Everyone Heard the Same Nonsense
Marco:
so uh hey i just got back from tennessee howdy y'all 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 to you know say england or something like some some country and then they come back and they have kind of a half accent like forever after that point i gotta tell you the lift at the hotel was extremely slow i was very i was very sad about it you're
Marco:
i know john is gonna do they say howdy in tennessee is that a howdy state i don't even know to be honest with you texas seems like a howdy state it's definitely a y'all state i mean i'm in a y'all state so who am i to really throw stones on that issue so yeah honestly i kind of wish i was in a y'all state because it's the best like the the second person plural is extremely useful and the rest of english doesn't really you know we just have you and you i 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 i hear it a lot around here i used it myself a lot at work i heard it a lot at work my jobby jobs yeah i cannot fathom like unironically not trying to do like it just i think it is it's not common but i think it's spreading i am here for you mr john syracuse was saying y'all like that that warms my i'm
John:
I'm sure I have.
John:
I'm sure I have said it on the show, and I bet you two didn't even bat an eye at it.
Casey:
Well, I certainly wouldn't.
Casey:
I'm so used to hearing it.
Marco:
I didn't say it with a Southern accent.
Marco:
I think you're required to say it with a little bit of a Southern accent, though.
Marco:
I feel like the service it provides is wonderful, and I thank the South for this because as we have become a little bit more...
Marco:
aware of inclusion and things that you know trying to get rid of gendered phrases like guys you know to refer to just general people hey guys you know like we're trying to drop that and replace it with something more neutral 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 like some some politicians have used like folks you know hey folks i like that one i used it myself too i think it's great
Marco:
I don't like that one so much.
Marco:
It's very folksy.
Marco:
Yeah, well, yeah.
Marco:
And that's fine sometimes, but that's not always appropriate.
Marco:
But I feel like if you're in a y'all region, y'all is pretty much always usable.
Marco:
There's not really any context in which it would feel weird or impart any additional meaning that you wouldn't intend the way folks kind of does.
Marco:
So I feel like y'all is a far superior word.
Marco:
What unintended meaning does folks imply?
Yeah.
Marco:
It's kind of folksy.
John:
No, it's fine.
John:
It just means people.
John:
It's just a shorter version for people.
John:
I don't think there's anything applied about folks.
Casey:
Yeah, I think you're reading a little too much into that.
Casey:
In fact, if anything, and I'm a staunch defender of y'all, but I think y'all reads more or sounds more folksy than folks.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Nevertheless, here we are.
Casey:
So yeah, so I went to Memphis.
Casey:
I got to tell you, there's clearly no motor vehicle safety inspection in Tennessee because every darn car that I was in or near had a shattered windshield, but be that as it may.
Casey:
No, it was very nice.
Casey:
I had a very good time.
Casey:
I went and I saw 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 a second.
Casey:
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 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 and then mike i saw in march if i'm not mistaken now i've seen this group still haven't seen john looking 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.
Casey:
However, we are getting prepped for September because if you are a long-time or even a mildly long-time ATP listener, you'll know that September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, and we spend a lot of time and energy raising money for St.
Casey:
Jude Children's Research Hospital.
Casey:
So St.
Casey:
Jude was doing their Play Live Plus Creators Summit, which I guess was born from a video game-only crowd, like Twitch streamers and whatnot.
Casey:
And they would come in every year.
Casey:
I guess I've been doing this for a handful of years.
Casey:
And they would come in and learn about St.
Casey:
Jude if they'd never been there and talk to other creators about how you can be more effective at raising money for St.
Casey:
Jude and so on and so forth.
Casey:
And it was really lovely.
Casey:
But it was very, very weird because I'm used to being an outcast for being a total dork.
Casey:
But in this case, I was an outcast because I wasn't the right kind of dork.
Casey:
Right.
John:
I don't know.
John:
See, I was going to say like, so this is a thing where they were 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:
Correct.
Casey:
That is true.
John:
So podcasters are welcome now.
Casey:
Well, no, no.
Casey:
It was actually both less cool and more cool dorks because there were definitely some like fashion influencers and whatnot.
Casey:
Cooler.
Casey:
Definitely cooler.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
fitness, I couldn't think of the word for a second there, fitness people, cooler, then the gamer people who were kind of de facto cool because there were so many of them, and then me, and our crowd.
John:
Yeah, and then some podcasters.
Casey:
Yeah, and then a handful of podcasters.
Casey:
But it was very nice.
Casey:
Nobody made me feel like an outsider deliberately, but it's funny because everyone kind of traded on, you know, what do you stream as in what video games do you stream?
Casey:
And I had no good answer for that.
Casey:
And it's, again, nobody was trying to be rude or unkind or anything like that or dismissive.
Casey:
It's just,
Casey:
you know that's what they were used to but anyway so what did you say when they said what do you stream what did you say i actually don't uh i am actually a podcaster and you know i'm part of a group that raises a whole pile of money and they said oh and walked away pretty much yeah they're like oh what's your youtube channel yeah right exactly uh no not quite that bad but that's a fair fair guess uh but yeah so we went and we learned a little more about saint jude and i got to take a tour of the campus and
Casey:
Let me tell you, I know that I think I speak for all three of us, but I certainly speak for myself in saying I was pretty in the bag for St.
Casey:
Jude anyway, even before this trip.
Casey:
And holy crapamoly, I am so in the bag for St.
Casey:
Jude right now.
Casey:
It's ridiculous because the stuff these people do is incredible.
Casey:
And I mean, admittedly, you know, this is a conference or whatever put on by St.
Casey:
Jude to make you excited about St.
Casey:
Jude.
Casey:
So, you know, I am considering the source.
Casey:
However, they brought up
Casey:
Several different people, both employees and patients and everyone in between, that said some flavor of the story of, yeah, either myself or my spouse or, you know, my son or daughter or my cousin or what have you had an extraordinarily weird and probably uncurable illness.
Casey:
I...
Casey:
was told by my doctors, I have a 10% chance to live.
Casey:
Then somebody had the idea, ooh, let's call St.
Casey:
Jude and see what happens.
Casey:
And then within hours, I had plane tickets to Memphis.
Casey:
And within days, I was getting treated.
Casey:
And there were many of these stories.
Casey:
It's unreal what they do there.
Casey:
It's just incredible.
Casey:
And they were talking about the Family Commons, which I think we talked about during September last year.
Casey:
But
Casey:
Basically, they took an entire floor of the hospital and said, here's what we're going to do.
Casey:
We're going to not do hospital things here.
Casey:
We're going to have a salon.
Casey:
We're going to have a place where you can get your nails done.
Casey:
We're going to have classrooms.
Casey:
We're going to have makerspace.
Casey:
They told a story of a young girl that was terminal.
Casey:
She knew she was going to pass, and she decided to make an album for her family to listen to after she passed away.
Casey:
I basically cried for three straight days.
Casey:
It was nuts.
Casey:
So...
Casey:
I know it's not September.
Casey:
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 your money.
Casey:
But let's just say I am so prepared to triple down on giving St.
Casey:
Jude as much of your hard-earned money as we possibly can, because they really do just incredible, incredible work there.
Casey:
And it's so incredibly moving, the work that they do.
Casey:
And I put a blog post up about this.
Casey:
We'll link it in the show notes.
Casey:
But there's a pavilion of some sort, I think that's what they call it, on campus where the founders are actually interred.
Casey:
But it's also kind of like a history of St.
Casey:
Jude.
Casey:
And they had this easel sort of thing up.
Casey:
And it says, what inspires you?
Casey:
And they had a bunch of Post-it notes where pre-printed on the Post-it notes was, I went to St.
Casey:
Jude and was inspired by.
Casey:
And I was killing some time, so I was looking around at some of these answers.
Casey:
And a lot of them are just really adorable and cute and whatever.
Casey:
But 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 of a child, the fact, I went to St.
Casey:
Jude and I was inspired by the fact that I will make it with a heart below it.
Casey:
Like, holy balls.
Casey:
I mean, cheesy peasy.
Casey:
Then the next one, I went to St.
Casey:
Jude and was inspired by the lives they saved, including mine.
Casey:
I mean, how can you not be excited about this organization?
Casey:
So this was a part of the reason, a large part of the reason I was there is because in September, we're going to have a weird recording schedule because I will be at St.
Casey:
Jude for the RelayFM podcast-a-thon, which is 12 hours of nonstop
Casey:
shenanigans.
Casey:
I don't even know how to describe it.
Casey:
If you've not tuned in, you really should.
Casey:
Even if I don't end up going for some strange reason, you should tune in because it's incredible.
Casey:
And this organization, it really does phenomenal, incredible, important, life-changing, life-saving work.
Casey:
And I'm so proud that the three of us have done so much to raise money for them.
Casey:
I'm so proud to be associated with Relay, who has done so, so much to raise money for them.
Casey:
It's just such an incredible...
Casey:
incredible place and there's also really good barbecue reel right nearby which is a which is a nice that always helps uh no it's i had a lot of fun at memphis we went to the pyramid which is the best pro shops which you two northerners know nothing about uh and we also had some barbecue and we got to visit the pod cabin so i took a picture with my uh cardboard cutout from the last podcast-a-thon if you don't know what i'm talking about well you know you should find out watch the podcast-a-thon in september
Casey:
But it was a really good time.
Casey:
Stephen's great host and we 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.
Casey:
Jude.
Casey:
Let's start with some follow-up.
Casey:
And pretty much the whole of the internet wrote to tell us about this tip, which I had known, but in the heat of the moment, I didn't think of it at all.
Casey:
And so I failed you, John.
Casey:
But friend of the show, Dan Sturm, has come through and told us there is a way to toggle a dimmable light in the home app and in HomeKit.
Casey:
John, what's the story here?
John:
Secret is you have to tap the icon on the button, not the whole rest of the button, which includes the text and a bunch of other area.
John:
A couple people wrote in with the idea that this used to be reversed and it used to be if you tapped anywhere back.
John:
But the icon, it would toggle the light on and off.
John:
I don't know if that's true or not.
John:
But anyway, I tested it, and it does indeed work.
John:
I was complaining that every time I go to control center or tap the home icon and try to mess with my light, it brings up the dimmer.
John:
And someone sent me a video, and they said, it doesn't bring up the dimmer for me.
John:
It turns my light on and off.
John:
It's a dimmable light.
John:
But when I tap it, it turns on and it turns off completely.
John:
And I did it on my phone.
John:
I'm like, nope, it brings up the dimmer for me.
John:
And we never would have figured this out until hundreds of people said...
John:
Yes, you have to tap specifically on the icon.
John:
These are very big buttons.
John:
They're very big touch targets.
John:
And I guess I just always tap on the three quarters of the button that is not the icon.
John:
Maybe it's because I'm using my thumb and I'm coming from the right side because I'm using my right hand.
John:
But yeah, that's some slightly undiscoverable UI, but it is good to know.
John:
It's not like the icon is small.
John:
Now that I know it, I think I'll be able to aim for it.
John:
I kind of wish it was reversed, or I still kind of wish you could just say, just make the whole button talk light on and off.
John:
But there you have it.
John:
The icon does something different than the whole rest of the button.
Casey:
Pedro Fernandez has some information about the Haze AT command set.
Casey:
Was this born out of the member special?
Casey:
Is that right?
Casey:
Is that where this started?
Casey:
Or was that on the main show?
Marco:
I assume so, yeah, because we were talking about me getting all these old slow modems slowly over time and still remembering all the AT commands.
Casey:
So Pedro writes, AT commands are far from being a thing of the past.
Casey:
Oh, no.
Casey:
If you do any kind of development with 4G or 5G connectivity data modules or modems, you talk to them with AT commands.
Casey:
ATA, Answer, ATD, Dial are all still alive.
Casey:
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 make sure that they keep answering those AT commands.
Casey:
Sounds great.
Casey:
Yeah, you don't want to drive 300 miles to unfreeze a 4G or 5G data module.
Casey:
Yeah, that sounds right.
John:
It's amazing that our modern technology and our modern phone systems, things like this, live on.
Casey:
They really shouldn't.
Casey:
They really, really shouldn't.
Casey:
But, you know, here we are.
Casey:
TSMC has unveiled advanced 1.6 nanometer process for 2026 chips.
Casey:
Do we eventually get to zero?
Casey:
Is that how this works?
Casey:
Because holy jamal.
John:
Yeah, as we've discussed before, Moore's law does end because at a certain point, you can't make things smaller.
Marco:
Well, I mean, to be fair, when I was growing up, I believe these are measured in micrometers.
Marco:
So the unit has just changed to the next smaller unit.
Marco:
I mean, you're right.
Marco:
Eventually, we can't make them smaller because we run into problems of physics.
Marco:
But we are not there yet.
Casey:
This was from MacRumors from just a few days ago.
Casey:
TSMC yesterday, on April 24th, unveiled a series of technologies, including the quote-unquote A16 process, which is a 1.6 nanometer node.
Casey:
The A16 technology, which TSMC plans to begin producing in 2026, incorporates innovative nanosheet transistors along with novel backside power rail solution.
Casey:
This development is expected to provide an 8% to 10% increase in speed and 15% to 20% reduction in power consumption at the same speeds compared with TSMC's N2P process alongside a 1.07 to 1.1x chip density improvement.
John:
I put the story in here for two reasons.
John:
One...
John:
I had just been discussing on Mastodon, someone had mentioned TSMC's backside power thing, and I'm like, I thought that was an Intel thing.
John:
I think we talked about it on a show a while ago where Intel has the technology to send power through the bottom of the chip instead of the top, because if you send it through the top, you've got to 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 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.
John:
This is confirming that TSMC does have a backside power solution, which is good.
John:
And the second reason is they're calling it A16.
John:
As if we didn't have enough problems with Macs powered by the M3 Macs and keeping 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 going to call the process A16.
John:
We are doomed on this show.
John:
They need to come up with new names for things.
John:
This is going to be the A19 chip made on the A16 process.
John:
oh my god and and the the the m5 chip is not based on the a17 cores it's based on a19 cores using the a16 process it's a good thing we're going to season of ios 18 which is also watch os 11 which is also vision os 2 and what and what are we at mac os now i've forgotten already i mean with all the ridiculousness of like n2b and n2e and n2p at least it was different than the chips oh god
Marco:
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Marco:
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Casey:
Rabbit R1 reviews.
Casey:
This is the thing designed by Teenage Engineering made by the company Rabbit.
Casey:
The reviews are in, and yikes, not looking too good.
Casey:
So, John, you collected a trio of different reviews.
Casey:
We've got Stephen Robles on YouTube, MKBHD on YouTube.
Casey:
We've got The Verge via blog post about it.
Casey:
It's not looking good, y'all.
Casey:
There it is, y'all.
Casey:
It's not looking good.
John:
All right, so the Stephen 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.
John:
The MKBHD's title is barely reviewable.
John:
The Verge title is A Fun, Funky, Unfinished AI Gadget.
John:
I recall when we talked about the Rabbit R1 originally, everything was framed as, if this works, it's a really good idea.
John:
I think at some point one of us even said, if this works, which it won't.
John:
Well, it doesn'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 even setting that aside, just like the whole idea, like what they're trying to do is clever, but it doesn't seem like they're going to be able to do it.
John:
Now, the first version, and when I say it doesn't seem like it'll be able to do it, like, will it do the things they say it will do?
John:
And the answer right now is no.
John:
It doesn't do.
John:
It tries to.
John:
It tries to do, like, for example, you speak to it and it can order something from DoorDash, but does it order something from DoorDash?
John:
pretty much no like watch watch the Stephen Robley video like no he he could not make it do the thing uh and he's had some follow videos with slightly more success but it takes so long that's setting aside everything having to do with like you know whether this is should be a phone or or whatever
John:
It's because it's a small company.
John:
It's a new product.
John:
It's new technology.
John:
It's trying to do new things, which is like automating the use of a UI made for humans, but having a computer do it in response to your voice, right?
John:
It's a very clever solution to the problem that a startup like this doesn't have its own large language model, can't do deals with DoorDash, so they have to go around it.
John:
It's a very good idea.
John:
Execution.
John:
is not good even within the constraints of the idea that they had which is a shame but you know hey it's 200 bucks which is a third of the price of the uh the humane pin uh and the company seems like a lot more fun and this is just version one and if they survive long enough uh maybe there'll be a version two and a version three and they'll fix their bug so
John:
I even though it seems like you'd put this and the humane pin in the same bucket of like, oh, they have this idea of the thing you're going to talk to and it's going to do stuff for you.
John:
And both of them didn't quite work.
John:
I have kinder feelings for the Rabbit R1 because it's cuter, cheaper and has a better idea.
John:
But neither one of them seems like it's really doing what you want to do.
Marco:
I mean, ultimately, I don't think either of them is a good idea.
Marco:
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 like this to succeed.
Marco:
We want them to be good.
Marco:
But ultimately, which I think we'll get to in a second, but ultimately, like...
Marco:
the phone is just going to slaughter all these things.
Marco:
And what we ultimately want is for our phones to just do these things.
Marco:
That's what we want.
Marco:
We don't want to buy and carry and charge and maintain and pay for plans for another device.
Marco:
We just want our phones to do this.
Marco:
And there is really no...
Marco:
like technical hardware reason why our phones can't do this like it isn't like we need custom hardware to have these kind of ai things no we we already have it in our phones and maybe our watches too like that's that's where you want 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.
Marco:
They're, you know, they're cellular connected.
Marco:
They have amazing processors.
Marco:
They have amazing cameras.
Marco:
They have touch screens that are super easy to navigate stuff on when you do need to look at something or watch or look at controls or whatever.
Marco:
They're already integrated with all of your contacts and everything like that.
Marco:
All the other apps you might want to use in the process.
Marco:
Like ultimately what we want is
Marco:
is that.
Marco:
We want this on our phones.
Marco:
And probably over the next month and about seven days, we're probably going to see both major smartphone platform vendors unveil exactly that.
Marco:
I fully expect Google I.O.
Marco:
and WWDC to
Marco:
to give us all sorts of promise about things that Android and iPhones will be able to do in the very near future that will make us very rapidly stop talking about this being separate hardware categories.
Marco:
Because ultimately, this is not destined to be separate hardware categories.
Marco:
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 for the people who don't like this topic to the whole eu dma doj everything because the reason these things are standalone devices is they have to be they have to be and they and they also they want to be and they have to be they want to be in that like look if you're trying to if you want to be the next apple uh making an app for the iphone is not the way to be the next apple
John:
So if you have ambitions, like we're going to make the next great platform and we see an opportunity here where the big players haven't jumped on AI and we think this is a way that we can get in.
John:
So let's imagine this device really did work magically well and somehow only Rabbit or only Humane had the secret sauce to make it work.
John:
And they had a couple year head start on Apple and they're like, if we can get big and we can get going, yes, we're at a big disadvantage, but maybe we'll outrun them or whatever.
John:
Obviously that has not happened, right?
John:
So they want to be their own, but also they have to be their own because to make anything like this, and I think there is
John:
some reason to have separate separate hardware as in like a thing with a camera that you pin to your lapel or whatever is that the integration they 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 example you can't replace siri on the iphone so if your ambition is to be a much better siri and but replace 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 do it
John:
But, oh, Apple doesn't let you replace Siri, do they?
John:
And they don't let you integrate with their phone so tightly that you – hell, like I said, it's almost like Apple doesn't let its own watch integrate that well with it because there's so much connectivity issues between the watches and phones.
John:
It's gotten better over time, but still.
John:
So there was a story in 9to5Mac that said –
John:
ai hardware is like trying to invent the ipod after the iphone and the whole story not once did they mention the fact that these companies are forced to do this because the people who own the platforms are not interested in allowing a third party to essentially be a peripheral to the phone and that's what we want like with these devices you know airpods are a great example they 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 but like
John:
standalone device with its own os doing everything all on itself right connecting to cellular and wi-fi and just like they didn't connect to the phone at all right that's like what these companies are doing you're like why would you do that we have phones and they have amazing computing power it's like yeah but i can't integrate with them in the way i need to right so airpods are great but imagine something with like a camera or a lapel or a microphone like
John:
It's auxiliary hardware, a peripheral for your phone, a thing that you don't have to take out of your pocket, but of course uses your phone to do all the stuff.
John:
That's what these products want to be, but can't be.
John:
So the fact that these companies are trying to do things that we think are there, the reason they're technically clever is because they're working around a unfortunate business.
John:
situation which is they can't be the products they want to be but every time one of these products gets funded tries to do this and fails and we look at it and say that's a clever way to try to work around a sort of unfair market that is reinforcement to all of these
John:
Court cases and regulations or whatever saying this is not a competitive market where innovation can flourish because basically we have to sit back and wait until Google and Apple decide that they're going to do something and a WWC Apple will do something and Google already is doing things.
John:
But like we don't want to have to wait for these two companies to decide what kind of things they want to do.
John:
People have other ideas and they would like to do them, but asking them to say, to do that, you have to start from zero, build your own platform, your own everything, be completely independent of the phone because the phone companies are never, not the phone companies, but you know what I mean, are never going to give you the integration you need.
John:
That's why this is mostly a story about the...
John:
the sort of awkward shape of the market 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 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 try to buy you uh where you could get out ahead and start doing something like what did we see recently 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 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 for trying and especially rabbit i give a lot of points for coming up with a low-cost clever attempt to work around the giants but yeah this is not what we want we want our airpods to let us yell things into the air we want a little tiny lapel microphone or camera to see everything around us and explain everything and we want a pair of glasses to put name tags over people's heads uh we're not quite there yet
Casey:
There are a couple of interesting things about this.
Casey:
First of all, I thought it was very, very well done.
Casey:
I think this was mentioned in the 9to5Mac link that Dave2D, who is a YouTuber, I put together a clip of this that I'll put in the show notes, but is looking at the rabbit and says, well, you know, he does a much better version than me, but you know, well...
Casey:
What if we took this, like the push to talk button and moved it to the other side?
Casey:
And actually, let's make them volume buttons.
Casey:
And then we can do like the push to talk button, maybe somewhere else.
Casey:
We can put the camera on the back.
Casey:
Now we've got a lot more space for the screen.
Casey:
Oh, look, we've made a phone.
Casey:
Like, you know, just by making the things, and this is coming 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 the smartphone.
Casey:
Yeah.
John:
I mean, and the rabbit does run Android and is people have discovered that basically the thing it's running is essentially an Android app that you can take.
John:
You can rip off of the rabbit and put it on Android phone and run it there.
John:
I love that.
John:
This is like a big story.
John:
Like, of course, that's what it is.
John:
Like that's like, well, did you think they wrote their own operating system like the play date?
Marco:
Well, I mean, yeah, that's fairly unusual.
Marco:
And so much of modern hardware devices, like my scanner is just an Android app.
Marco:
And Android, of course, is just Linux.
Marco:
And the language that's running is just Java.
Marco:
Yeah, there's a whole bunch of hardware out there that is, quote, just an Android app running on some kind of commodity Android tablet kind of guts.
Marco:
And it just so happens, oh, here's a scanner with a touch screen.
Marco:
What?
Marco:
what do you think is powering that?
Marco:
A lot of times it's Android.
Marco:
It's fine.
Marco:
People made a big deal out of this.
Marco:
Oh my God, it's just an app.
Marco:
Like, yeah, of course, that's not a story.
Marco:
The story is this device can't compete with smartphones.
Marco:
That's the story.
John:
Yeah, and the thing is like, why didn't you just make a phone?
John:
Oh, well...
John:
making 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 like making a good android phone is not an easy thing to do and second they didn't want to just make it an android phone they want they wanted to be like the next big thing and that's why they're taking a stab in this direction now i don't know what the integration situation is like an android can you replace like the google assistant on like google or samsung branded android phones or any of the android phones that matter
John:
How open is it to you integrating to sort of have an always, always reliable, always connected type of high speed, low latency connection between a peripheral and the thing, you know, more than just Bluetooth, right?
John:
I don't know what that situation is like, but obviously none of these companies were interested in going that route.
John:
They tried to be
John:
as standalone as they could possibly be and being standalone is a tough gig that's kind of another thing that rabbit did and humane for that matter no apps why no apps do you want to try to run a platform do you know what's involved with trying to run a platform and vending apis and tools and like that's insane like there have been very few successful computing platforms in our entire lives you can like count them on like fingers and toes right and
John:
There's not that many of them.
John:
Running one successfully is incredibly hard.
John:
So these things are like, we're not even going to try to do that.
John:
We're just going to like be an appliance, a magical appliance through the use of AI.
John:
Maybe we can be independent.
John:
And unfortunately, the magic they relied on were LMs 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 the press, from my own gut reaction.
Casey:
And we don't need to belabor this, but the humane people were talking about how they're God's gift to software and hardware development and how, oh, we're the best, we're the best, we're revolutionizing, we're destroying the smartphone.
Casey:
Look at us and how smart we are and our colorways and this and that.
Casey:
And everyone pooped all over them because they deserved it.
Casey:
With this, the reaction I've seen is, yeah, it's kind of trash, but man, it's cute and it's fun and it's cheap.
Casey:
So who cares?
Casey:
And it's just so funny to me that an ounce of humility, it really does go a long way.
Casey:
And when you're not trying to convince everyone that you're the second coming.
Casey:
It turns out people are more receptive to even when things aren't perfect.
Casey:
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 work out a little better for you.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And the rabbit was just so much more pragmatic.
John:
It's such a cheaper device.
John:
The hardware is cute, but also cheap, right?
John:
Their business model of trying to work around the big companies.
John:
I don't know people like $200.
John:
That's not cheap compared to $600 it is.
John:
Like if you're going to blow $200 on something that doesn't work, it feels much better than blowing $600 on it.
John:
I mean, they put a screen on it.
John:
Another example, they're like, well, let's just, how about we have a screen?
John:
How about that?
John:
Instead of like a laser projector, right?
John:
Simpler, cheaper, you know, it just, it shows more pragmatic choices.
John:
But in the end, like they're, you know, they're...
John:
they're doomed to failure but like it just it's it's a tough gig to coming out with a product like that with so much attention on you for a 1.0 uh yeah it is yeah it doesn't and and i think both of them i'm gonna say they don't work like spectacular failures but it's pretty big failure when it's not like oh it's a little slower it's a little clunky it's a little buggy like both of them have cases where they just simply do not do what the product is supposed to do and that is not really shippable but they both ship so there you have it
Casey:
All right, moving along.
Casey:
Riley Tested has some feedback and information, not specifically to us, but just general feedback with regard to Delta availability.
Casey:
So a toot from Riley getting some questions about Delta availability.
Casey:
I hope this clarifies things.
Casey:
Delta is exclusive to AltStore in the EU.
Casey:
Because of Apple's new developer terms, all downloads in the EU cost us 50 euro cents a year in Alt Store, Pal, and the App Store.
Casey:
So we couldn't offer Delta in the EU App Stores without making it paid.
Casey:
App Store only supports one-time paid-up-front apps, so we'd have to pick a price that could support years of the core technology fee.
Casey:
Alt Store, Pal's one euro, excuse me, and 50 cent cost covers Delta's core technology fee.
Casey:
and they would choose to make everything free everywhere if it wasn't for the core technology fee.
Casey:
So, I mean, you made this bed EU, so now you've got to sleep in it.
John:
It's more like Apple made the bed.
John:
Why is it exclusive to the alt star in the EU?
John:
Because of the CTF.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
I mean, I think it's a little calm, a little calm, but you're more right than wrong.
Casey:
All right, moving along.
Casey:
iPad OS has been identified as a quote-unquote digital gatekeeper under the new EU tech rules.
Casey:
So picking some snippets from Mac rumors, last September, the European Commission designated Apple as a gatekeeper for its iOS iPhone operating system, its web browser Safari, and its App Store.
Casey:
On the same day, the Commission opened a market investigation to whether iPadOS constitutes an important gateway for business users to reach end users in order to determine if it should be designated as a gatekeeper.
Casey:
That investigation is now closed.
Casey:
According to an EC Press release shared on Monday, the Commission's investigation found that Apple presents the features of a gatekeeper in relation to iPadOS for the following reasons.
Casey:
Number one, Apple's business user numbers exceeded the quantitative threshold 11-fold, while its end-user numbers were close to the threshold and predicted to rise in the near future.
Casey:
Number two, end-users are locked into iPadOS.
Casey:
Apple leverages its large ecosystem to disincentivize end-users from switching to other operating systems for tablets.
Casey:
And number three, business users are locked into iPadOS because of its large and commercially attractive user base and its importance for certain use cases, such as gaming apps.
Casey:
The commission has now given Apple a six-month deadline to fully comply with the obligations set by the DMCA, excuse me, the DMA, which means we should expect enforced changes in iOS and iPadOS, like alternative app stores, web distribution, and alternative browsers.
Casey:
And that should all come to iPadOS as well in a forthcoming update.
Casey:
I think this makes sense.
John:
I like how the reasons are like, well, we have a bunch of criteria.
John:
I bet almost meets them, but whatever.
John:
It's the same thing, right?
Casey:
I mean, it is the same thing.
John:
I don't see why they need to, like, justify it or have some kind of rules.
John:
Like, it's kind of weird that iPadOS didn't get folded in to begin with, but they went through this little dance to say, you know what?
John:
Yep, iPadOS too.
John:
And, you know, arguably...
John:
potentially one of many possible motivations for apple renaming you know ipad os to be its own os was to try to make it distinct in all uh legal circumstances or whatever but the thing is the ec can do whatever the hell they want and this is what they want to do so and it just honestly it makes it simpler because i half time always forgetting oh yeah uh there's no alternative uh marketplaces on ipad os but now there will be and it's more consistent for apple it's more consistent for users it just makes more sense so
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
I mean, this is good.
Casey:
This is good.
Casey:
Good work, EU.
Casey:
Mark Gurman writes, no Apple Vision 2 launch planned before the end of 2026.
Casey:
So no FOMO for, well, I was going to say Mark and me, but I guess just me, until the end of 2026.
Casey:
From MacRumors again, German says that Apple's latest Vision Pro roadmap, quote, doesn't currently call for a second-generation model until the end of 2026, quote.
Casey:
In February of 2024, he said that the device was at least 18 months away.
Casey:
According to German's sources, Apple's still trying to figure out a way to bring a cheaper version to market before then, although the company remains flummoxed by how exactly to bring down the cost.
Casey:
Kind of tangentially related, I don't recall if we said this on the show, but they did actually release the second episode of the...
Casey:
What is it?
Casey:
Encounter Dinosaurs or something like that?
Casey:
Immersive video.
Casey:
Yeah, this was like a week or two ago, actually.
Casey:
And I think it might have been right after we recorded last.
Casey:
And because of our travel, it's been a wonky recording schedule for us.
Casey:
But it has been released.
Casey:
And it's another like five minute thing.
Casey:
And it was fine.
Casey:
I did have somebody reach out on Mastodon and said, hey, I worked on this.
Casey:
And just so you know, it's, I was going to say historically accurate.
Casey:
I guess that's not the right turn of phrase.
Casey:
It's scientifically accurate based on the understanding that we have today.
Casey:
So like things that should have feathers have feathers and colors are as best as we think they could be at the time.
Casey:
I won't be able to dig up these toots to link to them.
Casey:
I'm sorry.
Casey:
But I did find that fascinating.
Casey:
But in terms of like a compelling cinematic experience, it was fine.
Yeah.
John:
yeah i guess that's what this means i mean trying to waiting this long for a new model to come out like that's you know really putting more cold water on top of the apple vision pro market but what it basically means is the parts in this that are expensive are not getting cheaper fast enough for apple to come out with a substantially cheaper model sooner it seems like and
John:
Well, I assume what that means is the screens, right?
John:
Because we know that the M series SOCs, the cost of those, you know, they're not the most expensive component in this thing anyway.
John:
And Apple has some control over that.
John:
And the aluminum and stuff, well, that's kind of the same.
John:
Yes, they could make it cheaper by dropping the screen, by dropping the front screen.
John:
But the screens that are in front of your eyeballs are not made by a lot of companies, are not in wide supply, and apparently are not going to get cheap enough, fast enough for Apple to come out with something sooner.
John:
So...
John:
there's going to be a long wait with the one it's this is like who would have predicted that the the apple like the glasses the goggles the vr whatever we were talking about the headset the what we were talking about before this was released that they will end up being essentially a home pod like product where they release one and it sits there and people go hmm
John:
Apple still doing this thing or it's not a good a good comparison when people start thinking of your product the same way they think of the HomePod the big HomePod that is but if this is true and there's not any other Vision Pro hardware until the end of 2026
John:
That's HomePod vibes.
Marco:
Well, I don't think that's, you know, people are making a big deal out of that news.
Marco:
I don't think that's that surprising.
Marco:
I think the bigger surprise for me with this launch is that Apple seems to be putting no wood behind the arrow.
Marco:
Like there's just like no content besides one episode of Dinosaurs, I guess.
Marco:
Cool.
Marco:
But like what this product needs, yeah, it needs to be radically cheaper.
Marco:
But as you mentioned, like there's some pretty critical inhibitions to making it cheaper that are going to stay that way for probably at least like five years.
Marco:
Like, you know, we're not close to making it cheaper, at least a lot cheaper.
Marco:
Like, yeah, yeah.
Marco:
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.
Marco:
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 device, how do you make that valuable to the people who will buy it, who can afford it?
Marco:
And that's the part that's the surprise to me is that there doesn't seem to be a lot happening there yet.
Marco:
Like I would have assumed since there really was no like, you know, competitive pressure to release this when they did.
Marco:
I would have assumed it would be more like you mentioned the play that a little bit earlier, Casey, like when panic launched the play date.
Marco:
They had a whole year of games that were planned and scheduled.
Marco:
Every week after it was launched, a new game came out.
Marco:
And they had all this content lined up and all these deals with developers lined up.
Marco:
And so they knew that, yes, we're selling a brand new hardware platform with no installed base and no software library that will be there when we get there.
Marco:
So we have to create that.
Marco:
So they did.
Marco:
And that was a great strategy.
Marco:
It worked very well.
Marco:
I assumed that Apple was releasing it when they were because they had plans to give it a real oomph kind of release.
Marco:
That seems to not have been the case.
Marco:
Apple doesn't have panic money, you know.
Casey:
Yeah, right.
John:
I mean...
John:
How many people does Panic have?
John:
They're such a big corporation, huge staff, incredibly well resourced.
John:
You can't really expect Apple to compete with that.
Marco:
Exactly.
Marco:
So that's what the Vision Pro needs.
Marco:
What it needs is reasons for the people who are willing to spend $3,500, which again, that's not going to be mass market for some time.
Marco:
But there is a market for...
Marco:
high-end luxury electronics.
Marco:
Those markets exist.
Marco:
They're not massive, but they exist.
Marco:
Apple has served them in other ways before.
Marco:
There is a market there at the current price, but even at the current price, Apple's not really addressing the market in other non-price ways.
Marco:
And if they launched a brand new hardware revision in six months or a year, instead of this rumor of 2026 or whatever, if they launched one earlier, that's not going to change that.
Marco:
What's holding it back right now is mostly not the hardware.
Marco:
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?
Marco:
Where's the killer content?
Marco:
That's what they need now.
Marco:
They don't need more hardware releases.
Marco:
They need apps and content.
John:
Well, they kind of need both.
John:
I mean, like I know one was kind of more important than the other.
John:
But like that's the reason I compared it to the HomePod is when people don't see updates to a product year over year, especially for like three years in a row, they start to wonder about the company's commitment.
John:
And that's really death for a new platform.
John:
And even though new hardware like it's I mean, it's not going to be that different within a year or two.
John:
Like the technology is not advancing that quickly.
John:
but it does show, oh, Apple's still committed to this.
John:
They've made some, even if it's just like 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, a better idea about fit, right?
John:
Even if it's exactly the same screen, still an M2, like just minor revisions shows that the company is committed to the product.
John:
No, that's not going to move the market, but it will make people feel a little bit more comfortable, especially if you're, you know, a,
John:
a tech gadget fan that like apple is committed to this obviously content also would do that to make you know that apple's committed to it but if they just released content and everyone was loving it three years in they'd be like okay i love it so much but what they need to release more of this they need to make a cheaper one because no one's going to buy this because it's too expensive and i think it's great but you know there's two things there's one it does need to get better like at some point in some number of years there should be a better technically better version but of course that will be equally expensive or even more expensive and then there also needs to be a cheaper one
John:
But right now it looks kind of like the original HomePod in multiple ways in that like maybe they'll be sitting in warehouses unsold like the big HomePods were.
John:
And then when Apple does come out with the new one, it would be like the HomePod mini.
John:
They'll be like, you know what?
John:
We just kind of decided that people actually just need a cheaper, worse one of these, like the HomePod mini.
John:
And we'll just stop making the big one.
John:
Oh, but we changed our mind.
John:
We'll make the big one again.
John:
And here's a better one.
John:
Like that's not a good path.
Yeah.
John:
for instilling confidence and the home pod is not even a platform listen the home pod is not a platform it's just a thing that people stick in their house this is a platform and so you need people 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 of life and one of the ways you can show signs of life is don't wait three years 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 surprising for me like you were saying a moment ago marco that there really hasn't been much of a push for content like since the launch what have we gotten we've gotten the mls thing that everyone hated including me we've gotten the dinosaur a second dinosaurs episode and that's
Casey:
it right like yeah other than some some bug fixes and mild improvements to the os and and some legitimately pretty solid improvements to um as to personas oh and the addition of spatial personas but even still like that's not that much and you would think and i think the play date is a just perfect um case study and how to do this right you would think that they knew when this was going to come out and they 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 well right well i mean talk about like a way to get content for quote unquote for free like hey netflix has content youtube has it had to be third parties to like make these own kind of you know webkit enabled screen scraping clients to try to do something useful out of it yeah it's just it's not been a good are we still i think we're still waiting on those coming soon new environments right
Casey:
Oh, that's true.
Casey:
Yeah, yeah.
Casey:
I forgot about that.
John:
Are those going to come out the end of 2026, too?
John:
Yeah, fair.
Marco:
Netflix and YouTube, those are third parties.
Marco:
There's lots of reasons why that's kind of out of Apple's control.
Marco:
Some of which are their fault, but still, that's not within their control directly.
Marco:
They could have thrown more money at it.
Marco:
They could have maybe.
Marco:
I mean, but, you know, that's that's more of like, you know, a corporate politics thing.
Marco:
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.
Marco:
So, for instance, they do have content studios.
Marco:
they could be making more of this content.
Marco:
They could have made it in advance.
Marco:
Certain deals they could make with other content providers, things like the sports leagues.
Marco:
I'm sure those are all in progress or in talks, but you need something there now for people to use this device with now.
Marco:
And then, of course, other things that they could make themselves directly, like things like the environments we were saying.
Marco:
Or their own apps.
Casey:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marco:
Every Apple app that shipped as an iPad app on the Vision Pro is kind of like, meh.
Marco:
I know this comes up occasionally.
Marco:
I want you to know out there, audience, when we criticize Apple, we get heat from you, from other Apple fans.
Marco:
So we don't criticize Apple unnecessarily or cavalierly.
Marco:
No matter how much we all want the Vision Pro to succeed because it is amazing technology, we all are rooting for this.
Marco:
We were rooting for this.
Marco:
We still are rooting for this to succeed.
Marco:
We want this to succeed.
Marco:
But it just looks like Apple is fumbling the ball so badly.
Marco:
Sorry for the sports analogy.
Marco:
I'm not good with sports.
Marco:
But it just looks like they just were not prepared to have actually launched this.
Marco:
And it almost seems like...
Marco:
We have more faith in the product than large parts of Apple do, and that's concerning.
Marco:
And the problem is, if they don't put a bunch of wood behind that arrow, no one's going to buy it and keep it and keep using it, and the platform will fail, even though it's an amazing piece of hardware.
Marco:
If the outcome that we want...
Marco:
is for this product to succeed, we should be bugging Apple from the outside and be like, hey, you know you got to do something here, right?
Marco:
You know this is not going to fix itself.
Marco:
The situation in the Vision Pro right now, over time, this is not going to get better unless changes are made.
Marco:
This isn't something that will work itself out.
Marco:
It isn't like, oh, we're just right around the corner from a bunch of apps being made for it.
Marco:
I keep seeing my overcast usage graph go down on the Vision Pro,
Marco:
It is now about 120 people.
Marco:
That's not good.
Marco:
What I see is the slope going down, down, down, down, down.
Marco:
That does not tell me that I, as a developer, should invest in this platform.
Marco:
What about content makers?
Marco:
What about Netflix?
Marco:
What about YouTube?
Marco:
They're seeing the same graphs, I'm sure, of whatever data they have showing how many of their potential customers might be using this thing.
Marco:
And those graphs are also probably going down from a pretty low number to begin with.
Marco:
And so if you follow this out, what's going to happen?
Marco:
How is this going to look six months from now?
Marco:
How is this going to look a year from now?
Marco:
If nothing changes significantly, it's going to look very bad.
Marco:
It's going to be just a continuation of this downward slope with almost no one left using it.
Marco:
Something has to change in order to make that go up.
Marco:
And it's not going to come from the outside because the outside parties have no reason to do it.
Marco:
So it has to come from Apple.
Marco:
Apple has to be the one to make that change.
John:
Another potentially helpful analogy is Apple TV for longtime Apple fans.
John:
Remember what the Apple TV was when it was introduced as ITV.
John:
It was a Mac running a modified version of Tiger, a Mac OS 10 10.4 and had a hard drive.
John:
And it was very different from what you see today.
John:
But it was essentially similar product, 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.
John:
Should it run Mac OS X?
John:
Should it have a hard drive?
John:
Like, what is the right role for this product?
John:
You know, kind of like the HomePod, you know, what is the right shape of this product?
John:
Are we barking up the wrong tree?
John:
And the change from the original Apple TV slash ITV to the current one is big, but it shows that if the company is patient and is willing to plug away at it,
John:
uh yeah the apple tv took how many years to be see any kind of success to even be good but apple didn't give up on it they just rethought regrouped tried a couple times made a couple really bad remotes it still has a lot of problems but it is better than it was uh if you don't give up
John:
and you're willing to keep putting money into it, and you do actually do occasional updates, you can make progress.
John:
But again, Apple TV as a platform, I think, is not where Apple wants Vision Pro to be as a platform.
John:
And Apple TV was not launched with the same fanfare as Vision Pro.
John:
So there is definitely a misbatch between what Apple is saying about the Vision Pro and how much it costs and how they launched it.
John:
And the reality of the product is a lot more like that original Apple TV or the big HomePod.
John:
But the launch is like it's the iPhone, and it's not.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
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.
Casey:
Do you have any opening statement?
Casey:
Do you want to start?
Marco:
Do you want to... Yeah, yeah.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
Whenever we think that a new product or more recently OS version is about to be unveiled, like we'll do one right before WWDC for iOS 17, etc.
Marco:
I started doing this a few years ago on this show here, doing these exit interviews.
Marco:
Because, of course, I have lots of experience with corporate America and managing people.
Marco:
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 has not changed much since 2018.
Marco:
That was a major revision in 2018.
Marco:
That was when the 11-inch was released, when they got the flat sides, the magnetic pencil, Face ID.
Marco:
That was a major revision.
Marco:
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 product.
Marco:
And kind of going into what is most likely to be the update, I think my opinions of the outgoing one frame what I want out of the update and what I hope Apple has addressed with it.
Marco:
Even when I very first got the other iPad Pro in 2018, I
Marco:
Number one thing I wanted was move the Face ID sensor to either the corner or the long edge.
Marco:
So that way you can use it in landscape mode, which is how I almost always use it, usually with a keyboard, and not have your hand cover the Face ID sensor when you pick it up.
Marco:
Something like that is rumored.
Marco:
It has been rumored for a while.
Marco:
One of the more recent iPad base models actually did that.
Marco:
They actually moved the Face ID camera to the top.
Marco:
I would love to see some basic improvements, just things we've learned along the way.
Marco:
And for me, the major theme for things we've learned along the way since 2018 is...
Marco:
I think way more people now than back then really use the iPad configured physically like a laptop.
Marco:
There is some kind of keyboard, whether it's one of Apple's many 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 covers because they were just so good.
Marco:
But the iPad, it was never seemingly designed to be used in landscape orientation.
Marco:
And it does it.
Marco:
But again, the Face ID and the camera were in the wrong spot for it.
Marco:
The volume buttons and everything.
Marco:
Everything on it is clearly in the wrong spot when you turn it on its side for landscape orientation.
Marco:
So I would like to see an iPad Pro.
Marco:
You know, whatever they choose to do with the other ones, whatever, that's up to them.
Marco:
But the iPad Pro, I think, is maybe more likely than the others to be used with a keyboard, the Apple Pencil, or both.
Marco:
I would like to see the new iPad Pro.
Marco:
be actually designed to be better used with optionally a keyboard and pencil.
Marco:
I want the keyboard to be able to physically attach in a better way than just having a giant 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.
Marco:
They're called holes.
Marco:
I want the iPad Pro to add holes or slot or some kind of physical like clip kind of thing, something that the keyboard can clip into.
Marco:
So that way, a keyboard could literally just be the flat bottom part of what we see now is the keyboard cases and not have a back case.
Marco:
And this can be accomplished in a very nice, graceful way if Apple chooses to do it.
Marco:
I'm not talking about, like, massive, like, you know, a big slot like a Palm Pilot, although that would be nice for the pencil, but we'll get to that in a second.
Marco:
But, like, I'm not talking about, like, some kind of giant slot that runs the whole end of the thing.
Marco:
This could be, like, you know, like, roughly the size of the millimeter wave window on an iPhone, on the side of the iPhones, the recent ones?
Marco:
A little oval...
Marco:
inset into it with some latch mechanism inside that a keyboard could be designed to latch into that's what i want attaching things with magnets is great it is great when you have no other options when it is the best option it isn't always the best option it is especially not always the best option with the apple pencil and this is i'll get to that now i guess
Marco:
The Apple Pencil always falls off the iPad Pro.
Marco:
When you bring 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 iPad Pro to better attach physically pencils and keyboards.
Marco:
I don't think this is going to happen, frankly.
Marco:
I think this is even less likely than the M4 rumor.
Marco:
I think this is very, very unlikely to be the design.
Marco:
But that's what ultimately I want.
Marco:
And again, it could just be as simple as a couple of oval cutouts that something could poke into with strong metal and maybe have a little expanding latch part that expands out and latches it in or something like that.
Marco:
It could be that simple.
Marco:
And what that would allow is, first of all, way more graceful attachment of keyboards, way more secure attachment of pencils, and the keyboard could then be like half the weight.
Marco:
It could be way smaller, way lighter, way mechanically simpler, which maybe could allow them to lower the obscene prices of those smart keyboards.
Marco:
And then the resulting package would be much more size and weight competitive with similarly sized laptops.
Marco:
Because right now, it's really not.
Marco:
It gets pretty bulky.
Marco:
I would love so much for them to fix this problem.
Marco:
Just put some kind of physical notch or something into the iPad body.
Marco:
I feel like the Johnny Ive school of design is let's make everything a smooth featureless blob that we can show it floating in space 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.
Marco:
In reality, then, we have to wrap things around it or bolt things to it with magnets or have cables coming out in weird ways.
Marco:
That's the reality.
Marco:
I would love for the products to be more designed to accommodate the reality of...
Marco:
what they actually need, how they're actually used.
Marco:
That way, the way most people actually end up using them can be more graceful and can work better.
Marco:
So that's what I want.
Marco:
I don't think I'm going to get it, but I want that more than I want any other predicted feature.
Marco:
That's more important to me than...
Marco:
the m4 or the m3 or ai it's more important to me than oled screens even sorry john like that's what i really want is for them to finally make the ipad pro designed to accommodate actually using it more like a laptop and it won't happen probably
John:
It's like you just want a touchscreen laptop running iPad OS.
Marco:
Yeah, seriously.
John:
Just cut to the chase.
Marco:
No, but it's convertible.
Marco:
It would still be convertible.
Marco:
In fact, it would be more easily convertible.
Marco:
You just pop it right out.
John:
Yeah.
John:
So, I mean, the holes idea is interesting, but 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 part.
John:
You can't actually just do a laptop-style hinge, so you still have to have a cantilevered out.
John:
area in the back which makes it clumsy i mean i i know what you're saying about like instead of having the magnets in the back have an attachment point that saves you some weight there but most people want to protect their pack of their ipads anyway so i don't know 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 with the addition of holes but it's it's a tough sell and i don't think they're going to go in that direction uh but the uh for just my brief thing in the exit interview for the current one um
John:
I think that it was a really important design in the evolution of the iPad, in particular, the flat-sided pencil that sticks to it, even though, yes, it does come off.
John:
It is better than the previous pencil, which didn't stick to it at all.
John:
Way better.
John:
So it was a big, important step, and I think, basically, it only stayed around for, like, one generation too long, right?
John:
Like, it was the last time when it didn't get revised and just got new guts on the inside, and when the iPad 10th gen or whatever got the landscape camera and everything, it was so clear that it was like, ooh, yeah, this year,
John:
it's kind of a shame the ipad pro but that's just one year right they're still and they and they still updated they still did update the guts i think this revision is not going to be as radical as you want it to be but i think it is going to have some things for you and i think we can casey do you have any ipad ipad pro exit interview stuff before we dive into the announcement
Casey:
A little bit.
Casey:
You know, I had bought a 2018 iPad Pro, loved it.
Casey:
That's now been pushed down the hierarchy to be the kid's iPad, predominantly Michaela at this point, but, you know, Declan will use it from time to time.
Casey:
And I had bought the 2022, the, whatever the M2 one was, 2022, right?
Casey:
M2 iPad Pro to replace it, both 11 inches.
Casey:
And I love that one.
Casey:
And I absolutely adore that as an around the house computer, as an in the car, as a passenger computer, things of that nature.
Casey:
You know, one thing that the iPad has up on the Mac and at the rate we're going, we'll always have up on the Mac is Marco.
John:
Cellular.
Casey:
Mm-hmm.
John:
I was going to say windshield shattering.
Casey:
It's also windshield shattering.
Casey:
Yes, that's true.
Casey:
Let me remind you, Apple, I will pay you infinite dollars to give me a cellular Mac Pro, please, for the love of God.
Casey:
I will give you all of my money.
Casey:
But anyway, no, I really like...
Casey:
my ipad in very limited use cases but those use cases it is freaking perfect for it i i don't particularly disagree with anything marco was saying with regard to like cases and things like that i use the cantilevered what is it magic keyboard is that right i always get them backwards
Marco:
Yeah, the Magic is the more expensive cantilevered one.
Marco:
The smart keyboard cover is the one that I use and Craig Federighi uses.
Marco:
It used to be the only one.
Marco:
There's no trackpad, and it's a little bit shorter up front.
Casey:
Yeah, and so I do have one of those.
Casey:
That's what's on Michaela's iPad, and I used that until the cantilevered one, the Magic one, came out.
Casey:
And I do think, and I think you had said this, Marco, I started using iPad way more when I had a real keyboard on it, because then, to me anyway, it becomes completely hamstrung for creation purposes to occasionally annoying.
Casey:
Which is a big improvement, actually.
Casey:
And so anyway, so I really like both of the iPads that are in the house.
Casey:
The biggest issue I would say I have with the 2022 iPad is that it's not really that much better than the 2018.
Casey:
Like it's noticeably better, but not night and day better, even though, you know, four years had elapsed.
Casey:
And I think the only thing that I seek, now we're leaving the exit interview part, 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 one, remind me of this in a week, but the only thing I really seek is I would love to have the FaceTime, the front-facing camera.
Casey:
on the longer edge but like the pencil yeah it falls off all the time but at least it can connect that doesn't really bother me um the the cantilever keyboard is heavy but it's you know i love that thing i think it's worth it's worth um it's worth the weight it's worth the cost although i will say
Casey:
Mine is not aging super gracefully.
Casey:
I feel like we just talked about this a few weeks back.
Casey:
But the corner, one of the corners of mine is looking real gross.
Casey:
And like the outer shell, like the kind of rubbery outer shell has fallen away.
Casey:
There's definitely some other spots that have like nicks and whatnot that it's not aged correctly.
Casey:
extraordinarily gracefully.
Casey:
So maybe a little bit better keyboard.
Casey:
Oh, and actually come to think of it, you know, now that I'm wish casting, bigger trackpad, which is a common refrain.
Casey:
You know, I think Jason and Mike talked about this.
Casey:
The Connected Boys talked about this.
Casey:
Bigger trackpad.
Casey:
And for the love of all that it's good and holy, an escape key and function row, please and thank you.
Casey:
I would love that.
Casey:
on a future keyboard.
Casey:
But in the grand scheme of things, the hardware itself, it's fine.
Casey:
It's quick.
Casey:
It's got cellular.
Casey:
I don't have any strong needs for the Apple Pencil.
Casey:
I do have one.
Casey:
And when I use it, I really, really like it.
Casey:
But I'm not an artist.
Casey:
I use it more for annotating things than anything else.
Casey:
So
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
I don't even know what I'm seeking right now.
Casey:
This is one of those moments where Apple needs to tell me what it is.
Casey:
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, as we always say, is the main thing that's holding back.
John:
But we're not getting a new OS for the iPad on May 7th.
John:
That'll wait till WWDC.
John:
So we have to set that aside.
John:
We're just talking about the hardware.
John:
But honestly...
John:
One big part of the problem with the iPad is that the OS has never lived up to the hardware.
John:
The hardware is essentially laptop.
John:
It's an Apple laptop without the keyboard running a slightly different OS, but the OS does not allow that power to be exploited, and it's a shame.
John:
But, you know, that's not going to change on May 7th.
John:
but the event the event didn't come out and say this is an ipad event but it did have what did it have it had uh had a bunch of different images uh i got the one that had uh someone holding an apple pencil yeah which might be the first time that apple literally put the product they're going to announce in the image right because it's so clearly an apple pencil it's not it's not like a regular pencil it's an apple pencil um but there were apparently six possible images that you can get and they're all kind of abstract like they were drawn with the pencil or whatever and then tim cook
John:
tweeted pencil us in for may 7th and then did a little pencil emoji gone are the days of subtlety you know it's like the the ai announcement for wwc but anyway you would think that they're going to have an event on may 7th where they're going to announce an apple pencil and that's it i think there will be other things but just fyi there's going to be a new apple pencil so that's great but the actual ipad as i said earlier in the year i think is the hardware product i'm most excited for this year
John:
because i'm definitely going to get one that the rumors are true and it has an oled screen because i use my ipad as a little tiny television uh and oled is better for tvs the black levels on the current 11 inch ipad pro are very bad uh and oled won't have that problem and so i'm excited for it and honestly from a hardware perspective
John:
It's basically a big screen.
John:
So any improvement to the screen is significant.
John:
And from what the rumors say, this is a very significant upgrade to the screen.
John:
So significant that I think this will be the best screen that Apple sells, period.
Yeah.
Casey:
The Vision Pro is having some thoughts right now.
John:
So there's the question of whether those are screens, but I guess, but even within that realm, I think this one will have better color reproduction and brightness than the Vision Pro.
John:
Maybe not as high resolution, but better color reproduction and brightness.
John:
And also you don't have to strap it to your head.
John:
right but just for traditional screens setting aside things that are inside goggles for traditional screens this i think this is going to beat everything that they sell if the rumors are true it's supposedly a dual stacked oled so the problem with oleds is you can't make them too bright over there they wear themselves out and use a lot of power so instead they take two oleds and put them on top of each other and run each one at slightly lower power so each individual oled doesn't wear itself out as fast but the total light throughput you get is i don't know if it's double but it's more right uh
John:
So that is fascinating.
John:
And if it is a really good screen, as the rumors suggest, I'm going to 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 do like professional photo or video work on it or whatever.
John:
And although good luck with that.
John:
But for this particular case, and honestly, I think this is a common use case.
John:
People watching video on their iPads.
John:
Whether or not they have a keyboard attached, I think that's probably more narrow interest for people who want to use it for productivity.
John:
But people watching video is common.
John:
And that's another reason that the landscape camera is important because people are watching video, I would imagine, mostly in landscape.
John:
I don't think people are blowing up the TikTok app to 2X and watching everything vertically on it.
John:
So the landscape camera helps with the people who use it as a mini TV.
John:
I cover that stupid camera with my hand all the time.
John:
It's annoying.
John:
And the screen, it's basically a big screen and it'll be an amazing screen.
John:
And then the other thing about the guts, which is fascinating, but less so for what it says about the iPad and more so for what it says about all their other products is the M4 rumor.
John:
You would think this is going to be an iPad Pro with an M3 in it.
John:
uh that would make perfect sense uh the macbook airs just came out with the m3 m3's been out for a while put it in an ipad sure but the rumor is oh but it might be an m4 and it's like okay well maybe i will see but that rumor has heated up recently with actual evidence uh there's two sets of evidence i've meant to grab this one from a screenshot one of them was the uh
John:
was it the the part number for the uh the cpu and apple has these weird internal part numbers like the m2 was t8 one one two and the m3 was t8 one two two so that the third number or the fourth digit fourth fourth character is changing so t8 one one t8 one two you would expect that the that the m3 is t8 one two two
John:
But the rumor, the people trying to find things in the OS or whatever, says that this new upcoming iPad is T813.
John:
I know it's confusing because one is the M2 and two is the M3.
John:
It's made on the A16 process for the 11-inch iPad for iPadOS 17.
John:
The part number, if they follow the same pattern, the part number says it's an M4.
John:
And the other thing is that the product number, the sort of internal product numbers that Apple has for its devices,
John:
uh and it's like always like a name of a product then number comma another number um and the rumored uh part numbers again pulled out of ipad os 7.5 beta is ipad 16 comma 3 16 comma 4 16 comma 5 and 16 comma 6.
John:
right so the ipad air 5 uh was and the ipad pro from 2021 were labeled ipad 13 comma something and they have the m1 and all the ipads that have the m2 are labeled ipad 14 so m1 is 13 m2 is 14 m3 would be 15 oh so they skipped one but this is ipad 16 so they're skipping ipad 15 which would have been the m3 model and that leads more evidence to this being the m4 so
John:
All of the internal software dredged out part numbers and product numbers lead to the conclusion that the iPad Pro have an M4 in it and not an M3.
Casey:
I find this so hard to believe.
Casey:
And if it wasn't for this like 16 comma whatever, whatever, I think I would say absolutely not.
Casey:
But this whole part number thing or model number thing is really giving me pause.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And the part number thing, because the part number is even more obscure.
John:
Those like T8, whatever, that's super obscure.
John:
There'd be no reason to fake that or skip a number, and that's really even farther to dig that out.
John:
But yeah, it's consistent.
John:
They skipped over the M3 thing, and this looks like it's going to have an M4 in it.
John:
And I find it perfectly plausible because 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 and apple kind of had to do it if they wanted to get their products out the door right but they don't want to stick with it for any longer than they have to and so if tsmc can make m4s in time to be in the ipad pro
John:
you bet apple would love to not have to pay to make another super expensive n3b based product and i think it is plausible that you can announce something on may 7th with an m14 in it i'm not sure when it will ship but you know tsmc doesn't always publicly 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 i think it's plausible based on the timing um
John:
but it's super interesting because that would mean that the m4 all the rumors about the m4 lineup and how like by the end of next year every single mac will be on on something on the m4 that gets a lot more likely to happen if they're starting with the m4s in may right not even wwdc 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 like i think the ipad is plenty you know
John:
I don't care about it in the iPad, right?
John:
But what that means is, come WWDC, if they announce any Mac hardware, doesn't that also have to have the M4?
John:
Or maybe not.
John:
Maybe they just announce the M3 Ultra.
John:
Like, I just... This overlap in these numbers is killing me.
John:
I just really wish they would get on schedule and just make the number go up by one every once in a while, but...
John:
I will be unrealistically expecting M4-based Macs at WWC if they release an M4-based iPad Pro.
John:
But I think the M4-based iPad Pro is plausible.
John:
And so, honestly, now I expect it.
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.
Marco:
And...
Marco:
And, you know, to some degree, like, we don't know how big of an update the M4 is compared to the M3.
Marco:
Like, you know, John mentioned, like, there is this process switch thing, you know, with, you know, N3B, as we discussed, was kind of a dead end with TSMC's processing.
Marco:
It was very, this very expensive process.
Marco:
And that's what the M3 and all of last fall's phone chips were made on.
Marco:
Probably, like, if I had to guess, if the M4 is ready this soon after the M3,
Marco:
My guess is the M4 was largely a change to get off that process and to be on the new, you know, N3, whatever the, what's the new one?
Marco:
N3P?
John:
N3E.
John:
And keep in mind, N3E is essentially, it's worse in terms of the product you get, but it's better in terms of yield and cost.
John:
So M3B is like the super expensive, but it actually is slightly better, but like no one wants to pay for it and the yields are terrible, right?
John:
So Apple wants to get off of that.
John:
Everyone wants to get off of it as soon as possible, but not because M3E is fantastically better.
John:
Like it is the same or even potentially slightly worse, but cheaper, better yields.
John:
And so that makes sense.
John:
And I think the M4...
John:
M4 advances over the M3.
John:
I assume whatever they do with the neural engine or if they rebrand it or whatever AI mumbo jumbo like that could possibly be in there.
John:
But I don't think it's just a warmed over M3 because the thing about M3E is it's not...
John:
Whatever the term is, it's not compatible with the designs they did for N3B.
John:
So you have to essentially relay out the chip.
John:
So I think it will be more of its own device than we might imagine, because it's not like they can just take the exact layout of the N3 and stamp it in N3E.
John:
They can't do that.
John:
That's the whole deal with M3B, right?
John:
So if this is the start of the M4s and there are no more M3s, it would mean the M3s were like, we had to get something out the door.
John:
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, and we got off it as fast as we can.
John:
But if, on the other hand, WWDC comes, and they've introduced an M4 iPad Pro, and they say, and now here's the new M3 Ultra Max Studio, I'm going to be like, what are you doing, Apple?
John:
What's going on?
John:
Like, an M3B, how expensive would an M3B-based M3 Ultra chip be?
John:
And...
John:
i mean it'll be faster than a plain m4 that's for sure but it's just it's so weird so i just it and it's so strange to be launching this on the ipad because who has an ipad who's like boy this needs an m4 like no 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 features which we'll get to in a little bit well
Marco:
I have some theories.
Marco:
If you look at the rumors overall between last fall and now about things like the process node switch, how N3B is so expensive and it's kind of a dead end, I'm guessing, and we were saying this all last fall, as you were saying, Apple wants to get off of that process quickly.
Marco:
That the M3 and the A, whatever we're on for the phones, that...
Marco:
This like there's a reason why this year only the pro phones got the got the new A chip with the three nanometer process on N3B and the other phones didn't.
Marco:
And then keep in mind, we've already for months heard the rumors that this coming fall's iPhones are both going to get a new chip.
Marco:
So it's not going to continue that lag of like, you know, the cheaper phone has last year's chip.
Marco:
That's been the rumor for months that that's not happening this year, which means that the iPhone chips that were made this past fall are one-offs because Apple does not keep making the pro phones for the next year.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
Whatever A we're on now is a one-off chip, it seems.
Marco:
It's not going to go to next year's cheaper phone.
Marco:
When Apple stopped making the iPhone 15 Pros this September, that chip is gone.
Marco:
It's not in anything else.
Marco:
That's one of the chips out of the way.
Marco:
Then we have the M3 generation.
Marco:
Well, 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 Mac Studio.
Marco:
This fall, what's going to be left with the M3B process chips, which are the M3, M3 Pro, M3 Max, and A, whatever is on the phone?
Marco:
It's just, I think, just going to be then the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro.
Marco:
And those both get updated pretty much every year to every chip that comes out for them.
Marco:
Oh, and the iMac.
Marco:
The iMac.
Marco:
And the iMac.
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
Okay.
Marco:
That's interesting.
Marco:
But anyway, so the iPad Pro gets updated less frequently.
Marco:
And so maybe what they're looking to do here is jump the iPad Pro forward first because then they can keep making that for the next two years, not touch it.
Marco:
And not have any chips left on the expensive N3B process.
Marco:
So my guess is they were okay using N3B for the really important high-end products that needed 3nm to get ahead, stay competitive.
Marco:
And that's the iPhone Pro, the MacBook Pro, and the MacBook Air.
Marco:
But then they're going to move off of that as quickly as they can.
Marco:
The products that have longer refresh cycles are kind of less important, like the Mac Mini, the Mac Studio, and the iPad Pro.
Marco:
Maybe they don't get it.
Marco:
And the iMac, unfortunately.
Marco:
The iMac's the one weird one, but maybe they'll just update that with the MacBook Air.
John:
Yeah, they skipped with the iMac, so it was overdue.
John:
I think the iMac will move to M4 quickly.
John:
I don't think the M3 iMac is going to be around for four years.
John:
I think they're going to move that to the M4 quicker than we think, but we'll see.
Marco:
Yeah, and based on that, if we go with the theory that the M4 is something that Apple is trying to get out there as quickly as possible to minimize the amount of time they need to keep making N3B chip products, then it does make sense to put it in the iPad Pro now.
Marco:
I would 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 probably going to be mostly a marketing focus, which is fine.
Marco:
Apple should be leaning into this.
Marco:
Everyone else is, and they look like they're behind.
Marco:
So they should be leaning into AI as a marketing thing.
Marco:
their chips already are good at many AI related tasks.
Marco:
They're already good at running inference.
Marco:
They're already good at training.
Marco:
They already have good GPUs, good neural engines, you know, lots of fast memory.
Marco:
So like they're already good at all that stuff.
Marco:
So for them to say the M4 is great for AI, like,
Marco:
Yeah, that's because all of their chips are pretty good relative to other consumer product chips.
Marco:
So they can still say all that while the M4 doesn't necessarily need to be a major jump forward.
Marco:
So I think we're going to see everything move to the M4 as quickly as possible, possibly even all in this calendar year.
Marco:
We'll see.
John:
Well, the problem is the rumors for, like, the good, beefy M4 chips for, like, the Studio and Mac Pro are, like, well out into next year.
John:
And so that really puts cold water on my idea that there's going to be a Mac Studio announcement at WWDC with an M4 in it.
John:
Yeah.
John:
But, I mean, obviously, I mean, Apple wants – it's not a question of them, like, deciding to do this.
John:
They need the M4 to be available.
John:
If the M4 wasn't available, they wouldn't do this.
John:
But if it is available, yes, they're jumping on it ASAP.
John:
And that's why I think they'll also update the iMac.
John:
Because as soon as the M4 is available with a reasonable upgrade cycle, they're going to like, we got to get to your point, get everything off of N3B.
John:
Any products we sell with N3Bs in them, they're not going to get any cheaper.
John:
No one else is using that process.
John:
TSMC is probably going to stop making it as soon as we're done buying it from them.
John:
So let's let's get off of it.
John:
And so any product that was on it, we need to get it off.
John:
within you know within the next calendar year right 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 put the m3 in it and yeah then it gives them more runway to let this i'm going to say let this languish but not it's not going to languish like again the computing power is not the thing that is holding this back and this will be presumably the new design with the new pencil and the new camera orientation and no holes in the bottom sorry marco although
John:
I guess we'll do the pencil next.
John:
The rumor of this pencil is it's the Apple Pencil 3.
John:
The Apple did just come out with a new pencil, but that one wasn't like the good pencil, the top end one, the most expensive pencil.
John:
This is the new most expensive pencil.
John:
And how can you tell?
John:
A, it'll be more expensive.
John:
And B, it has new features.
John:
And the rumored features are a squeeze function.
John:
Because, yeah, sure.
John:
Like, I mean, you could also do a button Apple, but that's so unseemly.
John:
So a squeeze function.
John:
And haptic feedback in the pencil of some kind.
John:
Maybe that's just in response to your squeeze.
John:
Maybe it'll be like a rumble feature to make it feel like textured paper or something.
John:
Who knows?
John:
But the pencil continues to get increasingly fancy.
John:
I think the rumors are that it will still be flat sided.
John:
It will still attach magnetically.
John:
It'll be a little bit shorter than the old one, maybe to fit in wherever they're going to slap it on.
John:
Maybe it'll go on the short side this time.
John:
as more of a landscape you know landscape oriented ipad type thing where the camera's on the top and the pencil's on the side you know that's that's reasonable and then your one hope this year marco is the rumors of a more quote laptop like aluminum magic keyboard and trackpad
John:
i don't think it's going to attach with holes but i think it will be well to help casey and his poor worn out you know to help everybody with their poor worn out ipad keyboards that are made of whatever fabric or rubbery membrane or whatever if you make the thing out of aluminum and plastic just like the laptops it will wear like the laptops do which is better than these ipad things uh
John:
bigger trackpad maybe a glass trackpad if it's made aluminum it can be more structurally sturdy um 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 the screen is light and the base is heavy and that works out for a you know a simple rear hinge they don't have that on the ipad so they got to do some sort of cantilevering thing but for people who do want
John:
A more laptop like experience out of their iPad.
John:
The rumors are that Apple is going to deliver that.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So first of all, just back to the pencil for a second.
Marco:
The double tap gesture to like change tools or go to the eraser on the pencil has always been a little finicky and a little bit like it's easy to accidentally trigger it.
Casey:
Excuse me.
Casey:
Excuse me.
Casey:
That is not fair.
Casey:
It is so frustratingly difficult to get right.
Marco:
Really?
Marco:
I've always found it triggers accidentally.
Casey:
Well, that's the thing.
Casey:
You're either doing it when you don't want to or completely freaking unable to do it when you do want to.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
So very frustrating.
Marco:
So like I assume that that double tap gesture will be replaced by whatever form this like haptic squeeze possible button thing is.
Marco:
And if so, that's great because that needs that needs to be rethought.
Marco:
I'm hoping to see that.
Marco:
You think it'll replace it or be an addition to it?
Marco:
oh that's a good question i i hope it replaces it directly because i think that would be better i mean it replaced it in the airpods there's that precedent right airpods used to be tap and now they're squeeze yes but the airpods don't have haptic feedback they play a click sound so like they give you feedback but it's audio feedback not not like vibration feedback so we'll see you know what is audio but vibrations wow
Casey:
Well done.
Marco:
If you look like there were rumors last fall about the iPhones getting basically like non-moving buttons 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.
Marco:
Maybe that's what this is in the pencil.
Marco:
I've been much more skeptical about that stuff in the past.
Marco:
I think Apple has shown over time that when they actually try to make a haptic button that is supposed to behave and feel like a button, they usually do a pretty good job.
Marco:
You had the haptic home buttons on the iPhone 7 and forward.
Marco:
Those actually felt pretty good.
Marco:
They felt like buttons.
Marco:
The trackpads.
Marco:
Yeah, the clicking trackpads.
Marco:
When they actually attempt to make something feel and work like a button, they usually do a good job of it recently.
Marco:
So if that's what they're doing,
Marco:
i i have high hopes that it will probably be decent uh and so my my major pencil question marks are basically how the heck it will attach and charge and where it will attach and charge to the to the ipad and battery life um honestly i think the battery life is pretty good um right but now they're gonna put a motor in there like a little the little in whatever it is the the taptic engine that's fair i mean it's it would probably be pretty tiny and you're not like you're not basically feeling it constantly like it would only be anyway
Marco:
I wouldn't worry too much about that.
Marco:
My main concern is where does it go on the iPad?
Marco:
How does it attach?
Marco:
How does it charge?
Marco:
And do they give it some kind of nice button feel or button effect for that?
Marco:
That would be great.
Marco:
I thought about, Casey, I thought about whether they would put it on the short side.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
You've got to figure out where the speaker is going.
John:
It is supposed to be shorter, though.
John:
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.
Marco:
And somebody... I forget where I saw this.
Marco:
Somewhere on Mastodon, I think.
Marco:
Somebody was saying, wouldn't it be great if this also worked with future iPhones?
Marco:
And yeah, that would be amazing.
Marco:
But yeah, probably it would not be small enough to magnetically attach to an iPhone.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
Honestly, I would love something like that for iPhones.
Marco:
But the problem also with that is that if you've noticed, recent iPads that are compatible with the pencil get really fingerprinty way more than your phone.
Marco:
And the reason why is because 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 coating on the glass.
Marco:
And that's why modern iPads get so incredibly fingerprinty so easily.
Marco:
But anyway, so back to the iPad.
Marco:
Those are my wishes for the pencil.
Marco:
I would love for it to have some kind of physical attachment mechanism that was not just magnets that actually would stay there.
Marco:
But I'm not super confident in that.
Marco:
So in the absence of that, yeah, give me a haptic button, sure.
John:
Third-party opportunity.
John:
There's lots of cases with little loops and latches and pockets and things for you to stick your pencil in.
John:
That seems to be Apple's solution to this problem.
John:
It attaches with a magnet.
John:
If you don't jostle it too much, if you want to travel with it, buy one of those cases where you can stick it in a little holster or loop or whatever.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Casey:
Let's do some Ask ATP.
Casey:
Charlie Sorrell writes, years and years ago when Marco was still child-free, Casey told Marco that once he became a dad, he'd give up making fancy coffee.
Casey:
I think it was AeroPress at the time.
Casey:
That was a while ago now, obviously.
Casey:
What actually happened?
Casey:
You know, I 100% believe I did this because this is 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.
Casey:
So what's the story there, Marco?
Marco:
So it turns out you were kind of right.
Marco:
Oh, I'm actually very surprised by this, to be honest.
Marco:
So I no longer roast my own beans.
Marco:
I never ended up roasting at the beach.
Marco:
It was not a great setting for it.
Marco:
When you roast, there's a whole bunch of smoke and stuff you have to deal with.
Marco:
And the beach setup was just really not a good environment for that.
Marco:
And what happened in those years, when I moved to the beach in early COVID times...
Marco:
Mail order coffee was already really good by that point.
Marco:
I had these wonderful mail order options.
Marco:
What also happened around that same time was my taste in coffee shifted towards more medium and light roasts.
Marco:
Medium and light roasts are more difficult to do, especially on a home roaster.
Marco:
My roasting skills were really not up for making that style of coffee.
Marco:
So my home roasting kind of fell off and I stopped doing it and I just switched to mail order.
Marco:
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 house, I'm still living in a construction zone here.
Marco:
There's still paper on the floors.
Marco:
There's coverings on the countertops.
Marco:
They're still doing some painting and wall works.
Marco:
There's still dust being produced here and there.
Marco:
First of all, there are many days where I just like can't even get into the kitchen or like the sink will have a drop cloth over it because they're working above it or something that was that was going on today.
Marco:
So what I've been doing mostly is just going to the coffee shop in town or I've often just been doing frozen coffee pods.
Marco:
There's a company called Cometeer that also they make really good frozen pods.
Marco:
And frankly, I love them.
Marco:
They're fantastic.
Marco:
I wouldn't recommend it for every day because it's a little bit over the top, you know, having these like frozen pods that you have to get shipped to you.
Marco:
And, you know, the per cup cost is way higher than bean costs and everything.
Marco:
But if you don't have a coffee maker or an AeroPress nearby to use, if you just need to like make some coffee without pretty much any equipment except maybe a hot water kettle.
Marco:
It's a great way to do it.
Marco:
And honestly, the coffee that I get from Cometeer is better than anything I've ever home roasted.
Marco:
It's really good.
Marco:
So anyway, so all that is to say, I've completely stopped roasting my own beans, which I used to do regularly for years.
Marco:
I have partially stopped even making my own coffee and brewing my own coffee at home because I just haven't had like a reliable kitchen set up a lot of the time for the last few months.
Marco:
And so I assume I will get back into at least the brewing part more, you know, once things calm down here and I actually have a kitchen that is not full of dust that I can actually use reliably.
Marco:
I expect to get back into brewing my own coffee and getting and, you know, remaining good at that.
Marco:
But I'm actually further from it now than I've ever been.
Marco:
And that was mostly because mailware services got really good.
Marco:
And also Cometeer kind of ruined me because it's really good too.
John:
It doesn't sound like any of it was kid related though.
Marco:
No.
Marco:
Well, not really.
Marco:
No.
Marco:
Because, like, I mean, really, you know, my kid just turned 12 and I was roasting 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.
Marco:
I think I think it's just like old person reality.
Marco:
Aging related.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Busyness related and aging related.
Marco:
Like.
Marco:
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.
Casey:
Andy writes, after years of trying, I finally got an invitation to attend WWDC.
Casey:
I hope you guys will cover the what to do or not to do at WWDC.
Casey:
As I've been told that you've done in the past, even a pointer to which episodes I should listen to would be extremely helpful.
Casey:
I don't feel like I can be of help at all because last time I was at WWDC was in San Jose.
Casey:
So Marco, tell us about this.
Marco:
Yeah, so one thing to note, Andy, is that the WBDC experience today and for the last couple of years that it's been at Apple Park is very different from what it was in the past, where it was at a conference center and it was a whole week of in-person sessions.
Marco:
So what it is now is all the sessions are virtual, so there's really no in-person component there at all.
Marco:
The only in-person stuff to do now is...
Marco:
There's like a big developer event that you were presumably invited to at Apple Park to watch the keynote.
Marco:
So what this is, is you are sitting in a lawn like an Apple Park in front of those giant sliding doors for the cafeteria.
Marco:
You sit in a bunch of chairs set up like, you
Marco:
concert or something Tim Cook comes out on stage says hello good morning and then you know you watch the video basically on a giant screen and then afterwards you like you know go and you're led over to like the you know some kind of various events there's like tours and stuff like that
Marco:
And then there's occasional other stuff around Apple Park for that day and maybe the day after, especially revolving around the Apple Visitor Center, which is like it's kind of across the street and has like a coffee shop and it's basically a big Apple store and stuff.
Marco:
And then there's a handful of other community events that happen.
Marco:
There's things like the live talk show that usually happen there.
Marco:
There's other like smaller groups that are arranging things, certain developer groups and meetup kind of things happening.
Marco:
So this is a very different experience than it used to be, but it's still pretty fun.
Marco:
It's just different.
Marco:
The big thing to keep in mind when you're going there now, there is no conference center.
Marco:
So you're led into the event and you're there in Apple Park.
Marco:
You're obviously very well controlled by Apple people the whole time of where you can go and what you're doing.
Marco:
But then after that, you are escorted, you know, you have a handful of things, and then you're escorted out, and then you can't get back in, like, for the rest of the week.
Marco:
So plan, if you're going to be there for like a few days, try to plan stuff to do with the other groups and events that happen around that, because you're just like kind of let out into suburban Cupertino.
Marco:
It's like, all right, bye.
Marco:
That's it.
Marco:
You know, it's not like you're not in downtown San Jose anymore or down in San Francisco.
Marco:
And so there's really no like town to hang out in.
Marco:
It's just like Apple Park and in the visitor center and then a bunch of houses around you.
Marco:
So the hotel situation is a little, you know, boring or challenging.
Marco:
The dinner and evening event situation is a little limited there.
Marco:
You're basically hanging out in the suburbs next to an office park that won't let you back in.
Marco:
So plan for that with what you expect event-wise.
Marco:
If you can get into any of the other side events that are going on, do that.
Marco:
Plan for that accordingly.
Marco:
Honestly, I wouldn't recommend staying...
Marco:
past you know like the the events on monday i would say you can usually safely leave on at least wednesday maybe even tuesday you know depending on whether you whether there's certain events you want to go to but um that's what to expect like it's a really fun presentation that day but then you're kind of on your own so plan accordingly
Casey:
Wade asks, does it bother you that you have no privacy with public electric charging stations?
Casey:
They know who you are and where you live because you're billing information, what car you drive, where you were, when, how far you drove between charges, et cetera.
Casey:
Is there any practical way to have an electric car not be tracked short of only ever charging it at home?
Casey:
Do you know what the charger operators do with this information?
Casey:
Do they anonymize it?
Casey:
Do they sell it?
Casey:
I mean, I hear you, but I mean, this is the way the world is going.
John:
And I don't think bad news about credit cards.
Casey:
Yeah, exactly.
Casey:
Like, I don't see how there's really any two ways around this.
Casey:
And I'm really struggling to get myself worked up about this, especially since credit cards exist.
Casey:
You know, there's 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.
Casey:
It's possible.
John:
I mean, so there are a couple of stories related to this, which are more in the vein of things that are car specific, because knowing where you are and what you're doing, if you use any kind of electronic form of payment, that's sufficient.
John:
But the car stuff is like knowing how you drive.
John:
And so there are a couple of stories.
John:
This one is from March of this year.
John:
Automakers sharing consumers driving behavior with insurance companies that you don't want.
Yeah.
John:
i mean i especially do not want that i can assure you yeah i mean like it's kind of the the point of insurance like as you as you slice and dice the insured population into smaller and smaller groups based on their behavior insurance stops being insurance the whole point of insurance is you're spreading the 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 drivers in one group and all low risk drivers and and like you keep slicing up like that then everyone should just pay for their own car
John:
problems like there's no longer insurance it's the whole point is you're pooling risk and so there is the i mean it's not really that big of a danger because insurance companies aren't going to be that stupid but insurance companies do want to adjust the risk pools to their advantage based on knowing exactly how you drive um and that was a controversy in march and then um about 10 days later general motors said that they're going to stop sharing their driving behavior with data brokers right so this is for you
John:
Yeah, this is the real frontier of privacy in cars.
John:
It's not knowing where you go based on paying for charging electric chargers.
John:
It is the telemetry 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.
John:
uh the battle of like trying to find an electric charging station where you can feed 20 bills into a slot i think you that's not going to happen um but yeah like again everywhere you go if you pay for gas with a credit card or any kind of electronic form of payment it's not really that much different in terms of knowing what you drive everybody knows what you drive it's your vehicle is registered like it's not this is all publicly available or at least information that's available to the people who want to to know it so
John:
uh i would uh fight for your right to privacy party during yeah fight for your right to privacy while you're driving like you're the actual moment to moment information about your driving even what your trips are where you go how long it takes you to get from point a to point b all that information is being gathered by the car you just want to have legally have some kind of control over it and hopefully we'll get some laws in that area if we can ever in this country anyway if we can ever pass some kind of
John:
sweeping privacy, technical electronic privacy legislation, which is, people have been trying to do that for a while, but things move slowly around here, so fingers crossed.
Marco:
And by the way, to the question of specifically electric fast charging stations, there are
Marco:
fast charging stations out there that are not like profile or login based that you can just have a credit card you know swipe for them i've never seen one that takes cash but there are plenty to take credit cards and so there are kind of there are options there for like you know less data tracking that you could do you know maybe use a certain card for it or whatever
Marco:
And then there are also ways to charge your car that don't use DC fast chargers.
Marco:
You can charge your car in 220-volt RV plugs.
Marco:
You just have to leave your car overnight somewhere to charge it.
Marco:
So there are options.
Marco:
If you're on a road trip, you can just go to hotels that have those 220-volt chargers and charge overnight every time.
Marco:
That is an option you have.
Marco:
This is not something I would recommend as your only option.
Marco:
But there are other options.
Marco:
And usually...
Marco:
Those 220-volt chargers are even less sophisticated.
Marco:
Sometimes it's literally just like a plug.
Marco:
It could be like one of those Tesla wall units, and there's no login for that.
Marco:
There's no authentication for that.
Marco:
Or it could be like a third-party one or a CCS-based one.
Marco:
There's all sorts of them.
John:
But if you pay for that hotel with a credit card, they already know you're there.
John:
Yeah.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, there's so many.
Marco:
If you have electronic tolling, you have an easy pass in your car, that'll tell everybody everything.
Marco:
So there's lots of ways you can be tracked very, very, very, very easily for people who actually want to track you.
Marco:
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.
Marco:
You can join atp.fm slash join.
Marco:
Our member only overtime segment this episode, which is our member only kind of bonus segment, bonus topic after the main show, is going to be about the Limitless Pendant.
Marco:
This is formerly known as the Rewind AI Pendant.
Marco:
It's now called Limitless.
Marco:
We're going to be talking about that in ATP Overtime this week.
Marco:
Join to listen, atp.fm slash join.
Marco:
Thank you so much, and we'll talk to you next week.
John:
Now the show is over.
John:
They didn't even mean to begin.
John:
Because it was accidental.
John:
Accidental.
John:
Oh, it was accidental.
Casey:
Accidental.
John:
John didn't do any research.
John:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
John:
Cause it was accidental.
John:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm.
Marco:
And if you're into Mastodon, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S, so that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-G, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A, Syracuse.
Marco:
It's accidental, they didn't mean it.
Casey:
Marco, you went on a trip.
Casey:
How did it go?
Marco:
Oh, my God.
Marco:
It was amazing.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
So I went, as discussed last episode, I was going to do this.
Marco:
I went to Las Vegas to see Fish play at The Sphere.
Marco:
Oh, my God.
Marco:
So, all right.
Marco:
First of all, I'll get past some technical stuff first.
Marco:
I once again use the AirPods Pro as my concert earplugs.
Marco:
And I had the newest model, the USB-C ones.
Marco:
And I don't know if that matters, probably not, but they were flawless as concert earplugs this time.
Marco:
So there's been, there's, you know, it's a minor hardware update since the last time I used them, which was last fall or last summer.
Marco:
There's also been, there's, you know, iOS 17 came out in the meantime.
Marco:
So there's been some software updates as well to the AirPods.
Marco:
So whatever they have done, if it's changed, or it could just be the way the Sphere does audio, which is kind of
Marco:
Advanced and custom and everything.
Marco:
But whatever it is, they were flawless as concert earplugs.
Marco:
There was no weird artifacting like there was last time.
Marco:
There was no variation if I move my head side to side or I turn my head like there was last time.
Marco:
It was great.
Marco:
I actually took a picture, which I will make the chapter art for this chapter.
Marco:
uh of how my watch was reducing the sound because i actually i you know the watch measures it and tells you through the airpods and so um it actually ended up uh keeping the sound right around 84 decibels and it was saying like the outside world at that time in the concert was like in the 90s like around 95 decibels um and so with the airpods it was bringing it down to about 84 most of the time what mode did you have the airpods in
Marco:
So this was the just regular default.
Marco:
I didn't go into any of the accessibility stuff because that that alters things in ways that I don't quite want.
Marco:
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 sound reduction.
Marco:
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.
Marco:
Now, for reference, earlier today when I was just playing music at like medium to loud volume in my car, just driving around, windows closed, playing medium to loud music in my car, it was around 80 something decibels.
Marco:
It was like, you know, 84, 85, 86 decibels.
Marco:
So like it didn't sound quiet.
Marco:
And this isn't something I would recommend that you listen to like hours and hours a day or even a week at this level.
Marco:
This is not hearing protection for anybody who needs serious hearing protection.
Marco:
But if you just go to a few concerts a year and you want something to be able to enjoy them with some protection –
Marco:
this still continues to work fantastically.
Marco:
So I strongly can encourage people to try this.
Marco:
I have tried... We've gone over this before.
Marco:
I won't go into it now.
Marco:
But I've tried every concert earplug out there.
Marco:
These are better than all of them in terms of sound quality, clarity, ease of use, even comfort for me.
Marco:
They don't offer as much protection as some of the really heavy-duty ones.
Marco:
But it's perfectly sufficient for occasional concertgoers.
Marco:
Anyway, so...
Marco:
what it is like to see a show at the Sphere.
Casey:
Before you establish that, can we recap for those who may not be aware what the Sphere is and what the kind of schtick is?
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So this is a spherical concert venue in Las Vegas.
Marco:
It was only built a couple of years ago.
Marco:
And the gimmick 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 dome of the inside of it is a giant screen.
Marco:
And they can show whatever video content they want on that screen.
Marco:
There's actually a good video, I'll put it in the show notes, called How Sphere Works.
Marco:
And it's all about the technical side of...
Marco:
what is the video resolution?
Marco:
How do they capture it?
Marco:
How do they do it?
Marco:
And it turns, it's like 16K by 16K square.
Marco:
And it's like, it's absurd.
Marco:
Like it's tons of custom video.
Marco:
It's actually very interesting.
Marco:
And so if you're interested in like the hardware of this arena, uh,
Marco:
I definitely watch this video.
Marco:
It's not that long, and it's pretty interesting.
Marco:
It shows what kind of screens they have, and 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.
Marco:
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 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 a Vision Pro.
Marco:
And this is a theme I'll come back to.
Marco:
When you hear what it's like to be immersed in some kind of large, your entire field of view environment in Vision Pro, everyone says the same thing.
Marco:
You just have to experience it.
Marco:
You can't really 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.
Marco:
It's such an amazing thing.
Marco:
The scale of it is so massive.
Marco:
it's huge and the screens are far away from you.
Marco:
So what this means, first of all, is that it is incredibly immersive in the sense that it dominates your entire field of view.
Marco:
It goes, depending on where you're sitting, generally goes the entire front field of view in front of you and you can look straight up and you're still looking at video content.
Marco:
And even you can look back somewhat if you're not in the very back of the place.
Marco:
You can even look back.
Marco:
So it's really all around you.
Marco:
The sound is also really, really good.
Marco:
The funny thing is they have this world-class sound system in there, and it's almost incidental to the reason why most people are going to be there, which is the video streams.
Marco:
But it is such an experience to be there.
Marco:
And so one thing that surprised me, first of all, is that the screen of the walls, like the main screen,
Marco:
It is incredibly bright and incredibly sharp.
Marco:
I did not expect that.
Marco:
I was thinking a screen that big, they're going to be doing a lot of projection and scaling.
Marco:
And I figured it would be kind of dim.
Marco:
And I did not expect it to be very high resolution.
Marco:
And it is neither.
Marco:
It is extremely high resolution and extremely bright.
Marco:
To the point where most concerts, you in the audience are basically sitting in the dark.
Marco:
And, you know, the bands lit up and occasionally maybe some light will like shine into the crowd or something.
Marco:
But mostly you are sitting in the dark in the sphere.
Marco:
The video projection, you know, depending on obviously what they are projecting.
Marco:
But the video content in Fisher's case was often so bright that it's lighting up the whole place like you're in the living room.
Marco:
So that first of all, like you're you're bathed in light because it's just that bright.
Marco:
It is so sharp that whatever they want the content to look like, they can make it look like that.
Marco:
You don't really see pixels or technical details.
Marco:
It's just immersive.
Marco:
It is everything.
Marco:
Again, sorry to pick on the Vision Pro.
Marco:
It's everything the Vision Pro tries to create and kind of can't with current technology.
Marco:
And there's I mean, this is a concert arena that cost two billion dollars to build.
Marco:
So it's kind of an unfair comparison, but it is an amazing effect to be in there because the screens are also so far from you because it's just it's a large venue.
Marco:
They're so far from you that your eyes are effectively at like infinite focus at that point.
Marco:
And so you can create 3d ish effects and it, it doesn't look like you're looking at a flat screen.
Marco:
It can look like you are in a 3d environment pretty well, pretty convincingly just because it's so far away.
Marco:
You don't perceive like the, the lack of, you know, parallax or whatever.
Marco:
Um,
Marco:
a few remarks on the audio uh it is this like crazy world-class audio system where like they use beam forming to send precise audio to each seat it's that's also a thing covered in the video and various articles it's worth looking up if you care about the kind of stuff yeah that video had a graphic they showed several times that didn't actually go into they tried to i think they were trying to show that different sections of the audience could be hearing things in a
Marco:
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.
Marco:
Everyone heard the same nonsense, but 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 one of the instruments was all of a sudden coming from like the far left side of the room and then moved across to the right side of the room and then and then went back but and like you could tell that they were playing around and they did it they did it like 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're using it very sparingly um they also
Marco:
uh one of the one of the uh features of the arena is they call it haptic seats so first of all the bass is partially transmitted through the seat speakers like i guess there's speakers along the seats somehow somewhere i didn't see them but maybe they're like you know in the floor or whatever but when you sit down so you know obviously it's a concert many people are standing most of the time but like you know you get tired and eventually like you want it might want to sit down for a
Marco:
So first of all, at the sphere, that's actually a really nice thing to do because even if the people in front of you are standing so you can't see the band anymore, you can just look up and you can still see most of the video content even if the people in front of you are standing and you want to sit for a minute.
John:
As an old person, this is disappointing to me that people are standing in the sphere.
John:
The whole point is they have these amazing haptic seats and everything.
John:
It's like, but no, it's a concert.
John:
We have to stand.
John:
No, you're all old.
John:
Just sit.
John:
If you can't sit in the sphere, it's so clearly an AV experience.
John:
They have the world's most high-tech chairs.
John:
Some of the sound is in the chair.
John:
Sit in the chairs.
John:
I can't believe people are standing.
John:
You need to wait until people get... There needs to be a cultural shift.
John:
At the beginning of the show, they need to put up a sign that says, I know you like us and you are fans of the band, but I assure you, if you all sit, you will all be able to see.
Marco:
Amazing.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Well, when you run your own concert venue, you can put that sign up and see how it goes.
Marco:
Fish can make it happen.
John:
They have a lot of cultural control over their audience.
John:
They just need to put that message out there and people will get on board.
Marco:
Oh, my God.
Marco:
Anyway, so sitting down was actually a really nice experience because you would feel much more of the bass sitting down.
Marco:
So it was getting like a nice butt massage from the music.
Marco:
And also then, you know, you could watch the screens.
Marco:
And so this was actually really nice.
Marco:
Like if you just, again, like if you want to take a break or something, like normally most concerts you sit down, you can't see anything anymore.
Marco:
The lights are blocked.
Marco:
The band is blocked.
Marco:
Like you can just see somebody's butt.
Marco:
And in this case, like that, it was much better than that.
Marco:
So that's great.
Marco:
They also, they have the, the haptic seating is not just like a speaker that is just playing normal volume.
Marco:
Each of the two concerts, there was one or two moments where it almost seemed like there was an earthquake, like the entire balcony seemed to shake.
Marco:
And everyone kind of looked around like, did somebody just drop a whale on this balcony or something?
Marco:
Huge shaking vibration.
Marco:
And I looked it up afterwards, and I learned that's also a feature of their haptic seats.
Marco:
They can do larger moves like that, and it feels...
Marco:
pretty nuts so it was it was a really fun experience even just like the seat situation because there's all these like physical features of it and physical realities of being in this big video dome um that that was really nice the value of good seats is very high here like you really want to be relatively centered in the venue and
Marco:
I was on the first balcony, the 206 section.
Marco:
I gather these are very good seats because, first of all, they were very good seats.
Marco:
But second of all, a few rows down, the people behind me pointed out was seated Trey Anastasio's dad.
Marco:
So I figured if he was put there, that's a pretty good sign.
Marco:
These are good seats.
Marco:
That's the guys behind me were saying, like, I guess these are pretty good seats.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
I also, in the little vestibule to go down into this section, I ran into Peter Anspach, a member of Goose.
Casey:
Did you introduce yourself or say hi or whatever?
Marco:
Very quickly.
Marco:
I just said that I did the Merlin.
Marco:
Oh, I really enjoy your work.
Marco:
Everybody was trying to take pictures with him, and so I just breezed through pretty quickly because I didn't want to be that guy.
Marco:
So anyway, I figure if Trey's dad and a member of Goose were seated in this section, I guess it's a pretty desirable section.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
But back to the show.
Marco:
So obviously as a Phish fan, the music was fantastic.
Marco:
They were very well rehearsed.
Marco:
It was very well produced.
Marco:
The visuals were great.
Marco:
I didn't quite know what to expect.
Marco:
Like what are they going to do with the screens?
Marco:
I believe I spoke to it last week.
Marco:
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, visualizers.
Marco:
Some of them were, like, basically composited live video effects of the band playing.
Marco:
So they had cameras on the band, like, on each member of the band, and they would, like...
Marco:
you know have some kind of visual effect like photo booth like you know 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 you know Brady Bunch style or like a like some kind of like you know video like color shifting and shadow playing and edge finding like you know so they had like live video of the band playing but processed
Marco:
They also had some that were like pre-rendered scenes or effects, you know, just kind of like animations almost.
Marco:
And then some were kind of tweaked live.
Marco:
And there have been a few articles about this where they apparently, the Virgin article about this, they actually used Unreal Engine to actually generate like live animations that the director could control based on what the band was doing.
Marco:
Because that's the thing, like with Phish, like they're a jam band.
Marco:
Like, you know, when U2 was in this venue, U2 had, they composed like a complete show with, you know, predefined, like at this point, we're going to play this song and we're going to have this visual and it's going to roughly work like this.
Marco:
And then we're going to go to this next thing.
Marco:
fish preset the set list but they there are certain songs they that they jam in and they kind of do what they feel like and so they designed the visuals of those songs to be able to to go on for any amount of time and to be able to be tweaked and like kind of manually commanded by the visual director as things went through so that was just like just technically speaking like that's a pretty impressive accomplishment when you're dealing with like
Marco:
live manipulation of these random visuals that are being rendered by Unreal Engine onto a 16K square circular projection.
Marco:
It was quite a technical accomplishment.
Marco:
And then just content-wise...
Marco:
You know, Phish usually has a really great light show.
Marco:
They have a guy, Chris Corotta, who's like this famous lighting director.
Marco:
He's really well regarded and he's done all their lights forever.
Marco:
And they usually put on a really good light show and it's great.
Marco:
But as soon as you see this, you're like, oh my God, this is so much better than a light show.
Marco:
Like having all of this video content, it's remarkable.
Marco:
like they they did this one this is the only one i'll call out specifically because i know we're running long but they one of their songs um pillow jets it's a recent song it's not very well liked by the fans it's kind of a kind of a slower maybe a little bit boring song and so when that song started they they had like this like forest that you're like slowly moving through almost like an apple tv landscape screensaver you're like slowly moving forward in this in this like cgi forest and
Marco:
And that song comes on and a bunch of fans kind of like, oh, well, I guess this is a good time to go to the bathroom.
Marco:
The whole row in front of me got up and left during that song.
Marco:
And this song proceeded to slowly like it was you're going through this forest and then the colors start shifting on the trees.
Marco:
And then they get a little bit brighter colored.
Marco:
And then things start moving.
Marco:
And then over the course of this 10-minute long song, the trees slowly start becoming fireworks of color.
Marco:
And the colors are exploding out of each of the leaves of the trees.
Marco:
And this is a good time for me to clarify.
Marco:
I was completely sober and on no drugs whatsoever for this show.
Casey:
I was about to ask.
Casey:
I was trying to figure out how to interrupt and ask that question delicately.
Casey:
So I'm glad you've already answered it for me.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So I was I was a little bit sick.
Marco:
I had like a cold.
Marco:
And so I didn't have anything else in my system except it was funny.
Marco:
Like, you know, on the way in, like, you know, the security guys like, you know, what's in your pocket?
Marco:
And I take out a bag of fishermen's friends.
Marco:
I'm probably the only person here 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 like mushroom trip color explosion is happening on the screens and i felt high like it was that immersive i'm like i don't need to do any drugs to feel this feeling like this is amazing uh and and it's just it shows like the the incredible immersion and and of course i mean
Marco:
Some of this is just I'd say a large part of this is that Phish themselves and their visual staff did a really good job with it.
Marco:
Like this is this is a canvas.
Marco:
Bands can use it in different ways.
Marco:
There's going to be bands that do it worse and better.
Marco:
Phish does a really good job with this stuff.
Marco:
And this was no exception.
Marco:
They did an amazing job.
Marco:
And yeah, the pillow jets 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.
Marco:
And they came back afterwards, and I was just thinking, you guys have no idea what you just missed.
Marco:
But anyway, they did such a fantastic job.
Marco:
It was great.
Marco:
And it is so much elevated above a regular concert experience because it is such a production.
Marco:
The ability to do this well will be mostly limited to really big, really profitable bands.
Marco:
So you're not going to see like indie bands here.
Marco:
And part of that's good because like this is very different from the experience of seeing a band in most venues.
Marco:
Because in most venues, you are looking at the band.
Marco:
You are watching them play and maybe looking a little bit at the lights.
Marco:
With this, the band could have not even been there.
Marco:
Because what you're watching, you're watching the entire sky above them.
Marco:
So you're not really looking down at the band very much at all.
Casey:
Oh, that's wild.
Marco:
That's going to affect obviously 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 only the biggest acts will be able to afford to produce a show like this with all these visuals and everything like that, with those disclaimers aside...
Marco:
I strongly encourage you all out there, if you ever get a chance to see anything at the Sphere, go see it.
Marco:
If you are in Vegas for whatever reason, and there's a band 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, go.
Marco:
It is quite an experience.
Marco:
Now, if you can get a band you love, that's, of course, way better.
Marco:
But it is so unique and is so immersive and so, frankly, mind-blowing.
Marco:
Go see anything there.
Marco:
Whatever is playing that you can get into next time you find a way to get to Vegas or if you happen to be there for other reasons, go.
Marco:
Trust me.
Marco:
Go see anything there.
Marco:
It is that much of a good experience.
John:
Apple recorded the whole thing and it'll be released on Vision Pro soon, right?
Marco:
Oh, can you imagine?
Marco:
That's the thing.
Marco:
The whole time, I'm thinking this is the perfect advertisement for VR headsets, sort of.
Marco:
See, the thing is, I was thinking, man...
Marco:
I would love if there could be like, you know, a VR headset version of this.
Marco:
Like I would love if they just like put Apple's like Alicia Keys cameras, like put those in the balcony that I was sitting in and just 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 look all around me.
Marco:
That's such fish thinking.
John:
no what you want is the direct feed of that 16k by 16k video mapped onto a sphere inside vision pro you don't need to send it through the analog hole and then get it back in through cameras no go direct just get the video but here's the thing so i thought about that like obviously obviously you're right that would be an option but
Marco:
There was one song, they played a song called Ghost in the first time I was there, where the visual was these giant, they looked like giant robots made of high-voltage power line towers, like those giant towers that hold the high-voltage power lines.
Marco:
They were like giant robots made of those.
Marco:
And just against flat black, like straight black backdrop, and these giant robots that were standing above you made of power lines.
Marco:
And because, again, because the screens are so far from you,
Marco:
You can't tell that these are being rendered relatively close to you.
Marco:
And so it looked like you were actually standing below these giant hundreds of feet tall power line robots that were angry.
Marco:
And then at one point, the one that was directly above you...
Marco:
leaned forward and it looked like it was going to fall on the entire audience.
Marco:
And everyone freaked out.
Marco:
And because part of the experience of being in a place like this is the people around you.
Marco:
You're experiencing this together with the audience of other extremely high people around you.
Marco:
if a vision pro or you know like if a vr headset version of this was just transmitting the feed of video in that's being mapped on the screens and you were sitting in an empty movie theater kind of thing like like what they have with some of the experiences now i think it would feel like many people complain about the vision pro it would feel very lonely because it's like oh i'm in the
Marco:
and no one else is here with me like part of the experience of being in a place like this is feeling what everyone else is feeling and and capturing like what makes everyone else excited i think for this to succeed if this was ever to succeed in a vr content play ideally it would need to be like a live recording of like from a from a perspective 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 on?
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
Like that's the VR presence thing, the whole personas thing.
John:
What if you were in a theater where every single seat was filled with a persona?
Marco:
I think that would be really weird and creepy.
John:
I don't know.
John:
I mean, maybe I'm just too new to the VR world.
John:
I'm still kind of down on those.
John:
I mean, obviously, it's not going to be as high fidelity as actual humans and probably not as high fidelity right now as a recording of actual humans.
John:
But I feel like the goal is, hey, instead of me just putting on this thing and me being alone in this giant sphere, it's me and the 5,000 other people who are all doing it all instanced together in this one thing.
John:
And I can hear them, you know, ooh and ah when the big robot leans forward and stuff like that.
John:
We're not there yet, to be clear.
John:
But I feel like that is...
John:
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 video stream and mapping it in 3D and everything and undervalue the human element and the value of the human element.
Marco:
I think that would be a mistake.
Marco:
The human element is very much a part of the experience of being there.
Marco:
Anything that's going to succeed and give you anything close to the experience you want needs that.
Marco:
It needs the human element.
Marco:
I think there is potential opportunity to
Marco:
for a vr content play here i would love i would definitely buy it if i could uh for many great concerts and live events that would be wonderful uh but it would have to it'd have to capture the people too even like even like honestly live sporting events too i mean i i mean the people would be there anyway so i guess you'd capture them regardless but like when you're at a live sporting event a huge part of the fun of being there is being in the crowd with the other people in the crowd and
Marco:
And reacting with them and feeling and hearing their reactions to everything.
Marco:
That's part of the fun of being at a live event.
John:
That's what VR is trying to do with the whole presence thing.
John:
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.
John:
I know that we're not there yet, but that's the whole idea is that the humans are providing that content.
John:
They're providing the...
John:
the movement, the sound, the oohs and the ahs, the jostling, the looking to the side and seeing expressions on your friend's face.
John:
Like, I feel like that's where the experience that is sold by a lot of the VR stuff.
John:
And, you know, with the personas that Casey got to try with Mike or whatever, like, it's
John:
It's obviously not there yet, but it is actually... There's a tiny glimmer of that human element that you're talking about, even in the very primitive... Even playing Battleship with shells of yourself that aren't even visible from the back.
Marco:
There is definitely a place for that.
Marco:
There is value for that.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
I think that's never going to replace or even compete with the value of actual humans being there if that is an option available.
Marco:
So obviously, in not every context, that's an option.
Marco:
That isn't always a possibility.
Marco:
But when that is a possibility, like if you're trying to do some kind of live event as a content, I think you want the live people there in some context.
Marco:
Now, obviously, you can do things to reduce their annoyingness.
Marco:
You wouldn't see the camera so low that when the people in front of you stand up, they block it.
John:
I was going to say, like this type of thing is ideal for things like the Vision Pro because you do actually have a stationary camera.
John:
It's like you don't you don't you don't get up and go to the camera doesn't get up and go to the bathroom.
John:
So you don't have any of the problems of like motion sickness and changing perspective and cutting.
John:
You could do that, but they they shouldn't.
John:
They should just even more so than sporting events, because in a concert venue like this, there is one pretty much best seat in the house, which you were apparently very close to.
John:
Whereas in a sporting event, the field is so big that sometimes you do want like a close up on the goal or, you know, different perspectives.
John:
But this show is made to be viewed from an audience.
John:
So you can just pick that ideal seat, plant the camera or virtual camera there and just keep there the whole time.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And they can already be part of like the whole like there's like a bit like only a few rows behind me was like the big like sound and video booth kind of thing, like the big like sound and video mixing board set up and everything.
Marco:
That's the perfect place.
Marco:
Put it there.
Marco:
Like have it be part of that.
Marco:
Done.
Casey:
I think there's something to be said, like Marco was saying a moment ago.
Casey:
I mean, I don't get to go to concerts often, but it is one of my favorite things to do is go to see music live.
Casey:
And I really think that part of what makes that so fun is that shared group experience, is knowing, even for a band like Phish, where it's so easy to get your hands on a copy of the show—
Casey:
it's still amazing knowing that you're seeing art being created live right in front of your eyes.
Casey:
And to a degree, the people, the thousands, the hundreds, the thousands, tens of thousands of people that are next to you are the only ones that will ever really and truly get the full version of that experience.
Casey:
And even a perfectly constructed Vision Pro version of that experience, immersive experience, it's still, in my eyes, not exactly the same as being there.
Casey:
Now,
Casey:
Does that mean it doesn't have merit?
Casey:
Of course not.
Casey:
I think it would be amazing to be able to go on tour with Dave Matthews, Vanderfish or who have you without having to leave your house.
Casey:
Like that would be incredible.
Casey:
Um, but 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 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 Apple vision pro.
Casey:
No comment.
Casey:
I'm not even the one who spent the money and I'm still saying no comment.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Like the VR version of this is obviously that we're projecting into a future where it is much less expensive to do this from your home and far more people can do it than, because I think, I don't know how many spheres they're planning on making their, their plans for a bunch of other ones in other places, but like,
John:
if people could do this from their own home.
John:
It's like a difference between TV and a movie theater or seeing live sports versus seeing sports on TV.
John:
Seeing sports on TV is not the same as seeing live sports, but it is way more accessible to way more people, and it's way less expensive and way more convenient.
John:
And it does actually have some advantages over seeing sports live in terms of perspective changes and incident replay and stuff.
John:
So, yeah, I think there's definitely a place for both of these things.
John:
I don't think the sphere is going to...
John:
be obsolete anytime soon because big impressive screens are always big and impressive by the way this is why people are so excited about micro led tvs because this is just a big micro led tv uh but yeah the problem with micro led tvs is to make make the leds small enough
John:
And close enough together, that's why, like, the micro LED TVs are always so big.
John:
Like, it used to be the smallest one you could get was, like, 100 inches.
John:
They recently, at CES, they had one that was 77 inches.
John:
And people were like, oh, my God, 77 inches.
John:
Like, people were excited that it was so small, which is, like, the opposite of what everyone's been thinking about televisions for the entire history of television.
John:
It's because they want this tech to get to the point where they can jam all those little tiny lights into a normal size television set that doesn't cost as much as a car.
John:
Unfortunately, they still cost...
John:
tens of thousands of dollars.
John:
But yeah, they don't have a space problem.
John:
But that's what it is.
John:
Individual tiny LEDs and they can be really bright and they look really good as long as you're far enough away from them.
Casey:
A couple of quick thoughts.
Casey:
First of all, if you haven't seen Drew Carey's review of his experience at the Sphere... Everyone has sent it to me.
Casey:
It is something and it is worth watching.
Casey:
It is not really kid-friendly, but it is quite funny and
Casey:
Let's just say he enjoyed his experience.
Casey:
He very much enjoyed his experience.
Casey:
He had a lot of cough drops.
Casey:
Yeah, he had a lot of cough drops.
Casey:
And then secondly, somebody had suggested this to me a while back.
Casey:
I don't have the faintest memory who it was, and I apologize.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
There's a Vision Pro app called Amaze VR, and I will put a link in the show notes.
Casey:
It is ostensibly a, like, music kind of sort of concert app where you can download these immersive...
Casey:
I'm going to say concerts, but that's a stretch.
Casey:
And you can watch them.
Casey:
And they have Megan Thee Stallion, T-Pain, Avenged Sevenfold.
Casey:
And there's a free one that is Zara Larson, who I think I recognize the song that she played.
Casey:
Let me tell you, I have an experience with getting real old that maybe we can talk about another time.
Casey:
But I feel older and older every passing day.
Casey:
But anyways.
Casey:
I mean, that is how time works.
Casey:
Well, yes, but no, in terms of like, I feel like an old man now.
Casey:
But anyways, these are concerts-ish.
Casey:
It's more like, you know, let me drop an actual artist in like a completely CGI environment.
Casey:
And it is immersive, but it's not a concert in the way that you and I think of concerts.
Casey:
Nevertheless, 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?
Casey:
So we'll put a link in the show notes.
Casey:
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 up to the camera, way closer than I saw Alicia Keys get.
Casey:
And it was like...
Marco:
kind of uncomfortable and off-putting like it felt like she was looking deep into your eyes and like a not comfortable way i don't know maybe i'm maybe i'm just weird and old but that's kind of how i felt with the um with the highline video yeah yeah like 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 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 into the camera, whereas I forget the woman's name, but from the Highline thing, she's kind of looking past the camera.
Casey:
But this is like, I'm staring into your soul.
Casey:
So this scenario is very, very uncomfortable.
Casey:
But anyway, it is worth checking out despite all that just to see what's possible.
Casey:
So you should you should take a look.
Marco:
Yeah, because, again, I think after I was there, I looked up some videos of, first of all, what they had done the nights before I was there because I missed the first two nights.
Marco:
I kind of regret, honestly, not going to all four.
Marco:
I had no way to know they would be this good.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
But anyway, so I looked up some stuff I hadn't seen.
Marco:
And I also looked up some videos of parts of the concerts that I did attend, just to kind of see, like, you know, was I remembering it right?
Marco:
And I kind of wanted to try to relive some of it.
Marco:
And even the really good videos...
Marco:
do not feel like what it felt like to be there it is really like videos cannot capture this and this again this is what everyone says about vr experiences too because a small video cannot possibly capture a 360 degree or 180 degree in front of you kind of experience like
Marco:
It is way better to experience it in person or for things that don't exist in person in 3D.
Marco:
Like that's that is way better.
Marco:
So this is a huge opportunity.
Marco:
This is a 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 all
Marco:
way better quality video than any vr headset can offer today it's hearing way better quality audio with i would i would point out a subwoofer which currently is not super practical or easily possible with vr headsets and you get the communal experiences if anything this shows like vr has promise if these deals can be made but nothing beats the real thing
Marco:
And man, is this a crazy real thing to experience.
Marco:
Again, go see anything in that venue.
Marco:
If you happen to like it, that's even better.
Marco:
But go see anything in that venue.
Marco:
It is quite an experience.
Marco:
I strongly recommend it.
John:
I like how you're calling a gigantic array of LEDs the real thing.
John:
The real thing is Red Rocks, Marco.
Marco:
The real world, the real sky, the real mountains.
Marco:
I mean, Phish plays there a lot, but they can't make a space vortex above them when they do.
John:
Well, you know, what if there was a real space vortex?
John:
It could happen.
Marco:
If it was ever going to happen, it would happen above a Phish concert, that's for sure.
John:
Yeah, it would happen above a Phish show at Red Rocks, probably.
John:
Yeah, probably.
John:
Or at least people will report it, having seen it.
Marco:
Well, yeah, I'm sure that happens a lot.