538: We Studied Thousands of Heads
06 Jun 2023WWDC 2023! New Macs, new OSes, and the unveiling of Apple Vision Pro.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show: 🧘 Feelings check 🧘
- WWDC
- Post-show: WWDC food review
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Chapters
- Feeling check
- State of the knowledge
- 15” MacBook Air
- New Mac Studio
- It’s Mac Pro day!
- Sponsor: Vector Bar
- iOS 17
- Sponsor: Squarespace (code ATP)
- iPadOS 17
- Sponsor: Kolide
- macOS Sonoma
- AirPods, AirPlay, TV
- watchOS 10
- Vision Pro
- Ending theme
- Food report
Feeling check
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Big day? John, how’s the weather where you are?
⏹️ ▶️ John I am in my house, so it is indoor weather.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am also in my house. John and I definitely were not cool enough to be invited.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Not that I’m, I won’t speak for John, not that I’m bitter at all, but Marco, where are you?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I am in a hotel room in California.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m very jealous. I am very, very jealous. Although I’m not sure I’m jealous of you being in San Jose
⏹️ ▶️ Casey particularly, but that’s neither here nor there, but you are in California, you are our intrepid reporter on the ground.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am very pleased that at least one of us was cool enough to show up or be allowed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to show up. So tell me, should we do a vibe check? I mean, since we have since apparently
⏹️ ▶️ John the vibe check. It’s a one time thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay, fine. Marco, would you tell me what the feeling is around Cupertino today?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The feeling check is frankly, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I got to say, so, you know, I got in last night and the vibe, even before
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it started, was you could kind of just feel the energy, like, vibrating.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Everybody was excited because, you know, the handful of people who were walking around, they were super excited.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The handful, you know, the developers that I saw last night, you know, here, you know, some friends here and there, everyone was super
⏹️ ▶️ Marco excited. And look, with good reason. I mean, We all knew this was going to be like, you know, a big announcement
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I mean, geez, I don’t even know where to start. I mean, there’s so much,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, so You know, I guess we’ll start with, you know, our usual, you know, keynote order of things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But there is just so much. So I want to disclose immediately. I have not yet tried the headset
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I am I’m hoping to get a chance to try it before I leave. Um
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know how likely those hopes are at this point, but I have not tried the headset I have seen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the headset, but seeing it is very different from trying it. And I also saw Tim
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Cook seeing the headset, but he did not prevent me from seeing it this time. He was further over in the room.
⏹️ ▶️ John It was a hands-off area, right? You weren’t actually allowed to touch it?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes, we could touch the MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air, rather, and I don’t know if I could touch the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pro. I didn’t touch the Mac Pro, but I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John did take a lot of pictures. You could
⏹️ ▶️ John always try it. You could do what I did with the iMac Pro, which is just walk right up to it and start using
⏹️ ▶️ John until an Apple person just swats you away.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mildly swatted because I started one of my, well I’ll get to the MacBook Air. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tried just playing music super loudly and turn the speakers all the way up and put my ear up to it to see how good the speakers were.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that was, I was instructed, you know, please, please ask the demo people to do that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rather than doing it yourself. But otherwise, yeah, I didn’t, I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I committed any other faux pas in the demo areas.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey before we get started though, non-rev guy makes an excellent point. I almost forgot to ask,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what is the count of Believe shirts that you yourself have noticed?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have not seen any Believe shirts. I have seen ATP shirts. Oh, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey good. But I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not yet seen the Believe shirt. Now I actually brought a Believe shirt with me. I have not yet worn it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it didn’t fit with my keynote outfit, but I will. Now I feel like I kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of feel like I don’t need to wear it anymore, but we’ll see. We’ll see.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, there’s plenty there. of people at WWDC sitting
⏹️ ▶️ John in the audience watching the big screen, the whole nine yards. Plus a bunch of people in front of the big
⏹️ ▶️ John rainbow Apple logo, so they’re probably Apple employees. so the shirts are there.
State of the knowledge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s also important to disclose state of the knowledge. This is the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time of day and what has been revealed so far, what we know as we record this. So,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right now we’re recording this on Keynote Eve after State of the Union. That means we have not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seen any other sessions. So any details that are revealed in sessions, we haven’t seen those yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The Vision OS SDK isn’t even out yet and won’t be out I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco until they said later this month. So none of us even tried the simulator of that. We have no idea. I have no idea how any of the apps,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how any of the SDKs work yet, besides what was announced in the State of the Union. I have not had time to pore through the documentation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and everything and even like, you know, browse Macedon to see what everyone else has uncovered. I’ve gotten almost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco none of that because, you know, the logistics of being here are very weird and different.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s hard to catch up on the internet and catch up in real life stuff at the same time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I assume the two of you have beaten me in that department, but.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, only a tiny bit.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so anyway, so there’s probably a lot that’s gonna be unveiled in the next couple of days with session videos and stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that we have not yet seen. And of course, since none of us have any experience yet with the headset,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, it’s hard to give first impressions. I have spoken to some people who have used it and I’ve got a lot of questions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about it, which we’ll get to later. So yeah, let’s get going. Keynote order.
15” MacBook Air
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so Tim comes out and says, the biggest announcements ever at WWDC.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I feel like that was a qualificat, like biggest announcement ever was probably the iPhone, but the qualifier at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco WWDC, I think gives him a pass for that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, you can just say biggest ever all the time. It’s in marketing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, that’s awesome. I mean, I don’t know, I think it’s fine. I don’t have a problem with it. But John Ternus comes out for a moment.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey He says the M2 MacBook Air, according to Apple’s world’s best-selling laptop. And then we got Kate Bergeron,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey who’s talking about a new MacBook Air 15.3 inches. I’m,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is not a computer for me personally, but I’m super excited that this is a thing. I think this is a great idea. I think this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey will probably sell really well. And I think it’s filling a hole in their lineup right now. So this is, this is two thumbs up for me.
⏹️ ▶️ John the straightforward thing. It’s the 13 inch, but 15 inches, nothing about it is different
⏹️ ▶️ John with the exception of the battery, which is about 21% bigger and the screen area
⏹️ ▶️ John where there’s about 21% more of it. And interestingly, for that extra bits that you get,
⏹️ ▶️ John exactly the same rated battery life according to Apple. So all that extra battery is going to
⏹️ ▶️ John power all that extra screen. And that’s it. Very straightforward. The pricing looks
⏹️ ▶️ John good-ish, right? Like it’s not, you know, $1,800. It’s not pressing up against MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro levels. It’s what, a hundred or two more than, $200 more than the 13-inch, because they
⏹️ ▶️ John lowered the 13-inch. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you match it spec for spec, it’s only a hundred bucks more. Like, cause it does, it’s a $200 entry price difference,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but the entry 13 inch has some of the cores cut. The other
⏹️ ▶️ John thing they did with the 15 inch, with the extra space provided to them, is they put more speakers. It’s got six speakers
⏹️ ▶️ John instead of the four on the 13 inch, and it’s got force canceling woofers, which I think maybe the 13
⏹️ ▶️ John inch doesn’t have, I’m not sure. But anyway, they had more room and they put more speakers in. They didn’t put more keyboard in, cause that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not a thing that Apple does, but the keyboard doesn’t look ridiculous, so it’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is the first time they’ve had a 15 inch laptop that doesn’t have speaker grill holes on the side. So the side
⏹️ ▶️ Marco panels next to the little margins next to the keyboard are just flat metal. Looks kind of weird at that size,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because we’re just not accustomed to seeing it. I will say, having played with it briefly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first of all, it feels great. You pick it up, it’s extremely light. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feels very similar to the 13-inch MacBook Air, which is a very good thing, because that feels
⏹️ ▶️ Marco amazing. It really does feel like you’re using the same computer, but bigger. I tried getting an idea of how good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the speakers were, as I mentioned in the hands-on thing. It’s a little hard to tell because it’s a loud room, but my impression
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was they didn’t seem like they were that much better than the 13-inch speakers, honestly. I think overall,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a very, very good computer overall. Don’t buy it for the speakers, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco overall, this is exactly what it had to be. A really great
⏹️ ▶️ Marco overall computer for almost anybody if you want a little bit bigger version than the 13-inch.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have more screen space and et cetera. So same ports, same everything else, same trade-offs, of which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco honestly there are very, very few trade-offs in this product. And I think it really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco broadens up the lineup. Like now you don’t have to spend what was before $2,500 to get a screen bigger than 14 inches.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like that was a huge gap in the lineup that is now filled by this. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very, very happy with this launch. It looks great, it feels great, it will probably work very, very well.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think this is gonna be the right computer for a ton of people.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I’m really impressed by this. It looks really good. And I think it’s worth mentioning that the 13-inch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey MacBook Air with the M1 processor now under a thousand dollars. by a dollar, but under a thousand dollars.
New Mac Studio
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so we move on to Jennifer Mon who introduces the Max Studio. We’ve got a new Max Studio
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with the M2 Max and the appearance, this is the debut, right, of the M2 Ultra with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey its UltraFusion Interposer, 24 cores, 76 core GPU, 32 core neural engine,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and up to 192 gigs of RAM, which is half again more than the M1 Ultra,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is exciting. And John, maybe you can translate this for me. There’s new HDMI that supports 8K and 240 hertz.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Is that like some new version of HDMI? that I haven’t
⏹️ ▶️ John dug into it again with the HDMI versioning that If it just said HDMI 2.1, that
⏹️ ▶️ John means nothing you have to look at the fine fine print But I’ll take Apple at its word that it supports
⏹️ ▶️ John this. I’m not sure what you’d connect it to exactly But the interesting thing about this
⏹️ ▶️ John product is so much for the rumors that they’re skipping a generation with the Mac Studio Nope, just straightforward
⏹️ ▶️ John upgrade just like they had an amp on ultra and this has the m2 ultra and the m2 ultra Ultra looks
⏹️ ▶️ John exactly like what you think. I wonder if they could even reuse the animations
⏹️ ▶️ John M2 Maxes coming together and the interposer connects them and the whole nine yards is exactly what we thought.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s great. Can we reuse our shirt designs? Can we just put some duct tape over the one that forms like a little two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out of duct tape and just wear the same shirt? We could, but I’m not sure we
⏹️ ▶️ John will. Um, as I snarked on Mastodon,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think I missed the part of the keynote where they said, and an all new cooling system.
⏹️ ▶️ John They didn’t say that,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco did they? No, they sure didn’t.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because that’s the main thing that I want out of the Mac Studio. For all we know, it could have one. Maybe they revised
⏹️ ▶️ John it, but we don’t, we’ll have to wait until people start getting these and review them, because that was the one
⏹️ ▶️ John weakness with the Mac Studio, that it just made a little bit more noise than we
⏹️ ▶️ John thought it should, especially, you know, I have the M1 Macs, Mac Studio, and
⏹️ ▶️ John they make a laptop with that same exact SOC in it, and the laptop makes less noise, and the Mac Studio
⏹️ ▶️ John is substantially larger. So that is disappointing. So we’ll see how they did on the M2
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac Studios. But I mean, worst case scenario, I imagine it will be the same as it was. I can’t imagine
⏹️ ▶️ John it being worse. I hope it’s better, but they didn’t say anything about it. So, hmm.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Overall though, like, you know, so assuming that hopefully that they improve the thermals, this is exactly the kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco update that we want them to do to pro hardware. It’s a boring spec bump upgrade. Like that’s exactly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what they didn’t do reliably for so many years. So I’m really, even though this is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not like a massively newsmaking product, I’m really happy they did this because it shows
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this was not just a one-off, they are committed to it. And as we get to the Mac Pro in a minute, it shows
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, it’s very clear what the role of this product is. And frankly, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it really holds its own against the Mac Pro in a few ways. So with that said, I loved
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when they announced, they were, you know, the presenter was like, we’re gonna talk about our pro products, quote, starting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with Mac Studio. And at that point we knew, oh boy,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is just part one of the pro products. So part two.
It’s Mac Pro day!
⏹️ ▶️ Marco John, sorry Casey, it’s Mac Pro day.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do you guys need me for the next two hours? Cause I’m going to go take a nap or something.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I think what’s interesting about this is first of all, the rumor mill had this all wrong
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in terms of like release timing, release likelihood. It shocked me when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not only were we getting the Mac Pro today, but that you can order it today. And it ships next
⏹️ ▶️ Marco week along with the Mac studio
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John and the MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco air, All three of these Macs are ready to order now and shipping like really, really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco soon. It’s not, you know, end of the year tricks, nothing like that. So, John,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what do you think of this new Mac Pro? I have some thoughts, which I’m sure I’ll get to, but what do you think?
⏹️ ▶️ John We talked about this computer for so long, and one of the frequent topics of conversation
⏹️ ▶️ John is how would this be differentiated from an M2 Ultra Mac Studio, which
⏹️ ▶️ John in our early conversations we just assumed was coming. And then the rumors came that maybe the M2 Ultra Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John Studio isn’t going to come. And that we had new rounds of conversations about how does that change
⏹️ ▶️ John the Mac Pro, so on and so forth. And the reason we kept having these conversations is ever since the rumor that the sort
⏹️ ▶️ John of the quad SOC thing was dead, which would basically be like twice as big as an
⏹️ ▶️ John M2 Ultra, like two M2 Ultras combined somehow, ever since the rumor of that thing being dead
⏹️ ▶️ John and not shipping at all, we were trying to find out how the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro would be differentiated as a product from a hypothetical or real M2 Ultra
⏹️ ▶️ John of Mac Studio. And we were struggling to think what the answer to that could
⏹️ ▶️ John be. And Apple’s answer was one of the things that we discussed over and over again. And every
⏹️ ▶️ John time we discussed it, we said, yeah, but that’s not great. Well, guess what? That’s what they
⏹️ ▶️ John did. It’s an M2 Ultra in a Mac Pro case with
⏹️ ▶️ John as far as we know right now, no support for third-party GPUs. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John got a whole bunch of slots into which you can put things that go in slots that are not GPUs.
⏹️ ▶️ John None of them are MPX slots. They’re just plain old PCIe slots. It’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John new version, PCIe version four or whatever, and they have 16x slots, and 8x slots. The PCI slots are
⏹️ ▶️ John fine, but that’s it, right? It is
⏹️ ▶️ John just a Mac Studio in a way, way bigger case. Now, what do you get for your way bigger case? So first of all, I think you get
⏹️ ▶️ John a pretty cool looking case. That’s thing number one. Second, you can put some more
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff in there. If you look at the insides of the case, you can see there’s room for
⏹️ ▶️ John basically anything. You could make a little house in there. You could put hard drives in there, like spinning hard drives. I
⏹️ ▶️ John have spinning hard drives in my Mac Pro. You can put spinning hard drives, I would imagine, in that Mac Pro if you buy an expensive
⏹️ ▶️ John bent piece of metal and you shove it in the right spot and you’ll be able to mount hard drives. You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can, by the way, I verified that. So the SATA ports are still in there and they still are supporting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that metal bracket thing that you bought, the bent piece of metal.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I recognize the arrangement of screws from having put the thing in. So that part’s the same.
⏹️ ▶️ John There is the SATA part. There’s an internal USB port for like dongles and all that stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s something you can’t do with the Mac Studio. And of course, you’ve got a bunch of slots and that’s how Apple pitched
⏹️ ▶️ John this. Said, here you go. If you want a bunch of slots that you need to put in, we sell a computer with those
⏹️ ▶️ John slots and here’s what you can put in them. And they showed a bunch of cards. It was like, oh, you can put, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John IO cards in there, weird, you know, fiber channel things. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ John storage cards, video input cards. They had made a big point of saying, like if you had like a bunch of 24, 8K video streams
⏹️ ▶️ John streaming into this thing, each one of them going into like a card, right? And that the
⏹️ ▶️ John SOC was powerful enough to process them all, right? And so that is the
⏹️ ▶️ John pitch for this computer. It’s like an M2 Mac Studio with an M2 Ultra in it, except you can
⏹️ ▶️ John put cards in it as long as they’re not GPUs. And by the way, you can also put some internal storage.
⏹️ ▶️ John That is not a particularly compelling product unless you have one of those
⏹️ ▶️ John specific needs. If you remember the previous Mac Pro, you could do all that stuff. And
⏹️ ▶️ John also you could stuff it to the gills with GPUs. And the previous Mac Pro was kind of designed,
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of money was spent making it so you could stuff it to the Gila GPUs with those MPX slots, which was Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John proprietary thing and cost more money and takes more power. And Apple itself sold many
⏹️ ▶️ John third-party cards in those big MPX modules that you could stuff in there. And not only that, but Apple upgraded those cards
⏹️ ▶️ John over time so you could configure which cards, which GPUs you wanted. And as new GPUs came
⏹️ ▶️ John out, Apple in their sort of lazy way that they normally do did eventually offer newer and better versions
⏹️ ▶️ John and you could buy them aftermarket. That was a big part of the Mac Pro that
⏹️ ▶️ John is now completely gone. You cannot add GPU grunt to this machine.
⏹️ ▶️ John You get the grunt that you buy it with, it’s in the SoC, and that’s it as far as we can tell.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I think, you know, in the PCI slots, you could probably put a PC GPU in there, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not sure you’d be able to find the power headers for it, like on the motherboard, and there’s certainly, there’s no MPX module type
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff, and then you need a separate cooler on the thing. You know, again, the case is cavernous. The pictures that showed
⏹️ ▶️ John of it are a little bit comical because it is just almost entirely empty space. There is the big block for the cooler
⏹️ ▶️ John for the M2 Ultra, and I would assume this thing will be just as quiet as the, you know, if
⏹️ ▶️ John not more quiet than the Intel one, because it’s got gigantic fans in the front of it, which look to be about the same,
⏹️ ▶️ John and all it’s cooling is an M2 Ultra, which is apparently able to be cooled in a tiny Mac Studio case, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John But the sales proposition for this thing is take our target
⏹️ ▶️ John audience for the Intel Mac Pro, cut some big portion of it out, and what you’ve got left
⏹️ ▶️ John is the market for the Mac Pro. And that makes me worry about this product because it’s not like the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro was selling in huge numbers. I don’t know what percentage of the market they’ve eliminated by not supporting third-party
⏹️ ▶️ John GPUs, but I’m gonna say it’s surely double digits and possibly even bigger
⏹️ ▶️ John than that. So they’re further narrowing the market for this product.
⏹️ ▶️ John Then we look at the price. All right, you do get some stuff over the M2 Ultra And
⏹️ ▶️ John assuming you can, you know, as soon as you have space for this monster and you don’t mind hanging with this
⏹️ ▶️ John gigantic thing around, you know, you don’t get the GPUs, but hey, you do get some stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John over the Mac Studio. How much more do you pay for that privilege? And the answer
⏹️ ▶️ John is a lot. If you similarly configure a Mac Studio
⏹️ ▶️ John and an M2 Ultra, a Mac Pro and an M2 Ultra Mac Studio, the Delta
⏹️ ▶️ John in price hovers around three grand.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Every configuration I could find, it’s exactly three grand.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I didn’t do it. I didn’t do every configuration under the sun, but I did a bunch of them. They always came out to three grand, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John So for three grand, you’re getting the ability to have internal spinning disks, internal SSDs,
⏹️ ▶️ John the ability to have expansion cards, and you could put more USB ports on there. You could put an internal PCI Express
⏹️ ▶️ John card, NVMe cards, like the ability to put those cards in there, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Don’t forget more Thunderbolt ports.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yes, you do get more Thunderbolt ports. So that’s kind of, you get more Thunderbolt standard And also you can probably add more to the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, but you’ve forgotten something very important. What’s that? I verified with Apple that not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco only does it still support wheels. Oh, the wheels. Yes. But you can even use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the same wheels from the previous Mac Pro if you want to, because the case has not changed.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Oh! The case is
⏹️ ▶️ John the, oh, I didn’t look at that. Let me just peek at that now. Did you happen to see if they fixed the little bar at the bottom
⏹️ ▶️ John so that you have to take out all the wires before you take the case off?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m guessing it’s the same because the case really is unchanged. It’s the exact
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and this makes sense. So the case being changed is not a big deal. There’s a reason I made the shirt with
⏹️ ▶️ John the 2019 Mac Pro on it, because this is such an expensive case, and they spent so long designing it, there’s no way
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re gonna use it for a single computer. Even if they don’t really have the guts
⏹️ ▶️ John to fill this case anymore, it’s very easy to show a packed 2019 Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro. If you take the case off my computer and you look inside, then you’re like, boy, that thing is packed, because every inch
⏹️ ▶️ John of it is filled with something practically. I have almost every slot filled, granted some of them are filled space-wise and not,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, card-wise, because I have these double and triple height cards. I’ve got spinning disks in there. It’s just, there’s tons of
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff in there. This thing, as again, as I snarked on Mastodon, like the universe, it’s mostly
⏹️ ▶️ John empty space. You buy this thing and it’s the full configuration. It’s a tiny little M2
⏹️ ▶️ John Ultra SoC shoved in the corner, and then just nothing, just literally nothing. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John just this tiny little quarter depth card with the IO and just totally
⏹️ ▶️ John empty space. Two gigantic fans are just taking air from the front of this thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John pushing them through empty space and injecting it out the back. There’s nothing in their path. What are they cooling?
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re not cooling anything. It is extremely expensive
⏹️ ▶️ John for the marginal extra utility that you get. And this, you know, part of this is the problem we
⏹️ ▶️ John were talking about. You know, they don’t have an expandable RAM story. They don’t have an expandable
⏹️ ▶️ John GPU power story. It’s all on that SoC plus PCI slots. I still think
⏹️ ▶️ John they should have made this computer, but I’m not worried so much about whether or not it appeals to me, because who cares?
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m worried about the market for this computer is being further narrowed.
⏹️ ▶️ John How narrowed is the market for this computer need to be before the powers that be at Apple that always want to
⏹️ ▶️ John kill this computer eventually win and say, there’s no reason for us to be selling this. look at the sales numbers, 2019
⏹️ ▶️ John sold X amount and the 2023 one sold like X divided by seven.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey is so expensive.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think that also explains possibly, although I haven’t dug into the specs, why this thing’s
⏹️ ▶️ John base configuration is so much more expensive than the old one. Didn’t it go up like a thousand bucks for the base config? It did,
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, from 2019 to 2023, the base config going up a thousand dollars in this machine,
⏹️ ▶️ John it would make a lot more sense to me if I could look at the component prices and explain it. but Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John isn’t paying Intel’s margins on Xeons here. I know the M2 Ultra is an expensive chip, but we have a direct
⏹️ ▶️ John comparison to that exact same SoC in the Mac Studio. It just,
⏹️ ▶️ John it looks like less of a bargain than it was before, and it has less of a reason to exist,
⏹️ ▶️ John and Apple didn’t do anything, I’m not gonna say anything interesting, didn’t do any of the
⏹️ ▶️ John seven things that we discussed that they could have done. Oh, you know, a tiered approach to RAM, some way
⏹️ ▶️ John to expand that, expandable GPUs from third parties, Expandable GPUs from Apple, anything like that. They were
⏹️ ▶️ John forced to tout things like, oh, it’s like having seven afterburner cards. Like, but that’s the same as the Mac Studio. Everything you’re bragging
⏹️ ▶️ John about is also in the Mac Studio. Oh, and of course, if they had had the quad chip, right? If they had that giant monster
⏹️ ▶️ John that was apparently too expensive for them to make it the volumes they wanted, there was like the strength of two M2 Ultras.
⏹️ ▶️ John Easy to explain the value proposition. There would be things then that were literally close to twice as fast
⏹️ ▶️ John on this computer as there on a Mac Studio. And, you know, granted the price would have been even higher
⏹️ ▶️ John But, you know, you would have had double the GPU grunt as well. That is a much easier
⏹️ ▶️ John machine to explain, especially since, as we did the math on ages ago, if
⏹️ ▶️ John it had had the quad SOC thing in there, its GPU grunt would be
⏹️ ▶️ John in the conversation with the very best PC GPUs. The M2 Ultra
⏹️ ▶️ John is not in the conversation with the very best PC GPUs. It’s just not. It doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have enough power, which is fine when you’re talking about the Mac Studio or something, but for
⏹️ ▶️ John a machine this big and this expensive, like it’s, forget it. Like the NVIDIA 4090
⏹️ ▶️ John crushes this thing and that card’s been out for ages, right? And there’s nothing you can do to change that. You can’t spend
⏹️ ▶️ John any more money on a Mac to make it competitive with existing, that have existed for
⏹️ ▶️ John like practically a year, high-end PC GPUs. That is very disappointing. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John I said, that takes that entire market and sort of like, you know, makes them all look at the Mac Studio
⏹️ ▶️ John they’d be like, what am I buying this for? So, we’ve got the Believe shirts, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John they did introduce the product, the product is not dead, the product being dead would be the worst case scenario, but I feel like this is
⏹️ ▶️ John like the second worst case scenario. Not because I think this is necessarily a bad machine, because the people who want
⏹️ ▶️ John it, I think Apple should make it but I don’t think, I think it narrows the market too much. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John think that enough people are, this is, enough people are gonna say, this is the machine for me
⏹️ ▶️ John to sustain this product like it is now. Now granted, you know, whatever, whatever the quad chip that went down the
⏹️ ▶️ John tubes, you know, uh, tomorrow, you know, next year is another year, year after that’s another year, you know, we’ll see how this goes
⏹️ ▶️ John in the future. Do they just keep upgrading this to the M3 Ultra, M4 Ultra, or do they eventually make the quad
⏹️ ▶️ John chip? Because if you’re gonna make the quad chip, this is the case for it. It’s got the space, it’s got the cooling,
⏹️ ▶️ John and the quad chip justifies this computer way more than the M2 Ultra
⏹️ ▶️ John does. So yeah, that’s, you know, I’m, the more I dwell on
⏹️ ▶️ John the Mac Pro announcement today, the more, I’m not gonna say disappointed, the more kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John fearful and sad I am, which is not the vibe I was going for with all the Believe shirts. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know, I have very mixed feelings about this computer. And by the way, I mean, we’ll discuss
⏹️ ▶️ John this in a little bit in a bit, certainly our future shows, but I just do not think this is the machine for me, which again is,
⏹️ ▶️ John who cares if it’s the machine for me? I’m not, I don’t even need this one, but it doesn’t, there’s nothing in it that
⏹️ ▶️ John makes me want to buy it pointlessly like I bought the 2019 pointlessly. Nah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the internal storage will get you. Looking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, not for $3,000, it won’t. No, that’s the thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John It won’t, for the internal storage, won’t get me for that amount of money.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, you could replace all the hard drives you have with nice SSDs for $3,000. Exactly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John right? And they were,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah. And we’ll get, Apple’s upgrade price.
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s prices for its like storage upgrades and RAM upgrades and everything, continue to be
⏹️ ▶️ John comically high. Like they always have been, but it just, as I said, like for
⏹️ ▶️ John three terabytes of SSD space, they want $1,000. Three terabytes of very fast
⏹️ ▶️ John SSD does not cost $1,000. It doesn’t, it costs half that, less than half
⏹️ ▶️ John that. And it’s disappointing that those prices are like that, especially on a machine this expensive, because for
⏹️ ▶️ John me, you know, and for anybody who wants lots of storage, it really jacks up the price on these things. I felt like
⏹️ ▶️ John when I priced out my Intel one, yes, it was horrendously expensive, but I felt like it was justified because
⏹️ ▶️ John what I was getting was a powerhouse machine that has no equal in the Mac line. And you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John not getting that with this. You’re not getting, you can’t buy from Apple a powerhouse machine that has no equal in terms of capabilities.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can buy this thing, and then you can buy stuff from third parties and shove it in there, and then it has no equal, like
⏹️ ▶️ John all those video input cards or fiber channel cards or something like that. But you can’t just buy that from Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a bunch of third party cards that you have to shove in there You have to know which cards you want to put in there and you have to need them.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s, I don’t know. I’m a little bit sad about this computer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I feel like when you look at this computer, I wonder like when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two years ago, when John Turner said the Mac Pro was a story for another day, I bet this is not what he had in mind.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like I bet this is not what was originally planned for the outcome of this product.
⏹️ ▶️ John But when he made that announcement, I think the quad was already dead. So I think he knew that this is the thing that
⏹️ ▶️ John was coming, I, you know, it is what it is. Like I, I, I, this is why
⏹️ ▶️ John it might be hard to fight for this machine internally because you can see why internally they would say, why do we
⏹️ ▶️ John even bother doing this? Just keeping the machine and the name alive is probably worthwhile, but it’s a tough
⏹️ ▶️ John fight because once the quads canned, everyone’s saying, why are we even doing this? And we were like, no, we just got to do it. Like maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John the, maybe we’ll get the quad in the M three or M four generation, but rough. It’s rough. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. And I have to wonder like, you know, is this the machine that’s, that was, you that got through all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the committees. And as John mentioned, we’ve kind of heard there are factions that don’t want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this machine to exist inside the company and factions that do. And it almost seems like this is kind of what came out of the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco meat grinder from people who want this product to die. Because it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really is cutting down the market by so much for this product. And in addition to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the capabilities it’s losing, the high RAM support, the GPU support, in addition for all that, they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also raised the price and made it even less compelling. I feel like if people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wanted to kill this product inside the company, they would do exactly this. Release something that shrinks its
⏹️ ▶️ Marco market down, raise the price by so much that everyone else buys the Mac Studio, and then in a couple years say,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look, all customers have spoken, everyone just buys the Mac Studio, so we’ll just kill the Mac Pro and just keep making the Mac Studio.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Whereas, obviously, if they gave this product a little more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco capability to set it apart, maybe that would keep its market a little healthier. but the way it is now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can’t see this product living very long unless this is only, okay, we couldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get the giant quad chip with the M2 generation. Maybe with the M3 generation, maybe they can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get it then. And so maybe this product is kind of a stopgap to fill the slot in the lineup
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and get it onto Apple Silicon at all. And then maybe down the road, they release the quad chip
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a future version of this product. That I think could keep this product alive in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some way. even that’s gonna be a very small market, especially if the price difference is what it is, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at least it’s a market. And the way it is now, the only market for this, as far as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can tell, is people who need a bunch of those PCI capture cards, like for audio and video
⏹️ ▶️ Marco specialized use. That’s who’s gonna buy this.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or IO cards or something like that. But yeah, like if they need cards that are not GPUs, which is a market, it does exist
⏹️ ▶️ John as part of what this machine serves. I just wonder how big a percentage of the market is. And by
⏹️ ▶️ John the way, I think this machine needs a GPU story. Forget about the cards.
⏹️ ▶️ John It needs some story with GPU that is not, it’s exactly the same as the Max Studio because that’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John a good story for a computer that’s like seven times the size and $3,000 more expensive. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I know not everybody needs it, but it’s just, it needs a CPU story. Like it just,
⏹️ ▶️ John using literally the exact same SoC, Macs are so defined by these SoCs in
⏹️ ▶️ John the Apple Silicon era that you can’t give your $3,000 more expensive computer literally
⏹️ ▶️ John the same SoC as the cheaper one and say, well, we’ll make it up in
⏹️ ▶️ John expansion and storage. Oh, and by the way, a lot of things that you could expand, you can’t expand anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So looking on Apple’s accessories website for the 2023 Mac Pro, and I will attempt to link this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the show notes, there is a $50 Belkin lock adapter, a $130 Thunderbolt 4 Pro cable, a $160
⏹️ ▶️ Casey version of the same, the Profeet kit for $300,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Promise Pegasus eight terabyte internal storage enclosure,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so this is just the enclosure, for $400, and our final option is the $700
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple Mac Pro wheels kit. That is the sum total of the accessories that are apparently for the Mac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can also buy SSD expansions that are even more expensive than when you- Cool.
⏹️ ▶️ John Than put them out, so like what I said before, going from one terabyte SSD to four terabyte SSDs, basically
⏹️ ▶️ John adding three terabytes of SSDs, $1,000 option, but if you try to buy that
⏹️ ▶️ John same upgrade aftermarket as opposed to just ordering it when you order your computer I think it’s $1,700. So
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’d like the little module upgrades if you buy them from Apple, they’re even more expensive It makes
⏹️ ▶️ John it makes the machine ridiculous and again I get I choked down those prices when I Configured this machine because I felt like
⏹️ ▶️ John I was getting a machine that really had no equal in the Mac line that it was more Powerful and in everything
⏹️ ▶️ John in every aspect and that’s what a machine that cost this much money money should be on the date of its introduction.
⏹️ ▶️ John It should be able to do literally everything better than every other Mac with the possible exception
⏹️ ▶️ John of single core performance if you get a super high core count or whatever. But this Mac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John does not cross that line.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m sorry, John, I was excited for you. Genuinely, I know it’s kind of my shtick
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to poop on the Mac Pro, but I was excited to see it and I was excited for you, but I understand what you’re saying.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I mean, it wasn’t an exciting introduction. They didn’t tout anything about how fast it is and how capable it is. The
⏹️ ▶️ John things they touted were like the things that are also true of the Mac Studio with the
⏹️ ▶️ John M2 Ultra. And that’s not a good Mac Pro introduction. You gotta be able to show it
⏹️ ▶️ John doing something. Like even a contrive thing, show it doing something that other Macs can’t do and they just can’t. They
⏹️ ▶️ John mentioned the thing about the 24 streams of 8K, but they didn’t show it doing that and they don’t sell any of those cards anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ John So it was very weird. And for the people in the chat room asking, what does this mean for me and my computer upgrade things?
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, the first thing that it means is that I’m not buying this computer. Uh, the second thing that it
⏹️ ▶️ John means is, so what computer are you buying? Are you going to get M2 MacStudio, something like that? I think I’m going
⏹️ ▶️ John to sit out the M2 generation. I think I’m going to hold tight with the computer
⏹️ ▶️ John that I have for a while longer. And when the M3 Ultra MacStudio comes
⏹️ ▶️ John out, or maybe even the M3 Max MacStudio comes out, that will probably be the machine
⏹️ ▶️ John that I replace this with. Um, another thing, by the way, that could have made this announcement more exciting as an XDR
⏹️ ▶️ John replacement. Of course, they didn’t have that either, right? So no like, you know, 8K, 6K display with promotion,
⏹️ ▶️ John something like that. So in the absence of the things that the Mac Pro brings, me
⏹️ ▶️ John trying to get like the Ultra, so I can get a little bit more GPU, it’s like, well, who are you kidding? You’re still
⏹️ ▶️ John not in the ballpark of PC high-end GPUs. So why
⏹️ ▶️ John waste your money to go from 50% to 65%, right? Like, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, and you know, it does cost a lot of extra money. So we’ll see, right now I’m saying my next computer will
⏹️ ▶️ John probably be an M3 something something Mac Studio next
⏹️ ▶️ John year when it comes out. Unless they massively revise the Mac Pro, although
⏹️ ▶️ John given these prices, I shudder to think how much a quad Mac Pro would have cost. But again,
⏹️ ▶️ John at least the quad would be like, look, it’s got double the number of cores, it’s got double the amount of GPU,
⏹️ ▶️ John and here are a bunch of benchmarks, like whatever you do, as long as it’s not literally single threaded,
⏹️ ▶️ John Xcode compiling, playing a game, grinding through, processing something, like, you know, using
⏹️ ▶️ John machine learning, like, the Quad would have done really well on those things. And so
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe you could help justify its outrageous price, but that computer doesn’t exist. So I’m eyeing
⏹️ ▶️ John an M3 Mac Studio of some kind as a replacement. And in the meantime, I will continue to enjoy
⏹️ ▶️ John another year of decent GPU power and the ability to boot into Windows and play
⏹️ ▶️ Casey someone from inside your house sent me a text a moment ago, 10 more years.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think you interpret that how you please, but I almost laughed out loud in the middle of you guys saying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something not funny.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, on that front, by the way, did you see people saying, huh, the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John OS 14 beta doesn’t have an Intel version? I’m like, oh no. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John is that right? I did not know that. No, they were just talking about what betas are appearing on the Apple website. I’m assuming that they would have
⏹️ ▶️ John mentioned it if it was dropping Intel support. I don’t think it is just a question of like, I think someone tried to
⏹️ ▶️ John go download it and I think the Apple Silicon one was up first or something like that. But that’s in
⏹️ ▶️ John the back of my mind, which is like, well, how, you know, unlike my past computer that I could use for 10 years, I can’t use it for 10 years because
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac OS is gonna drop Intel support before that. So I’m watching out for that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I bet you probably have like one or two more years at least, but you don’t have 10, that’s for sure.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So before we move on, how do you feel overall about the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mac specific hardware that was announced today. I mean, for me, I think it’s pretty darn good. Like I’m pleased
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that the Mac Pro is still something in their lineup. I totally understand where you’re coming from, John. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey echo your sentiments, it make perfect sense, but I’ll take this over nothing personally, and I think you’d probably agree.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I think this looks good. You mean the Mac Studio, like Marco said earlier, you know, boring update, works for me. The
⏹️ ▶️ Casey new MacBook Air, cheaper previous MacBook Airs, all good, all across the board. I give this two thumbs up. Marco,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what do you think?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So first of all, I think the rumors were that we were getting no Mac hardware today. So this was all a pleasant
⏹️ ▶️ Marco surprise. And especially as I mentioned earlier, how they all ship next week, that’s great. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s a nice surprise. Overall, the transition to Apple Silicon has,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it has omitted certain things at the very high end. And that hurts the pro products, especially
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Mac Pro. That’s what John is complaining about. That like, it had in the Intel generations,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it had higher capabilities and higher expansion potential than what the current ones
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have, relative to their peers in the PC world. But the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco number of, or like the percentage of Apple’s customers who need the super high-end configurations
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of these computers has also dramatically dropped in the Apple Silicon era. In part for reasons that are crappy,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that they’ve kind of lost certain high-end or specialized markets, but mostly because what the Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Silicon era has done is dramatically raise the floor of what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the low-end computers do. You know, if you look at that 15-inch MacBook Air, that’s just the regular
⏹️ ▶️ Marco M2 chip. That’s a $1,200 computer. Or $1,300, I guess.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That is an amazing computer, and the vast majority of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco user types and, like, user requirement types that used to need the big desktop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco towers with the maximum cooling, the maximum processors, the maximum RAM, the maximum, you know, disks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and stuff. Most people who used those towers five or 10 years
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ago would be totally fine using a MacBook Air class computer today, not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because, you know, just things have gotten better over time, like, you know, just incrementally with tech, but because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even Apple’s cheapest computers now, as long as you give them enough RAM and disk space, they can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco satisfy way more, way higher percentage of people’s needs than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in previous eras than those low-end laptops and those low-end computers. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a great story. Like the Apple Silicon story is a great story for almost everyone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The only people who are kind of meh about it are the very high-end users
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who want things like GPU slots and stuff like that, or super high RAM, that kind of stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or people who just want GPU power, which we’ll get to that when we talk about gaming in a little bit, because it’s not just the desire for
⏹️ ▶️ John third-party GPUs. It’s like, well, but I just want to play modern games at a reasonable frame rate. And the plain
⏹️ ▶️ John M2 with no suffix is not doing that for you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s true. But like ultimately, you know, most PC gaming happens on PCs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like that’s the reality.
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like you said, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you stop shipping any computers that can play
⏹️ ▶️ John high-end games, and then there’s no high-end games for your platform.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, but you know, it’s not like high-end gaming was super healthy on the Mac in the Intel era
⏹️ ▶️ John No, but if you thought it couldn’t get worse, it
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco can and has.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes, but ultimately PC gamers don’t buy Macs. PC gamers buy awesome gaming PCs, and that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco satisfies their needs way better and way cheaper than anything Apple sells. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that market largely, I don’t think Apple cares too much about that market. They never have, and I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco separately from maybe some headset stuff, I don’t think they ever are gonna really push into that market very much. And I-
⏹️ ▶️ John will talk about that when we get to the gaming portion of the keynote.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, yeah, and they announced some relevant stuff there, but I still don’t think it’s gonna be a massive area for them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just because the markets are so different. But, you know, overall, the Mac, I think the Mac is, continues
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be in a very, very good place for almost everyone. I mean, look, I have the giant 16 inch,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but the reality is if I swapped out my 16 inch for that new 15 inch MacBook Air,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much of the time I’m doing much of my work, I would not notice.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s really saying something. Like the fact is that even their like quote, low-end
⏹️ ▶️ Marco computers are so good now. And you can do, you know, the stuff that we used to,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that we used to quote require the high-end stuff, video editing, you know, developer compilation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff, all of that stuff is surprisingly fast and capable, even on the cheapest MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Air. And that’s, so we’re in an amazing place. Yes, the high-end has suffered a little bit in terms
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of how high it can go, but the number of people in Apple’s user base
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who need the high-end keeps shrinking and shrinking and shrinking because almost everyone’s needs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco across way more industries and use cases than ever can now be solved with their cheapest computers. And that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an amazing place to be overall.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep, I completely agree.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yep, I think the Macs they introduced today are all, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John fine, except for the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Mac Pro, which is- Wow!
⏹️ ▶️ John But the 15-inch is my favorite because they just pretty much nailed that one. They, you know, it is
⏹️ ▶️ John exactly what they needed to make at a good price and, you know, it’s great. The Mac Studio, I
⏹️ ▶️ John find myself suddenly very, very interested in the insides of the Mac Studio, like way more than I’m interested
⏹️ ▶️ John in the Mac Pro because I feel like that’s going to be my computer in the Mac, my future in the Mac line,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s gonna be Mac Studios, and I don’t want one that makes weird fan noises, right? Like it’s not terrible, I have one here, you
⏹️ ▶️ John put it on a desk, you can’t hear it, but I don’t wanna put it under my desk, I want it to be, anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Look, you already have an XDR, you can do a desktop laptop, I can tell you it’s a really good setup.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I don’t want that. I know. You’re such an anti-laptopist.
⏹️ ▶️ John But yeah, I’m very interested in that. But I’m glad that they bumped the Mac Studio, right? I mean, that’s,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, I continue to think that the M2 line is, like the M1 was a 10 out of 10,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? The whole M1 line, 10 out of 10, excellent. The M2 is like an 8.5 out of 10,
⏹️ ▶️ John mostly because they didn’t get, it’s not on a new process. I know it’s like on the revised five nanometer, whatever, blah, blah, blah.
⏹️ ▶️ John But when they go to three nanometer with the M3, that is going to be a bigger jump. So
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like M1, amazing, holy cow, can you believe it? M2, small incremental improvement. And M3,
⏹️ ▶️ John I hope will be another jump and that will make all these computers, you know, even better than they are.
⏹️ ▶️ John Will the Mac Pro survive long enough to ever get a quad or a reason to exist? I’m not sure.
⏹️ ▶️ John But like I said, this makes me way more interested in and invested in the Mac Studio.
⏹️ ▶️ John I want better for the Mac Studio. I want a better cooling system. I want, if I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John honest, I want a more interesting looking case. Not that it’s bad, it’s fine, but it’s certainly
⏹️ ▶️ John humble looking case. Yeah, I know, but it could have more panache,
⏹️ ▶️ John especially at the prices, because the Mac Studio is not cheap. I configured a reasonable Mac Studio
⏹️ ▶️ John and it was, oh, $6,800. Like, phew, that’s- I mean, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s the Mac Pro. Like, that’s really, for most people, that is the Mac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ John I know, but for 6,800 bucks, I want a little more panache.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it looks like one of those concrete brutalist buildings. It’s like the Mac version of
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s really just like a really beefy Mac Mini, which is fine. But anyway, yeah, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, the Mac announcements are good and fine. The Mac Pro really took a little bit of wind out of my sails and now
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m just gonna spend the next one to five years just fretting about that product even more.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John you want, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple will take other ways to take your thousands of dollars like they’re offering some other interesting options there
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iOS 17
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s try to do our best to plow through software stuff. iOS 17,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some interesting new stuff with contact posters, which is used in various places throughout
⏹️ ▶️ John Do you have, does either one of you know from any more people talking about this, is the idea
⏹️ ▶️ John that I pick something and it gets shoved to other people?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s the way I took it. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s contacts only to prevent the, you know, the problems that could result from that.
⏹️ ▶️ John But no, but as in like, you know, the current system where you pick a contact thing and then everybody gets a stupid prompt on top of the screen that
⏹️ ▶️ John hey, so and so has an updated picture. Do you want to use it? And you constantly have to dismiss it and carefully not pick it because you like your
⏹️ ▶️ John picture better, right? Yep. Is this the same as that? Or is this something different? Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John does this just like, shove it at people, but it doesn’t it doesn’t offer to to add it to their context.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, I like the idea of a bigger, you know, picture that that you for to
⏹️ ▶️ John represent yourself to the world. So when you call somebody, they can see your picture like a kind of a push type thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John or something like that. But I feel like there’s still this tension that wasn’t really addressed in the explanation of
⏹️ ▶️ John this feature between do I get to pick the picture that I want for the person? Does the person get to picture
⏹️ ▶️ John that they want for themselves? And to give an example, my daughter uses a comically
⏹️ ▶️ John mangled photo of me as the contact picture for me instead of the picture that I would prefer.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I think she would be mad if I overrode that with something I pushed her.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, as far as I know, I haven’t tried. I don’t have the beta installed in my it’s been a day. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as far as I can, as far as I understood from the presentation, I think it is basically an expansion
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of that feature that like now you can specify this whole poster. But I would, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, again, I would assume that the receiving person probably has the option
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to not accept your customization, to prevent the chat roulette problem that could result
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from that. And I would assume it’s somebody who has to be in your contacts already or who you’ve responded to.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The way the current system works is you get a random text from somebody, nothing happens. If you respond,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then it will tell you, hey, do you wanna use this person’s updated photo and name? So it’s probably something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that for new contacts. But I think for existing contacts, again, I haven’t tried it yet, We’ll know all this next week,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but for existing contacts, it probably, there’s probably some kind of approval and decline
⏹️ ▶️ Marco available process there.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I’m not sure. Messages is getting some love. Oh, I’m sorry, I’m skipping ahead. Live
⏹️ ▶️ Casey voicemail is exciting, although I would assume that’s gonna require carrier support, I would guess.
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just doing a transcription.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it seems like it actually has replaced carrier voicemail. The way this works mechanically,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it looks like your phone is answering every call, even if you send it to voicemail, it seems like your phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is actually really answering it. Which I think is interesting. I worry a little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bit about, will people or like telemarketers be able to tell the difference between
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this kind of thing picking up and a carrier thing picking up? You know, I worry a little bit about that, but it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sure seems like it is taking on that whole responsibility directly on the phone.
⏹️ ▶️ John I like the example of you’re in a meeting and you get a call, but you don’t wanna pick it up, but you’re also gonna, like, it’s bad
⏹️ ▶️ John enough when you get interrupted in a meeting and like you’re looking down at your phone the person speaking knows you’re not paying
⏹️ ▶️ John attention because you’re looking to see who called. Not only you’re now looking to see who called, you’re also staring at your phone to watch
⏹️ ▶️ John the transcription slowly appear. So you’re paying even less attention to the meeting. So maybe not the best example, but
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, perhaps a useful feature.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, then we got FaceTime, which now has voicemail as well.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Facemail. Kim Beveritt came up for messages, which has search filters. It
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has I looked away when this was discussed, but my understanding is there’s a button that will let you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey jump directly to the oldest message that you have not yet read. So this is basically a jump to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey unread thing, which I am so excited about. That’ll be very, very cool. Audio
⏹️ ▶️ Casey messages are transcribed for the six people in the world that use them. You can do location
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stuff in line. If you are a complete worrywart, like, hello, me, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me, I’m the problem, it’s me. in is a thing now and I don’t know how
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one establishes that you need or want to check in or how you establish that you’re going to provide a check in.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But one way or another it detects you know whether or not you’ve gotten home or whatever place you’re trying to travel to and will automatically
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tell the person that you’re checking in with oh you know Casey’s arrived home safe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and sound which I am pretty excited about.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Wait doesn’t doesn’t this additionally Sherlock like through the grave your old app?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey it does. What was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the one with the feet? What was it called? I forgot.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, fast text? No, I thought you were doing something else.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, doesn’t it look additionally Sherlock fast
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, fast text has been Sherlocked eight ways to Sunday. I mean, it’s long.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, this just dug up its grave and then re-buried it deeper.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, pretty much, pretty much. I thought you were talking about Glimpse, which is an app I used to religiously
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use, and I haven’t used in a long time, but Maps has a similar feature and has for a couple years
⏹️ ▶️ Casey now, where it lets you see, you know, somebody going down the road. Nevertheless,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they also redid the messages UI a little bit. So now apparently there’s like a plus button to the left of the text entry
⏹️ ▶️ Casey field where everything lives and it tries to be smarter about what it presents there
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and what order, et cetera, et
⏹️ ▶️ John cetera. Say hallelujah on that. We’ve talked about that for so many years and it’s like, oh, because when, ever since they hid
⏹️ ▶️ John the attached photo under a second tap, you know, and elevated the stupid
⏹️ ▶️ John like audio message, right? They were like, just, you know, just give me a list of the things I use most frequently.
⏹️ ▶️ John and now they’ve totally eliminated that part of the UI. Like there’s not an extra row there, so
⏹️ ▶️ John you get more message space and everything’s under little plus. And my impression from the thing is, oh, just sort by
⏹️ ▶️ John most recently used. Hallelujah, it’s a miracle, amazing algorithm. They could figure it, just so many
⏹️ ▶️ John years for that. So I was excited by this portion of the thing because the features they were saying, like
⏹️ ▶️ John more sophisticated search and swipe to reply and a sane UI for doing message
⏹️ ▶️ John things have been so long coming, but it will have an outsized effect on my
⏹️ ▶️ John life. So I give this whole section a thumbs up, even though kind of like marking as unread, it’s things that
⏹️ ▶️ John they should have had ages ago, better late than never.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, this is all like, you know, nice little everyday nicety features. I’m so happy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re doing this stuff. Yeah, again, sure, it would have been great if they did it years ago, but they’re doing it now. And like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any kind of little improvement to messages, that has such a massive impact
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the world. Like, you know, messages is so big. It is probably the most used app on the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPhone globally period. And so, you know, this is sucked, like any little thing they do.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Obviously that’s probably one of the reasons why they’re fairly conservative with its feature set, because the impact is quite large
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you know, you don’t wanna get anything wrong, but I’m so happy they’re doing stuff like this. Little good quality
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I completely agree with you. However, a real time correction follow-up. My understanding is that Messages
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is not as big a deal globally, but certainly here in the States, 100% agreed. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey live in messages. It is far and away that, I mean, I’d have to look at the stats, but I’ve got to assume it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is far and away my most used app. So all these little quality of life improvements are excellent.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We got some, speaking of quality of life improvements, we got some AirDrop updates. You can do NameDrop,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which I don’t know, some people are snarking on the name. I love that name. I think it’s hilarious. But you can NameDrop via NFC,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where you just basically bump your two iPhones together.
⏹️ ▶️ John them. I do wonder with their demos, if this is going to be an epidemic of people cracking each other’s screens, of like playing the Easter
⏹️ ▶️ John egg game where you bang the eggs together to see which one breaks. Please do not do not bang
⏹️ ▶️ John the back of your phone against the top front screen. Just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everyone has cases. It’ll be fine. Doesn’t this doesn’t this Sherlock actual startup that was named
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bump? Wasn’t that actually a thing? Something like that. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. But they kept showing one over the top of another. So it was like, just
⏹️ ▶️ John I really hope I really hope this this happens with just proximity and not overlapping and clacking together.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But it was interesting. Like that was that was part of a a larger airdrop update too, where airdrop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now, it’s more automatic when you just bring phones near each other. I wonder how that will work with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Macs, you know, non-phone devices, because I frequently will airdrop something between
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a phone and a Mac, or you know, and usually phone to Mac, and so I hope, and sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s me, sometimes it’s Tiff, you know, so I hope that is better, because right now, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a very slow process to airdrop something from your phone to your-
⏹️ ▶️ John faster than file sharing in the Finder.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s true. That’s not difficult. But yeah, it’s a very slow process. I’m hoping that with this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’ve probably done some degree of rewriting here to enable all this cool stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John I do wonder if people are going to be taking their phones and like pressing it up against their screen. It’s like, I’m sorry, there’s nothing in that screen.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s going to know the phone is near. Especially if you have a desktop, you got to hold it near the Mac Studio or something.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or if you have a laptop in your little holster, you got to take the phone and rub it against your laptop or something.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And also now AirDrop now can continue the transfer over the internet
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if the phone leaves the range during the transfer, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey is pretty cool. Yeah. That is incredible.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, now it’s limited only to people who are signed into iCloud on their phones. So both
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the sender and the recipient need to be signed into iCloud, but yeah, you can start your AirDrop transfer via NFC
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then you can do the negotiation via NFC and then you can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey walk away and apparently it will just magically get uploaded to iCloud and then transferred and then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I presume deleted thereafter, which is super cool and I’m super excited about
⏹️ ▶️ John Not just NFC, like AirDrop does the peer-to-peer Wi-Fi thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco right? Yes, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it uses that to transfer, but I believe it uses ultra wideband to detect that super
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tight proximity. Yeah. And so, actually, it’ll be a good thing to check is like what models of phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco does this work on? Because, you know, if it’s, whenever they added the ultra wideband, I think it was like somewhere around like the iPhone 12
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 13, like somewhere around there-ish. So if a phone’s older than that can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do it, then we know it’s using the U1 chip or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We got some keyboard and dictation stuff. Allegedly, they’ve really,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really honest, I promise, seriously, you guys, I swear it’s fixed this time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Auto-correct, it’s gonna work this time, I swear. I promise. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the best part, possibly my favorite moment of this entire presentation, including the debut
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the Vision Pro, was Craig saying, those moments when you just wanna type a ducking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey word. It was so good, I lost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. Oh my gosh. The best thing was, he said, you have to teach
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple what the curse words are. It says, when you wanna type the ducking word, you type it, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then the keyboard will learn it too. So we get to corrupt our phones, basically,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the words that Apple, Apple walks in and pretends they don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John I wish I didn’t remember all the same pitches I heard about the previous version of autocorrect.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, we’ve improved it so much and it’s great and it will learn and blah, blah, blah. And that was not the case. So they said all
⏹️ ▶️ John the right things again, but this time I’m a little bit more doubtful
⏹️ ▶️ John whether they’ve done or not. I loved everything they said. I’m like, yes, please make it better. You’re acknowledging that it’s bad by telling
⏹️ ▶️ John us that you’ve like improved it. I don’t know if they’re trying to say if it’s all new or not. I
⏹️ ▶️ John hope it’s all new because the existing one just needs to.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, they did say something important. So one word that you didn’t hear
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in this entire presentation was AI.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or large language model.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes, those were not mentioned, neither was metaverse. Those were not mentioned, that was intentional from my understanding,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but AI was never said. And there’s lots of reasons for that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s a buzzword, it means a lot of things to a lot of different people. And what people usually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are referring to, these days when they say AI, there’s more precise language if you want to be more precise. And what they said
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about the new autocorrect and the new dictation, which I’m very curious about the API around that, what they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco said was they’re now using a quote transformer language model for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco word prediction. So this is, you know, this is like the kind of thing that chat GPT
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, like those large language models, those are transformer language models. And so what it sounds like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that they built in some custom transformer based language model into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iOS 17 for both auto correct on the keyboard and for dictation. And those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are probably two different models, but you know, so they’re both using transformer AI based
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tech, you know, like it’s that kind of tech. So that is probably a significant change from the previous
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ML system that was based on different older techniques that were probably not transformer based. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that actually is a pretty big deal. And if it works, if it has any chance of working well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s gonna be with this kind of technology in this day and age. So they didn’t call it AI, but.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I’d say, I don’t know, because like the large language models don’t do this job.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like large language models do all sorts of stuff, but I haven’t seen them perform this function. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John people are typing on the keyboard, trying to figure out what they were saying. So like, for me, it’s an open question.
⏹️ ▶️ John Are those type of models good at this specific task? because it is very different than conversing,
⏹️ ▶️ John asking a question, looking something up, like all the sorts of things that people are doing with them now, having it perform a task,
⏹️ ▶️ John or even like what I talked about in the past, which is say a bunch of crap and then have it figure out what you mean and then
⏹️ ▶️ John have it convey that message to Siri and have it do a thing for you. So I still say the jury’s
⏹️ ▶️ John out on this. I’m hopeful. I did note that they said some new technologies and said some new things about
⏹️ ▶️ John how it’s gonna be better, but I haven’t actually seen or used something
⏹️ ▶️ John that does autocorrect for phone keyboards, that uses this type of model to say, oh, I know it’ll work great because
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve seen it before.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, as we keep going, we got Journal debuted. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey potentially bad news for day one. This was introduced by Aditi. I didn’t catch their last name. Ulo.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But iPhone, thank you. iPhone creates suggestions throughout the day of things you might want
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to journal. Now I got super excited because they said there would be an API for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this. And I took that as, oh, we will provide to day one or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can ask for, well, so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco hold on, where
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you can ask for the other, just the suggestions we’ve come up with. And I thought that was a freaking awesome,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because then, you know, I can use day one, which I have literally thousands of entries in, and I can continue
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to use day one, but have it kind of fill some of this stuff out for me. And I was so excited. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey someone pointed out to me later, I think via like Mastodon or something, or maybe it was a text message, But one way or the other,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey somebody pointed out, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You will be suggesting to Apple what they can include in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco They will not be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey suggesting to anyone else. And I mean, I don’t think we’ve seen these APIs or certainly at the time as we’ve record, as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we are recording, we haven’t seen the APIs, perhaps they’re available now, but, um, yeah, I think that was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey perhaps too, too generous, say read on the situation, which kind of bums me out because I love
⏹️ ▶️ Casey day one. I, we, they have sponsored in the past a couple of times, I’m pretty sure, but I will evangelize them
⏹️ ▶️ Casey until I’m blue in the face. They are a, it’s a fantastic app that I put at least,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, 10, 15 minutes of time into every single day and I’m very thankful for it every single day. So,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uh, whether, whether or not this Sherlock’s day one, I think it’s, as always, it’s going to be one of those situations
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where if you want more, you go to day one, but if this is enough, then this is enough, but I do think that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey based completely on my own experience, I think that journaling to some degree,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think that’s a helpful and healthy thing to do. I don’t think it’s required to be a healthy individual, but I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is a healthy activity just like exercise is a healthy activity. And I think it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey great that they’re trying to provide an outlet or vehicle for this for more people. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I dig this in principle. I’m excited for this. Moving on, we’ve got standby, which is similar to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Apple Watch when it’s in, I think nightstand mode, they called it or something like that. But basically
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you put your iPhone horizontally, you can see a big old clock, you can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey see a a bunch of widgets, uh, widgets are the widget staffs are swipable, just like on the home screen,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey um, and you can interact with them, which we’ll talk about a little bit more later. Uh, but yeah, this looks
⏹️ ▶️ Casey neat. This is not filling a use that I have personally.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I don’t know a lot of people that have stands that facilitate a landscape mounted phone,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I could totally see because I’m one of those. A-holes that buys a new phone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey every year. I could totally see putting like one of these in the living room or in the kitchen or something like that and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just making it Chock full of home kit buttons and having like a home kit, you know control
⏹️ ▶️ Casey center sort of thing with like a couple year-old phone But either way, I mean, I I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that this is going to be a terribly popular thing to do, but I like it I think it’s a neat idea and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what’s it gonna hurt?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s kind of bridging the gap between like our generation that had clock radios on the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco that’s a thing
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s kind of like a landscape-oriented, but kind of vertical-ish thing. And
⏹️ ▶️ John the current past few, the generations that are after us, because the generations that are after us, I believe their
⏹️ ▶️ John experience is, it’s just your phone laying flat on your nightstand. They use their phone as their alarm, but it’s just laying there flat.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so whenever the alarm goes off, they reach over, pick it up, and press the button or whatever. And so this is like, okay,
⏹️ ▶️ John we know all you’ve got in your nightstand is a phone, but we know from generations past that sometimes it’s convenient
⏹️ ▶️ John to have it facing you So you can read the time by just turning your head instead of picking your head
⏹️ ▶️ John up and peeking so you can see that the time on the you know what I mean I’m not sure if that
⏹️ ▶️ John hybrid approach is going to find a market or not But hey, it’s a useful thing to
⏹️ ▶️ John you do with your phone when it’s that orientation and you mentioned There’s not many stands like that I think you’re gonna see a lot more stands like that
⏹️ ▶️ John in the coming years because There are a lot of people in our generation or older who would
⏹️ ▶️ John like to replace their clock radio with a phone but right now it doesn’t fulfill that role because it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John look clock radio-ish, and this does. So thumbs up for old people.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, I think this is a cool feature set to add to an iPhone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The clock radio thing, I think, is the most obvious use case for it. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ultimately, what this really, I think, is much cooler of an idea for would be like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a kitchen countertop thing, you know, like similar to how people use voice assistant products, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, the Amazon Alexa line of stuff, and they have various ones with screens and everything,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Google Home stuff, they have one with a screen. And so what’s interesting is like, why is this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the iPhone? But I think this is foreshadowing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe a dedicated product in this area, which could be much better. You know. And much cheaper, I would hope.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes, the problem with an iPhone doing this is, number one, it’s too small to be used in your kitchen. Number two, it’s too
⏹️ ▶️ Marco expensive. And the ones that would be the most obvious things to do them would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be the ones with always on displays. So that limited to even more expensive models.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So what this really wants to be, first of all, I don’t know why this isn’t an iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feature. Like this would be a great use of, especially like an old iPad. Like if it’s old
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enough to run this. Well, they did add widgets to iPadOS.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. So I think an iPad with widgets is close.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but like, you know, the fact that it can, that it, you know, I guess iPad do, It listens for Siri,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it can run your widgets, it’s designed to be viewed at a distance, like all these things. It would be a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot better as a use for a semi-retired iPad.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It would be great for that. And it would also be great to have some kind of maybe good speaker built
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in, maybe some kind of HomePod with this as a screen. Like that could be a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really nice kitchen counter kind of computer. So I’m hoping that this is just the precursor
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to future products that are devoted to this for like, you know, kitchen counter use. Now, bedside
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use, that makes sense to be your phone because your phone’s already on your bedside table. You know, you’re already charging it overnight. So that’s really nice.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco One interesting little tidbit they threw in there at the end is they said that if you use a MagSafe charger,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I guess MagSafe chargers have some kind of like serial number in them. So it says each MagSafe charger
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will remember whatever view you configured for each MagSafe charger. So like if you have one in the bedroom that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco MagSafe, and then you also have a separate MagSafe charger in the kitchen and you have two different views configured, based
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on what they said, I think it will actually maintain separate settings for those, which is pretty cool.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, that is cool, I did not notice that, or if they stated it during the keynote, I totally missed it, so that’s cool.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So yeah, we also get sharing, I think this is on one of those like quilt
⏹️ ▶️ Casey screens where it shows all the different features. We get sharing for Find My Items, which is pretty cool,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and also pet recognition, so it’ll recognize pets, your pets in photos.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m excited by this. I think it may be my favorite iOS 17 feature, considering
⏹️ ▶️ John as far as we know, we don’t have any confirmation on the force quit all apps or hide all pictures
⏹️ ▶️ John feature. Find out when we get the betas, but pet recognition, we’re waiting for that for such a long time because
⏹️ ▶️ John a huge percentage of my pictures are pictures of my various dogs and they are not identified.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so when I ever want to search for dogs, I have to just search for dog and it’s my dog, my
⏹️ ▶️ John past dog, and also every other dog I’ve ever taken a picture of. a lot of them too. I would love to be able to just
⏹️ ▶️ John search for my specific dog. So I’m I’m excited to try out that feature, I hope it does well.
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iPadOS 17
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, iPadOS, we’ve got widgets on lock screen. They are interactive, kind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of. They are interactive, but very limited. It’s very, very limited the way this works. And I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey probably going to get some details wrong here. But my understanding is you vend
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to iOS or iPadOS that you support an activity intent.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you can, in your Swift UI code, say, hey, by hitting this button, you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are firing that intent. Does that sound right, Marco? Have you looked into this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Does that at least sound vaguely correct?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So when the rumor started about interactive widgets, one of the things we said was, look, the way widgets
⏹️ ▶️ Marco work is those processes for those apps are not continuously running. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so basically, you give the system a timeline of, like, here’s what my widget
⏹️ ▶️ Marco should show between these time ranges into the future. So you can configure if you’re making
⏹️ ▶️ Marco weather, you have an hourly forecast, okay, for this hour, from this time to this time, show this forecast, and this time to this time, show this forecast,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then ask me again in four hours for an update. So you can kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tell the system when you have new data, or you can send a push notification to request a refresh, or your app can request a refresh
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or whatever, but it’s all based on, you’re kind of pre-rendering the content for the widget,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then your app is suspended into the background. So you are not continuously running.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So when the rumors came up of interactive widgets, we were asking on the show, well how does that work? Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you tap a button or something in the widget, does it have to then relaunch your process in the background?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the answer appears to be yes. That they didn’t change the way the process
⏹️ ▶️ Marco management is done. That your process is still not running when you have a widget on the screen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That app’s process is still not running continuously. But they have added this new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco system where there are certain limited types of interaction like buttons and toggles
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you can use from SwiftUI and when they are triggered, you can,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it will request the app intent which will wake up your apps process in the background and perform whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco action you need to perform. Some of those can be done in the extension, the widget extension, most of them I think are just done
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the app. And this remains, I’ll have more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to say on this once I’ve had a chance to actually try it because this all depends on how quickly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is happening in the background. How quickly is it gonna wake up my process? How quickly can I respond?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What kind of interaction is really possible here? Is there throttling built in? Can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I, if somebody interacts with it constantly, does it like over and over again, like if they tap it a whole bunch of times all in a row,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can I actually respond to that? If I put like a play pause button in there, which their documentation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seemed to suggest as a valid use of this. So if I make like a little mini
⏹️ ▶️ Marco player widget, like if people interact with it a lot, does it throttle? Does it do the requests
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like backup? Is it fast enough? Is it responsive enough to make that a good experience? That remains to be seen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that might vary depending on what kind of hardware you have. If somebody quote force quit your app out of the switcher,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco does it take longer to wake it up if they tap on your widget? You know, there’s all sorts of little implementation details.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If they make everything fast enough, and they have done a lot of work over the years with like making the loaders faster
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and stuff like that, Like processes can launch pretty quickly these days on iOS, especially if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re not too bloated with your app. But this all depends
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on that speed. Is it fast enough that most people wouldn’t notice and it feels like a live version
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of your app? Or does it feel kind of like you’re putting in a request and they’re gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bring your order out later? We’ll see what happens. I’m optimistic because again,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they have done so much work with the loader and everything to make everything faster to launch. As long as we don’t have any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco odd limits and throttles in place, this should be pretty interesting. It’s worth
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pointing out also this exact same system is now part of live activities as well. So live activities can also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now be interactive in the same way. So there’s a couple of minor differences, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re minor. So this could be really cool. This adds
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yet more to the pile, making a little bit of work for me and a lot of work for our friend underscore David Smith.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But this is, you know, this is going to be probably a decent part of what my summer is spent working on.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because again, now I think, I think it’s probably now going to be expected
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that apps like mine have now playing widgets that can actually work as little mini players. So this will be some work,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it’s a really cool idea. And if it works well, if it’s responsive,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if it’s fast, if it’s not weirdly throttled, this could be really great.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I’m also worried about the latency.
⏹️ ▶️ John not a lot of good choices for Apple here if they’re gonna stick with this model because like interactively,
⏹️ ▶️ John one choice is as soon as they tap the button, you know, do the animation of the button
⏹️ ▶️ John being tapped, highlight the button on the highlighted or whatever. The other choice is to wait until
⏹️ ▶️ John it has woken the app up and the app has responded in the affirmative to highlight the button. And both of
⏹️ ▶️ John those choices stink because if you highlight immediately, it’s like, oh, it’s great, it’s really responsive. But if you highlight immediately and
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s taken a while to open the, to launch the app behind the scenes because it has 27 ad SDKs in it and
⏹️ ▶️ John takes forever to launch, right? Then you press the button and from the user’s experiences,
⏹️ ▶️ John I press the button, it highlighted, it unhighlighted, nothing happened. Like for example, with a play pause,
⏹️ ▶️ John I hit it and it like, either it changes into the play symbol because it was previously
⏹️ ▶️ John was paused and you press it and now it’s like, oh, I’ve paused and I’m gonna change it to the play set, but you still hear the music playing.
⏹️ ▶️ John And now there’s a disconnect. The button is the play triangle, but you still hear the music playing.
⏹️ ▶️ John or you press it and literally nothing happens until you wake up the app, it actually pauses the thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John All bad choices, right? If it’s fast enough, no problem, right? And I bet it will be fast enough for
⏹️ ▶️ John well-written apps that launch quickly, you know, especially if it goes to the extension, not the
⏹️ ▶️ John app, that can presumably launch even faster. But I do worry about it, because there’s nothing worse than an unresponsive UI.
⏹️ ▶️ John And especially on things like the iPad, where you’ve got, you know, the bigger iPads with more RAM, I do think
⏹️ ▶️ John this model is a little long in the tooth here. I know they’re really super cautious about everything,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it may be a little much. Like how much RAM do we have to have? How fast do these
⏹️ ▶️ John SOCs have to be before we say, you know what, it’s okay for something that has a widget
⏹️ ▶️ John to be running in the background. I was gonna destroy my battery. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John not sure they struck the right balance, but we’ll see. Performance is not an issue, it’ll be fine. I know we’ll get to this in a little
⏹️ ▶️ John bit, but they’re supporting this on the Mac, on the Mac, it’s not launching a process on your Mac, it’s gonna talk to a process
⏹️ ▶️ John on your phone in some cases. So not only does it have to wake up a process, it’s gonna wake up a process on a whole other device.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I worry about
⏹️ ▶️ John that. I mean, it’s great that they’re there. It’s cool that you can see your charge level on your Lucid Air or whatever, but
⏹️ ▶️ John interaction, press the thing on your Mac. Mac says, hey, iPhone, are you around? If you’re around, oh, by
⏹️ ▶️ John the way, here’s an App Intent. The iPhone’s like, wait, what, who are you? Oh, okay, App Intent, all right, launch the App.
⏹️ ▶️ John geez, I really hope that is acceptable performance. Let’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco watch it all over. Yeah, I was about to say that’s exactly how watch stuff works a lot of times and that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco works pretty poorly. But, I mean, I’m guessing for whatever it’s worth, I’m guessing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that there is a pretty critical difference with process management, whether you’re talking about something that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is just simply suspended, which is basically pausing it and putting it in the background, so it can’t execute
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anything live, but when you want to resume a suspended process, you just unpause it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then it keeps going so it’s much faster, versus terminated. If it’s terminated, it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is quit. And then when you do need to relaunch it, it has to load up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from scratch, like load everything back into memory. I’m guessing, I hope, that if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’ve configured a widget for an app and it’s currently being displayed, I’m guessing they don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco let your process terminate. I’m guessing they leave it suspended only, and that way when you do tap
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, it’s much faster to
⏹️ ▶️ John wake it back up. Because someone’s gonna launch a game and you’re gonna get booted out. Like you’re not gonna be suspended anymore. games
⏹️ ▶️ John will just take all available RAM on an iPad. I don’t care, you know, because you have a screen full of widgets. So,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, things are tight, not as tight as they could be. But like, anyway, I just I I’m glad that they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John moving and they’re moving the right direction, which is more permissive, make more things possible.
⏹️ ▶️ John And we’ll see how this goes. But I do have to think that eventually the
⏹️ ▶️ John the hardware will catch up to the point where where we the limitations won’t be quite as onerous.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey For what it’s worth, it was pointed out by Adam the second chat that friend of the show, James Thompson, already got a Pcalc
⏹️ ▶️ Casey widget running in the simulator. So it is seeming like you can put a bunch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of buttons on there. It looked quick. We’ll put a link in the show notes. It looked
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reasonable. Granted, this is all simulators. It’s beta 1, et cetera, et cetera. But it looked good. All
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right. Where were we? Widgets, blah, blah, blah. Health. There’s now the Health app on iPad. That’s cool.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, I don’t think there’s too much more to say about it, but I’m here for it. Then Jenny Chen came out, talked about PDFs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and Apple Pencil. Apparently, there’s going to be much more robust PDF support, which is funny because I didn’t ever think it was
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey So here’s the thing with PDFs.
⏹️ ▶️ John Everyone loves to send you PDFs that they want you to fill out as forms, but Preview
⏹️ ▶️ John and Apple’s PDF handling, it’s got like a 50% success rate in
⏹️ ▶️ John my experience with, can it open and fill out this PDF in a sane way? And that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not great. But the worst part is, and the part that they’re addressing here, most people have no idea how to even do what
⏹️ ▶️ John I just described. Because to do what I just described, you have to know that it’s possible, you have to know you have to download it, you have to know you can
⏹️ ▶️ John open it in preview, you have to know preview has these features. This is much more inline where it’s like, well, we’ll give it a shot right here
⏹️ ▶️ John where you see the thing in the mail app, in the notes app. Like just, you don’t have to go anywhere, you don’t have to download
⏹️ ▶️ John it, you don’t have to open it in another map. It’s right here, but then we’re still faced with the same problem, which is like, why does it only work
⏹️ ▶️ John sometimes? Is it because people are bad at making PDF forms? Yes, they are bad at making PDF forms. I’ve had
⏹️ ▶️ John to multiple times download the trial of Adobe Acrobat to use the one and only
⏹️ ▶️ John application I could find that will successfully fill out this stupid PDF form. PDF forms are bad. They should be web forms, but
⏹️ ▶️ John we have to live with them. So I think Apple is doing what it can. I just still would like to know what is it about Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ John PDF handling? It’s probably the fact that Apple’s PDF handling is correct according to the spec and people’s PDFs are
⏹️ ▶️ John made like an Acrobat and they only work in Acrobat. It’s like, I don’t know if it’s Acrobat or something else, like the equivalent of Chrome,
⏹️ ▶️ John or it’s like, well, whatever Chrome does is correct and Safari, screw you, even if you follow the standards. but
⏹️ ▶️ John a good step in the right direction. But I continue to find filling out PDFs frustrating on Apple platforms without the help
⏹️ ▶️ John of janky third party PDF stuff that I don’t wanna use.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, the good news is now what’s changed is not AI, it’s quote, new machine
⏹️ ▶️ Marco learning models. That’s to identify the PDF forms. And what’s also cool
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that they demoed that if it identifies forms and it looks like something like, you know, an address field, it will offer auto fill,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is really cool.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, now they’re brute forcing it, right? because you can actually make forms with PDFs that says, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, this area is where they’re gonna fill in text and this, but you can also brute force it, which is just, you know what, machine learning,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll figure it out, it’s an address field, because a lot of times people will send you a PDF that isn’t a form, that doesn’t have places
⏹️ ▶️ John for you to put stuff, and they just expect you to print it and scan it back in or some insanity. So like, again, Apple’s doing what
⏹️ ▶️ John it can, which is like, we can’t control the world of people sending out PDFs that only work in Acrobat for some reason,
⏹️ ▶️ John but we can, you know, apply our skills and knowledge to just say, I don’t care what the heck that PDF
⏹️ ▶️ John is. I think that’s an address for him. Auto fill.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I thought it was cool, though.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s really cool to like the stuff that they added with making PDFs a bit more of a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, you know, first class citizen inside of an inside of a note in the notes app. That I think is really cool. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they talk about, you know, the notes app is like the master Sherlocker of Apple products
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it has Sherlocked so many apps over its history, and it does a pretty good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco job of many of them. And in this case, you know, now it’s that you can keep multiple PDFs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the same note. If you’re like, you know, doing a research project, there’s so there’s so many apps
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that like, you know, used to have to be a separate app. And now nodes does pretty much the same. I
⏹️ ▶️ John feel like it’s still not ideal. They were showing notes being used for that. I’m like, that’s not the ideal app for
⏹️ ▶️ John that. Like I still think well, I think what they’re doing is saying, look, if you’re going to make a third party version of this thing, like, I think
⏹️ ▶️ John this is, you know, people call it Sherlocking. But I think the definition has been lost. interlocking was like, take an innovative
⏹️ ▶️ John idea for an app that has that you hadn’t seen before that has a signature look and style and feature set
⏹️ ▶️ John that is recognizable as this thing and make one just like it. And that’s not what Apple’s doing. Instead, what they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John doing is saying, when you buy our products, you get the functionality to do
⏹️ ▶️ John basic stuff, you can read email, you can browse the web, you can take notes and like and that that basic
⏹️ ▶️ John functionality, how what is the basic functionality? How much what does it encompass continues to expand as computers get
⏹️ ▶️ John more powerful, but the idea is you don’t have to buy an Apple device and be like, okay, now I gotta spend 20 years
⏹️ ▶️ John in the app store asking my friends what I should download. No, out of the box, it will do all the basic stuff. So what
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s doing is saying, do you wanna make a notes app? Do you wanna make a journaling app? The bar
⏹️ ▶️ John is now, you can’t just make a well-designed, fairly basic notes or journaling app. You have to make
⏹️ ▶️ John one that is fancier, that has more features, that has a point of view that we don’t have, that is
⏹️ ▶️ John more specific, that is more flexible, And that’s, you know, that’s tough for people, but it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John Sherlocking. It’s just saying when previously you needed an entirely new app to do this at all, now with the
⏹️ ▶️ John bundles app, you can do an okay job of it. But like, I would not want to manage all my PDFs inside
⏹️ ▶️ John a notes document, but the fact that it’s possible to do it at all means people don’t have to suffer through hunting
⏹️ ▶️ John for a third party application if they just want to have that basic functionality.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and I think that’s like, what notes is really amazing at is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you don’t need the super pro specialized advanced features of lots of stuff, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you, something like Evernote, where you wanna collect all these ideas together for this one thing you’re researching,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that used to require special apps, like Evernote or things like that, and now you can just do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 80% version of that in Notes, and then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you need more advanced features, you can go to the more advanced apps, but Notes by itself can do so much.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, really, I think Notes, if I had to pick, like, you know, I’ve criticized Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot in recent years for not really being able to make great
⏹️ ▶️ Marco applications. You know, their OSs are amazing, their frameworks are amazing, their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco applications have been not super all there recently. But I think Notes is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably the major exception that Notes is, I think, really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of a sleeper. Like, people often don’t think about it or don’t think about how much value it’s given them, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like there is so much built into Notes, and overall it works
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really well. It is one of the best syncing apps in terms of like iCloud reliability,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco although it doesn’t sync in the background enough.
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know. Yeah, exactly. I’m gonna, that’s a big asterisk
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on that statement. But when, yeah, when it does sync, like, you know, it syncs, it doesn’t lose data, you know, it syncs reliably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco once it’s going, but like the feature set, like there’s so much. There’s drawing, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco check boxes, There’s like, you know, photo, like there’s embedding all sorts of stuff. Now they have linking.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s one of the new things. The document scanner
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes, like there’s so much built into Notes. I think Notes might be the best
⏹️ ▶️ Marco modern Apple app. And there’s just so much in there. But now there’s even more.
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macOS Sonoma
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, macOS Sonoma. When they were talking about why, and this is my ignorance to all things California,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I thought they were going to say macOS Napa, but apparently no, macOS Sonoma, and this is where Jason Snell is rolling and getting very upset
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with me. Sorry, Jason. But nonetheless, Arial got Sherlocked. I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey been running the Arial screensavers for forever.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, that’s not a Sherlocking because Arial was just a reimplementation of an Apple thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John And again, that’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sherlocking. Yes, taking Apple TV screensavers and putting them on your Mac. Now, your Mac just has Apple TV screensavers.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right, and now Apple put Apple TV screensavers on your Mac. So, you know, Arial filled the
⏹️ ▶️ John gap that Apple should have filled for a long time, which is, hey, these are your screensavers, Apple. Why are they not
⏹️ ▶️ John on the Mac? Now they are.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it was such an obvious, like, we of course put it on the Mac. Why would you not want that? Now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we have it. By the way,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I say on the Sonoma name, at least they finally picked a name that most people won’t mispronounce or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco argue about how it’s supposed to be pronounced. and you won’t have all the Californians saying, it’s Ventura. I’m not sure
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s true. What do you think people have an easier time with this name than Ventura? I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I 100% agree with Marco. 100%, this is easier. And it’s not, I don’t know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s a place that I think people have actually heard of, which I feel, well, I mean, that’s not fair. Like you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John have so many people heard of, but. I
⏹️ ▶️ John had never heard of Sonoma until freshman year at college when someone on my floor was from Sonoma. So that’s how sheltered
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on my island. Well, I don’t think it’s you being sheltered. that’s Californian self-importance shining through because I mean, yeah, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think… Well, there’s a big wine drinker in high school. Well, fair. But no, I think, you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know, if you’re going to take it as fact that they’re going to name things after California or places in California, fine,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey whatever. Sonoma, I think, is a pretty good choice. So moving right along, we talked about Arial. Widgets
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are on the desktop now, like on the desktop properly, and they dim when other apps are active. I thought
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this was pretty neat. They tint based on the wallpaper behind them. I thought that was kind of neat. This is where
⏹️ ▶️ Casey things get a little bit weird though. First of all, I had heard through the grapevine, this may not be true,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I’d heard through the grapevine that, speaking of Sonoma, that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Federici up until at least a couple of years ago, which is the last time I was asking about this, drove like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a piece of garbage, like 10 year old Audi A6. But did you notice what widget he was using or what widget
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was sitting on his desktop today? I don’t know, is that real? Is that fake? Who knows? How could you know? the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Lucid Air charge widget on his desktop. And that is a very nice and very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey expensive automobile, which if anyone can afford it, it’s Craig, but I thought that was interesting. Nevertheless,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is what John was talking about earlier. Apparently, you don’t need to install
⏹️ ▶️ Casey apps on your Mac in order to use widgets from your phone. You just need your phone on the same wifi network or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey within close proximity, and then magic. Surely it’ll work no problem,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right? that when they said that, that you can access iPhone widgets on the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco without installing the app on the Mac.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they’re interactive.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And yeah, and they’re interactive. Again, hopefully it works more like anything than WatchKit.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But you know, we’ll see. I mean, part of the reason why WatchKit sucks so badly is that the watch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a very, very low power device that is constantly turning off things like its wifi radio
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s forcing everything over Bluetooth and keep trying to keep things like in sleep state as much as possible,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it’s so power constrained. So hopefully that kind of thing will work better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with things like laptops and phones, which have bigger batteries and can keep their wifi on more often and stuff like that. Hopefully
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that will be better. And I sure, it can’t be worse than WatchKit,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or WatchConnectivity rather is the framework. So hopefully it’s better than WatchConnectivity.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think it probably will be, but it’s just, this is so cool. Like iPhone widgets on the Mac, This
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, you know, for all of the trouble that Apple has keeping
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac OS relevant and updated and stable and high quality, at least
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re giving it modern features. You know, at least they’re keeping Mac OS relevant. It isn’t- It’s as modern
⏹️ ▶️ John dashboard, which is what, seven years old?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco No, but this is so much- More than seven. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dashboard, people comparing it, dashboard, first of all, I loved certain things about dashboard,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but dashboard sucked. I used dashboard and it was, it just sucked. because here’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the thing, first of all, you know, the reliance on web technologies back then when it came out,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it made everything very sluggish. You’d like drag out the widget to plop onto the dashboard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you’d want, and like it would pause for a second before it showed that cool ripple vertex shader thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it did because it was like loading, like it was basically loading a little web browser for each one of those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things, that’s problem number one. Problem number two is that those were never updated in the background. So you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would hit whatever it was, was it F11? What was the dashboard key? Hot corner. Or a hot corner,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah. So you’d bring up dashboard, and everything in dashboard would be showing either
⏹️ ▶️ Marco blank data or stale data. And then over the following couple of seconds, they would pop in with updated
⏹️ ▶️ Marco data, because they weren’t being updated in the background. So you’d load dashboard, and it was always stale. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then it would pop in.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think all those things you complained about were eventually fixed. They eventually did one big webkit process for the whole thing instead of other ones.
⏹️ ▶️ John And eventually, they updated so fast that by the time the animation was done, new data was in them. with the widgets I
⏹️ ▶️ John use. The main thing I liked about dashboard was that it was off screen. So you didn’t have to deal with what they’re doing here where they’re like,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re dimmed because we don’t want you to be distracted by them. But dimming them is gonna hurt their legibility. But on the other hand, I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t want them cluttering up my desktop. So imagine if they were just off somewhere on another screen that I could hit a hot corner to get to.
⏹️ ▶️ John But yeah, this is the modern incarnation of that. And by the way, if they did it with web technologies now, it would be
⏹️ ▶️ John lighting fast and they could update it in the background. But why bother? Because you’ve got SwiftUI and this whole widget system, which is great.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s great that it’s the same across all platforms. This is just sort of, this is the, whatever the opposite of
⏹️ ▶️ John a strategy tax is, a strategy bonus. Strategy credit. Like this, yeah, this widget technology and the fact
⏹️ ▶️ John that SwiftUI is all cross-platform means that when you do this stuff, you can share it across all your platforms.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it is sort of a unifying force as the, you know, spread this around. And people like widgets. And if, you know, they
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t have to make something dashboard which is totally out of left field because there was nothing like it. Now making it with Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ John first class, you know, UI framework that works across all their platforms, including their freaking headset.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s the strategy bonus.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and I think the reality is there are two types of people out there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s the people who maintain a very clean, minimalist desktop, and then there’s the rest
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the world who uses their desktop for all sorts of crap, and I’m one of those people. My desktop’s always covered in crap,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and whenever I mention that or post a screenshot, I always hear from the former type of person,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how can you live like that? But the reality is most people use their desktop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as a drop spot, as a working space, because what’s it there for? It’s not supposed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be clear all the time. It’s a working space. It’s real estate you can use to get your work done. It’s like when people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco post those pictures of their real life desks and there’s nothing on them. Those people aren’t doing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anything. They’re not working. That’s not how it really looks if you’re actually doing anything. You know, my desk is always covered in crap, just like my desktop.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s how people live. And so the idea of putting a widget or a few widgets on my desktop,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not concerned about the clutter that brings. It’s already cluttered. If it can bring me useful information,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So next in keynote orders gaming, if you’ll permit a slight change
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of procedure here, I’d like to come back to that and just try to blast through the other stuff real quick and then we can spend a few minutes on gaming.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There were some video conferencing updates. There’s presenter overlay where you can get a fake green screen.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What I thought was super cool about this, I didn’t take good notes about it, so I’m going off the top of my head, But you can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey put, put this setup where the camera is taking the video
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of you and, and the, in the, the background behind you, like the real life background
⏹️ ▶️ Casey behind you. But then it will superimpose your screen as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey though it’s being presented adjacent to your head. I’m probably not doing a good job describing this, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it looked super cool. And I can imagine how this would be super useful, especially if you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can do this with Zoom and all the other video conferencing apps, which my understanding is this is a system level thing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and you can do exactly that. So I thought that looked really, really slick. But
⏹️ ▶️ John the guy’s head is blocking half of a slide though.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, I’m sure you could, well, I would.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John You mean dodging
⏹️ ▶️ John out of the way. I see this problem comically on the Destiny videos I watch is they all have kind of like a same thing where they
⏹️ ▶️ John can show their screen with their little head superimposed and they’re always blocking the one part of the screen that they’re trying to talk about.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Then additionally, we got some talk about Safari. Again, I’m gonna try to make this quick. They said
⏹️ ▶️ Casey often that they locked the, I think a private browser window. I think they were saying private browser window when
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’re not using it. I’m not entirely clear what that means. I’m assuming that means they don’t show the contents.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it’s probably like locked notes where like if you have a locked note and you go away from it for a little while, you come back and it re-requires
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the authentication. I’m sure it’s probably something like that. Maybe it requires Face ID or Touch ID to unlock it. Who knows?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep, they’re doing more to remove trackers and things like that. Profiles for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey separating work browsing versus personal browsing. This is something that even when
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I had an actual job didn’t ever bother me that much, but I can totally understand if this is something that bothers
⏹️ ▶️ John it in Chrome a lot. Like it’s useful if you have kids that have a Google account with their school, but they
⏹️ ▶️ John also have their own personal Google account dealing with those, but you can deal with them both in a single profile, but having profiles
⏹️ ▶️ John in Chrome is super handy. So this is a catch-up feature for Apple, but it’s a good feature. I heartily
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I actually didn’t realize that this was implemented by anybody else, because I’m not really a Chrome person. But this is great,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because so often I would just use a different browser for certain things. Like, oh, I have this browser for this account,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then I’ll have this other browser that I launched only to use as other account. Like, now this is much nicer.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and what Chrome does is they let you have different themes for the Chrome and the UI.
⏹️ ▶️ John So you can kind of tell, like, this is the school window. These are all the school windows that are kind of bluish, all my personal windows are kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John white-ish or whatever. The way Apple is doing it is not coloring the whole UI,
⏹️ ▶️ John but the button that switches profiles is strongly colored orange, blue, or whatever. So I think that’s a good
⏹️ ▶️ John compromise. I think Apple did a good job with this feature.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep. All right. So then the other thing that was super exciting to me about Safari,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh, I’m sorry, before we get there, web apps on the Mac, you can do file, add to dock. That’s cool. Not something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel like I would use, but that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John cool. And people are gonna say, you’re Sherlocking a thousand apps. But again, I’m gonna say not the same definition of Sherlock, but boy, there
⏹️ ▶️ John are and there have been so many apps on the Mac that did this exact job and Apple finally got around to doing
⏹️ ▶️ John it. After what, like a decade, a decade and a half that those apps have exist? Yeah. Now it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John built in. And arguably Apple did it first-ish on the iPhone because I think from like
⏹️ ▶️ John day one, you could basically save a website as an icon on springboard on your phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep, yep, yep. But the thing, before we move on and come back to gaming, the thing that I am genuinely,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no sarcasm, super freaking amped about is shared passkeys. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John quick recap. And passwords, not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just passkeys. Oh, I didn’t catch that. That’s a good correction.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So passkeys and password, well, we all know what a password is. Passkey is that fancy thing where you can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use, you know, biometric authentication or whatever. Again, I’m probably getting these terms wrong, but you get the gist of what I’m saying.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But you can do use biometrics in order to authenticate onto websites and things like that. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am really into this because you don’t have to worry about remembering passwords. You don’t have to invent ridiculously long, complex passwords.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I’m super into this right now because, uh, one password eight and one password
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is a former sponsor. And I love the people at one password. Really? I do. One password eight is really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not good. Like really, really not good. Really not good. And,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uh, I think they’re marching ahead with one password eight come hell or high water, we don’t care who we tick off and doing it. So I’ve been
⏹️ ▶️ Casey shopping around for something to replace one password. And I am a religious user of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the shared vault system, where you can have a vault in one password
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of shared passwords that both Aaron and I can see. And up until literally
⏹️ ▶️ Casey today, I didn’t really see any equivalent of that in passkeys. And now I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how good it’s going to be. I don’t know if it’s going to be easy or not, but at least there’s a chance
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because shared passkeys and apparently passwords are a thing or will be a thing. And I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey am genuinely no sarcasm, super excited for this.
⏹️ ▶️ John Here’s a summary from Ricky on Macedon. You can share passkeys, passwords, and verification
⏹️ ▶️ John codes, which means like the two factor things and notes, edits and updates seamlessly sync between
⏹️ ▶️ John group members and end encrypted share with family, friends or other close contacts. So it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s the full thing. It’s like, you know, you know, I cloud key chain where you put put your stuff, well now some of that stuff can be shared.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco love it. Yeah, although there’s still no like passwords app. It’s still, as far as I can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tell, right? It’s still like kind of buried in either settings or in Safari or like, I do- As far as I know, I’ll have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to check IOS 16, 17 bit is. I do wish they would just make an app for all this stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, give us a little bit, little more features that are like 1Password in terms of just like the editing interface and stuff like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they have all the pieces, they like, they have this amazing system. If the app situation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was a little bit nicer and better, I would definitely switch and I would drop 1Password. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at least until that happens and if that happens, right now I think I’m still gonna stick with 1Password just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because I like having that easy access to everything. So I know Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again, I said a few minutes ago, they’re not great at making applications in recent years with a few exceptions, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wish they would do that because this is screaming out for it. And I think that would ultimately,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Not only would that make our lives better, you know, as the nerds who use these kind of things already, but I think that would actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco help more people use this. You know, their goal, which is a laudable goal,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is to make this stuff built into everything so it’s easy to use so more people have better security. That’s a great
⏹️ ▶️ Marco goal. They should be doing that, and they largely succeed. But these passwords
⏹️ ▶️ Marco being buried in these places that most people don’t even know you can go to access them, that’s not good enough
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to achieve that goal. You need easier access for people to see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and edit and view this stuff instead of just being like buried in a settings panel somewhere they don’t even know
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, you’re supposed to use it at the point of, you’re not supposed to go digging for it. Like it’s supposed to be right there in Safari, you know, auto-filling
⏹️ ▶️ John and everything like that. But when you do go and edit it, the interface for doing so is bare bones, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not, there’s not a lot of fancy stuff in it. So if it was a separate app, presumably you’d have a bigger team
⏹️ ▶️ John to do that UI and not, you know, because like the guts of this feature the important part, the backend,
⏹️ ▶️ John the syncing, the end-to-end encryption, like and the, all the APIs for hooking it into apps. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the majority of what this team probably does. And then, oh, by the way, you need to have a UI so you can actually look
⏹️ ▶️ John at this stuff. That’s, it’s kind of like not an afterthought, but they don’t have the resources to go whole hog
⏹️ ▶️ John of like, to even come close to competing with 1Password for the features of the actual app that you go to. But in
⏹️ ▶️ John general, I don’t think you’re supposed to be going to the app in the ideal case, but sometimes you do need to go there.
⏹️ ▶️ John And when you do, the app is just kind of like, well, first of all, it’s not an app, it’s buried in settings. Second, it’s just, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s there, the stuff’s there, it’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, and I feel like, you know, if they had an app, they could, you know, it kind of pushes them more in the direction of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco adopting to the reality of the world. And in the reality of the world, not every
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app people use on Apple’s platforms, let alone off of them, is Apple’s version
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of that app. So for instance, Chrome on the Mac, kind of a big thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know Safari’s better, I agree, I use Safari myself, but many people use Chrome
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the Mac. And this has, as far as I know, this still has no way to integrate with that.
⏹️ ▶️ John It has a way to integrate it with, but Google doesn’t use that way. So it doesn’t integrate. Like there are APIs, Google
⏹️ ▶️ John could integrate with it, but they choose not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to. Right, but like Apple, doesn’t Apple make an extension for Chrome for Windows to do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not Chrome for Mac? I feel like there are, I wish Apple would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco open up a little more of the access to this to reflect what people actually want and do.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because their functionality is great in this area. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now we’re kind of just stuck with things like 1Password to fill that role instead, which is fine, those are good apps to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an extent. But for those of us who are mostly Apple-based in our ecosystem,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple’s solution is largely better in a lot of ways. And I wish I could kind of go all in on it, but there’s still these little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco areas that keep me on 1Password. Anyway, maybe it’s selfish, I don’t know. but I think they could get more people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco using this feature and benefiting from Apple’s increased security with a few little tweaks here
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and there or large things like an app.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I agree with what you’re saying. I think for now, I would also stick with 1Password,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but this gives me a whole bunch of peace of mind knowing that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if 1Password forces me on 1Password 8 because I actually downgraded to 7 and oh my God, my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey experience got so much better. But anyway, if I’m forced to 8 and if eight is still a pile of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey garbage, then this gives me options, right? Whereas up until today, I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would just have to suffer through with one password eight, which maybe it’s gotten better than the last month, who knows? The chat
⏹️ ▶️ Casey room seems to disagree with me here, but I can tell you it’s been nothing but a nightmare for me up until a month ago.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So anyways, this gives me hope that there are, that there will be a workable alternative,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which I am super into. All right, we have been recording for something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the order of an hour and a half, hour 45 minutes. I have a feeling, John, you’re going to have a couple of words to say about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gaming, but please remember that we have an entire other product line to talk about.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So use your time wisely, sir. Go. It
⏹️ ▶️ John seems like you’re wasting a lot of time with that preamble. I could have just done it quickly.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh, it’s like that. I see. We’re going to talk a little
⏹️ ▶️ John bit more about gaming later, but this is the typical thing that Apple does where they get someone. We talked about Dave Kojima
⏹️ ▶️ John being rumored to have been seen around Apple. Well, here he is. He’s talking about stuff and he’s talking about games on the Mac.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, it’s a four year old game that everybody’s already played. and here we are showing it playing on a Mac with jumpy bad
⏹️ ▶️ John frame rates. Is anybody excited by that? Oh, and he says he’s excited to bring his future
⏹️ ▶️ John games to the Mac, presumably four years after everybody has already played them. Like the game technologies Apple has
⏹️ ▶️ John on the Mac platform are probably better than they’ve ever been before. The problem is,
⏹️ ▶️ John one, the hardware they sell doesn’t have enough GPU power for the amount of money that you spend on it. Two, there is
⏹️ ▶️ John no high end, as we just discussed for gaming at all. And three, nobody makes games for it.
⏹️ ▶️ John and they’re not really doing anything to, you know, solve that chicken and egg
⏹️ ▶️ John problem. They’re not making better hardware and paying people to make better software. They don’t have killer app software that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John then, you know, able to run on it. It’s just, I don’t, this presentation, I don’t know why they bother doing
⏹️ ▶️ John this. Like who, who is, you know, who wants to play Death
⏹️ ▶️ John Stranding who has not already played Death Stranding on a $500 box at better frame rates than this,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? And what I don’t understand is how the heck to do all the gaming APIs, get budgeted at Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ John all these things where you convert your shaders and the whole thing that are like, here’s where you can run your Windows game and emulation
⏹️ ▶️ John on the Mac, and we’ll estimate how well it’s gonna perform and we’ll recompile your shaders and like all the whole technology
⏹️ ▶️ John stack they have for metal and the scale, like they have like a full featured, their
⏹️ ▶️ John own little world of gaming technology stack with metal and their GPU support, and it’s good and it performs
⏹️ ▶️ John well. And you know, it does really well on the chips that Apple makes, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John But what is that all for? Like it’s not for games. What is it all for? How do they get money?
⏹️ ▶️ John How does this part of the company get some? And to be clear, I want them to have money. I’m not saying I don’t begrudge them their
⏹️ ▶️ John budget. It just amazes me how much time and effort Apple puts into this and what an amazing job
⏹️ ▶️ John they do only to just stumble at the finish line because the company itself has no idea how to encourage
⏹️ ▶️ John a healthy medium to high-end game ecosystem on anything except for iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John and maybe secondarily on iPad. on the Mac, this just out in the wilderness with an
⏹️ ▶️ John amazing technology stack and computers with not enough GPU that cost too much money and nobody making games
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I do want to touch a little more on what you also seem to have picked up. This
⏹️ ▶️ Casey appears to me that they’re doing full-on emulation, like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey almost like, I mean, I know wine is not an emulator, but almost sort of kind of like a wine
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sort of thing. Again, more emulation than facade, but.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think they’re doing like a Parallels kind of virtual machine with GPU support. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John the whole point of that, it’s supposed to be just a developer tool to let people know, hey, were you to port this game to the Mac, like
⏹️ ▶️ John here’s how it might perform, even before optimization, or here’s our estimate. Like it’s just an
⏹️ ▶️ John entire like, hey, person who has a game, don’t you want to sell that to the dozens of Mac developers
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco and Mac users who might
⏹️ ▶️ John buy your game? Well, look at all these tools we have for you. We give you the tools for free. We’ll, you have a thing that
⏹️ ▶️ John recompiles, and all you have to do is change all your graphic stuff to use Metal. It’s really easy. Just watch all these sessions
⏹️ ▶️ John and learn Metal. And the developer’s like, I already stopped listening. Like, just now just rewrite
⏹️ ▶️ John your graphic stack. Do what now? I mean, it’s nice that they had Unity there, but they didn’t have Unreal
⏹️ ▶️ John on stage. And it’s just, it’s such a weird split between the
⏹️ ▶️ John amazing technology and the phenomenal GPUs for the power envelopes.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, when I keep saying phenomenal GPUs, it’s like, yes, for a 15 watt SoC, their GPU power is
⏹️ ▶️ John amazing and their APIs for accessing it are amazing. They have nothing to compete with high-end
⏹️ ▶️ John GPUs and they have no game development ecosystem to speak of on the Mac.
⏹️ ▶️ John On the iPhone, they do, and iPad a little bit less so, but the Mac, it’s a sad
⏹️ ▶️ John situation. So I really hope they solve this not by saying, let’s give up on gaming again. Because they
⏹️ ▶️ John did that, they did like input sprockets and game sprockets and they gave up on it for like two decades and now they’re back,
⏹️ ▶️ John but they still, the rest of the company is not on board with this plan. They just, I mean, I
⏹️ ▶️ John guess that technology is useful elsewhere and we’ll talk about it when we get to the headset. But this was kind of a
⏹️ ▶️ John depressing, another depressing section of the keynote.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, and I don’t know, it’s hard for me to understand what their
⏹️ ▶️ Casey preferred order of operations is or what their preferred approach is because it, it appeared to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me like, like Apple is giving you some sort of emulation layer where
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you want to do nothing. You can use a simulation layer and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey walk away, but they’d prefer if you convert your shaders and do all this stuff with metal and blah, blah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey blah, and says, boom, Bob, but that’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John what I got from it, but I’ll have to watch it again.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. I mean, I’m not confident that I’m right either. It could be either one of us, but I just thought it was, it’s,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s cool that they’re saying, well, since nobody wants to actually spend the time to bring the games to us, then maybe we can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bring us to the games.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe that’s what, that’s what the, the steam deck does. They could do that, but steam deck doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John Steam Deck says, look, just run your PC games and we’ll just hand all the details. That’s not what Apple is saying
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey at all. Right. Right. So All
⏹️ ▶️ John Just, I don’t know.
AirPods, AirPlay, TV
⏹️ ▶️ Casey AirPods get adaptive audio, which is kind of transparency and active noise
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cancellation all in one. Also conversation awareness will duck the volume
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of music. That’s cool. I’m into that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m really curious how well this works in practice because that’s, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, the idea that you kind of wouldn’t need to turn on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco noise cancellation and transparency separately, it’ll just kind of figure out what’s probably best.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I hope, two things, I hope that works well. I also hope that’s not the only option going forward. You know, I hope
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can still just have transparency or just have noise cancellation if you want to. And you probably can,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hopefully. But if they can pull that off, that’s really nice. I mean, you know, the examples
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they gave, you know, the leaf blowers versus conversations, that all sounds really good. Like, it seems like, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, it demos well, it sounds really good. I hope this works, because that, If it works as well as they say,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it could be really cool. The conversation detection, as you mentioned, where someone comes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up and talks to you, it’ll automatically lower your music. Again, this is really cool stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I hope it works. One thing that I’m a little scared of, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m glad they were touching it, is they mentioned they’ve dramatically improved the cross-device
⏹️ ▶️ Marco switching mechanics. Let’s see how that works, because to date,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that has not worked well.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John It works great for me.
⏹️ ▶️ John Hope they didn’t make it worse, but right now, still like it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, same. It’s not perfect for me, but it’s pretty good for the most part. I leave it
⏹️ ▶️ John I use it on a daily basis and it pretty much never goes wrong for me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I still reliably have the bug where I will be leaving my house with my AirPods to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go take a dog walk or something, and I will click the stem to begin playback of Overcast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on my phone, but the AirPods have instead paired themselves somehow to my Mac, which I never
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pair them to, my Mac in the next room over, and by clicking the stem on the AirPods,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it will begin playing the Mac’s audio on the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out of the Mac’s speakers.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I’ve had that happen like once or twice, but it’s very rare for me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That happens to me all the time. And so I’m like, what kind of bug
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is this where clicking the stem on my AirPods as I walk out the door makes my Mac start playing Phish in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the other room? It’s infuriating. So yeah, I’m hoping for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some attention to that process. And they said they did it. So let’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see how that works. I would love more options to turn
⏹️ ▶️ Marco off some of this magic. You know, because when magic does not work well, you kind of want an option
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to turn it off. And so I would love an option to say, for instance, like for this pair of AirPods,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco never offer to automatically connect it to anything else besides the devices I connect it to. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t, you know, when I walk near my Mac while wearing these AirPods, don’t put up a little notification that says connect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the AirPods. When I walk by my family who’s watching something on the Apple TV, and I just came in from a dog walk
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the AirPods on and the TV’s right near the door, don’t show on the Apple TV,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco connect to Marco’s AirPods. Like, and then if I click a button on the AirPods. You can turn that off. I hope, like there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some of those things, a lot of those things you can’t turn off. No, you can’t, like right now you can go turn that off in settings in your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh good, but you can’t turn that off like on the Mac as far as I can tell, and you can’t turn it off, you can’t say for a given
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pair of AirPods, like never auto connect to anything unless I’ve told you to. You could, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have to like go to each device and say on each device for each pair of AirPods, say don’t automatically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reconnect. And then sometimes it just forgets that setting and reconnects anyway. So, or place fish in the room when you’re leaving the house.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So anyway, some attention to that area is appreciated.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep, yep. I totally hear that. Then we got from Ann Park,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey should Lasky some AirPlay improvements. Hotels, allegedly, maybe like six of them,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey will allow you to scan a QR code and then connect to the hotel wifi and connect to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the screen, the TV screen in front of you, which is super cool. I don’t have teenagers, so I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not too into share play for the car yet, but I can imagine that that will be super
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cool for me in a few years.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, teenagers all use Spotify, so it’s not gonna help you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Touche. Well, for me, that’s great for like your spouse who’s in the passenger seat. Like, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like to me, like, you know, It’s always my phone on the CarPlay screen in my car, or it’s Tiff’s phone on the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco CarPlay screen in her car. And so it’s really nice to be able to, like now, you know, what we’ve done up to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco date is whenever I want to hear, like, you know, if I wanna have Tiff play the music while I’m driving and it’s my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phone on CarPlay, her phone isn’t set up for all that in my car. So we keep it on my car so I can, you know, keep my driving directions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up and everything. But then we just have to like figure out what she’s playing and then try to send it to my phone in some way that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco works while we’re driving, or use Siri, which is always an abysmal failure. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this, to be able to have her just like, just play something, play like an Apple music playlist from her phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco onto the CarPlay head unit without it switching, like that’s really nice. If that feature works at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all, that’s gonna be a nice little quality of life improvement for a lot of people.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, yeah, I completely agree. tvOS and Apple TV were mentioned. We got a new control
⏹️ ▶️ Casey center, which I think looked pretty good. You can locate the remote using iPhone, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think requires new hardware, which I am very excited about, that’s super great.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You can select memories with screensaver. You can do FaceTime on Apple TV if you use continuity camera,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which I thought was super cool. I can absolutely imagine occasions when I would wanna do that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with like grandparents or something like that. And there was this weird app mentioned or I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right maybe, a pictured on screen Overcast was in the keynote, at least briefly,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is super exciting. So congratulations, Marco.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yep, yep, yeah, the icon, it was part of a, one of those like, you know, lots of features slides, and it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was about that apparently there, there was some, I haven’t looked into this yet, but there’s kind of mechanism
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for, you’d ask Siri on a HomePod to play, to initiate playback
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from an audio app on your phone over AirPlay. So before, you couldn’t do that. Before, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there was, you could, you could tell a HomePod to play music and it would play it itself, but that you couldn’t ask
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a HomePod to begin playback for the version of Overcast running on your phone in your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pocket. You could take the phone out and begin playback and AirPlay it to the HomePod,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like all manually from the phone, but you couldn’t do that via Siri. If I understand that slide correctly, it sounds
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like they have now added that ability to initiate, excuse me, to initiate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that AirPlay session totally by voice without taking the phone in your pocket. And that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve been hoping for this for so long. So I am super excited about this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I assume the reason they put my app on the slide is that maybe it just automatically works because maybe if you take
⏹️ ▶️ Marco advantage of Siri App Intents, which I do, for playing audio, maybe that just works without any intervention for me, which would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be great. But super excited about that. And I’m so thrilled. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was so cool to see my app on the slide in the keynote, or at least see my icon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the slide in the keynote. That’s a huge developer win. I’ve had,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a long time ago I had Instapaper appear during a session video,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that blew my mind. And that was just during a session, but to have my icon in the keynote, I was, I’m pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, that’s super awesome. Congratulations.
watchOS 10
⏹️ ▶️ Casey WatchOS revamped mostly as we’ve heard, so I don’t think there’s a lot we need to talk
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about. You turn the crown to reveal widgets and smart stack. They went all in on vertical paging,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which I think makes sense. Apparently, there’s a widget to hold your complications
⏹️ ▶️ Casey now, which at first I was like, what? But I guess that makes sense.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s a little unusual, but I think I can get behind it. Developers can use more of the display,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and in fact, the time can even move to the center of the display, because it’s usually in the upper right-hand corner if memory
⏹️ ▶️ Casey serves, and the time will automatically move to the center if need be because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco developers can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey put- Love that. Yep, developers can put stuff in the toolbar up there. Really dig that. We
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get Snoopy and Woodstock faces. I am not a huge fan of these animated faces. I think they’re clever and cool, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just not for me, but I dig that Snoopy and Woodstock are there. And additionally, they seem to interact with not only what’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going on around you, but with things that are happening on the watch. They showed a demo of Snoopy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey putting his ear over Woodstock so Woodstock doesn’t get rained on because it was raining, allegedly, when that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey happened, which I thought was super neat. We saw Eric Charles come up with some cycling and hiking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey updates. Most of this, I thought, was cool. But again, I’m not a big cycler,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cyclist, whatever. And I don’t hike often, although I do quite enjoy it when I do go hiking.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What I thought was really neat was last known cellular contact waypoint. So as you’re hiking,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’ll say, oh, this is the last place that I had cell coverage. So if you have an emergency, you can run back there, hopefully.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And also maps have topographical maps, which I thought was really neat. Then we got
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from Dr. Desai, we got some health updates. Mental health has mood logging,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is also available on iPhone and iPad and the watch. You can take standardized assessments for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anxiety and depression risk, which I thought was interesting. They also talked about vision health and how you can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reduce myopia. Myopia is not being able to see close
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco up. Nearsightedness.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey OK, so I had that backwards then. Anyway, affects like a third of the population, probably gonna be more in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the future. So it’ll tell you, hey, you should probably, you know, scoot your face away from the screen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you are using something like an iPad with Face ID. And also it’ll measure for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kids, especially it’ll measure how much time they spend outside using the ambient light sensor to tell you if, hey, you should maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get outside because some of those, you know, some of the sun’s rays really help your eyes. Anything else
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on watch before we move to the one more thing?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, the watch face situation remains dire.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, so with the new focus on widgets and everything, this seems like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is kind of like the rebirth of the Siri watch face, which they launched a long time ago
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now. And it was kind of this, you know, dynamic context sensitive little rectangles that would come up depending on what was coming up.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was a cool idea that they kind of launched version one over the never touched again. So this is that final
⏹️ ▶️ Marco version two. And I like that you can just kind of scroll down from any watch face. So you don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have to use the Siri face, which as a watch face, wasn’t very good. You can kind of get this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of contextual widget based awareness and dynamic functionality now with any face, I think,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is great. I still want third-party
⏹️ ▶️ Marco watch faces or at least much more customization available via the widget
⏹️ ▶️ Marco system. So for instance, like a full screen widget that maybe just has the clock in the top center or something like that, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some other ways that we can do this. Maybe we can do some of this now with this new system, probably not. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I still want custom watch faces. I’m still not surprised that they didn’t give it to us. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the meantime, this is some pretty solid updates. I like the, with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the cycling workout thing, the way that you can now use your phone as a screen for your cycling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey in real time. That’s a good point. Yeah, that’s a pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cool, you know, cause like a lot of people will have a mount on their bike, handlebars or something to stick their phone there. so you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can see real-time stuff there rather than having to look at your watch, which on a bike is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little bit of a clumsy and slightly dangerous maneuver. So this is actually really nice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you’re a bikist. This is very nice. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s the new high-frequency motion data access on the Series 8 and Ultra for the golf and tennis
⏹️ ▶️ Marco swing monitoring and the whole API for that. That’s pretty cool. Overall, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually a fairly medium-grade watchOS update. It’s not a massive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco revamp like we thought. It’s a nice, you know, it’s bigger than average years in terms of,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, UI updates and SDK updates, but about the same
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in average years in terms of user-facing features. There’s not a ton of user-facing new features.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s some little refinements here and there. There’s some new workout functionality. So in that kind of way, it’s kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as expected. I am interested though and excited about the new design stuff possible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that are made easy by all the new, you know, design language around those cards and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the corner toolbar items, stuff like that. But I think this is going to make better watch app
⏹️ ▶️ Marco watch apps easier to make. Um, and nicer, it remains to be seen whether
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any of the, you know, background execution limits and stuff like that have actually been lifted or not. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m guessing probably not.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. Um, I would like to take just a two second pause here and evaluate what,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if this was the whole of WWDC, I don’t think that there was anything
⏹️ ▶️ Casey super revolutionary that was introduced except maybe the Mac pro, but I think it was a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pretty good WWDC. I mean, these are all very mature platforms. We got nice quality
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of life improvements pretty much everywhere. So far, I felt like this was pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Casey good. I mean, not like a revolutionary. I will remember this until the end of time, kind of WWDC, but a pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Casey good one. I mean, John, what did you think?
⏹️ ▶️ John Excluding the headset, excluding the headset, I feel like the,
⏹️ ▶️ John wasn’t there, they would have added more of the stuff that was in the state of the union because there
⏹️ ▶️ John cool developery stuff and they just didn’t have time for that, but the headset in here, so it was much more like a sort
⏹️ ▶️ John of Mac world expo keynote than a WWDC one, because they had to fit all the products. Yep.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But are you pleased with it though?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, no, it was good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think it would, without the headset, just seeing what we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco saw so far, and the SDK updates that are coming behind the scenes, I mean, obviously
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we would have had more explained to us in the keynote, because the keynote’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually about two hours long, and in this case, at this point, with everything we’ve covered,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they were at an hour 20. So there’s 40 more minutes of content that is taken up by the headset
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that they would have expanded upon other things, things. So maybe, you know, I think we would have been even more excited about a lot of that stuff. But yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it would have been a pretty good WBDC. I mean, these are all pretty nice, you know, incremental, but not revolutionary
⏹️ ▶️ Marco OS updates. We had great Mac hardware releases at the beginning. Well, we had Mac hardware releases at the beginning,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some of which were great, some of which John hates. But overall, like, yeah, that’s a pretty good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco WBDC in most cases, in most years. Yep, I would agree with that.
Vision Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was one more thing. We go back to Tim and Tim says to us, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have one more thing. And this is the first Apple product you look through not at.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And we are introduced to the Vision Pro. I don’t dislike the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey name, but the name doesn’t really rev my engine that much. Like, I don’t know what I would suggest
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in lieu of this. Like, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John fine. It’s actually better than going with reality, despite the fact that, as I said, reality has a storied history in
⏹️ ▶️ John 3D or whatever. Like I feel like the marketing team probably said the reality opens them up to too
⏹️ ▶️ John much snark and I kind of agree with that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would, I would agree with that too.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, honestly, like I, first of all, full credit to them. This name did not leak
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at all. Everyone’s thought the name was either going to be reality pro and reality OS
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or maybe rally pro and then XR OS. Like those, those were the names that
⏹️ ▶️ John those were in the code. Those were in all the open source code. And I bet the symbol, the enum will probably still be reality OS and they
⏹️ ▶️ John did trademark XR OS. You trademark stuff just defensively to make sure no one else has it, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and there are a few different places in the code so far where you see the word reality, like in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco various enum values and stuff like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, Reality Composer is what they did brand that particular product that is related to this, but yeah, Reality
⏹️ ▶️ John OS was the code name. Maybe they’ll change it, because that’s the type of thing they can change with the source
⏹️ ▶️ John code before release.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, but see, I think vision is what they’re going to go with. And I think the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reason why this makes sense is when you look at this product
⏹️ ▶️ Marco relative to everything else in the market in this kind of area, everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco else is about creating a virtual environment inside the headset. And the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco AR or kind of looking through transparency kind of features are kind of afterthoughts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for most of them. In this case, they leaned way into that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So they want the name, the product, everything to be about we are viewing,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’re making you participate in the real world while creating a partial virtual
⏹️ ▶️ Marco world most of the time for you. We’re not leaning that heavily into full blackout
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mode where you’re totally isolated from everything else. The whole product is designed around that and that will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco set it apart greatly from its competitors in most ways. And so calling it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reality, or calling it, sorry, calling it Vision Pro and Vision OS, that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sets the tone for this product, which is this is not about creating alternative realities for you most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the time. This is about integrating the technology more into your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco surroundings, and making you remain part of the world. It’s about your vision
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the world, and augmenting your vision, not isolating you and making
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you look like a weirdo. And to whatever degree that’s possible, and we’ll see how that goes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco once we actually have the product, which is not gonna be anytime soon. But setting that as the tone, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco setting that right at the beginning of the expectation, like I can tell you, when they did that unveiling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco video, and here it is, and you see the thing, and you’re like, okay, cool, goggles, looks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cool, nice glass and metal, you see a bunch of cameras on the bottom, everyone was super excited, but that was pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much within expectations and it was masterful the way they did it. When that video shows the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco woman’s face who was wearing it and it lights up and her eyes are there, everyone in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco audience gasped. It was like, whoa! That was the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco moment of the keynote, was when you saw her eyes. Everyone, I’m telling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you, to feel that in that audience was really cool because that surprised everyone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We heard the rumors that it had an outward-facing screen to show the eyes of the wearer. And that sounded like the most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ridiculous, everyone’s like, that’s, some people thought that that must’ve been like a joke to suss
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out leakers. It sounded ridiculous. And it might be ridiculous,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know yet, but if it works at all, the way that they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco demoed it working or show it working, like in the videos, again, I haven’t seen one or tried one yet, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco man, if it works like that, that is potentially amazing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now, it has to be perfect to not be creepy. And
⏹️ ▶️ John But it’s not gonna be perfect. One of the things I think didn’t leak is the lenticular thing, where it doesn’t just show
⏹️ ▶️ John a single image. So if you’re viewing it from an angle, you see a second image that’s more on the angle you’re looking at it. But
⏹️ ▶️ John bottom line is the headset sticks out from your face by an inch or two. Your eyes aren’t there.
⏹️ ▶️ John Your eyes are way back farther. And they do the best they can to make your eyes not seem
⏹️ ▶️ John like they’re on the surface of the headset. but they’re not where your eyes are supposed to be. So the front view they showed
⏹️ ▶️ John in the keynote is putting its best face forward, right? At any angle other than dead on,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s gonna be tricky. But kudos for trying, we’ll have to see how it looks in real life.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like you can imagine a future version of this where they use
⏹️ ▶️ John transparent OLEDs that you actually do see your eyeballs through.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like the illusion that they were giving you in that reveal, that could be real with transparent
⏹️ ▶️ John OLED screens. I think LG made a transparent LED TV and it’s kind of silly technology, but it does exist.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s just that, you know, to do a headset with that, where that doesn’t quite work right now. But
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not out of the realm of possibility as this thing shrinks to have something like that. But yeah, I agree with you, Marco, that
⏹️ ▶️ John Vision is a good name for a thing where they’re trying to pitch the AR aspect of
⏹️ ▶️ John it. But so I made this comment on my last
⏹️ ▶️ John seminar I was watching. I feel like this entire section of the keynote
⏹️ ▶️ John was missing one little tiny piece of text, which I, was it on the commercial? It probably will be on the commercial,
⏹️ ▶️ John but anyway. Images simulated. Oh no. That needed to be
⏹️ ▶️ John on every single portion of the keynote when they were showing you what the wearer of this is supposedly
⏹️ ▶️ John seeing, because all those images are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco simulated, right? Oh no, they were not. I have it on good authority that everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that was shown from the perspective of the wearer was actual capture from the real hardware.
⏹️ ▶️ John We’ll see, we’ll see how that goes. Like, here’s the thing, like, obviously
⏹️ ▶️ John the production values on this are very high. So even the things they just film in real life look better than they would look if you
⏹️ ▶️ John just, you know, took your iPhone and took a picture of something because everything’s well lit and so on and so forth. And maybe that’s true.
⏹️ ▶️ John But the thing about AR is that, you know, you mentioned the other
⏹️ ▶️ John headsets don’t lean that heavily into that. They just have that feature as an afterthought. The other headsets, like the gaming headsets, they have that
⏹️ ▶️ John feature so you don’t like hurt yourself getting in and out of your chair. Like they have that feature so you don’t trip and fall. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John you need to be able to see the outside world for a moment to fiddle with something on your PC,
⏹️ ▶️ John to grab something on your desk, to find your mug, right? It’s a utilitarian function because otherwise
⏹️ ▶️ John you’d basically be wearing a blindfold stumbling around your house with that expensive thing on your face, right? Whereas Apple’s saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John no, this isn’t like an afterthought to keep you from tripping. This is a major feature of the product. We’re leaning heavily into
⏹️ ▶️ John AR, right? Where, that’s where they differ. Where they meet is
⏹️ ▶️ John at the fact that screens, and we talked about this before when we talked about HDR, screens currently
⏹️ ▶️ John do not have the same fidelity as your eyes looking at the real world. There’s more dynamic range in the real world
⏹️ ▶️ John than there are on even the most amazing screens. And so there’s always, and no matter how good
⏹️ ▶️ John the lenses are, no matter how good the resolution is, there’s always that little difference between
⏹️ ▶️ John looking at the room with your eyeballs and looking through a screen because the screen isn’t able to reproduce
⏹️ ▶️ John the fidelity of the room in all conditions. And that is where the
⏹️ ▶️ John crappy PC gaming headset with an afterthought of looking at the room feature meets
⏹️ ▶️ John this one, because they are both limited by screen technology. Now granted, the screen is gonna be probably
⏹️ ▶️ John better than the gaming thing you have, unless you have a very, very high-end gaming headset,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s not gonna be better enough to feel like you were really looking at your room. What you’re really looking at
⏹️ ▶️ John is a video of your room. Or like, if you imagine, take your iPhone Look at the screen. It’s got 1600 nits of
⏹️ ▶️ John brightness, right? Really amazing fidelity. But you pointed it at the room, doesn’t quite look the same as
⏹️ ▶️ John looking at the room with your actual eyeballs, which I don’t, to be fair, I don’t think is that big of a deal, but I think that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the part where you need the image of simulated disclaimer. And if they weren’t simulated, I think they are misleading
⏹️ ▶️ John in the way that all advertising and misleading is that they’re showing an idealized scenario. Your results
⏹️ ▶️ John in your dim computer room or actual real home are probably
⏹️ ▶️ John going to be different.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I mean, again, I have it on very good authority that they were actually captured from the hardware.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, so, you know, not everything in the video was user viewpoint. Like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there were things that were showing, like, you know, outside of the video, like outside of the user, what they look like. And in those kinds of cases, compositing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco might’ve been used, you know, or maybe, you know, maybe for the eye images, because it’s hard to film screens, you know. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what it’s showing inside the headset, that was all hardware captured.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that is amazing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, it has the advantage of being incorporated into a video. Like, these have been incorporated into a video, which
⏹️ ▶️ John is also limited by the limitations of a screen or whatever. When I was comparing it to is looking at your actual living room versus
⏹️ ▶️ John looking at a video of your living room. Whereas this, everything is video of the room. But it is impressive that this is all captured
⏹️ ▶️ John from device. But in the ad, especially, I kept looking for images simulated and didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No. And again, like, you know, you can, yeah, if you want to criticize ideal conditions,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, they were ideal conditions, I’m sure. But no, it’s like, this is the real deal. they actually captured from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John the hardware. The only
⏹️ ▶️ John way to solve this is for Apple to send us all headsets so we can try it ourselves.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Seeing will be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco believing. No, and that’s like, so going back on that point, the one thing,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people who, I ran into somebody who had tried it, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I asked various Apple people who have had a chance to work on it or try it, whoever I’d
⏹️ ▶️ Marco run into, whoever would talk to me, I asked various people, and the one thing I wanna know first
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is how convincing is the transparency simulation? You know, like how, when you put it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on, how much do you feel like you’re looking through it? And what every single person
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who has tried it has told me so far, again, most of them are Apple people, so you know, they’re, I’m sure they’re optimistic, but they’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all said, it’s a really well done illusion. So that’s what I really wanna know, because that matters
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so much. And, you know, if it took, you know, obviously what Apple is going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for here, again, with the whole vision angle, focusing much more on AR
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than VR, making it much better of an integrated citizen of the environment around
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you, in terms of it senses when people come up to you, you don’t just look like you’re, well, you do look ridiculous,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but you look less ridiculous than if you’re just in a VR headset. The integration with the outside
⏹️ ▶️ Marco world in this product is clearly, that was clearly the number one design goal,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then everything else fell from that. If it took them until now to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco deliver that tech, to do that, that makes sense. Like that makes total sense. Like they couldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make a good enough, you know, illusion of transparency with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a very opaque device. They couldn’t do that well enough until they had whatever these components
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are, you know, these super high end little screens, the cameras, the lenses, whatever, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever much larger combination of stuff is doing this. It makes sense
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that they waited till now to do this. And it makes sense that this product is starting at such a high price point because they probably don’t,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They probably never want to deliver a Vision Series headset from Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that doesn’t have this convincing illusion. And that’s pretty cool, because that really does set it apart
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from everything else. There are some very high-end, very specialized headsets that have that kind of thing,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but they’re even more expensive and much less general purpose, much more specialized, and even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they, from people who have used them, I don’t think they do as good of a job. So again, that’s the one thing I really want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to know, and I’m hoping to get a chance to try one before I leave here. I really want to know how that illusion is.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The rest of the stuff with like, you know, what apps can do and everything, I believe them on that. I believe all that. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really curious how good that illusion is. And secondarily, I’m curious how sharp text actually really is. Because that’s another thing, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, if you’ve ever used one of the gaming headsets, their, you know, their resolution is garbage by comparison. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco text is so chunky and blocky. And the idea of having your Mac show a little 4K
⏹️ ▶️ Marco virtual screen in your viewport, uh, and being able to do work on that, That seems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, that seems optimistic unless the text is very very sharp. What they say is that it is
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, yeah, so let me I was gonna touch on that in a little bit But because you brought it up now, this is a thing that I just want to make clear to people
⏹️ ▶️ John We’ve alluded to it many times. So talking about the specs, but just to make it very clear They said that
⏹️ ▶️ John you give more than 4k per eyeball on the little screens that are inside there So there’s one thing I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ John But I’m willing to give Apple the benefit of the doubt and what I don’t know is So if you had both your two
⏹️ ▶️ John eyes looking at a 4k monitor, you’re looking at a 4k monitor. But if each of your eyeballs has its
⏹️ ▶️ John own dedicated 4k screen that should be more resolution than a 4k monitor. Is
⏹️ ▶️ John it double? Is it 8k? I don’t know, but it seems, it stands to reason in my, you know, I don’t actually understand how
⏹️ ▶️ John this works but I’m willing to believe that having 4k of dedicated pixels for each eyeball
⏹️ ▶️ John means that you can show more than 4k pixels because each eye has a slightly different view
⏹️ ▶️ John on the world you should be able to resolve more dots. I don’t actually know if that’s true, but I’m willing to, let’s just give it the most optimistic
⏹️ ▶️ John one and say it’s 8K, right? Steven
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Leonard Let me read to you from the marketing website, more pixels and a 4K TV
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for each eye. The custom micro OLED display system uses 23 million pixels delivering stunning resolution
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and colors and a specifically designed three element lens creates the feeling of a display that’s everywhere
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you look. So yeah, that says to me more than 4K per
⏹️ ▶️ John eye. Paul What I’m getting at, does that mean that you you can see the equivalent of 8K pixels
⏹️ ▶️ John because each eye has 4K and they see slightly different pixels, right? And here’s what I’m getting at, right? So let’s just assume it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John 8K, right? That’s 8K for your entire field of view,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? So when they show a monitor floating in front of you, that can’t be an 8K monitor
⏹️ ▶️ John at true resolution because if it was an 8K monitor at true resolution, it would literally extend from edge to edge of
⏹️ ▶️ John your field of view. And that would not be a comfortable way to look at a monitor because it’s too wide for you
⏹️ ▶️ John to see. So every time they say, oh, you can put a monitor in front of you and it’s like a 4K monitor,
⏹️ ▶️ John I start doing the math and say, is that filling 50% of my field of view? Because the only way it’s gonna be true 4K
⏹️ ▶️ John to get to Marco’s point about sharp text is if it’s filling 50% of my field of view. Because in
⏹️ ▶️ John the most optimistic scenario, I have 8K of pixels in front of me. And if you’re gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John put a 4K monitor on it, well, not 50%, you know what I mean? Because it’s not quite the same. But anyway, like
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t think that every single rectangle you see can be 4K. the entire field
⏹️ ▶️ John of view for your left eye is 4K and the entire field of view for your right eye is 4K and the entire field of view for both eyes in the optimistic
⏹️ ▶️ John scenario is 8K, right? So I think it will be, the resolution will be good,
⏹️ ▶️ John probably matching the best gaming headsets, but you won’t, for example, you won’t be
⏹️ ▶️ John able to have a Pro Display XDR at true pixel resolution at a reasonable filling
⏹️ ▶️ John of your field of vision because right now my field of vision is, I can see my wall, I can see my desk, I’m looking straight
⏹️ ▶️ John at my XDR, right? You cannot have a 6K screen on there and see
⏹️ ▶️ John all the pixels. Now, do you need to see all the pixels? Probably not, because you can’t resolve the pixels on a 6K screen from
⏹️ ▶️ John a comfortable distance anyway. So I think it will be fine and good, but I think a lot of people
⏹️ ▶️ John look at this and say, all I have in front of me is an LG 4K monitor, and now I’m gonna be able to
⏹️ ▶️ John have, you know, three of them. Like, yeah, you can look at each
⏹️ ▶️ John one in turn, and you’ll more or less get true pixels out of it, but we
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t have a glut of resolution to pass around because remember what you’re seeing in this headset is not
⏹️ ▶️ John just the monitor, it’s the entire world, whether it is transparency, showing you what the cameras see of the outside
⏹️ ▶️ John world, or a simulated world with those backdrops that they were showing. So please do keep that in mind when thinking about the resolution
⏹️ ▶️ John of this. I think it will be good and probably better than any headsets anyone has tried and certainly
⏹️ ▶️ John better than a $300 headset, but we need more pixels, so stay tuned for the coming years.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, for what it’s worth, they said both in the keynote and the State of the Union, and now I’m jumping ahead, but when
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you use a Mac with the device, which they said in the State of the Union, you can get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a virtual display from your Mac. Well, that was stated during the keynote, but during the State of the Union, they said,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you just look at it. So they showed a MacBook Pro with the screen open, and the wearer of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Vision Pro looked down and there was a brief pause. And then suddenly that Mac screen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dimmed from the perspective of the Vision Pro user. it did in real life as well. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this 4K screen was dropped in the middle of their field of view. But they specifically
⏹️ ▶️ Casey said 4K, both in the keynote and the State of the Union. And I bet
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s not an accident. It’s exactly what you’re saying. You can only get but so many bits, or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you can only get but so much resolution with what’s in the device already.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But to go back, I think, and it’s slightly my fault, but we’re getting in the weeds a little bit. I think we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey should talk a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about us. We should talk a little bit more broadly about what this is.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not sure what to make of this. And obviously I’ve only been sitting with it for a few hours now in a figurative
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sense, but I don’t, I don’t know what I expected, but this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is not what I expected. And I think in a good way, I think I expected a,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and Marco, I believe you had said something about this a minute ago. I’d expected a, well, the world has disappeared now cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have my, my headset on and that never really appealed to me much.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I think I really dig the idea of this being kind of a halfway
⏹️ ▶️ Casey between VR and regular reality. And I think I really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dig, even though we heard what was going to be done with the, with the digital crown and how you’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey adjust how much like not literal transparency, but you know, kind of transparency you have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with the, with the outside world, seeing it as best as one can on a flat screen,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seeing it in action, it looked really cool. And a lot of people were snarking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on Mastodon about, what is it, eyesight? The thing on the front that reveals
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the wearer’s eyes. And everyone said it looked like garbage and was uncanny valley, uncanny valley, uncanny valley. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I didn’t get that at all. It looked really good to me. And I hear what you guys are saying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about being off axis and and so on and so forth. But from what they showed, it looked really good. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I loved that it showed with like kind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the almost top of a HomePod blur. It showed when you were really engaged with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something and not paying attention to the outside world, but then it was fairly transparent looking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when you were interacting with the outside world. And I don’t know, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey feel like I’m not sure when I would use this device
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because no matter what they said, I don’t feel like it’s a around
⏹️ ▶️ Casey other people device. But that being said,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think this appeals to me more than I expected. Well, I expected of course, that I would be wowed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by the keynote, which I was, but But I feel like I can see places in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my life where this could be neat. Leaving aside all the social stigma that will
⏹️ ▶️ Casey unquestionably come from this, like what kind of jackass is going to wear this on an airplane?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think it’s perfect
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but hear me out. From a social perspective, you’re an idiot if you’re wearing this on an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey airplane. Why? Just hold on. Just hold on. Because you look like a fool. You look like
⏹️ ▶️ John Why do you look like a fool? You’re in your seat. a very compact screen.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Look at this jackass with their $3,500 fancy lad. People
⏹️ ▶️ John wear masks like this just so they can sleep. It’s better than a neck donut.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is the worst thing. I can’t reach over and smack you too like I’m used to being able to do in years past. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think what I keep coming back to with this, and specifically with the social stigma about it, like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey watching their video of the dude recording his kid’s birthday, that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it just seems like such an obnoxious time to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have a physical barrier between you and your children. Like I understand what they’re driving at. I understand they’ve got this whole 3D
⏹️ ▶️ Casey camera thing. I get that.
⏹️ ▶️ John They could just put that on their phone, by the way, Apple. That’s a free tip for you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Exactly. But I get what they’re driving at here, but what an obnoxious time to do that. And so all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I disagree on that, by the way, just for reference. I mean- The birthday one you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with? Yeah, well, okay. Let’s get you finished, I’ll get to it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Thank you. I appreciate it. Um, so I keep coming back to the social stigma for this. I think will be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ugly. Like you’re going to look like an idiot wearing this, but, but, and this is what I couldn’t get to a second ago.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I remember vividly when the AirPods first came out and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you had AirPods, I feel like everyone looked at you like you were a lunatic for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a couple of months. And then after that, everyone had AirPods. And so suddenly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this thing that I, and I had AirPods and even I would look at people particularly before mine
⏹️ ▶️ Casey came in, I would look at people and be like, Oh, yes, look at you with your fancy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey earbuds that don’t have any wires. Oh, I’m too good for wires. Look at me. And that lasted
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not very long at all. And now everywhere you go at any moment in life,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey including times when I don’t think it’s particularly appropriate to have AirPods in, I see AirPods in.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Just the other day, I was at dinner somewhere with the family, and I looked over at the table next
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to us, and there was another family at dinner, and one of the kids had an AirPod in. They’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at family dinner, and presumably family dinner was too boring, and they needed to have an AirPod in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to have music during family dinner. Leaving aside the fact that the restaurant was playing music, they needed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to have their music. Kids these days, I tell you. But that’s how prevalent,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and that’s how often you see AirPods now, AirPods now, that it’s not unusual to see an AirPod in a kid’s ear at family
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dinner. And I feel like sitting here today, if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I saw the idiot next to me in the airplane wearing these goggles, I would think, what a dork.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I think it will not take long for me to change my tune and to come back around to what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, I think was going to say, what an unbelievably awesome time to put on these dorky goggles.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey How amazing would it be to to have this like 50 foot screen in front of you with your AirPods,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with noise cancellation and effectively, you know, surround sound. And while
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we’re flying across the country to WWDC next year when Apple actually invites all of us,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey imagine being able to watch a movie that whole way across the country. Like that sounds so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cool and such a perfect use case for this. And I can’t wait, one way or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey another, I can’t wait to try it.
⏹️ ▶️ John think it’ll take a little bit longer for a $3,500 headset. $3,500 headset. You’re right, you’re right. Versus $160
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey AirPods. Well, $160 is
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of expensive for AirPods too. But yeah, I’m not so much worried about the social stigma,
⏹️ ▶️ John but to get to, to overcome the social stigma thing, you need to get over the,
⏹️ ▶️ John is this a product that people want to use scenario? And I’m not, you know, we’ll see, we’ll see how that goes. Because
⏹️ ▶️ John none of us have tried it yet. And it, I mean, it definitely does look early because it is,
⏹️ ▶️ John in the grand scheme of Apple products, big and clunky, right? I mean, it’s amazing technology.
⏹️ ▶️ John is at the limit of what they can do, but there’s only so much they can do. Unlike the AirPods, which were, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, the perfect size practically from day one. In fact, they’ve actually gotten a little bit bigger over time because they’ve packed more
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff into them. But these are an amazing feat of technology that
⏹️ ▶️ John is still nevertheless kind of clunky. And actually looking at the physical form of this, I said, this
⏹️ ▶️ John is one of the things that I was gonna be looking at, see how they, what this product looks like. Does
⏹️ ▶️ John it look like it was shaped by its utility or does it look like it was shaped by
⏹️ ▶️ John somebody who wanted it to look beautiful? And I can pretty confidently say that no one tried to shape this
⏹️ ▶️ John to look particularly beautiful because it doesn’t look particularly beautiful. It is a little bit clunky
⏹️ ▶️ John and awkward because it has to be. Here’s the thing that I was most surprised by. I kept saving screenshots
⏹️ ▶️ John of people doing mock-ups based on rumors and stuff, or mock-ups based on their own ideas of what it would look
⏹️ ▶️ John like. The one that I kept seeing, it was probably 9to5Mac, or I don’t know who originated it, but
⏹️ ▶️ John it was that thing you see people who do mock-ups they do all the time where they just take existing Apple products and like Photoshop the pieces
⏹️ ▶️ John together. So it was like basically a ski goggle type headset kind of looking like this. And then the band
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco like an Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John they just turned sideways and like made, right? And I was like, have these people never seen an actual headset?
⏹️ ▶️ John You can’t just take a single watch band and put a strap that goes straight back from the ski goggles that just
⏹️ ▶️ John literally does not fit on human heads. They know what human heads look like. Have you ever put on a pair of ski goggles? Even a
⏹️ ▶️ John literal pair of ski goggles has a wider band than that and it’s Alaska. You can’t put the Apple watch band there.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I’m glad to see that this doesn’t look like that. But you can tell that the people who
⏹️ ▶️ John are feeding them probably had seen this because the thing that surprised me the most is that it has
⏹️ ▶️ John a band that goes back, the band is perpendicular to the surface of the glasses
⏹️ ▶️ John and that’s it. And most of the other headsets have something that
⏹️ ▶️ John goes towards the top of the head.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco You know what I mean? Right, right, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There was no top strap.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right, the PSVR 1 and 2 have it, most of the other big gaming headsets have
⏹️ ▶️ John it, but this one goes straight back. Now granted, it goes straight back to basically a catcher’s mitt that cradles
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco head, that gigantic fabric
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. So that’s why I think, people have worn this, I’m sure it works for its purpose. It’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John just a skinny straight back, it’s a big cup back, a big flexi cup with the adjustable things
⏹️ ▶️ John on it that kind of grips your head with the little, it does the job, but
⏹️ ▶️ John it doesn’t have the top strap, which I think they can get away with basically because of the battery
⏹️ ▶️ John pack, basically because of the incredible technology and lightweight, the fact that they don’t need
⏹️ ▶️ John to hang this off the top of your head because apparently that back of your head grippy thing can handle
⏹️ ▶️ John it for you. So I’m very curious to try this thing on to see how the fit feels
⏹️ ▶️ John because if you ever looked at the back of a human skull, like human skulls are not spheres, right? They’re
⏹️ ▶️ John not, your eyeballs are not in the center of them, the back of them are not symmetrical, Like
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re weird and bulgy and stuff. So if you try to draw a human head inside, like the side
⏹️ ▶️ John view of this thing, you’ll start realizing that it is actually a little bit tricky where that thing lands. But as Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John said, they looked, they studied lots of heads or whatever the hell they said.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Richard Howard said,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we studied thousands of heads.
⏹️ ▶️ John They also studied thousands of ears when they made the original AirPods and apparently they didn’t study Marcos. So fit is still
⏹️ ▶️ John potentially an issue, but I am glad to see that this thing tries
⏹️ ▶️ John to get a good grip on your head with only a single strap without a top strap. I hope
⏹️ ▶️ John it works. I hope they pulled it off. I hope it doesn’t sag. Looking at the side things, especially the audio
⏹️ ▶️ John pods, they are particularly awkward, especially awkward if, I don’t know, Mark,
⏹️ ▶️ John did anyone confirm that you can use this with AirPods? I would assume you can, but they didn’t say that, did they?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can use it with AirPods, and I don’t know if other people, probably other, anyway, you can use it with AirPods.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The built-in speakers that are on the head strap, basically, they had a special
⏹️ ▶️ Marco word for them, like audio pods or something, So the built-in speakers, they are not like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bone conduction transducers. They are regular speakers. They’re just very close to your ears.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But there is like a gap between the speakers in your ears. And so it’s kind of like an open headphone. You will hear outside noise.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We asked, I asked when I was in the hands-off area, how is the leakage of sound? Like people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who had worked on it. And you know, they can’t tell us that much because it’s still PR, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, they’re not going to tell great detail, but it might leak a little bit of sound if you’re really close. I was saying like, you know, obviously,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you probably wouldn’t wear it on a plane because it’s too much ambient noise. Yes, that’s correct. Planes are too loud. You’d
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wear AirPods on a plane for noise cancellation. But I was like, you know, if you were wearing it on a bus,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would the passenger next to you hear your stuff? Probably not. You know, maybe if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you go really close to your head, like they might, you know, maybe like if you’re like-
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Maybe like a little
⏹️ ▶️ John teeny distant kind of thing, kind of like,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco you know, you get some earphones.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but yeah, not like wearing wide open headphones, like the super open headphones, not like that apparently.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So we’ll see how that goes, but yes, in most cases that you need isolation, you’d be wearing AirPods.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the other thing they said that I was encouraged by was the fact, well, I don’t know, again, I have to rewatch
⏹️ ▶️ John the video. They seem to make it say that there’s multiple fabric thingies that you can
⏹️ ▶️ John attach to it to fit your face?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so on the fit front, they were pretty clear about this, both in public and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hands-off, excuse me, hands-off area. There are multiple straps that you’ll be able to fit.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Also, the face gasket piece, which I think they called the light shield, something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that? Light seal. That’s it, yeah, light seal. So that piece, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco implication is that there’s gonna be many different sizes of them, not just like, you know, with AirPods, you get the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco three little earplugs, small, medium, large. No, the implication
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that there’s gonna be many different sizes and shapes, and that you basically go to an Apple store to get fit. Also,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco interesting little tidbit, I asked about the different eye lens things.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I asked about stuff like the adjustment for things like interpupillary distance, the IPD,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is the spacing between the eyepieces and any kind of headset or binoculars even, you can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco adjust that spacing. Apparently, they are automatic and motorized for the IPD
⏹️ ▶️ Marco adjustment. Oh, that’s cool.
⏹️ ▶️ John They showed that in the keynote. They showed them adjusting.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, you just put it on and adjust that. And then for the lenses, I don’t know how this is gonna work in the stores yet,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but what they’re doing in the demos apparently is you give them your eyeglasses that you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wearing and they like shoot a light through it and then they bring out perfectly matched lenses for you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So if they’re doing that for the hands-on demos, I’m thinking maybe they also will have that ability in Apple retail stores
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when these things launch. So maybe there’ll be a, you know, you go in, you put your glasses in a thing,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they measure your head and they bring out, okay, here’s your perfect fit, try it on, you know. So what they’re going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for apparently is They have, again, 30,000s of heads. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they do appear to be taking comfort very seriously and making fit very good. Because for the illusion
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to work, you can’t have any light leaking in. It really has to be a very good fit in lots of different ways.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Comfort, for light isolation, for long-term wearability, for accessibility.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You really need a lot of different adaptation ability to different people’s needs and bodies.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So they are apparently doing that. That they have lots of different light seal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things, lots of different lens options and everything. So apparently it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gonna be really good in all those ways. And it’s one of the things you kind of just have to try to tell like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how many people will this work for? Apparently a lot. Also on the realm of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco motion sickness, which they had some euphemism for like motion sensitivity or something like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, sorry, motion discomfort. They called it in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John the notes. Yeah, discomfort.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But on that, they talk a lot about the R1 chip that they’ve done everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to try to make stuff as real time as possible. They talk a lot about that 12 millisecond processing latency,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is way below what everyone else is doing in the market. That apparently,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I asked some people, like hey, what does that mean in real life, like for motion sensitive people? And everyone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco claims that it basically eliminates motion sickness. Now we’ll see if that is true and for how many people,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but they’re talking a big game. And so far, the handful
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of people who have tried it seem to all back that up. So it sounds like they are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the right path here. I am really dying to try this thing. I really wanna see how good the comfort
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, how good the latency is, how good the illusion is, whether I get motion sick, whether I can see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything sharply. I’m just, I’m so curious. But again, for the handful
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of people who have tried it, the reports so far are very good.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, they’re one order of magnitude off of the latency. Remember that video I always post from my, I posted on my blog, the Microsoft
⏹️ ▶️ John thing where they had an adjustable latency where they get to do it a thousand milliseconds, a hundred, 10, one, of just
⏹️ ▶️ John scribbling on a screen with their finger. One millisecond is where you start getting down to the point where it’s like, it seems
⏹️ ▶️ John like it’s real time. 10, 12 is good. They’re, you know, you know, they got one more
⏹️ ▶️ John order of magnitude to travel down. But like I said before, a lot of the motion sickness stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John has more to do with the software than the hardware. The hardware is your limit. You’re never gonna be better than your hardware, but you
⏹️ ▶️ John can make software experiences that make people motion sick with no latency, because
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re controlling everything that you see. And if they make you see stuff that your inner ear disagrees with because
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re sitting on a couch, you’re gonna get motion sick. That is the origin of motion sickness. So software
⏹️ ▶️ John is a big factor. And that’s where, by the way, the AR stuff comes in handy because that really tries to root you
⏹️ ▶️ John in a room that is not moving, right? So if you’re looking at a bunch of virtual screens in your
⏹️ ▶️ John living room, motion sickness is probably not gonna be a big problem. If you’re flying an X-Wing through a canyon
⏹️ ▶️ John when your actual body is sitting on a couch, motion sickness may be a problem no
⏹️ ▶️ John matter what the latency is. So it’s a big software issue. And speaking of that, by the way, so we haven’t really talked about
⏹️ ▶️ John this, but before we were saying, what are they gonna do with this headset? What am I supposed to do with it? Is it gonna be like the watch
⏹️ ▶️ John where they say it can be all things to all people and I figure out what it is? And the answer from this presentation was no. Apple has a very clear
⏹️ ▶️ John idea of what they think you can do with this, and it is narrow. Hideo Kojima was
⏹️ ▶️ John at Apple. he was not there to pitch games for the headset. This incredibly powerful headset
⏹️ ▶️ John was not presented as a gaming device by Apple at all, which is shocking
⏹️ ▶️ John to a lot of people because like their competition hardware wise are all gaming headsets. And Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John was, I mean, they mentioned, you know, it is a 3D thing, you can make games or, you know, it’ll like
⏹️ ▶️ John games will work, it’ll be fine. But Apple was like, no, this is not a product for people who wanna play video
⏹️ ▶️ John games, which was very clear. What is it for? It’s for people who want to basically
⏹️ ▶️ John use your Apple devices, right? Now granted, this is an Apple device
⏹️ ▶️ John and you’re using it, but what are you using it for? Like I kept thinking it was basically as like the Pro Display XDR,
⏹️ ▶️ John but for your face. This is a display product. What does it let you display? Running
⏹️ ▶️ John applications. Oh, and by the way, it also runs them because it’s not like it’s just a display. Like it has an M2 in there and it will run
⏹️ ▶️ John your iPad apps and it’ll run your iPhone apps and you can look at your Mac screen. But in the end, it’s saying like,
⏹️ ▶️ John Hey, all the things that you normally do, imagine if you could do them without a bunch of monitors arrayed around you,
⏹️ ▶️ John but instead a thing on your face. Because some of us may have a monitor in front of us,
⏹️ ▶️ John but how many people can have five monitors that we can swipe away and replace with other monitors and windows and floating around?
⏹️ ▶️ John That was their pitch with this device. You use it to, you put it on and you do
⏹️ ▶️ John computing type stuff, video conferencing, using all your apps that you’re familiar with and new kinds of apps that we want
⏹️ ▶️ John you to make with his SDK and they show like a 3D satellite spinning around and stuff like that or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like this was a very clear message of what Apple thinks this device is for. Are they right? Is this
⏹️ ▶️ John what it’s going to be for? The most touchy one is the one we touched on before was like, is dad gonna wear these at the birthday
⏹️ ▶️ John party so he can get 3D video? On the one hand, 3D video is super cool. On the other hand, you can
⏹️ ▶️ John get 3D video on a phone if you just separate the two cameras by a little bit. And it’s way more,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, it’s not just like socially acceptable and people will get used to it. your kid should see your face.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if he sees your face and you’re holding the rectangle of the iPhone, he can still kind of see your face, right? So when
⏹️ ▶️ John these things are actual glasses, sure, wear them and record the party. When they’re goggles, it
⏹️ ▶️ John seems like a shame to use this as a capture device for 3D video. As a viewing device for 3D video
⏹️ ▶️ John to relive memories of your kid’s second birthday, awesome. As a capture device, it happens to
⏹️ ▶️ John be the only Apple device with two cameras separated by enough distance to get good stereo video, which is kind of a shame.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I mean, on that front, you know, again, this is very early for this stuff. Now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, first of all, now that there will be a viewing device that can show 3D content, that certainly creates
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more demand for 3D capture devices, so maybe we’ll see more in the future. But if you look back, like, this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is kind of like the original VHS-sized camcorders. Remember
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when those came out, like, in, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John know, the 80s and 90s? You put them on your shoulder.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, those giant, it was just a VCR on your shoulder, like a full, they were so big and so heavy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that when, you know, when somebody usually like a dad, you know, would take that out, it was a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big deal, and you’d take it out every so often, not at every possible occasion, you would take
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it out for stuff like birthdays and Christmas and whatever, and you would film around for a little while,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then you’d set it down. And so you wouldn’t be capturing the entire event that way, because it was way too big
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and heavy and the battery sucked, and you know, it was kind of an occasional
⏹️ ▶️ Marco brief capture device. And I think that’s kind of what this is going to be like. I think the appeal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of capturing 3D video and audio is so compelling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that people will do it. And you know, people will gladly put this thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on and capture a few minutes of the party and then they’ll take it off and go back to the party. Like, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think people are going to be spending the entire party in the headset, and nor should they probably,
⏹️ ▶️ John but- They can’t because the battery life won’t let them. Yeah, right. But I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it won’t look weird after a little while, you know, to Casey’s point earlier, it’ll become fairly common for people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to take this out and capture parts of experiences and then go back to the real world.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Until we have 3D capturing iPhones, which we might
⏹️ ▶️ Marco never have or might not be for a while, that’s totally fine. And by the way, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it certainly raises the question of like for parents who were in their phones all the time, how present are they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really? You know, like that’s a separate question, but you know, certainly one worth
⏹️ ▶️ Marco considering that this makes it more obvious, but you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is it actually different in presence levels? Maybe not, but anyway, yeah. Think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of it as a giant old camcorder. There’s gonna be this time in history for a little while where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is the only slash best way to capture 3D video of what’s going on, but capturing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 3D video is gonna be so compelling. Like, I cannot wait to have that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think that’s gonna be amazing. You could’ve used it on Nintendo DS years and years ago.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Two cameras. Anyway, I think that thing’s gonna be amazing for that. And as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the use cases, I think it’s wise to lean more into the media stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the general computing stuff, because first of all, every single time we talked about,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, hey, what are VR headsets good for? We always had people writing, yes, I know people watch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco porn in them. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John thanks for telling us everyone. I didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have a section of the keynote
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco on that. It’s weird. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we are fully aware that that’s a thing. Also, yeah, people watch movies in them that aren’t porn.
⏹️ ▶️ John They did have that framework that detects sensitive images. It would just blur everything you see.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, right. Yeah, that’s a new framework. Now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s based on Unity sensor. Anyway, so yes, I’m sure it’ll be great for that. And yes, people will buy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it for that. And even if you only buy it to watch videos on, you know, movies and TV shows and stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, look, iPads are capable of doing amazing things. They have much of the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco same computational power. They have, you know, amazing capabilities, and yet, what most people do on iPads is watch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco video on them, and that’s fine, you know? So, yes, they made this ridiculous, amazing headset.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If most people end up watching movies on it a lot, or other activities that involve watching video feeds, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fine. It’s, like, you don’t need to be doing amazing things on it. And if it’s otherwise
⏹️ ▶️ Marco being used largely as a computing platform, like as basically a glorified monitor for apps that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re working with or working in or
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco running whatever. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John glorified a better monitor in some ways because you have your whole field of view and not just like, things can
⏹️ ▶️ John be anywhere, not just on the rectangle that is the monitor.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, exactly. But like if that’s, I was thinking earlier, like when you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look back over computing history, there’s kind of this like base load of like the amount of computational
⏹️ ▶️ Marco power that we burn just to do things in a more modern way that are otherwise fairly simple, like type a document
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or something. When we had to move to a compositing window management
⏹️ ▶️ Marco system, like with Mac OS X or whatever version, whatever the hell version of Windows added that, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco system was burning more computational resources to do the basics. And then our
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps had to work above that. And that mattered for a little while when the hardware was super early, but then as hardware went
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on, now we don’t even think about that. Later on, we had things like web technology doing all the rendering
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for UIs. And that is, from a computational perspective, hilariously wasteful
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and inefficient. But things got fast enough that it didn’t really matter and it became more about other factors that made
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that compelling. Well, when you think about the amount of computing power
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the Vision Pro burns just to show you like an app window in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco middle of your room, the amount of complexity and sophistication and amazing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feats of engineering required to show you like a spreadsheet in the middle of the room is kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hilarious. Like, I was thinking about that earlier and just like laughing to myself in the middle of,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, the Apple Visitor Center, no one else, everyone thought I was a weirdo probably. Just thinking like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the amount of computing power that we’re just considering like passe, like, oh yeah, we’re gonna have, you know, 16 cameras
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and this whole M2 chip and this whole, like all this This amazing, you know, this thing’s probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco drawing like 90 watts or something from from its cable having a cooling fan But oh, yes,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s a fan and like doing all All that to show, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know A couple of floating windows in your in your virtual room is kind of amusing and is so comically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over-the-top But if that’s what people actually want to do with this, I mean, yes, there are gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be amazing Games and game like experiences that become possible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that’s great I am looking forward to, you know, being able to, you know, go on a virtual
⏹️ ▶️ Marco retreat into somewhere warm when it’s winter and freezing and crappy in real life. And you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when everything’s all dark, because in the middle of the winter it got dark at 3.30pm,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can just go to a tropical paradise in my virtual headset. You know, that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would be amazing. There will be all sorts of things like that, but it will also be compelling to just do regular
⏹️ ▶️ Marco boring old app work in this thing, you know, once everything gets good and mature enough to do that. It will be great
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be sitting on a plane and to have a giant screen field of view that you can be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doing other better, nicer things in. It will be great to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sitting in your living room in the middle of the winter and watching a movie in the middle of a jungle
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or whatever. They didn’t talk about fitness stuff, and there’s probably lots of reasons for that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco One thing I instantly thought of is like, well, how sweaty is your face gonna be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John with this whole face gasket?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s fabric, so it’s better than it being rubber, but breathability is always an issue, and also I think bouncing up and down is gonna be an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but there are certain, like I was thinking like, my God, when I’m sitting on my water rower,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by the way, there was a wonderful segment on Cortex, this is a very brief version, I know we’re short on time,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where Gray was saying, you know, don’t even try a water rower if you ever use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a gym rowing machine, like the chain kind of rowing machine in a gym. I got a chance recently to use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a chain rowing machine for the first time ever, I’ve only ever had a water rower. It was like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rowing a trash can lid across a field of gravel. Like it was such
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a terrible feeling compared to the water rower. Oh my God. He like, yeah. If you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use a water rower and you ever think, maybe we should get a concept too. No, oh my God, they’re awful. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sorry, concept two people, if you’re listening. So anyway, the idea of like taking my wonderful
⏹️ ▶️ Marco water growing machine and virtually rowing across a wonderful lake in a, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, a peaceful lake scene, you know, with maybe some trainer head in the corner telling me what to do or something.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That sounds amazing. I would love that. That sounds like, so there are fitness experiences that I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could work with this without having too many weird practical problems. But anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And they’ll be even better because the fans will be blowing a little breeze on your face. No, they’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be blowing hot air though, unfortunately. Well, it’s a summer row. It’s a summer row
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco in Arizona.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco In the rainforest, maybe. It’s very humid and hot. Anyway, so I can think of lots. So anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s lots of use cases for this beyond just gaming. And I think what we’ve seen,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco honestly, what we’ve seen from the gaming VR headsets is that gaming in VR is a fun novelty.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It has not taken over the gaming world as much as everyone thought it would. It has not produced
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nearly as many good VR games as people would have assumed would exist by now. There are some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that are fun. They’re mostly, you know, novelties or fads,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco honestly. So I think not having a strong gaming focus
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is both, I think realistic in the sense that Apple is not great in the gaming world despite their best efforts.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And also gamers are not gonna be spending $3,500 on this anytime soon. Well, I think they’d
⏹️ ▶️ John be the most likely to people to spend $3,500 on the gaming headset, because on this headset, because it’s got such amazing specs.
⏹️ ▶️ John If only they could play games with it, but they can’t. It’s not the games they want to.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I think if people start using this, even if it’s only really used
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at first by most people for capturing and watching 3D media. That’s still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a big enough use case to get it going. And then you can start doing some more of the app stuff. It’s like, yeah, maybe while
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re capturing your 3D media, hey, maybe you have your messages over in the corner and you start doing that, or you start messing around
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with whatever your productivity apps on your iPad are. There is a world where that makes a lot of sense.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think they have positioned themselves very well to start that and capture that. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do think it’s gonna be very specialized and very kind of low adoption at first, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first of all, this thing isn’t even coming out for a long time. And then when it does come out, it’s going to be fairly expensive and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fairly limited. And so, yes, this, but this is a start. This is not going to replace people’s computers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anytime soon for most people.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, what about replacing their monitors? I feel like that is a more realistic goal. Is that, is that
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco going to replace your
⏹️ ▶️ John computer? But will it replace your monitor? I mean, that’s, that’s kind of, it’s not a shame, but it’s like, it’s interesting that this is
⏹️ ▶️ John not just a display device. It’s a, it’s an entire computer by itself, but you can use it to see your
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac screen. Like, you know, so they showed it being used with a keyboard and a mouse
⏹️ ▶️ John and stuff like that. But like the thing I’m most disappointed with in terms of their demos is, Apple didn’t seem to have
⏹️ ▶️ John any kind of point of view or story or a solution to the whole thing of like, okay, but
⏹️ ▶️ John what kind of apps can you make in the third dimension? They have frameworks for it. They showed that
⏹️ ▶️ John satellite rotating in 3D, but that’s nothing. Like that is like, it’s cute, but that doesn’t let me do,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s not a new kind of application that I couldn’t use on a 2D screen. Show me, and clearly it’s possible
⏹️ ▶️ John to make applications that you couldn’t do on a 2D screen, but kind of like the gaming thing you were saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John show me the killer app. Show me the one that everybody has to have. Show me the one that they say, you can’t do this
⏹️ ▶️ John on a laptop screen. You have to do it in the headset. And by the way, when you do it in the headset, it is an
⏹️ ▶️ John experience that is better than trying to do the same thing anywhere else. Like we were saying before about like, what can the iPad do better
⏹️ ▶️ John than the phone and the Mac? What can the Mac do better than the, you know, what can the headset do better? Well, it can be a better display
⏹️ ▶️ John in certain ways because you have flexibility about where to put things and stuff like that. But what about the app experience?
⏹️ ▶️ John It has to be, it doesn’t have to be, but I feel like it is possible to be more than just 2D planes
⏹️ ▶️ John showing traditional 2D applications on them with maybe one or two 3D things poking out, right? That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not adding anything. And Apple didn’t have an answer there. They didn’t say, and here’s our killer
⏹️ ▶️ John app that can only exist on the headset that goes far beyond just showing you an iPad app
⏹️ ▶️ John and a rectangle that’s floating in front of you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco First of all, I think what they did demo is that. I guarantee you the killer app for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this thing is 3D picture and video capture and being able to replay moments. That’s the killer app. I’ll call
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it right now. That’s gonna get everyone to buy it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I mean, I didn’t mean killer app isn’t the thing that’s gonna make people wanna buy it. I mean, like I said, the thing
⏹️ ▶️ John that takes advantage of 3D technology and more than just being a display, right? They have frameworks
⏹️ ▶️ John for it, they showed it, but they didn’t have an application that they wrote that is essentially a 3D application
⏹️ ▶️ John as opposed to a bunch of 2D planes. And that’s, you know, to be clear, I think their concentration on 2D planes
⏹️ ▶️ John showing video content and applications, that was clearly
⏹️ ▶️ John their focus. It seems much more focused on the watch. And I think that’s a smart focus because those are all things with proven
⏹️ ▶️ John utility. And that’s why I keep framing this in my mind as, hey, you know all that stuff that you already wanna do,
⏹️ ▶️ John imagine if you could have as many screens as you wanted wherever you wanted doing all that same stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John That is compelling. Imagine, you know, and like you said, watching media or even just the rowing thing. That I
⏹️ ▶️ John feel like people are probably writing in are ready to tell me, that is actually an example, the rowing experience
⏹️ ▶️ John of something that you can’t do on a 2D screen, because a 2D screen doesn’t fill your field of view.
⏹️ ▶️ John And when you’re on the rowing machine, you wanna feel like you’re on the lake. You don’t wanna feel like you’re looking at a monitor showing a lake,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? It’s kind of the difference between when you ride a bike and it’s got a screen in front of you showing a road versus putting on a headset where you
⏹️ ▶️ John feel like you’re actually on the road. It’s just that that is mostly just like a 360 video experience.
⏹️ ▶️ John It is not the 3D stuff. Like I’m thinking of this cause I saw the State of the Union where they’re saying, here’s look, you can have planes
⏹️ ▶️ John and volumes and in volumes you can have full 3D apps, but Apple doesn’t have any full 3D apps.
⏹️ ▶️ John They have, you know, environments that you can be in and sort of 3D video experiences, 360 video experiences.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I think that will be amazing, especially since by the way, they made a point of saying they don’t have any hand controllers.
⏹️ ▶️ John So most of the traditional type of games are out because you need hand controllers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They do support game controllers. If you want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John to use it. Right, but not
⏹️ ▶️ John like the independent ones where you like grab
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco and you know, have you played Half-Life, Alex? You have, right? Where you grab. No, no I haven’t.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, anyway, like, yes, you can hold a PS5 controller or whatever, but not independent hands
⏹️ ▶️ John that you grab things with or whatever, right? So the type of game experience that you’re gonna have are the ones that I feel like have
⏹️ ▶️ John a broader appeal to non-gamers, which is they show that meditation thing, or you’re on a
⏹️ ▶️ John lake, or you’re walking through the mountains, or even if you’re flying through the clouds or whatever. That
⏹️ ▶️ John is the closest they came to having an experience you can’t have on a 2D screen, is you will feel like you’re there because it fills
⏹️ ▶️ John your field of view. But the 3D stuff, as in 3D modeled objects in the world, whether you’re putting them on the desk in
⏹️ ▶️ John front of you or a completely 3D world, they don’t have an answer for that. I don’t think anybody has an answer
⏹️ ▶️ John for that. But just to be clear, Apple didn’t have an answer for it either. They have frameworks for it, and they’re hoping
⏹️ ▶️ John someone will make an app like that that says, wow, this is, you know, that’s why I kept saying the killer app in terms of 3D.
⏹️ ▶️ John But what they were showing is we already know you want to do these things. We already know you want to watch video. You want to use your
⏹️ ▶️ John apps, right? You want to, you want to, you know, record video and, you know, see it in 3d,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is a thing you can’t do without weird glasses and stuff like that. So I think they concentrated on the right
⏹️ ▶️ John things, but they also didn’t have anything beyond what anyone else had had in terms of
⏹️ ▶️ John ideas for applications. Everything that they showed is something someone else was doing, but in a worse way on on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I mean, so I think what I mean, honestly, all the things that they did show, I think that’s enough to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get this thing going and started. That’s that’s plenty. And again, like, I honestly think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 3D capture and playback of video is its own killer app right there. But, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even more pedestrian stuff, like, you know, and they’ve had this support in ARKit for a while,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it’s been, you know, limited to tiny phone and iPad screens. Shopping and interior
⏹️ ▶️ Marco decoration of rooms, like, that, you know, if you want to, you know, buy something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the internet, one of the hardest, most challenging problems of online shopping is when you get something and you realize that the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco size or scale of it is not quite what you expected, to be able to just have that object show up,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, in your room, that I think could be remarkable for as pedestrian
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and common uses as online shopping. Or to have, you know, room redecoration or furniture arrangement
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps, where you can like, oh, let’s move this couch around or see what happens if we painted this wall blue. That kind of stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s killer apps for so many people. And those are all things that you can do now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the phone or iPad, but it would be so much better doing it with this. So,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, I think they’ve already shown us enough that is gonna make a lot of people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wanna buy this, including me, honestly. And I was super skeptical before, but now I’m super optimistic, of course.
⏹️ ▶️ John One of the things they also stayed away from, by the way, although they kind of barely touched on this, the whole like feeling
⏹️ ▶️ John like you’re all sitting around a meeting table with a bunch of people, they stayed pretty far away
⏹️ ▶️ John from that. They said, yeah, you can do FaceTime in it, and we have a solution to the problem of people can’t see your face,
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll make this little creepy avatar thing or whatever. But the closest they got was like, oh, and you can have
⏹️ ▶️ John a disembodied head.
⏹️ ▶️ John Disembodied head and shoulders. But they were not going into the whole, you know, part of the reason they didn’t say metaverse
⏹️ ▶️ John is they’re actually not doing any of that stuff, which is like, what is a little 3D avatar of yourself and you feel like you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John sitting at a table with everybody and you can see their expressions. Nope, it’s FaceTime, it’s disembodied heads
⏹️ ▶️ John with a little bit of a 3D effect on them. And if they’re also in a headset, it’s not really their face, it’s a model
⏹️ ▶️ John of their face or whatever. Like, you know, I think all that’s fine. That’ll come along, but they
⏹️ ▶️ John stayed, you know, that is definitely a touchy feely Apple thing that they could have done. Oh, the feeling of presence
⏹️ ▶️ John and you’re there with your loved ones. They were like, yeah, no. Like, like they had to prove
⏹️ ▶️ John you can use this for work meetings. You can use this to FaceTime with your family. Not the
⏹️ ▶️ John ideal use case, right? Like it’s, it’s so much, they spent so much more time showing people looking
⏹️ ▶️ John at like movies showing on a virtual screen in front of them than they spent showing a
⏹️ ▶️ John disembodied CG head of a scanned face. That, you know, even in the in
⏹️ ▶️ John the idealized scenarios of this thing, looked a little bit creepy. Right. So I feel like that is a weakness
⏹️ ▶️ John of this product. They tried to kind of hang a lantern on and say, we have a solution to that. See, don’t worry about it. They’ll still be able to see
⏹️ ▶️ John your face sort of kind of. But that is not what Apple is pitching this on. That I mean, if you want to see the pitch for
⏹️ ▶️ John that, it’s continuity camera for the Apple TV, right? Whole family gather around on the couch, put a camera
⏹️ ▶️ John that probably doesn’t zoom in enough and has whatever. Like I I’m not entirely convinced by the continuity camera thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John but FaceTime with a bunch of people in your family, you’re much more likely to prop up an iPad, hold a phone
⏹️ ▶️ John or use continuity camera than you are to have. You certainly not going to have your entire family and thirty five hundred dollar headsets, but even just
⏹️ ▶️ John one person and even in a work meeting, it’s a little bit iffy on that front. But, you know, this
⏹️ ▶️ John this stakes out a different area of the headset space than I have seen anybody try to stake out,
⏹️ ▶️ John even, you know, so the game things forget it. Apple’s not anywhere near them. And then when Facebook did it, Facebook’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John a particularly big gaming company, Oculus was a gaming headset. They tried to stake out this whole presence virtual
⏹️ ▶️ John meeting, little Nintendo Miis walking around with no legs or whatever. Apple’s like, no legs,
⏹️ ▶️ John no body, no nothing. They got disembodied hands and a floating CG head, but that’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John what this is about. Let me show you more of your apps floating around you. And speaking of the apps, by the way,
⏹️ ▶️ John they had everyone’s favorite person, Marco’s favorite UI designer, Alan Dye up there talking about the UI for this,
⏹️ ▶️ John with the sort of translucent panes and everything. And everything was okay to me, except the question I had, and I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John sure this will become clear if I actually used it, but it’s hard to tell in the keynote, is they had the whole thing of where you look at the button you want and then you pinch
⏹️ ▶️ John your fingers to press it. And the whole time I’m looking and I’m like, is it possible for me as a human
⏹️ ▶️ John to tell which item is selected on this screen? It’s kind of like the old
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple TV where it’s like they would zoom it in a little bit. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they have like a hover effect on it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, when I pinch, they’re doing an effect. And they said, when I pinch, which thing that’s on the screen is gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John activate right now? And Alan Dye’s like, Can’t you see it’s a subtly different sheen on this button? It shows that
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s the ones that I’m like, oh, come on, just highlight it, like invert it, make it white on black instead
⏹️ ▶️ John of black on white, something, I wanna be able to know where the selection state is, Alan, why won’t you tell me?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Anyway, I can’t blame-
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It disappears into the void. No, I’m sure there’s gonna be like, you know, one accessibility option to fix that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, we’ve got old eyes here, like everything can’t be translucent flushed through glass. I have to know which item
⏹️ ▶️ John has the focus so that when I pinch, which thing, you know, again, it’s hard to tell from videos, But that’s what I
⏹️ ▶️ John was looking out for there. I do like mostly what they did with it, the frosted glass look and the little controls on the side and everything, it
⏹️ ▶️ John all looks cool. I do wonder, they didn’t show any minority report kind of like reaching
⏹️ ▶️ John out with your hands and swiping things from side to side and everything like that. So it feels kind of like stage manager and how rigid
⏹️ ▶️ John it is in terms of where you can place things. But I think we have a ways to go with hand and finger tracking before
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re gonna be Tom Cruise in our way through this UI.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and also, I mean, there’s the huge question of text input. You know, so they’re very, very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco clear to say, like, you know, you can connect the Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, which is great. There is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a virtual keyboard that you can kind of poke at in the air. I’m curious how well that works
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in practice. I’m a little skeptical because it seems like it’s a very difficult problem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John to get right.
⏹️ ▶️ John Better, better use the, you know, speech to text at that point.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, yeah. And of course there is dictation. There is Siri. You know, there’s, there’s, you know, stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that that will allow input better. But this is probably like I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think if you’re going to be doing a lot of input, you’re going to be sitting with the keyboard. Now that being said, I mean, imagine imagine
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that on an airline tray table. That’s amazing. Because it’s like you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can actually sit and coach and have the person in front of you lean back like a jerk. And you can just have the keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the tray table and no screen to get in the way to get pinched
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John by the by the seat.
⏹️ ▶️ John I hope you can touch type though, because I was thinking about this in terms of the airline thing. they pointedly
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t really show someone watching a movie on an airplane. And I felt like the only way you could do it is to turn that
⏹️ ▶️ John dial so you’re full VR. Because if you try to do it with AR, the screen would have to be two rows in front
⏹️ ▶️ John of you, or one row in front of you, and that would mess, like how would that work with AR? Because like,
⏹️ ▶️ John in Coach, the back of the person’s seat is like six inches from your nose, it feels
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco like, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And you don’t want the screen to be six inches, so the virtual screen in the augmented reality has to be farther
⏹️ ▶️ John out, and then how to, it can’t make a convincing augmented reality. So you really got to turn that dial
⏹️ ▶️ John and make it so, nope, I’m in the desert at night or wherever the hell that thing was. Which means if you have a keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ John in front of you, you better be able to touch type without having to look at the keyboard because you can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John look down and look at the keys.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But you could bring your Bluetooth keyboard, just sit on the tray table.
⏹️ ▶️ John Now that’s what I’m saying. You have to be able to type on your Bluetooth keyboard without looking at the keyboard. Cause it’s not an
⏹️ ▶️ John AR mode, cause you know, or you could just have, fine, the screen will be out three feet in front of you and it will like, it’ll do some weird clipping
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. You know what I mean? Like it’s, someone’s going to try it to see how does it, how does it square that circle? Because
⏹️ ▶️ John you want the screen to be two feet away from you, but the seat is one foot away from you. So now the screen
⏹️ ▶️ John is behind the seat. And so it truncates at the bottom, ruins the illusion. It’ll probably be fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Man, I, there is, there is just, there’s so much here. Like I’m, you know, one, another thing, I mean, obviously
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’re gonna cover this a lot in future episodes. You know, I think the, the design of the UI and the interaction is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco interesting in the sense that they didn’t do minority report style. you have to like grab
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything and have your arms up and out all the time. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John that’s obviously- They also
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t really show much of that interaction. So we don’t actually know how it works. I’m assuming it’s a bunch of fixed positions,
⏹️ ▶️ John but how do you manipulate those fixed positions with your hands?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Well, but what’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good is like, you know, it is based on eye tracking and you making a hand movement, but it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doesn’t really matter where your hands are. So they can be in your lap, off to the side. You can be lying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco down, kind of, you can be slouching. And that’s not only is that great for lots of different accessibility needs,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But also, that’s just great for not being super tiresome. And you don’t have to be waving
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your arms around in midair in front of you. You can just be moving your eyes and tapping with your finger and you can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco navigate the whole thing without doing a whole shoulder workout in the process. Which that’s,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again, it’s like, the sci-fi vision of a product like this would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually be probably pretty terrible in real life. So rather than do the sci-fi vision, they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco made the thing that’s actually better in real life. And I think that’s kind of the theme of this whole product that we’ve seen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so far. That when you, if you, if somebody tells you, oh, we’re gonna make AR glasses with the whole AR
⏹️ ▶️ Marco OS, what you picture is something very different, and what you picture how it would work is very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco different. That’s not what they did. They probably, I’m sure they like thought of that, or maybe made some demo stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and maybe saw it sucked and abandoned or whatever, but what they’ve shipped, or what they’re going to eventually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ship here, is seemingly something that is much better designed for,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reality. This is something that’s actually going to be very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco useful in reality, no pun intended, and it’s very, it seems like a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much more practical approach to solving some of these problems. That being said, of course,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I use the term practical a little bit loosely there in terms of like, they needed to throw an absurd amount of technology and engineering
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to make these things work this way, and there’s a large amount of cost and a large amount
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of you know, wasted CPU power and stuff in the meantime to make this all happen. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this isn’t something that we, this isn’t what we would have guessed. It isn’t what we did guess.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We don’t have to be theoretical. We were guessing about this product for years. This is not what I expected it to be.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is not, I think, what anybody expected it to be.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I think the rumors pretty much got the form right. It’s just that it was hard for anyone to believe that they wouldn’t talk about gaming.
⏹️ ▶️ John And guess what? They didn’t talk about gaming.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John No, I’m saying,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m saying, not, obviously, who cares what it looks like, you know, the goggles, whatever, I’m just saying like the way it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco works, the way it is such a strong focus on AR rather than being all about
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean that was Tim’s original thing that Apple was big into AR not VR. It’s just in the recent years
⏹️ ▶️ John the rumors started to drift more towards VR because the idea that it was Apple was going to ship something that
⏹️ ▶️ John was a headset that blocked your vision entirely. So people said it had to be more VR. But the original origin
⏹️ ▶️ John of the headset rumors was Apple wants to do AR. They’re going to augment reality and it just kind of shifted
⏹️ ▶️ John over time as people gave up on the pipe dream of the glass and said, well, I guess we’ll just ship a headset that totally
⏹️ ▶️ John blocks your vision, right? And then that’s where all the VR rumors came from. That’s where the gaming angle started coming in.
⏹️ ▶️ John no, the original rumors of this headset is that Apple is super into AR and that’s what
⏹️ ▶️ John they presented as a product that is heavily focused on AR. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even that, if you ask people, Apple’s gonna make an AR-focused headset,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what kind of features will it have? When people think of AR, they think of you walking down the street and having little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco info bubble pop up over the store saying, oh, this is rated five stars, maybe pop over people. Oh, this is, you know, Emily
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Smith. Like that’s what they’re thinking when you say AR. No one thinks about,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just want to be sitting on my couch, working on a Word document, and be able to see if my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco spouse walks by. Like that’s what they actually ship. I think people thought about that.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know if you weren’t reading those articles, but a lot of this whole idea of having a bunch of virtual screens in front of you as augmented reality was
⏹️ ▶️ John definitely in the mix, right? But that’s the part that Apple concentrated on. Speaking of eye
⏹️ ▶️ John tracking though, by the way, with having, they made a big point of like the privacy angle on this,
⏹️ ▶️ John which I think they skimmed over it too fast, but I think what they were getting at was essentially, hey, if you’re looking
⏹️ ▶️ John at safari in your goggles, right, that they won’t
⏹️ ▶️ John pass where your eyes are lingering as like
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco cursor events.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yes. It’s kind of the equivalent if you’re on your Mac, if you’re on your Mac and imagine if your mouse pointer moved everywhere
⏹️ ▶️ John your eyes went, where your mouse pointer moves can be captured by most web apps or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or actually I don’t know what the state of the art in security is, but in theory it could be captured, right? But where your eyes move is
⏹️ ▶️ John not captured by any web browser because the computer’s not detected, right? And that
⏹️ ▶️ John is deemed more privacy related because they do, like you ever see this, where they test like a website with like a bunch of people
⏹️ ▶️ John doing some usability testing, that’s where they track their eyes and they say, oh, people’s eyes are hovering around here. But
⏹️ ▶️ John that doesn’t happen when you use your phone, when you use your iPad, when you use your Mac, but with a headset, something
⏹️ ▶️ John is tracking where your eyes are all the time. And Apple made it a point to say, we’re not going to pass that information
⏹️ ▶️ John on to Facebook.com or whatever. Which, you know, it’s their privacy angle, it’s the picture, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John that biometric data that you don’t expect to be passed on to these things, we won’t pass it on. They’ll only get the
⏹️ ▶️ John thing when you click with your fingers or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think that’s also applied to apps, though, which is interesting.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Well, so here’s the thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can, like, gaming and the headset, one of the best gaming experiences
⏹️ ▶️ John that people come up with is things where you aim with your eyeballs. feels awesome, right? And this eye tracking, I’m sure, is
⏹️ ▶️ John amazing compared to like the eye tracking on a $300 headset. So those things where you look at something and shoot
⏹️ ▶️ John it by, you know, pressing a button on the controller, you kind of have to pass the eye position to the game
⏹️ ▶️ John to do that. So I think what they were saying is, yeah, we won’t pass it to the site you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John using with the web browser, but of course, if you make a VR game, they have to pass the eye position
⏹️ ▶️ John onto the game because that’s half of how you control. One of the most amazing things about controlling games
⏹️ ▶️ John in VR is they can track your eye position. So they didn’t make that clear in the keynote, but I will be shocked
⏹️ ▶️ John if you can’t make a game for this thing that tracks your eye movement, because that’s, because duh. But yeah, I guess we’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John find out what Apple’s dedication to gaming really is. If they say, nope, even if you’re a game, you can’t have eye position, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John really truly closing the door on this thing as a gaming device.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, I think the mechanic will probably be, I bet there will be a mode for that, that you just have to pass a privacy prompt to approve.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you look at, like I think one of the things they breezed over in the State of the Union was that when you’re viewing,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like for apps that are reading like AR positioning information to figure out like where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to put their volumes and stuff like that, they’re not getting a camera feed of your room. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco presumably that would require some kind of camera permission. So like even though the headset is constantly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco capturing the video of the room around you to show you in your eyepieces, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps are not gonna get visual data. So they’re not gonna see that you’re not wearing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pants. They’re gonna see there’s just like some leg shaped logs there.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, it depends on how detailed the depth data, it may be
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco detailed to show something. Yeah, maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s a bad example. But, you know, they’re not gonna see like, oh, you have blue walls in this room. They’re gonna see there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a wall there. You know, like, they get like geometry of the room, but not images of
⏹️ ▶️ John Speaking of the geometry, by the way, they really focused on that in the spatial audio. Did you see that bit where they’re like,
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll do spatial audio based on where your coffee table is and stuff, and it made me think, the same thing I always think when I see this
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff, it’s like, there is a application of that that is ideal, And I think it’s kind of like when you’re doing like
⏹️ ▶️ John the virtual FaceTime with somebody or something, you want them to feel like they’re in front of you. And when they talk,
⏹️ ▶️ John their sound bounces off your coffee table and it will give that convincing illusion that they’re not just a disembodied
⏹️ ▶️ John floating head in your field of vision, but they’re actually a real floating head in your living room. And when they talk, it bounces off your ceiling
⏹️ ▶️ John and your walls, and that’s how it should work. But I continue to say that when I watch a movie, I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t actually want the sound to bounce off my coffee table. I want it to be perfect as
⏹️ ▶️ John it was mastered by the person who made this movie, put it right into my ears, don’t bounce it around my room. I spend all this
⏹️ ▶️ John time trying to get an arrangement of speakers and everything to eliminate bouncing around a room effects.
⏹️ ▶️ John So like, it’s great technology, it has its place. Another example
⏹️ ▶️ John is if I’m playing, I don’t know, a game again, if I’m playing a game, I wanna hear where the enemy is in the game, my coffee table’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John in the game, don’t bounce sound off of it, right? But what they seem to wanna make it sound like is imagine if you had a TV
⏹️ ▶️ John floating in front of your coffee table. If the sound was coming out of that TV, it would hit your coffee table and bounce to your
⏹️ ▶️ John ears. Isn’t that what you want? And I would say, no, it’s not what I want. I know, you know, this is different between me
⏹️ ▶️ John and the imagined audience of spatial audio. I don’t want the sound
⏹️ ▶️ John to sound like it’s coming from my iPad when I’m watching TV on my iPad. I want it to sound like it’s coming out of the headphones that are in my ear.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I’m glad I can turn it off, but they have the technology and it’s using the same thing. That depth picture
⏹️ ▶️ John of where you are, which presumably is sophisticated because they have LiDAR on this thing. And I think they have IR sprayer
⏹️ ▶️ John things and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s got an idea of the shape of your room and applications will be able to sense that, but they don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John get to see the video of it. And they just, you know, one of the uses of it is to figure out how to bounce sound around
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, are you gonna make the bouncing around the room joke or do I have to?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, I just keep coming back to what Marco said
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a few minutes ago. And when I got to the one more thing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the keynote, I think we all kind of knew what to expect, but I don’t think I received what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I expected. I think it’s actually far better. I keep
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thinking to myself that right now I’m really, if you can’t tell, hung up on the social
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like, ugh, about all of this. But leaving that aside for a moment,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really enjoy going places to work once or twice a week. I enjoy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going to my beloved, don’t call it a park bench,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John picnic table. I
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t think about this. You do leave your house to work a lot, don’t you?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I do like going to the library and if I just do not care about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what other people think of me, which I wish was true in so many parts of my life. But anyway, if I just don’t care
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about what other people think of me and I’m willing to strap this thing to my face, I could see this being an incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cool way to get work done somewhere else. But, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then I got thinking to myself, well, what work could I really do on this thing as a standalone device.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And what I feel like having not used it and having and knowing almost nothing about it, my knowledge being only a few,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey few hours old, it feels like if you’re the kind of person that can legitimately
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get things, get work done on your iPad today,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel like you should be able to do the same here. Now, maybe you might want a physical keyboard because maybe you don’t want to mash
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on a virtual keyboard or do you don’t want to use, you know, dictation or what have you. But just in terms of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey apps that are available, the way the device works, it appears to me like if you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can do honest to goodness work on your iPad, you can probably do honest to goodness work with the Vision
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pro. And that’s appealing, but I don’t think that’s me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey most of the time because my work most of the time really has to be done on a traditional
⏹️ ▶️ Casey computer. And I do think it would be nice to have a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very large 4K display wherever I wanted, you know, wherever I am. I think that would be pretty neat. So even if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have to bring my computer, it would be neat to have the big display in potentially
⏹️ ▶️ John than one and turn your head to look at each one.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I don’t know if I can, I don’t think you can have more than one computer.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I said one for the Mac,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just at least for version one, it was just one display,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but that doesn’t mean, I mean, I remember I’m a big spaces person and this is kind of like spaces on steroids.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so maybe what I could do is I could have Xcode full screen or what have you,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uh, on the virtual 4k screen, but I could have messages as running natively
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the vision pro adjacent to that, and I can have Slack adjacent to that, you know what I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mean? And I can have Safari, all, all the other things running natively on the vision pro on you’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey strewn about this virtual, uh, workspace, and that would be pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fricking cool. And speaking of Xcode and things like that, they do seem to be taking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very seriously the simulator. They seem to be making it as reasonable as they can, given
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that the technology on a traditional traditional computer is so different. But one thing they showed in the State of the Union
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was what if you wanted to develop a Vision Pro, you know, XROS
⏹️ ▶️ Casey app? And they did, they did make mention of XROS, or at least it was visually shown in the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Xcode screenshots.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. It was like, honestly, it was like in somebody’s toolbar, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. Which I, which I thought was funny. But nevertheless, um, what if you wanted to write an app for this thing?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, what you could do is you could have your virtual monitor for your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey computer and they showed it off to the right, and then you can have your app off to the left
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and yes, of course you can do that, but seeing that my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mind just freaking exploded, like how amazingly cool is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that? And that is a future that I think is very, very interesting.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think Marco’s right that I think the killer app for this, I’m not so sure
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that it’s 3D specifically, but I think it’s just the consumption of media, just like the iPad. The killer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey app of the iPad is being able to consume things wherever you want. And I think the killer app for this might be,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey having a full surround sound setup, asterisk, with a humongous screen of high fidelity,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, dagger, but what appears to be those things,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and you can have it anywhere. And then what could really make it interesting is if you, if you can get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey work done on it, and again, I think if you can get work done on an iPad and that’s not me, but it may be you. If
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you can get work done on an iPad, I bet you could get work done on this. And if you had 17 iPads in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like a grandma’s boy style array in front of you, I bet you could probably get more work done, you know?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so that makes this very interesting to me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I, as an engineer, and I think we should talk about price here as an engineer, I totally understand how we landed at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey starts at $3,500. Makes perfect sense. Absolutely reasonable. As a consumer,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, I feel like I need to, to, to paste in the good fellas GIF with a what’s his nuts,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey laughy, or everyone laughing at the restaurant. You know, you know, the gift I’m thinking of like that is just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an asnine amount of money that being said, I’m really thinking about it. Cause this thing looks
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so freaking cool and we’re presumably going to learn a lot more about it over the next six
⏹️ ▶️ Casey months. We’re presumably going to see people demoing, even in 2D space. We’re going to see them demoing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey apps for it and recording videos of the Xcode simulator and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Vision Pro simulator and so on and so forth. I honestly don’t know what I’ll do because $3,500 is a lot of money to say, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey why not? But it does seem
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very interesting. And although I haven’t had time to read posts about their people’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey firsthand experience, I see that Chase Miller has a post up, which we’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey link in the show notes. Our friend Matthew Panzarino has a post up. We’ve had some other people report into the three
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of us that they have tried it and it is amazing. So I am really interested.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know if I’m going to do it. I don’t know if I’m going to spend $3,500 on this,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m definitely not shutting the door on it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You’re a dad and you’re sentimental about your kids. You’re going to want to capture. Trust me, that’s what’s gonna drive so many
⏹️ ▶️ Marco early sales of this, is computer dads with money who wanna capture their kids.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Maybe that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the excuse they’ll use anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still, that is going to be a massive excuse for people to get this thing, and that’s gonna be a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco huge killer app, I guarantee it.
⏹️ ▶️ John I have a question about the hardware though, that I don’t think I’ve seen the answer yet. So we mentioned the battery life, we
⏹️ ▶️ John made a joke about it, up to two hours with the external battery pack.
⏹️ ▶️ John And unlimited time, if it’s plugged in, Yeah, we know it’s unlimited until the power goes out. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John two things on that. One, that battery pack doesn’t look too big. Couldn’t they have doubled the size and given it four
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco not on the headset.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It might pull your pants down. It’s not very big, but it’s probably very dense.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it’s hard to tell what was the deal with that. And my second question is though, it seemed like it was connected with a kind of a MagSafety
⏹️ ▶️ John type of thing, but if that gets disconnected, the thing shuts
⏹️ ▶️ John off, right? Like there’s no battery in the headset.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I actually asked about that, because I was saying like, you know, is there some kind of like, you know, temporary, you know, hot swap time, you could,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, you could swap it on. And the answer is no, it shuts down. Like when you, it shuts down. So that seems a little weird. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John it makes sense. I mean, again, you want the batteries out of the heads that you don’t want it to be heavy. That’s the whole
⏹️ ▶️ John reason they have a thing. Like that’s, I totally, that design decision makes sense. But then the decision to also make it kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John mag safey. I mean, that also makes sense is you don’t want the cord to snag on something, but also
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like yanking the power cable out from your desktop Mac. It’s kind of, I
⏹️ ▶️ John mean, all right, I just really give that file system a workout, I guess. Just,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, it might’ve been in the middle of doing something, but whoops, the cat pulled the cord out, and that’s the end of what
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re doing right now. And of course, I’m pretty, well, I don’t know, we’ll find out. Like, it has to default to
⏹️ ▶️ John total blackness, right? Like, that’s, if the cord comes off,
⏹️ ▶️ John all you see is black, right? If
⏹️ ▶️ John blocking light, and there’s no other even small on-board battery to light
⏹️ ▶️ John up the, anyway, we’ll try it. But this definitely seems like a kind of, you won’t
⏹️ ▶️ John get this reference, but you know, Neon Genesis Evangelion type of thing. They have these giant mechs
⏹️ ▶️ John in them that in the beginning, they are connected to a tether. And then as soon as you disconnect
⏹️ ▶️ John them from the tether, a timer starts going down. When that timer goes down, they’re out of power. And the timer is like three and a half minutes
⏹️ ▶️ John long. So it’s kind of like a ticking clock for the battle as the battery drains. Same thing with this, only
⏹️ ▶️ John the second that cable gets disconnected, it’s game over and you’re in total darkness.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I was assuming and kind of hoping that there would be some kind of little grace period to swap the battery,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but who knows? I mean, when you think about the amount of power this is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look at the processor. It’s running the full-blown M.2, a whole separate processor called the R1
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I don’t think we know yet how big or power-hungry of a processor that is, but it’s probably
⏹️ ▶️ John The rumors were it’s like a second M.2, basically.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, exactly. So if you think about it, It’s powered by what appears to be modified USB
⏹️ ▶️ Marco power delivery. So it’s probably going to have a roughly 100 watt max.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m guessing this is probably somewhere near a 100 watt device. Like in terms of power
⏹️ ▶️ John draw. That sounds high to me. I’ll be shocked if it’s that high but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’ll see. Maybe it’s quote only 50 watts. That’s still a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of power to be battery powered continuously. So I’m guessing this is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably like… they just can’t do certain, like they can’t make it be that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco long powered by whatever, like, I don’t know, giant capacitor or whatever it be. They
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John probably can’t make it.
⏹️ ▶️ John One of the things that headset makers have done to put battery on it to not
⏹️ ▶️ John be too heavy or crappy is they stick it on the back of your head. Like where that big giant thing
⏹️ ▶️ John is, if you can imagine Apple could have put a smaller five minute
⏹️ ▶️ John battery pack strap there because it balances out the weight of the headset on the front
⏹️ ▶️ John and it gives you enough power, like you said, the grace period, right? Or something to turn on transparency on the headset
⏹️ ▶️ John just to put up an image that says the cable has been disconnected, you know, and to pause everything. But they didn’t do that.
⏹️ ▶️ John It would have added cost, it would have added complexity, it would have added danger because you don’t want any batteries that can catch fire
⏹️ ▶️ John next to people’s heads, although having them in their pocket isn’t great either. So, you know, this is definitely kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of a version one that’s got that prototype-y kind of feel. But yeah, not having a battery at
⏹️ ▶️ John all in it is, I mean, again, it would have, cause you gotta run the wires and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’d be interesting to see if they revisit that because you don’t need that big of a battery to give you a little grace period and to give you
⏹️ ▶️ John a little transparency or whatever. Although that’s another thing I feel like Apple was pretty
⏹️ ▶️ John careful not to show too much of, which is people running around with this thing, right? I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not like everyone was always sitting down. The dad was by like the island and the kitchen or whatever, and presumably he’s walking around
⏹️ ▶️ John the house, but no games where you’re running around
⏹️ ▶️ John or, you know, there’s lots of, because it is self-contained, like you’re not tethered
⏹️ ▶️ John to a PC, so you could in theory move around with some transparency on, so you can avoid your furniture, but they were not
⏹️ ▶️ John really into showing that. Again, most of the things they were showing was someone sitting at a desk or on a couch
⏹️ ▶️ John and then one guy standing at a counter. So that’s how Apple is thinking of this right now. And I think
⏹️ ▶️ John the battery, the tethered battery, I mean, they kept showing it in people’s pocket, but if you’re sitting down, would you
⏹️ ▶️ John put it on the desk? Right? And in that case, will they sell a bigger battery pack or would you just plug it in when you’re at your
⏹️ ▶️ John desk? It’s those use cases are a little bit confusing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. The battery has a USB hole on it. So I’m guessing like that is like, I’m guessing you can just do like pass
⏹️ ▶️ Marco through charging or continuous power that way.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but they also, in the state of the union, they also showed, I tried posting this to Mastodon, but it kept failing. And I don’t know, maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s user error, but they showed what looked to be a dongle. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there’s like, uh, coming off of the spot where the thing plugs in,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there’s something that looks like a dongle and then what looks like a USB port on it. Uh, I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It was very unusual and I definitely caught a screen capture of it. And I’ll put a link
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the show notes of what I captured, but, and I just put it in the chat room. There’s definitely something going
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on there. Not, not in a bad way. Just, you know, there’s some sort of dongle looking thing happening.
⏹️ ▶️ John Uh, you’re not going to watch a movie as long as it’s less than two hours, I guess, on the plane.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I think, you know, on the plane, I think you’d probably like, you know, plug into power or something, you know, I don’t know. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s also worth pointing out too, like, you know, people in the chat are speculating that maybe, you know, maybe they’re hitting the FAA, you know, 100 watt
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hour limit with the battery. I don’t think it’s that big. So they had the battery,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they had it like out in like the hands-off area where you could like walk around Steve Jobs theater and like kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look at it, but you couldn’t touch it. They had the batteries lying right there next to them, which is great. Like, I’m actually very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happy that they didn’t just pretend like these things have no wires. Like in their cool fancy demo of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco having these things, look, take a picture. They had the batteries right there connected to them like resting on the table. So that’s nice. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first of all, a hundred watt hour battery is heavy, especially for a pocket. So I don’t think they would do quite that high
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just for pocket weight reasons. But I would say, you know, just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco eyeballing it size-wise, it looks kind of like a 20,000 milliamp hour battery pack.
⏹️ ▶️ John And plus you can have multiples, even if it was a hundred, you could just get more than one of those batteries in the plane and just,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, I guess your movie would be the whole OS shuts down and you yank the power cord, but it would remember your playback
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, if somebody does the math, like whatever a 20,000 milliamp hour battery would power for, you know, for two hours,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s probably the rough power draw of this thing. So I don’t know what that is, maybe 30 or 40, 50 Watts, something like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Up to two hours, which may, when they say up to, it makes me think, like, you would think video playback would be a low
⏹️ ▶️ John stress application. Like if there’s, you know, just one thing, the decode is done in hardware, it’s projecting
⏹️ ▶️ John it on a single rectangle in front of you.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Maybe there’s a, you know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s what I was talking about earlier. It’s like, you know, the baseline level of computation required to just show a still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco screen in this thing, like to also show your entire surroundings, to be scanning your eyes,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John to be, like there’s so much going on.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not like playing a 3D game or even like, you know, crunching numbers in some set of, you
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey running- Everything is a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 3D game. The whole damn thing is a 3D game.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I know, but like,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey lot of, there’s not a lot of polygons. The
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco desktop is a 3D game. There’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of polygons and shaders in that scene with a single rectangle in front of you, is what I’m saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco you know what I mean? As opposed to
⏹️ ▶️ John playing an actual 3D game with millions of polygons you’re running through a forest or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John And even stuff like, oh, I wanna run, I have an iPad app for stable diffusion, and
⏹️ ▶️ John I wanna run part of it on device. It’s the stable diffusion that runs on device up to three hours.
⏹️ ▶️ John So you have, whatever the lightest weight application of this you can think of, and I think maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John video playback is the lightest weight, because probably web browsing is more, you know, right? That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John where you get up to two hours, right? So replaceable battery, and again, that’s why the good, the battery
⏹️ ▶️ John pack is replaced. So replaceable battery packs is great. Third-party battery packs, based on the picture that you posted, Casey, it seems
⏹️ ▶️ John like that would be possible, in which case, just open the floodgates to gigantic USB batteries, and we probably all have a bunch of them already,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco right? And I’m sure people, you know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, maybe a backpack. You could have a whole battery backpack
⏹️ ▶️ John that weighs like 30 pounds. No, no, I’m saying, like, if it gets up to two hours out of this little thing, yeah, like, I, my, you know, My wife
⏹️ ▶️ John has a monstrous battery pack that she uses for Pokemon Go. They will power her phone for days. That would probably
⏹️ ▶️ John give you 20 hours of video playback on this thing. So, third party opportunity.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it again makes me wonder why they gave such a small battery pack for this because they know the battery life is terrible.
⏹️ ▶️ John I guess they wanted it to fit in everybody’s pocket, assuming people have pockets on their clothes, which is not universally true. But
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe Apple’s gonna change that. You’re gonna have to buy your AR goggles pants with a pocket for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, we really gotta wrap this up, couple of other quick notes from the state of the union. First of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all, they said that they, and I’m something like they’re, they will offer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for developers to ask for Apple to run their apps
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on a real device and give them feedback, which I thought was interesting. They also said they’re going to have, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t know if they call them labs, but like workshops or whatever in not only Cupertino, but like I think it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey six other locations around the world where you can apply to go and get FaceTime
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with the device and, uh, and, and try your app, you know, on the actual vision pro
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hardware, which I thought was pretty neat. Uh, it’s only in the U S and sometime early next year. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey again, we are six months out at the earliest. Uh, but I don’t know, this thing looks really cool.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It is, it is, it is impressive. I thought it was going to be a full VR thing and that just doesn’t really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey rev my engine that much, but it seems to be very different than that. and I am definitely interested
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to try it. I think there’s a pretty good chance I’m probably gonna end up buying one. Sounds like Marco, you’re definitely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco capture video of your kids. I’m telling you that’s it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, and speaking of the AR versus full VR, they did note that a lot of the things they were showing in the
⏹️ ▶️ John 3D is good enough to fool you. It was actually full VR, but the VR scene was
⏹️ ▶️ John of a desk, like in a nice office, you know what I mean? Like, so
⏹️ ▶️ John what you were seeing, every single pixel of it was, you know, virtual. Like, it’s nothing, it’s not transparency at
⏹️ ▶️ John all. But they had a bunch of like, they had a conference room one and a desk. And so if you want to feel like you’re in one of
⏹️ ▶️ John these scenes, probably half of these scenes were actually virtual, you know, Apple style exposed
⏹️ ▶️ John brick wall, light wood furniture type of scenario. And
⏹️ ▶️ John in that scenario, yeah, you’re using a bunch of floating images as screens. But you’d also don’t have to worry about the
⏹️ ▶️ John fact that like your room is a mess or your, or your office is actually much smaller
⏹️ ▶️ John than the one they’re showing in this video. And I feel like that’s another advantage of, to your point of case, it’s like, oh, I was thinking of VR, but
⏹️ ▶️ John when you’re thinking of VR, you’re like, oh, I’m in outer space, or I’m in a forest or whatever. It’s like, no, you’re just at a
⏹️ ▶️ John nicer desk in a bigger office.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So John, are you feeling like you’re in for one of these? I know you have a Mac Pro to buy, so probably not.
⏹️ ▶️ John I am saving a lot of money on getting that Mac Pro, let me tell you. I definitely would like to try this.
⏹️ ▶️ John I still am very skeptical of my ability to get any utility out of it due to motion
⏹️ ▶️ John sickness. And also I have a 6K screen here and this is not gonna be bigger than that. But
⏹️ ▶️ John here’s the killer app for me personally, I think could possibly be doing what I do
⏹️ ▶️ John already, which is watch television on my iPad and in bed next to my wife, only with less light
⏹️ ▶️ John leakage and a better
⏹️ ▶️ John right? Better display than my current, like non OLED
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. Also Casey, of course you’re gonna get this because call sheet is gonna have to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have a widget next to the thing when people watch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey movies. Yes, I’ve thought about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this a lot already actually. I really honestly have. I’ve been
⏹️ ▶️ John about this a lot. I’m kind of shocked that Apple didn’t show that. It’s like, people kept saying like the version of
⏹️ ▶️ John Amazon X-Ray. I don’t know why everyone hasn’t copied Amazon X-Ray. Please Apple, copy this. It’s like the killer
⏹️ ▶️ John feature of all streaming apps. Just do it better than Amazon does it, which people don’t know. When you’re watching something, if you tap the player in Amazon
⏹️ ▶️ John video thing, It shows you the names and faces of everybody who’s on the screen right now. And if you tap on them,
⏹️ ▶️ John call sheet style, say here’s where they’re from, here’s what they’ve been in. Perfect
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey for AR. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Very much so. Now this was all told, now we are considering
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Vision Pro headset. I thought it was a very impressive WWDC. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have been sad for a long time since I figured out about a week ago I wasn’t gonna be able to be there.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am even more sad now that I’m seeing all my friends together I’m seeing people trying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the headset. I’m super sad, but there’s always next year. But this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was a really strong WWDC, a very, very strong one, and I am very impressed.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I can’t wait to talk more about it. But hey, if you’re interested in helping
⏹️ ▶️ Casey us buy these ridiculous computers for dads with money or whatever Marco said earlier, atp.fm
⏹️ ▶️ Casey slash join. You can try, maybe send a few dollars our way. It would help us buy this thing that we don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But we have to talk about it for our jobs. Yes, exactly. All right, thank you very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much for listening, everybody. Thanks to our sponsors, Squarespace, Collide, and VectorBar.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And thank you, as Casey was just saying, to our members who support us directly. You can join us at atv.fm
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slash join. We so appreciate our members. Thank you so, so much.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we will talk to you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental
⏹️ ▶️ John John didn’t do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him Cause
⏹️ ▶️ John it was accidental, oh it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey accidental And you can find the show
⏹️ ▶️ John notes at atp.fm And if you’re into
⏹️ ▶️ John Twitter, you can follow them at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M,
⏹️ ▶️ John S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A Syracuse It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey accidental, they didn’t mean to.
⏹️ ▶️ John Accidental, accidental, tech podcast so
Food report
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you want to hear about the food?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I do actually. Yes. Yes,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco briefly. Yes, very,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very briefly. There’s not that much to say. So, so I had, I had the press badges here. The press had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a little like tear, like a little like terrace overlooking Cafe Max, where like they have like, you know, little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco snacks before it starts.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey So you’re literally
⏹️ ▶️ Casey above the heathens below you. Yes. Wow. Wow.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s not that bad, but I mean, I mean, technically you are correct.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, and it is very much like a super fancified
⏹️ ▶️ Marco version of box lunch kind of things, almost, but like way better. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they had set up like kind of this giant like, you know, cold bar of just little,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of like, little like, you know, appetizer side, or like not even appetizer, like almost like, you know, cocktail party
⏹️ ▶️ Marco walk around kind of, you know, hors d’oeuvres. size little cups
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of, you know, bean salad or like little tiny slider made of mushroom or like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco little tiny turkey sandwich cubes, like that kind of stuff. And it’s all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really good. And they even had like a chia pudding, like fancy stuff. Like it’s exactly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what you’d expect from like Apple’s high production value for this thing. I thought it was funny, speaking of production
⏹️ ▶️ Marco values too, you know, last year they had the issue where it was very, it was kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of sunnier than expected last year and a lot of people got sunburned because most of the developer seating was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not shaded. Press was kind of under the Apple canopy of the Ring building,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so Press mostly was in the shade. Most developers last year were in direct sun. Now Apple thought of this. They gave
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you, in the little swag bags they give everybody, they gave you a little bottle of sunscreen last year and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was good sunscreen too. So this year they decided rather than just give everybody sunscreen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again, we’re going to build this entire, what might be a temporary, like, structure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where it was in the same location last year, like starting from within Café Max, going out through those giant
⏹️ ▶️ Marco open doors, you know, into like the kind of the field next to the building. Same location, but this time they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco built this tremendous, they basically built a concert venue that, knowing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s gone by tomorrow. Like, if it’s just like somehow
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they will throw enough money at this problem that not only will it be totally gone but the grass will be like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in perfect condition as if it was never even there. Like I’m I’m sure that’s what’s going on tonight as we sleep.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, yeah the food, their food is really good and like in the visitor
⏹️ ▶️ Marco center, they had like all these juices and everything and then afterwards I went over to the visitor center to hang out and download
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the betas and buy some t-shirts and stuff like that and and watch and that’s where I watched
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the State of the Union and they were just giving out like you know free like you know coffees and even more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of those kind of little like hors d’oeuvres sized sandwiches and bean bowls and stuff like that cookies,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bags of chips, it was delightful. So this is way way better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than conference food and and yeah just standard standard Apple visitor
⏹️ ▶️ Marco center fair but that’s that’s a very high bar relative to anything else you get at a conference.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So thumbs up on the food even the coffee was pretty good and you know For me,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s quite a statement. So yeah, I’m overall very impressed by Apple’s food and drink options at