Food Comes From Cans
Marco:
I think I have one of the most disruptive injuries I've ever had.
Marco:
Oh.
Marco:
I have a cut on my support pinky right where the phone rests.
Casey:
Oh, that is not desirable.
Casey:
What was the load-bearing pinky?
Casey:
That was the name of the episode, right?
Marco:
Yeah, so basically I can't hold my phone the way I have held my phone forever.
Marco:
Because it hurts a lot.
Marco:
It's one of those deep paper cut kind of things.
Marco:
It'll be gone in probably maybe four or five days.
Marco:
But man, it's really disruptive right now.
Casey:
That is not desirable.
John:
Aren't you one of those weird people who holds their phone in their non-dominant hand?
Marco:
Yes, because I had a wallet before I carried a phone.
Marco:
So the wallet and keys went in the right pocket with my dominant hand.
Casey:
Every time this kills me.
Casey:
Every time.
Marco:
eventually i added a phone to my pocket setup and so it had to go in the left pocket because that was the free pocket so i am a left hand phone user even though i am right handed yeah all right well so now uh now that your left hand is injured uh you can use your dominant hand to hold your phone with your non-injured pinky right
John:
oh god it's all wrong i'm trying it's all it feels all wrong i mean it's the hand that you're good with like it should be no problem but that pinky under there oh god this is i can't even now i can't reach all my icons it's the wrong thumb i i'm so firmly in the uh the phone in the right hand pockets thing is that when i walk the dog my phone is in my right hand pocket but i also hold the dog leash with my right hand because you know i don't have control of the dog and
John:
And so I've gotten really, really good at taking my phone out of my right-hand pocket with my left hand and putting it back.
Casey:
Yep, yep.
John:
I just go, it's like, why don't you just put the phone in the left pocket?
John:
And it's just because that's not how the pocket setup goes.
Marco:
See, the pocket setup, even though you have it set up wrong, the pocket setup is king.
Marco:
Once you've established a pocket setup, you can't mess with it.
John:
right but but you see how see how i'm adapting the pocket setup i'm not changing but i'm saying okay when the normal hand is occupied in my case with a leash in your case with a paper cut uh use the other hand by the way i also am a left dog leash uh left phone person so i i have the same problem your dog is the size of a chihuahua so you can
John:
You have no problem using the left hand to control your dog.
John:
But if you had a dog that was a little bit more, a little bit bigger and a little bit more eager, a little bit more eager to kill varmints, you maybe would want to use your dominant hand.
Marco:
No, meanwhile, we like, you know, we, because of where we live, there's deer everywhere.
Marco:
Like we have just walking all along the sidewalks.
Marco:
They walk right up to people because some people feed them, even though you're not supposed to, but some people do.
Marco:
They want Lyme disease.
Marco:
They love it.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
And, and they'll like, they'll walk up and like lick your hand.
Marco:
Like,
Marco:
how many like i've touched a deer nose not because i really wanted to but because it was in front of my hand i'm like oh let's see what this feels like turns out it feels like a giant dog nose um but anyway yeah like there's like we can walk right past like a family of three deer within five feet of us and hops won't even notice he just walked he just keeps going he just because like you know as far as he knows his food comes from cans he doesn't know that it comes from animals i don't think he's gonna be taking that a deer no matter what
John:
no but like you know if he sees a can on the ground who knows oh yeah yeah well you know i think i'm assuming hops has some kind of flea and tick treatment but you probably don't so maybe don't get so close to the deer because the deer ticks are not your friend yeah no these are all brand new little fluffy ones that don't have they aren't covered in ticks yet no you don't think so give them a few months that that comes later in the summer all right but no i don't i don't i try not to get that close
Marco:
The problem is they're, like, taking up the whole road.
Marco:
I got to, like, squeeze past them.
Casey:
For the record, John and I have the correct pocket setup.
Casey:
It is phone in the front right pocket, keys in the front left pocket, and other randomness.
Casey:
I am a back pocket wallet kind of person.
Casey:
I don't understand how people use the front wallet.
Marco:
Of course you are.
Casey:
What is that supposed to mean?
What?
Casey:
I mean, what kind of monster puts their wallet in the front unless you're walking through like a genuinely pickpocket heavy city, which is something I do extremely rarely.
Casey:
The wallet goes in the back.
Casey:
That's why you have a little thin wallet, not a John Syracuse slash Costanza wallet.
John:
No, thin or thick.
John:
I don't want a Costanza back injury.
John:
There's no thickness of wallet that makes it comfortable to sit on.
Marco:
no i don't feel like i sit on my i'm in my pjs as we've talked about many times before uh i don't think i sit on my wall maybe i do and i don't realize it but my wallet is thin no back pockets are decorative i mean like that's i feel like you know there's well there's there's a class of of storage of of pants storage uh where it is standing storage only
Marco:
it's only if you have a max phone yeah right like you know many people they will they will have something in their pocket but then when they go to sit down their routine is to remove that thing from their pocket and like put it on the table or something i don't like doing that so i'm i am not i don't use standing storage only i just have front pockets that i can keep things in all the time and i'm not a phone on the table kind of person and i'm very happy living that way
John:
Or you could be a teenager and apparently they put their phones in their back pockets and just sit with them and they don't care.
John:
I feel like that's half the reason why the iPhone 6 Bend stuff happens because teenagers just do not care.
John:
They'll just sit on their phones and just expect everything to be fine.
Casey:
We haven't talked about this in a while, but I wanted to take a moment and just, I don't know, remind isn't really the word I'm looking for, but I guess just to say that I know I speak for all three of us in saying that we support trans youth, we support trans people.
Casey:
It's been really gross here in America for...
Casey:
Six, seven years now, but even longer than that, too.
Casey:
And lately, there have been a bunch of bills that have been introduced here in the States.
Casey:
And I don't think it's unique to the United States, both fortunately and unfortunately.
Casey:
I guess mostly unfortunately.
Casey:
There's been a bunch of bills introduced that are really, really gross and sick and awful.
Casey:
And this is becoming kind of a thing or shouldn't even say becoming.
Casey:
It is a thing here.
Casey:
And it's the responsibility of people like the three of us and probably like a lot of the people listening to the show to stand up and say, this is not OK.
Casey:
And so I would like to say on behalf of the three of us, this is not OK.
Casey:
I wanted to read to you from five calls dot org, which we'll talk about here in a second.
Casey:
But on there, it reads over the past two years, state lawmakers introduced well over 300 bills targeting trans people more than in any previous period.
Casey:
More than 85 percent of this legislation focuses on trans youth.
Casey:
In addition to bills banning necessary medical care, legislation continues to be introduced that restrict what can be taught in schools and exclude trans people from participation in sports, as well as restricting their access to bathrooms.
Casey:
I heard about this most recently from a dear friend of the show and host of Two-Headed Girl with their spouse, Matt, talking about Alex Cox, who you would also know is one of the hosts of Dubai Friday.
Casey:
Alex wrote a lovely blog post slash recorded an episode of Two-Headed Girl.
Casey:
We will link to both the text and audio versions.
Casey:
where Alex is basically saying in a very kind way, hey, people that look like the hosts of ATP, you should do something.
Casey:
We need you to do something.
Casey:
So this happened at around the same time that I saw John Moult's tweet about fivecalls.org, which I briefly mentioned a moment ago.
Casey:
Five Calls is a really cool tool that I was not familiar with before.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
that you can read and say exactly what you need to say.
Casey:
And they even, if you want to go for double bonus points, have a link where you can look at the trans-related legislation for your area.
Casey:
So you can say, I am calling on behalf of Bill 12345, and it's gross, and I don't like it.
Casey:
And so I am going to do this tomorrow.
Casey:
I didn't have a chance to do it today, but I am...
Casey:
putting it out here for the public.
Casey:
You can ask me if I've done it and keep me honest here.
Casey:
My intention is to do it first thing tomorrow morning.
Casey:
But to call my legislators and say, this is gross, because you know what?
Casey:
It is gross.
Casey:
And it is up to people that look like us to be there for the people that don't look like us.
Casey:
And it's the least we can do, for goodness sakes.
Casey:
And so I just wanted to call that out.
Casey:
I don't know if you two have anything you want to add about that.
Casey:
Please feel free.
Casey:
But seriously, fivecalls.org, we'll put the full link in the show notes and listen to Alex's episode and or read their blog post because it's incredible.
John:
Yeah, the thing I'll add is on a periodic basis, we also get the opportunity to vote for people who will be in the lawmaking bodies in our country.
John:
Don't vote for anybody who supports any of these bills.
John:
I know you have other issues.
John:
It's the reason this comes up because the Republicans use it as a wedge issue to scare people into voting for them so they can get lower taxes for rich people.
John:
It's a perverse system.
John:
I understand, right?
John:
But you may be like, well, I don't like that this person supports the trans bill, but I do like X, Y, and Z.
John:
It's kind of the reason they use it as a wedge issue is because people are scared of it and it scares them into voting for them.
John:
But on the other side of it, it's kind of a disqualifier.
John:
It's like, well, I like everything about their policy except how they classify this whole set of humans as non-human.
John:
That's kind of hard to overlook.
John:
I feel like it should be kind of hard to overlook.
John:
Anybody who supports any of these things that take away rights from people do not vote for them.
John:
Vote for whoever is running against them that has the best chance of winning because of our stupid, uh, you know, two party system here, whatever.
John:
Uh, yes, make the calls, all that.
John:
But like a lot of times you feel like you're making the calls and it doesn't matter if you have some stupid, uh, uh, Republican lawmaker, you know, is not going to change their mind.
John:
Vote them out next time.
Marco:
If you look throughout American history, we have a long history of trying to suppress people's rights, trying to cause a certain type of person not to exist in various ways, many of them hostile or violent.
Marco:
Lots of different attempts at society to meddle in people's sexuality or gender identities or other romantic or gender-based behaviors that they really have no business meddling in.
Marco:
And over the arc of history, those have all been proven wrong.
Marco:
And we've moved past a lot of them.
Marco:
Every one of those battles was fought hard and eventually won.
Marco:
And the people who were on the other side of it, who were trying to cause violence to or restrict the rights of people of certain characteristics that they didn't like or whatever...
Marco:
Those people always lose, and those people oftentimes come to regret the positions they've had on the other side when they were trying to restrict people's rights.
Marco:
If you are maybe on the fence on issues like this, or if you are on the other side where you want these rights to be restricted, I urge you to
Marco:
Look at the course of history and see how that's gone for those people and maybe realize, you know, this whatever whatever reasons you have in your head for thinking this is different.
Marco:
I assure you it's not.
Marco:
You can look back at our history and say, like, you know, well, you know, the rights of women, the rights of black people, the rights of gay people over time.
Marco:
Those of all – we've had to work really hard to advance those and to work for equality, and we're still not done, honestly, in all those areas.
Marco:
But this is the latest battlefront in that area where we have lots of efforts across our country –
Marco:
to restrict the rights of trans people, to try to deny trans people exist, or to try to stop them from existing, those are just as barbaric and just horrendous as our past treatment of all those other groups.
Marco:
I urge you to fight this good fight.
Marco:
This is our generation's latest challenge in this area.
Marco:
Anything that restricts somebody's rights or ability to be themselves or their right to simply exist without being harassed or threatened by our society, we need to fight for that.
Marco:
We need to fight for everyone's rights.
Marco:
It is no business of the state what gender identity people want to have.
Marco:
It is no more their business as it was to ban interracial marriage or to ban gay marriage or to have laws against certain people making love to each other like that.
Marco:
All of those things are, well, for the most part, relics of history that we've fought very hard to get rid of.
Marco:
This is the latest battle.
Marco:
And so all people who care about rights and liberty for all, you should care about this.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
Couldn't agree more.
Casey:
So please, fivecalls.org, particularly if you're American, I'm sure there's equivalents for wherever you live, because unfortunately, this is not a uniquely American thing.
Casey:
Although perhaps we are being more aggressive about it than most other places.
Casey:
Hooray.
Casey:
And then just to put a little bit of a smile on the beginning of the show here, it's officially, officially, officially the last time I can say ATP is 10 years old, because on the 11th of March, 2013- How many anniversaries have we had?
Casey:
Occasion inflation, right?
Casey:
We have had like 17 10th anniversaries so far.
Casey:
But for real this time, this is the last one on my list.
Casey:
It was 621 in the evening on March 11th, 2013 that I had tweeted about the Accidental Tech podcast.
Casey:
So for real, for real this time,
Casey:
10 years.
Casey:
And I will just very briefly say, first of all, thank you to anyone who has ever listened to the show.
Casey:
Even if you have stopped listening and thus are not hearing my words right now, I appreciate it immensely.
Casey:
We appreciate it immensely.
Casey:
Anyone who's even looked at a sponsor, much less patronized one of the sponsors, anyone who has become a member at atp.fm slash join.
Casey:
Normally, this is where I would say if you really enjoy the show, go to that URL.
Casey:
But instead, I will say go to fivecalls.org and make some phone calls.
Casey:
And we'll appreciate that for this one.
Casey:
Uh, but nevertheless, it is because of all of you that have stuck around for 10 years, 10 years.
Casey:
It's bananas.
Casey:
I mean, Adam was a baby.
Casey:
Wasn't even a year old when the show started.
Casey:
I didn't have babies when this show started.
Casey:
It's nuts to me.
Casey:
that we have been going for 10 years.
Casey:
And speaking only for myself for a moment, it is a genuine pleasure that I get to speak to you two gentlemen every single week come hell or high water.
Casey:
And for me, I hope this continues until one of us or all of us can't talk anymore.
Casey:
So thank you to you two.
Casey:
Thank you especially to the listeners.
Casey:
And you can thank us by going to fivecalls.org and making some phone calls.
Marco:
i agree with all that but you're not allowed to do any more anniversaries casey moratorium so in my family we have like a tradition that uh that birthdays are just the week so it's like your birthday week like we that kind of our birthdays have grown over time into just full week experiences um and i feel like this is like our show here our anniversary has lasted like two months like how long has it been it's too much it's too much you've overdone oh yeah there's a long cooling off period you need now
Casey:
I got at least like five more years until I need to start worrying about an anniversary.
Casey:
If we can make it to 15, which I sure hope we do.
John:
I think you got to hold off until 20 now.
John:
You've overdone it so much.
John:
You're banned until 20.
Marco:
Yeah, but 20 is going to be six months long.
Marco:
Yeah, it's possible.
Casey:
We're going to start celebrating the 20th anniversary in 2031.
Casey:
Do I have that right?
Casey:
Yeah, 2031.
Casey:
It's just going to be a year long.
Casey:
The future.
Casey:
We'll see.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Well, thank you for indulging us for all of the pre-show.
Casey:
I really do appreciate it.
Casey:
And let's do some follow-up because I know that's what you're here for.
Casey:
Ted points out with regard to turning off the – what's the term, John, for the sensitivity in the remote?
Casey:
What's the formal term for it?
John:
It was like touch or click only or touch and click.
John:
I don't remember what the setting is.
Okay.
Casey:
Well, if you turn that off, Ted has found out that if you press up when you're looking at an Apple TV screensaver, it will show the location.
Casey:
And then instead of swiping, you can press left and right to cycle through the screensavers, which is cool.
John:
Yeah, this is the never-ending follow-up of like, I turned off touch of my Apple TV remote, but now I can't do whatever.
John:
And I think this was the last one we had in the queue.
John:
Someone said, I can't figure out how to get the location on the screensaver.
John:
Apparently, you can press up.
Casey:
Indeed.
Casey:
Then Eric DeReuter writes, it seems that the no passcode iPhone plan can be defeated by a thief adding a passcode and then using the new passcode to reset your Apple ID password.
Casey:
Whoopsie-dopsie.
That is...
Casey:
So amazing.
John:
I have not tested this.
John:
And here's the thing.
John:
This is going to be a theme that we have a bunch of follow-up related to this.
John:
Lots of people post things like this and it's not clear to me that they have actually tested it or they're just surmising this would be the case.
John:
And the reason I haven't been testing a lot of these is because basically I'm afraid of screwing something up and locking myself out of my Apple ID.
John:
Because a lot of this testing is like, remove a passcode, then remove this, then remove your Apple ID, then add your Apple ID.
John:
It's just like, there's no way I'm going to do that.
John:
So I'm cautioning people not to just...
John:
go hog wild trying all these things that you're hearing.
John:
I'm including him in the show just because I'd like to hear... I think it's interesting to know that there may be ways around... Even that silliest thing of the person who was on the farm and didn't have a passcode, it's a fun little bit of feedback, but if you think that's a great plan, maybe think again, because...
John:
Setting aside all the social engineering things, just practically speaking, it's apparently not clear to anyone anywhere exactly how the security is intertwined with Apple IDs and resetting and trusting devices.
John:
It's just so complicated.
John:
We all kind of know the default way things work.
John:
but this type of thing of like okay well we'll get through in a little bit like but what if i want to have an apple id and i want to have a passcode but i don't want the passcode to be able to reset the apple id is that possible and what if i don't have a passcode if they add the passcode suddenly can the added passcode now reset my apple id it's very confusing and very fraught and i feel like apple should eventually address this as we've discussed in past shows but
John:
Here's just one more permutation to make you doubt that you really know exactly what's going on with respect to passcodes and Apple IDs.
John:
I mean, the bottom line is what we said before.
John:
If you had a really long alphanumeric one, it's harder to shoulder surf, and that's probably the best defense, but it's also super annoying.
Casey:
Tangentially related with regard to doing a screen recording while your parent is entering the screen time passcode so you can then
Casey:
You know, reverse engineer the screen time passcode.
Casey:
Guy Rambo told me that in the iOS 16.4 beta, the screen time passcode entry does not show up in screen recordings.
Casey:
Guy writes, I believe that that's been the case for any secure data entry for quite a while if the app configures the keyboard appropriately.
Casey:
I just thought that was very funny that apparently that is already that that hole is already being filled in.
John:
Yeah, but not the whole of your children shoulder surfing you.
John:
And we keep saying that phrase as if everyone knows what it means.
John:
I mean, can we do the etymology on shoulder surfing?
John:
I think it actually is difficult to find out.
John:
What we mean is someone looking over your shoulder and seeing what you're doing, right?
John:
But why is it called shoulder surfing?
John:
Yeah.
John:
think it's like what's the what's the derivation of that i think it's like i don't know surfing is i don't know you can look it up it's not this is not the first use of surfing to mean sort of like being poised on the edge of something peering over or whatever but anyway that's what we name by shoulder surfing someone looking over your shoulder and seeing what you're doing and kids are really good at that because they're small and sneaky
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
And then apparently you can make unlimited guesses for the screen time passcode in a particular context.
Casey:
So Melly writes, you can do an unlimited screen time passcode attempts in the screen time passcode, whatever, within hours.
Casey:
So you can go to iOS settings, general transfer or reset iPhone.
Casey:
You tap on erase all content and settings, tap on continue.
Casey:
You might have to enter the iPhone passcode, then you're asked to enter the screen time passcode, and you can enter the wrong passcode as often as you like.
Casey:
There's no forced pause after six wrong passcodes, which is kind of funny.
Casey:
I mean, I don't think that's that big a deal, but it's pretty funny nonetheless.
John:
Well, but no, that's exactly – this is an ultimate hole for a child.
John:
So first of all, it's a scary thing to do.
John:
Like they're going to their own device.
John:
They're on their own like iPad, right?
John:
And they're going like –
John:
you know erase all content and settings which is a terrifying flow to start going through right but they're just going through and you know you have to enter the passcode they know probably know the passcode to their own ipad it's how they get into their ipad right so they're able to do this they are able to go this they just have to make sure they don't go all the way through with the procedure because at a certain point in the erase all content and settings flow on their own device they will be asked oh you're not allowed to erase this because it's locked with screen time so please enter the screen time passcode
John:
And in this particular flow, at that point, you can guess as many times as you want.
John:
And the screen time passcode, I believe, is limited to four digits.
John:
Yes.
John:
It's only 10,000 combos, and kids have a lot of time.
Marco:
Yep.
Marco:
And fast fingers.
Marco:
Like, God, I cannot believe, like, when I see my kid operating the iPad or his computer, he's so fast.
Yeah.
Marco:
Like, you know, I'm a nerd.
Marco:
I'm pretty fast at things.
Marco:
My God, I got nothing on my kid.
Marco:
He is like the speed at which he taps things and goes through things and goes through screens and everything flies through menus like amazing.
Marco:
And so, yeah, a kid who discovers this loophole and is devoted to getting the passcode can probably do it within like a half hour.
John:
It would take longer.
John:
You can do the time.
John:
How long does it take to type in 10,000 four digit codes?
John:
You can split it over multiple days.
John:
Like, but the point is you think, oh, no one will ever have the patience to root for it.
John:
This a kid would.
Marco:
Especially because the reward for knowing your iPad's screen time passcode is quite encouraging for a kid.
Marco:
Yeah, they're highly motivated.
Marco:
Yes.
Casey:
And then there's a feedback number we'll put in the show notes, which would potentially be useful to Apple people if feedback actually did anything other than go to dev null, which we're going to talk about in a future episode because I have thoughts.
John:
Well, yeah, this person says they filed a feedback and Apple responded that it is, quote, not a security issue.
Casey:
How is it not a security issue?
Casey:
Well, that, but how did Apple respond to a feedback?
Casey:
I think that's even more stunning.
John:
I mean, we don't, it's not a direct quote.
John:
We're quoting the person who, who wrote this, uh, I thought it was a Macedon post.
John:
So anyway, it feels wrong to me.
John:
It feels like if there's any place where you're asked for the passcode, there should be at least like a slowdown, sort of a back off slowdown type thing.
John:
You can't just guess forever.
Yeah.
Marco:
It's definitely a security issue.
Marco:
They just might not care about this area of security enough, which I think is their problem that they should fix, if that's true.
Marco:
But it's also possible that this got to a bug screener who wasn't very good.
Marco:
A big problem, I think, with the impression that we have of the bug filing process from the outside is that it is very, very clear that the level of bug screeners that often interact with our bugs...
Marco:
They are not paying attention.
Marco:
They are not going through like actually reading what you wrote.
Marco:
They're not actually looking to see what you what you included or attached.
Marco:
They're looking to plow through as many as possible, find any reason to kick it back to you or close it.
Marco:
That's it.
Marco:
You know, it isn't like, you know, Apple, the one brain has decided this is not worth fixing.
Marco:
No, it's Apple has a really crappy bug screening process that incentivizes and encourages mass disregard of what we say.
Marco:
And so that person who saw that bug report had a very, very strong incentive and probable inertia towards disregarding it in some reason.
Marco:
So if you say, hey, this is a security problem, they're looking for any possible reason to say, no, it's not because they want to plow through as many bugs as possible that day.
Marco:
And that's terrible and dysfunctional.
Marco:
And that causes Apple to miss tons of stuff they really shouldn't miss.
Marco:
But that is Apple's process and that it falls squarely on their management to fix.
Casey:
Save it for the show because we're going to talk about it.
Casey:
Not this week, but probably soon.
Casey:
Jenny Oscarson writes, it is possible to have a passcode on an iPhone be logged into iCloud and not have that passcode allow you to change your Apple ID password.
Casey:
So the way you do this is you change your passcode.
Casey:
Once the passcode has been entered twice, it will ask for your Apple ID password.
Casey:
At that point, just hit cancel.
Casey:
The passcode has been changed even though you've canceled.
Casey:
And if you attempt to change the Apple ID password from the settings app, it will ask you for your current Apple ID password.
Casey:
I haven't verified if this is true, but it sounds good.
Marco:
I tried this and it did not work.
Marco:
Like I was not offered that choice and it just never.
Marco:
So whatever it's worth, this didn't work for me.
John:
I feel like there is with this type of thing, there is there's stuff that we can't see.
John:
And the stuff that we can't see, I feel like is behind the scenes.
John:
Once you link up your trusted device and your Apple ID, even if you follow this procedure.
John:
it still says, oh, well, this device and this Apple ID, like, this is a trusted device for this Apple ID.
John:
So, of course, I will prompt, and this device does have a passcode, so I'll prompt you for the passcode, and that's why you reset it.
John:
Like, I feel like once they get associated on Apple's server side, that this phone and that Apple ID are connected, that this won't work.
John:
But if maybe you never link them in this way, or maybe you should do this the first time, like, I feel like there's unseen stuff that we're, you know, something in some database table or some record somewhere on Apple's side,
John:
It was is thwarting this and I had the same experience that it didn't work for me, but it worked for Jenny.
John:
So I there's obviously something we're not seeing that's beyond just looking at the settings on your phone.
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Casey:
There's been a little bit of talk over the last week about how Tim Cook's a jerk and he just wants to ship because he wants to be remembered, man.
Casey:
That's what it's all about.
Casey:
This is a report in the Financial Times, which was then summarized possibly not extremely accurately, depending on how you read it.
Casey:
It was summarized by MacRumors.
Casey:
That summary says that Apple CEO Tim Cook sided with the operations chief Jeff Williams in pushing to launch a first-generation mixed reality headset device this year against the wishes of the company's design team, the Financial Times reports.
Casey:
The company's industrial design team cautioned that devices in the category were not yet ready for launch and wanted to delay until a lightweight AR glass product had matured several years later.
Casey:
On the other hand, Apple's ops team wanted to ship an early version of the product in the form of a VR-focused ski goggle-like headset that allows users to watch 3D videos, perform interactive workouts, or make FaceTime calls with virtual avatars.
Casey:
Tim Cook reportedly sided with Jeff Williams overruling objections from Apple's designers and pressing for an early launch with a more limited product.
Casey:
speaking of the financial times former apple engineers who worked on the device described the quote huge pressure to ship quote apple's headset has reportedly been in active development for seven years twice as long as the original iphone prior to prior to its launch the device is seen as being tied directly to tim cook's legacy as apple's first new computing platform developed entirely under his leadership well what do we think fellas
John:
Well, Gruber had a good follow-up sort of punching holes in all the theorizing about the internal intrigue about this and how nonsensical this theory is.
John:
It's nonsensical on many, many fronts.
John:
Factually inaccurate about this being the first item tied to Tim Cook's legacy.
John:
It doesn't really make much sense that Tim Cook would care about this to secure his legacy, which is already secured.
John:
In fact, this could screw it up.
John:
Like, we'll link to the Gruber article.
John:
You can see all that.
John:
I'm not so much interested in whether, you know,
John:
about all those details i'm more interested in basically the idea of do we think apple should ship a ski goggles thing or do we think that they should wait until they have ar glasses it seems like the company has decided that they're going to ship a thing i mean we've talked about this for ages like the thing we've been talking about oh it's going to come anytime now is not a pair of glasses it is a goggly thing maybe a slim goggly thing smaller than other people's but it's a it's a
John:
AR VR headset thing of the type that we already see on the market not a pair of Clark Kent glasses that magically show you something because nobody has the technology to do that yet and this I think the interesting part of the story is just putting a pin on the idea that
John:
Apple has decided they're going to ship that rather than waiting.
John:
That much is clear.
John:
And the other little tidbit is that there is a portion of the company that thinks this is the wrong move.
John:
I don't think there's anything that Apple does that there's not a portion of the company that thinks it's the wrong move.
John:
Like, it's a big company with a lot of opinionated people.
John:
Like literally name anything, any product, any decision they've ever made somewhere, some department thinks that that was the wrong thing to do.
John:
Some software division, some hardware division, some supplier manager, like someone thinks they should have either not shipped that or shipped it earlier or shipped it later or shipped a different thing.
John:
That is true in any company.
John:
So a story that says, well, you know, the, you know, the operations department thought they should have done X and the supplier management people thought they should have done Y sooner.
John:
Like, of course, that's just, that's inevitable, right?
John:
they try to make it into a more interesting story it's like oh it's it's tim cook and operations versus industrial design it's like he runs the company like it's not versus anything it's a hierarchy like this again tim cook doesn't need approval from everyone below him to do things right and and
John:
There's nothing, literally nothing that gets done that doesn't have someone disagreeing with it or whatever.
John:
Like the butterfly keyboard, right?
John:
They shipped that for years and years.
John:
You think there weren't people inside Apple that thought, whole departments that thought this butterfly keyboard thing is a terrible mistake.
John:
They just weren't the ones who got to make the decision for that, right?
John:
Anyway, so setting that aside, it is interesting to think kind of like, kind of comparing to the car project.
John:
Should Apple continue, have continued to, you know, they haven't shipped anything yet, but should Apple continue to just work on this problem until they have something that looks like a pair of glasses?
John:
Or should they basically ship what they have, which presumably is, you know, incrementally better than other ski goggles type things, but it's not a pair of glasses?
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, there's so many weird holes in this article, and, you know, the aforementioned Gruber article, I think, pokes most of the holes very well, so I'll leave that to him, including, like, the whole thing with, like, you know, this being Tim Cook's legacy.
Marco:
No, the Apple Watch was a Tim Cook product.
Marco:
Like, you know, they claimed that Steve Jobs conceived the Apple Watch, but the watch came out, like...
Marco:
four years after jobs died uh that's it's a it's a tim cook product like whatever whatever jobs would have conceived there would have been such an early preliminary thing it was pretty much 100 executed under tim cook so that's the watch is a tim cook product and it's very successful you know gruber mentioned airpods is another great example like this is these are not small deals so tim cook's legacy is fine um
Marco:
If you want to poke holes in his legacy, look at other things like his China strategy, for instance.
Marco:
Maybe that's going to be a problem.
Marco:
But for the products, they've been fine.
Marco:
They've had ups and downs.
Marco:
They also had ups and downs under Steve.
Marco:
So we're fine there.
Marco:
So as for the particulars of this thing...
Marco:
I think it's interesting, you know, reading between the lines here, whenever you have an article like this, it is... Or, you know, you see something from Mark Gurman or from Ming-Chi Kuo.
Marco:
It's like, you're seeing bits and pieces.
Marco:
Like, what happens is somebody has a source somewhere, and they get some information, bits and pieces of information, possibly from multiple different sources, and then they try to put together the narrative that they think this means.
Marco:
But you often have to separate that out.
Marco:
Like...
Marco:
So often the rumor mill gets good information and like the individual facts of it might end up being correct, but the narrative they spin ends up being totally wrong.
Marco:
So I think it's worth parsing some of that out and, you know, and trying to figure out like, OK, what's the actual information that this seems to be reporting?
Marco:
Not necessarily the story of why the reporter thinks this is the way it is or the overarching story that this might be saying, but what's the actual information here?
Marco:
And I don't think there's much new here except for maybe that the industrial design team did not want to ship this product at all, or yet at least, and that operations said, sure, we're going to ship it anyway.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And I don't think, you know, and like, you know, operations here under Tim Cook, that's basically become product design.
Marco:
Like as far as we can tell from, you know, vague statements and tips here and there, it does seem like Jeff Williams is kind of the head of product direction now in some ways, at least, or for some products, at least.
John:
Why do you think that?
John:
Just because he's sort of in charge of that project?
John:
It's difficult to tell from the outside, but I think Gruber made the point that in Apple world, product marketing is what is also known as product or product management in other companies.
John:
Emphasis on the product.
John:
If you think product marketing is just how to design the ads for the product, that's not it.
John:
And product marketing still exists and still has powerful people in it.
John:
So it's never been entirely clear to me how this works.
John:
And I think it is informal.
John:
When we say product, what we're talking about is like, what should we make?
John:
Should we make a laptop computer with a giant flashlight built into it?
John:
should we make a giant desktop with 8 000 slots like should we make a car like product is the in most companies is like what should we make like we're we're a company that makes you know i don't know like a grill should we make gas grills should we make charcoal grills should we make grills that we plug in that are electric like what should we make what kind of electric you know someone has to decide what should we make that's a product decision very often traditional companies have like
John:
What should we make?
John:
It's not entirely clear who does that job because ideas for products have historically come from all over the place.
John:
You know, in the Jobs era, Jobs may have an idea, but also I think ideas would come from all over the place, bounce off of Jobs' head and come back down the org chart and they would say, we're going to make this, we're going to make that.
John:
Whose idea was it to make a watch?
John:
That could have been Johnny Ives' idea.
John:
He was big enough in the org that he could bounce that off.
John:
But who decides, yes, we are going to make a watch?
John:
Like, it bounces all over the place.
John:
It's not entirely clear.
John:
Within the realm of individual departments, who's deciding what kind of Macs get made?
John:
Should we continue to make iMacs or not?
John:
Should we make a Mac Pro?
John:
Should we have SD cards in our laptop?
John:
Should we have an HDMI port?
John:
Like...
John:
You can see the decisions that influence that all over the place.
John:
Should we make a convertible laptop that folds back and has a touchscreen?
John:
Should we make touchscreen Macs?
John:
Who makes that call?
John:
In Apple's org chart, it is not entirely clear where that comes from.
John:
And it often comes down to individual personalities, you know, or people with particular power structures in the org because of historical reasons.
John:
And sometimes just as simple as like someone, some random part in the org chart has a conversation with someone that has a conversation with someone that has a conversation with someone higher up that comes back down.
John:
But it's not as regimented.
John:
That's part of what makes Apple in any sort of good company.
John:
You can't have a regimented structure where it's like, this is where all the decisions about product get made.
John:
No one wants to work at that company, and that kind of company is ossified and just not particularly...
John:
use buzzwords agile or reactive to the market right uh but the bottom line is those decisions do get made someone said we're going to do some kind of car thing and that kind of car thing has changed someone's making that decision right so in this scenario i don't think industrial design has ever really been in the business of saying we should make a watch we should make a car we should make a laptop uh
John:
We should make a laptop with HDMI ports and an SD card, right?
John:
But Johnny Ive was certainly in the business of potentially saying we should make a watch.
John:
And Johnny Ive is different than saying the current industrial design team.
John:
They're both the same part of the org chart, but Johnny Ive is Johnny Ive, right?
John:
And so that's why from the outside, it's difficult to tell...
John:
Who is deciding what kind of things Apple should make?
John:
If you ask anybody in a particular org structure, like, ask, like, Colleen, what's her name, Colleen Novatelli?
John:
Novielli.
John:
I'm sorry.
John:
Novielli.
John:
Novielli.
John:
Like, who decided that we were going to make a really, really skinny 20, who decided we were going to make a 20-inch iMac at all, let alone the fact that it was skinny?
John:
And they'd probably say, well, it was collaborative.
John:
We knew we were going to continue to make the iMac.
John:
It's like, well, wait a second.
John:
How did you know that?
John:
Was there ever a conversation of, should we make IMAX anymore?
John:
Oh, no.
John:
And then who decided it was going to be really skinny?
John:
Well, that was industrial design.
John:
It's a lot of give and take.
John:
That's the way these products get made.
John:
With the headset type thing, someone decided years and years ago, we should be looking into this VR, VR thing.
John:
And I feel like it doesn't matter who said that.
John:
If it was operations, industrial design, engineering...
John:
Tim Cook, you know, someone's sister's brother's uncle's cousin.
John:
Like, it doesn't matter where that idea came from.
John:
The bottom line is, as that idea somehow finds its way into executives, and they all go, yeah, this is a thing we should look into.
John:
We're Apple.
John:
This is right up our alley.
John:
Other people are looking into it.
John:
We can't ignore AR, VR.
John:
We should look into this technology, and we should probably have some kind of skunkworks project to do this.
John:
That's probably an easy decision, and it's hard to trace back to any single person, maybe.
John:
But then at this point where you're like, okay, we've been doing this, we've been working on products, industrial design, we said in the past shows that remember that industrial design said it should be a stand, or Johnny Ives specifically said it shouldn't have a thing that you click onto your belt, it should be standalone, right?
John:
You shouldn't have to connect it to your phone, you shouldn't have to connect it to your Mac, it should be a standalone device.
John:
Why does industrial design get to make that decision?
John:
Is it just because, oh, that's part of the hardware design in terms of like having a wire going from your head down to the thing?
John:
Or is it because Johnny Ives is Johnny Ives?
John:
Or some combination of those two things, right?
John:
But that's the type of decision you can imagine being influenced.
John:
And here, industrial design may think, boy, having a ski goggles thing on your face is clunky.
John:
And I kind of agree with them.
John:
But then you could say, but industrial design, like, what do you want us to do?
John:
Never ship anything until it's the fantasy version in your head?
John:
Because that's not technically possible right now.
John:
And we're not entirely sure when it will be technically possible.
John:
So industrial design saying, we should just continue to work on this for another eight years and not ship anything.
John:
I can imagine that falling on deaf ears within the organization, especially since, as Gruber pointed out, the team that is working on these goggles is like, you know, hundreds or thousands of people.
John:
And just a design is way smaller number of people.
John:
And yeah, maybe they think Apple shouldn't ship anything this clunky.
John:
And that gets back to the long running discussion we've had about, you know, should, you know, is this what are you going to do with this product?
John:
Is it going to be flop or whatever?
John:
But my personal opinion is that they've been working on it so long.
John:
They need to ship something to get good at shipping this type of thing.
John:
It's foolish to think that they could stay in sort of stealth mode for 16 to 20 years and then pop out one day with the glasses, right?
John:
Even though they've been doing all the groundwork with all their frameworks, with AR-VR frameworks and all that stuff, they've been doing the software side of it.
John:
You do need to...
John:
get a product out to people to learn from your mistakes, which is tough for Apple to be in because anything they put out, everyone's going to have scrutiny on it like they did with the watch.
John:
Oh, if it's not the biggest hit product overnight, Apple sucks, right?
John:
It's the end of Apple, blah, blah, blah.
John:
That's going to happen with this product.
John:
I don't think it's going to be a smash hit.
John:
But I think they need to... I agree with Tim Cook.
John:
They need to ship this.
John:
If they have something they think is plausibly useful for some function and is a pretty good...
John:
better version of what's out there now they need to ship it to get good at shipping this type of thing kind of in case this type of thing ends up being important in the future and we all kind of think that eventually when this technology gets way way better it will absolutely be important so don't sit on the sidelines don't don't wait until everybody else gets all the experience doing this you know they they i agree with tim cook
John:
according to the story, that they should ship this.
John:
I say this despite the fact that I still have no idea what this thing will be useful for, and I think I'm very pessimistic about the product, but sometimes that's just what you have to do.
John:
It's not an Apple-type thing to do, but like...
John:
In the realm of the technology, I believe so strongly that if and when technology arrives to have this not be a giant goggle on your face, that it will be transformative and incredibly useful.
John:
They need to get good at it.
John:
So as painful as it's going to, I think it's going to be for the whole org.
John:
They need to ship something that they think is of Apple quality and learn from it.
Casey:
Well, not only do they need to ship so they can get good at it, if there's going to be a third-party developer story, then we need to get good at it, too.
Casey:
And most of the developers that I know, which is complete anecdata, but of the developers I know, I think only James Thompson has really fiddled that much with AR stuff.
Casey:
I mean, maybe others have.
Casey:
Maybe you guys have, for all I know.
Casey:
But as far as I'm aware, it's basically just James Thompson amongst our peer group.
Yeah.
Marco:
I don't have any empty tables in my house to play with.
Casey:
Exactly.
Casey:
And so if this is going to be a thing, and if third-party developers care about it, even just rank and file third-party developers like us, then we need to start figuring all this out.
Casey:
And I can tell you, I did really badly in matrix mathematics when I was in college, and I'm pretty sure that there's a lot of that involved in AR stuff.
Casey:
So I'm fighting an uphill battle.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
any 3d graphic stuff is going to use matrices but you don't have to deal with it in modern code like you know it's all below the below the surface that you're dealing with here no but am i gonna have to buy like a new blank desk to test somewhere in my office i need like an empty table it must be made of wood and it must be you know nine feet by three feet well
John:
Well, that's the AR stuff, but the VR stuff is like, you know, gaming is the obvious application, but if there's any kind of, like, thing you want to do, people want to listen to podcasts where they see a 3D projection of the chapter art.
John:
People don't even know podcasts have chapter art.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
No, I mean, but people, I mean, look, people probably will want to listen to podcasts in this thing, and that's what, like,
Marco:
Look, I'll tell you, as a developer, I could not be less excited about this for the moment, just because I'm right in the middle of this giant rewrite.
Marco:
The last thing I want to do is get a new platform dropped on me that I have to support right now.
Marco:
Maybe next year would be a little bit better.
Marco:
Going back to this article just for a minute here, I think...
Marco:
even though I just told you like, you know, be careful what people, what narratives people weave from rumors.
Marco:
And meanwhile, I'm about to weave one.
Marco:
But I think what the story here might be, because when you look at a leak or a rumor, you know, you got to figure like, well, why did the leaker share this information with a journalist?
Marco:
And oftentimes it's, they have an ax to grind.
Marco:
They're trying, or they're trying to get something changed or they're upset about or something, trying to get some decision reversed or made or whatever.
Marco:
And if you look at this story, you can pick up bits and pieces from other recent changes and things at Apple.
Marco:
Some of which have been good.
Marco:
It seems like the industrial design department is losing its authority a little bit in Apple.
Marco:
And it's coming from a pretty high place.
Marco:
Like the Steve Jobs and Johnny Ive and then later Tim Cook and Johnny Ive era really had industrial design having tons of influence and control over the products to the point where we've heard stories from people about how industrial design wouldn't let them ship something until they centered a screw or they would force them to
Marco:
you know fit the internals of this product into this little skinny enclosure even if like it really could have been a lot better with like a few more millimeters but they would be like no you have to fit it in this these dimensions this is our design period it seems like industrial design had a huge amount of influence that could basically dictate what they wanted and the rest of the company would have to fall in line and in the last few years after johnny's departure or maybe as part of johnny's departure um but in the last few years that they seem to have lost some of that influence and
John:
i think it's not just his departure yeah it was it's not just his departure it's the things that were done that could could conceivably be laid at the feet of industrial zion like right you know like the butterfly keyboard you know but and well that's not maybe not necessarily industrial it's hard to tell from the outside but look you can see you can look at things like the 2013 trash can mac pro the butterfly keyboard
Marco:
That the whole series of 2016 to 2020 MacBook Pros that people really, you know, had a lot of practical problems with or features that were removed.
John:
That gets into what I was saying before about about like who decided that the laptops wouldn't have ports anymore and they would just have USB-C shaped holes like that is a product decision.
John:
But it seems like again from the outside, it seems like it might have been heavily influenced by industrial design.
John:
I think the keyboard thing is not necessarily clear that that was laid at the feet of industrial design.
John:
Maybe the fact that they had to make that keyboard to begin with could be laid at the feet of industrial design, but shipping it for six years, I think, was not industrial design.
John:
But anyway, that's why it's so hard from the outside.
John:
But I have to say that the influence is not just because Johnny left, but because...
John:
Whatever the organization as a whole was doing, the outside world and the market has decided this is not what we want from Apple products.
John:
Like the laptops we complained about for ages, that they were too thin and had too few ports and had too little utility and people didn't really like the touch bar.
John:
Whoever's decision that was in Apple...
John:
If any of that can be laid to the feet of industrial design, industrial design should have some of their power taken away because they made a lot of bad calls.
John:
Maybe that wasn't industrial design.
John:
Whoever's fault it was, some part of the Apple organization made some bad calls about product decisions, right?
John:
What features should this product have?
John:
Should it have an SD card slot or not?
John:
Should it have HDMI port?
John:
How thin should it be?
John:
How important is battery life?
John:
Even the iPhones, you could say, with the iPhone 6 when it was getting thinner and thinner and they were bendy.
John:
and the battery life was bad at some point apple as an organization changed course and said we're going to make the phones thicker and make the batteries bigger that's a better product decision right and even though we can't attribute blame for any individual one thing because we don't know what's going on it is reasonable to conclude that industrial design had a lot of influence over because we know kind of the or their ethos and johnny ive ethos and of like minimal not a lot of external features very small thin simple
John:
We can see that.
John:
And we attribute that to industrial design.
John:
And we think, at least on this podcast, that a lot of the decisions were not the right ones.
John:
And so, yes, Johnny, I have left as the big personality.
John:
But also, industrial design, there should be a give and take between engineering and industrial design.
John:
Like what you said before, like industrial design says, no, here's how much space you have.
John:
We're not going to change our design.
John:
Engineering shouldn't be 100% overruled by industrial design all the time.
John:
It has to be a give and take.
Marco:
Yeah, and I think what we've seen in the products over the last few years is more of a give and take between what is good engineering, what your customers want and what serves them best, and what industrial design wants to make visually and form-wise.
Marco:
We've seen that be better balanced in the last few years in the product.
Marco:
That's why we're all so happy with all the recent products because they've done such a good job of rebalancing that because it had gone too far in one direction and now it has become more of a give and take.
Marco:
And if you look at this article...
Marco:
It kind of just sounds like there was somebody on the design team who leaked all this who maybe was just resentful that they didn't have ultimate authority anymore or they didn't have as much authority as they used to.
John:
But in this case, it's not like they had... In this case, if you said, okay, fine, industrial design person, what do you want to do?
John:
Because we can't ship the thing that the industrial design thing is wanting here.
John:
We should ship glasses.
John:
Well, we don't have glasses.
John:
Nobody has that.
John:
It's like saying, well, we should ship a self-driving car.
John:
Well, great, but nobody has that.
John:
So...
John:
So what they're saying instead is, we should just not ship anything.
Marco:
Well, I hear Tesla's going to release that just right around the corner, right?
John:
Any minute now.
John:
But that's their position is, we should just not ship anything.
John:
And that is a position to have, but after however many years, what is it, seven years in development or whatever, someone somewhere has decided that they think that there's some use of this product.
John:
It has reached a point where presumably it is like one of the best products
John:
headsets on the market given its price because you would expect that from apple right they're good this type of thing okay uh and you know the question is should we ship that or not an industrial design person might think i hate this product i don't i would never use it i don't think it's particularly useful blah blah blah right it's me no well i mean we've all kind of said the same thing but i feel like from tim cook's perspective if you believe that this type of product will eventually be important when the hardware catches up with it
John:
it is somewhat important for apple to get good and you could say the same things about the iphone it's like well apple didn't ship a phone until they had totally nailed it yeah but they did make the newton right right like it's not not that i'm saying this headset is going to be the newton of arvr stuff like you have to kind of get good about making small electronic objects with screens and touchscreens and pens like apple before the iphone apple it's not like apple had never shipped anything like it before right
John:
And it's the same thing with everything Apple has done.
John:
The iPhone came from stuff they were doing internally with tablet-type stuff.
John:
And even though the iPad came later, they repurposed that technological experience to a shipping product and eventually got good enough to ship the tablet, blah, blah, blah.
John:
I agree with most people that this type of technology will eventually become important when the tech catches up.
John:
So I think it is important for Apple to get this experience.
John:
It's just awkward for everybody involved to kind of agree.
John:
I mean, maybe they don't internally.
John:
But from the outside, we feel like they're going to ship a product and it's not really going to be... We're going to be doing the show being like, oh, I don't think I'm going to buy one of these.
John:
I have no use for it.
John:
It's not for me.
John:
Mark was going to be like, it doesn't really apply to my application.
John:
We're going to say all these things.
John:
But from Apple's perspective...
John:
if they think they have a product that somebody might want to use, you can't just develop this internally for 16 years and just arrive on day zero.
John:
It's like if Apple had never made a laptop computer and never made a Newton, they would not have been able to make that.
John:
Or the iPod.
John:
The iPod is a great example.
John:
The experience they got building tiny electronics with the iPod
John:
and I would say the Newton, even though it wasn't that tiny, were important contributors to the institutional knowledge, even if it's just the knowledge of how to get suppliers and assemble things and blah, blah, blah, that made them more able to make the iPhone.
John:
I think this type of... In the best case scenario, this headset is that type of product where...
John:
it will give the organization some important experience of getting this thing into actual users hands and finding out what they what they did wrong because internal testing especially their super secretive internal testing we're like so such a small number of people ever see this is never going to be sufficient for them to figure out if they've really got this right if they really made it comfortable understood the problems have they solved the motion sickness thing
John:
Are people going to use it for what they think they're going to use?
John:
Look at the Apple watch.
John:
They had all sorts of ideas of what people might be interested in using it for, but they needed to put it out on the market and find out what people actually did want to use it for.
John:
And then they corrected course.
John:
And I hope that's what happens here.
Marco:
I think also, you know, hardware does not just come out of nowhere.
Marco:
Hardware does not develop out of nowhere.
Marco:
Hardware develops out of a process over time that is funded by a market that's buying it.
Marco:
And so if we want to get to the AR glasses future, you know,
Marco:
There needs to be a market that leads us there that funds all of the hardware development along the way to get there.
Marco:
We need to start buying components now that are kind of in the ballpark of the stuff we want and shipping them in products to create that big market so that more suppliers put more time and money and research into those areas to develop the smaller and smaller and better and better versions of those things.
Marco:
These things don't develop on their own.
Marco:
Like, look at the world of tiny camera sensors that used to be basically non-existent or terrible.
Marco:
Once the smartphone came out, that market exploded.
Marco:
And now, like, people poured tons and tons of money and research into making awesome tiny optics and tiny cameras and tiny camera processing things because there was a huge market of phones that had crappy cameras that wanted better cameras.
Marco:
And that market is now massive.
Marco:
The market was supporting it along the way and having a huge amount of demand and basically rewarding people who would invest into making those components better.
Marco:
But we're not going to get from VR headsets nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, and then 10 years from now, AR goggles or AR glasses.
Marco:
There has to be a market along the way to cause those components to be iteratively developed over time.
Marco:
So you do have to kind of release this thing in the sooner term rather than the later term.
Marco:
You can't just sit back and wait and say, all right, in 10 years, we'll take advantage of the components that exist then without having done anything in the meantime to make those components exist.
John:
And because Apple's competitors, it's not like if Apple doesn't make the market, nobody will.
John:
No, somebody else might do make that market and be iterating and be selling.
John:
And then when you arrive with the air glasses, everyone is, you know, locked into, you know, Facebook meta headset, whatever thing like the competitors are also moving in this direction.
John:
So it behooves you to not sit it out because if someone else gets momentum and is actually selling hundreds and thousands and millions of these things a year and then you arrive 10 years later with your thing, it's got to be so much better than theirs.
John:
you know so anyway it's it's still a big this market is still a big question mark but it's like unlike the car it is so straightforwardly aligned with everything else that apple does that if this becomes a thing apple needs to do this right and there are synergies with everything else that does screen technology wireless technology socs all the silicon stuff like 3d gpus you know like
John:
It's not completely out of left field.
John:
So even if they never shipped a product, they would be getting some benefit.
John:
And it's interesting to compare it to the car, where it seems like the car program, they have never been at a point where they had something that was even plausibly shippable.
John:
They didn't have a car they wanted to ship.
John:
They didn't have self-driving that they wanted to ship.
John:
They didn't have a thing they were going to sell to other car makers.
John:
I don't think they've ever even been at a decision point like this, which is like, conceivably, we could ship this as an Apple product.
John:
Uh, but should we or not?
John:
The car stuff is like, what are we even making here?
John:
Uh, you know, too many shovels, too many reboots.
John:
Uh, and kind of like the VR thing, like you were saying, Margo, like Apple does have a lot of money and they can just pile monies and things for years and years.
John:
And they have huge amounts of money hiring huge amounts of people, you know, resets, blah, blah, blah.
John:
Apple has the luxury of doing that.
John:
But, you know, it's not the it's not the ideal scenario.
John:
Like I remember the story about how much money it cost to develop the original iPhone.
John:
It was like one hundred and fifty million dollars or something absurd, absurdly low in case that's not clear.
John:
And, you know, the number of people and the amount of money and the time they spent to develop the first iPhone, compare that to the number of people, amount of money and time they spent on either the AR, VR headset or the car.
John:
and what do they have to show for it it's not looking good for those projects like it's not saying that you know apple should do this they should sink money in many years into this type of stuff uh but it would be much better if they could get to a point where they have a product that people might want to buy to help uh you know fund this uh to help to help to help start the iteration loop because the your internal iteration is not as interesting as external
Casey:
So which one of us is going to take the fall and get this?
John:
I was thinking about that.
John:
I mean, I'm assuming it has to be Marco.
John:
I mean, I have to get it if there's a developer story.
John:
Yeah, exactly.
John:
I feel like Marco for sure.
John:
I feel like I'm the least likely just because I'm sure that if I'm any kind of AR viewer thing is going to make me motion sick.
Casey:
Yeah, that's true.
John:
Like no matter what.
Marco:
Well, I'm a little afraid of that, too, because the Oculus thing that we have makes me a little motion sick.
Marco:
And also, I can't see it very sharply.
Marco:
And whatever reading glasses thing I need to make it work doesn't... I didn't talk about this in the show, but I actually briefly got a FPV drone a couple months back.
Marco:
What?
Marco:
And I ended up returning it because I really... Wait, which one?
Marco:
The DJI... Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marco:
The little one with the guards around the things.
John:
You have to explain to people what that is because they don't know that FPV is first-person view.
Marco:
it's yeah so it's a it's a type of drone i mean it's a camera drone like any other but it's optimized for um using like with goggles and kind of flying it in first person view like that so it's more of an immersive thing because like i love like my favorite thing to do with my drone is just like fly around and look at stuff like i don't really need the footage for much of anything i just like flying around and looking at my town and the ocean and you know it's like i like that
Marco:
And so I thought, here's a new kind of drone with a new kind of screen situation.
Marco:
I also wanted to get away.
Marco:
My old drone was the kind that uses the phone as the screen and controlling app, and you stick it in the controller dock.
Marco:
And that's always been such a pain in the butt, and so I never wanted to do it.
Marco:
So I'm like, all right, this is a whole standalone thing.
Marco:
First of all,
Marco:
Guess what?
Marco:
Yet again, this is a brand new product from DJI, a brand new product from a high-end hardware maker.
Marco:
And you have to charge three things to get it to work.
Marco:
You have to charge the drone battery itself, this special battery pack for the goggles that goes in your pocket.
Marco:
Sound familiar?
Marco:
Battery goes in your pocket, runs a cable up to your goggles around your head.
Marco:
By the way, that sucks.
Marco:
Like having that cable in your pocket, like this is why, if this is what's rumored for the Apple headset of having a big battery pack that you put in your pocket and have a cable that runs up, oh man, I can't wait to not need that anymore.
John:
No, it'll just be wireless power delivery.
John:
It'll slowly bake your internal organs.
John:
Yes, that'll be great.
Marco:
Yes, yes.
Marco:
But anyway, so first of all, the little hand controller, that's the third thing you have to keep charged, has a USB-C hole, but does not accept USB-C power.
Marco:
You got to use a USB-A cable for that and only that.
Marco:
And the other two things support USB-C.
Marco:
That's a brand new device from DJI.
Marco:
It doesn't support USB power because they didn't do that one resistor in the stupid hand controller.
Marco:
Anyway, I ended up returning it for a few reasons, but chief of which was that
Marco:
um i just couldn't see very sharply in the thing like it was very hard to use because they have adjustments and you can like adjust it i tried wearing glasses in it i tried uh adjusting all the diopter stuff and everything i just could not get it to a point and i have the same problem with the um oculus like i can see the middle sharply but not the edges and it's a little bit motion sicknessy for me and so i can only spend like a minute or two in it i don't feel good afterwards um and and i i have that worry with the apple thing for sure
Marco:
As we are going into the VR world here, it's worth considering that this is not as universally accessible a technology as the phone.
Marco:
And I think we should have much lower expectations for its eventual adoption as a result.
John:
Well, I mean, it's not as accessible yet.
John:
uh because the problems of motion sickness they've been working on that for years and they've been getting way better than they used to be every event and a lot of it actually has to do with technological limitations we can't get the frame rate up this high we can't get a screen that is this responsive right a lot of things we know would work better like oh the lag right lag is really bad right we can't make the lag any uh any lower than it is now
John:
Those are things that we know will help.
John:
We just can't do them yet.
John:
And then there are the things we don't even know will help yet that people haven't developed.
John:
Like there's a story I linked to ages ago.
John:
I don't know if I'll be able to find it again about what the developers of Destiny did to fight motion sickness in their game.
John:
And they thought about it a lot and they did a lot of stuff.
John:
And this is just a plain old first person game where you're looking at a screen, but you can get sick from those as well.
John:
And the things they're doing, nobody who's playing the game even notices because it's the type of thing you wouldn't even occur to you unless you were a game developer working on this.
John:
Those type of things, we don't even know what all those are yet for AR, VR, headsets.
John:
Setting aside technological stuff that we just can't do, I'm sure there's stuff that we haven't even realized.
John:
Things about the UI, because a lot of the stuff in Destiny is like, what does it look like when you throw a grenade or shoot things or whatever, or if your character jumps, what do we do with the camera to not make you motion sick?
John:
And with these goggles, it's like, okay, how do we present an interface?
John:
Whether it's an AR interface where you're decorating the world or whether it's a VR interface, how do we present that interface in a way that does not make people sick?
John:
Setting aside just the glasses themselves, like, how do we present something?
John:
How do we let them look at a virtual screen?
John:
How do we present a UI?
John:
We don't even know the answers to those questions yet.
John:
They need to put this out in the real world and figure that out.
John:
Kind of like, you know, you can make your guess about what's going to be a good UI, but
John:
for the phone or the ipad or whatever when you get out in front of people and people try it you learn things and you try again i i feel like motion sickness is going to take that same thing but unlike a clunky ui for notifications or something or lack of copy and paste uh this one actually makes people sick to their stomach so it's going to be a harder sell to your point marco that if someone has a negative experience to convince them oh no it's better now and convince them to try again versus oh notifications are better in the new version of ios
John:
Right.
Marco:
And there's going to be people like maybe like me who like, hey, this thing just doesn't fit me in some way.
Marco:
Like for some reason, this is not comfortable or usable for me.
Marco:
And there's going to be a lot of people like that for anything that goes in the eye.
Marco:
I mean, look, Casey, you have weird eyes.
Marco:
We all have weird eyes in different ways.
Marco:
Some weird than others.
Marco:
I think Casey is the king of the weirdness here.
Marco:
Yeah.
Casey:
Well, yes and no, actually.
Casey:
I don't take offense to what you're saying, not a bit, but in a way, my eyes are not that weird as long as I have my contacts in it.
Casey:
I'm not like John.
Casey:
In this case, I think John has weirder eyes only because he's contending.
Casey:
Well, that's true.
Casey:
But you're contending with, well, I'm turning 41 just a couple days.
Casey:
It's getting bad.
Casey:
But no, I don't need anything on my face in order to see, I was going to say well, but I'll just say as well as I possibly can.
Casey:
Whereas John is going to have to figure out what to do with his glasses.
Casey:
Can he keep them on?
Casey:
Is there special bespoke lenses?
John:
One of the rumors of the Apple thing is they have, and a lot of these AR VR headsets have like, Marco was talking about the diopter adjustment, which is just a lens in there.
John:
Cameras have that in their viewfinders and stuff, right?
John:
But the rumor of the Apple ones is they have like a,
John:
A particular accommodation for prescription-type lenses.
John:
And again, in theory, Apple is the company that could do that well.
John:
Doing it well is expensive.
John:
If you want to adjust for your astigmatism and everything, you'd have to get very expensive, fancy custom lenses to slot into your headset automatically.
John:
And if headsets become really popular, people will do that.
John:
It will be worthwhile.
John:
Same way people get glasses for their computer.
John:
I'm wearing my quote unquote computer glasses right now, which is a prescription custom tailored by my eye doctor to be most relaxing for my old man eyesight looking at computer screens.
John:
But I have different glasses for driving.
John:
If AR VR becomes popular or VR headsets become popular and Apple Apple will eventually have to accommodate prescription lenses of a you know of a fancy expensive kind that is custom to people so they can comfortably spend X number of hours per day in their VR meetings or whatever if that market ever emerges.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And so, you know, stepping aside from our weird eye contest, this is an area that I think is significant.
Marco:
It's a significant challenge in the goggles kind of space because, you know, there is such a wide array of different eyesight needs that people have.
Marco:
uh that's you know i i think i think this is that's a major challenge to any product and that's eyesight is just one part of it as you know to mention motion sickness and motion perception you know there's there's all sorts of different other possible challenges that like you know a phone is you know phones aren't universally accessible but i think they are significantly more accessible than uh than goggles will be and and
Marco:
that's going to be something that we have to contend with and maybe version one doesn't fit very well for a lot of people like you know airpods were like that i mean airpods version one like a lot of people liked it i couldn't wear them a lot of people couldn't wear them and they came up with the airpods pros and then a different set of people could wear them i happen to fit into that set i was very happy but some people then couldn't wear those you know like and and you know look at you know the most the closest uh most recent product to this for like fit and comfort reasons might be the airpods max and
Marco:
which are another thing that's, you know, kind of heavy and goes on your head.
Marco:
But they're not super comfortable, in my opinion, either.
Marco:
And so, you know, these are hard problems to solve in product development.
Marco:
And it might take a while before this product line is even able to be to be mass market, even setting aside the price and desirability aspects of it.
Marco:
Like maybe physically it can't be mass market for a long time.
Casey:
And not only that, but if this is as expensive as people are saying it will be, and I mean, we heard this about the iPad, right?
Casey:
Like everyone thought it was going to be a thousand plus dollars for the first iPad and it was like 500 bucks, which is still, I mean, a lot of money, but nevertheless, if this is like a multi-thousand dollar like for funsies thing, I don't know a lot of people that have a couple of grand, including me for the record, that have a couple of grand just burning a hole in their pockets that they just really want to throw in the direction of their nearest Apple store.
Casey:
Like,
Casey:
It's not the sort of thing like a phone, which has become like a critical part of everyone's everyday life.
Casey:
It's not even like an Apple Watch, which I would argue is not at all critical, but something that many people, including me, feel like is something you want to have on you pretty much always.
Casey:
This is just a toy right now, or I mean, unless they have some compelling use for it that I'm not thinking of, but...
Casey:
This is a, it appears to be just a toy and a couple thousand dollars for just a toy.
Casey:
That's a lot of money that I don't think all that many people like in this economy, you know, I don't know that all that many people have a couple thousand dollars just looking to be spent on something that is very unproven and may or may not even work for their bodies.
Casey:
Like you were saying, like it's a big ask.
Marco:
i mean really the best time to release it would have been right at the beginning of covid when everybody was like trying to figure out you know more interesting stuff they could do without going anywhere like that that would have been perfect you know they missed that opportunity but you know that it wasn't ready yet uh but if they make a compelling case for this that's and that's a huge if and we'll talk about that for i'm sure for many months but if they if they make a compelling case for this
Marco:
I think there is a market for it.
Marco:
It's not going to start out as a very big market.
Marco:
It doesn't need to.
Marco:
But there is a market.
Marco:
It's not going to be easy to make a compelling product of this type.
Marco:
And that's why I think it has taken them so long and they still haven't shipped.
Marco:
I don't think it's about necessarily the industrial design aesthetics or anything.
Marco:
I think it's more likely that the product just really hasn't been compelling enough yet.
Marco:
And that, you know, maybe they have internal disagreements about, is it good enough to ship yet or not?
Marco:
Not necessarily, should we even bother with this category of XR headset at all?
Marco:
But do we have enough here to make it worth shipping version one?
Marco:
Or have we not even reached that yet?
Marco:
That's probably the actual debate.
Marco:
And or, you know, does the industrial design team, you know, object to being overruled in certain ways or object to having to be a little more collaborative and a little more give and take in other ways.
Marco:
But, you know, for this actual for this product by itself, you know, it wouldn't surprise me if it's kind of on shaky ground until very, very recently as to whether they even have something worth shipping at all.
Marco:
And if they if they think they finally have it and we're about to get it.
Marco:
Well, I'm damn curious to see what they have deemed worth shipping because, again, I don't have the imagination or the foresight to be able to see for myself, oh, this is going to be amazing.
Marco:
I haven't seen that yet, but I'm wrong a lot, so maybe they have something amazing and we just don't know it yet.
John:
The long pole in this project has got to be software at this point.
John:
That's what the rumors have been.
John:
So I feel like I'm willing to take at face value the industrial design objection outlined here, which is basically we shouldn't ship a goggly product.
John:
Right.
John:
It's not that this goggly product isn't good enough or not ready, because I think the thing that is not ready about this and the thing that has been delaying it is the software side of it.
John:
And that's very often the case because the software side of it is difficult and really defines the experience.
John:
The hardware part of it, you can make as good as you can make.
John:
And the hardware part of it is mostly a tradeoff between price and technology.
John:
And you have to kind of do that balance.
John:
And I feel like that's where industrial design and engineering are bouncing off each other, trying to come up with the best goggle they can get and iterating it over year after year.
John:
And industrial design might still disagree that they've got something shippable.
John:
But the objection to this article is like, we shouldn't even do this until we can make Clark Kent glasses, right?
John:
And that's, I mean, I feel like that's a position to have, but I think it's the wrong position, and I think it's kind of tantrum-y.
John:
It's like, we should wait until we have flying cars.
John:
Can we make just a regular car first?
John:
Not that I'm saying Apple should make a regular car, but it's, you know, that's an analogy.
John:
I wish it wasn't so, I wish it could be just an analogy, but alas, Apple is rumored to be investigating that as well.
John:
So anyway, we'll see, but like...
John:
i i think if we'll find out when they ship something because if they ship something and we're like oh you know what you just said marco like uh even if you agree that apple should be in the goggles market these are bad goggles that we'll say that when they come out and then we'll retroactively say that must have been the debate or whatever but this story is very straightforward and trying to say we shouldn't ship a thing like this
John:
we should make until we make glasses.
John:
It's like, okay, whoever has that opinion, that is an opinion to have, but I think it would be the wrong move for Apple, and apparently the company is going to ship something.
Marco:
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Marco:
That's really what it is.
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Marco:
Right now it's down, and we are very, very thankful to our members for basically keeping us afloat during this down ad market.
Marco:
And you also get an ad-free version of every episode.
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The bootleg is an unedited version of our live stream.
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So whatever we broadcast live, totally unedited.
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Marco:
You get to hear us pick titles at the end and a little bit of banter that usually gets cut out for time for the main show.
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And it comes out right after we finish recording the live show.
Marco:
So usually about half a day to a day before the regular edited episode comes out.
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You also get 15% off any items during our merchandise sales during like the main sale periods that we announced on the show.
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You get a coupon code of the membership panel for that.
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Mostly, for the most part, you're really just supporting the show.
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it's nice in the downs to have membership support.
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Ad-free version of the show, bootleg version of the show, whatever you want.
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Casey:
So there's been a bit of a brouhaha over the last week or so.
Casey:
It was not about Apple.
Casey:
It was instead about Samsung and their space zoom photos, which may or may not be enhanced, quote unquote, by AI.
Casey:
So what the heck am I talking about?
Casey:
So in the Samsung S20 Ultra, which has one of these periscope style lenses that we've heard for years the iPhone is getting this year, this is the year.
Casey:
Well, they actually have one, and it does a 100x zoom, and I think some of that is digital, some of that is optical.
Casey:
I'm not entirely sure, and honestly, it doesn't really matter for the purposes of this conversation.
Casey:
But people have noticed that these phones take just absolutely stunning images of the moon.
Casey:
And somebody on Reddit started looking into this and they wrote, many of us have witnessed the breathtaking moon photos taken with this latest zoom lens, starting with the Samsung S20 Ultra.
Casey:
I've always had doubts about their authenticity as they appear almost too perfect.
Casey:
While these images are not necessarily outright fabrications, neither are they entirely genuine.
Casey:
Many people believe the moon photos are real.
Casey:
Even MKBHD has claimed this in a popular YouTube short that the moon is not an overlay like Huawei or how do you pronounce that?
Casey:
Is it Huawei?
Marco:
Yeah.
Casey:
Okay, sure.
Casey:
Huawei has been accused of in the past, but he's not correct.
Casey:
And eventually he, by the way, put up a full-on correction video, which we're going to talk about here in a second.
Casey:
But what this person did was absolutely fascinating.
Casey:
And I'm probably going to get the terminology wrong, but the gist of it is they took a picture of the moon and they blurred the snot out of it.
Casey:
So you could barely recognize it as a moon.
Casey:
They put it on their computer screen
Casey:
turned all the lights off, went across the room or whatever, and zoomed in on this moon that has been blurred.
Casey:
So it is a picture of the moon, but the source material is blurry because the only thing being shown on the screen is a blurry image.
Casey:
And the image that came out from the camera was this very crisp image of the moon where there were details that did not exist on the computer screen.
Casey:
Again, the source was blurred.
Casey:
It's not like it was hard to see.
Casey:
It literally was blurred.
Casey:
There was no more detail to be had because the original was blurred.
Casey:
Well, somehow that blurry original got sharpened with mega air quotes into a very accurate picture of the moon, which seems then that what's going on is the phone is just filling in a picture of the moon and calling it good.
Casey:
And so what MKBHD's follow-up video starts asking, and I thought it was a really, really, really good question, and maybe I should turn it over to John and we can channel a little, you know, robot or not, but MKBHD asked, what is a photo?
Casey:
You know, in short, and he does a very, very good job of explaining it, but in short...
Casey:
is this a photo?
Casey:
Like if they really, if you are taking a picture of the moon and the phone figures out, okay, what should the moon look like from where you're standing at this phase of the moon at this time and so on and so forth.
Casey:
And it becomes effectively a picture of what you, what you would see if you had better equipment.
Casey:
Is that still a photo?
Casey:
Is that cheating?
Casey:
Is that okay?
Casey:
And it was a really interesting question.
Casey:
So John, is it a photo?
John:
Yeah, I think this question is less complicated than people make it sound, which is the main reason I wanted to put this in here.
John:
But a few notes before that, which I haven't seen brought up in many places.
John:
One is that we do have and have for many years various techniques to take a blurry image and, quote-unquote, retrieve detail, right?
John:
So a lot of people in the Reddit thread are like, but it's blurry.
John:
You can't get detail that's not there.
John:
Hmm.
John:
we do actually have ways to do that, especially if you have some knowledge of the, of some constraints.
John:
So for example, we've seen the thing where if like, Oh, be careful when you blur text on a screenshot or something you post, because you can take the blurred text and reverse that blur to get out the original images, mostly because we know what letter forms look like.
John:
And we, you know, like it is a more constrained problem, but that is not outside the realm of reason.
John:
And that is not any kind of like, it's not like, you know, when you're in your unblurring text, it's,
John:
it's not quite the same thing as we're talking about here.
John:
So I think this, you know, look, it's proof.
John:
They must be just taking a picture of the moon and slapping on it because there's no way you can get this detail back.
John:
I think we could using preexisting pre quote unquote AI algorithms.
John:
I hate that phrase because it has nothing to do with AI really, but, um,
John:
In the past, in technologies that existed in years past, I think it is actually possible to unblur a picture of the moon and get something reasonable.
John:
But setting that aside, that doesn't appear to be what they're doing here.
John:
The other interesting thing is this whole thing about Samsung messing things with the moon has come up, even just on Reddit, several times in the past years.
John:
There's an older one that was, I think, from several years ago where this person's experiment was they took a picture of the moon and they drew a smiley face on it in gray paint in like a paint program.
Yeah.
John:
and then they took a picture with their samsung camera and the samsung camera dutifully made the smiley face look like a cratery smiley face because the samsung camera knows moon is supposed to be cratery that and and it knows that that's a moon and so i will craterify it um and samsung has an explanation of this i originally had a link to their their uh korean forum post about it but they have an english one there's a verge story here where it says samsung responds to fake moon controversy and samsung explains that
John:
They basically just say, hey, we use AI image processing and we do this and here's our pipeline and blah, blah.
John:
What they basically say is our camera recognizes that you're taking a picture of the moon.
John:
It knows it's a moon and it uses quote unquote AI to quote unquote enhance the image, which is what everybody is saying.
John:
So getting back to Casey's and MKBG's question, what is a photo?
John:
Um,
John:
When I see this, there's definitely a camp that I see reacting to these stories where you say, okay, well, anytime there's a new technology, people complain about it and think it's unnatural and shouldn't be used and unholy and old ways are best and it's an abomination.
John:
But eventually those people die and we just get used to it and it becomes the new normal.
John:
And I'm here to tell you that in this specific case,
John:
This question of photos versus enhanced photo or augmented photos is not the type of thing that is going to wipe away the old thing.
John:
It is a new thing that will be in our arsenal and become very important for the future.
John:
But we will never get to a point where nobody has any interest in taking a quote unquote old style photo.
John:
And I'll explain why.
John:
So this is a related story that was in the New Yorker, believe it or not.
John:
It was talking about chat GPT, trying to explain to people how it works and what it is and it isn't.
John:
And it is actually very relevant to this moon thing in an interesting way.
John:
So I'm going to try to summarize this rather than read it because it's kind of long.
John:
But the bottom line is someone was using a Xerox photocopier and they were photocopying floor plans and they photocopied it.
John:
but the photocopy had the wrong measurements.
John:
Like they had measurements on the wall.
John:
Like this wall is five, this wall is 10, this wall, whatever.
John:
Uh, and then when they would photocopy it, the photocopy would have the wrong measurements.
John:
It made all of the walls, the same length as one of the walls.
John:
And it like, it wasn't supposed to be a square.
John:
It was like, there were different lengths, right?
Yeah.
John:
which is like the weirdest bug you can ever imagine.
John:
You'd be like, is someone playing a practical joke on me?
John:
Not only is it a weird bug, but it's also like potentially super dangerous.
John:
What if you're making like plans for like an airplane or something, a space thing or some safety, like a bridge or like when you make a Xerox, you know, using the proprietary eponym, when you make a photocopy, you kind of expect the paper to come out to be a copy of the one you put in.
John:
And if the one you put in said, this is five feet, this is 10 feet, this is 12 feet, and it comes back and they're all five feet, you might not notice that because why would you even check that, right?
John:
And so the explanation, and I'll read this because it is slightly detailed, right?
John:
Here's the explanation of what was going on.
John:
Xerox photocopiers use lossy compression format known as JBIG2, designed for use of black and white images.
John:
To save space, the copier identifies similar-looking regions in the image and stores a single copy for all of them.
John:
When the files decompress, it uses that copy repeatedly to reconstruct the image.
John:
It turned out that the photocopier had judged the labels specifying the area of the rooms to be similar enough that it needed to only store one of them.
John:
The one with the value 14.13.
John:
And it reused that one for all three rooms when printing the floor plan.
John:
That's good.
John:
The fact that ChatGPT rephrases the material from the web instead of quoting it word for word makes it seem like a student expressing their ideas in their own words rather than simply regurgitating what she reads.
John:
It creates the illusion that ChatGPT understands the material.
John:
Right.
John:
So the saying that ChatGPT does a similar thing.
John:
It finds an occurrence of this.
John:
Seems like it's a good stand in and repeats it.
John:
Right.
John:
The moon, same deal.
John:
I recognize that's the moon.
John:
I know what the moon looks like.
John:
I don't have to pay any attention to what your camera took a picture of.
John:
And honestly, the Samsung camera, it's just a blurry white ball at that point.
John:
Like it has no way to resolve anything.
John:
That 100x zoom is not making any sense out of the moon.
John:
But I know that it's a moon.
John:
And so I will take the one copy that I have of the moon and apply it using AI technology to your image, right?
John:
The reason this is not going to become the accepted norm and wipe out quote-unquote old-style photos is the same reason this photocopier is never going to be acceptable.
John:
By the way, Xerox fixed the book, right?
John:
When you take a photo or when you make a photocopy...
John:
Very often you're doing it, you have a job that you want it to do.
John:
In the case of the copier, you want it to make an exact duplicate of the paper that you put on it.
John:
You don't want it to change the measurements.
John:
That's very bad because your whole point is I want it to be an exact copy.
John:
Sometimes when you take a picture of the moon, you just want a pretty picture of the moon, and that's fine.
John:
But sometimes when you take a picture of the thing, you want a picture of the thing that is in front of you.
John:
You don't care what some computer thinks that thing in front of you probably looks like or has looked like in the past or will look like in the future or would look better as.
John:
You want to know what that thing looks like now.
John:
Sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes that is the job of a photograph.
John:
So I think there is no future in which we accept
John:
cameras routinely replacing things that are in front of them with things that thinks they are because sometimes that's not the job we want a camera to do and that's why i think and you know this thing with the moon who cares it's not particularly important but like say you're taking a picture of a bunch of people and you're on vacation take a picture of your family and it knows that you've taken a thousand pictures of your family and it says well little timmy's head is blurred so i'm gonna take timmy's head from another photo and ai map it onto there
John:
I don't think that will be acceptable to people in general because what they want is Timmy's actual expression at this point, not an AI warped version of Timmy's composite of all Timmy's faces from past photos mapped onto his face in this photo, right?
John:
Or whatever the threshold is.
John:
Maybe the little Timmy people will want that.
John:
But at a certain point, the job of a camera and the job of a photo is to document what is actually there.
John:
And I'm setting this aside from like, okay, but what about image enhancing and sharpening and blurring and saturating colors?
John:
Like...
John:
there is a line between I'm taking the, the information that's there and trying to make it a little bit clearer versus I'm basically doing an image map and not an image map, but you know, like the, the avatar things we thought of before where it recognizes what it is and knows what you want and takes all of its knowledge of that thing.
John:
And sort of, you know, I don't, I don't want to say map cause it's not like it's texture mapping.
John:
It is doing AI image processing.
John:
It's doing stable diffusion.
John:
Like it's, it is, that's not what we want it to do.
John:
in most cases.
John:
And so I'm not sure whether this technology is appropriate for cell phones or whatever.
John:
And by the way, on the Samsung phone, you can turn this off and on, so it's not like you're stuck with this.
John:
But I feel like
John:
At least some of the time, the job we want a camera or a photograph to do is to record what's there in the best way possible, not to make up something.
John:
And the photocopier is the most extreme example.
John:
And ChatGPT is a similar type of thing where it's like, well, I've seen stuff like this before.
John:
And I know you actually want to know the answer, but I've seen enough similar things that are plausibly the answer that I'll just show you those.
John:
And sometimes that's fun and interesting and useful as long as you understand what it's doing.
John:
But sometimes you actually want to know the real answer and it's kind of super important.
John:
So I wouldn't want NASA asking chat GPT about like how far away is the moon.
John:
Because you probably get an answer, and it might be right, but really you need to delve farther into that.
John:
Similarly, I wouldn't want someone taking photos and, for example, submitting them as evidence in a criminal trial when half the stuff in the image has been AI replaced by some computer's idea of what it probably should have looked like.
Marco:
It's a complicated topic because we are so accustomed to cameras capturing what we're pretty sure they should be capturing based on what they are seeing.
Marco:
You know, when Apple does its deep fusion process...
Marco:
which is literally AI detail generation for pictures that they've been doing for years.
Marco:
It's like it's this exact same kind of thing, just done in a little bit more subtle ways with a little bit more finesse.
Marco:
But it's the same technique, roughly.
Marco:
It's like they see like, oh, this looks kind of like a hair.
Marco:
I'm going to sharpen it to make it look more like a higher resolution hair or sweater fiber than what the sensor actually captured.
Marco:
And that might be wrong.
John:
But they don't have like... They didn't train it on a huge database of a million pictures of hair and saying, hey, when you see something that's a hair, rather than trying to sharpen it because hair is... We apply this sharpening algorithm to things that we think are hair.
John:
Instead, take all your knowledge in this giant trained image set of all pictures of hair you've seen and just...
John:
Synthesize a picture of hair that is more or less the same shape as that picture in the same way that you can take like You know steal artwork from somebody where they drew it draw you as a superhero and synthesize Marco's face plus the superhero drawing that somebody did and end up with a superhero drawing of Marco I think nothing has Apple has done at that point up to this point has been trained on other images and
John:
and uses that to synthesize.
John:
Instead, it's maybe perhaps been trained in other images to recognize this is hair, this is not hair, but hasn't gone the extra step, or like this is sweater, this is not sweater, hasn't gone the extra step to say, okay, in addition to that, take your giant database of knowledge of what sweaters look like and synthesize an image of a purple sweater that matches this purple and more or less looks like a sweater.
John:
And that's where I feel like the line is drawn, where it is
John:
where it is creating based on other images versus just taking what you have there, recognizing it, and then applying essentially image processing algorithms to sharpen, blur, enhance, saturate, so on.
Marco:
I believe that's correct, that their approaches have not seemingly been synthesis-driven from a trained large model kind of thing.
Marco:
I think it has been more just smarter versions of sharpening and stuff like that, and interpolation.
Marco:
I'm pretty sure that's right, but
Marco:
there's a that's honestly a very fine line that i think the whole industry is going to just waltz right over over the next few years and none of us are going to notice or care uh it's just going to become the new normal i mean people expect their the cameras they take with their phones to just look good and look right and people reward that by buying those phones that have those cameras and using those apps that generate those effects and
Marco:
And the technology in general of like AI synthesized photo processing is already out there in mainstream apps.
Marco:
I mean, like there's all this stuff going on on TikTok with like all these filters that work on live video and people are like, you know, making themselves look like the teenage version of themselves or movie stars or like super high glam version of themselves.
Marco:
They all fail comically on me, by the way.
Marco:
but like there's this and and these are all these algorithms that make people look good and this you know people have been doing this on instagram and snapchat for years uh you know things that kind of like you know basically make it look like you're wearing a lot of stage makeup like you know they kind of like fog your face out and you know smooth over any blemishes and make you know make you look like a movie star all the time and you god god forbid you ever have a pimple on your face we're gonna hide that right over you know
Marco:
There's all this stuff going on.
Marco:
That's all way more complex than than Apple's deep fusion stuff.
Marco:
It is using AI powered decision making in a lot of those a lot of those things.
Marco:
It is synthesizing detail or changing things outright that were not there in the picture.
Marco:
And that's becoming commonplace.
Marco:
That's because like it's super commonplace.
Marco:
Tons of people experience photography that way now.
John:
Right, but that goes back to, like, what is a photo, though?
John:
Like, an example is, like, that's people doing it intentionally for fun.
John:
Like, that is a fun thing to do.
John:
You know you're doing it.
John:
It's a fun thing to do, right?
John:
But, like, the case where it becomes routine, where, like, you take a picture of your family on vacation, and then you get back home and you realize the photo misidentified one of your children, thought it was kid A instead of kid B, and synthesized kid A's face on top of them, and you basically now have a ruined photo, right?
John:
Right.
John:
That's the type of thing where the first time that happens to someone, people are going to hunt down that setting and say, don't do that anymore.
John:
I don't care how if that person's photo was like it was too dim and it wasn't sharp enough.
John:
I don't want you putting the other kid's face on that.
John:
I know my kids look similar.
John:
Lots of kids look similar.
John:
We're all potentially genetically related to each other.
John:
And so I can see how you can make that mistake.
John:
Kind of like how Apple's face recognition makes a mistake.
John:
But...
John:
Once people realize that it is synthesizing a face on top of a face, you do that intentionally to make yourself look glamorous with makeup, fun.
John:
Someone does that to your family photo and it puts the wrong kid on top of a thing, not fun, not acceptable.
John:
And that will never be acceptable, right?
John:
It will never be acceptable to any error rate in accidentally or even forget about putting the wrong kid.
Yeah.
John:
if it made your face look like one of those, you know, makeup filters or whatever.
John:
I don't even think that's acceptable as a standard thing.
John:
You always have to have the ability to capture what is there without synthesis.
John:
And I don't think that's going to be, might not even be the majority case, but you will never eliminate that case.
John:
My argument is that this kind of technology...
John:
will never wipe out the need to record what is actually in front of the photo and the photo, you know, the camera's lens in the best way possible because sometimes that is the job of a camera.
John:
Sometimes it's the job of a camera to look good or be fun or whatever, but other times it is, you know, traffic cameras, for example, that take pictures.
John:
It is not the job of the traffic camera to synthesize license plates, right?
John:
it's absolutely it's just not the job right and it's not acceptable for that to be the job you can use ai to enhance the image or whatever but if it says oh we've fed it a library of all the license plates and we'll find the license plate that looks the most like and replace it and then we'll use that in court to say like that is an example of like that is not the job we want this you know if you can't get the good picture get a better camera but i don't want you guessing it what that license plate was and replacing it like the xerox copier did with a very crisp picture of a license plate that is actually somebody else's
John:
Oh, man.
Marco:
I just had the terrifying thought of what's going to happen when police officers realize they can change their body cam footage.
Marco:
That's awful.
Marco:
But anyway, I think you're right that there will always be a role for basically unprocessing or less processing cameras that are not trying to be too smart.
John:
It's not less processing.
John:
processing it's it's it's where that it's where that line is the line between enhancing what is in front of the camera and the line of synthesizing based on your knowledge of like millions of photos like that is that i feel like i don't know how to define that line in terms of vocabulary because we're too new in that thing but there is a line i know it's fuzzy and difficult to define but it does exist and that i feel like is what we're all going to work out as a society of like what do we call that line where is it maybe legally that line will be worked out
John:
But that division does exist.
John:
It is not just a giant smear that we just have to accept that this is just going to be the way all photos are.
John:
It's not going to be.
John:
And so we do have to find out where that dividing line is.
Marco:
Well, no one is going to ask us.
Marco:
See, we're not going to be asked where we want to draw this line.
Marco:
We're not going to be asked should this line exist and where should it be drawn.
Marco:
Here's what's going to happen.
Marco:
We're going to keep going on the path we're going, and already, I think we're already here now, but say in a few years, we're going to look back and realize, for most people, they're going to look back and realize the vast majority to the entirety of all pictures they have from the last X years have been processed in this way.
Marco:
And it might be subtle things.
Marco:
They might look back and say, like, hey, you know, this picture...
Marco:
of you know my kid it may be it may be in the actual picture the kid had like one eye like half blinking so like one eye was like half closed and maybe the the ai camera that they were using at that time was smart enough to like open it up and make it match the other eye but maybe that kid has like maybe that kid's eyes the two eyes look different from each other in some way normally and the parent might not notice immediately but then they might you might like be looking back at the picture like wait a minute
Marco:
Little Johnny's green eye is supposed to be green there and it's blue because his other eye is blue.
Marco:
That's weird.
Marco:
The camera made something up that wasn't there.
Marco:
But we're going to be at a point where we'll be looking back and realize, oh, actually, all of the photos we have now, all the photos we've been taking, all the photos we are taking now...
Marco:
have all had synthesized detail added to them that wasn't really there.
Marco:
And that decision has already been made for us by the market or by our own usage and not even realizing that we were really doing it necessarily.
Marco:
It's like baking in a filter to all your pictures during the Instagram era.
Marco:
You look back from pictures you have, say, in the fall of 2010, and they all have weird color and low resolution.
Marco:
It's like, oh, that's because we were all playing with Instagram and that's just what we have then.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
This is what people are doing.
Marco:
This is the apps people are using.
Marco:
These are the filters people are choosing to use.
Marco:
This is the camera modes people are choosing to use.
Marco:
These are the actual cameras on our phones that we are all using.
Marco:
It's funny.
Marco:
I recently... I had a chance to play with a modern little point-and-shoot because Gruber got one and then Tiff wanted us.
Marco:
We were looking at them.
Marco:
We were playing with it.
Marco:
And got a chance to shoot some pictures with a modern, nice, standalone camera.
Marco:
And the pictures looked incredible.
Marco:
Like...
Marco:
Turns out standalone cameras have gotten really good recently.
Marco:
And I look back at my iPhone pictures, and they all look a little bit artificial compared to the same... I would shoot a picture with my iPhone, and I'd take this cool little real camera and shoot with it.
Marco:
And the iPhone pictures were more easily taken in low light and stuff like that.
Marco:
But the real camera pictures looked better...
Marco:
And they weren't necessarily massively higher resolution.
Marco:
They just didn't look over-processed.
Marco:
iPhone pictures, when you see them compared to regular camera pictures, they look really over-processed, over-sharpened, over-blurred to get rid of noise.
Marco:
They look a certain way.
Marco:
It's interesting now.
Marco:
I'm looking back at all my pictures, and for the last few years, the vast majority of my pictures are iPhone pictures.
Marco:
And I kind of regret that I don't have more real camera shots.
Marco:
At the same time, I don't want a real camera because I will literally never bring it around.
Marco:
Because one thing I realized, so I ended up getting one for Tiff for an occasion because she really wanted it.
Marco:
She's taken it a couple times.
Marco:
But I thought, like, maybe I'll take this out sometime.
Marco:
Like, maybe take it out for a walk or take it out when hanging out with friends.
Marco:
And because I haven't used a real camera regularly in so long,
Marco:
i i didn't feel like i i felt weird taking it out of the house because now if you like if you see somebody taking a picture with a regular camera now it's almost like they're taking out one of those big old polaroid cameras just chunk like it's it looks so ridiculous to see somebody today taking out a big camera it does disagree because everyone just uses phones now
Marco:
How many people do you know who use a regular camera anymore?
Marco:
So it actually like I felt self-conscious even like taking it outside.
Marco:
It felt so weird because that's because the world we're in now is we're all just using our phones.
Marco:
So my point is, even though our phones take worse and less accurate pictures a lot of the time.
Marco:
I feel like that's just the world we're in now.
Marco:
So that's what everyone's doing.
Marco:
Even if people have access to regular cameras, they usually won't use them, and most people don't have access at all anymore.
Marco:
So I think this is the world we're in no matter what, and the world we're in synthesizes a lot of data that wasn't there.
John:
But it's just an exposure bracketing, and it's combining, and it's not sensitive.
John:
That's what it starts with.
John:
Right.
John:
Well, the cameras we have, the cameras we have not to do that.
John:
Like, I don't think there's going to be a scenario, I'm not as pessimistic as you are, where suddenly we're going to realize that all our children's faces were replaced 20 years later.
John:
Like, we're already talking about this and it's just the moon, right?
John:
I think it will be a thing that people are aware of.
John:
What they choose to do and what they choose to turn on and turn off is going to be a market decision.
John:
But I don't think it's going to happen unaware.
John:
And what you're mostly talking about is tiny little camera sensors that have such terrible raw output that we have to do this to them to make them look reasonable, which is why all phone pictures look like they're kind of impressionist paintings.
John:
If you zoom in on, if you quote unquote pixel peep on them.
John:
And yeah, real cameras are better because they have much bigger sensors, right?
John:
There's just no getting around that.
John:
Technology hasn't advanced to the point where we can do that.
John:
So we're doing the best we can with these tiny sensors because like you said, people mostly just want to take pictures with their phone.
John:
But but our phones, with the exception of the Samsung thing on the moon, are not have not crossed that line that I was trying to define before, which is do what you can with this camera output to try to make it look reasonable versus you've seen a bunch of images of people before, including a bunch of images of what you think are these people.
John:
whatever that came out of the camera combine that with your knowledge of what this person actually looks like to replace their face to make it look better and that is the line the line where you're where you're you're not you're mostly taking the input to as a recognizer like what you want to know is this the moon or is it not the moon is this timmy or is it not timmy is this a shirt or is it not a shirt that's what you're using the sensor data for and then you're saying okay given that we know that's timmy and that's a shirt
John:
Use all your knowledge and your AI model of Timmy and shirts to put a good looking Timmy and a good looking shirt there.
John:
And that whatever that line is, that is the line that once we pass over that, that there's going to be a split between cameras for the purpose of
John:
You know, if people like that, and that's the default on all cameras, fine.
John:
But there's going to be another thing on the other side of that, which is, okay, but sometimes that's not the job of a camera.
John:
And when it's not the job, we need to, A, know that's happening, and B, not use that feature.
John:
And that's the traffic cameras, or for some people, they're cameras of their family.
John:
Like...
John:
I feel like consumers will be able to make an informed choice about this because, to your point, people know about this stuff.
John:
TikTok filters that change your face or whatever.
John:
Everybody knows about that.
John:
They know it exists.
John:
They know it's fun.
John:
They know how to use it.
John:
When it comes to all of our phones in a way that's more mass market than taking pictures of the moon on this particular camera with 100x zoom, people will know about it and then people will make their own personal decision.
John:
My main argument here is this will not sweep across all photography forever because
John:
there's always going to be the job of a camera to record what's in front of it and that job will not go away it will just become more marginalized right and how marginalized how many people will want this enhancement versus not we don't know that yet it's probably going to be the generation after us that decides or whatever and there may even be like a fad where everybody has it enabled on their cameras kind of the instagram filter and they know it's enabled like people didn't would not understand it was enabled and they regret it later because like oh i shouldn't have taken all those pictures with the
John:
gotham filter i thought it was real cool but now it's just blurry and i can't see anything right that may happen because fads happen or whatever but in the meantime the traffic cameras simply cannot they can't do this like and there's probably going to be some court case over it to decide it you know we're into legal things or someone's going to say i have this photo and it shows you you know stealing this package for my porch and we're like that's not me and it's like this is your face and it's like well your camera was trained on my face because i'm your ex-boyfriend and you know like you can see how these things could
John:
can can roll out right but i think i mean again i think this the fact that we're seeing the story and this same story has come up years and years in the past and it's just about the stupid moon because who cares means we will be on top of this and you know i don't know how it's going to turn out in terms of how many people want this feature on their camera or even who puts it in because i feel like this is the type of feature that apple would be
John:
hesitant to put in whether where samsung will be like oh no we'll totally replace your your family's face we'll replace your family's face with brad pitt and angelina jolie in their prime yeah no we'll look you look make you look great and some people will want that but you know that's that's a consumer choice not a uh not an inevitability like in a dystopian inevitability which is like no real cameras will ever exist again in the end
Marco:
Thanks to our sponsors this week, Collide, and our members.
Marco:
You can join atp.fm slash join and become a member right now.
Marco:
Help support the show.
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.
John:
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.
John:
And if you're into Twitter...
Marco:
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-E-N-T Marco Arment S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A Syracuse It's accidental They didn't mean to Accidental Tech Podcast So long
Casey:
I have an illness, and it's not COVID this time.
Casey:
This time?
John:
You've got a fever.
Casey:
I know.
Casey:
And the only prescription is more cowbell.
Casey:
I get that one.
Casey:
There's more watch bands.
Casey:
The only prescription is more watch bands, yeah.
Casey:
So when I bought the Series 8 or whatever the most current Apple Watch is, I've already lost track.
Casey:
8 or Ultra.
Casey:
Sorry, not the Ultra.
Casey:
I am way too thin-wristed for an Ultra.
Casey:
I wish I wasn't, but my wrists are way too tiny.
Marco:
So am I. I wear it sometimes anyway.
Marco:
I've made it my workout watch.
Marco:
Living with two watches at the same time generally sucks.
Marco:
There's a bunch of things that are annoying about it.
Marco:
But it's great for workouts because...
Marco:
I flip it around so that the crown and the button are on the inside of my arm instead of facing the outside.
Marco:
So if I have a weightlifting glove and it hits the button, it doesn't activate Siri.
Marco:
And I totally turned off the action button because that's now facing the outside.
Marco:
And with those two changes, it's wonderful as a workout watch.
Marco:
But I don't want to wear that all the time because it's way too big for me still.
Marco:
So I'm flipping between that and my Siri 7.
Marco:
But anyway, sorry, go on.
Casey:
No, no, no, not at all.
Casey:
I wish I had the self-confidence to just not care, you know, and just wear, well, I mean, I don't have an Ultra, but just to wear one anyway.
Casey:
But I don't have that self-confidence, so here we are.
Casey:
Anyway, when I ordered the Series 8, I received with it, I don't remember the official color, but what I will call a blue, Solo Loop.
Casey:
The Solo Loop is the silicone rubber, so similar but not exactly the same as the sport band that is the de facto default watch band.
Casey:
It's a stretchy silicone rubber, and it is just a single piece of material.
Casey:
There are no clasps, no joints, nothing.
Casey:
It's just a piece of rubber that you plug in on either side of the watch, and that's that.
Casey:
To take the watch off or to put it on, you just stretch the rubber out.
Casey:
It is designed to do that.
Casey:
The problem I have is it's designed to do that for somewhere around six months.
Casey:
And every time I've had like two or three of these, every damn time it snaps in two.
Casey:
I should like send this thing.
Casey:
I don't know Dr. Drang's real name, much less his actual address, but I should send this damn thing to Drang so he can do a full analysis on the failure of this thing.
Casey:
But suffice to say, I think I just stretched it either too much or too far or whatever.
Casey:
But about a week or maybe two weeks ago, I noticed, oh no, oh no, there's a little cut.
Casey:
Oh, there's the end.
Casey:
And that's the end.
Casey:
with my sport band, which I actually, I like this one too, as much as I joke, but I like this.
Casey:
I like the solo loops more.
Casey:
I just wish they lasted.
Casey:
So, uh, Apple, can you please make that, make me not break this?
Casey:
Maybe the problem is, is that my wrist to hand ratio is not good.
Casey:
And so I have to stretch it too far to get it over my hands, but it needs to be tiny to be on my little teeny tiny wrists.
Casey:
But I just want one that doesn't break.
Casey:
Please.
Casey:
And of course, I went to the Apple store.
Casey:
I went to the Apple store and I was like, look, this is out of warranty.
Casey:
Like, is this the sort of thing that you guys would replace?
Casey:
And two different occasions on two different with two different copies of this band, they were like, no.
Casey:
And I said, OK, thanks.
Casey:
And I walked out.
Casey:
Didn't argue.
Casey:
Not a bit.
Casey:
But I just want I just want this thing to last.
Casey:
And it doesn't.
Casey:
And it makes me sad.
John:
You've got to learn how to do that thing you see people do when they're escaping handcuffs on a TV show or a movie where you make your hand really, really small to get there.
John:
You've got to figure out how to do that.
John:
You need better hand flexibility to make it really small so then you're stretching it out less.
John:
And maybe grease up your hand first.
Casey:
Yeah, that's also true.
Casey:
Actually, if it's wet or, you know, if I've put on my beloved Cetaphil, as we talked about a couple months ago, it does make it easier.
Casey:
And I guess if I was more religious about that, it would have been okay.
John:
Although I do wonder if the lotion might be like corroding the band, you know, like some material stuff.
Marco:
You gotta like grease yourself up to get it on.
John:
But I'm saying if you get that stuff in the band, I don't know what the band is made out of, but maybe that reacts poorly with it and makes it brittle over time or something.
Casey:
I mean, maybe.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
It's tough because I love the band so much.
Casey:
There's no seams.
Casey:
There's nothing.
Casey:
It's just a piece of silicon.
John:
I know this is not – I mean, Apple's watch bands are expensive and everything, but practically speaking, unless your watch band is made of metal, it is basically a wear item for watches.
John:
Yeah.
John:
I mean, even if it's just that they get real smelly over time, like if you have like a leather band or something, the expectation that it will last forever is not great.
John:
Six months is too short, to be clear.
John:
But like 20 years is probably too long for a leather band that you wear every day.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
I mean, I understand what you're saying.
Casey:
But all of the sport bands that I've had, I don't think I've ever thrown any.
Casey:
Well, that's not true.
Casey:
Half of them I had to give up because I went from the big watch to the little watch.
Casey:
because of my aforementioned teeny tiny wrists.
Casey:
But, I mean, there's still... I still have them.
Casey:
They're still functional.
Casey:
They don't smell bad or anything.
John:
I mean, you know, the plastic-y stuff they use is certainly more durable than, like, say, a thin leather band or at least absorbs smell less, let's say.
John:
But, you know, it's... These shouldn't have snapped after six months.
John:
That's clear, especially given how much they cost.
John:
And I'm just wondering what the problem is.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
It's like 50 bucks.
Casey:
And, I mean, I would...
Casey:
I could go and get another one, although I don't really love the particular colors that are available.
Casey:
As it looks, there is sprout green, which I like the name.
Marco:
You know, there's a really nice yellow.
Casey:
There's sprout green, which I really like the name.
John:
You know, I have to, the yellow thing, because I saw something, what was it?
John:
Some other celebration of yellow in something.
John:
It was, oh, it was like Gus Mueller posted like a pizza grill that was yellow.
John:
And I was like, I was thinking of Casey, but I said, you know what?
John:
Casey just said he doesn't like yellow cars.
Casey:
Not that he just likes yellow everything.
John:
He likes yellow lemons.
John:
Like he's against yellow in all forms.
John:
He just doesn't like yellow cars.
John:
So I just want to make that clear because I feel like it's unfair to think that Casey is going to hate all yellow everything.
Casey:
Well, of course, I mean, I actually I don't mind the Canary Yellow solo loop, but now, you know, I have to go for the gag.
Casey:
You know, that's why I'm here is to lean into the gag.
Casey:
And so all kidding aside, I don't mind yellow.
Casey:
I think yellow cars are awful in almost every circumstance, but yellow in general, like you said, no problem.
Casey:
But anyway, so there's.
Casey:
Sprout Green, great name.
Casey:
Green is a little loud for my taste.
Casey:
Canary Yellow.
Casey:
Olive Solo, which is fine.
Casey:
Purple Fog, which actually isn't bad.
Casey:
Let's see.
Casey:
Starlight Solo, which is like a creamy.
Casey:
And Storm Blue, which looks to me to be gray, at least on the screen here.
Casey:
I don't want any of those colors.
Casey:
So this is going to, this solves the problem for me because even if I was willing to plunk down $50 twice a year or thereabouts to get a new solo loop, which I'd think about, I don't particularly care for any of these colors.
Casey:
So I'm just going to stick with my blue sport band and call it a day.
Casey:
But I just, I love these things so much.
Casey:
I wish they lasted longer.
Casey:
Maybe I should, maybe I should try the solo loop and give that a shot, but they're a hundred bucks.
John:
If these things are going to break after six months, why don't you try like a third party knockoff?
Marco:
oh they're bad it's are they real bad i mean it's gonna but it maybe the last one six months or if it does have only last six months or if it's only 10 bucks you know right yeah if it's like 10 bucks every six months who cares no i've i've had a couple of like you know amazon brand you know amazon no name brand uh apple sport bands and they're noticeably lower quality in every possible way and you know you got to figure too like
Marco:
What kind of rando chemical are you putting against your skin all day long?
Marco:
You might want to get that from somebody who has a brand name that isn't a string of random characters, just in case.
Marco:
But yeah, it's the reality is like the regular sport bands with the with the pinbuckle last a very long time.
Marco:
Like, yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
Marco:
They last freaking forever.
Marco:
They last.
Marco:
Yeah, they're basically invincible.
Marco:
They just they get they eventually will get discolored if it's the lighter colored one.
Casey:
But yes, that is very true.
Marco:
But that's, I mean, that's just what happens.
Marco:
Like if you're going to wear something white around your wrist, I know from experience every single day, like it is going to get dirty at some point to the point where it's very hard to clean, you know, and eventually like you will have permanent staining on it from like your jeans or whatever, you know, that's just what happens.
Marco:
But,
Marco:
that's that's that's watch bands like as john was saying watch bands are basically a wear item uh the rubber ones do last a lot longer than than than things like cloth or leather even metal bands like you know bracelets they they wear over time but in ways people don't usually care about like usually on watch brace it's like they'll become a little bit looser that like the the links won't
Marco:
be like exactly as next to each other like they start getting like gap between the links like if you hold the bracelet it'll flex a little bit like it'll sink down like it'll curve downward that kind of thing happens with metal because there's a bunch of moving parts and pins and everything um but any metal band you get for an apple watch is going to outlast the apple watch that you are attaching it to um but that's not true for leather at all leather lasts usually a year or two depends on how sweaty you get and how much you tolerate it being stinky um
Marco:
but yeah, it's leather is, you know, moisture dependent.
Marco:
Um, cloth also, you know, cloth will get, will get, um, you know, moisture.
Marco:
Like if you were, when you're looking at the woven loop that you set up a hundred dollars, those things are extremely comfortable.
Marco:
They are very, very nice.
Marco:
The lighter colored ones are hard to clean.
Marco:
You can clean them, but they're hard to clean.
Marco:
Um, and they, they do hold moisture to an uncomfortable degree for me.
Casey:
Like, Oh, that's no good.
Marco:
like you definitely don't want to be exercising in them.
Marco:
Um, because it'll, it'll just kind of be, it'll be moist for like hours afterwards, like these being held against your wrist.
Marco:
That's no good.
Marco:
Um, so for, for general all around waterproof use, it's either metal or rubber.
Marco:
Like those, those are your best choices for a watch band.
Marco:
Rubber is, you know, obviously a little more comfortable, usually cheaper than metal.
Marco:
Um, metal is a little bit nicer looking, um, more expensive, more rigid and, and longer lasting.
Marco:
Um,
Marco:
But those are your options.
Marco:
Whether it's worth 50 bucks every six months for you not to have the buckle, that's up to you.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And I don't, I just don't think it is.
Casey:
And if, if I'm not an every year watch person, but I would say, you know, I'll just get the solo loop every time I get a new watch and that would at least give me one a year, but I'm on like a two to three year cycle on watches.
Casey:
So that's not really going to fix my problem anyway.
Casey:
I don't know if you're listening and you found a knockoff that is less than $50 that you think is pretty good and doesn't make your skin like burn off or anything to Marco's point.
Casey:
Send me a toot at me, which is a phrase I didn't think I'd ever say.
Casey:
Mastodon and let me know.
Casey:
Don't send me an email, please.
Casey:
I get too much email.
Casey:
But send me a toot.
Casey:
Just send your flatulence my way and let me know what you prefer.
Marco:
To me, the answer is just get the sport band with the pin buckle and be done with it.
Casey:
That's what I'm doing.
Casey:
Like I said, I mean, I've got several of them at this point, so that's what I'm doing.
Casey:
And it's not that I mind it.
Casey:
I just – I really love the no buckle or no clasp or whatever the term I'm looking for is, that version.
Casey:
I love that so much.
Casey:
And, and I was looking at the braided solo loop, which is, you know, what you suggested and leaving aside the water retention issues, which for me would be a very big issue.
Casey:
I just, again, I'm not in love with all these, any of these colors and I'm sure they'll change in a couple of months or, you know, three or four months or whatever, but I don't love any of these colors either.
Casey:
So no matter what, I don't think I'm buying anything anytime soon, except maybe actually I would rock the pride one for sure.
Casey:
But other than that, I don't really like any of them.
Marco:
The Pride one's nice, actually.
Marco:
That's the one I have of that type.
Marco:
The rainbow one.
Marco:
It's really nice.
Marco:
Got tons of compliments on that when I was wearing that.
Marco:
But they do get dirty real fast.
Marco:
Because they had part of the design is some white or beige threads.
Marco:
And those get dirty very quickly.
Casey:
Yeah, because I have the Nike Pride Edition Nike Sport Loop I have.
Casey:
I think I should bust that back out because I haven't worn that in a little while.
Casey:
And that one's pretty good.
Casey:
It's not amazing, but it's pretty good.
Casey:
And that has nothing to do with the Pride thing.
Casey:
It's just I don't love that particular band material, but it's fine.
Marco:
Yeah, if you're going to get a pride band, I think the braided solo loop is the one to get.
Marco:
But yeah, you got to run some dish soap and scrub off the light colored threads like every few weeks.
Marco:
It gets pretty dingy, you know, pretty quickly.
Marco:
But when it's clean, it looks amazing.
Casey:
So somebody linked in the chat, and I know that the three of us have very mixed feelings about Wirecutter these days, but there is a very, very comprehensive Wirecutter post with all various flavors of watch band that they seem to like.
Casey:
So I'll take a look through this one.
Casey:
I'm not trying to talk to you two.
Marco:
I would caution you on sizing in particular.
Marco:
There's a couple of things that the third-party watch band world usually falls over on.
Marco:
One is material quality.
Marco:
You don't realize how nice Apple's materials are until you try other people's and you're like, oh, this is kind of crappy.
Okay.
Casey:
Yeah, I've done that a couple of times.
Casey:
I did, I think, a knockoff Milanese, which wasn't bad, but then I tried the official Apple one like months later.
Casey:
Oh, oh, that's why it's so much money.
Casey:
That makes much more sense now.
Casey:
There was a couple other materials.
Casey:
I forget what off the top of my head, but a similar thing where it was like, oh, that's why the Apple one is so much money.
Casey:
I get it.
Marco:
Yeah, so there's that.
Marco:
There's also typically the lug attachment area, like how it attaches to the Apple Watch.
Marco:
I've had issues with third-party bands with poor quality, like the three little line segments that latch it in.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marco:
Sometimes those don't work well.
Marco:
They're slightly misaligned or slightly the wrong size, so they don't quite latch in right, and it kind of gets jammed or it won't go in.
Marco:
I've had that issue with them.
Marco:
Also, the ones that have metal attachments, and then usually any kind of third-party leather band will have some kind of little metal lug that will go into the Apple Watch, and then the band comes off of that.
Marco:
Those often are not great matches for the Apple Watch metal.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
And so it's kind of that's like either either the color is wrong or the finish isn't right or the quality is different.
Marco:
So the metals don't match.
Marco:
And that always looks and looks bad, in my opinion.
Marco:
And then the biggest problem I've had is sizing that, you know, and you you seem to think you have small wrists.
Marco:
And I think our wrists are pretty similar sizes.
Casey:
I actually I think so.
Casey:
I think you're right.
Marco:
One of the great things about the Apple Watch Sportband is that it comes with a short version.
Marco:
It used to come with both.
Marco:
Now, when you buy a Sportband, you pick whether you want the small-medium or the medium-large set.
Marco:
It used to come with both, and you'd just have to throw away whichever end you didn't use, which was terrible.
Marco:
So I'm glad they changed that.
Marco:
But anyway, so I used the small-medium pairing.
Marco:
Yep, same.
Marco:
And I had a third-party band from Nomad.
Marco:
It only comes in one size.
Marco:
Most of our part of the hands are, you know, one size fits all or whatever.
Marco:
But it was so ridiculously long.
Marco:
Like I had, there was so much excess that I had to like tuck under.
Marco:
It almost reached the other end of the watch.
Marco:
There was so much excess.
Marco:
Like it almost went all the way around, almost like lapped my arm.
Yeah.
Marco:
Oh my word.
Marco:
And I tried cutting off the excess and then it just looks and feels bad.
Marco:
There's no good option.
Marco:
So that's another thing.
Marco:
Third party bands, usually the fit is not as good if you have a smaller wrist because they only make one size for everybody and that ends up being very large to accommodate as many people as possible on the large end.
Marco:
But what that means if you have a smaller wrist is you're going to have a lot of excess and it's going to look bad or not quite fit very well or whatever.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
there's a reason why apple makes their watch bands and charges 50 bucks or like they're pretty good and and in the watch world they're very good compared to what everyone else is making uh both apple watch and otherwise and so you know they they earn their price and i i don't feel bad paying 50 bucks for a sport band every so often because they're just really good