585: Everyone Heard the Same Nonsense
02 May 2024Hopes for the iPad event next week, Rabbit R1 reviews, (slightly) less-fussy coffee, and the experience of Phish at the Sphere.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show: Casey’s after-action report
- St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
- RelayFM Podcastathon 2023 Part 1 & Part 2
- Follow-up:
- It’s possible to toggle a dimmable light in Home.app (via Dan Sturm)
- The Hayes AT command set is still going strong 😱 (via Pedro Fernandes)
- TSMC unveils 1.6nm process for 2026 chips
- Rabbit R1 reviews
- Riley Testut on Delta availability
- iPadOS is classified as “Gatekeeper” under the DMA
- No new Vision Pro until late 2026?
- May 7 Apple event
- Ask ATP:
- Did Marco give up on fussy coffee, as Casey’s prophecy foretold? (via Charlie Sorrel)
- Trade Coffee (literally sponsoring this episode)
- YES PLZ (has previously sponsored)
- Cometeer frozen coffee pods (Marco’s referral link)
- Can we give WWDC tips? (via Andy)
- Are we worried about charging station privacy? (via Wade)
- Automakers are Sharing Consumers’ Driving Behavior with Insurance Companies (11 March 2024)
- GM Quits Sharing Driving Behavior with Data Brokers (22 March 2024)
- Did Marco give up on fussy coffee, as Casey’s prophecy foretold? (via Charlie Sorrel)
- Post-show: Marco’s after-action report
- Members-only ATP Overtime: The Limitless pendant
Sponsored by:
- Computex: The leading international technology exhibition.
- Trade Coffee: The Best Coffee is Made at Home. Enjoy a free bag of roasted-to-order coffee and $15 off select plans when you join Trade.
Become a member for ATP Overtime, ad-free episodes, member specials, and our early-release, unedited “bootleg” feed!
Chapters
- Howdy, y’all
- Non-dimming HomeKit lights
- Cellular AT commands
- TSMC 1.6 nm in 2026
- Sponsor: Trade Coffee
- Rabbit R1 reviews
- Delta availability
- iPadOS also a “gatekeeper”
- No new Vision Pro until 2026
- iPad Pro update imminent
- Sponsor: Computex 2024
- #askatp: Coffee update
- #askatp: Attending WWDC
- #askatp: EV-charger privacy
- Ending theme
- Concert-earplugs update 🖼️
- Phish at Sphere 🖼️
Howdy, y’all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So hey, I just got back from Tennessee. How do y’all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sweet? Are you gonna say that now like that’s you know how like you ever know those people in your life that like they go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to you Know say England or something like some some country and then they come back and they have kind of a half
⏹️ ▶️ Marco accent like forever after That point
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I gotta tell you the lift at the hotel was extremely slow You’re gonna break
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John I know John is
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna say howdy in Tennessee, is that a howdy state?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t even know to be honest with you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Texas seems like a howdy state. It’s definitely a y’all state.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, I’m in a y’all state, so who am I to really throw stones on that issue? So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco honestly, I kind of wish I was in a y’all state because it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like the second person plural is extremely useful and the rest of English doesn’t really, you know, we just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have you and you. I
⏹️ ▶️ John think y’all is spreading. I think I need to see a y’all map. I think it’s spreading. I don’t think it’s South only anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ John I hear it a lot around here. I used it myself a lot at work. I heard it a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey at work in my
⏹️ ▶️ John jobby jobs. Yeah. I cannot fathom. Like unironically, not trying to do, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John just, I think it’s not common, but I think it’s spreading.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am here for you. Mr. John Syracuse was saying y’all, like that warms
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m sure I have. I’m sure I have said it on the show. And I bet you two didn’t even bat an eye at
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey it. Well, I certainly wouldn’t. So used to hearing
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t say it with a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Southern accent. I just,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Fair. I think you’re required to say it with a little bit of a Southern accent though. Like when you, like, I feel like, I mean, the service it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco provides is wonderful. And I thank the South for this because like, you know, as, as we have become a little bit more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco aware of inclusion and things like that, you know, trying to get rid of gendered phrases like guys, you know, to refer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to just general people, hey guys, you know, like we’re trying to drop that and replace it with something more neutral.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you see like what options exist in the language. And there’s not a lot of good options out there. You know, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like some politicians have used like folks, you know, hey
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John folks, you know. I like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one myself too. I think it’s great. I don’t like that one so much. It’s very folksy. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s fine sometimes, but that’s not always appropriate. But I feel like if you’re in a y’all region,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco y’all is pretty much always usable. Like there’s not really any context in which it would feel weird or impart
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any additional meaning that you wouldn’t intend the way folks kind of does. So I feel like y’all is a far superior
⏹️ ▶️ John Wait, what unintended meaning does folks imply? Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s kind of folksy.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, it’s fine. It just means people. It’s just a shorter version for people. There’s, I don’t think there’s anything
⏹️ ▶️ John implied about folks.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I think you’re reading a little too much into that. In fact, if anything, and I am a staunch defender of y’all, but I think y’all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reads more or sounds more folksy than folks. I don’t know if I would have made an argument.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Nevertheless, here we are. So yeah, so I went to Memphis. I got to tell you, there’s clearly no motor vehicle safety inspection
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in Tennessee, because every darn car that I was in or near had a shattered windshield. But be that as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it may, it was very nice. I had a very good time. I went and I saw
⏹️ ▶️ Casey our mutual friends, Stephen Hackett, who, of course, lives in Memphis, but was also hosting in more ways than one, which we’ll get to in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a second. I saw Jason Snell, Kathy Campbell, a couple of the Discord mods, Micah Sargent,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so many people that I saw, and it was so great to see them because I hadn’t seen any of them since 2019. And so now
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve been whittling down the list of people I haven’t seen. You know, Marco and I saw each other in November, I believe it was,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then Mike I saw in March, if I’m not mistaken. Now I’ve seen this group.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Still haven’t seen John. Mm-hmm, looking
⏹️ ▶️ John right at John. Object permanence. Even when you don’t see me, I still exist.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey In any case, I was down in Memphis because it is not September. However, we are getting prepped for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey September because if you are a long-time or even a mildly long-time ATP listener, you’ll know that September is Childhood
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Cancer Awareness Month, and we spend a lot of time and energy raising money for St. Jude Children’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Research Hospital. So St. Jude was doing their Play Live Plus Creators
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Summit, which I guess was born from a a video game only
⏹️ ▶️ Casey crowd, like Twitch streamers and whatnot, and they would come in every year. I guess I’ve been doing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this for a handful of years. And they would come in and learn about St. Jude if they’d never been there, and talk
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to other creators about how you can be more effective at raising money for St. Jude and so on and so forth. And it was really lovely. But it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very, very weird because I’m used to being an outcast for being a total
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dork. But in this case, I was an outcast because I wasn’t the right kind of dork.
⏹️ ▶️ John around me. I don’t know. See, I was gonna say like, so they, this is a thing where they read together with like Twitch streamers and stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it sounds like this year they decided to expand it out into much less cool dorks.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, no, no, it was actually both less cool and more cool dorks because there were definitely some like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fashion influencers and whatnot. Cooler, definitely cooler.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fitness, I couldn’t think of the word for a second. There are fitness people, cooler, then the gamer people who were
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kind of de facto cool because there were so many of them. And then me and our crowd.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then some podcasters. Yeah, and then a handful of podcasters. But it was very, nobody made me feel like an outsider deliberately.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But it’s funny because everyone kind of traded on, you know, what do you stream as in what video
⏹️ ▶️ Casey games do you stream? And that I had no good answer for that. And it’s again, nobody was trying to be rude
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or unkind or anything like that or dismissive. It’s just, you know, that’s what they were used to. But
⏹️ ▶️ John So what did you say when they said, what do you stream? What did you say?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I actually don’t. I am actually a podcaster and I’m part of a group that raises a whole pile of money.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pretty much, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’re like, oh, what’s your YouTube channel?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, right, exactly. No, not quite that bad, but that’s a fair guess. But yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so we went and we learned a little more about St. Jude and I got to take a tour of the campus.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And let me tell you, I know that, I think I speak for all three of us, but I certainly speak for myself in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey saying I was pretty in the bag for St. Jude anyway, even before this trip, and holy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey crap-a-moley, I am so in the bag for St. Jude right now, it’s ridiculous, because the stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Casey these people do is incredible. And I mean, admittedly, this is a conference or whatever put on by
⏹️ ▶️ Casey St. Jude to make you excited about St. Jude, so I am considering the source. However, they brought
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up several different people, both employees and patients and everyone in between, that said some flavor
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the story of, yeah, either myself or my spouse or my my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey son or daughter, my cousin or what have you, had an extraordinarily weird
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and probably uncurable illness. I was told by my doctors,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have a 10% chance to live. Then somebody had the idea, ooh, let’s call St. Jude and see what happens. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey within hours, I had plane tickets to Memphis and within days I was getting treated. And there were many
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of these stories. It’s unreal what they do there. It’s just incredible. And they were
⏹️ ▶️ Casey talking about the family commons, which I think we talked about during September last year, but basically they took an entire
⏹️ ▶️ Casey floor of the hospital and said, here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna not do hospital things here. We’re gonna have a salon. We’re gonna have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a place where you can get your nails done. We’re gonna have classrooms. We’re gonna have maker space. They told a story
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of a young girl that was terminal. She knew she was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going to pass and she decided to make an album for her family to listen to after she passed away.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Like I basically cried for three straight days. It was nuts. So I know it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not September. I know we’re not quite ready to start to try to guilt you into giving us all, well, not us, giving them all of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your money. But let’s just say I am so prepared to triple down
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on giving St. Jude as much of your hard-earned money as we possibly can, because they really do just incredible,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey incredible work there. And it’s so incredibly moving, the work that they do. And I put a blog
⏹️ ▶️ Casey post up about this. We’ll link it in the show notes. But there’s a pavilion of some sort,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think that’s what they call it, on campus, where the founders are actually interred. but it’s also kind of like a history of St.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Jude. And they had this easel sort of thing up, and it says, what inspires you? And they had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a bunch of Post-it notes, were pre-printed on the Post-it notes, was, I went to St. Jude and was inspired by.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I was killing some time, so I was looking around at some of these answers, and a lot of them are just really adorable and cute and whatever. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one of them, and I have pictures of both of these on this blog post, one of them reads, it’s clearly in the handwriting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of a child, the fact, I went to St. Jude, I was inspired by, the fact that I will make
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it with a heart below it. Like, holy balls, I mean, jeezy peasy. Then the next
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one, I went to St. Jude and was inspired by the lives they saved, including mine. I mean, how can you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not be excited about this organization? So this was a part of the reason, a large part of the reason I was there
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is because in September, we’re gonna have a weird recording schedule because I will be at St. Jude for the Relay FM Podcastathon,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is 12 hours of nonstop shenanigans. I don’t even know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how to describe it. If you’ve not tuned in, you really should. even if I don’t end up going for some strange
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reason, you should tune in because it’s incredible. And this organization, it really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey does phenomenal, incredible, important, life-changing, life-saving
⏹️ ▶️ Casey work. And I’m so proud that the three of us have done so much to raise money
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for them. I’m so proud to be associated with Relay, who has done so, so much to raise money
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for them. It’s just such an incredible, incredible place. And there’s also a really good barbecue right nearby,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is a nice bonus.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco That always helps. Yeah, that always
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, I had a lot of fun in Memphis. We went to the Pyramid, which is a Bass Pro Shops, which you two northerners know nothing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about. And we also had some barbecue and we got to visit the Pod Cabin. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I took a picture with my cardboard cutout from the last podcast-a-thon. If you don’t know what I’m talking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about, well, you know, you should find out. Watch the podcast-a-thon in September. But it was a really good time. Stephen was a great host and we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had a ton of fun and I’m so excited to go back in September and try to raise a whole pile of money for St. Jude.
Non-dimming HomeKit lights
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s start with some follow-up. And pretty much the whole
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the internet wrote to tell us about this tip, which I had known, but in the heat of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey moment, I didn’t think of it at all. And so I failed you, John. But friend of the show, Dan Sturm has come through
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and told us there is a way to toggle a dimmable light in the home app
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and in HomeKit. John, what’s the story here?
⏹️ ▶️ John Secret is you have to tap the icon on the button, not
⏹️ ▶️ John the whole rest of the button, which includes the text and a bunch of other area. Couple people wrote
⏹️ ▶️ John in with the idea that this used to be reversed. And it used to be if you tapped anywhere
⏹️ ▶️ John but the icon, it would toggle the light on and off. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John I tested it and it does indeed work. I was complaining that every time I go to control center or tap the home
⏹️ ▶️ John icon and try to mess with my light type, it brings up the dimmer. And someone sent me a video and they said, it doesn’t bring up the dimmer for
⏹️ ▶️ John me, it turns my light on and off. It’s a dimmable light, but when I tap it, it turns on and it turns off completely.
⏹️ ▶️ John and I just, I did it on my phone. I’m like, nope, brings up a dimmer for me. And we never would
⏹️ ▶️ John have figured this out until hundreds of people said,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco yes, you have to tap
⏹️ ▶️ John specifically on the icon. These are very big buttons. They’re very big touch targets. And I guess I just
⏹️ ▶️ John always tap on the, you know, three quarters of the button that is not the icon. Maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s because I’m using my thumb and I’m coming from the right side because I’m using my right hand. But yeah, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John some slightly undiscoverable UI, but it is good to know. It’s not like the icon is small. Now that I know it, I think
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll be able to aim for it. I kinda wish it was reversed, or I still kinda wish you could just say, just make the whole button
⏹️ ▶️ John talk, light on and off. But there you have it. The icon does something different than the whole rest
Cellular AT commands
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pedro Fernandez has some information about the Hays AT command set. Was this born
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out of the member special? Is that right? Is that where this started? Or was that on the main
⏹️ ▶️ Marco assume so, yeah. Because we were talking about, like, you know, me getting all these old slow modems slowly over time and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still remembering all the AT commands.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So Pedro writes, AT commands are far from being a thing of the past. Oh, no. If you do any kind of development
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with 4G or 5G connectivity data modules or modems, you talk to them with AT commands.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ATA, ANSR, ATD, DIAL are all still alive. And yes, they remain a pain.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve worked on hundreds of systems and they all require a routine quote-unquote cron reboot to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey make sure that they keep answering those AT commands. Sounds great. Yeah, you don’t want to drive 300 miles to unfreeze a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 4G or 5G data module. Yeah, that that sounds right.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s amazing that our modern technology and our modern phone systems, things like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey They really shouldn’t. They really, really shouldn’t. But, you know, here we are.
TSMC 1.6 nm in 2026
⏹️ ▶️ Casey TSMC has unveiled advanced 1.6 nanometer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey process for 2026 chips. Do we eventually get to zero? Is that how this works? Because holy jemari.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, as we’ve discussed before, Moore’s law does end because at a certain point you can’t make things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I mean, to be fair, like when I was growing up, I believe these are measured in micrometers. So the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco unit has just changed to the next smaller unit. I mean, you’re right. Eventually, you know, we can’t make them smaller because we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco run into problems of like physics. But we are not there yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This was from MacRumors from just a few days ago. TSMC yesterday, on April 24th,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey unveiled a series of technologies, including the quote-unquote A16 process, which is a 1.6 nanometer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey node. The A16 technology, which TSMC plans to begin producing in 2026, incorporates
⏹️ ▶️ Casey innovative nanosheet transistors, along with novel backside power rail solution.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This development is expected to provide an 8 to 10 percent increase in speed and 15 to 20% reduction in power consumption
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at the same speeds compared with TSMC’s N2P process alongside
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a 1.07 to 1.1X chip density improvement. I put
⏹️ ▶️ John this story in here for two reasons. One, I had just been discussing on Mastodon, someone had mentioned TSMC’s
⏹️ ▶️ John backside power thing, and I’m like, I thought that was an Intel thing. We think we talked about it on our show a while ago where Intel
⏹️ ▶️ John has the technology to send power through the bottom of the chip instead of the top, because if you send it through the top,
⏹️ ▶️ John You got to like wiggle it around all the logic to get it to the power spots where if you send it from the bottom It’s a more
⏹️ ▶️ John direct route and you don’t have to do that complicated weaving through all the logic that you put in the chip
⏹️ ▶️ John So that’s interesting. This is confirming the TSMC does have a backside power solution, which is good and the second
⏹️ ▶️ John reason is they’re calling it a 16 as if we didn’t have enough problems
⏹️ ▶️ John with max powered by the m3 max And and keeping
⏹️ ▶️ John track of the fact that the a5 was the first a series chip but it was not in the iPhone 5.
⏹️ ▶️ John Now they’re gonna call the process A16. We are doomed on this show. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John they need to come up with new names for things. This is gonna be the A19
⏹️ ▶️ John chip made on the A16 process. Oh my God. And the
⏹️ ▶️ John M5 chip is not based on the A17 cores. It’s based on A19 cores using the A16 process. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing we’re going to season of iOS 18, which is also watchOS 11, which is also visionOS 2.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And what are we at, macOS now? I’ve forgotten already.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, with all the ridiculousness of like N2B and N2E and N2P, at least it was different than
⏹️ ▶️ John the chips. Oh, God.
Sponsor: Trade Coffee
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are brought to you this episode by Trade Coffee. Trade Coffee believes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anyone can make great coffee at home. All you need is access to the best beans,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco roasted to order, and curated for your personal taste, which is exactly what Trade provides.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks to their in-house team of coffee experts, over 50 small batch specialty coffee partners, and over 450
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rotating roasts available. So, Trade is amazing. I’ve used Trade myself.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve gotten lots of great coffee from them, And really, you don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have to tell them much. Like you kind of give them some guidelines on what you like and then you just let them do their thing and you just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get a wonderful variety of coffee sent to you however you need it, whether it’s weekly, every other week,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco however much you need, whether you need it whole bean or ground, whatever you need. And of course, like, you know, if you have too much, if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going on vacation, you can pause it, you can suspend it, you can delay it, you can adjust things whenever you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like. So it’s super easy. It’ll adapt to your schedule very, very easily, no hassle. And the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco coffee you get from Trade is super freshly roasted, which is key to making great coffee. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve had some amazing coffees from there. Their hit rate is really good for me. And again, I had to tell
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them almost nothing and they just send me new stuff every week or two and it’s just amazing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So from dark roast to decafs, espressos to cold brew, you can discover the best coffee
⏹️ ▶️ Marco suited to your taste. It’s also a great gift. You know, graduations are coming up soon, Father’s Day, summer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco birthday is like mine coming up. So it’s not too early to begin thinking about perfect gifts you really can’t go wrong with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco better coffee. Great gift. Love it. So give Trade a try for a month and see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how you can make better coffee at home. Right now, they’re offering 30% off your first month of coffee
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you visit drinktrade.com slash ATP. That’s drinktrade.com
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slash ATP for 30% off a month of coffee. Drinktrade.com
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slash ATP. Thank you so much Thanks to Trade Coffee for sponsoring our show.
Rabbit R1 reviews
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Rabbit R1 Reviews! This is the thing made by, or excuse me, designed by Teenage Engineering,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey made by the company Rabbit. The reviews are in and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yikes, not looking too good. So John, you collected a trio of different
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reviews. We’ve got Stephen Robles on YouTube, MKBHD on YouTube. We’ve got the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Verge via blog post about it. It’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey looking good, y’all. There it is, y’all. It’s not looking good. All
⏹️ ▶️ John right, so the CM Robles video is good because it shows you all the functionality and how poorly it works.
⏹️ ▶️ John The MKBHD one is just a straight review, as you would expect. The MKBHD’s title is barely
⏹️ ▶️ John reviewable. The Verge title is a fun, funky, unfinished AI gadget.
⏹️ ▶️ John I recall when we talked about the Rabid R1 originally, everything was framed
⏹️ ▶️ John as, if this works, it’s a really good idea. I think at some point, one of us even said, if this works, which it won’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, in all fairness, I’m pretty sure I was always of the don’t bet against the smartphone opinion.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but it’s even setting that aside, just like the whole idea, like what they’re trying to do is clever,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it doesn’t seem like they’re gonna be able to do it. Now, the first version, and when I say it doesn’t seem like it’d be able to do it, Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John will it do the things they say it will do? And the answer right now is no, it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John do. It tries to, it tries to do like, for example, you speak to it and it can order something
⏹️ ▶️ John from DoorDash, but does it order something from DoorDash? Pretty much no, like watch the Stephen
⏹️ ▶️ John Robley video. Like, no, he could not make it do the thing. And he’s had some follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ John videos where it’s slightly more success, but it takes so long. That’s setting aside everything having
⏹️ ▶️ John to do with like, you know, whether this is should be a phone or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s because it’s a small company, it’s a new product, it’s new technology, it’s trying to
⏹️ ▶️ John do new things, which is like, you know, automating the function, automating the use of a UI
⏹️ ▶️ John made for humans, but having a computer do it in response to your voice, right? It’s a very
⏹️ ▶️ John clever solution to the problem that a startup like this doesn’t have its own large language model, can’t do
⏹️ ▶️ John deals with DoorDash, they have to go around it. It’s very good idea. execution
⏹️ ▶️ John is not good, even within the constraints of the idea that they had, which
⏹️ ▶️ John is a shame, but you know, hey, it’s 200 bucks, which is a third of the price of the humane
⏹️ ▶️ John pin, and the company seems like a lot more fun. And this is just version one. And if they survive long enough,
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe there’ll be a version two and a version three and they’ll fix their bugs. So I even though
⏹️ ▶️ John it seems like you’d put this and the humane pin in the same bucket of like, oh, they had this idea of the thing you’re going to talk to it, it’s going
⏹️ ▶️ John to do stuff for you and both of them didn’t quite work. I have kinder feelings
⏹️ ▶️ John for the Rabbit R1 because it’s cuter, cheaper, and has a better idea, but
⏹️ ▶️ John neither one of them seems like it’s really doing what you want it to do.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, ultimately, I don’t think either of them is a good idea, and I think I’ve been pretty consistent on this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco These are ideas that we, as gadget people and as tech people, we want things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like this to succeed. We want them to be good, but ultimately, which I think we’ll get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to in a second, but ultimately, the phone is just going to slaughter all these things. And what we ultimately want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is for our phones to just do these things. That’s what we want. We don’t want to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buy and carry and charge and maintain and pay for plans
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for another device. We just want our phones to do this. And there is really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no technical hardware reason why our phones can’t do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this. It isn’t like we need custom hardware to have these kind of AI things.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, we already have it in our phones and maybe our watches too. Like that’s where you want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this functionality. You want it in the devices we already have that we have already bought
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that are already extremely advanced with their hardware. They’re cellular connected,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they have amazing processors, they have amazing cameras, they have touch screens that are super easy to navigate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff on when you do need to look at something or watch or look at controls or whatever. They’re already integrated with all of your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco contacts and everything like that, all the other apps you might wanna use in the process. Ultimately
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what we want is that. We want this on our phones. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably over the next month and about seven days, we’re probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gonna see both major smartphone platform vendors unveil
⏹️ ▶️ Marco exactly that. Like I fully expect Google I O and WWDC to give
⏹️ ▶️ Marco us all sorts of promise about things that Android and iPhones will be able to do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the very near future that will make us very rapidly stop talking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about this being separate hardware categories. Because ultimately this is not destined to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco separate hardware categories. This is all destined to just be part of our phones.
⏹️ ▶️ John The reason we’re talking about on this show and the reason these products exist is connected, unfortunately
⏹️ ▶️ John for the people who don’t like this topic, to the whole EU, DMA, DOJ, everything.
⏹️ ▶️ John because the reason these things are standalone devices is they have to be. They have to be and
⏹️ ▶️ John they also, they wanna be and they have to be. They wanna be in that like, look, if you’re trying to, if you wanna be the next
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple, making an app for the iPhone is not the way to be the next Apple. So if you have ambitions,
⏹️ ▶️ John like we’re gonna make the next great platform and we see an opportunity here where the big players haven’t jumped on AI
⏹️ ▶️ John and we think this is a way that we can get in. So let’s imagine this device really did work magically well
⏹️ ▶️ John and somehow only Rabbit or only Humane had the secret sauce to make it work and they had a couple of year headstart on
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple and they’re like, if we can get big and we can get going, yes, we’re at a big disadvantage, but like maybe we’ll outrun
⏹️ ▶️ John them or whatever. Obviously that has not happened, right? So they wanna be their own, but also they have to be their
⏹️ ▶️ John own because to make anything like this, and I think there is some reason to have separate hardware,
⏹️ ▶️ John as in like a thing with a camera that you pin to your lapel or whatever, is that the integration they
⏹️ ▶️ John need with the phone platforms, they tend not to be able to get. Certainly with Apple, I’m not sure with Android, but like, for
⏹️ ▶️ John example, you can’t replace Siri on the iPhone. So if your ambition is to be a much better Siri, but replace
⏹️ ▶️ John Siri on the phone, that would be great. Everyone’s got the phones, we’re charging them, they’re incredibly powerful, someone else runs the platform, you don’t have to
⏹️ ▶️ John do it. But oh, Apple doesn’t let you replace Siri, do they? And they don’t let you integrate with their phone
⏹️ ▶️ John so tightly that you, how, like, is that, it’s almost like Apple doesn’t let its own watch integrate that well with it, because there’s so
⏹️ ▶️ John much connectivity issues between the watches and phones, it’s gotten better over time, but still. So there
⏹️ ▶️ John was a story in 9to5Mac that said, AI hardware is like trying to invent the iPod after the iPhone.
⏹️ ▶️ John in the whole story, not once did they mention the fact that these companies are forced to do this because
⏹️ ▶️ John the people who own the platforms are not interested in allowing a third party to essentially be
⏹️ ▶️ John a peripheral to the phone. And that’s what we want. Like with these devices, you know, AirPods are a great example. They
⏹️ ▶️ John are a peripheral to the phone. Imagine if AirPods tried to be a standalone device with a little computer. I mean, they do have little computers,
⏹️ ▶️ John but like a standalone device with its own OS doing everything all on itself, right? Connecting to cellular
⏹️ ▶️ John and wifi, and just like they didn’t connect to the phone at all, right? these companies are doing, you’re like, why would you do that?
⏹️ ▶️ John We have phones and they have amazing computing power. And it’s like, yeah, but I can’t integrate with them in the way I need to
⏹️ ▶️ John write. So air pods are great. But imagine something with like a camera or a lapel or a microphone, like
⏹️ ▶️ John auxiliary hardware, a peripheral for your phone, a thing that you don’t have to take out of your pocket,
⏹️ ▶️ John but of course, uses your phone to do all the stuff. That’s what these products want to be,
⏹️ ▶️ John but can’t be. So the fact that these companies are trying to do things that we think are there. The
⏹️ ▶️ John reason they’re technically clever because they’re working around a unfortunate business situation, which
⏹️ ▶️ John is they can’t be the products they want to be. But every time one of these products gets funded, tries to do this
⏹️ ▶️ John and fails, and we look at it and say, that’s a clever way to try to work around a sort
⏹️ ▶️ John of unfair market. That is reinforcement to all of these court cases
⏹️ ▶️ John and regulations or whatever saying this is not a competitive market where innovation
⏹️ ▶️ John can flourish. Because is basically we have to sit back and wait until Google and Apple decide
⏹️ ▶️ John that they’re going to do something. And at WWDC, Apple will do something, and Google already is doing things. But like, we don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John wanna have to wait for these two companies to decide what kind of things they wanna do. People
⏹️ ▶️ John have other ideas, and they would like to do them, but asking them to say, to do that, you have to start
⏹️ ▶️ John from zero, build your own platform, your own everything, be completely independent of the phone, because
⏹️ ▶️ John the phone companies are never, not the phone companies, you know what I mean, are never gonna give you the integration you need.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s why this is mostly a story about the sort of awkward shape of the market.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you know, people are cleverly trying to get around it. And it’s not like they’re all doomed to failure. Again, if AI
⏹️ ▶️ John was better than it was, and one of these companies really hit it out of the park, there is a couple years of runway before these big companies
⏹️ ▶️ John try to buy you where you could get out ahead and start doing something like what do we see recently
⏹️ ▶️ John with maybe you could say maybe the Pebble watch got a little traction before the Apple watch squished it. Every once in a while, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like something that pops out that gets out ahead of one of the big tech giants before the tech giants wake up and smush it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Uh, in this case they don’t, they kind of self smushed, but I, I give them points
⏹️ ▶️ John for trying and especially rabbit. I give a lot of points for coming up with a low
⏹️ ▶️ John cost, clever attempt to work around the giants. But yeah, this is not what we want.
⏹️ ▶️ John We want our AirPods to let us yell things into the air. We want a little tiny
⏹️ ▶️ John lapel microphone or camera to see everything around us and explain everything and we want a pair of glasses
⏹️ ▶️ John to put name tags over people’s heads. We’re not quite there yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There are a couple of interesting things about this. First of all, I thought it was very, very well done. I think this was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mentioned in the 9to5Mac link that Dave2D, who’s a YouTuber,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I put together a clip of this that I’ll put in the show notes, but is looking at the the rabbit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and says, well, you know, he does a much better version than me, but you know, well, what if we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey took this, like, the push to talk button and moved it to the other side and actually, let’s make them volume
⏹️ ▶️ Casey buttons and then we can do like the push to talk button maybe somewhere else. We can put the camera on the back. Now we’ve got a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey lot more space for the screen. Oh, look, we’ve made a phone. Like, you know, just by making the things, and this is coming
⏹️ ▶️ Casey back to what you were saying, Marco, like by making the thing work better for the thing it’s trying to accomplish, you’ve just reinvented
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, and the Rabbit does run Android and people have discovered that basically the thing it’s running is essentially
⏹️ ▶️ John an Android app that you can take, you can rip off of the rabbit and put it on an Android phone and run it there. I love
⏹️ ▶️ John that this is like a big story. Like, of course that’s what it is. Like that’s- Yeah, like, wait, did you think they wrote their own operating system, like the Playdate?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I mean, yeah, that’s fairly unusual. And like so much of, you know, modern
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hardware devices, like my scanner is just an Android app. And
⏹️ ▶️ John Android, of course, is just Linux. And the language it’s running is just Java.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, like there’s a whole bunch of hardware out there that is quote, just an Android app running
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on some kind of commodity Android tablet kind of guts, and it just so happens, oh, here’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a scanner with a touch screen. Like, well, what do you think is powering
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of times it’s Android. It’s fine. Like, people made a big deal out of this. Oh my God, it’s just an app. Like, yeah, of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco course, that’s not a story. The story is this device can’t compete with smartphones. That’s the story.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and the thing is, like, you say, why didn’t you just make a phone? Oh, well, making
⏹️ ▶️ John a phone, first off, you just made another Android phone, great. Now you’re just another Android phone vendor. That’s a tough business. It’s competitive,
⏹️ ▶️ John making a good Android phone is not an easy thing to do. And second, they didn’t want to just make an Android
⏹️ ▶️ John phone. They want it to be like the next big thing. And that’s why they’re taking a stab in this
⏹️ ▶️ John direction. Now, I don’t know what the integration situation is like on Android. Can you replace like the Google Assistant
⏹️ ▶️ John on like Google or Samsung branded Android phones or any of the Android phones that matter? How open
⏹️ ▶️ John is it to you integrating to sort of have an always reliable, always connected
⏹️ ▶️ John type of high speed, low latency connection between a peripheral and the thing, you know, more than just Bluetooth,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? I don’t know what that situation is like, but obviously none of these companies were interested in
⏹️ ▶️ John going that route. They tried to be as standalone as they could possibly be, and
⏹️ ▶️ John being standalone is a tough gig. That’s kind of the other thing that Rabbit did, and Humane for that matter, no apps. Why no
⏹️ ▶️ John apps? Do you wanna try to run a platform? Do you know what it’s involved with trying to run a platform and vending APIs
⏹️ ▶️ John and tools? And like, that’s insane. Like, there have been very few successful computing platforms
⏹️ ▶️ John in our entire lives. You can like count them on like fingers and toes, right? There’s not that many of them.
⏹️ ▶️ John Running one successfully is incredibly hard. So these things were like, we’re not even going to try to do that. We’re just going to like be an appliance,
⏹️ ▶️ John a magical appliance through the use of AI. Maybe we can be independent. And unfortunately the magic they relied
⏹️ ▶️ John on were LLMs that are not up to this job, which is a shame.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The other thing I thought was fascinating about this was watching the reactions from
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the press, from my own like gut reaction. When we don’t need to belabor this,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but you know, the humane people, we’re talking about how they’re, you know, God’s gift to software and hardware
⏹️ ▶️ Casey development and how, Oh, we’re the best. We’re the best. We’re revolutionizing. We’re destroying the smartphone. Look at us and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how smart we are and our color ways and this and that. And everyone pooped all over them because they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey deserved it. With this, the reaction I’ve seen is yeah, it’s kind of trash,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but man, it’s cute and it’s fun and it’s cheap. So who cares? And it’s just so funny
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to me that an ounce of humility, it really does go a long way. And when you’re not trying to convince
⏹️ ▶️ Casey everyone that you’re the second coming, it turns out people are more receptive to even when things aren’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey perfect. Although I will say the Jesse fellows seem to be kicking rocks in Humane’s direction an awful lot lately.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I still think the broader point is fair that maybe just don’t be a jerk and things will
⏹️ ▶️ Casey work out a little better for you.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and the Rabbit was just so much more pragmatic. It’s such a cheaper device. The hardware is cute, but also
⏹️ ▶️ John cheap, right? their business model of trying to work around the big companies. I don’t know, people are like, $200, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not cheap, compared to 600 it is. Like, if you’re gonna blow $200 on something that doesn’t work, it feels much better
⏹️ ▶️ John than blowing 600 on it. I mean, they put a screen on it, another example. They’re like, well, let’s just, how about we have a screen?
⏹️ ▶️ John How about that? Instead of like a laser projector, right? Simpler, cheaper, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John it just, it shows more pragmatic choices, but in the end, like, they’re, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re doomed to failure, but like, it just, It’s a tough gig coming out with a product like
⏹️ ▶️ John that with so much attention on you for a 1.0. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it doesn’t. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I think both of them, I’m gonna say they don’t work spectacular failures, but
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s pretty big failure when it’s not like, oh, it’s a little slow or it’s a little clunky, it’s a little buggy. Both of them
⏹️ ▶️ John have cases where they just simply do not do what the product is supposed to do, and that is
⏹️ ▶️ John not really shippable. But they both ship, so there you have it.
Delta availability
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, moving along. Riley Tested has some feedback and information, not specifically
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to us, but just general feedback with regard to Delta availability. So a toot from Riley,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey getting some questions about Delta availability. I hope this clarifies things. Delta is exclusive to AltStore
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the EU. Because of Apple’s new developer terms, all downloads in the EU cost us 50 euro
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cents a year in AltStore PAL and the App Store. So we we couldn’t offer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Delta in the EU app stores without making it paid. App Store only supports one-time paid
⏹️ ▶️ Casey upfront apps, so we’d have to pick a price that could support years of the core
⏹️ ▶️ Casey technology fee. AltStore PALS, one dollar or one euro, excuse me, and 50 cent cost
⏹️ ▶️ Casey covers Delta’s core technology fee. And they would choose to make everything
⏹️ ▶️ Casey free everywhere if it wasn’t for the core technology fee. So, I mean, you made
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this bad EU, so now you got to sleep in it.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s more like Apple made the bed Why is it exclusive to the Altstar in the EU because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I mean it’s I think a little calm a little calm be but you’re you’re more right than wrong. I’m
iPadOS also a “gatekeeper”
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Moving along, iPad OS has been identified as a quote unquote digital gatekeeper
⏹️ ▶️ Casey under the new EU tech rules. So picking some snippets from Mac rumors,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey last September, the European Commission designated Apple as a gatekeeper for its iOS iPhone operating system, its web
⏹️ ▶️ Casey browser Safari, and its app store. On the same day, the commission opened a market investigation to whether iPad OS constitutes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an important gateway for business users to reach end users in order to determine if it should be designated as a gatekeeper.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The investigation is now closed according to an EC Press released shared on Monday, the commission’s investigation found that Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey presents the features of a gatekeeper in relation to iPadOS for the following reasons. Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey number one, Apple’s business user numbers exceeded the quantitative threshold 11 fold, while its end user numbers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey were close to the threshold and predicted to rise in the near future. Number two, end users are locked
⏹️ ▶️ Casey into iPadOS. Apple leverages its large ecosystem to disincentivize end users from
⏹️ ▶️ Casey switching to other operating systems for tablets. And number three, business users are locked into iPadOS because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of its large in commercially attractive user base and its importance for certain use cases, such as gaming apps.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Commission has now given Apple a six month deadline to fully comply with the obligations set by the DMCA, excuse me, the DMA,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which means we should expect enforced changes in iOS and iPadOS like alternative app stores,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey web distribution, and alternative browsers. And that should all come to iPadOS as well in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a forthcoming update. I think this makes sense.
⏹️ ▶️ John I like how the reasons are like, well, we have a bunch of criteria. I bet almost meets them, but whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s the same thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I mean, like, I don’t, I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t, I don’t see why they need to like justify it or have some kind of rules. Like it’s kind of weird that iPadOS
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t get folded in to begin with, but they went through this little dance to say, you know what? Yep. iPadOS
⏹️ ▶️ John too. And, you know, arguably potentially one of many
⏹️ ▶️ John possible motivations for Apple renaming, you know, iPadOS to be its own OS was
⏹️ ▶️ John to try to make it distinct in all legal circumstances or whatever. But the thing is
⏹️ ▶️ John the EC can do whatever the hell they want. this is what they want to do. So and it just honestly, it makes it simpler.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because I have time always forgetting. Oh, yeah. There’s no alternative marketplaces
⏹️ ▶️ John on iPadOS. But now there will be and it’s more consistent for Apple. It’s more consistent for users. It just makes more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yep, I mean, this this this is good. This is good. Good work you
No new Vision Pro until 2026
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mark Gurman writes, no Apple Vision 2 launch planned before the end of 2026. So no FOMO
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for… Well, I was gonna say Mark and me, but I guess just me. Until
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the end of 2026. From MacRumors again, Gurman says that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple’s latest Vision Pro roadmap, quote, doesn’t currently call for a second generation model until
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the end of 2026. Quote, in February of 2024, he said that the device was at least 18
⏹️ ▶️ Casey months away. According to Gurman’s sources, still trying to figure out a way to bring a cheaper version of market before then, although the company remains
⏹️ ▶️ Casey flummoxed by how exactly to bring down the cost. Uh, kind of tangentially related. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey recall if we said this on the show, but they did actually release the second episode of the,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uh, what is it? Encounter Dinosaurs or something like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Immersive video. Yeah. This was like a week or two ago actually. And I think it might’ve been right after we recorded last
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and because of our travel, it’s been a wonky recording schedule for us, but it has been released and it’s another
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like five minute thing and it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey did have somebody reach out on Mastodon and said, hey, I worked on this. And just so you know, it’s,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s, I was gonna say historically accurate. I guess that’s not the right term, turn a phrase. It’s scientifically accurate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey based on the understanding that we have today. So like things that should have feathers have feathers and colors
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are as best as we think they could be at the time. I won’t be able to dig up these toots to link to them. I’m sorry, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I did find that fascinating. But in terms of like a compelling cinematic experience,
⏹️ ▶️ John it was fine. Yeah, I guess that’s what this means. I mean, trying to waiting this long for a
⏹️ ▶️ John new model to come out like that’s, you know, really putting more cold water on top of the abolition pro market. But what
⏹️ ▶️ John it basically means is the parts in this that are expensive are not getting cheaper
⏹️ ▶️ John fast enough for Apple to come out with a substantially cheaper model sooner. It seems like and what
⏹️ ▶️ John I assume what that means is the screens, right? Because we know that the M series so sees
⏹️ ▶️ John the cost of those, you know, they’re not the the most expensive component in this thing anyway, and Apple has some control
⏹️ ▶️ John over that. And the aluminum and stuff, well that’s kind of the same. Yes, they could make it cheaper by dropping the screen,
⏹️ ▶️ John by dropping the front screen, but the screens that are in front of your eyeballs are not made by a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ John companies, are not in wide supply, and apparently are not going to get cheap
⏹️ ▶️ John enough, fast enough for Apple to come out with something sooner. So this is gonna be a long wait with the
⏹️ ▶️ John one, this is like, who would have predicted that the Apple, like the glasses,
⏹️ ▶️ John the goggles, the VR, whatever we were talking about, the headset, what we were talking about before this was released, that it will end
⏹️ ▶️ John up being essentially a HomePod-like product, where they release one and it sits there
⏹️ ▶️ John and people go, hmm, is Apple still doing this thing? Or, and
⏹️ ▶️ John so, it’s not a good comparison when people start thinking of your product the same way they think of the
⏹️ ▶️ John HomePod, the big HomePod that is. But if this is true and there’s not any other
⏹️ ▶️ John Vision Pro hardware until the end of 2026, that’s HomePod vibes. No.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think that’s, you know, people are making a big deal out of that news. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think that’s that surprising. I think the bigger surprise for me with this launch is that Apple seems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be putting no wood behind the arrow. Like there’s just like no content besides one episode of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Dinosaurs, I guess, cool. But like what this product needs, yeah, it needs to be radically cheaper, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as you mentioned, some pretty critical inhibitions to making it cheaper that are going to stay that way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for probably at least like five years. Like, you know, we’re not close to making it cheaper,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at least a lot cheaper. Like, yeah, yeah, you know, you could make it a little bit cheaper with some of the cuts here and there, as you’re mentioning,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but like, it’s not going to be a mass market priced device for some time, if ever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So in the meantime, all right, how do you make what it is, this $3,500 plus
⏹️ ▶️ Marco device, how do you make that valuable to the people who will buy it, who
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can afford it? And that’s the part, that’s the surprise to me is that there doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seem to be a lot happening there yet. Like I would have assumed, since there really was no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, you know, competitive pressure to release this when they did, I would have assumed it would be more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like you mentioned the Playdate a little bit earlier, Casey. Panic launched the Playdate, they had like a whole
⏹️ ▶️ Marco year of games that were like planned and scheduled. Every week after
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was launched, a new game came out and they had all this content lined up and all these deals with developers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lined up and so they knew that yes we’re selling a brand new hardware platform
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with no installed base and no software library that will be there when we get there so we have to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco create that. So they did like and that was a great strategy It worked very well. I assumed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that Apple was releasing it when they were because they had plans
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to give it a real oomph kind of release. That seems to not have been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the case. Apple doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have panic money, you know.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Yeah, right.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, how many people does panic have? They’re such a big corporation with huge staff,
⏹️ ▶️ John incredibly well-resourced. You can’t really expect Apple to compete
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with them. Right, right. Exactly. So that’s what the Vision Pro means. Like what it needs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is reasons for the people who are willing to spend $3,500, which again,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s not going to be mass market for some time, but there is a market for high-end
⏹️ ▶️ Marco luxury electronics. Like those markets exist. They’re not massive, but they exist. Apple has served
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them in other ways before. There is a market there at the current price,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but even at the current price, Apple’s not really addressing the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco market in other non-price ways. And if they launched a brand new hardware
⏹️ ▶️ Marco revision, you know, in six months or a year, instead of this rumor of 2026 or whatever, like if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they launched one earlier, that’s not gonna change that. Like what’s holding it back right now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is mostly not the hardware. It’s the price, which won’t change for a long time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the ecosystem and the software just kind of not, like what’s the killer app? Where’s the killer content?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s what they need now. They don’t need more hardware releases. They need apps and content.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, they kind of need both. I mean, like I know one was kind of more important than the other, but like the reason I compared it to the HomePod
⏹️ ▶️ John is when people don’t see updates to a product year over year, especially for like three years in a row,
⏹️ ▶️ John they start to wonder about the company’s commitment and that’s really death for a new platform. And
⏹️ ▶️ John even though new hardware, like it’s, I mean, it’s not gonna be that different within a year or two, like the technology
⏹️ ▶️ John is not advancing that quickly, but it does show, oh, Apple’s still committed to this. They’ve made some, even if it’s just like
⏹️ ▶️ John physical changes, like we have a little bit better ideas for straps now that we’ve put these out in the field and we have a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ John better idea about fit, right? Even if it’s exactly the same screen, still an M2, like
⏹️ ▶️ John just minor revisions shows that the company is committed to the product. And no, that’s not gonna move the
⏹️ ▶️ John market, but it will make people feel a little bit more comfortable, especially if you’re a
⏹️ ▶️ John tech gadget fan that like Apple is committed to this. Obviously content also
⏹️ ▶️ John would do that to make you know that Apple’s committed to it. But if they just released content and everyone was loving
⏹️ ▶️ John it, three years in, they’d be like, okay, I love it so much, but they need to release more of this and they need to make a cheaper one because
⏹️ ▶️ John no one’s gonna buy this because it’s too expensive and I think it’s great, but there’s two things. There’s one, it does need to get better.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like at some point in some number of years, there should be a technically better version, but of course
⏹️ ▶️ John that will be equally expensive or even more expensive. And then there also needs to be a cheaper one. But right now it looks kind of like the original
⏹️ ▶️ John HomePod in multiple ways in that, like maybe there’ll be sitting in warehouses unsold
⏹️ ▶️ John like the big HomePods were. And then when Apple does come out with the new one, It’ll be like the HomePod mini, they’ll be like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know what, we just kind of decided that people actually just need a cheaper, worse one of these like
⏹️ ▶️ John the HomePod mini, and we’ll just stop making the big one. Oh, but we changed our mind, we’ll make the big one again, and here’s a better one. Like, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not a good path for instilling confidence. And the HomePod’s not even a platform. The
⏹️ ▶️ John HomePod is not a platform, it’s just a thing that people stick in their house. This is a platform, and so you need people
⏹️ ▶️ John to believe in it. You need developers to believe in it, you need users to believe in it, you need to have it show signs
⏹️ ▶️ John of life. And one of the ways you can show signs of life is don’t wait three years
⏹️ ▶️ John between changing the hardware at all. I mean, see also the Mac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right. And I mean, I think it’s really, it’s been extremely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey surprising for me. Like you were saying a moment ago, Marco, that there really hasn’t been much of a push
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for content. Like since the launch, what have we gotten? We’ve gotten the MLS thing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that everyone hated, including me. We’ve gotten the dinosaur, a second dinosaurs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey episode and that’s it, right? Like other than some, some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bug fixes and mild improvements to the OS and some legitimately pretty solid improvements
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to, um, as to his personas. Oh, and the addition of spatial personas, but even still like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s not that much. And you would think, and I think the play date is a just perfect, um,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey case study and how to do this right. You would think that they knew when this was going to come out and they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would have queued up a whole bunch of this content and it seems like they just didn’t.
⏹️ ▶️ John They didn’t even have Netflix and YouTube app. Talk about like a way to get content
⏹️ ▶️ John for quote unquote for free like, hey, Netflix has content, YouTube has content. It had to be third parties
⏹️ ▶️ John to like make these own kind of, you know, web kit enabled screen scraping
⏹️ ▶️ John clients to try to do something useful out of it. Yeah, it’s just, it’s not pretty good. Are we still I think we’re still waiting on those
⏹️ ▶️ John coming soon new environments, right? Oh, that’s true Yeah, yeah, I forgot about that. Is it gonna come out the end of 2026 to yeah
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fair Netflix and YouTube. Those are third parties There’s lots of reasons why
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s kind of out of Apple’s control Some of which are their fault, but but still like, you know, that’s not within
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their control directly They could have thrown more money at it They could have maybe I mean, but you know That’s that’s more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of like, you know a corporate politics thing Like I get that’s kind of a bigger picture problem for them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but there are things within Apple’s power to do that they seem to not have done yet. So for instance,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they do have content studios. They could be making more of this content. They could have made it in advance.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Certain deals they could make with other content providers, things like the sports leagues. I’m sure those are all like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in progress or in talks, but you need something there now for people to use this device
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with now. And then of course, other things that they could make themselves directly, like things like the environments
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we were saying. their own apps.
⏹️ ▶️ John Every Apple app that shipped as an iPad app on the Vision Pro is kind of like, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know this comes up occasionally whenever, when we, I want you to know out there audience, when we criticize
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple we get heat from you, from other Apple fans.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So we don’t criticize Apple, you know, unnecessarily or, you know, cavalierly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is just like, no matter how much we all want the Vision Pro to succeed because it is amazing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco technology, Like we all we all are rooting for this. We were rooting for this. We still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are rooting for this to succeed We want this to succeed But it just looks like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple is fumbling the ball so badly sorry for the sports analogy I’m not good with sports but like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it just looks like they’re they just were not prepared to have actually launched this and it almost seems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like We have more faith in the product than large parts of Apple do and and that’s concerning
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and and the problem is if If they don’t put a bunch of wood behind that arrow, no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one’s going to buy it and keep it and keep using it, and the platform will fail,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even though it’s an amazing piece of hardware. If the outcome that we want is for this product to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco succeed, we should be bugging Apple from the outside, be like, hey, you know you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gotta do something here, right? Like, you know this is not gonna fix itself. Like, the situation in the Vision
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pro right now, over time, this is not going to get better, unless
⏹️ ▶️ Marco changes are made. Like this isn’t something that will work itself out. It isn’t like, oh, we’re just right around the corner from a bunch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of apps being made for it. Like I keep seeing my Overcast usage graph go down
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the Vision Pro. It is now about 120 people. That’s not good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What I see is the slope going down, down, down, down, down. That does not tell me that I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as a developer should invest in this platform. What about content makers? What about Netflix? What about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco YouTube? they’re seeing the same graphs, I’m sure, of whatever data they have showing how many
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of their potential customers might be using this thing. And those graphs are also probably going down
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from a pretty low number to begin with. And so if you follow this out, what’s going to happen? How is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this gonna look six months from now? How’s this gonna look a year from now? If nothing changes significantly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s going to look very bad. It’s going to be just a continuation of this downward slope with almost no one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco left using it. something has to change in order to make that go up.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s not gonna come from the outside because the outside parties have no reason to do it. So it has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to come from Apple. Apple has to be the one to make that change.
⏹️ ▶️ John Another potentially helpful analogy is Apple TV for long time Apple fans. Remember what the Apple TV
⏹️ ▶️ John was when it was introduced as iTV, it was a Mac running a modified version
⏹️ ▶️ John of Tiger, a Mac OS 10, 10.4, and had a hard drive. and
⏹️ ▶️ John it was very different from what you see today. But it was essentially similar product,
⏹️ ▶️ John similar job, an Apple connected thing that you, you know, you connect to your television and it helps you watch TV.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it took a while for that platform to find whatever legs it has. There was a long time
⏹️ ▶️ John where Apple itself would refer to it as a hobby project to sort of undercut it and tamp down expectations.
⏹️ ▶️ John That is not how the Vision Pro was launched to say the least as a hobby product, right? But that
⏹️ ▶️ John did sort of give it, you know, they had to figure it out, Like what should this be a Mac? Should it run Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John OS 10? Should it have a hard drive? Like what is the right role for this product? You know, kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John like the HomePod, you know, what is the right shape of this product? Are we barking up the wrong tree? And
⏹️ ▶️ John the change from the original Apple TV slash iTV to the current one is
⏹️ ▶️ John big, but it shows that if the company is patient and is willing to plug away at it,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, the Apple TV took how many years to see any kind of success to even be good,
⏹️ ▶️ John but Apple didn’t give up on it. They just rethought, regrouped, tried a couple of times, made a couple of really
⏹️ ▶️ John bad remotes. It still has a lot of problems, but it is better than it was.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you don’t give up and you’re willing to keep putting money into it, and you do actually do occasional
⏹️ ▶️ John updates, you can make progress. But again, Apple TV as a platform, I think is
⏹️ ▶️ John not where Apple wants Vision Pro to be as a platform. And Apple TV was
⏹️ ▶️ John not launched for the same fanfare as Vision Pro. So there is definitely a mispatch between what Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John is saying about the Vision Pro and how much it costs and how they launched it and the actual,
⏹️ ▶️ John the reality of the product is a lot more like that original Apple TV or the big HomePod. but the
⏹️ ▶️ John launch is like it’s the iPhone and it’s not.
iPad Pro update imminent
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, it is time for the 2018 to 2022 iPad Pro exit interview.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I don’t know, Marco, this is kind of your baby. Do you have any opening statement? Do you want to start? Do you want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah. So, whenever we think that a new product
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or more recently OS version is about to be unveiled, like we’ll do one right before WWDC for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iOS 17, etc. I started doing this a few years ago on this show here, doing these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco exit interviews, because of course I have lots of experience with corporate America
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and managing people. And so I know how to conduct such things, obviously.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The iPad Pro is probably about to be replaced before or right on our next show.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The current iPad Pro technically came out in 2022, but it really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has not changed much since 2018. That was a major
⏹️ ▶️ Marco revision. 2018, that was when the 11-inch was released, when they got the flat sides, the magnetic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pencil, Face ID, that was a major revision. It was a great revision.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There are some, you know, I’ve had some nitpicks with it over time, but overall, I think it’s really been a fantastic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco product. And kind of going into the, what is most likely to be the update, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my opinions of the outgoing one frame what I want out of the update, and what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I hope Apple has has addressed with it. Even when I very first got the other
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPad Pro in 2018, number one thing I wanted was move the face
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ID sensor to either the corner or the long edge. So that way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can use it in landscape mode, which is how I almost always use it, usually with a keyboard, and not have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your hand cover the face ID sensor when you pick it up. Something like that is rumored, it has been rumored for a while.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco One of the more recent iPad base models actually did that. actually moved the face-to-face camera
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the top. I would love to see like some basic improvements just like things we’ve learned
⏹️ ▶️ Marco along the way and for me the major theme for things we’ve learned along the way since 2018 is I think way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more people now than back then really use the iPad configured
⏹️ ▶️ Marco physically like a laptop. There is some kind of keyboard whether it’s one of Apple’s many
⏹️ ▶️ Marco options for keyboards for the iPad or whether it’s a third-party keyboard case whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I really never use an iPad regularly until the Apple keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco covers because they were just so good but the iPad it was never
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seemingly designed to be used in landscape orientation and you know it does it but like again like the face
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ID and the camera run the wrong spot for it you know the volume buttons and everything like everything on it is clearly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the wrong spot when you turn it on its side for landscape orientation So I would like to see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an iPad Pro, you know whatever they choose to do with the other ones, whatever, that’s up to them. But the iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pro I think is maybe more likely than the others to be used with a keyboard,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Apple Pencil, or both. I would like to see the new iPad Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be actually designed to be better used with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco optionally a keyboard and pencil. I want the keyboard to be able
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to physically attach in a better way than just having a giant
⏹️ ▶️ Marco face full of magnets that forms an entire back cover that sticks to the back of it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it turns out we have better ways. They’re called holes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I want the iPad Pro to add holes or slot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or some kind of physical like clip kind of thing something that the keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can clip into so that way a keyboard could literally just be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the flat bottom part of what we see now is the keyboard cases and not have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a back case and this can be accomplished in a very nice graceful way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if Apple chooses to do it I’m not talking about like massive like you know a big slot like a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco palm pilot although that would be nice for the pencil but we’ll get to that in a second but I’m not talking about like some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of giant slot that runs the whole into the thing this could be like you know like the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like roughly the size of the millimeter wave window on an iPhone on the side of the iPhones
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the recent ones a little oval inset into it with some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco latch mechanism inside that a keyboard could be designed to latch into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s what I want attaching things with magnets is great it is great when you have no other options
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when it is the best option it isn’t always the best option. It is especially not always the best option
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the Apple Pencil and this is a point to that now I guess. The Apple Pencil always
⏹️ ▶️ Marco falls off the iPad Pro. When you put it in and out of any bag ever, the pencil will fall off.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Many pencils have been lost or have fallen into bags or airline seat gaps or whatever from this reason.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would love to see some consideration for the physical form of the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPad Pro to better attach physically pencils and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keyboards. I don’t think this is going to happen, frankly. I think this is even less likely than the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco M4 rumor. Like, I think this is very, very unlikely to be the design. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s what ultimately I want. And again, it could just be as simple as like, you know, a couple of like oval
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cutouts that something could poke into with strong metal and maybe have like a little expanding
⏹️ ▶️ Marco latch part that expands out and latches it in or something like that. It could be that simple. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what that would allow is first of all way more graceful attachment
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of keyboards, way more secure attachment of pencils,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the keyboard could then be like half the weight. It could be way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco smaller, way lighter, way mechanically simpler which maybe could allow them to lower the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco obscene prices of those smart keyboards. And then the resulting package would be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much more size and weight competitive with similarly sized laptops because right now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s really not it gets pretty bulky I would love so much them to fix this problem just put
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some kind of physical notch or something into the iPad body
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know I feel like the the Johnny Ive school of design is let’s make everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a smooth featureless blob that we can show it floating in space
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a white room in a product video and it just looks like a perfect uninterrupted form.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That is not super compatible with many realities. In reality then,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we have to like wrap things around it or bolt things to it with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco magnets or have cables coming out in weird ways. Like that’s the reality. I would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco love for the products to be more designed to accommodate the reality of what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they actually need, how they’re actually used. That way, the way most people actually end up using them can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be more graceful and can work better. So that’s what I want. I don’t think I’m going to get it, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I want that more than I want any other predicted feature. Like, that’s more important
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to me than the M4 or the M3 or AI, it’s more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco important to me than OLED screens even, sorry, John. Like, that’s what I really want,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is for them to finally make the iPad Pro designed to accommodate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually using it more like a laptop. And it won’t happen probably.
⏹️ ▶️ John So you just want a touchscreen laptop running iPad OS.
⏹️ ▶️ John Just cut to the chase.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, but it’s convertible. It would still be convertible. In fact,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more easily convertible. You just pop it right out.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. So I mean, the holes idea is interesting, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think it actually solves the main problem, which is the weight distribution, because all of the computing guts are in the quote unquote screen
⏹️ ▶️ John part. You can’t actually just do a laptop style hinge. You still have to have like hand levered out area in the back,
⏹️ ▶️ John which makes it clumsy. I mean, I know what you’re saying about like, instead of having the magnets on the back, have an attachment
⏹️ ▶️ John point that saves you some weight there, but most people want to protect their pack of their iPads anyway. So I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think you’d have to really sketch this out to try to come up with something that actually is both lighter weight and sturdier
⏹️ ▶️ John with the addition of holes, but it’s a tough sell. And I don’t think they’re going to go in that direction.
⏹️ ▶️ John But the, for just my brief thing in the exit interview for the current one,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think that it was a really important design in the evolution of the iPad, in particular,
⏹️ ▶️ John the flat-sided pencil that sticks to it, even though, yes, it does come off, it is better than the previous pencil,
⏹️ ▶️ John which didn’t stick to it at all. Way better. So it was a big, important step, and I think, basically, it only stayed
⏹️ ▶️ John around for like one generation too long. Like, it was the last time when it didn’t get revised
⏹️ ▶️ John and just got new guts on the inside, and when the iPad 10th gen or whatever got the landscape camera and
⏹️ ▶️ John everything, It was so clear that it was like, ooh, yeah, this year, it’s kind of a shame,
⏹️ ▶️ John the iPad Pro. But that’s just one year, right? They’re still, and they still updated. They still did update the guts.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think this revision is not going to be as radical as you want it to be, but I think it is gonna have some things
⏹️ ▶️ John for you. And I think we can, Casey, do you have any iPad Pro exit interview stuff before we dive into the announcement?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey A little bit. You know, I had bought a 2018 iPad Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey loved it. That’s now been pushed down the hierarchy to be the kids iPad,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey predominantly Micaela at this point, but you know, Declan will use it from time to time. And I had bought the 2022,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the whatever the M2 one was, 2022, right? M2
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPad Pro to replace it, both 11 inches. And I love that one. And I absolutely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey adore that as an around the house computer, as an in the car as a passenger
⏹️ ▶️ Casey computer, things of that nature. You know, one thing that the iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has up on the Mac and at the rate we’re going will always have up on the Mac is Marco. Mark Miller
⏹️ ▶️ John was going to say windshield shattering.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Jared Ranere It’s also windshield shattering. Yes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s true. Let me remind you, Apple, I will pay you infinite dollars to give me a cellular
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mac Pro, please, for the love of God. I will give you all of my money. But anyway, Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really like my iPad in very limited
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use cases, but those use cases, it is freaking perfect for it. I don’t particularly disagree
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with anything Marco was saying with regard to like cases and things like that. I use the cantilevered, what is it,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Magic keyboard? Is that right? I always get them backwards.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, the Magic is the more expensive cantilevered one. The Smart keyboard cover
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the one that I use and Craig Federighi uses. that is just, it used to be the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco only one. It was like, there’s no track pad and it’s like a little bit shorter up front.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, and so I do have one of those, that’s what’s on Michaela’s iPad, and I used that until the cantilevered
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one, the magic one came out. And I do think, and I think you had said this, Marco,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I started using iPad way more when I had a real keyboard on it, because then, to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me anyway, it becomes completely hamstrung for creation purposes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to occasionally annoying, Which is a big
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco improvement,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actually. And so anyways, so I really like both of the iPads that are in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the house. The biggest issue I would say I have with the 2022 iPad is that it’s not really that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey much better than the 2018. Like it’s noticeably better, but not night and day better, even though four years had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey elapsed. And I think the only thing that I seek, now we’re leaving the exit interview part,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sorry, John, but the only thing I really seek from a new one, well, first of all, I don’t, sitting here now, I don’t plan to buy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one, remind me of this in a week. But the only thing I really seek is I would love to have the FaceTime,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the front facing camera on the longer edge. But I like the pencil,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah, it falls off all the time, but at least it can connect. That doesn’t really bother me. The cantilever keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is heavy, but it’s, you know, I love that thing. I think it’s worth, it’s worth the weight, it’s worth
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the cost. Although I will say mine is not aging
⏹️ ▶️ Casey super gracefully. I feel like we just talked about this a few weeks back, but the corner, of the corners of mine is looking real
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gross and like the the outer shell like the kind of rubbery outer shell is falling away.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There’s definitely some other spots that have like nicks and whatnot that it’s not aged
⏹️ ▶️ Casey extraordinarily gracefully. So maybe a little bit better keyboard. Oh, and actually come to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think of it, you know, now that I’m wish casting, bigger trackpad, which is a common refrain. You know, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think Jason and Mike talked about this, the Connected Boys talked about this bigger trackpad. And for the love of all that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is good and holy and escape key and function row, please and thank you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on a future keyboard. But in the grand scheme of things, the hardware itself, like it’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s quick. It’s got cellular. You know, I don’t have any strong
⏹️ ▶️ Casey needs for the, um, for the Apple pencil. I do have one. And when I use it,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really, really like it, but I’m not an artist. I use it more for like, you know, annotating
⏹️ ▶️ Casey things than anything else. So I don’t know. I don’t even know what I’m seeking right now. This is one of those moments where Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey needs to tell me what it is, I have missed all of my life because I don’t know what it is right now.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, what we’re not talking about, which is we have no reason to talk about it until the WWDC is the OS, which,
⏹️ ▶️ John as we always say, is the main thing that’s holding that. But we’re not getting a new OS for the iPad on May 7th. That’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John wait to the WWDC. So we have to set that aside. We’re just talking about the hardware. But honestly, part of
⏹️ ▶️ John the one big part of the problem with the iPad is that the OS has never lived up to the hardware. The hardware
⏹️ ▶️ John is essentially laptop, it’s an Apple laptop without the keyboard running a slightly different OS,
⏹️ ▶️ John but the OS does not allow that power to be exploited, and it’s a shame. But
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s not gonna change on May 7th. So, but the event, the event didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John come out and say, this is an iPad event, but it did have what it had. It had a bunch of different
⏹️ ▶️ John images. I got the one that had someone holding an Apple Pencil,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco which might be the first
⏹️ ▶️ John time that Apple literally put the product they’re gonna announce in the image, right? Because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s so clearly an Apple pencil, it’s not like a regular pencil, it’s an Apple pencil. But
⏹️ ▶️ John there was apparently six possible images that you can get, and they’re all kind of abstract, like they were drawn with a pencil or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then Tim Cook tweeted, pencil us in for May 7th, and then did a little pencil
⏹️ ▶️ John emoji. Gone are the days of subtlety. It’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John the AI announcement for WWDC. But anyway, you would think that they’re gonna have an event on May 7th where they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna announce an Apple pencil, and that’s it. I think there will be other things, but just FYI, there’s gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John be a new Apple Pencil. So that’s great. But the actual iPad,
⏹️ ▶️ John as I said earlier in the year, I think is the hardware product I’m most excited for this year, because
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m definitely gonna get one if the rumors are true and it has an OLED screen, because I use my iPad
⏹️ ▶️ John as a little tiny television. And OLED is better for TVs. The black levels on the current 11-inch
⏹️ ▶️ John iPad Pro are very bad. and OLED won’t have that problem, and so I’m excited for
⏹️ ▶️ John it. And honestly, from a hardware perspective, it’s basically a big screen.
⏹️ ▶️ John So any improvement to the screen is significant. And from what the rumors say, this is
⏹️ ▶️ John a very significant upgrade to the screen. So significant that I think this will be the best
⏹️ ▶️ John screen that Apple sells, period.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The Vision Pro is having some thoughts right
⏹️ ▶️ John now. So there’s the question of whether those are screens, but I guess, but even within that realm, I think this
⏹️ ▶️ John one will have better color reproduction and brightness than the Vision Pro ones do.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe not as high resolution, but better color reproduction and brightness, and also you don’t have to strap it to your head. All right, but just for
⏹️ ▶️ John traditional screens, setting aside things that are inside goggles. For traditional screens,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think this is gonna beat everything that they sell if the rumors are true. It’s supposedly a dual stacked OLED.
⏹️ ▶️ John So the problem with OLEDs is you can’t make them too bright or they wear themselves out and use a lot of power. So instead
⏹️ ▶️ John they take two OLEDs and put them on top of each other and run each one at slightly lower power. So each individual
⏹️ ▶️ John OLED doesn’t wear itself out as fast, but the total light throughput you get is, I don’t know if it’s double,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s more, right? So that is fascinating. And if it is a really
⏹️ ▶️ John good screen, as the rumors suggest, I’m gonna love it, because this is my little miniature TV.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I know that’s not exciting to most people, except for maybe color reproduction for people who are trying to
⏹️ ▶️ John do like professional photo or video work on it or whatever. And although good luck with that,
⏹️ ▶️ John But for this particular case, and honestly, I think this is a common
⏹️ ▶️ John use case, people watching video on their iPads. Whether or not they have a keyboard attached,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think that’s probably more narrow interest for people who wanna use it for productivity, but
⏹️ ▶️ John people watching video is common, and that’s another reason that the landscape camera is important, because
⏹️ ▶️ John people are watching video, I would imagine, mostly in landscape. I don’t think people are blowing up the TikTok app to
⏹️ ▶️ John 2X I’m watching everything vertically on it. So the landscape camera helps with the people
⏹️ ▶️ John who use it as a mini TV. I cover that stupid camera with my hand all the time. It’s annoying. And the screen,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s basically a big screen and it’ll be an amazing screen. And then the other thing about the Guts,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is fascinating, but less so for what it says about the iPad and more so for what it says about all their
⏹️ ▶️ John other products, is the M4 rumor. You would think this is gonna be an iPad Pro with an M3 in it.
⏹️ ▶️ John That would make perfect sense. The MacBook Air just came out with the M3, M3’s been out for a while, put it in an iPad,
⏹️ ▶️ John sure. But the rumor is, oh, but it might be an M4. And it’s like, okay, well, maybe, we’ll see.
⏹️ ▶️ John But that rumor has heated up recently with actual evidence.
⏹️ ▶️ John There was two sets of evidence. I meant to grab this one from a screenshot. One of them was the, was
⏹️ ▶️ John it the part number for the CPU? And Apple has these weird internal
⏹️ ▶️ John part numbers, like the M2 was T8112, and the M3 was T8122. T8122, so the third number,
⏹️ ▶️ John or the fourth digit, fourth character is changing, so
⏹️ ▶️ John You would expect that the M3 is T8122, but
⏹️ ▶️ John the rumor, the people trying to find things in the OS or whatever says that this new upcoming iPad
⏹️ ▶️ John is T813. I know it’s confusing because one is the M2 and two
⏹️ ▶️ John is the M3. It’s made on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the A16 process for the 11-inch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John iPad for Mac OS 17. The part number, if they
⏹️ ▶️ John the same pattern, the part number says it’s an M4. And the other thing is that the
⏹️ ▶️ John product number, there’s sort of internal product numbers that Apple has for its devices.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s always like a name of a product, then number, comma,
⏹️ ▶️ John another number. And the rumored part numbers, again, pulled out of
⏹️ ▶️ John iPadOS 7.5 beta is iPad 16,3, 16,4, 16,5, and 16,6.
⏹️ ▶️ John So the iPad Air 5 and the iPad Pro from 2020 were
⏹️ ▶️ John labeled iPad 13 comma something, and they have the M1. And all the iPads that have the M2 are labeled
⏹️ ▶️ John iPad 14. So M1 is 13, M2 is 14, M3 would be 15.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, so they skipped one? But this is iPad 16. So they’re skipping iPad 15,
⏹️ ▶️ John which would have been the M3 model. And that leads more evidence
⏹️ ▶️ John to this being the M4. So all of the internal software
⏹️ ▶️ John dredged out part numbers and product numbers lead to the
⏹️ ▶️ John conclusion that the iPad Pro have an M4 in it and not an M3.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I find this so hard to believe. And if it wasn’t for this like 16 comma, whatever, whatever, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think I would say absolutely not. But this whole part number thing or model number thing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is really giving me pause.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the part number thing, because the part number is even more obscure. Those like T8, whatever, like that’s super
⏹️ ▶️ John obscure. Like what, there’d be no reason to like fake that or skip a number and that that’s really even
⏹️ ▶️ John farther, you know, to dig that out. But yeah, it’s consistent. They skipped over
⏹️ ▶️ John the M3 thing and this looks like it’s gonna have an M4 in it. And I find it perfectly plausible because
⏹️ ▶️ John we know that every M3, whatever, chip that Apple has made
⏹️ ▶️ John has been on the M3B process, which is super expensive and essentially Apple exclusive.
⏹️ ▶️ John And Apple kind of had to do it if they wanted to get their products out the door, right? But they
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t want to stick with it for any longer than they have to. And so if TSMC can
⏹️ ▶️ John make M4s in time to be in the iPad Pro, you bet Apple would love
⏹️ ▶️ John to not have to pay to make another super expensive M3B based product.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I think it is plausible that you can announce something on May 7th
⏹️ ▶️ John with an M14. I’m not sure when it will ship, but you know, TSMC doesn’t always publicly
⏹️ ▶️ John say when they’re doing all, you know, so I, I think it is plausible. I think it’s plausible based on the part numbers,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it’s plausible based on the timing, but it’s super interesting because that
⏹️ ▶️ John would mean that the M4, all the rumors about the M4 lineup and how like by the end of next year,
⏹️ ▶️ John every single Mac will be on, on something on the M4, that gets a lot more
⏹️ ▶️ John likely to happen if they’re starting with the M4s in May, right? Not even WWDC.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then what that means also is that for WWDC, if they release an M4 iPad, I don’t care about the M4, right? Who cares?
⏹️ ▶️ John Like I think the iPad is plenty, you know, I don’t care about it in the iPad, right? But what that means
⏹️ ▶️ John is come WWDC, if they announce any Mac hardware, doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John that also have to have the M4 or maybe not? Maybe Maybe they just announced the M3 Ultra.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, I just, this overlap in these numbers is killing me. I just really wish they would get
⏹️ ▶️ John on schedule and just make the number go up by one every once in a while. But I
⏹️ ▶️ John will be unrealistically expecting M4-based Macs at WWC if they release an M4-based
⏹️ ▶️ John iPad Pro. But I think the M4-based iPad Pro is plausible. And so now, honestly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco German’s traffic record’s been pretty good about this kind of stuff recently, and he’s pretty sure about it from his sourcing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So like, it’s looking like this is a real possibility. And,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, to some degree, like we don’t know how big of an update the M4
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is compared to the M3. Like, you know, John mentioned like there is this process switch thing,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, with N3B, as we discussed, was kind of a dead end with TSMC’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco processing. It was very, this very expensive process. And that’s what the M3 and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all of Lastfall’s phone chips were made on probably. if I had to guess, if the M4
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is ready this soon after the M3, my guess is the M4
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was largely a change to get off that process and to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the new, you know, N3, whatever the, what’s the new one? N3P?
⏹️ ▶️ John M3E. And keep in mind, M3E is essentially, it’s worse in terms of the product
⏹️ ▶️ John you get, but it’s better in terms of yield and cost. So M3B is like the super expensive,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it actually is slightly better, but like no one wants to pay for it. And the yields are terrible, right? So Apple wants to get off
⏹️ ▶️ John of that. Everyone wants to get off of it as soon as possible, but not because n three is fantastically better.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like it is the same or even potentially slightly worse, but cheaper, better yields.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so that makes sense. And I think the M four M four advances over the M three,
⏹️ ▶️ John I assume like whatever they do with the neural engine, or if they rebranded or whatever AI mumbo jumbo
⏹️ ▶️ John like that could possibly be in there, but I mean I don’t think it’s just a warmed over
⏹️ ▶️ John M3 because the thing about M3E is it’s not, whatever the term is, it’s not compatible
⏹️ ▶️ John with the designs they did for M3B, so you have to essentially re-layout the chip, so I think it will be
⏹️ ▶️ John more of its own device than we might imagine because it’s not like they can just take the exact layout of the M3
⏹️ ▶️ John and stamp it in M3E, they can’t do that, that’s the whole deal with M3B, right? So if this
⏹️ ▶️ John is the start of the M4s and there are no more M3s, it would mean the M3s were like, we had
⏹️ ▶️ John to get something out the door. We used the most expensive process that no one else wanted to pay for. And we did a whole bunch of chips all at once
⏹️ ▶️ John and we got off it as fast as we can. But if on the other hand, WWDC comes and
⏹️ ▶️ John they’ve introduced an M4 iPad Pro and they say, and now here’s the new M3 Ultra Max
⏹️ ▶️ John Studio. We’d be like, what are you doing Apple? What’s
⏹️ ▶️ John But like an N3B, how expensive would an N3B based
⏹️ ▶️ John M3 Ultra chip be? And I mean, it’ll be faster than a plain M4,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s for sure but it’s just, it’s so weird. So I just, and it’s so strange to be launching
⏹️ ▶️ John this on the iPad because who has an iPad who’s like, boy, this needs an M4.
⏹️ ▶️ John no one is thinking that, they’re thinking it needs a better OS, it needs a better keyboard to Marco’s point, maybe they want more pencil
⏹️ ▶️ John features, which we’ll get to in a little bit.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I have some theories. If you look at the rumors overall, between
⏹️ ▶️ Marco last fall and now, about things like the process node switch, how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco N3B is so expensive and it’s kind of a dead end, I’m guessing,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we were seeing this all last fall, as you were saying, Apple wants to get off of that process quickly, that the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco M3 and the A, whatever, were on for the phones, that this, like, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a reason why this year, only the pro phones got the new A chip
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the three nanometer process on N3B and the other phones didn’t. And then keep in mind, we’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco already for months heard the rumors that this coming fall’s iPhones are both
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to get a new chip. So it’s not gonna continue that lag of like, you know, the cheaper
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phone has last year’s chip. That’s been the rumor for months, that that’s not happening this year, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco means that the iPhone chips that were made this past fall are one-offs because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple does not keep making the Pro phones for the next year. So, whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco A we’re on now is a one-off chip, it seems. It’s not gonna go to next year’s cheaper phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco When Apple starts making the iPhone 15 Pros this September, that chip is gone. It’s not in anything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco else. That’s one of the chips out of the way. Then we have the M3 generation. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it sure looks like, we’ve heard rumors so far, and it sure looks like just based on timing, that there might not be an M3-based
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac Studio. this fall, what’s going to be left with the N3B process
⏹️ ▶️ Marco chips, which are the M3, M3 Pro, M3 Max, and A whatever is on the phone. It’s just, I think,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just going to be then the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro. And those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco both get updated pretty much every year to every chip that comes out for them. Oh, and the iMac,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the iMac. And the iMac, right. Oh yeah, that’s okay, that’s that’s interesting. But anyway, so the iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pro gets updated less frequently. And so So maybe what they’re looking to do here
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is jump the iPad Pro forward first because then they can keep making that for the next
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two years, not touch it, and not have any chips left on the expensive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco N3B process. So my guess is they were okay using N3B
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the really important high-end products that needed 3nm to get ahead,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stay competitive, and that’s the iPhone Pro, the MacBook Pro, and the MacBook Air, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then they’re gonna move off of that as quickly as they can. And the products that have longer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco refresh cycles or are kind of less important, like the Mac Mini, the Mac Studio
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the iPad Pro, maybe they don’t get it. And the iMac, unfortunately. Yeah, the iMac’s the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one weird one. That’s, but, you know, maybe they’ll just update that, you know, with the MacBook Air. Yeah, they skipped
⏹️ ▶️ John it with the iMac. So it was overdue. I think the iMac will move to M4 quickly. Like I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t think the M3 iMac is gonna be around for four years. I think they’re gonna move that to the M4 as quick, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John quicker than we think, but we’ll see.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and so, and based on that, like, if we go with the theory that the M4 is something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that Apple is trying to get out there as quickly as possible to minimize the amount of time they need to keep making
⏹️ ▶️ Marco N3B chip products, then it does make sense to put it in the iPad Pro now. I would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also then simultaneously not have massive expectations for the M4 over the M3, because the M3 is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the M3 was already a big jump over the M2 and it’s only been out for like two seconds.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Everything we’re hearing about like the M4 having a significant focus on AI, I’m guessing that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably gonna be mostly a marketing focus, which is fine. Like Apple should be leaning into this, everyone else
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is and they look like they’re behind. So they should be leaning into AI as a marketing thing. Their chips
⏹️ ▶️ Marco already are good at many AI related tasks. They’re already good at running inference, they’re already good at training,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they already have good GPUs, good neural engines, you know, lots of fast memory. Like they’re already good at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all that stuff so for them to say the m4 is great for AI like Yeah, that’s because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all of their chips are pretty good for relative to other consumer product chips So they can still say all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that while the m4 doesn’t necessarily need to be a major Jump forward
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I think we’re gonna see Everything moved to the m4 as quickly as possible possibly even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all in this calendar year. We’ll see
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, the problem is the rumors for the good beefy M4 chips for the studio and Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro are well out into next year. And so that really puts cold water on my idea that there’s going to be a Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John Studio announcement at WWDC with an M4 in it. But
⏹️ ▶️ John obviously, Apple wants, it’s not a question of them deciding to do this,
⏹️ ▶️ John they need the M4 to be available. If the M4 wasn’t available, they wouldn’t do this. But if it is available, yes, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John jumping on it ASAP. why I think it’ll also update the iMac. Because as soon as the M4 is available with
⏹️ ▶️ John a reasonable upgrade cycle, they’re gonna like, we gotta get, to your point, get everything off of N3B. Any products
⏹️ ▶️ John we sell with N3Bs in them, they’re not gonna get any cheaper. No one else is using that process. TSMC is
⏹️ ▶️ John probably gonna stop making it as soon as we’re done buying it from them. So let’s get off of it. And so any
⏹️ ▶️ John product that was on it, we need to get it off within the next calendar year, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And this being the first product is like, well, we’re making a new iPad and this is available. So by all means, let’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John put the M3 in it then yeah, then it gives them more runway to let this, I’m gonna say let this languish, but it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna languish. Like again, the computing power is not the thing that is holding this back. And this will be presumably
⏹️ ▶️ John the new design with the new pencil and the new camera orientation and no holes
⏹️ ▶️ John in the bottom. Sorry, Marco, although I guess we’ll do the pencil next.
⏹️ ▶️ John The rumor of this pencil is it’s the Apple Pencil 3. The Apple did just come out with a new pencil, but that
⏹️ ▶️ John one wasn’t like the good pencil, the top end one, the most expensive pencil. This
⏹️ ▶️ John is the new most expensive pencil. And how can you tell? A, it’ll be more expensive. And B, it has new
⏹️ ▶️ John features. And the rumored features are a squeeze function. Because, yeah, sure. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, you could do also do a button apple, but that’s so unseemly. So a squeeze function
⏹️ ▶️ John and haptic feedback in the pencil of some kind. Maybe that’s just in response to your squeeze. Maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John it’ll be like a rumble feature to make it feel like textured paper or something. Who knows? But the pencil
⏹️ ▶️ John continues to get increasingly fancy. I think the rumors are that it will still be flat-sided, it will still
⏹️ ▶️ John attach magnetically, it’ll be a little bit shorter than the old one, maybe to fit in wherever they’re gonna slap it on, maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John it’ll go on the short side this time as more of a landscape, you know, landscape-oriented
⏹️ ▶️ John iPad type thing where the camera’s on the top and the pencil’s on the side. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s reasonable. And then your one hope this year, Marco, is the rumors of a more, quote,
⏹️ ▶️ John “‘laptop-like’ aluminum Magic Keyboard and Trackpad.” I don’t think it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John going to attach with holes, but I think it will be, well, to help Casey and his poor worn
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco to help everybody
⏹️ ▶️ John with their poor worn out iPad keyboards that are made of whatever fabric or rubbery membrane
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. If you make the thing out of aluminum and plastic, just like the laptops, it will wear
⏹️ ▶️ John like the laptops do, which is better than these iPad things. Bigger track pad, maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John a glass track pad. If it’s made of aluminum, it can be more structurally sturdy.
⏹️ ▶️ John They still have the problem of most of the weight being in the screen part, sort of being the inverse of a laptop, where laptops,
⏹️ ▶️ John the screen is light and the base is heavy, and that works out for a simple rear hinge. They don’t have that
⏹️ ▶️ John on the iPad, so they gotta do some sort of cantilevering thing, but for people who do want
⏹️ ▶️ John a more laptop-like experience out of their iPad, the rumors are that Apple is going to deliver that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so first of all, just back to the pencil for a second, the double tap gesture
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to change tools or go to the eraser on the pencil has always been a little finicky
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and a little bit, like it’s easy to accidentally trigger it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Excuse me, excuse me, that is not fair. It is so frustratingly difficult to get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Really? I’ve always found it like triggers accidentally.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, yeah, it’s either you’re, well, that’s the thing. You’re either doing it when you don’t want to or completely freaking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey unable to do it when you do want to, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco So. Very frustrating.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So like, I assume that that double tap gesture will be replaced by whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco form this like haptic squeeze possible button thing is. And if so, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco great, because that needs to be rethought. I’m hoping to see that. You think it’ll replace it or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be an addition to it? Oh, that’s a good question. I hope it replaces it directly because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think that would be
⏹️ ▶️ John better. I mean, it replaced it in the AirPods. There’s that precedent, right? AirPods used to be tap and now they’re squeeze.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes, but the AirPods don’t have haptic feedback. They play a click sound. So like they give you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feedback, but it’s audio feedback, not like vibration feedback. So we’ll see you know what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is audio, but vibrations
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey well done so well done.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know if you look like there were rumors last fall about the iPhones getting basically like non moving
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buttons that would that would provide haptic feedback. So they would feel like buttons, but they wouldn’t actually be moving.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe they are using whatever tech that was that didn’t make it into last year’s iPhones. Maybe that’s what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is in the pencil. That’s not like I I’ve been much more skeptical about that stuff in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco past. I think Apple has shown over time that when they actually try
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to make a haptic button that is supposed to behave and feel like a button,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they usually do a pretty good job. You know, you had like the haptic home screen, or the home buttons on the iPhone 7
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and forward, you know, those actually felt pretty good, they felt like buttons, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco clicking trackpads. When they actually attempt to make something look and feel and work
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a button, they usually do a good job of it recently. So if that’s what they’re doing, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have high hopes that it will probably be decent. And so my major
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pencil question marks are basically how the heck it will attach and charge and where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it will attach and charge to the iPad. And battery life. Honestly, I think the battery life is pretty
⏹️ ▶️ John Right, but now they’re gonna put a motor in there, like a little, whatever it is, the Taptic Engine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s fair. I mean, it would probably be pretty tiny and you’re not basically feeling it constantly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like it would only be, anyway. I wouldn’t worry too much about that. My main concern is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where does it go on the iPad? How does it attach? How does it charge? And do they give it some kind of nice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco button feel or button effect for that? That would be great. I thought about,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Casey, I thought about whether they would put it on the short side. I don’t know, you gotta figure out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where the speaker is going.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it is supposed to be shorter though. Regardless of which side it’s on, the rumor is that it is slightly shorter than the Apple Pencil 2.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so we’ll see. And somebody, I forget where I saw this, somewhere on Masterdon,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think, somebody was saying, wouldn’t it be great if this also worked with future iPhones?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that would be amazing. But yeah, it probably would not be small enough to magnetically attach to an iPhone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I don’t know. Honestly, I would love something like that for iPhones. But the problem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also with that is that if you’ve noticed recent iPads that are compatible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the Pencil get really fingerprinty, way more than your phone. And the reason why is because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the phone’s oleophobic coating apparently gets worn away if you would use it on the iPad for the Pencil.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So when iPads became Pencil compatible, they actually had to switch to a worse oleophobic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco coating on the glass. And that’s why modern iPads get so incredibly fingerprinty so easily.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But anyway, so back to the iPad. Those were my wishes for the Pencil. I would love for it to have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some kind of physical attachment mechanism was not just magnets that actually would stay there, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not super confident in that. So in the absence of that, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco give me a give me a haptic button. Sure.
⏹️ ▶️ John Third party opportunity. There’s lots of cases with little loops and latches and pockets and things for you to stick your pencil
⏹️ ▶️ John in. That’s that’s the seems to be Apple’s solution to this problem is it attaches with a magnet. If you don’t jostle it too much,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you want to travel with it by one of those cases where you can stick it in a little holster loop or whatever.
Sponsor: Computex 2024
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are brought to you this episode by Computex 2024, one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the world’s largest AIoT and startup shows happening in Taipei from June
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 4th through 7th. Whether you’re a seasoned industry professional or a passionate entrepreneur, Computex
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has something for everyone. You can discover cutting edge technology from AI computing, advanced
⏹️ ▶️ Marco connectivity, and future mobility. You can explore the latest trends and innovations shaping the future
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of tech and network with industry leaders at Innovex. Don’t miss the chance to skyrocket
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your startup with Innovex, Computex’s international startup hub. Innovex facilitates
⏹️ ▶️ Marco connections with manufacturing partners and global sales channels through competitions and presentations,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ensuring heightened visibility and investor support. And you can gain insights from thought leaders
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by attending keynote speeches from the likes of AMD, Intel, Qualcomm, MediaTek, Supermicro,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco NXP, and Delta, and workshops led by industry experts, gaining valuable knowledge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and insights. So if you’re ready to grow your career and expand your network, head over to computextaipei.com.tw
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slash ATP to register now and secure your spot at Computex 2024 from June 4th
⏹️ ▶️ Marco through 7th. Don’t miss out on this incredible opportunity to be at the forefront
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the tech revolution. Thank you so much to Computex 2024 for sponsoring our show.
#askatp: Coffee update
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s do some Ask ATP. Charlie Sorrell writes, years and years ago when Marco was still child-free, Casey
⏹️ ▶️ Casey told Marco that once he became a dad, he’d give up making fancy coffee. I think it was AeroPress at the time. That was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a while ago now, obviously. What actually happened? You know, I 100% believe I did this because this is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey huge Casey energy, but damned if I remember having this conversation.
⏹️ ▶️ John shocking that you don’t remember something that happened years ago on the show.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Exactly. Exactly. So what’s the story there, Marco?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it turns out you were kind of right.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, I’m actually very surprised by this, to be honest.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I no longer roast my own beans. I never ended up roasting at the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco beach. It was not a great setting for it. Like, you know, when you roast with a whole bunch of like smoke and stuff you have to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco deal with and the beach setup was just really not a good environment for that. And what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happened in those years, like when I moved to the beach in, you know, early COVID
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mail-order coffee was already really good by that point. I had these wonderful mail-order options.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What also happened around that same time was my taste in coffee shifted
⏹️ ▶️ Marco towards more medium and light roasts. Medium and light roasts are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more difficult to do, especially on a home roaster. My roasting skills were really not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up for making that style of coffee, so my home roasting kind of fell off and I stopped
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doing it and I just switched to mail-order. And that got me through most of COVID, all of COVID.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco More recently, it’s actually gotten a little bit worse because in the new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco house, I’m still living in a construction zone here. There’s still like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, paper on the floors. There’s like coverings on the countertops. They’re still doing like some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco painting and wall works. There’s still dust being produced here and there. First of all, there are many days where I just like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can’t even get into the kitchen or like the sink will have a drop cloth over it cause they’re working above it or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something. That was going on today. So what I’ve been doing mostly is just going to the coffee shop in town.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or I’ve often just been doing frozen coffee pods. There’s a company called Commetteer that also, they make really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good frozen pods. And I wish I, frankly, I love them. They’re fantastic. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wouldn’t recommend it for every day because it’s a little bit over the top, you know, having these like frozen pods that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have to get shipped to you. And you know, the per cup cost is way higher than bean
⏹️ ▶️ Marco costs and everything. But if you don’t have a coffee maker or an AeroPress nearby
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to use, if you just need to like make some coffee without pretty much any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco equipment except maybe a hot water kettle, it’s a great way to do it. And, honestly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the coffee that I get from Commetteer is better than anything I’ve ever home
⏹️ ▶️ Marco roasted. It’s really good. So anyway, so all that is to say, I’ve completely stopped roasting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my own beans, which I used to do regularly for years. I have partially stopped even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco making my own coffee and brewing my own coffee at home because I just haven’t had like a reliable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kitchen set up a lot of the time for the last few months. And so I assume I will get back into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at least the brewing part more. You know, once things calm down here and I actually have a kitchen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is not full of dust that I can actually use reliably, I expect to get back into brewing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my own coffee and remaining good at that. But I’m actually further
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from it now than I’ve ever been. And that was mostly because mail order services
⏹️ ▶️ Marco got really good and also Committeer kind of ruined me because it’s really good too.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It doesn’t sound like any of it was kid related though. No, well not really, no. Because like, I mean really, you know, my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kid just turned 12 and I was roasting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my own coffee until he was about eight and brewing my own coffee until he was 11.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, you know, I don’t think it was kid related. I think it’s just like old person
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reality. Aging related, yeah. Yeah, busyness related
⏹️ ▶️ Marco aging related. Like, you know, my taste shifted towards something I don’t make very well, light roasts.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And other options for that taste became available that were really good.
#askatp: Attending WWDC
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Andy writes after years of trying I finally got an invitation to attend WWDC I hope you guys
⏹️ ▶️ Casey will cover the what to do or not to do at WWDC as I’ve been told that you’ve done in the past Even
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a pointer to which episodes I should listen to would be extremely helpful I don’t feel like I can be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of help at all because last time I was at WWDC was in San Jose So Marco tell us about this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so so one thing to note Andy is that the WBDC experience today and for the last couple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of years that it’s been at Apple Park is very different from what it was in the past where it was like at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a conference center and it was a whole week of in-person sessions. So what it is now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is all the sessions are virtual. So there’s really no in-person component there at all. The only in-person
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff to do now is there’s like a big developer event that you were presumably invited to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at Apple Park to watch the keynote. So what this is is you are sitting in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lawn like an Apple Park in front of those giant sliding doors for the cafeteria. You sit in a bunch of chairs, set
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up a big outdoor concert or something. Tim Cook comes out on stage, says, hello,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good morning. And then you watch the video, basically, on a giant screen. And then afterwards,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you go and you’re led over to some kind of various events. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tours and stuff like that. And then there’s occasional other stuff around
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple Park for that day and maybe the day after, especially revolving around the Apple Visitor
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Center, which is like… kind of across the street and has like a coffee shop and it’s basically a big Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco store and stuff. And then there’s a handful of other community events that happen. There’s things like the live
⏹️ ▶️ Marco talk show that usually happen there. There’s other like smaller groups that are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco arranging things. Certain developer groups and meetup kind of things happening. So this is a very different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco experience than it used to be but it’s still pretty fun. It’s just different. The big thing to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keep in mind when you’re going there now, there is no conference center.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you know you’re led into the event and you’re there like you know in Apple Park you’re obviously
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like you know very well controlled by Apple people the whole time of like where you can go and what you’re doing but then after that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you are escorted you know you have a few a handful of things to say then you’re escorted out and then you can’t get back
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in like for the rest of the week. So plan if you’re gonna be there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for like a few days try to plan stuff to do with the other groups and events that happen around that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because you’re just like kind of let out into suburban Cupertino. It’s like, all right, bye.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s it. You know, it’s not like you’re not in downtown San Jose anymore or down in San Francisco. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s really no like town to hang out in. It’s just like Apple Park
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then the visitor center and then a bunch of houses around you. So the hotel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco situation is a little, you know, boring or challenging. The like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dinner and evening event situation is a little limited there. You’re basically hanging out in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the suburbs next to an office park that won’t let you back in. So plan for that with like what you expect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco event-wise. If you can get into any of the other like side events that are going on, do that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, plan for that accordingly. And I wouldn’t, honestly, I wouldn’t recommend
⏹️ ▶️ Marco staying past, you know, like the events on Monday. I would say you can usually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco safely leave on at least Wednesday. maybe even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Tuesday, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, depending on whether there’s certain events you want to go to. But that’s what to expect. Like, it’s a really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fun presentation that day, day but then you’re kind of on your own so plan accordingly.
#askatp: EV-charger privacy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wade asks, does it bother you that you have no privacy with public electric charging
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stations? They know who you are and where you live because you’re billing information. What car you drive, where you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey were when, how far you drove between charges, et cetera. Is there any practical way to have an electric car not be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tracked short of only ever charging it at home? Do you know what the charger operators do with this information? Do they anonymize
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it? Do they sell it? I mean, I hear you, but, I mean, this is the way the world is going, and I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John think… LAZARTE
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s the bad news about credit cards.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, exactly. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey see how… how there’s really any two ways around this. And…
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m really struggling to get myself worked up about this. Especially since credit cards exist, you know, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so much data tracking on your phones, which, you know, Apple’s doing their best to try to issue.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe Wade pays with cash at gas stations?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, you never know. It’s possible.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, so there are a couple stories related to this, which are more in the vein of things that
⏹️ ▶️ John are car specific, specific because knowing where you are and what you’re doing, if you use any kind of electronic form of payment,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s sufficient. But the car stuff is like knowing how you drive.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so there are a couple of stories. This one is from March of this year. Automakers sharing
⏹️ ▶️ John consumers’ driving behavior with insurance companies. That you don’t want.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I especially do not want that, I can assure you.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I mean, it’s kind of the point of insurance. Like as you slice and dice the insured population
⏹️ ▶️ John into smaller and smaller groups based on their behavior, insurance stops being insurance. The whole point of insurance is you’re spreading the
⏹️ ▶️ John risk. So you have to be in a group with, there has to be variability within a group. If you just put all the high risk
⏹️ ▶️ John drivers in one group and all low risk drivers, and like you keep slicing it up like that, then everyone should
⏹️ ▶️ John just pay for their own car problems. Like there’s no longer insurance. The whole point is you’re pooling risk.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so there is the, I mean, it’s not really that big of a danger because insurance companies aren’t gonna be that stupid, but
⏹️ ▶️ John insurance companies do want to adjust the risk pools to their advantage based
⏹️ ▶️ John on knowing exactly how you drive. And that was a controversy in March. And then about 10
⏹️ ▶️ John days later, General Motors said that they’re going to stop sharing their driving behavior with data brokers.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh, good for
⏹️ ▶️ John you. Yeah, this is the real frontier of privacy in cars. It’s not knowing where
⏹️ ▶️ John you go based on paying for charging electric chargers. It is the telemetry
⏹️ ▶️ John gathered while you are driving and where that information goes and what control you have over that information.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that is, I feel like, the more important battlefront. The battle of
⏹️ ▶️ John trying to find an electric charging station where you can feed $20 bills into a slot, I think that’s not going
⏹️ ▶️ John to happen. But yeah, again, everywhere you go, if you pay for gas with a credit card or any kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of electronic form of payment, it’s not really that much different. And in terms of knowing what you drive, everybody knows what
⏹️ ▶️ John you drive. It’s your vehicle’s registered. It’s not all publicly available, or at least information
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s available to the people who want to know it. So I would fight for your
⏹️ ▶️ John right to privacy during. Yeah. Fight for your right to privacy while you’re driving.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like you’re the actual moment to moment information about your driving, even what your trips
⏹️ ▶️ John are, where you go, how long it takes you to get from point A to point B. All that information is being gathered
⏹️ ▶️ John by the car. You just want to have legally have some kind of control over it. And hopefully we’ll get some laws in
⏹️ ▶️ John that area if we can ever in this country. Anyway, if we can ever pass some kind of sweeping
⏹️ ▶️ John privacy, technical electronic privacy legislation, which is that people
⏹️ ▶️ John have been trying to do that for a while, but things move slowly around here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So fingers crossed. And by the way, like, you know, to the question of specifically like electric fast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco charging stations, there are fast charging stations out there that are not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like profile or login based that you can just have a credit card, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco swipe for them. I’ve never seen one that takes cash, but there are playing to take credit cards. And so there are kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of there are options is there for like, you know, less data tracking that you could do, you know, maybe use a certain card
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for it or whatever. And then there are also ways to charge your car that don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use DC fast chargers. Like you can charge your car in like, you know, 220 volt RV plugs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It just, you know, you just have to leave your car overnight somewhere to charge it. So like there are options, if you’re on a road
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trip, you can just go to hotels that have those 220 volt chargers and charge overnight every time. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you could, that is an option you have. It’s, this is not something I would recommend as your only option,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but there are other options. And usually those 220 volt chargers are even less sophisticated.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sometimes it’s literally just a plug. It could be one of those Tesla wall units and there’s no login
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for that. There’s no authentication for that. Or it could be a third party one or a CCS based
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one. There’s all sorts of them. But if you pay for that hotel with a credit card, they already know you’re there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John That’s, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, there’s so many. If you have electronic tolling, you have an E-ZPass in your car,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’ll tell everybody everything. So there’s lots of ways you can be tracked very, very, very, very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco easily for people who actually want to track you. But if you are looking to minimize it, that is something to consider for sure.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thank you to our sponsors this episode, Trade Coffee and Computex 2024.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And thank you to our members who support us directly. You can join atp.fm slash join our
⏹️ ▶️ Marco member only overtime segment. This episode, which is our member only kind of bonus
⏹️ ▶️ Marco segment bonus topic after the main show is going to be about the limitless pendant. This is formerly known
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as the Rewind AI pendant. It’s now called Limitless. We’re going to be talking about that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in ATP Overtime this week. Join to listen at ATP.fm. Thank you so much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we’ll talk to you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over, they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey didn’t even mean to begin Cause it was accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental John didn’t do any research, Marco
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and Casey wouldn’t let him Cause it was accidental, oh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental And you can find the show notes at atp.fm
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you’re into Mastodon, 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,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and T. Marco Armin,
⏹️ ▶️ John S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John mean to Accidental Check the podcast Broadcastin’
Concert-earplugs update
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, you went on a trip. How did it go?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh my god, it was amazing. All right, so I went, as discussed last
⏹️ ▶️ Marco episode, I was going to do this. I went to Las Vegas to see fish
⏹️ ▶️ Marco play at the Sphere. Oh my god.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So all right, first of all, I’ll get past some technical stuff first. I once again
⏹️ ▶️ Marco used the AirPods Pro as my concert earplugs. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I had the newest model, the USB-C ones, and I don’t know if that matters, probably not, but they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco were flawless as concert earplugs this time. So it’s a minor hardware update since the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco last time I used them, which was last fall or last summer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s also been, iOS 17 came out in the meantime, so there’s been some software
⏹️ ▶️ Marco updates as well to the AirPods. So whatever they have done, if it’s changed, or it could just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be the way the Sphere does audio, which is kind of advanced and custom and everything. But whatever it is, they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco were flawless as concert earplugs. There was no like weird artifacting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like there was last time. There was no like variation if I moved my head side to side or like turn my head
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like there was last time. It was great. I actually took a picture, which I will make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the chapter art for this chapter of how my watch was reducing the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sound. Cause I actually, I, you know, the watch measures it and tells you through the AirPods. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it actually ended up keeping the sound right around 84 decibels. And it was saying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the outside world at that time in the concert was like in the 90s, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco around 95 decibels. And so with the AirPods, it was bringing it down to about 84
⏹️ ▶️ John What mode did you have the AirPods in?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So this was the just regular default. I didn’t go into any of the accessibility stuff because that alters things in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ways that I don’t quite want. there’s a setting called loud sound reduction.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s just right in the regular, like the first level AirPods Pro setting screen, loud
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sound reduction. And it was in transparency mode and everything else was left alone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So with that mode, it seems to keep it around 84 decibels. Now for reference,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco earlier today, when I was just playing music at like medium to loud volume in my car, just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco driving around, windows closed, playing medium to loud music in my car, it was around 80
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something decibels. It was like, you know, 84, 85, 86 decibels. So like, it didn’t sound quiet. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this isn’t something I would recommend that you listen to like hours and hours a day or even a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco week at this level. This is not hearing protection for anybody who needs serious
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hearing protection. But if you just go to a few concerts a year and you want something to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be able to enjoy them with some protection, this still continues to work fantastically. So I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco strongly can encourage people to try this. I have tried, you know, we’ve gone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over this before. I won’t go into it now, but I’ve tried every concert earplug out there. These are better than all of them in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco terms of sound quality, clarity, ease of use, even comfort for me. They don’t offer as much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco protection as like some of the really heavy duty ones, but it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco perfectly sufficient for occasional concert goers. Anyway, so…
Phish at Sphere
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what it is like to see a show at the Sphere.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now before you establish that, can we recap for those who may not be aware what the Sphere is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and what the kind of schtick is?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so this is a spherical concert venue in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Las Vegas. It was only built a couple of years ago and the gimmick
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of it or the innovation of it, there’s a whole bunch of innovations of it, but the main one is that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the entire like dome of the inside of it is a giant screen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they can show whatever video content they want on that screen. There’s actually there’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good video I’ll put it in the show notes called how sphere works
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s all about like the technical side of like what is the video resolution
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how do they capture it how do they do it and it turns it’s like 16k by 16k square
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s like it’s absurd Like it’s tons of custom video, it’s actually very interesting.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so if you’re interested in like the hardware of this arena, I definitely watch this video.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s not that long and it’s pretty interesting. And it shows like, you know, what kind of screens they have. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s basically just a whole bunch of tiny LEDs that you’re just very far from them. So it just looks like a screen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it’s incredible. So what it’s like to actually see a concert there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco First of all, you need to go see something here because it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco impossible to capture what this is like with a phone camera or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s very much like when you hear people try to explain what it’s like to watch immersive video in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a Vision Pro. And this is a theme I’ll come back to. When you hear what it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be immersed in some kind of large, your entire field of view environment
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in Vision Pro, everyone says the same thing, like, oh, you just have to experience it. You can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really like take a picture or video of it and really get what it feels like to be there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s exactly what it’s like seeing a concert in the sphere. Like, it’s such an amazing thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The scale of it is so massive. It is, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco huge and the screens are far away from you. So what this means, first of all, is that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is incredibly immersive in the sense that it dominates your entire field of view. It goes,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco depending on where you’re sitting, know generally goes the entire front field of you in front
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of you and straight like you can look straight up and you’re still looking at video content and even you can look back
⏹️ ▶️ Marco somewhat if you’re if you’re not like in the very back of the place you can even look back so it’s really all around you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the sound is also really really good but you know that’s that’s kind of the funny thing is like they have this like world-class
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sound system in there and it’s almost like incidental to the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reason why most people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John are going to be there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is the video streams but it is such an experience to be there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so one thing that surprised me first of all is that the screen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the wall, the main screen is incredibly bright and incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sharp I did not expect that like I was thinking a screen that big they’re gonna be doing a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of like projection and scaling and I figured it would be kind of dim
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I did not expect it to be very high resolution and It is neither. Like, it is extremely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco high resolution and extremely bright. To the point where, like, you know, most concerts,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you in the audience are basically sitting in the dark. And, you know, the band’s lit up, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco occasionally maybe some light will, like, shine into the crowd or something, but mostly you are sitting in the dark.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco In the Sphere, the video projection, you know, depending on obviously what they are projecting, but the video
⏹️ ▶️ Marco content, in Fish’s case, was often so bright that it’s lighting up the whole place
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like you’re in the living room. Like, it’s so that, first of all, like, you’re bathed in light because it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just that bright. It is so sharp
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that whatever they want the content to look like, they can make it look like that. They’re, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you don’t really see, like, pixels or, you know, technical details.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s just immersive. It is everything, I, again, sorry to pick on the Vision Pro, it’s everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Vision Pro tries to create and kind of can’t with current technology and there’s I mean
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is a you know concert arena that cost two billion dollars to build so it’s kind of an unfair comparison
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it is an amazing effect to be in there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because the screens are also so far from you because it just it’s a large venue
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there so far from you that your eyes are effectively at like infinite focus at that point and so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can create 3d ish effects and it doesn’t look like you’re looking at a flat
⏹️ ▶️ Marco screen it can look like you are in a 3d environment pretty well pretty convincingly just because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s so far away you don’t perceive like the lack of you know parallax whatever a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco few remarks on the audio it is this like crazy world-class audio system
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where like they use beam forming to send precise audio to each seat it’s that’s also a thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco covered in the video and various articles it’s worth looking up if you care about that kind of stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that video had a graphic that they showed several times that didn’t actually go into, they tried to, I think they were trying
⏹️ ▶️ John to show that different sections of the audience could be hearing things in a different language. What?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that is something that the sphere has promoted as an ability they have there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, Phish didn’t do that, everyone heard the same nonsense, but there are,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there were like, so at certain times, they played with, and I think they used it very sparingly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the best, but at certain times, they clearly were playing with panning effects where it would seem like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of the instruments was all of a sudden coming from the far left side of the room and then moved across to the right side of the room
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then went back. But you could tell that they were playing around and they did it like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I went to two nights and I think I heard that a total of maybe three or four times across the two concerts. So they were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco using it very sparingly. They also, one of the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco features of the arena is they call it haptic seats. So first of all,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the bass is partially transmitted through the seat speakers. I guess there’s speakers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco along the seats somehow, somewhere. I didn’t see them, but maybe they’re in the floor or whatever, but when you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sit down, so obviously it’s a concert, many people are standing most of the time, but you get tired and eventually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you might wanna sit down for a couple of songs. So first of all, at the sphere, that’s actually a really nice thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do because even if the people in front of you are standing so you can’t see the band anymore,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can just look up and you can see, you can still see most of the video content,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even if the people in front of you are standing and you want to sit for a minute.
⏹️ ▶️ John an old person, this is disappointing to me that people are standing in the sphere. The whole point is they have these amazing
⏹️ ▶️ John haptic seats and everything, it’s like, but no, it’s a concert, we have to stand. No, you’re all old, just sit.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, if you can’t sit in the sphere, like it’s so clearly like an AV experience. They
⏹️ ▶️ John have the world’s most high-tech chairs. Some of the sound is in the chair. sit in the chairs.
⏹️ ▶️ John I can’t believe people are standing. You need to wait until people I get that there needs to be a cultural
⏹️ ▶️ John shift. And at the beginning of the show, they need to put up a sign that says, I know you like us and you are fans
⏹️ ▶️ John of the band, but I assure you if you all sit, you will all be able to see.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Amazing. Yeah. Well, when you run your own concert venue, you can put that sign up and see how it goes.
⏹️ ▶️ John make it happen. They have a lot of cultural control over their audience. They just need to put that message
⏹️ ▶️ John out there and people will get on board. Oh my God.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, so sitting down was actually a really nice experience because you would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feel much more of the bass sitting down. So it was getting like a nice butt massage from the music.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And also then you could watch the screens. And so this was actually really nice. Like if you just, again, like if you want to take a break or something,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like normally most concerts you sit down, you can’t see anything anymore. The lights are blocked, the band is blocked. Like you can just see somebody’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco butt. And in this case, like that, it was much better than that. So that’s great. They also, they have,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the haptic seating is not just like a speaker that is just playing normal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco volume. Each of the two concerts there were there was one or two moments
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where it almost seemed like there was an earthquake like that the entire balcony seemed to shake
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and everyone kind of looked around like did somebody just like drop a whale on this balcony or something like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a huge like shaking vibration and I looked it up afterwards and I learned like that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually that’s also a feature of their haptic seats like they can do like larger moves like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that and it feels pretty nuts so it was it was a really fun
⏹️ ▶️ Marco experience even just like the seat situation because there’s all these like physical features
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of it and physical realities of being in this big video dome that that was really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nice the value of good seats is very high here like you really want to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be relatively centered in the venue. I was on the first balcony, the 206 section. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gather these are very good seats because first of all they were very good seats, but second of all, a few
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rows down, the people behind me pointed out, was seated Trey Anastasios dad.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I figured, if he was put there, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a pretty good sign. These are good seats. That’s what they were saying, like, I guess these are good seats.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I also, in the little vestibule to go down into this section, I ran into Peter
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Ansbach, a member of Goose. Did you introduce yourself or say
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Very quickly. I just said that I did the Merlin. I’m like, oh, I really enjoy your work. Everybody was trying to take pictures with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco him. And so I just breezed through pretty quickly because I didn’t want to be that guy. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anyway, I figure if Trey’s dad and a member of Goose were seated in this section,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I guess it’s a pretty desirable section. But back to the show. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco obviously as a Phish fan, the music was fantastic. They were very well rehearsed. It was very well produced.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The visuals were great. I didn’t quite know what to expect. Like what are they going to do with the screens?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like I believe I speculated last week like it might be kind of like iTunes Visualizer or something.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And there were certain, like every song they had a different thing going on with the screens.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco certain songs were kind of like visualizer. Some of them were like basically composited
⏹️ ▶️ Marco live video effects of the band playing. So they had cameras on the band, like on each member
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the band, and they would like, you know, have some kind of visual effect, like photo booth,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have some kind of visual effect that’s processing their live video, and then throw it up on the screens, like in a big grid, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, Brady Bunch style, or like, some kind of like, you know, video, like color shifting,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Shadow playing an edge finding like you know so they had like live video of the band playing but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco processed they also had some that were like pre-rendered scenes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or effects you know just kind of like animations almost and then some were kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tweaked live and there have been a few articles about this where they apparently the virgin article that is they actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco used Unreal Engine to actually generate like live animations
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that what that the director could control based on what the band was doing. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s the thing with Phish, they’re a jam band. When U2 was in this venue, U2, they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco composed a complete show with predefined, at this point we’re going to play this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco song, and we’re going to have this visual, and it’s going to roughly work like this, and then we’re going to go to this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco next thing. Phish preset the set list, but there are certain
⏹️ ▶️ Marco songs that they jam in, and they kind of do what they feel like, And so they designed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the visuals of those songs to be able to go on for any amount of time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and to be able to be tweaked and like kind of manually commanded by the visual director
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as things went through. So that was just like, just technically speaking, like that’s a pretty impressive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco accomplishment when you’re dealing with like live manipulation of these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco random visuals that are being rendered by Unreal Engine onto a 16K square circular
⏹️ ▶️ Marco projection. Like it was quite a technical accomplishment. And then just like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco content wise, you know, Fish usually has a really great light
⏹️ ▶️ Marco show. Like they have a guy, Chris Corotta, who’s like this famous lighting director. He’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really well regarded and he’s done all their lights forever. And they usually put on a really good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco light show and it’s great. But as soon as you see this, you’re like, oh my God,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is so much better than a light show. Like having all of this video content,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s remarkable. Like they did this one, this is the only one I’ll call out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco specifically because I know we’re running long, but one of their songs, Pillow Jets, it’s a recent song.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s not very well liked by the fans. It’s kind of a slower, maybe a little bit boring
⏹️ ▶️ Marco song. And so when that song started, they had like this forest that you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slowly moving through, almost like an Apple TV landscape screensaver. You’re like slowly moving forward in this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco CGI forest. And that song comes on and a bunch of fans kind of are like, oh well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I guess this is a good time to go to the bathroom. The whole row in front of me got up and left during that song.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And this song proceeded to slowly, it was, you’re going through this forest
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then the colors start shifting on the trees. And then they get a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco brighter colored. And then things start moving. And then like over the course of this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like 10 minute long song, the trees slowly start becoming fireworks of color
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and like the colors are exploding out of each of the leaves of the trees. And I’m like, and this is a good time for me to clarify.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was completely sober and on no drugs whatsoever for this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey show. I was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about to ask, I was trying to figure out how to interrupt and ask that question delicately. So I’m glad you’ve already
⏹️ ▶️ Casey answered it for me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. So I was, I was a little bit sick. I had like a cold. And so I didn’t have anything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco else in my system except it was funny. Like, you know, on the way in, like, you know, the security guy is like, you know, what’s in your pocket?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I take out a bag of fish. It’s free. I’m probably the only person here
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who brings in a bag of cough drops to a fish concert that are actually just cough drops.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, so I’m there totally sober and this ridiculous,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like mushroom trip color explosion is happening on the streets. And I felt
⏹️ ▶️ Marco high. Like it was that immersive. I’m like, I don’t need to do any drugs to feel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this feeling. Like, this is amazing. And it’s just, it shows like the incredible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco immersion. And of course, I mean, some of this is just, I’d say a large part of this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that Phish themselves and their visual staff did a really good job with it. Like this is a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco canvas, bands can use it in different ways. There’s gonna be bands that do it worse and better.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Phish does a really good job with this stuff and this was no exception. They did an amazing job. And yeah, the Pillow Jets
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tree, firework explosion, mushroom trip was definitely my favorite song.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I had the clear view because everyone in front of me got up and left. And they came back afterwards and I was just thinking, you guys have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no idea what you just missed. But anyway, they did such a fantastic job.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was great. And it really, it is so much elevated above a regular
⏹️ ▶️ Marco concert experience because it is such a production. the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ability to do this well will be mostly limited to really big, really profitable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bands. So you’re not gonna see like indie bands here. And part of that’s good because like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is very different from the experience of seeing a band in most venues because in most venues you are looking at the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco band. You are watching them play and maybe looking a little bit at the lights. With this, the band
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could have not even been there. Like what you’re watching, you’re watching the entire
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sky above them. So you’re not really looking down at the band very much at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, that’s gonna affect obviously like what kind of act you’d want to see in a place like this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But with that disclaimer aside, and with the obvious disclaimer that like only the biggest
⏹️ ▶️ Marco acts will be able to afford to produce a show like this with all these visuals and everything like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco With those disclaimers aside, I strongly encourage you all out there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you ever get a chance to see anything at the Sphere,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go see it. If you are in Vegas for whatever reason, and there’s a band
⏹️ ▶️ Marco playing there, and you can get reasonable tickets that are somewhat centrally located in the venue, go.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Even if it is not a band that you would otherwise love, it is quite
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an experience. Now, if you can get a band you love, that’s of course way better, but it is so unique,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it is so immersive, and so frankly mind-blowing. Go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see anything there. whatever is playing that you can get into next time you find
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a way to get to Vegas or if you happen to be there for other reasons, go, trust me, go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see anything there. It is that much of a good experience.
⏹️ ▶️ John But Apple recorded the whole thing and it’ll be released on Vision Pro soon, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, can you imagine? So that’s the thing, like the whole time I’m thinking like, this is the perfect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco advertisement for VR headsets, sort of. See the thing is like, so as I was thinking like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco man, I would love if there could be like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, a VR headset version of this. Like I would love if they just like put Apple’s, like Alicia
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Keys cameras, like put those in the balcony that I was sitting in and just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sell me a live stream of a fixed camera from that perspective that I can just, you know, look up and down whenever I want to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look all around me.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s such fish thinking. No, what you want is the direct feed of that 16K by 16K
⏹️ ▶️ John video mapped onto a sphere inside Vision Pro. You don’t need to send it through the analog hole and then get
⏹️ ▶️ John it back in through cameras. No go direct just get the video,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but here’s the thing. So I thought about that like obviously obviously you’re right that would be an option, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like there was there was one song they played a song called ghost in the first time I was there where the visual
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was these giant they were like giant robots
⏹️ ▶️ Marco made of high voltage power line towers like those giant towers of to hold the high voltage power lines, you know?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They were like giant robots made of those. And just against, just flat black, like straight black
⏹️ ▶️ Marco backdrop, and these giant robots that were standing above you made of power lines. And because,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again, like because the screens are so far from you, you can’t tell that these are being rendered right up,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, relatively close to you. And so it looked like you were actually standing below
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these giant hundreds of feet tall, you know, power line robots that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco were angry. And then at one point, the one that was directly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco above you leaned forward and it looked like it was going to fall on the entire audience.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And everyone freaked out. And because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco part of the experience of being in a place like this is the people around you. You’re experiencing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this together with the audience of other extremely high people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco around you. If a Vision Pro, you know, like if a VR headset version of this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was just transmitting the feed of video that’s being mapped on the screens
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you were sitting in an empty movie theater kind of thing, like what they have with some of the experiences
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now, I think it would feel, like many people complain about the Vision Pro, it would feel very lonely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it’s like, oh, I’m in the middle of this concert arena and no one else is here with me. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco part of the experience of being in a place like this is feeling what everyone else is feeling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and capturing like what makes everyone else excited. I think for this to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco succeed if this was ever to succeed in a VR content play, ideally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it would need to be like a live recording like from a perspective
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of a good seat in the audience.
⏹️ ▶️ John Why wouldn’t you just want to be in it with 5,000 other people also have Vision Pros
⏹️ ▶️ John on? You know what I mean? Like that’s the the VR presence thing the whole personas thing What if you were in a theater
⏹️ ▶️ John where every single seat was filled with the persona?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think that would be really weird and creepy. I don’t know I mean, maybe I’m just too new to the VR world.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m still kind of down on those Yeah, I mean
⏹️ ▶️ John obviously it’s not gonna be as high fidelity as actual humans and probably not as high fidelity right now as a recording
⏹️ ▶️ John Of actual humans, but I feel like the goal is hey instead of me just putting on this thing and me
⏹️ ▶️ John being alone in this Giant sphere it’s me and the 5,000 other people who are all doing it all instance
⏹️ ▶️ John together in this one thing and I can hear them, you know, ooh and ah when the big robot leans forward and
⏹️ ▶️ John not there yet to be clear, but I feel like that is attainable with not so distant technology.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It would be tempting to make it too technically perfect by doing things like just sending you the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco video stream and mapping it in 3D and everything and undervalue the human element and the value of the human
⏹️ ▶️ Marco element. I think that would be a mistake. The human element is very much a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco part of the experience of being there. that’s going to succeed and give you anything close
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the experience you want needs that. It needs the human element. I think there is potential opportunity
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a VR content play here. I would love, I would definitely buy it if I could for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco many great concerts and live events. That would be wonderful. But it would have to, it’d have to capture the people too.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Even like, even like honestly live sporting events too. I mean, I mean the people would be there anyway, so I guess you’d
⏹️ ▶️ Marco capture them regardless. But like when you’re at a live sporting event, a huge part of the fun of being there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is being in the crowd with the other people in the crowd, and reacting with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them, and feeling and hearing their reactions to everything. That’s part of the fun of being at a live event.
⏹️ ▶️ John I know. That’s what VR is trying to do with the whole presence thing. I feel like my friend is sitting next to me on the couch as we’re watching it together.
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like I’m in a stadium with 10,000 people, but it’s 10,000 personas. Like, I know that we’re not there yet, but that’s the whole idea, is that the humans
⏹️ ▶️ John are providing that content. They’re providing the movement, the sound, the ooze, in
⏹️ ▶️ John the Oz, the jostling, the looking to the side and seeing expression on your friend’s face. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s, I feel like that’s where the experience that is sold by a lot of the VR stuff. And you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, with the, the personas that Casey got to try with Mike or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John like it’s, it’s obviously not there yet, but it is actually, there is a, there’s a tiny
⏹️ ▶️ John glimmer of that human element that you’re talking about, even in the very primitive, even, even playing battleship with
⏹️ ▶️ John shells of yourself that aren’t even visible from the back.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There is definitely a place for that. There is value for that. But I think that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco never going to replace or even compete with the value of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actual humans being there if that is an option available. So obviously, in not every context, that’s an option.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That isn’t always a possibility. But when that is a possibility, like if you’re trying to do some kind of live event
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as content, I think you want the live people there in some context. Now, obviously you can do things to reduce
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their annoyingness. Like you wouldn’t see the camera so low that when the people in front
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of you stand up, they block it.
⏹️ ▶️ John I was going to say, this type of thing is ideal for things like the Vision Pro because you do
⏹️ ▶️ John actually have a stationary camera. It’s like you don’t get up and go to the, the camera doesn’t get up and go to the bathroom.
⏹️ ▶️ John So you don’t have any of the problems of motion sickness and changing perspective and cutting. You could do that, but
⏹️ ▶️ John they shouldn’t. They should just, even more so than sporting events because in a concert venue like this, There
⏹️ ▶️ John is one pretty much best seat in the house, which you are apparently very close to. Whereas in a sporting event, the field is so
⏹️ ▶️ John big that sometimes you do want like a close up on the goal or, you know, different perspectives. But this
⏹️ ▶️ John show is made to be viewed from an audience. So you can just pick that ideal seat, plant the camera
⏹️ ▶️ John or virtual camera there and just keep it there the whole time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and they can already be part of like the whole, like there’s like a bit, right? Like only a few rows behind me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was like the big, like sound and video booth kind of thing. Like the big, like sound and video mixing board
⏹️ ▶️ Marco set up and everything. That’s the perfect place. Put it there. Like, have it be part of that. Done.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think there’s something to be said, like Marco was saying a moment ago. I mean, I don’t get to go to concerts often,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it is one of my favorite things to do, is go to see music live. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really think that part of what makes that so fun is that shared group experience. Is knowing,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even for a band like Phish, where it’s so easy to get your hands
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on a copy of the show. It’s still amazing knowing that you’re seeing art
⏹️ ▶️ Casey being created live right in front of your eyes and to a degree, the people, the thousands,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the hundreds, the thousands, tens of thousands of people that are next to you are the only ones that will ever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really and truly get the full version of that experience. And even a perfectly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey constructed vision pro version of that experience, immersive experience, it’s still
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in my eyes, not exactly the same as being there. Now, does that mean it doesn’t have merit? Of course
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not. I think it would be amazing to be able to go on tour with Dave Matthews, Vander Fish or who have you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey without having to leave your house. Like that would be incredible. Um, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it will never replace the real deal, you know, and, and there’s room in the world for both of these things.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I would love for both of these things to exist, but you can pry a real honest
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to goodness concert from my cold, cold, dead hands.
⏹️ ▶️ John I wonder what’s more expensive flying to Las Vegas and seeing a real sphere show or buying an elevation
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No comment. I’m not even the one who spent the money and I’m still saying no comment
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah like the VR version of this is obviously that we’re projecting into a future where it is much less expensive
⏹️ ▶️ John to Do this from your home and far more people can do it then because I think I don’t know how many spheres they’re planning
⏹️ ▶️ John on Making their their plans for a bunch of other ones in other places, but like if people could
⏹️ ▶️ John do this from their own home It’s like they’re seeing TV in a movie theater or seeing live sports for seeing sports on TV Seeing
⏹️ ▶️ John sports on TV is not the same as seeing live sports But it is way more accessible to way more people
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s way less expensive and way more convenient And it does actually have some advantages over seeing sports live
⏹️ ▶️ John in terms of perspective changes and incident replay and stuff So yeah, I think there’s definitely a place for
⏹️ ▶️ John Both of these things. I don’t I don’t think the this sphere is going to Be
⏹️ ▶️ John obsolete anytime soon because big impressive screens are always big and impressive And by the way, this is why people are
⏹️ ▶️ John so excited about micro LED TVs, because this is just a big micro LED TV.
⏹️ ▶️ John But yeah, the problem with micro LED TVs is to make the LEDs small enough
⏹️ ▶️ John and close enough together. That’s why the micro LED TVs are always so big. It used to be the smallest one you could get
⏹️ ▶️ John was like 100 inches. They recently, at CES, they had one that was 77 inches. And people were like, oh my god, 77 inches.
⏹️ ▶️ John People were excited that it was so small, which is the opposite of what everyone’s been thinking about televisions for the entire history
⏹️ ▶️ John of television. It’s because they want this tech to get to the point where they can jam all those
⏹️ ▶️ John little tiny lights into a normal size television set that doesn’t cost as much as a car. Unfortunately, they
⏹️ ▶️ John still cost tens of thousands of dollars. But yeah, they don’t have a space problem. But that’s what it
⏹️ ▶️ John is. Individual tiny LEDs, and they can be really bright, and they look really good, as long as you’re far
⏹️ ▶️ John enough away from them.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. A couple of quick thoughts. First of all, if you haven’t seen Drew Carey’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey review of his experience, The Sphere. Everyone has sent it to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me. It is something, and it is worth watching. It is not really kid-friendly,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it is quite funny.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Let’s just say he enjoyed his experience.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey He very much enjoyed his experience. He had a lot of cough drops.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Yeah, he had a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cough drops. And then, secondly, somebody had suggested this to me a while
⏹️ ▶️ Casey back. I don’t have the faintest memory who it was, and I apologize. Um, there’s a vision
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pro app called, uh, amaze VR, and I will put a link in the show notes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Um, it is ostensibly a like music kind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of sort of concert app where you can download these immersive. I’m going to say
⏹️ ▶️ Casey concerts, but that’s a stretch. Um, and you can watch them and they have, uh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Megan, the stallion T pain event, seven fold, and there’s a free one that is, uh, Zara
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Larson, who I I think I recognize the song that she played. Let me tell you, I have an experience
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with getting real old that maybe we can talk about another time, but I feel older and older every passing day. But anyways, I mean, that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is how time works. Yeah. Well, yes, but no, I, in terms of like, I feel like an old man now, but anyways,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey um, the, the, the, these are concerts ish. It’s more like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, let me drop an, uh, an actual artist and like a completely CGI environment. And it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is immersive, but it’s not a concert in the way that you and I think of concerts. Nevertheless,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is worth checking out and downloading the free one just to see what sorts of things are possible.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you know, there’s not that much else to do with Vision Pro right now, so why not do that? So we’ll put a link in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the show notes. But it is funny because the Sarah Larson one, she does like a song on the free version.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And there’s at one point where she is at eye level and gets like right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up to the camera way closer than I saw Alicia Keys get. And it was like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kind of uncomfortable and off-putting. Like it felt like she was looking deep into your eyes in a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not comfortable way. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just weird and old.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s kind of how I felt with the High Line video.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when it starts out and you’re extremely close to the woman’s face and you’re like, I feel like I’m a creep.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like I don’t want to be like, I don’t know this person. She doesn’t know me. I feel like I should not be standing this close to her.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The difference though is that in this case, Zara Larsson is like looking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey into the camera, whereas, I forget the woman’s name, but from the Highline thing, she was kind of looking past the camera, but this is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like, I’m staring into your soul, sort of scenario is very, very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uncomfortable. But anyway, it is worth checking out despite all that, just to see what’s possible. So you should
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, because like, again, like I think after I was there, I looked up some videos
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of first of all, like what was, what they had done like the nights before, I was there because I missed the first two nights.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I kind of regret honestly not going to all four. I had no way to know they would be this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good. But anyway, so I looked up some stuff I hadn’t seen. And I also looked up some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco videos of parts of the concerts that I did attend just to kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see like, you know, was I remembering it right? And I kind of wanted to try to relive some of it. And even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the really good videos do not feel like what it felt like to be there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is really like videos cannot capture this. And this, again, this is what everyone says about VR
⏹️ ▶️ Marco experiences too, because a small video cannot possibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco capture a 360 degree or 180 degree in front of you kind of experience. Like it is way better to experience it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in person or for things that don’t exist in person
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in 3D. Like that’s, that is way better. So this is a huge opportunity. Like this is a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco demo to show everyone like, oh, this is why VR could be really cool.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But if anything, going to the sphere suggests like, yeah, but everyone in here is seeing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way better quality video than any VR headset can offer today.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s hearing way better quality audio with, I would point out, a subwoofer,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which currently is not super practical or easily possible with VR headsets.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you get the communal experiences. If anything, this shows like VR has promise.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If these deals can be made, but nothing beats the real thing. And man,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is this a crazy real thing to experience? Like again, go see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anything in that venue. If you happen to like it, that’s even better, but go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see anything in that venue. It is quite an experience. I strongly recommend it.
⏹️ ▶️ John I like it. You’re calling a gigantic, uh, array of LEDs. the real thing. The real thing is Red Rocks, Marco.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco real world, the real
⏹️ ▶️ John sky, the real mountains.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, Fish plays there a lot, but like they can’t make a space vortex above them when they do.
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, what if there was a real space vortex? Could happen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If it was ever going to happen, it would happen above a Fish concert. That’s for sure. Yeah, it would happen above the Fish show at Red Rocks,
⏹️ ▶️ John probably. Yeah, probably.
⏹️ ▶️ John least people will report it having seen it. Well yeah, I’m sure that happens a lot.