunteer to do it. David in the Discord has a good question that we should specify here,

0:47:45which is, is it multi-user or like an iPhone and iPad? The answer is it is a little like the Mac

0:47:52in the sense that you have a user and then there's a guest user that you can say, now I look at this

0:47:57and I think guest users is okay, but like you could probably get more couples to be willing

0:48:02to buy this thing. If you could have two users instead of a temporary guest user is basically

0:48:07like it's your friends trying it on install, try on it. So you don't have to recalibrate

0:48:14because they, they, it saves all of your settings and then you put it in guest mode and then it,

0:48:18it does the calibration and then do the whole thing. Yeah. So you can do that. So if your

0:48:21friend comes over and wants to try it, you put it in guest mode. The lenses that you put in as well

0:48:25are magnetic. So you could have a swabble. So you could have your partner's lenses and then the guest

0:48:30mode could just be set to that one person. Like it's not an impossible thing. I do think that

0:48:36like this is a device which is complicated for multiple people to use, even though it's so

0:48:41expensive, it would be nice if it could. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I just, it's one of those things

0:48:46where I could see that you might have this, like we're going to share this one and it's, it's at

0:48:50least what Apple says now is that's not going to be the case. There's sort of you. And then if you

0:48:54have somebody who wants to use it, you can put it in guest mode for them. And that person would have

0:48:59to recalibrate every time. Cause I bet that's just how guest mode works. I would think so. So I had

0:49:03a few extra details that I picked up throughout the week. Developer kits are going to be coming.

0:49:08Yes. I heard that too. It is unknown when or how fully featured. Apple have just said

0:49:16there will be developer kits. So the way it's going to work is they're going to do a thing

0:49:20where there are various cities around the world. Cupertino, London, Munich, Shanghai,

0:49:24Singapore, and Tokyo. You're on it. Where developers are going to be able to go and work

0:49:29with the hardware in an Apple location. You schedule all your time and all of that. But yeah,

0:49:34it sounds like after that, when there are more of them available, they're going to do, it's going to

0:49:39be like the other developer kits have been where you're going to be a developer. You're going to

0:49:43apply and it's not going to be a random thing, right? They're going to look at what your apps

0:49:47are or what you, what app you say you're building. They're going to make some judgments and they're

0:49:51going to approve people to get it. It's going to be a limited supply, but that there will be

0:49:56developers who will be able to get these because obviously they want that to be the case. And I

0:50:01have a theory, which is in some of the videos at WWDC, there is a little dongle up at the connector,

0:50:08the magnetic connector up at the top of the, it's by the pods, the audio pods. Why do they have to

0:50:15name that audio pods? Pods. It's like earpods. They're earpods or AirPods or pods. My only

0:50:21criticism at the moment is that the Vision Pro has too many brands inside of it. They over buzzworded

0:50:27this product. Yeah, yeah. EyeSight and yeah, there's too much stuff going on. They're running wild there.

0:50:33So there's a dongle in the videos that is, it looks like it's power and USB out. And people

0:50:43are like, what is that? Because that's not how you're supposed to charge it is up at the headset.

0:50:48You're supposed to charge it down at the battery. And my theory is it's for development. That's how

0:50:54you get data out as well. My theory is you tether it to a Mac when you're developing software and

0:50:58that the ones that they're, I mean, maybe not, and maybe it's just a developer unit inside of Apple.

0:51:02But that's my theory is that probably what's going to happen is this thing is going to run

0:51:07a beta version of Vision OS, but maybe limited. But that's what it's going to be. And maybe not.

0:51:14I mean, it's out there now. This is the thing of like, so I was talking to underscore about this,

0:51:18who by the way, wrote a wonderful article that was put in the show notes today about kind of like

0:51:22why he is going to be a developer for this and like what that means. And I just thought it was

0:51:27like, he calls it a developers view of vision pro, which I just really liked that as a framing.

0:51:32He is committing to be there day one. And so I think it's worth reading if you are thinking

0:51:36about this to kind of see where he's coming from, but he was saying about like, well,

0:51:40the Apple silicon developer kit was a Mac mini with a chip inside. That was never a shipping

0:51:44product. How final is this going to be? But they hadn't announced any products when they did the

0:51:51developer kit, right? Whereas this product has been announced. My guess is that it's going to be

0:51:55pre-release hardware that they're going to have to return, but that it will, and there's a question

0:52:03of whether they will just limit what the OS is capable of because the stuff's not ready and you

0:52:07know everything's going to leak, right? Like everybody's going to, who gets one of these,

0:52:12somebody's going to have a friend who's going to get it to the verge or whatever, right? Like all

0:52:16that stuff's going to happen. So they're going to contain it a little bit, but I do think it will be

0:52:19basically what the final hardware is going to be, barring a little bit. And maybe even required it

0:52:26to be tethered to the Mac that is attached to the same developer account that has Vision Pro

0:52:33authorized and then they do it. Neither of us had great experiences with the Faceline personas.

0:52:39Mine was buggy and I didn't really like it very much. Mine was the uncanniest of valleys. I was

0:52:47one of those people who was optimistic about it because after the keynote I heard a bunch of

0:52:53people who were like, "Oh, that digital persona, ooh." And I was like, "Yeah." I mean even on the

0:52:58episode we did last week, I was like, "You know, we'll see, we'll see." And then I saw it and I

0:53:03thought, "No, no, it is, this looks like a person, but they're not, and they're moving their face,

0:53:10but not quite in a human way." And I really... It looked like a video game. Like they looked

0:53:16like a video game character. Yeah, and not quite right. Which is how video game characters often

0:53:20look. It's uncanny. There's just something in the eyes that isn't right. Mine was broken,

0:53:24like at one point the eyes moved in different directions. Something that I didn't mention in

0:53:29Cortex, but I remembered when talking to someone about it, the spatial persona I was talking to,

0:53:33I don't think had any hair, but not in like this person was bald in that the skin just cut off at

0:53:39the top and there was no hair. There was clearly a connection issue for me with that part, but in

0:53:45the State of the Union, they did something Apple very rarely does. They showed something they're

0:53:50working on, which was spatial personas. So the idea that like there is a future version of this

0:53:56technology where these people will look even more realistic and have like volume to them. And will

0:54:02they be out in the world instead of in a box? Well, there's no box around them. Okay. But so

0:54:09it looks like that you could kind of like just have them hanging out, but it's still just a

0:54:13disembodied head. Because that's the one thing that surprised me that I thought was kind of

0:54:17weird was that not only is this persona not great, but it's in a FaceTime window. Yeah.

0:54:24Looks I'm showing Jason an image from the MaxRumors article that's in the show. This is in the

0:54:29State of the Union. So they're like in a portal kind of hovering. They're kind of like, they're

0:54:33still just hanging out, right? It's still just like head and shoulders hanging out. And this

0:54:36person has a hand where they're pointing. But they're like in a place. But they're kind of like

0:54:40fading, you know, you kind of apparently they have more volume. Right. Clearly, this is, you know,

0:54:49one of those things that they wanted to show but is not ready to ship. And I wonder if when it's

0:54:54when the thing ships, will it be like this? Or will it be like, who knows how quick will they

0:54:57get there? I think also that they're absolutely going to let you create an avatar that's like an

0:55:04emoji. They just didn't want to show it. No, because it's not impressive. It's not impressive.

0:55:08This is their impressive new technology for this. And the truth is that yeah, after having seen it,

0:55:13I would probably choose to just use an emoji instead. But they've got to start and maybe

0:55:19in the future, it will look good enough. But right now, it didn't work for me. Yeah, I agree.

0:55:23Anything more on the Vision Pro today? Obviously, we're going to be talking about this constantly.

0:55:30I wanted to say briefly about the dinosaur experience that happened at the end. I thought

0:55:36it was really funny. So I think because I was a little late getting up, I sat there watching as

0:55:41the big dinosaur came closer. And they're like, you should get up there and interact with a

0:55:45dinosaur. And I walked up toward the dinosaur and I ended up inside the dinosaur. Okay. And it kind

0:55:51of like it kind of like grayed out. And I realized that I was kind of like, and I was like, you had a

0:55:55failure too. I did have a dinosaur failure. And then I didn't experience, I feel like I was too

0:56:02close. And so it wasn't really reacting to me anymore. Also, it was a big dinosaur and I didn't

0:56:06want to interact with it because it could kill me. They told me to get up basically as soon as

0:56:10that started. So maybe they learned from your experience. Yeah, because I got up too late and

0:56:14I got too close and then it popped out. That's a shame because that was the most impressive part

0:56:18of the demo for me was that dinosaur walking into the room and I was terrified of it. And that was

0:56:23like, oh yeah, in this part, we've gone past the I can't tell what's real anymore kind of stage,

0:56:30which is really what you want. And to be able to deliver that kind of experience in an AR

0:56:37environment, not in a VR environment was very impressive. I think that's why it's so impressive

0:56:41is that you're in what you perceive to be a real space. And then there's this thing in there that's

0:56:47unreal. I think my favorite moment was the sizzle reel of the 180 degree immersive video because

0:56:55as a sports guy, especially, it was just like, this is, I mean, it's so much closer to what's

0:57:04going on, that dunk and the ground ball and in the baseball game, like, oh, that was just really good

0:57:11stuff. And then the other stuff, I mean, being up on a cliff and looking down, you know, deep down

0:57:17into the cliff and all that, that was also very impressive too. The sports part was the most

0:57:20impressive part of that because it didn't have the kind of like, you know, it starts with like

0:57:26Alicia Keys is singing at you and that just doesn't feel real because she wouldn't do that.

0:57:29But the sports thing, they're doing their thing, they're not paying any attention to the camera.

0:57:34And so you just feel like you're just hanging out and watching the sports. And like, I think that

0:57:38there is a big market in that. - I agree. I think that that's going to be one of those places, if

0:57:42they can do it. And there's some technical questions there because right, this is all

0:57:44baked in after. And the question is like, is it only from one perspective? Can you switch to

0:57:49different perspectives? How do you, can you stream it live? Because, you know, is that,

0:57:53and what's the quality if you stream it live? Because you're gonna have to compress that video,

0:57:57you've got stereo, so it's gotta be two images. What's the frame rate? You know, what's the

0:58:02resolution? I have questions about like, if I, can I get that in my home and stream it live-ish,

0:58:09you know, even if it's like a delay of 10 seconds or 30 seconds or whatever.

0:58:14I got lots of questions, but if they can make that into a product, and MLS might be the thing that

0:58:19they try. - Oh, I'm sure they will. - And it's not gonna be everywhere. It's gonna be like, maybe

0:58:23there's an MLS game that is gonna be in 3D immersive starting, you know, next season when

0:58:30this thing is shipping. And maybe there's a Friday night baseball game that is in there.

0:58:36'Cause they're probably only gonna have a limited number of cameras that they can even shoot this

0:58:40with. - And you could do it at concerts too. - Absolutely. - Like music still works. - And

0:58:44then it's the Apple Music Experience too, right? - In the demo, you're just in a recording studio

0:58:49of Alicia Keys. It's like, that doesn't feel right, but you could like, just put one of these

0:58:53down at Ed Sheeran concert, and you're at the front row, and now you're just watching it,

0:58:56and he's doing his thing. - Yeah, I would love to. - All of this is like, it's such a smart move,

0:59:00because it's like, for sports, I would pay more than what the pay-per-view costs, but not as much

0:59:05as the tickets. And now you've got this middle tier to charge people. But like, if, you know,

0:59:09pay-per-view's $10, tickets 100, I'd pay 50 to have this immersive experience, where I feel like

0:59:14I'm actually sitting and watching the game. - Immersive, yeah, and for a concert, immersive

0:59:19on demand. Like, you know, I can't make the concert, I'm too far away, or I can't make that

0:59:24day, but you can, you know, two days later, you can watch that concert, and it's like you're in

0:59:28the front row. That would be great. - Infinite ticket sales, right? - It is. - There is like,

0:59:31there, usually you're bound by the size of the stadium. Well, everyone that couldn't have got

0:59:36a Taylor Swift ticket could watch it in immersive video instead, if they wanted to. - Right, and it's

0:59:42going to be a different experience. This is a thing that came up in a couple of places,

0:59:45and I think it's worth talking about. The difference between watching clips of Avatar

0:59:49and watching the immersive video. And the difference is, I think 3D movies on this are

0:59:56going to be amazing. - Yes, because it was. - Avatar, I mean, is the perfect example,

1:00:00because James Cameron's been a 3D, like, he cares about 3D at a level that almost nobody else in the

1:00:05movie industry cares about. Most 3D movies are shot in 2D because it's way easier to shoot in 2D,

1:00:10and then they are processed into 3D. And they can still be very impressive, but they're,

1:00:14you know, James Cameron is like at the forefront of this. He really cares about this stuff. So that

1:00:17was great. But it's also a movie. Not only is it in a rectangle, but, you know, I'm going to get

1:00:23back to my old film class in college, right? It's cuts and framing. It's the director chooses what

1:00:30you see. They choose the camera angles and the cuts and the framing, and it all goes into the

1:00:35storytelling of the decisions by the director. The immersive stuff, it's like you're there.

1:00:43And I think that that's interesting because, like, I watched, the last concert film I watched was,

1:00:48there's a 1975 concert on Amazon Prime Video. It's great. From there, it's, I think, Madison Square

1:00:54Garden on their latest tour. And it's fun. But if I were watching that in immersive from the front

1:01:01row, I wouldn't get the cuts. You know, it cuts to the audience. It cuts to close up on Maddie Healy.

1:01:09It backs up and shows it. It shows the drummer. It's like the director is showing you what the

1:01:14director thinks that you should see in that moment. And if I was watching the immersive

1:01:19video of it, I would be at the front of the stage and I could look where I wanted. And it's

1:01:24not necessarily a better experience. It's just a different one because now I'm the director.

1:01:29If I am amazed by the fans bouncing next to me, I can watch the fans bouncing next to me whenever I

1:01:34want. Or I can look up on stage and look at Maddie or I can go over and look at the saxophone player

1:01:40or whatever at any time, like when I go to a real concert, right? It's just different. And sports

1:01:48will be like that too. And again, Ben Thompson said something that I thought was great, which is

1:01:52like, the difference is I'm just sitting courtside and there's no technology in my way. I'm just

1:01:57there. And if I want to see what the score is, I look at the scoreboard and like that says it all.

1:02:05There's no overlay with the score or anything. The point is that you're there. So I feel like

1:02:09the immersive stuff is going to be really interesting because there are some choices

1:02:13to be made, but what it isn't is they could do a 3D version of a soccer match and maybe they will.

1:02:18But what I think they're also going to try is this immersion thing where it's like, you're now

1:02:24at a really good seat at the soccer match, or you're right behind the goal at the soccer match,

1:02:29or whatever. And maybe you can choose where you are. I think that would be interesting because it

1:02:33might get a little boring if you're in one place. Maybe you flip around where you are and you can

1:02:37choose that. But it's just different. And it's going to be interesting to see what happens with

1:02:43that because Apple, with all of its ties to the entertainment industry and to the sports industry

1:02:47now, Apple can make this stuff happen.

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1:04:32You have had a busy week. I have. I just got more tea by the way. I know. I watched Jason. We just

1:04:38took an ad break, especially as an upgrade. I feel bad. Normally you don't know that I've left you

1:04:43when you're reading the ad. Well also I feel like you need to, you're getting the typical

1:04:48like gladiator experience that I'm through where I have to sit here the whole time. Need more liquid?

1:04:54Can't do it. Need to use the bathroom? Ain't happening. Mike sits here in this chair for the

1:04:58entire time every week. You know you can literally take a break at any point. Nope. I will not. This

1:05:02is, this is the way I am. You know, sometimes it just keeps me alive. You've been busy this week

1:05:07because you have also had to review not one but two Macintosh computers. Yeah, you know, normally

1:05:12I would have spent the rest of the week after we had our couple of days in San Jose. Normally

1:05:17we would, Dan Morin and I would spend the rest of the week scouring the videos on the website for

1:05:25tidbits and that didn't happen this time because I spent all of my time with a Mac Studio with an

1:05:34M2 Ultra processor and a 15-inch MacBook Air which is actually right in front of you right now. I can

1:05:41see it. I mean it's big. I saw it. What is that? Starlight? Yeah, that's Starlight. I mean I also

1:05:46saw one of them. I saw this and I had the demo experience in the hands-on area. I mean there's

1:05:51nothing to say about it. Okay, I had to write two reviews of products that are, you know, not that

1:05:58surprising. The newest thing in it is that we hadn't seen the M2 Ultra before and the answer is

1:06:03the M2 Ultra is faster in the same way that the M1 Ultra is faster than the rest of the M1s.

1:06:08It's not much of a surprise. I mean this isn't a huge difference. Does this Mac Studio have more

1:06:12IO? Or is it just the Mac Pro that got more IO? It's just the Mac Pro. Okay. So obviously the

1:06:17chip is capable of having many many many many more Thunderbolt ports on it plus a bridge that

1:06:23takes it to many many many PCI cards and, you know, they're just using the standard Mac Studio.

1:06:30So on the Ultra you get the what four USB-C in the back plus two in the front plus there's USB-A

1:06:36in the back. Thunderbolt, right? Or sorry, yeah Thunderbolt. They're Thunderbolt in front and back

1:06:40and on the Macs they're Thunderbolt only on back and they're USB on front. Okay. So there's a lot

1:06:46of IO anyway but they didn't change any of that. Really the big change in the Mac Studio is the

1:06:53chip is an M2 instead of an M1. I said in my review if you've got an M1 Mac Studio you're fine.

1:06:59Yeah. It's, you know, it's M1 to M2. It's incremental. I don't think anybody, we've been

1:07:04saying this all along, if you've got an M1 and you look at the M2 and like well should I update for

1:07:08the speed? That is not a reason. It's faster but like the people who should buy this are people who

1:07:13and I said this in the review, people who still on Intel, people who maybe have an M1 but it's like a

1:07:21lower end model like a Mac Mini or something like that and they want more power or it's people who

1:07:26like saw that M2 Macs and said I'm gonna get the MacBook Pro and I know multiple people who have a

1:07:32MacBook Pro tethered to a monitor and mostly just use it as a desktop and would say you know the

1:07:38Mac Studio is nice and you could sell that MacBook Pro and buy a Mac Studio instead and put it on

1:07:44your studio display. So yeah. Anyway it's that. Oh and the big news that all the Mac nerds want to

1:07:51know which is is it quieter? And the answer is yes it is quieter. It is quieter. So the test for me

1:07:58was when I was reviewing the M1 Mac Studio, I had it out on my desk and I was not testing for noise

1:08:05and I thought to myself what's that sound? And it was the fans on the Mac Studio and when I put it

1:08:11under my desk I didn't hear them anymore and that's where my Mac Studio lives now. But with the M2,

1:08:15I put it on my desk and listened for a fan and I didn't hear it and the only way I could hear the

1:08:20fan is either to turn it around 180 degrees so I was listening to the back of it or to go around

1:08:25to the back of my desk and listen. There is a fan noise there but it is quieter. That's the best way

1:08:30I can quantify it is it's quiet enough that if it's on my desk and I'm in front of it I can't hear

1:08:35the fan and that fan noise is consistent. I was trying to I think it'll crank up if you really

1:08:40blast the GPU and the CPU. I tried to blast the GPU and it didn't get any louder so it's just

1:08:48and then I had my M1 over next to it. It's actually over there. You can see it. My M1 Mac Studio and I

1:08:54could hear it from my chair even though it's over by the wall now. So it is appreciably quieter.

1:09:00If that was the thing that was freaking you out about the Mac Studio is that the fan noise was a

1:09:04bit too much, they fixed it and Apple confirmed that we made some changes to the cooling system.

1:09:11They wouldn't say what they were. They wouldn't quantify them in any way so the best I can tell

1:09:15you is they're quieter and I couldn't hear it in a fairly quiet room with it facing me so the fan is

1:09:23pointing out the back. That was enough to hide the audio, hide that hissing sound and that's not true

1:09:31of the M1 so it's definitely quieter than the M1. The fact that this product exists, the second

1:09:37version, has sold me on it being my next computer. It's not going to go away now I think. And that

1:09:44was my worry of like was this just a stop gap and now like they just don't need it anymore?

1:09:50Like we weren't sure right? But now I mean really this is the Mac Pro now. This is the Mac Pro now.

1:09:57The Mac Pro so that's one of the things that I hid in my review was it's always been that the

1:10:03Mac Pro has been the highest end Mac and it may be again right there were those rumors that they

1:10:06were working on like a four chip version of the M2 and then they killed it and it isn't going to

1:10:12happen and so because the Ultra is two Max's put together. It was like was it an extreme?

1:10:19Yeah I mean I think Mark Gurman kind of made up a name for it but like the idea was they were

1:10:22going to use that Ultra Fusion technology to connect four together and then that didn't happen.

1:10:26It could happen in the future and if it does too much it might be well that's the thing it could

1:10:30happen and if it does happen it'll happen on the Mac Pro not in the Mac Studio. But I think the

1:10:37truth is that for at least for now the Mac Studio with the Ultra chip and the Mac Pro are identical.

1:10:43They're identical in every way that is about the chip. They're identical in GPU configurations

1:10:50and RAM. They're identical in performance. Only the IO is different. Only the fact that you can

1:10:57put PCI cards in there and that there are more Thunderbolt ports out and the fact that it's huge

1:11:03and expensive. Separate the two. So if you want the fastest Mac money can buy and you don't need

1:11:08that extra IO you can just buy a Mac Studio and you get it. So the Mac Studio is I think what I

1:11:13said in the review is still the champion. It's a co-champion now but it's still the champion

1:11:17and I like that about it and so I think that's a reason for people like you to be like okay I

1:11:23view that as being Apple thinks most people should not buy the Mac Pro even if they need

1:11:28maximum performance they should just buy the Mac Studio. The way I think of it now is like the

1:11:32Mac Studio is is the Mac Pro. The Mac Pro is like the specialist Mac because it really is like do

1:11:39you need PCI expansion? Like that has to be internal. Right right and the since graphics and

1:11:47RAM are taken out of the equation now it is just about all it is it's storage it's networking and

1:11:52it's these specialized IO cards that are used in audio and video and we saw it I mean they

1:11:56they exist there are people who spend seven eight nine thousand dollars per card and put five cards

1:12:01in there and they're doing scoring of an orchestra and it's better to do it on one computer than three

1:12:06and now they can and like that's all great right but it is so specialized. But it's like realistically

1:12:11I don't know how long that even exists as a thing like Thunderbolt can handle this. Well I have had

1:12:17that thought which is I wonder if in the long run the answer is you make some modifications to the

1:12:23Mac Studio that'll and you sell a breakout box that does this because the Mac Studio can do all

1:12:31those things too right you would just need a chassis with PCI cards and a Thunderbolt cable

1:12:36that's or or realistically or several yeah I'm sure that there are specifics and I'm bungling

1:12:43but like do you that's all it is they can make a spec or they can make a special connector yeah

1:12:49that was for their special box and then they don't even need to sell a Mac Pro anymore.

1:12:54I think honestly I think they're amortizing the cost of designing that brand new Mac Pro

1:12:58in closure and they might as well do it and they got the rack mountable version and they're like

1:13:02very it's pretty and they're very popular. It's a statement they're making a statement with it.

1:13:05Yeah and there's nothing wrong with that but and I people who are upset about Mac Pros not having

1:13:10the graphics expansion and all that I think we all knew this was coming I don't think it's

1:13:14necessarily forever I think it's possible that they would try to bring some of that back down

1:13:19the road but I think it's not likely I think this is probably what it is and you know the fact is

1:13:27Apple can't and won't make computers for every single use case and so on the talk show last week

1:13:36which we were all at you know they're doing their marketing spin but I think there's also truth in

1:13:43there too which is yes they can't scale like PCs can in certain ways at the same time their

1:13:52argument is they have chosen a different path and that Apple silicon Macs are have diverged from the

1:14:00priorities of Intel PCs in lots of ways and this is the path they have chosen and you know if

1:14:08Apple has not ever been afraid of leaving some people behind along the way.

1:14:13Yeah it's like look if Apple seems to be okay. They do not need to make a Mac to train machine

1:14:19learning models they don't have to do that they don't the PCs can do that and the Macs can use

1:14:25the output. Yeah I had a funny moment where there was a demo of the Mac Pro and they were talking

1:14:29about using Nuke and they were going to do it's very impressive machine learning model where

1:14:36basically an artist was going to rotoscope hundreds of frames and they drew 20 frames

1:14:41that were representative of the whole motion and then they built a machine learning model

1:14:46and outputted all the frames and so you get their point there was that you can use machine learning

1:14:52to further the creative process so there's like an actual artist who does the hand drawing and then

1:14:57the machine learning expands it so they don't have to draw every frame. Because they have the neural

1:15:02engine. That's very cool however in the demo at one point they said now I'm not actually going to

1:15:09train the model here because that'll take a couple hours and I thought ah there it is that that model

1:15:15training happens on the GPU and even on a Mac Pro they can only have whatever it is 70 odd GPUs and

1:15:22the fact is that training would probably not happen on that Mac Pro right that training would happen

1:15:26on a PC that's packed with GPUs and they would do the training there in less time and you're right

1:15:32Apple doesn't have to there's this moment that I think people get to where they're like aha

1:15:37and for that you need to use a PC and it's like you know what Apple should not be in the business

1:15:43of filling every ecological niche they really shouldn't and we could argue like oh but they're

1:15:47going to lose this market it's like well they've lost a lot of markets there are a lot of markets

1:15:51that Apple is not in anymore and they're not getting them back and it's okay as long as they're

1:15:55serving you know the markets that make sense for Apple and this is a training is like a finite

1:16:00thing that every user is going to need even the pro users like once enough models have been created

1:16:05you just use the models that exist I don't think that into the future everyone's going to be

1:16:10training their own AI models like you're just taking advantage of what is they are created to

1:16:16be used for what you need them for but the technology can change as well and the way these

1:16:21things could be trained could end up being different in the future we don't know right now

1:16:25but I don't believe that Apple should make a Mac Pro for this very one specific purpose I don't

1:16:32think that's something they have to do and I know that there are prominent people out there who we

1:16:36know and have been on the show who talk about about like the you know the idea of GPUs for gaming and

1:16:40things like that the truth is it's not really a relevant market for Apple it just isn't no I mean

1:16:44we spoke about it already they're trying to find other ways to bring gaming to the Mac and it will

1:16:48work it will work perfectly fine yeah but the idea I mean I think I think what Apple Silicon has done

1:16:54and you can disagree with this or not but in terms of whether you think it's good but you can't

1:16:58dispute that it's true is by focusing on Apple Silicon they're focusing on design choices that

1:17:04they made that involve the the mobile space right it started as an iPhone went to the iPad they've

1:17:11they modified it but like a lot of those design choices that make it so good preclude it from

1:17:17behaving in the way that a traditional Intel PC would Apple has chosen this path and they've

1:17:23benefited from it and part of that is saying we're not gonna be profiling like an Intel PC in these

1:17:32ways and you just have to deal with it and like they made their decisions and it's benefited them

1:17:38but it will leave things behind where where you're like but what about more GPUs and they're like

1:17:43you know I wrote a piece a while ago I can't remember how long ago now but basically what I

1:17:47said was is it worth it if you think about Apple's whole chip design you know there's people down in

1:17:52the bunker with Johnny Shruti if you come to them and you're like you know what I know that you've

1:17:58gotten all this way because of your integrated GPUs in memory but I want to sell the least

1:18:05popular Mac in existence and I want you to make a special custom thing that throws everything that

1:18:13you've done up to now away so that I can have GPUs for a very tiny fraction of the people who will

1:18:19buy the least popular Mac in existence which is the Mac itself our smallest computing product

1:18:25line at the moment like how could they ever motivate the chip design team to change all

1:18:37of their philosophy for this tiny part of the Mac Pro like I just don't see it I mean it's not like

1:18:44I mean it's incredibly powerful still though like yes you could tune it differently right oh man

1:18:49so many incredibly GPUs on that on that ultra model it's just it's wild but like that the

1:18:55Apple silicon chip ethos and the power per watt and all of that that they're focusing on has

1:19:00enabled them to make a bigger version of what I think is the best laptop Apple's ever made which

1:19:05is the M2 MacBook Air right so you also have the 15 inch I do there you know this is the best laptop

1:19:12but it's a bit bigger and like yeah now there is a product in the lineup for people that want a

1:19:17bigger screen if you've used the M2 MacBook Air like you say you've used it but it's just a bit

1:19:23bigger now a chip is a chip is a chip and in the Apple silicon era and a computer is a computer

1:19:28like this is a MacBook Air it is I mean Mark Gurman said this weekend that they actually

1:19:33planned on releasing them both together and they just couldn't do it and so a year later almost we

1:19:37get we get this other one and then the M3 versions will come in 2024 so right the the 13 inch is going

1:19:43to be around for longer than it would typically right but it's not but it's going to sounds like

1:19:48that's just the M3 is sliding until early next year because they've had all this stuff kind of

1:19:52in the bottleneck right but the the fact is I mean this was the most uh difficult review to write

1:19:58because there's very little to say about it it is the 13 inch MacBook Air except at 15 inches and

1:20:04most of what I have to say is Apple clearly thinks that there's a switcher opportunity here because

1:20:0915 inch laptops are very popular on the PC side I think Apple finally realized that while there

1:20:15are some people who will pay $2,500 in order to get a 16 inch Mac laptop there are a lot of people

1:20:22who will either just begrudgingly get the 13 inch or will say we'll just forget it I won't get one

1:20:28or we'll buy a 15 inch Windows laptop because they just don't care they in that keynote really

1:20:35hammered on the idea of switchers that there's a market there for them there are people who've

1:20:39bought the 13 who are going to be like oh yeah I would much rather go up to the 15 on the Air

1:20:44and yet it keeps everything else about the Air it is just that M2 MacBook Air it's just a little

1:20:48wider and has a bigger screen and it's got a and it's a little heavier because it's it's bigger and

1:20:54it has a little more battery but it it's just a counteract powering the screen it's the same

1:20:58battery life it's the same computer just you can get it in 13 or 15 it's an incredible computer for

1:21:03fifteen hundred dollars yeah it just is and it's a hundred dollar difference if you spec them

1:21:08another thing that I noticed is that that 1199 formerly 1299 model that's the one that has the

1:21:14two GPU cores shut off and that's the one that has the cheaper power adapter when you go up when you

1:21:20start to build to order and you get them to match the difference between the 13 and the 15 is a

1:21:26hundred dollars yeah I said it starts at 1300 yeah yeah so 1199 or 1399 uh it is so what is it yeah

1:21:37it's the same specs at the hundred oh so for if you want the same specs as the 1399 15 you get the

1:21:441299 13 inch model so basically you want a bigger screen it's a hundred dollars more that's

1:21:51essentially what it is unless you get they've got the cut rate version that they're that they got

1:21:56down to 1199 that used to be 1299 of the 13 inch model that's typical apple right they've got the

1:22:01sort of like super lightweight version 15 inch they're not they're not selling it that way there's

1:22:06no reduced core 8 GPU smaller power adapter in the box for the 15 inch you just get the good one

1:22:14it's just storage is the difference between the two and you can and you can um also power adapter

1:22:21thing it's just like it was on the built order higher end models of the 13 inch you can you can

1:22:25choose you either get that um two USB-C adapter or you can get the one that's got more power with one

1:22:31plug and it does fast charge and you can choose but that's not new that's actually was there last

1:22:37july too it was just the the big difference is just that they don't have the reduced cost version

1:22:42as the base model that's it i mean it's a cool computer man i mean that yeah that's it it's like

1:22:47everything i think my summation of my review was like look just go read my review of the m2 air

1:22:52from last summer because it's the same computer and it's great and i bought one and i love it and

1:22:56i spent you know a year with it and i love it and this is that but bigger yeah these laptops are so

1:23:00popular um it only makes sense really to have another version of it it makes sense why not make

1:23:06an even smaller one just go wild like the magbook air is a product line all on its own uh it's

1:23:13deployed from its original branding zach's pointing out yes 1099 is the base model was

1:23:171199 now is 1099 that's the one that's that's got the two fewer gpu cores and the worst charger

1:23:22for that will be a couple of years away now and then that 999 and that'll be go away and this will

1:23:28be 999 yeah no it's it's uh they're they're headed in that direction but yeah i just bottom line is

1:23:33that it was this was my mac world column last week i was basically like hey the mac announcements

1:23:37were all really boring and i think they were i think they were huge i actually think bringing

1:23:41the 13 inch down a hundred dollars their most popular laptop being a hundred dollars cheaper

1:23:46is huge news putting the 15 inch model on top of it like i just anybody who's been in that position

1:23:52where they're shopping for a mac laptop and they look at like well it would be nice to have a bigger

1:23:55screen it costs what uh and yeah some people buy the macbook pro but like you don't need the macbook

1:24:00pro stuff if you just want a bigger screen it just used to be that was all you could do and now

1:24:06now you don't so yeah if you want the the bigger screen that's brighter and has the the pro motion

1:24:11display and has more io and it has more powerful processors like there's a whole list of things

1:24:15that that macbook pro gets you but all you really care about is you want something bigger than a 13

1:24:19inch screen now this is here i think it's i think it's going to be big is the 13 inch 999 on

1:24:25education yes i see that's amazing yep that's a just a yeah i will say it again i hit that on

1:24:31me now 13 inch macbook care is the best mac i think ever it's pretty great like it is the most

1:24:38perfect balance of portability and power that i've ever experienced and like what they have been able

1:24:46to pull off with apple silicon to enable this is unbelievable and now that they've done a similar

1:24:50thing in in the macbook the only thing i don't like about the 15 inch macbook air the keyboard

1:24:55deck looks weird with no speakers it looks like just an expanse so i'll tell you as somebody who

1:25:03doesn't use a macbook pro but has always used a macbook air it doesn't bother me at all but all

1:25:08the macbook pro people are like oh that's basically the speakers because it's still firing them out

1:25:12the back and against the screen because that's the macbook air design but that in all the macbook

1:25:17pros they have grills to just it's like a visual thing i think as well as a helpful thing but yeah

1:25:22it just looks like the keyboard just looks so tiny i know in the space yeah that is that is because

1:25:27they've stretched out the they didn't stretch the keyboard they just stretched out the laptop to be

1:25:32wider and so it's just metal there don't perforate your own macbook air try not to this episode is

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1:27:20all of relay fm we now move into some ask upgrade questions if you would like to send in questions

1:27:29of your own go to upgrade feedback.com and you can do that mike asks mike how bad did your cheeks

1:27:35hurt by the end of monday just caught up on instagram and you were beaming ear to ear in every

1:27:40picture i had just the best day yeah best couple of days it got only better with the vision pro thing

1:27:46my wwc experience was basically perfect couldn't have been happier i think i saw somebody asked me

1:27:53i had people ask me like you know i obviously such a terrible time last year did this make up for it

1:27:57yes it made up for it i am i have gotten to the point where i'm pleased i missed wwc last year

1:28:03because my first wwc was the introduction of a brand new platform yeah and i got to use that

1:28:09platform not many people in history get that opportunity and i got that so yeah i feel very

1:28:14grateful yeah is that asks is the virtual theater in the vision pro better than the real thing or

1:28:20just something different better than the real thing because the way projection systems work

1:28:25at theaters that show 3d it what they're doing is they've got two images so they make you put

1:28:31on glasses who knows where those glasses have been so you're already wearing something on your face

1:28:37right and then the glasses are polarized so what they're doing is they're projecting two images

1:28:42left and right eye but they use the brightness of the projector so it's half the brightness so

1:28:47three in most cases 3d projection will be dim and unpleasant uh and this is not that this is full

1:28:54brightness and it makes a difference it really does and you are sat in the prime position which

1:29:00is not a thing you get right we're going to see spider verse tomorrow which i'm very excited about

1:29:05i haven't seen it that's great and we're going uh in the cinema that we're going to we're like on

1:29:10the end of a row because all the middle seats are taken right but if i was watching at home with my

1:29:15vision pro i'd be right perfectly in the middle absolutely brian asks the vision pro strap looks

1:29:21like it get in the way of using airpods max apple didn't design a headset that can't work with their

1:29:26best headphones right well i mean brian gotta tell you the best headphones are the airpods pro and

1:29:31it won't get in the way of those yeah i i use the airpods max and love the airpods max uh but the

1:29:36airpods pro is clearly what this thing's designed for and it will give you a better experience yep

1:29:41no it probably wouldn't work the strap probably wouldn't work but as i was told and i think you

1:29:46were told too apple's fully expecting many people to make many different kinds of straps this it's

1:29:51going to be a connector that people will be able to use oh interesting i didn't hear that that's

1:29:54they said to me like we expect third parties to make straps for this headset because i asked them

1:29:59specifically about the fact that i had the overhead strap and i didn't recall that in the keynote

1:30:03right they said to me it wasn't the keynote but really it was in like one tiny shot um but all of

1:30:08the imagery just show the back strap which you can use it that way but you get they said you get

1:30:13additional comfort over longer periods they believe by using the top strap but the straps

1:30:17aren't final but they expect many companies to make many different types of straps for many

1:30:22different types of comfort levels because it's just to connect to like the apple watch effectively

1:30:27they think it'll be like that one okay jerry asks noting that the new headset is the vision pro

1:30:34what do you imagine a vision non-pro to be do you have any thoughts on what apple could compromise

1:30:39on it's the quest big question gonna be a question of the next year yeah two years i mean mark

1:30:45german's newsletter this weekend did have some discussion of this i was surprised by some of the

1:30:50the choices that he said but like he said the the the eyesight thing is is going to be on all of

1:30:56them at least they think that right now i mean they may they may change as this goes um but i

1:31:01think um they could compromise on they could have fewer sensors they could compromise made of

1:31:08aluminium it could be it could be you know cheaper it could be bring your own uh speakers it could be

1:31:16um lower resolution could be yeah that would suck though i know i know this is going to be the

1:31:26really hard part it is like what do what do they pull out of it it's going to be very difficult it

1:31:31may be that it's a lot like this one but cheaper because it's two years later and that there's a

1:31:35new thing at the high end that could also be it right that like the cheaper version is just

1:31:39it's just this but they might use pro too they might use cheaper materials that's that's a

1:31:44possibility i i think what's going to happen too is they wanted to get their best foot forward here

1:31:49and so um imagine coming out with the the cheaper one they've made it a problem for future apple

1:31:55yeah to deal with that's right future apple will have to we'll have to work this out decontend that

1:31:59thing well but by all accounts they're working on that product um and so they have to figure that

1:32:04out of like how do you make uh a cheaper one and and then also the next generation one of this

1:32:11uh yeah it's a good it's a good question we're going to be playing that game for a while now

1:32:16and i think once it ships they're going to get a better sense and we're going to get a better sense

1:32:20of what are the core parts of this experience that really can't be downgraded and what are the things

1:32:25that you could get away with parker asks will the glasses like the prescription adapters be required

1:32:31for people who are near-sighted it makes sense if you're farsighted you would need something but

1:32:36since the screens are basically on your eye i don't see why someone who is near-sighted would

1:32:40need additional lenses i don't know i don't know i'm not i'm not right and so that's why i needed

1:32:46them they did the scanning my expectation is if you have no if you are near-sighted i don't think

1:32:56near-sighted means you can see near but you can't see far wait let me rephrase it because i get yeah

1:33:02i need glasses for things far away yes me too i think if you need glasses for things far away

1:33:08you're going to need the prescription correction yes i think if you just need glasses for reading

1:33:12i think you'll be okay i think you'll probably be okay i had somebody ask me um the other day at a

1:33:17user group thing that i did um how do they make it so that you can you know basically it's like

1:33:25these things are right in front of your eyes how do they make it that way and and why do you need

1:33:29vision correction for that and all that and my answer was that think about um surround sound

1:33:35speakers and you've got seven speakers everywhere around you and then and then apple says oh you

1:33:40can just put these air pods in and it'll do surround too and there are a lot of people are like oh but

1:33:43it can't it can't because of the seven but you think about it you only have two ear holes right

1:33:49so your brain is doing the processing you could if you i'm not saying that apple does this they

1:33:54do sort of but like if you can have a sophisticated enough system in your ear holes that can make it

1:34:02sound like there are a bunch of different speakers or things in a bunch of different places

1:34:07so that your brain reacts the same way you know the the seven speakers positioned around your room

1:34:12is cheating it's still cheating it's it's not putting sound everywhere it's putting sound in

1:34:17seven places and then they come through the room into your ears and your brain processes them

1:34:22it's like that this thing's right in front of your eyes but what it's doing is they've got that

1:34:28whole lens system that's in between there exactly and what they're doing is they want the light when

1:34:33it passes into your eye and hits the back to be as if it was light from the world even though it's

1:34:41not that's the trick and the the better the lenses are and the higher quality the images and

1:34:46everything that goes into that they are making your eyes see light from uh as if it was coming

1:34:55from distance and as a result you gotta focus like it's coming from distance and i know that's a

1:35:02it really is a thing that is a head scratcher but like that's the idea here is that your eyes don't

1:35:08know where that light is coming from all they know is that the light hit the back of your eye and if

1:35:12apple can emulate light from the real world hitting your eye but it's light from their screens hitting

1:35:17your eye then your brain can't tell the difference and your eyes can't tell the difference because

1:35:23there's no like we don't have lidar scanners in our bodies that give us a distance back right we

1:35:30just interpret distance based on the light that passes into our eyes and hits our retinas so

1:35:35if you can fake it then it's like it's real and rich asks do we know what the accessibility story

1:35:43is with the vision pro so i looked into this there was a session about accessibility for how that

1:35:50could work and there's a few things that they're doing one is called pointer control so instead of

1:35:56using eye tracking you use your head wrist and index finger to do the tracking on the headset

1:36:04so like rather than your eyes do looking around and choosing the interface you can kind of put

1:36:08your hand up it looks like kind of like i don't like a magic wand that you're aiming towards the

1:36:12interface and you can select it that way they have something called dwell control which is

1:36:18on-screen options for the interactions rather than using your hands so you would use eye tracking to

1:36:24look at a thing and then look at a place which allows you to select so you'd like select and

1:36:28then look here and if you just hold for long enough in a certain place it will activate it

1:36:34so then you're driving just by vision yes they also have support for guided access so this is

1:36:38their new one app at a time simplified ui thing and voiceover support right that's the thing that

1:36:43they didn't show that i think is one of the missing pieces here is somebody was asking me

1:36:47about like how and they didn't they didn't want us to do this like how do you go to a specific

1:36:51website in safari and there's that keyboard and you can type on the keyboard theoretically either

1:36:56with your hands or actually by looking at the letters and just tapping but i had that thought

1:37:00which is like or you use your voice right like or you just use your voice and we had no examples of

1:37:05that because again they don't want to show that right now it may not be ready but also that's not

1:37:09the interaction that's not the image that they want to put out there is that they've got uh you

1:37:13know full voice assistant support that will let you do stuff like that but i'm sure they will yeah

1:37:20thank you to everybody who sent in a question if you'd like to send in one of your own just go to

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