The Year of Romance
Marco:
By the way, I'm sorry.
Marco:
I'm a little bit hoarse tonight, and I wish I had a good reason, like being sick or having to shout to save a child or something.
John:
Is shouting save children?
John:
Is that how it works now?
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
The truth is that I am alone in my house tonight, and therefore a lot of singing has occurred.
Marco:
And I regret to inform you that I have neither the singing range of Paul Simon nor Art Garfunkel.
Marco:
That's the real reason why I sound slightly hoarse tonight.
John:
I was going to say, if you were listening to Fish, how are you doing any singing?
Marco:
Right?
Marco:
I also listen to other music sometimes.
Marco:
I mean, not a lot, if I'm honest.
Casey:
Sometimes.
Casey:
Oh, man.
Casey:
It's funny to me...
Marco:
how how you tactically deploy your executive assistant for media acquisition purposes oh yeah whenever i want to pirate anything i always ask casey how to do it because like i haven't pirated things in mass in a very long time like since high school really like so all the modern ways to do it i don't really know about them and i'm certainly not like set up for them
Marco:
Um, so I always have to ask my other friends like, Hey, there's this like concert I want to download and it's only letting me do like a video on demand.
Marco:
How do I download it?
Casey:
Uh, but yeah, we, uh, I got a text message out of the blue saying, Hey, there's this time limited thing.
Casey:
I really want to download.
Casey:
What can I do?
Casey:
And I gave some pointers as to just hypothetical things that one could try, but we would never do.
Casey:
But you could try them.
Casey:
And it turns out that you didn't need my help because you found it by a mechanism all your own.
Marco:
Well, someone else said it to me, basically.
Marco:
But I think it's interesting.
Marco:
In the history of things that can be shown in a web browser...
Marco:
Typically, there were tools that were pretty reliably able to download those things, you know, because it's like at some level it would be like, you know, a bunch of MPEG-4 files in a series on a server in a playlist or something like that.
Marco:
But now there appears to be pretty widespread use of whatever kind of DRM.
Marco:
I think maybe Widevine is one of them, but whatever kind of DRM exists now on HLS streams.
Marco:
it seems like it's everywhere now.
Marco:
And so all the tools like, you know, YouTube DL or YTDLP or whatever, like all these tools basically don't work anymore on a lot of like paid video services because they all use this DRM, which I'm not, I'm not a fan of DRM as a technologist.
Marco:
So, you know, that irritates me on a lot of levels.
Marco:
But I'm also just kind of surprised that like none of these tools have
Marco:
caught up yet because like it seems like i mean i don't know how this stuff works these days i'm sure there's a lot of os level integrations but like somehow every web browser including stuff like firefox like they they can all play the drm streams just fine and screen recording software can you like that is still loophole you can still like run a
Marco:
Not with all apps.
Marco:
QuickTime Player will just give you a black square.
Marco:
But some apps will just record the screen in some way that includes the content.
Marco:
So you can do it that way, which is a terrible way to do it, I know.
Marco:
But I'm kind of amazed that all these tools are not able to break this DRM for something that is common enough that it can play in every web browser.
Marco:
But I don't know.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
We live in kind of a sad time that there's just that much DRM everywhere in our computing lives now, and we don't even blink an eye.
Marco:
It's just considered normal.
Marco:
It's kind of sad.
John:
Are you talking about fish stuff?
Marco:
I thought all that was free, man.
Marco:
No, it's not.
Marco:
And I don't need it to be free.
Marco:
I buy the MP3.
Marco:
You can buy audio downloads that are all DRM-free.
Marco:
That's what I was saying.
Marco:
Like you pay the money and you get a bunch of files, but they're DRM free.
Marco:
That's audio only though.
Marco:
If you want to see the video streams, you pay per show something like 40 bucks and then you can watch the stream for like 48 hours and or live.
Marco:
But then the real problem is you can't buy it afterwards.
Marco:
So you can watch it for only the 48 hours like after the concert has occurred.
Marco:
But if you want to watch it next week or next year, you just can't.
Marco:
Like you can't rebuy it.
Marco:
There's no way to watch it.
Marco:
It's just gone.
Marco:
So, and it was this fish new year show was a really important show.
Marco:
Like it was important.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
Explain, explain yourself.
Casey:
Use more words.
Casey:
Why was this an important show?
Marco:
I'm not even going to try to explain, but basically there was a ton of fan service references that go back 30 years in the band, like that were brought together in a big way.
Marco:
And so it was a very important show for fish fans.
Marco:
And so I wanted to really make sure like, I really want to have a copy of this because look,
Marco:
I don't know what the band's archival situation is.
Marco:
I assume that they are saving all of their videos and at some point in the future might make them available in some way.
Marco:
Maybe I hope, but I don't want to rely on maybe I hope for like a really important concert for my favorite band of my life.
Marco:
I want to actually have it.
John:
This is where the community comes in, though.
John:
Like, wouldn't you just rely on the fact that this is a popular band and you don't have to do this?
John:
All you got to do is wait for the people who already know how to do this to upload the stream that they ripped from the thing.
Marco:
Yeah, but upload it where?
Marco:
That's the problem.
Marco:
Like, I don't know all the places that people go now.
Marco:
i really hope adam can help you in your old age i know he's gonna have to he's well right now casey is my video piracy um you know assistant eventually adam will take over and help both of us uh but we we're not there yet it's not piracy if you paid for it and you're just time shifting it i think we already had several court cases about that and the vcr was allowed to exist so if you pay for something like you pay for cable television and they air it and send it to you and you record it on a device
John:
I know you've got the DMCA, but you're not supposed to crack encryption, blah, blah, blah.
John:
But I feel like you're at least ethically, if not legally, in the clear here.
Marco:
Well, I think it's a little questionable.
Marco:
And we'll get to copyright stuff later, actually.
Marco:
But I think it's a little questionable because I'm not paying $40 to own it forever.
Marco:
I'm paying $40 to watch it once.
John:
I know, but it's the same thing when you pay for cable.
John:
You're not paying to own all those shows that are broadcast to your house forever, but you do pay the cable company to send you video.
John:
And if you have a device in your home that records that video for time-shifting purposes, like a video cassette recorder, that turns out to be legal, according to all the court cases.
John:
The only wrinkle in this entire scheme is, oh, now we have a thing called DRM that stops you from recording it.
John:
And because of the DMCA, it's illegal for you to try to crack DRM.
John:
And I think there is no distinction between...
John:
paying for cable to be broadcast in your house and then time shifting with ECR and then paying for a video of a concert to be streamed into your house and then time shifting it with FFmpeg.
John:
The only difference is that stupid law that says you're not allowed to even try to crack encryption, which is incredibly stupid and we should get rid of, but it is what it is.
Marco:
I mean, there's a whole lot of this that's stupid, but I don't I don't think that necessarily would hold up to legal scrutiny.
John:
No, because because of the DMCA, because because it's illegal to try to crack encryption.
John:
But aside from that one thing, it is exactly the same as the time shifting with a VCR case, because in both cases like, well, you just paid to have it sent to your house once.
John:
You didn't pay to keep it forever.
John:
But the courts found, no, if you have a device that can record it, it's yours.
Marco:
Is that really what the decision... I don't know enough about it.
Marco:
Is that really... Yeah.
John:
The whole point was you can't have a video cassette recorder in your house because then when we air Star Wars on ABC and you record it, now you have a copy of Star Wars and you didn't pay for that.
John:
And the decision was you're allowed to do that.
John:
You're not allowed to resell it.
John:
You're not allowed to pay...
John:
sell tickets to it or whatever but you were allowed to time shift it was called time shifting you take something that was aired and you put it on some storage medium so you can watch it at a different time and the only legal thing stopping you now is they made a law that says okay if we put some magic pixie dust drm on this even if it's trivially easy to crack if you do that you're breaking the law that's why you had the you know the dcss t-shirts with the pearl code on it that was you know illegal and all that crap the one prime number that broke the key or whatever
John:
Yeah, it's absurd, but that is the legal system we have.
John:
That's why I said ethically, I think you're in the clear, if not legally.
Marco:
I wonder if a screen recording method might actually sort of not be a DMCA.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
Because you didn't try to crack the encryption?
Marco:
Probably.
Marco:
But you could argue the software might have cracked it, even though it's not.
Marco:
It's not compliant or whatever.
Marco:
But it's just recording the screen content, so it's not...
John:
I think that's probably fine because I think that it's like the analog loophole.
John:
Remember that whole thing of like, oh, the way to record it is, you know, you're not cracking the encryption on the DVD.
John:
You're just playing the DVD over an analog video cable and intercepting it there.
Marco:
yeah i mean and even i mean all of the um you know machinations now about like how having these secure video paths with that are supported by the hardware and hdmi and everything and try to try to ensure drm so that you can't do stuff like screen recording or just hdmi capture of protected content or take a screenshot because you want to tweet something funny about a tv show the worst
Marco:
I know.
Marco:
Frankly, I don't actually know how certain screen recording methods somehow get around it and others don't.
Marco:
I'm glad they do.
Marco:
The amount of grief this causes legitimate users all the time.
Marco:
I can't tell you how many times I've been traveling and trying to output something over HDMI to a TV or something and
Marco:
Some part of the chain doesn't fit the DRM standards.
Marco:
And so it like it just refuses.
Marco:
And I guess I can't watch this movie that I just that I paid for, like stream from my laptop onto the hotel TV or whatever.
Marco:
Like it's it's so annoying.
Marco:
I hate DRM so much.
John:
It's dumb because as we all know, none of that stuff actually stops the stuff from being available illegally.
John:
All it does is frustrate legitimate users.
Casey:
I think we talked about this just a couple months ago because I just ran across this recently, but there is a Dave Matthews fan website where it has a Q&A with the crew.
Casey:
Now, this may be very, very old, but somebody asked, you have listed a 24-track hard disk recorder under the recording equipment, but 39 inputs to the board.
Casey:
Demix channels are recorded on multiple 24-track recorders, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Casey:
The answer is we actually have eight Tascam 24s, three pairs working in main and backup modes with two spares.
Casey:
46 tracks are recorded every day, which includes the band's input list plus several audience mics and other inputs.
Casey:
The hard drives get sent back to an archivist in Charlottesville who then dumps each track to a separate CDR for permanent storage in a vault.
Casey:
Each show will generate about 138 CDRs.
Casey:
And that's audio.
Casey:
That's not even video.
John:
Did we discuss this already?
John:
And did we freak out about CDRs?
Casey:
We did indeed.
John:
We did.
John:
Yeah, they better be using M disks.
John:
Yeah, because I really think putting them on a CD-R and then putting them in a vault are two sentiments that are a little bit at odds with each other.
Casey:
I totally agree with you.
Casey:
But my point is, you know, Marco had justifiably asked, you know, is this a flash in the pan, you know, this video recording?
Casey:
Does Phish keep a copy of this video recording or is this a one and done?
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I mean, I assume someone is archiving all this stuff.
Marco:
I hope.
Marco:
Agree.
Marco:
But I don't know.
Marco:
Like, they don't usually release archival videos.
Marco:
Like, they release archival audio sometimes.
Marco:
I don't think they tend to release archival video much, if at all.
Marco:
So, I don't know.
Marco:
That's why, like, it's a little unnerving, and that's why I, you know, and I think I have a lot of...
Marco:
I think a lot of sympathy from the two of you on this.
Marco:
I want to be a digital pack rat for stuff that I can't just easily just get off the internet again.
Marco:
Stuff that's really important to me, I actually want to have my own copy because we all know from the tech world, everything out there that's like, especially DRM stuff through streaming services or whatever, it's all so temporary.
Marco:
You think you own it, even when you buy it and you think you quote own it, then Sony pulls a fast one or something like that, a story, and like
Marco:
then it's just gone the stuff you quote bought is gone or unavailable or whatever like so and that stuff annoys me so much I think we live in a time where a huge amount of modern culture in the form of you know both media and also like software and games and everything like that
Marco:
a huge amount of it is going to be basically inaccessible to historians in the future because of technological means or encryption or SSL breaking.
Marco:
There's so many things that the previous eras of media that we've had decades ago, we can all still access those today, but the stuff that we are making and using and enjoying today –
Marco:
I think we're going to have a very hard time re-enjoying or re-experiencing that in 20 years.
John:
I think it's probably mostly the trend line is upwards still, because all the stuff before recorded medium is totally lost.
John:
People sang, and there was nothing to record them on for most of human history.
John:
And then we had this period where it was recorded with no DRM, and now we have it recorded with DRM, but we have so much more storage now.
John:
I think we're saving so much more stuff, and it's going to be a lot easier for historians to find that old stuff.
John:
And even if, I mean, maybe we're not saving it DRM encrypted, but even if they are, it will be eventually trivial to break that DRM encryption.
John:
So I think we're doing better overall, but there is definitely a hiccup in the whole introduction of DRM that's going to cause some headaches, but it's still better than wax cylinders and it's still way better than no way to record performances at all.
Casey:
Let's do some follow-up.
Casey:
And we have a paper about Apple's on-device LLM.
Casey:
LLM in a flash, efficient large language model inference with limited memory.
Casey:
Can you tell me about this, please, John?
John:
I think it was last episode we were talking, maybe the Ask ATP question about what we thought Apple would do to run LLM stuff on-device with wimpy devices like the HomePod.
John:
And we referenced this, alluded to, I alluded to this paper, but we didn't have a link to it.
John:
So now we will in the show notes.
John:
This is a summary from someone on threads.
John:
It says Apple has proposed an inference cost model that coordinates with the behavior of flash memory usage, guiding optimization in two key areas, reducing the amount of data transferred from flash memory and reading data in larger, more continuous blocks.
John:
These methods collectively enable running models up to twice the size of available DRAM with 4X to 5X and 20X to 25X increase in inference speed compared to naive loading approaches in CPU and GPU, respectively.
John:
So this is, you can read the paper to see, but it's like, hey, Apple has a bunch of devices that have limited DRAM.
John:
And if you wanted to run one of those better models, then you can't fit it in DRAM.
John:
Is there a way you can get reasonable forms out of it while essentially overflowing your RAM and using Flash as a backing store?
John:
And they have some techniques to speed that up.
John:
And that is extremely relevant to pretty much everything that Apple makes, with the exception of Macs, where you are probably going to be RAM limited.
John:
and a lot of these large language models i know the first l is for large but you can size them you can even in a lot of the cases take a really big honking model that takes a huge amount of resources and take that exact model and cut it down in some way like without like making a new model to to size it to fit within whatever your constraints are and it sounds like this approach in this paper will let apple use models a little bit bigger than the otherwise would be able to on their wimpy hardware
Casey:
Apple is also exploring AI deals with news publishers.
Casey:
This was in the New York Times.
Casey:
Apple has opened negotiations in recent weeks with major news and publishing organizations seeking permission to use their material in the company's development of generative artificial intelligence systems, according to four people familiar with the discussions.
Casey:
The technology giant has floated multi-year deals worth at least $50 million to license the archives of news articles, said the people with knowledge of talks.
Casey:
For the record, Apple, for 10% of that, for a mere $5 million, you are welcome to use caseylist.com in its entirety in training your model.
John:
I thought you were going to offer up the ATP archives.
John:
I think we need to collectively negotiate with Apple for those.
John:
Even though they're already publicly available, we may have started at a disadvantage in this negotiation already.
Casey:
Fair.
Casey:
But have your people call our people.
John:
This is something that a few companies are doing.
John:
Adobe is the other one that comes to mind where they have a bunch of generative AI stuff in the latest version of Photoshop that I believe Adobe has claimed, hey, we trained all of our models on images that we own.
John:
uh or have the rights to so they're essentially legally in the clear if i'm not if it's not adobe and it's actually some other like stock photo company i forget but anyway uh companies are doing this where they're like we want to be able to provide a service to our customers with no doubt no legal doubt about however this whole you know court stuff comes out with the ai training it's like we trained our models on stuff that we own because some companies own a large volume of images for example like a stock photo company or whatever
John:
it might be the stock photo company i'm thinking of it not uh what is it called shutterstock or maybe it's like that getty images they're the big one getty images yeah anyway um apple this is totally an apple move to say we can solve this problem with money if there's any kind of questions about the legality uh how about we just give people millions of dollars in exchange for them letting us train their uh train our ai model on their content
Casey:
New York Times, speaking of, is suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement.
Casey:
The New York Times is suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, claiming the two companies built their AI models by copying and using millions of the publication's articles and now, quote-unquote, directly compete.
Casey:
Thank you.
John:
That nicely ties in above the previous story.
John:
If Apple is offering these people millions of dollars for the content, but Microsoft is just taking it for free and then getting sued over it, you can see where Apple might have thought this is a wiser move in the short term.
John:
We've talked about this many times in the past about whether it is, you know, again, ethics, morals, and legalities, whether it is right to train a large language model on, for example, the publicly accessible web pages containing content of New York Times stories.
John:
people can make arguments that it is, you know, it's transformational and it's, you know, fair use or whatever legal precedent you don't want to use for.
John:
It's an entirely new thing.
John:
We have to have a new set of laws governing or whatever.
John:
But clearly the New York Times thinks, hey, if you train your large language model on New York Times articles and now people use your thing and don't ever go to the New York Times because they essentially get the article summarized or excerpted in your thing or whatever, that's, you know, under current law, that's illegal.
John:
And now we're sitting over it.
John:
whatever.
John:
As I said in many past times when we discuss this, I continue to think that it should not be legal to train a large language model on content that you don't own because your large language model is worthless without that content.
John:
You know, empty large language model that has not been trained on anything is worth zero dollars.
John:
And you say, well, we can make this valuable by feeding it the contents of the New York Times.
John:
Well,
John:
The New York Times should either let you do that or they should be compensated for it or we need to figure out some other thing.
John:
But I don't think you should just get it free just because.
John:
But that's the type of thing that is going to be hashed out in court.
John:
And again, Apple is neatly sidestepping this by saying, I don't care whether it's legal or not.
John:
Here's millions of dollars.
John:
Can we use your articles?
John:
Yes, no.
John:
And that is a much more straightforward arrangement of value exchange.
John:
What is the right amount of money for that?
John:
Is it like, you know, a penny per article or like even less or like what, you know, how people who are training large language models negotiate with people who own the content that they're being trained on?
John:
We'll see.
John:
There's always sort of publicly available things like I think Wikipedia says you're allowed to train on it, but whether they do or not, everybody does.
John:
So yeah, this is entirely in a big legal gray area and
John:
I think Apple's approach is the right one for now and Adobe and whatever company I couldn't remember that's also doing the same thing.
John:
Train on data that you own or have licensed.
John:
And then if it turns out that, oh, actually the courts say you're allowed to get this for free, then don't pay them next year.
John:
But if it turns out that the New York Times wins their case and gets millions of dollars in damages, you were always on the right side of that.
John:
So kudos to Apple for using its money wisely.
Marco:
Yeah, this is a case to watch because there's been so many kind of questions about AI training and its relation to copyright law.
Marco:
And is training an AI on public material that's owned by somebody else, is that copyright infringement?
Marco:
I don't know if that's a clear-cut idea.
Marco:
argument either way like it is it's it's definitely like a a new area and you know this is what happens with the law over time like new problems arise or new conditions or or new you know distinctions need to be made and that's what the law and the legal system is made to sort out and decide um it remains a huge open question mark of like can you just train ai models on whatever you want and
Marco:
I still believe that that is not copyright infringement necessarily, because like if you look at, you know, the New York Times is making some some pretty strong claims here that, you know, these LLMs that they tested were able to output Times articles verbatim.
Marco:
But if you look at what kind of prompts they had to give them, the way it worked was basically the New York Times would feed it like the first few paragraphs of an article and say, what comes next?
Marco:
And so the way LM's work on a general, you know, a general high level overview of the way LM's work is basically like statistically speaking, what comes next given this prompt?
Marco:
And so when when they give it a few paragraphs of a story from The New York Times verbatim and say what comes next after this, there is probably no other statistical influence on what the model could draw from.
Marco:
So, of course, it's going to say, OK, well, the one source I saw that contained everything you're asking for, this was next.
John:
I think part of that demonstration, part of the point of that demonstration, is to do something that is otherwise difficult to do, which is essentially to prove that they did train on your data.
John:
Because it's not like when you see an LLM, you can ask it, hey, tell me all the stuff that you ingested.
John:
It doesn't work that way.
John:
They can't answer that question.
John:
It's not like they're trying to keep it a secret.
John:
A large language model does not contain within it
John:
a complete exhaustive list of all the data that it was trained on right i mean it does in sort of a smushed up fuzzy way but not like in a literal way so if as part of the case if i don't know if this is in this particular case but if as part of the case the people with the olm said we never trained on your data you can pull this out and say uh i think it's pretty unlikely that it would produce these verbatim you know seven paragraphs right so there's there's that and i don't know in this case again microsoft could freely admit that they trained for new york times and that's a moot point
John:
But the language in the little summary we excerpted from is directly trying to tie it to existing law, because that's what they have to do in a court case.
John:
You know, if there are no laws directly addressing this, you're going to come and say, I think you are in violation of these existing laws.
John:
And so one of those is like...
John:
um the the whole fair use doctrine of like is the thing a substitute for the thing that it is taking from and like saying like a two-second clip of a movie is not a substitute for the movie no one is saying i was going to watch the movie but instead i'm going to watch this two-second clip and they're saying that these lms directly compete with its content saying it is a substitute it is it is directly competing with our stuff it's not just like
John:
A Google search result where you see a headline, you see like a link and then like two sentences, but you have to click through to read the story.
John:
No one is looking at that and saying, well, I felt like I've read the whole story.
John:
Whereas here they're saying, you know, within existing copyright law, you do not fall under this section of fair use because you are directly competing with us rather than just.
John:
you know being not being a substitute or whatever so we'll see if they succeed in that strategy because to your point marco the existing laws don't address this because it's a new use case but that's when you bring a case you have to say i think some existing laws you're already in violation of and we'll see how that works out legally my point has always been regardless of what the current laws say i think it shouldn't be legal so that that to do what they're doing
John:
just willy-nilly so there should be some kind of law made governing this or and if no if laws aren't made governing it then at the very least what we'll get is precedence in court cases i don't like things being determined by precedence in court cases because i figure what the saying is i always get it backwards but like hard cases make bad law or something like that where it's better to just say what you actually want to happen through legislation
John:
And and to the degree that our government can actually function, that would be the more desirable thing.
John:
But anytime any laws are made of surrounding technology, we all kind of, you know, grit our teeth a little bit.
John:
So we'll see how this goes.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, I don't honestly I don't think it's that clear cut.
Marco:
You know, like their claims, you know, they say that it can recite Times content verbatim.
Marco:
OK, we covered that.
Marco:
Like, but there's already laws against that.
Marco:
Reciting Times content verbatim is copyright infringement.
Marco:
That's direct because it's like this is a copyrighted work that we have on our site and you are serving it over here.
Marco:
We already have laws that make that part of it illegal.
Marco:
They also say it closely summarizes it.
John:
well who cares that's not illegal i don't know i'm not sure if like it depends on close the summary is i think existing laws listing case laws probably covers cases where it's like well it's not exactly verbatim one or two words are changed here but i again i'm not you know i don't have exhaustive knowledge of copyright law but that seems like something that would have come up before for example a newspaper essentially steering and stealing another newspaper story and reproducing it high school student style where you change a couple words around yeah there have been case
John:
about that and again in all those cases here's the tricky bit and the part i always keep trying to focus on in all existing case law it's it's humans doing things like this like it's a reporter at one newspaper closely summarizing an article in another newspaper and changing the words around right whereas here it's not a human doing this it's human setting a machinery into motion and the machinery spits out the new york times article that it was fed in this series of things so
John:
The laws governing what machines are allowed to do are much more sparse and less well tested because they're all necessarily newer because we haven't had machines that could do anything like this.
John:
So, yeah, I don't it's hard to say how this one's going to go.
John:
But like I I applaud Apple for just sidestepping in entirely and Adobe and all these other companies.
John:
While these guys fight it out, but I do fear what the outcome of these cases are going to be because it's like, you know, whatever the details of this specific case are, are probably so weird and so specific that they shouldn't be like the placeholder for everything for all time.
John:
It would be much better for us to all sort of think about this.
John:
As a society and come up with some kind of guidelines that we think will be beneficial going forward.
John:
But the more I the more I outline that scenario, the more fantastical it sounds.
John:
So maybe we'll just get a series of legal precedents and hope for the best.
Marco:
Well, and there's also there's other ways this could be sorted out.
Marco:
So like, for instance, the market might just might kind of go in a direction where.
Marco:
Big companies like OpenAI and Microsoft, and certainly as we're seeing with what Apple's allegedly doing, big companies might decide, you know what, it's not worth the risk for me to train my models on data that might come back and bite me in the butt as a copyright infringement lawsuit later.
Marco:
So let me just buy stuff from known sources that I'm allowed to buy from anyway and train on that.
John:
Or they'll settle out of court.
John:
Like this will never actually go to a verdict.
John:
They'll settle.
John:
They'll settle once they see how the lay of the land in the court and whoever is losing will be compelled to come to the table and they'll find a settlement.
John:
And basically what they'll end up with is a not quite as amicable version of what Apple has, which is, you know, Microsoft has agreed to play the New York Times X, Y millions of dollars in exchange for blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
John:
And that becomes the precedent, which is like...
John:
You can steal it if you can get away with it, but if they notice and sue you, then you have to settle for millions of dollars, which is also not a great way to do business to also patents.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
But also, like, you know, the models, again, I know shockingly little about how these new models work, so forgive me.
Marco:
I'm trying to figure that out in the coming year, but anyway...
Marco:
The models could also potentially be tweaked to just like kind of keep track of like how many original training inputs are being served for a given output.
Marco:
Maybe that's not how the models work at all right now.
Marco:
Like at all.
John:
It's more it's much more like a one way hash mash.
John:
You cannot reverse it.
John:
You could keep track of what did we train it on, but maybe either accidentally or on purpose, a lot of these companies say, oh, well, we can't give you an exhaustive list of what we train.
John:
Like just humans, like, hey, we'll just make a list of all the stuff we feed to the LM, like all the URLs, all the content.
John:
Essentially, we'll catalog it.
John:
And so if anyone asks, we can show them the list.
John:
But what you're asking for is what a lot of people ask for.
John:
It's like, oh, when I give you a prompt and you give me a result, can you tell me what contributed to that result?
John:
Because the answer is always everything I was trained on.
John:
Like, that's the answer.
John:
There's no like, oh, tell me which part which part did this word come from and what URLs and what documents contributed to this.
John:
That is absolutely not tracked in these things.
John:
And if you think about it, if it was like that's, you know, it's not if it was these models would be even larger.
John:
Now, it could be that legally we have to come up with some kind of tagging method to be able to incorporate that into the model.
John:
So it can tell you.
John:
But I bet the answer would be these 17 million documents contributed to that result.
John:
And it's like, that's not useful to me.
John:
How is that useful?
John:
So yeah, I don't, this whole lawsuit of like, oh, New York Times is suing OpenAI, right?
John:
Whichever way this goes, those large language models at OpenAI were not just trained on the New York Times.
John:
They were trained on millions and millions and millions of pieces of data.
John:
Is this the system now, if you can figure out that it was trained on your data and you can hire lawyers for millions of dollars, you can sue them and hope to win something?
John:
Like that's also a ridiculous system.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, I think my general opinion on it now is that it shouldn't be illegal for AI models to do what will be legal for humans to do.
Marco:
But why do you think that?
Marco:
I think a lot of this is really questions about fair use, which of course is a famously squishy, imprecise doctrine.
Marco:
But it is totally legal for a human to read a bunch of New York Times articles and summarize them for other people if they ask them.
Marco:
It is legal for a human to, you know, like what the Times says that the models, quote, mimic its expressive style.
Marco:
Well, it is totally legal for a human to mimic the New York Times' style when creating other content.
Marco:
The Times does not have a monopoly on style.
John:
I'm not entirely sure it is legal for humans to closely summarize.
John:
But anyway, my whole point of this is like, yes, our laws give humans lots of rights, but this is not a human doing this.
John:
Well, but it is tools that humans are making.
John:
Right, but that's like making it sort of a rights laundering machine where it's like, well, if I make a machine and set it into motion, I wash my hands of it and now I didn't do it.
John:
The computer program do it, but computer programs have no rights.
John:
They're not sentient conscience beings that have legal standing in the legal system.
John:
They are computer programs, right?
John:
There are no laws saying, and if a computer program does this...
John:
it's fine because the computer programs are allowed to do that because here are the rights here here's the bill of rights for computer programs it's not a conscious entity it's not a you know what i mean like so and if you if you make it so like well if a human kills someone that's murder but if a human pushes a button that makes a machine kill somebody it's fine the machine did it and this is just a much more complicated version of push the button machinery happens copyright infringement
Marco:
No, I actually don't think this is liability laundering at all.
Marco:
On the contrary, the people who create the machine become responsible for what it does.
Marco:
But I think it should be allowed to do what people are allowed to do.
Marco:
Because the people are the ones creating the software that does this.
Marco:
The people are the ones creating the tools.
Marco:
Right now, it is legal for me to read a bunch of articles...
Marco:
and then talk about them in summary or make a satirical imitation of the New York Times' style, that is all legal for me.
Marco:
However, what is not legal for me is to replicate an entire article on my own site that's someone else's.
Marco:
They can hit me for copyright infringement.
Marco:
Well, that I think is fine.
Marco:
And so in some ways, I think the Times actually has a case for copyright infringement in the sense that
Marco:
If these models can output copyrighted content in like in whole part or in whole, I guess that makes sense.
Marco:
You know, they have they have a possible case there.
Marco:
But I don't think they could then also say you aren't allowed to train on our data.
Marco:
The problem is you are re serving our data.
Marco:
And that becomes OpenAI and Microsoft's liability then.
Marco:
So they have to decide what they want to do with their models and whether they can tweak them in such a way that it can't do that anymore.
Marco:
But the models existing and having been trained on that data, I don't see that as a clear-cut copyright violation.
Marco:
They can create copyright violations afterwards, but the model just having been trained on it, I don't necessarily see that as a problem.
John:
It's not a clear-cut copyright violation, but copyright is a law that's been extended to do so many weird things.
John:
But I think it's not tenable for us to have a system where you can extract all the value from someone else's content and make something that was previously worthless, a worthless pile of code, suddenly becomes incredibly valuable because of the input of the work of others that they're not compensated for.
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
And that's why I'm saying like...
John:
That shouldn't be allowed because it makes for a system where one party with these LLMs can exploit the work of others with no compensation and then make huge amounts of money off of it.
John:
And that seems like it doesn't set a great precedent.
John:
I'm not sure what the system should be, but that doesn't seem like a great system.
John:
And the closest thing that we have, legally speaking, and I think there's probably cases about this, but I don't remember them, is like Google search results.
John:
Is it illegal for Google to scrape the entire web and to make a search engine?
John:
Google is worthless without the web that it's scraping, right?
John:
And if there were cases about this, which I imagine there were cases about everything, I think the side we've come down to is we're okay with you essentially indexing
John:
And allowing access to and showing search results for because in the end, you are providing a service that is like a catalog that leads you to the links that you then click on.
John:
But as time has gone on and Google has gotten more and more towards the side of like, well, we don't
John:
really want to send you to the links we found some links but actually what we're doing here is summarizing links you don't need to click through we'll just summarize them i mean they were doing that long before llms right and that starts to get more into okay google are now are you a substitute for the websites because previously we said it's fine for google to make a billion dollar company and sell ads
John:
Because they're providing a service, a catalog, an index.
John:
They are not replacing all of those webpages.
John:
Google itself contains no information.
John:
If you want to see what's on those webpages, you've got to click through them.
John:
Oh, well, they do have summaries.
John:
And I guess they do show the headline.
John:
Oh, now they're summarizing them at the top and not showing you what that came from?
John:
Hmm.
John:
That's where you start to push into this.
John:
And if you're going to look for the closest case law and the closest argument for it, you could say, well, if you think it's okay for Google to do what they're doing,
John:
then how is this not okay?
John:
Because this is just a better version of Google.
Marco:
Largely, yes.
Marco:
I mean, I think that largely is the case that I'm making.
Marco:
I don't see this as being that different from what Google is doing.
Marco:
And what Google is doing, you can look at it and you can say, this is not ideal.
Marco:
You can say, this is kind of a jerk thing to do.
Marco:
But that's very different from whether it should be legal or not.
Marco:
Again, we already have sufficient laws that
Marco:
to protect against full-scale copyright infringement.
Marco:
Google, in their little info box answers they give on their search results pages, they aren't allowed to replicate an entire copyrightable work on there.
Marco:
That would be copyright infringement.
Marco:
We already have laws against that.
Marco:
They are allowed to stay within whatever is considered fair use.
Marco:
And again, that's a kind of a squishy, broad thing.
Marco:
But there are established standards for that, including how much of the work are you replicating?
Marco:
So if you have an AI model that is able to give you a one-sentence summary of a five-paragraph article, I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
Marco:
That, I think, is clear fair use.
John:
Yeah, well, that's those are the ends of the spectrum.
John:
But I feel like what the LLMs are doing is far beyond the summary of the top of Google results.
John:
But that's that's they're creeping towards each other.
John:
Right.
John:
So Google was going in that direction.
John:
LLMs took this huge leap to say, actually, no search results.
John:
I mean, the old Bard does still provide them.
John:
But like I said, it's my understanding is you can't back it out of the result.
John:
You can show what you the the the the documents that you trained on if you bother to keep track of them, which you probably didn't because your lawyers probably said, just don't keep track of it.
John:
But you can't, you know, you can't show exactly where this stuff came from.
John:
But like the LMs, we'll see how this case goes.
John:
Like the direct competition, like saying that this is a substitute for our service, that is an attempt to nullify fair use.
John:
To say, even if you just saw an excerpt or whatever, if you show sufficient information
John:
that it is now a substitute for the thing that you trained on, you're essentially stealing value from us.
John:
No one's going to go to the New York Times if all the knowledge of the New York Times is contained in your large language model.
John:
And right now they're not that good, right?
John:
And so really all the language isn't contained in the LLMs and a lot of it is filled with BS or whatever.
John:
But if they could figure out how to make it not spew BS or at least spew plausible enough BS that no one ever goes to the New York Times again, that makes the New York Times unviable as a business.
John:
And why?
John:
Because the LLMs stole all their value and then eventually there's no more New York Times.
John:
I know this is a silly scenario,
John:
But eventually there's no more New York Times.
John:
And then what is the next LLM trained on?
John:
Which is why I think just allowing it to go hog wild is not viable.
John:
You need to come to some kind of arrangement that allows all the things that the LLMs are trained on to continue to exist for the next hundred years for the next set of LLMs or whatever to be trained on.
John:
Otherwise, there'll be just LLMs with nothing for them to be trained on except for each other's BS.
John:
And that's not an ideal system.
Marco:
Ultimately, there's a question of what should be illegal versus what's ideal for the market or ideal for how we think things should be righteous or best.
Marco:
And those are very different questions.
Marco:
Lots of things are legal that we think are kind of unfortunate.
Marco:
Lots of things are legal that are pretty strong competition for other companies.
Marco:
So if new technology creates competition for someone else, that's generally legal and usually for the benefit of the public.
John:
Well, what you want is for laws to guide this because if there are no laws governing it and people think it's a free-for-all, there'll never be a market solution.
John:
What you want is there to be enough laws that say –
John:
These parties need to discuss things with each other because one of them just can't take everything and ignore the other.
John:
Right.
John:
In the absence of any kind of laws or precedents or whatever, it's like we can do whatever we want.
John:
Everything we're doing is 100 percent legal.
John:
You can't stop us at all.
John:
It's better to have some kind of laws governing the bounds of this such that it brings them all to the table and they come to a market solution because the market solution is not going to be you pay New York Times one dollar for every article you trained on because that's like billions of dollars.
John:
Right.
John:
That doesn't make any sense.
John:
That's not a viable market solution.
John:
Then be like, OK, well, I guess we just won't have LLMs and I guess we'll never train in The New York Times.
John:
Right.
John:
If you have enough guidelines, the parties will come together and come up with something that is feasible to say, well, if we don't talk to each other and figure something out, there are these laws that say, you know,
John:
again, kind of like patents for those, the Fran stuff where it's like, you can have this patent, but you have to license it to people under reasonable terms.
John:
You can't just charge them a bazillion dollars or whatever.
John:
I would hope that there'd be some kind of laws that make the LLM companies figure out a compensation model, kind of like the, what are the ASCAP thing or whatever, when you want to do like a cover of a song or whatever, but,
John:
you can't just cover a song for free, but also there is a system in place that has come up with a market value for doing covers such that covers still are allowed to happen, but people are still compensated for them.
John:
And I don't know a lot about that, that whole system, but that's in my mind, that's kind of the ideal of like, it's not a free for all, but it's also not so onerous that no one can ever sing covers anymore.
John:
And it's also, you know, people do get paid, right?
John:
So yeah,
John:
Again, maybe wishful thinking.
John:
We'll see how this works out in the court case.
John:
But I do like the idea of there being some kind of value exchange somewhere here.
John:
And I'm happy to let the market figure out that value exchange.
John:
But in the absence of any guidelines, I'm not happy to let people just say everything is free and we're taking it all and we'll suck every ounce of value out of it.
John:
Sorry.
Casey:
I mean, that's capitalism, isn't it?
John:
That's unbridled capitalism.
John:
We need capitalism with regulations, right?
John:
That's laissez-faire capitalism.
John:
Yeah, it tends not to work very well long term.
John:
The tricky part is figuring out what should those guidelines be and who should they accidentally favor, usually rich people.
John:
And everyone has a different answer.
Casey:
Speaking of, let's talk Massimo.
Casey:
So on the 26th of December, the Biden administration said, eh, we're not going to do anything about this.
Casey:
And the Apple Watch sales ban did indeed land in the U.S.
Casey:
Apple had a statement, again, this is 26th of December.
Casey:
Apple says, at Apple, we work tirelessly to create products and services that meaningfully impact users' lives.
Casey:
It's what drives our teams, clinical design and
Casey:
Hang on, just a moment here.
John:
Keep in mind, what you're reading is a statement after the Biden administration said, no, we're going to let this go through.
John:
You've got we've got more than halfway through this statement and Apple has said, we're pretty great.
John:
Like, it wouldn't be like a statement.
John:
We are very disappointed with the Biden administration's blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
John:
Fully, you know, over one half of this statement is like, we just work so hard on this and we're so wonderful.
John:
Anyway, now what do they say?
Casey:
We strongly disagree with the US ITC decision and resulting exclusion order and are taking all measures to return Apple Watch Series 9, Apple Watch Ultra 2 to customers in the US as soon as possible.
Casey:
Again, 26 December.
John:
I bet they're going to pay Massimo a bunch of money, right?
John:
All measures.
John:
Let's see what happens next.
Casey:
Surely that's what they'll do.
Casey:
27 December at 11 55 AM.
Casey:
Apple watch bands then temporarily pause.
Casey:
Woo.
Casey:
So the verge reports that one day after the Apple watch man import ban went into effect, the U S court of appeals is instituting a brief pause while it considers a longer pause.
John:
So the answer is, uh, what avenues were still open, still plenty of things they can do in the courts.
John:
And they are like, I mean, that's always been Apple's play here is they're going to exhaust every possibility asking Biden to help them appealing.
John:
They'll do all those things.
John:
Uh,
John:
We'll see if they get to a termination condition, which involves giving Massimo money.
Casey:
Well, that was the 27th at 11.55 a.m., the 27th at 5.21 p.m.
Casey:
Apple resumes Apple Watch sales after the ban is paused.
Casey:
With the sales and import bans on hold, Apple's resumed sales of Series 9 and Ultra 2.
Casey:
And that's where we stand.
Casey:
We're recording this on, what's today, the 3rd?
Casey:
We still have Apple Watch on sale in the United States from Apple.
Casey:
So all is well, right?
John:
I mean, that's pretty amazing considering they they halted sales like a couple of days after Christmas.
John:
And then one day later, they turn them back on.
John:
I mean, again, they're still it's still winding its way through the court system.
John:
But if you had to if Apple could have picked this timing, I'm not sure they could have picked anything better.
John:
Like we get all our holiday sales.
John:
We get one in two days where we file paperwork to, you know, we have our last ditch effort.
John:
Biden, save us.
John:
He's like, nah, don't think so.
John:
And then he gets pulled from the stores.
John:
And then one day later, it's back.
John:
And, you know, now we wait for the next step.
Casey:
Yeah, I mean, it worked out pretty well for Apple.
Casey:
Not so great for Massimo, but I mean, we'll see what happens.
John:
Well, this is not over yet.
Marco:
So further updates as events transpire.
Marco:
Ultimately, I think they're just going to have to settle and they're going to have to license whatever this patent is that they can't get past.
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Casey:
It's 2024, baby.
Casey:
And we should probably do a little bit of a preview as to what we think is coming in 2024.
Casey:
John, you've been kind enough to put a bunch of items in the show notes for us to discuss.
Casey:
Did you want to do this top to bottom or are you going to let us just round Robin and pick what we think is interesting?
No.
John:
You go through the items.
John:
What I put on the list is things.
John:
Well, it's in our typical show notes fashion.
John:
It's things that we more or less know are coming and what we think about them or we're looking forward to them or whatever.
John:
And then things start getting question marks after them as we get towards the end of the list where it's like, maybe these are coming.
John:
So we just go one at a time.
Casey:
Vision Pro.
Casey:
It sounds like... I don't have links to put in the show notes handy, but it sounds like it is imminent.
Casey:
Probably, if I were to wager a guess, sometime this month will be at least a formal announcement as to when it'll go on sale and whatnot.
Casey:
So Vision Pro could be any time now.
Casey:
And...
Casey:
I am, I'm excited for it.
Casey:
I'm curious to see what the response will be.
Casey:
I'm curious to see how one goes to buy a vision pro.
Casey:
I mean, I know there's been a lot of talk and chatter, if not official statements that you'll have to pick it up in store.
Casey:
Um, I understand that, although I have a lot of problems with it, uh, which we can explore if we really want, but, um,
Casey:
I'm very curious to see how this looks.
Casey:
I'm curious to see what the gray market looks like, because I know that there's a lot of people, including many of our friends that live overseas, that are very keen to have their own Vision Pro.
Casey:
So how does that work?
Casey:
You know, if you're willing to fly yourself to New York or Richmond and want to pick up a Vision Pro, is that something that Apple will sell to you?
Casey:
Or does it work with a non-American Apple ID?
Casey:
Like, how does that look?
Casey:
But...
Casey:
All that being said, I'm really excited and really interested to see what this looks like once it's in the market.
Casey:
I'm not excited for the work I need to do to get CallSheet working better on it, which I've done some of, but not enough.
Casey:
But I am excited overall.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
Marco, how do you feel about it?
Marco:
Man, I'm going to have a lot to say about it once I'm allowed to talk about experiences that I will have with it.
Marco:
Yeah, going to a lab was amazing as a developer, not so great as a podcaster.
Marco:
I'm sorry, you're not allowed to characterize your experience, Marco.
Marco:
Strike that from the record.
Marco:
Yes, I went to a lab, period.
Marco:
But it is kind of unfortunate that it's hard for me to discuss the Vision Pro and my expectations and thoughts on it because I have some experience with it that I'm not allowed to talk about.
Marco:
But hopefully that will be over soon.
Marco:
I'm with you, Casey.
Marco:
I think it is probably coming within probably a month.
Marco:
I think it's very close.
Marco:
And I am excited about it.
Marco:
But I also... I'm trying to keep my excitement in check.
Marco:
As I figure out what am I doing for Overcast for it, looking at the market for it, I think it's going to be a very slow burn.
Marco:
It's going to be a very slow build-up because...
Marco:
The volume is just not going to be there for a while.
Marco:
You know, there was those rumors from the supply chain that the little screens they're using inside, that like Sony can probably only make, you know, one or two million of those screens in a year.
Marco:
And so there is some speculation from the supply chain like they might not be able to make and sell more than maybe a million Vision Pros in the first year.
Marco:
And if there's any truth to that, if you if you figure like approximately a year from now, maybe there's a million of these in active use.
Marco:
Well, as an app developer, how many of those million people are going to have my app?
Marco:
If I'm lucky, maybe a few hundred like it's not it's going to be a very small number of people.
Marco:
From an app developer's perspective, there is going to be no good reason, I think, to port your app over to this unless you have a way to capture a huge portion of its users.
Marco:
I don't think as a podcast app, I don't think I have that.
John:
You should make an app that looks like when you tilt the glasses upward is like you're drinking a beer.
John:
Because that's the type of app that, like, that's what I'm thinking of with this launch of, like, you're right.
John:
Because of the supply issues, Apple is capped in how many of these they can physically make, no matter how many people want them.
John:
And keep in mind, they're $3,500 to start.
John:
So it's probably not going to be them anyway.
John:
But, like, you have to, there is the kind of gold rush of, like, well, people are going to get their Vision Pro.
John:
And they're like, well, I've got this thing.
John:
What kind of apps can I get for it?
John:
And if you have some general purpose app, like it looks like, we're talking about the iPhone app that showed, like, basically a beer on your phone and used the accelerometer when you tilted your phone, the level, the beer,
John:
liquid level would say level so like you're drinking a beer.
John:
Everyone who had an iPhone got that app because you get an iPhone and you're like, what's available for this thing?
John:
And it was like seven, you know, not seven things in the store, but relatively speaking, there were very few apps in the app store.
John:
And if you were one of those apps and you were a general purpose, kind of like, ah, I'll try it.
John:
I just want to try a fun thing for my thing.
John:
you could get a massive market share of the first batch of people who bought an iPhone and make a lot of money.
John:
And that is probably going to be true on the vision pro, but I'm not sure a podcast player is that app.
John:
That's going to be the impulse purchase that you really want to just try out the vision pro.
John:
When I think vision pro, I don't think podcasts.
John:
It's not particularly a visual medium, but someone's going to make that app.
John:
So I think there is going to be a mini gold rush to try to sell to 50% of the million people who get Vision Pros.
John:
And Casey, to your point about the gray market stuff, this has got to be Apple's nightmare because Apple hates gray market stuff to begin with.
John:
And the worst thing, the thing Apple always will tell you they don't want and they really, really don't want, which is we don't want people to have our product and have a crappy experience because they didn't get it the Apple way.
John:
And nothing could be more problematic when it comes to that situation than a thing that fits on your face that has different sized things, different sized light shields and the prescription glasses and all that.
John:
There is no way that the gray market is going to give the buyers of those gray market things what Apple thinks the experience should be.
John:
So you're going to have developers overseas who are using uncomfortable, blurry-looking headsets because it's the only thing they could get, and they pick the prescription wrong, and they don't have the right light shield thing, and it doesn't fit their face, and it's just...
John:
And Apple's going to be like, that's not how it's supposed to be.
John:
We want you to have this experience.
John:
That's why you have to wait for us to lunch in your country.
John:
Come to the Apple store.
John:
We'll scan your face.
John:
We'll make sure we find the right, you know.
John:
But it's like, well, I didn't do that.
John:
Instead, someone got it for me, and I bought it on eBay, and I just hoped that the Fate Shield, like, wasn't too painful after 30 minutes.
John:
And that's...
John:
not the experience apple wants you to have i mean they hated gray market iphones they don't like when you use non-official apple parts they don't you know just like this is their worst nightmare because the experience of vision pro can be so much worse like the floor is so low if you get one that doesn't fit right you know and doesn't look right with the you know prescription lenses and so many people need prescriptions like i still think about this not that i'm planning on getting one but it's like
John:
When I heard Casey, when I heard you talking when you're on the talk show, talking about like the prescription lenses and stuff, setting aside the price, I was like, what prescription would I tell Apple?
John:
Because Gruber is like, oh, I came to the thing and they just asked what my prescription was because I have two sets of glasses now.
John:
I haven't moved to bifocals or progressives, but I have my computer glasses that I'm wearing now to look at my screen.
John:
And then I have my TV watching glasses that are my and my driving glasses that are my distance glasses.
John:
I don't know which prescription I should give them.
John:
What distance, because my computer glasses are made to be comfortable for me looking at my screen that's like an arm's length, right?
John:
And my driving glasses are basically 20-20 at infinity, you know, like for distance stuff.
John:
What prescription would I even give Apple?
John:
And believe me, I'm not the only old person with two different prescriptions up close and far away.
John:
There are a lot of us.
John:
And so that's got to be part of the experience.
John:
It's not like you're going to go into the Apple store and they're going to say, oh, what's your prescription?
John:
Because that's not an easy question.
John:
You have to say, what's your prescription when viewing things from X distance?
John:
And I don't even know what that distance is.
John:
Is it the distance that they typically hang windows by default in front of you?
John:
Is it the distance the screens are from your eyes?
Marco:
Well, I think yes.
Marco:
I mean, remember we talked about that whole like convergence effect thing earlier in the fall.
Marco:
And it does seem like they are optimizing for the equivalent distance of whatever it is, like a few meters in front of you, like wherever the default spot is they put windows and kind of like on this axis around you.
Marco:
Meters.
Yeah.
Marco:
How far is that in feet?
Marco:
Yeah, it's something like 8 or 10 feet in front of you, I think.
John:
Yeah, but all this is to say that getting the experience Apple wants you to have from their Vision Pro is going to be trickier than any other Apple product, even more so than the watch.
John:
And gray market is just going to exacerbate that.
John:
You know, that's just part of being an early adopter and people will suffer through it.
John:
But boy, it's got to really eat Apple up because they spent so long trying to make this product and get the right set of face shields.
John:
And and they know how it should work, like internally or whatever, just to know that like 20 percent of basically everyone outside the U.S.
John:
who has this thing is having a substandard experience.
John:
You know, what can you do?
Marco:
I think the Vision Pro is going to be the story of the first few months of the year, at least.
Marco:
I'm a little concerned for Apple that the press and the hype won't stick as much as they want it to because it's going to be such a slow buildup of a market, I think.
Marco:
They have put so much into this product in terms of their time and resources and everything that
Marco:
But when was the last time Apple launched a really high-profile brand-new product that was not expected to be a massive volume hit at the start?
Marco:
Well, it was the iPhone.
Marco:
Yeah, that's it.
Marco:
And that was a long time ago, and that was a very different company.
Marco:
And now, you can say something like, oh, the Mac Pro, but that's not nearly the resources that went into the Vision Pro anymore.
John:
They haven't launched anything that they're fully behind as like, this is a new paradigm.
John:
The watch was the closest you could say.
John:
It's like, this is a new way of computing or whatever.
John:
But I think this is fine for Apple because I think they'll weather it fine because it's almost kind of a relief to...
John:
to essentially be supply constrained in the first year give them time to get their feet under them kind of like with the watch like apple has an idea of what they think this thing will be good for but what does the market think and so this will this will be a big story in early 2024 and i think it will settle down and people will forget about it and move on and that will give the product time to grow into itself right and because you know either they all sell out or the story is apple couldn't even sell a million of them and it's too expensive blah blah like
John:
that voice too yeah apple's not going to be scared but apple's not going to go oh my god forget it we did so badly we're just going to cancel this product no they're going to they're going to ride out 2024 no matter what happens they're going to learn from what's out there in the market and 2025 they'll regroup and you know continue on so i'm i'm not worried about all the inevitable stories and the low sales due to
John:
either supply constraints or lack of demand or whatever.
John:
And even if it's best case and we're like, they sell it instantly and people are spending huge amounts of money for them on, uh, in the gray market and everybody wants them and it's just so exciting, but they can't make them.
John:
And they make the stories like, Oh, Apple should have, you know, found another supplier for those screens or whatever.
John:
even if the very best happens in that scenario, it's still going to be like just a, you know, a rookie year for the vision pro don't expect it to take over the world.
John:
The iPhone, even the iPhone didn't take over the world in its first year of sales.
John:
It was a curiosity.
John:
It was a thing that people who could tolerate AT&T use.
John:
And it was like, I'm not so sure about this.
John:
Like,
John:
And the iPhone is like, you know, the best selling consumer product ever.
John:
So do not expect the Vision Pro to do better than the iPhone in its first year.
John:
And if it does 10 times worse, don't worry about it.
John:
I feel like Apple is pretty dedicated to this.
John:
Even if it 100% flops, I think they're going to keep plugging away at this.
Marco:
I don't think Apple's going to have any trouble selling as many as they can make this year.
Marco:
They're going to sell every single one they can make.
Marco:
Because they can't make that many.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
It's going to be back-ordered.
Marco:
It's going to be hard to get.
Marco:
They're going to sell them all.
Marco:
That's not going to be the problem.
Marco:
But what I am...
Marco:
envisioning is that people are going to buy it with a set of expectations about what they're going to be able to use it for and then that will change because that's what happens with new tech categories it happens it happened with the apple watch it happened before that with the ipad remember the iphone didn't have apps didn't have an app store when it launched so talk about changing the way people use the device the people who had the the first iphone are using it differently than we are because there was no app store
Marco:
And this is going to go through the same kind of hype curve of like, you're going to have now before it's actually out, but after it's been announced, you have people saying, oh my God, we're going to have to rethink cities.
Marco:
I'll be able to get all my work done in this headset.
Marco:
I'll never have to buy a computer or a monitor again.
Marco:
And you're going to have those people go out and buy it.
Marco:
It's not going to fulfill that expectation for some percentage of those people.
Marco:
The expectations are going to crash saying, I tried living my entire life in a Vision Pro for a month and then
Marco:
this is what happened and my face is all sweaty and my nose hurts right so then the expectations are going to crash you're going to have people like federico who like actually will figure out how to get all their work done in it and it's going to be you know a whole bunch of complex hacks to make it work for you and and then you know and you're going to say actually i i traveled only with this device for this trip and here's how i did it so there's going to be this you know this big you know roller coaster of press for it from people who were like you know kicking the tires trying it out you know tech enthusiasts people who are trying to like
Marco:
live in it and do way too much stuff in it.
Marco:
Then you're going to have all the people saying, I tried this and it was bad for reason X, and then all that's going to crash.
Marco:
And then people are going to try it again and try different things and some new app will come out for it that'll make it better.
Marco:
It's going to be that kind of roller coaster for a while.
Marco:
It's going to be a fun year in the sense that that kind of experimentation I always find really fun and entertaining for both myself to try to do it, but mostly to listen and watch to what other people are doing with it.
Marco:
uh and and uh kind of experience it vicariously through other people who have more time than i do um but at the end of the of that roller coaster uh i think this product is going to be really great for the market that it finds uh but i that's not going to be a big market for a while for lots of reasons price supply apps like it's going to be there's lots of reasons why it's not going to be a huge market yet um and and i hope
Marco:
That everyone, including Apple, is able to keep perspective that when it comes out and does not set the whole world on fire, that that's not necessarily a failure.
Marco:
It's just the early part of its lifetime and the earliest part of this market.
Marco:
But ultimately, I'm very excited for that market.
Marco:
I think there's a lot of good uses for it, but it's going to be a slow start.
Casey:
Marco, do you plan on buying one?
Marco:
Of course.
Marco:
Immediately.
Marco:
Because here's the thing.
Marco:
As a developer of these platforms, my app will be there.
Marco:
People will use it.
Marco:
Now, I was looking earlier today.
Marco:
I allow people to run my iPad app on Apple Silicon Macs.
Marco:
That has now accumulated a very large number of Mac users.
Marco:
I have more Mac users than I have iPad users, which that's not what I would have guessed.
Marco:
Wow.
Marco:
But that's the reality.
Marco:
I plan to allow my app to run as long as it doesn't have major problems.
Marco:
And I will see what kind of usage it gets.
Marco:
And I will make decisions from there about when and whether to make a native version.
Marco:
Um, but I have some ideas for a native version I think are good.
Marco:
I'm going to want to try them.
Marco:
I'm going to want to try them immediately because, you know, even though my, my likely market of vision pro owners in the first year is probably going to be like, you know, fewer people than use like the large widget.
Marco:
It's going to be like some slice of a slice of a slice.
Marco:
Numbers-wise, relative to my entire product and my entire audience for my app, it's going to be nothing.
Marco:
But it's important for me to be there for other reasons.
Marco:
There's value in...
Marco:
In the people who are like the influencers and the press, there's value in them seeing my app there and using it and knowing it's there.
Marco:
There's a certain level of demand there that I want to address from that kind of person.
Marco:
There's value to Apple and therefore value to me indirectly through favor with Apple.
Marco:
So there's all sorts of reasons why I would probably want to be there anyway.
Marco:
Numbers are not one of them.
Marco:
And I expect the Vision Pro and the Overcast app for it to be a massively money-losing operation for me for a while.
Marco:
But I absolutely will be buying one the second I can get my hands on one.
Marco:
And I think a large portion of the early buyers will be developers and companies that are buying it to test their stuff on and to develop for.
Marco:
We'll see.
Marco:
That being said, a lot of small developers are super uninterested in paying $3,500 for this.
Marco:
It's not as much of a slam dunk for every developer out there to buy this as, say, the first iPad was because we had different expectations and it was way cheaper.
Marco:
uh this is very expensive and anyone who's like running the numbers like well how much money am i going to make with my software invasion pro and is that going to help pay for the 3500 no no it will not not for a while at least so so that's going that's going to impact the market to some degree um it's not going to be purchased by every ios developer out there like that's not that's not going to happen for lots of reasons but
Marco:
They will be bought by some developers and some YouTubers and influencers and just people who want to try it, business travelers, rich people.
Marco:
There is a market for it, and it's going to be really fun and amazing, but it's not going to be the next iPad or Apple Watch for a while, if ever.
Casey:
Yeah, I don't know what I'm going to do because I don't know that I have an overabundance of interest from a user's perspective, but I do feel some amount of responsibility as the developer of CallSheet.
Casey:
I feel a fairly considerable amount of responsibility as one of the three hosts of this program.
Casey:
And since John doesn't want to take the fall and it's always up to you and me to take care of this, then... Hey, I bought this Mac Pro.
John:
You've got a lot of spending to do.
John:
I mean, only a few Vision Pros, though.
Casey:
Yeah, right?
Casey:
Well, then again, he did option that Mac Pro.
Casey:
So we're looking at like, I don't know, 10 Vision Pros.
Casey:
How much did you spend on that damn thing?
John:
Maybe three or four.
John:
But anyway, it's certainly more, it covers both of your Vision Pros.
John:
So go ahead.
Casey:
Oh, I see.
John:
I see.
John:
Plus, you both have apps that legitimately could be on the platform.
John:
It's not like you're just doing it for the show.
Marco:
Honestly, Call Sheet, it probably has a much bigger audience on Vision Pro than Overcast does.
John:
Exactly.
John:
You're watching, you're watching a movie, you look to your left and, and you say some voice thing and says, who is that?
John:
And then your app captures the video.
John:
No, forget it.
Casey:
You can't do that.
Casey:
Anyway, I think it was during the talk show that, that Gruber and I were talking this out and it, it occurred to me that I don't think call sheet can run side by side with a video player.
Casey:
Cause the best of my understanding, a video player is an immersive experience.
Casey:
You know, there's three different experiences.
Casey:
There's the, the windows, I forget what they call them.
John:
Spaces, volumes.
Casey:
Spaces, that's it.
Casey:
Thank you.
John:
But I will remind you what the early versions of iOS and watchOS and iPadOS look like and what their limitations were and how long those lasted.
John:
That's fair.
John:
Don't worry too much about it.
John:
Yes, I know the limitations that they have now, but this is like
John:
the 1.0-iest of 1.0s and inevitably once this product contact comes in contact with developers and apps and users that is all going to change so fast it even changed on the ipad eventually so i have much faith that applications like yours will eventually be able to do same things but i do agree with you that right now there's probably a bunch of annoying limitations that make it difficult for you to do what you want and then you'll you should give that feedback to apple and they'll incorporate that into the next version of the os
Marco:
Well, honestly, first of all, I think you'll be in the clear.
Marco:
Second of all, if you're not, app switching exists and people figure it out pretty quickly.
Marco:
So I think you're fine either way.
Marco:
But I think this is probably going to be a device that gets a lot of movie and TV watching done on it.
Marco:
So the market for a call sheet is, I think, much more direct than the market for people who want an audio-only podcast podcast.
Marco:
listening to podcasts while they're working on their spreadsheets and their vision pro they can i mean and that's that's why people use the mac app you know it's hard for me to understand the needs of that market because i'm not a listen to podcasts while working kind of person um so i don't like i don't ever use overcast on my mac but i use it constantly on my phone because i'm like when i'm out and around doing stuff and walking the dog and washing dishes like that's when i listen to podcasts but i don't understand how people listen to podcasts while working because my brain doesn't work that way
Marco:
So I don't know how people are going to use it necessarily in Vision Pro, but it's not like... I can envision... I can envision a situation where you might want an experience in Vision Pro where you're transported to some place.
Marco:
You want to hang out on top of a mountain and maybe just put a podcast on and listen to it.
Marco:
I can envision that being a market.
Marco:
Again, I don't know how big of a market.
Marco:
Maybe a few hundred people in the first...
Marco:
It's not going to be a big market, but I can envision use cases like that.
Marco:
The Vision Pro is a very broad product.
Marco:
It can do a lot of things.
Marco:
We don't really know yet what is going to be its most popular uses, but I can hazard a guess that it's going to be very consumption-focused, I think, in practice.
Marco:
Very much like the iPad, where I think there will be people...
Marco:
who will do productivity work on it.
Marco:
But I don't think that's going to be the most common case.
Marco:
I think it is much more likely that people will use it more for media consumption and immersive experience consumption than doing your spreadsheets and email.
Marco:
I think, again, you will be able to do your spreadsheets and email in it.
Marco:
I don't see that being a huge part of its use case.
Marco:
So then are people going to listen to audio podcasts?
Marco:
I mean, while they watch videos, probably not.
Marco:
But while they sit on a mountaintop, maybe.
Marco:
So again, this all remains to be seen.
Marco:
It is a very clear-cut case for CallSheet because there's going to be, I think, a lot of video watching in this device.
Casey:
Yeah, we'll see.
Casey:
But I am not looking forward to spending $3,500-plus on something that its use as a person to me, I'm not entirely convinced yet.
Casey:
But again, you know what?
Marco:
You're going to have one on day one.
Casey:
I think I'm gonna I've convinced myself I need to you're gonna buy it and you're gonna grumble about the price and you're gonna love it I am I'm going to buy it I'm going to grumble about the price I think I'll say it's extremely cool the question is will I pick it up after you know completing whatever I need to do with call sheet I don't know maybe I will maybe I'll love it I don't know but we'll see I would gosh I wish I could talk about what happened at the labs anyway I know me too I'm dying here it's killing me all right John tell us about OLED iPads what do we think is happening there
John:
This is, you know, we both talked about Vision Pro, but OLED iPads are the product that I'm most excited about for 2024 from Apple, believe it or not, because I'm for sure going to buy these if they are OLED iPads because I use my iPad to watch video all the time and an OLED iPad would do a better job of showing video because it would have better black levels.
John:
I want this so bad.
John:
uh and uh you know it'll it hasn't been that long since i got my ipad i have an m1 ipad it's not that old but the oled screen is a reason enough for me to upgrade for the wider market as we've discussed in the past we hope that they'll rationalize the ipad line update the pros to have the landscape camera figure out what they're going to do with the pencil after taking the year off essentially 2023 the ipad took that whole year off all we got was the weird pencil uh 2024 is the year of
John:
actually releasing ipads some of which we hope are good um and the only reason i highlight this as item number two is because this is the one i'm definitely going to buy you two are going to try to get vision pros if you possibly can if they don't sell out in the first 30 seconds i am absolutely buying an ipad and i think i'll have an easier time getting one and it will be cheaper
John:
yeah well that's it's hard to be more expensive well if you got the eight terabyte model maybe it would be the same price we'll see and by the way you know vision pro starting at thirty five hundred dollars we don't know the details of that statement yet all they said was starting at thirty five hundred each individual prescription lens is fifteen hundred dollars there's a porsche option prices i know you're joking but it wouldn't surprise me if they are hilariously expensive
Marco:
yeah blue stitching an extra 400 just hope that you can't adjust the storage at all yeah well but but like what is the storage going to be used for how many people buying it will even know yet like i don't know how much storage i need on my vision pro i have no idea better get the big one i guess yeah
Marco:
well or like do you want to invest that much extra money in like version 1.0 that's going to be obsolete you know first i i get the big apple tv it's a little bit less expensive but you know yeah it's like what is it 50 bucks 30 bucks yeah exactly yeah no but so the ipad the ipad i think is going to be i i've kind of fallen out of using the ipad for almost anything but i go in phases i go up and down i'm sure when they when they launch i'm going to be like
Marco:
oh, I want that because it's new and shiny and OLED.
Marco:
And I'll rationalize myself buying one for some reason.
John:
Especially if it's dual-layer OLED screen that some of the rumors are interested.
John:
Super bright, really amazing quality.
John:
It would essentially be the best quality screen available on an Apple product because it will surpass the LCD, mini-LED things on the MacBook Pros and certainly surpass the XDR.
Marco:
Yeah, that would be great.
Marco:
I'm mostly just curious to see what they do with the iPad Pro, especially because the iPad Pro has not seen a meaningful update redesign since 2018.
Marco:
It is pretty long in the tooth now.
Marco:
I really want to know, do they address things like the pencil attachment mechanism, any kind of pencil charging changes?
Marco:
Because there's rumors that there's going to be a new Pro pencil as well.
Marco:
What do they do about where the camera is?
Marco:
One of the biggest annoyances of using the iPad Pro for me is that the camera is still on the short side, and I'm almost 100% using it in the little keyboard flappy thing.
Marco:
Not the Magic Trackpad equipped one, the one before that, the straight one that Craig Federighi uses.
Marco:
So I use that one.
Marco:
And so the camera is always right under my left hand.
Marco:
I guess when you pick up the iPad, it is directly under where you pick it up by.
John:
And it warns you about it, which is when you have to add a software feature to compensate for a hardware thing, that's when you know the hardware thing has outlived its useful life.
Marco:
And they did update one of the lower end iPads to have the camera on the long edge like a laptop.
Marco:
So if you're holding it in landscape, it's in the top middle.
Marco:
That, I think, is the clear answer for where it should be on the iPad Pro and probably on all iPads as well.
Marco:
But it interferes with where the pencil attaches right now in the current iPad Pro.
Marco:
So this is a question like, where do you put the pencil?
Marco:
If you put it on the short side, that has other downsides.
Marco:
You can still put it on the long side, but change where the magnets are so you can fit the camera between them or something.
Marco:
There's options.
John:
Yeah, that's what everyone assumes they're going to do.
John:
That's the whole reason for the new pencil.
John:
I'm sure the pencil will have new features, but the main reason is, oh, we have to rejigger the internals to make room for the...
John:
camera that's on the long side and that'll be the apple pencil three or whatever so and i just want to say that if they come out with the new ipad and it has a led screen and they change nothing else about it i'm still getting it because i'm not i'm not going to be like i'm waiting i'm going to wait until they have the landscape camera that's not what i'm using the ipad for i do have a pencil and i do use it and it is annoying that my hand covers the facetime camera and everything like that but still no matter what they do it is just if they do like the you know the the new uh mac pro that uh uh
Marco:
launch this very podcast it's exactly the same ipad as we have now the only difference is a new oled screen i'm still getting it i mean that would still be a huge upgrade but and it would be incredibly disappointing to everybody but me yeah but but i i do hope there's more i mean you know you know as you mentioned 2023 there were literally no new ipads released
Marco:
And the state of the iPad lineup, as we discussed previously, is really messy right now because it seems like they're like halfway through multiple different important transitions.
Marco:
Things like moving the camera, unifying the pencils, stuff like this.
Marco:
There's a lot of like half done transitions in the iPad lineup.
Marco:
There's way too many iPads.
Marco:
The differentiation between them is odd and confusing.
Marco:
There's lots of like...
Marco:
little nitpicks of like, well, you can use this keyboard with this one, but not with this very similar one.
Marco:
They have three different iPads that are all within a half-inch screen size of each other.
Marco:
It's a weird lineup.
Marco:
What I expect and hope from 2024 for the iPad is...
Marco:
For us to finally get the answer of like, where is the iPad going?
Marco:
And give us a coherent lineup that puts us there.
Marco:
That I really hope for and I think is likely to actually happen.
Marco:
I'm sure they're going to do the thing where they keep around an old model of the cheap one, but they're already still doing that.
Marco:
So they currently have two base models, basically, like the more modern design one and the one that still has the home button and the forehead and chin.
Marco:
And so hopefully they're able to get rid of the home button one finally move the more modern one down to that slot and then give us the new base model.
Marco:
You know, so there's a lot to do in the iPad lineup.
Marco:
It seems like they're slated to do all of it this year, basically, because I think every iPad approximately is due for an update.
Marco:
So we will see.
Marco:
I hope they do it.
Marco:
I hope they do a good job.
Marco:
And I hope whatever changes are coming to the iPad Pro were worth the wait from 2018.
Casey:
Fair enough.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
M3 Ultra, maybe in the Mac Studio, perhaps in a new Mac Pro.
Casey:
What do we think about that?
John:
I mean, I guess really this could have been inverted, but it shows where my interest lies.
John:
You know, the Mac Studio and Mac Pro are due to be updated this year.
John:
They will presumably get the M3 Ultra, which is a chip that we assume will exist, and it will just be two M3 Maxes stuck together in the usual way.
John:
But the thing is, the M3 Max is amazing, and two of them will be twice as amazing.
John:
So that will be a really good chip.
John:
despite the fact that the Mac Studio will surely come with the M3 Max, it will also come with the M3 Ultra, and that's going to really differentiate it from the rest of the product line.
John:
I don't expect any other changes to these products other than them just existing and getting the new chip.
John:
And for the Mac Studio, I think that's fine.
John:
And for the Mac Pro, it is exactly as disappointing as last year's Mac Pro.
John:
No change there.
John:
In particular, the M3 Ultra Mac Studio...
John:
i feel like is becoming increasingly essential for apple's supposed ambitions in gaming they have a long way to go there but it is nice to be able to have something that they sell that has more gpu grunt than a laptop right and the mac studio is going to have twice as much gpu grunt as their fastest laptop because it'll have two m3 maxes in there with twice the gpu grunt
John:
Does that make a difference for the tiny amount of games that exist?
John:
Well, probably not, but it's, you know, at the very least, again, we'll see how it performs in the benchmarks, but something better than a laptop is kind of one of those, like, really low bar that Apple needs to clear to start taking itself seriously as a gaming company, and we've discussed this many times as fast.
John:
It's great that they've, you know, raised the floor, that none of their computers stink anymore, they're all pretty good, but you gotta have at least one...
John:
really good one one pretty okay one you know what i mean and that is the role of the mt ultra it's not the mac pro it owns buying that thing for games but the mac studio is small cheaper than the mac pro and you know it'll it should be you know close to twice as fast uh when running game stuff because it's got twice a gpu so i'm looking forward i'm not planning on buying that um
John:
I'm still, you know, again, the clock on my 2019 Mac Pro is mostly dictated by Apple.
John:
I was thinking over the holiday that, like, how long would I be willing to keep using this Mac Pro after Apple stops supporting it with the latest version of macOS?
John:
And I think that is a non-zero amount of time for me because I do want to...
John:
wait to buy at the right time you know what i mean i i want i'm impressed by the m3 series especially the m3 max the m3 max is often benchmarking it higher than the m2 ultra in certain tests right so i feel like they're they're pressing on the high end i want to see what an m4 or an m5 looks like if i can hold out that long so uh that's all i just i look forward to these computers existing and i look forward to seeing the benchmarks and i'm ready to continue to be disappointed by the mac pro
Casey:
So what is the current plan as of the beginning of 2024 when Apple says no more new macOS releases for Intel?
Casey:
Do you immediately buy an Apple Silicon Mac Pro?
Casey:
Do you slum it and buy a studio?
John:
No, like I said, I'm willing to be stuck in amber of like, okay, it's not supported anymore.
John:
I'm just going to keep using it
John:
after the version is released that i can't run anymore how long will i last in that state i don't know if you'd asked me before i'd say well as soon as that happens i'm going to buy one so i'm never going to be in that state but now i'm thinking that i'm willing to be on the previous years os that marco can never remember the name of for a non-zero amount of time is that going to be six months is that going to be a year
John:
It's going to be like me and buying TVs.
John:
Like, I want to pick the right time to buy.
John:
Ideally, I would like to wait to see them do something more than the current Ultra strategy with their top-end chip.
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
Even if I buy it in a Mac Studio, I would love to see, as we discussed in the past, a different packaging arrangement or something different than we seem to do with M1 through M3 with respect to the Ultra.
John:
If I can hold out that long, I will.
John:
If I can't, then I'll just get an M4 Ultra Mac Studio.
John:
That's my plan, essentially.
John:
Like whatever, whatever that, when the time comes when I just can't hold that any longer and it's just untenable and I, you know, maybe I need to update it to do dev work on my apps, whatever, whatever the situation is, when I get pressed to do it, if assuming there's still the Mac Pro is still like it is, I'm going to end up getting a Mac Studio with whatever the best ultra is.
Casey:
I know we're going off on a tangent.
Casey:
It's my fault.
Casey:
But what do you feel like your Mac Pro is uniquely good at that the studio isn't?
Casey:
I know the obvious answer is gaming now, but that's not likely to be the case in any future Mac Pro.
Casey:
So you don't have 340 hard drives in there, do you?
John:
i mean i do have a bunch i have i have all my storage is internal well except for my windows drive which is external but i do like my i have an internal why is that external if everything else is internal i have an internal time machine drive it internal super duper clone and then i have the regular uh boot disk and i have swapped video cards many times and i know what you're saying like well you're not gonna be able to run pc games because it's not x86 yada yada but i i do want to buy something with gpu grunt that essentially is going to be sitting there idle in the hopes that apple's
John:
gaming strategy bears fruit or at the worst case that i can boot into linux and play like steam games that are for the steam deck you know what i mean like i want the gpu grunt to be there speculatively like i don't i it is not as sure a thing as hey i can i can boot this thing into windows and play windows games that is a sure thing right it's easy to know
John:
Why am I getting why do I want a Mac with more GPU grunt?
John:
That's speculative.
John:
That's me crossing my fingers and saying, boy, I hope I can do something gaming related with this extra GPU grunt.
John:
And, you know, maybe I'll get burned.
John:
Maybe it'll turns out that for the millionth time, Apple's gaming strategy won't work out and I can't run Windows and I can't run Linux games with Proton and stuff.
John:
But that's the plan.
Casey:
Why won't you put your Windows boot drive in your in the in the machine?
Casey:
You feel like it's tainting it, don't you?
John:
I mean, it's mostly because like the Windows boot drive.
John:
Yeah, it probably should be inside the machine, but the tainting is not the reason I did it, but it's kind of it goes on one of my crappier.
John:
ssds because you know it doesn't really matter and i think it's changed a few times and it was such a pain to get it working on the external one that was kind of like a sunk cost fallacy but uh anyway yeah i'm probably i think this thing is probably in its final arrangement of components after many many swaps and stuff where it's it's all solid state it's got that one external oh you know what i mean when i do this when i did the sonoma drive that was also external because that's like a throwaway one that i'm constantly erasing and stuff and i use it on different computers so
Casey:
Fair enough.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
iPhone 16.
Casey:
I don't know too much of what to expect from this.
Casey:
Obviously, we've talked about the capture button, which I think could be very interesting, and I'm optimistic about that.
Casey:
I'm slightly terrified about dropping the 5X Tetra Prism thing into the regular-sized phones, because I don't know which one I would buy then, because
Casey:
What do you mean you don't know?
John:
You would come back to the medium side.
Casey:
I think I would.
John:
Especially since the rumor is that the 16 is going to actually be a little bit bigger than the 15.
Casey:
Again?
John:
They're doing it again?
John:
I think the thing that they're doing... Remember that the 15 shrunk because they shrunk the bezels all around it and everything?
John:
I think they're essentially not undoing that, but making the screen bigger by an old bezels width just to give themselves more room internally for the Tetra Prism camera and a bunch of other stuff.
John:
And honestly, I'm fine with that because I'm using a 14 Pro now and the 14 Pro is bigger than the 15 Pro.
John:
So like 15 Pro shrunk a little bit.
John:
It sounds like a 16 is going to be the same size as my current phone.
John:
And keep in mind that I am buying the 16 because that's my phone year.
John:
So from my perspective, the 16 will be the same size as my current phone.
John:
But from your perspective, it'll be a little bit bigger than your 15 Pro.
John:
And
John:
From Casey's perspective, it'll be way smaller than that stupid pop socket thing you've got.
Casey:
That's true.
Casey:
No, I mean, there are some things I like about this phone, but I do miss having a phone that you can legitimately, without worry, without a dongle on the back or, you know, a wart on the back, use one-handed.
Casey:
You know, I don't have...
Casey:
Gigantor hands like, you know, Mike Hurley does.
Casey:
And so I really do need some sort of affordance on there.
Casey:
And so I am cautiously and tentatively optimistic that maybe I would be able to go back to the, you know, human-sized phone again, which I think would be kind of nice.
Casey:
I'll miss the real estate and I'll miss maybe the battery life, although that hasn't been as night and day as I had expected.
Casey:
But it would be nice to have a phone I could use one-handed again.
Casey:
So...
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
Marco, what are your thoughts on the iPhone 16?
Marco:
We don't know a ton about it yet, but if the rumors are true that it's going to be adding a capture button and giving me the 5X lens, that's great.
Marco:
I am looking forward to that because the 5X lens I am super envious of.
Marco:
Whenever I have a moment to see TIFFs or to use it, I'm always like, man, I wish I had this on my phone, but I don't wish enough to get the giant phone.
Marco:
So, again, hopefully I get that.
Marco:
And otherwise, I don't really know.
Marco:
This is what happens every year.
Marco:
I'm very happy with the iPhone I have now.
Marco:
But, you know, I'm sure they'll find a way to make me want to buy the new one.
John:
This will have the realigned cameras on both of them, by the way, on both the 16 and the 16 Pro, like the realigned cameras for spatial video because they'll both be able to do it.
John:
And the rumor is also...
John:
They'll both have the capture button and it won't be a pro-only feature.
John:
And there are some, I mean, we talked about this a million times when we were talking about the SoCs.
John:
Like, what are they going to do?
John:
Is there going to be A18 Pro and an A18?
John:
Are they going to be unified?
John:
Are they going to be split?
John:
Is there going to be one that's like last year's model but with GPU things?
John:
We don't know what they're going to do with the SoCs, but it seems like from the physical feature sets,
John:
they're both going to have the aligned cameras and they're both going to have the capture button.
John:
I still at this early stage, I still feel like the capture button is kind of like a solid state volume buttons.
John:
And it's the type of thing that we could be hearing plans from back in time.
John:
And really that decision was reversed and we won't know about it until the next round of rumors comes out.
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
And maybe there just won't be a capture button and we'll wait till next year.
John:
But from what I've heard, it sounds like the 16 line will be more unified and coherent than the 15 one was, but we'll see.
John:
It's, it's a long ways off, but you know, the iPhone is,
John:
especially with no rumors about anything radical it's just like oh it's a it's a year where they're consolidating gains from the previous phones and you know it's not every year the iphone is good i don't think there's any chance of it being terrible but there's i don't think there's much chance either of it being something like an iphone 10 type revelation yeah yeah
Marco:
Actually, and I'm glad you brought up the spatial video thing, John, because that, I think, would be a huge motivator.
Marco:
If it can take spatial video better than 1080p 30, which is very restrictive.
John:
Yeah, that might be a differentiation on the Pro.
John:
They'll both have the aligned cameras for spatial video, and the rumor is that the ultra-wide that is aligned with it is going to be 48 megapixel, and maybe only on the Pro you'll get better frame rates, better resolution, whatever.
Marco:
And look, I know this decision's already made 15 years ago, but if you have to raise either the frame rate or the resolution and you can't do both, give me the frame rate, please.
Marco:
Like 30 FPS is tough.
John:
I think with the Vision Pro, I think the resolution may have more bang for the buck because it's so big in your field of vision.
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
i'm not allowed to tell you whether i know what you mean uh okay anyway yes i mean casey gruber discussed it with like it's not as big as panoramas panoramas is where it suffers the most according to gruber but the the spatial video is apparently smaller but still it's pretty big i definitely can't tell you any of that however i can tell you i really want more resolution out of my cameras now more frame rate you mean
Marco:
Both.
Marco:
Well, I would suggest for panoramas, you would probably want a lot of resolution.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Like one of the things that I am really looking forward to in the Vision Pro, Merlin introduced me to this Polycam app, where it basically, it's one of these apps that uses like the LiDAR and the cameras and everything, and you can make like a 3D, you can 3D capture and make a floor plan or a whole like 3D map of a room.
Marco:
As long as your room is not filled with junk, I know from experience.
Marco:
But that's a really cool thing.
Marco:
I'm looking forward to just like, I don't know if you can even do this yet on Vision Pro, but I'm sure it will come fairly soon if you can't.
Marco:
Like whatever standard, you know, USDZ scene formats that these kind of things can output.
Marco:
I want to be able to capture a place with my iPhone using something like Polycam and then be able to be in it in the Vision Pro at a later time.
Marco:
What was it like to be in my room in this one apartment that I captured and then I don't live there anymore?
Marco:
That kind of thing.
Marco:
That would be so cool to me.
Marco:
What was it like on this vacation?
Marco:
What was our hotel room like?
Marco:
What was my kid's room like when he was this age?
Marco:
I would love to be able to capture that kind of stuff and then kind of just experience it in the Vision Pro.
Marco:
And I think one thing that you will probably want if we see that...
Marco:
is the most resolution possible on those captures.
Marco:
Because what you are seeing in the Vision Pro, the field of view it is simulating is massive compared to a phone or a computer screen.
Marco:
So the pictures that we take today on our little iPhone camera sensors or whatever, a single picture...
Marco:
Yeah, that looks great on your phone.
Marco:
If you're lucky, it might look OK on your laptop screen.
Marco:
But when you put it onto like a 50 foot tall virtual screen or something, that's a different experience.
John:
That's also when people complain that I'm nitpicking when I say, well, iPhone photos are fine unless you're quote unquote pixel peeping.
John:
Well, guess what?
John:
Everyone inside the Vision Pro is pixel peeping.
John:
Everything is so much bigger.
John:
It could be the side of a of a billboard.
John:
And suddenly you see last time with the picture of you towing your car on the beach and what a mess it made of your face because it was low light.
John:
Yeah, that's not you're not going to need to pixel peep to see that when it's 50 feet tall in front of you.
Marco:
So I think the rise of these headsets, whether it's the Vision Pro or the Quest series or whatever, the rise of these headsets, I think is going to increase the demand for much higher resolution phone cameras, basically, that can actually capture a lot more detail of our surroundings and our experiences that we go through in life.
Marco:
And, you know, and maybe even, you know, big cameras might have a small resurgence because they're so much higher resolution.
Marco:
But I think it ultimately like it has to go in the phones like this has to be.
Marco:
And maybe they'll just do it with with a bunch of, you know, combination capture like, OK, we'll take this.
John:
Yeah, that's what big cameras do that.
John:
Speaking of big cameras, cameras with huge sensors, with huge, like big mirrorless cameras with like 60 megapixel sensors also have a mode where they will take 75 pictures and stitch them together for massive resolution.
John:
And the phones should, I mean, that's what panorama is.
John:
It's taking a bunch of captures and stitching them together.
John:
uh that that kind of technology like you're not you can't just keep adding megapixels it's not going to work especially with the phone but what you can do is get more and more intelligent modes of taking a whole bunch of 48 megapixel captures and weaving them together into something that looks better and better inside vision pro
Marco:
Talking about as the Vision Pro market very slowly grows over time, that will give the iPhone a chance to have its cameras grow too.
Marco:
Because if the Vision Pro takes off, and if it sticks around for the long haul and becomes something that a lot of us really want and enjoy, you're going to want the highest resolution captures possible.
Marco:
And current phone stuff, again, looks great on the phone, but...
Marco:
When you blow it up, most phone pictures don't even look that good on my Pro Display XDR.
Marco:
And that is, in the scale of what the Vision Pro is giving us, the XDR is like a relatively tiny app window for the Vision Pro.
Marco:
So it's a very different scale that we're talking about of experiencing our media.
Marco:
And there's going to be just demand for infinitely higher resolution.
John:
That's why as a consumption device is another thing in its favor because in the beginning, professional companies that can take very expensive, huge cameras and actually capture massive resolution, that's the only content that's going to be available that can truly take advantage of the Vision Pro with all the resolution that's available as you turn your head around.
John:
and regular people won't be able to make that certainly not with their iphones and most people aren't going to buy like the weird 360 camera rigs that stitch together these high megapixel images but some companies will be able to like apple and other companies who can essentially ship an app that is the equivalent of the single app ebook remember those days on the on the right it's just like what is this it's an app that just shows you a bunch of places but we capture them with our camera equipment that costs as much as your house
John:
Yeah, it's 60 gigs.
John:
You can't capture this, but we captured it and it looks amazing and you're just going to want to sit here and listen to podcasts on Marco's app.
Marco:
Maybe I should do that.
Marco:
Maybe that's my app.
Marco:
Maybe it's like I create an immersive experience that I like film some mountain somewhere with some crazy camera.
John:
It gives you an excuse to buy another $200,000 worth of 3D video capture equipment and then go on top of a mountain.
Marco:
I definitely have not recently purchased a very high resolution camera.
Casey:
Oh, gosh.
Casey:
After show.
Casey:
Apple Watch 10.
Casey:
I'm excited to see.
Casey:
I got to imagine they're going to make this look different.
Casey:
And I'm excited to see what that looks like.
John:
I mean, some people keep saying with the Roman numeral X 10, right?
John:
It's like, oh, it'll be like the iPhone 10 or Mac OS 10.
John:
It'll be the time they change the form factor.
John:
But what if they're not ready to change the form factor?
John:
Then it's just going to be Apple Watch 10 with a one and a zero.
John:
And we'll worry about it next year.
John:
Like this would be a convenient time, but sometimes convenient times don't always line up.
John:
I hope it is a new form factor.
John:
It is a reasonable time for it to be one, but there's no, there's no like pressing need.
John:
Like they have to do it or whatever.
John:
And if it doesn't line up, it doesn't line up.
John:
Hey, look, look what they did with the iPhone.
John:
They were ready early.
John:
And so they just skipped nine.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
I mean, I guess that's true, but I, I don't know.
Casey:
I, I just have a gut feeling that's going to happen.
Marco:
It'll be cool if they use the X, too.
Marco:
I think we're ready for it.
Marco:
And honestly, I'm a little scared because the Apple Watch is what I wear most days.
Marco:
And I'm a huge watch snob.
Marco:
And I'm currently happy with the Apple Watch.
Marco:
I don't super love it.
Marco:
I don't super hate anything about it.
Marco:
We're in a nice, stable place.
Marco:
And I'm a little worried if they're going to take some big moves.
Marco:
I'm a little worried they might mess some stuff up.
Marco:
Like, I gotta say, I still don't love watchOS 10, but that's a story for another day, I guess.
Marco:
So, you know, we'll see what they do with the hardware.
Marco:
So I'm a little nervous, but their track record with the Apple Watch hardware is really good.
Marco:
With the exception of, you know, the first one just being so darn slow and everything, but that wasn't really their fault.
Marco:
Recent generations of the Apple Watch hardware have really just been amazing.
Marco:
It's been a little boring, you know, with the exception of the Ultra, which was a huge hit.
Marco:
But the regular series Apple Watch, it doesn't change much in recent years.
Marco:
But every year brings some kind of little incremental changes that over time add up.
Marco:
And so the recent Apple Watches are great.
Marco:
But as I said last time this came up, I would like to see some progress.
Marco:
refreshing and variety happen in the apple watch lineup just because it is still jewelry um so you know some some updates and refreshing over time are a nice thing to have uh i'm looking forward to that the the whole strap attachment rumor things has me a little nervous yeah but again you look at apple's track record on making straps they're amazing like apple has the best watch straps in the watch industry
Marco:
by a huge margin generally speaking like yeah one or two nice ones from other vendors exist but like apple watch straps on the whole and and i'm really mostly are only talking about the ones by apple not by third parties which are largely garbage but apple's own apple watch straps
Marco:
not only are amazing today, but have been amazing for the entire run of the Apple Watch.
Marco:
Even the very first ones they launched with the very first Apple Watch, those straps were all amazing.
Marco:
They were super good straps, so they're really good at this.
Marco:
If they're going to redo the strap mechanism...
Marco:
I trust that they're probably going to come out with some really nice straps to go with it, too.
Marco:
So I'm looking forward to this rumor of this big Apple Watch revamp.
Marco:
I think it's time, and I trust that they will probably do a really good job with it.
John:
I feel like this this strap rumor is the one that I'm most willing to believe that I couldn't get that one done.
John:
Like, you know, if I had to rank them like a new shape redesign for 10 is higher ranked for me than new shape and also new strap because our previous session, maybe they couldn't figure out something better.
John:
And so it goes in the back burner for a few more years or whatever.
John:
But having them both would be great.
John:
That would really be an Apple Watch 10.
John:
New design, new strap, new everything.
John:
It would be very much like the iPhone 10.
Marco:
Well, but the thing is, according to the rumor that one of the reasons they were looking at a new strap attachment mechanism is because the current one takes up a lot of space in the case, which is true.
Marco:
It might be that in order to get a new case-shaped design, they had to change the strap mechanism to get that extra space out.
John:
If they tied them together, then yeah, then either both of them pushed off or neither one.
John:
But it's so hard to tell from these rumors because, you know, see previous Apple Watch rumors, they have not been entirely reliable about it.
Marco:
form factor changes no they've been comically unreliable but you know if you think about what apple could do with more interior space of an apple watch the answer is very obvious add more battery and therefore give the watch more capabilities and make it you know raise the specs basically and or make it thinner
Marco:
both of which would be wonderfully welcome for the Apple Watch.
Marco:
I would actually say that they've come far enough in the thinness department in recent minor revisions.
Marco:
I actually don't think it needs to be that much thinner.
Marco:
I'm happy with it where it is.
Marco:
A little bit thinner would be a little more elegant, but it's not screaming for being thinner.
Marco:
But it is screaming for resources.
John:
I think you still have to fight the thinness one because I think we would all agree an Apple Watch that's one quarter of the thickness could be amazing.
John:
It opens up a whole new design possibility.
John:
It's like a really thin one.
John:
But we know we just can't do that with current technology.
John:
I feel like we need to keep much more so than the phone.
John:
because it's not something that you hold in your hand.
John:
Thin watches exist and are at a good look and are cool, and Apple should pursue that.
John:
It is now, it is still thicker than, if you said Apple, but you have a magic battery that can be any size and give you the same amount of energy, they wouldn't choose to make it this big.
John:
It is thicker than Apple would choose to design.
John:
It's thicker than anyone would choose to design.
John:
We just know it has to be that big.
John:
So I get what you're saying, that it's not so big that it's an impediment, but watches, unlike phones as we know them today, can tolerate being a lot thinner than these things are.
Marco:
Yes, but it doesn't look like a thick watch.
Marco:
It looks like a kind of regular range of a watch thickness.
Marco:
It doesn't need it.
Marco:
You're right that it would be nice if it's thinner, but if they're going to gain a decent chunk of internal volume to use for something, like to spend somehow.
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
I'm not saying this year.
John:
I'm saying like 20 years from now.
John:
Apple shouldn't stop pursuing thinness because we're never going to get to the 20 years from now really thin watch if they don't continue to pursue it.
John:
And the flip side of that is there is obviously the style on the watch industry of like it is ridiculously thick because that is the style.
Marco:
Well, that's a style.
John:
It's not universal.
John:
Well, I mean the Ultra.
John:
The Ultra fulfills that.
John:
But there are very thin watches and there are also very thick ones.
John:
And the thick ones are not thick because they need to be that thick.
John:
It is a style.
John:
And I feel like the Ultra, that's where the Ultra lives right now.
John:
And I'm happy with that one.
John:
But for the regular watch, I would love to see it be thinner in a decade.
John:
rather than the same size.
Marco:
Ultimately, what I want to see for the watch is anything that can raise its limits.
Marco:
The entire watch software platform is so extremely limited by its need to conserve power very aggressively in order to have useful battery life.
Marco:
And if they can give it 20% more battery space, whatever it would be,
Marco:
If that would then allow them to let the watch loose a little bit more with its own resource usage, that opens up much more software potential.
Marco:
That opens up potentially more responsiveness for the user, more on-device features.
Marco:
It makes the entire watch experience potentially much better if they can lift some of those limits.
Marco:
So that could pay off in a much bigger way than making it a millimeter thinner, in my opinion.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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you.
Casey:
AirPods 4.
Casey:
I don't have too much to say about this.
Casey:
We have in the show notes that they're supposed to be getting a new design, an updated case, and potentially even active noise cancellation, which I think would be great for non-AirPods Pro things.
Casey:
Apparently, the case will have speakers for Find My Alerts.
Casey:
It'll have USB-C, obviously.
Casey:
And then apparently a higher-end version of the AirPods 4, not the Pro, but the AirPods 4 will have ANC, like I said.
Marco:
AirPods 4+.
Casey:
Yeah, right.
Casey:
Or 4 Macs.
Casey:
I think AirPods 4, that sounds good.
Casey:
I mean, I don't have any particularly strong thoughts about this.
Casey:
I think I'll probably stick with the AirPods Pro forevermore because they are so freaking good.
Casey:
But I think more of that tech flowing downhill to regular stuff, I'm here for it.
Casey:
Sounds good to me.
John:
2024 is the year of stuff for me.
John:
OLED iPads that no one's really interested in.
John:
AirPods 4 that no one's really interested in.
John:
But I am, and it's also my iPhone year.
John:
I'm a little bit confused by the AirPods 4 rumor with there being two versions, one of which has noise canceling or whatever.
John:
Only confused because they haven't come right out and said, oh, by the way, the one that has noise canceling will be shoved into your ear canal, which is not what I want.
John:
The reason I use AirPods 3 is I don't want things shoved into my ear canal.
John:
If they have two versions of the AirPods 4, surely one of them will not be shoved into my ear canal.
John:
I don't know what the word is for this that I keep saying.
John:
But anyway, you know what I mean?
John:
The little soft, squishy tips that go into the hole in your ear.
John:
I don't want that.
John:
So if there are two of them, one of them's got to be not like that.
John:
But are they also trying to say that the other AirPods 4 will also not go in your ear but have a noise canceling?
John:
You could do noise canceling, like do the same thing.
John:
but not be shoved into your canal, but it's not going to work as well at all, right?
John:
Just for many, many reasons.
John:
But, you know, the rumors are still vague.
John:
Anyway, if there are new AirPods, I will probably get them unless both of them go into your canals, in which case I'll just ride these out.
John:
And I'm willing to believe that I can be converted.
John:
If Apple just stops selling the ones that don't go into your canals, I'll just have to get used to it.
John:
I'll probably survive, but...
John:
it's not what i prefer again my wife has airpods pro now she's had two pairs of them uh and i've tried them and i know what they're like and it's not like i can't do it i just don't prefer it i could get used to it if i had to and i'm sure if i did get used to it i'd be like wow noise cancelling is great isn't this wonderful yeah you know all the things everyone else already knows i just still prefer the other one so i'm hoping the airpods 4 with two different models one or both of them still don't go into your canal and that'll be the one for me as i watch my oled ipad
John:
It's a big year for John.
John:
Yeah, all the boring products.
Casey:
AirPods Max 2, potentially?
John:
Question mark time.
Casey:
I've never tried the AirPods Max, so I don't have any thoughts on this other than...
John:
I mean, do they make a USB-C model?
John:
Do they actually revise it so they're changed in some way?
John:
Do they fix the condensation issue for people with sweaty ears?
John:
Do they make them more comfortable?
John:
Granted, I've only worn them in Apple stores or whatever, but I do not find them comfortable.
John:
It hurts the top of my head with that stupid mesh thing.
John:
It's not what I prefer.
Marco:
Yeah, the AirPods Max are really great in certain ways, but they could really use a revision like they could really use a version to tackling of this problem.
Marco:
They definitely need to get rid of lightning.
Marco:
Of course, we know that they need the updated processor to have all the newest features of the AirPods Pro, especially at their price.
Marco:
And what I would hope is what John was alluding to.
Marco:
I would hope they would address comfort a little bit better.
Marco:
The current ones, as talked about many times in the show, they're very heavy because they use a ton of metal and almost no plastic anywhere in them.
Marco:
And that that makes it very difficult to achieve good comfort with headphones.
Marco:
Like you can have comfortable, heavy headphones, but you probably won't.
John:
It makes it much harder.
John:
You really need to spread... What you'd have to do with heavy headphones, you have to spread the weight over a large area, and that looks clunky, and it also means there's more crap in contact with your head, which is hotter and sweatier.
Marco:
Right, and so it is much easier to make comfortable headphones when they are lightweight, and it is much easier to make lightweight headphones when they use a lot less steel and aluminum than Apple used on theirs.
Marco:
Generally, that means plastic.
Marco:
That's why when you look at the other... If you look at the competitors...
Marco:
To the AirPods Max, the main competitors are the Sony and Bose noise-canceling headphones, both of which use large amounts of plastic in their construction.
Marco:
In part, yes, you could say, oh, because it's cheaper.
Marco:
No, the real reason is because it's better for headphones to be plastic because it's much lighter, and that makes them much more comfortable.
Marco:
Also, of course, the AirPods Max have that terrible case.
Marco:
They don't have a power button.
Marco:
There's all sorts of little other things that I think a revision to this product would be very needed and very welcome.
Marco:
Because the other thing about the AirPods Max is that they sound incredible.
Marco:
They sound really good.
Marco:
Their noise cancellation is also really good.
Marco:
They compete well on those factors.
Marco:
It's just all the physical design factors that they really need a lot of help with.
Marco:
So I hope Apple's willing and able to do the kind of update that the product deserves because, again, they sound so good that it's kind of a shame right now that they are held back in these other factors to a lot of people because sound-wise, they're amazing.
John:
Can we try to speed run these last four, especially since we're in the question marks here?
Casey:
HomePod, don't care.
Casey:
Apple TV, yes, please.
Casey:
LLM-powered stuff in Apple OSes, sure, why not?
Casey:
Inside loading in the EU, we'll see what happens.
Casey:
Done.
John:
A little bit faster than I expected, but yeah.
John:
So for the HomePod and Apple TV, I think that's just a collective shrug.
John:
I mostly agree with what Casey said.
John:
With the LLM stuff in Apple OSes, this probably should have been hoisted up farther because...
John:
2024 could be the year that Apple rolls out some of the stuff that it's doing.
John:
We mentioned at the top of follow-up, they are doing LLM stuff.
John:
We know they're doing it.
John:
Is this the year some of it comes out?
John:
We all hope so because Siri's crappy and we think the LLM stuff could make it better.
John:
For all the problems with the LLM stuff, anything is better than current Siri.
John:
Really constrain it.
John:
Have it only help out in certain scenarios.
John:
We just want it to work and be smarter than it is.
John:
We're so tolerant of Siri's
John:
you know, disloyalty, I don't know, betrayal, non-functionality, that all of the problems that we know are inherent with LM's will still not be as bad as what Siri does, right?
John:
So I really hope that this is the year that, and it doesn't have to be just Siri.
John:
That's why I say LM powered stuff in Apple OS's.
John:
There's tons of stuff they could do with it.
John:
It could help out with autocorrect.
John:
It could try to summarize things for you.
John:
And I say on all Apple OS's, they could roll it on the Mac, on the iPad.
John:
Like I'm willing to, I'm ready for Apple to roll out
John:
Something interesting using LLM technology on all of its platforms, even if it's a small thing, because we know that technology has uses.
John:
It doesn't solve the world's problems.
John:
It's not a quote-unquote AI.
John:
It can't even do everything that Siri can do.
John:
It's not even ready to step into those shoes.
John:
But can it help out a little with autocorrect or search in photos?
John:
Yes, I think it can do that.
John:
And so whatever those little areas are,
John:
especially you know again for something like photos they could roll that out across all their platforms that photos exists on and it wouldn't replace the photos app it would just be an existing feature of the photos app like search that suddenly works a little bit better than it used to thanks to llm technology that runs locally on your mac that's what i'm looking forward to and then the sideloading in the eu stuff uh
John:
If nothing comes of that, then we just whatever.
John:
But if something comes to me, it could be potentially very interesting because we've speculated about what would happen if there was ever sideloading the iPhone and actually seeing it happen, even if it's not in our country.
John:
That's time to get some popcorn.
Marco:
Honestly, what's interesting about the sideloading is I bet
Marco:
it's not going to be that big of a deal.
Marco:
It'll be a big deal for podcasts and the press and legally.
Marco:
It'll be a big deal for that, for talking about it.
Marco:
But the actual market for who's going to actually do it, I think it's going to be much like the whole Netherlands dating app thing.
John:
But I was thinking of that scenario, and I think there's a big difference between the dating app scenario where it's like, well, you just have to charge money.
John:
Apple will just charge you anyway.
John:
I think, again, I don't know the details, but I think this is a scenario where...
John:
Once the sideloading door is open, like granted, you have to go through it the way Apple says you have to, but I don't think Apple can extract any money from sideloading.
John:
So it's not going to be like Netherland lading app.
John:
It's going to be constrained by what Apple does, like whatever hoops they make you jump through.
John:
But once you've jumped through those hoops,
John:
Apple doesn't get a cut of anything.
John:
Apple doesn't, like, it's all sidestepping Apple entirely.
John:
If that's not true, then you're right.
John:
It's just going to be like no one's dating app.
John:
Do we know that?
John:
Do we know whether that's true?
John:
Like, whether they're allowed to charge a commission or whatever?
John:
I don't think, see, we'll see.
John:
I don't know the details, but I would imagine that the whole point of this is sideloading is different than using a different payment method when you're selling an app through Apple's own app store.
John:
This is like, no, I'm not even using Apple's own app store.
John:
The whole point of this is people want to have their own app stores, right?
John:
Which, by the way, as a developer, I really don't want this to happen.
John:
I know.
John:
How can having your own app store make any sense if Apple's allowed to take a cut?
John:
So I have to think that once you jump through whatever hurdles that Apple is going to surely put in your path to sideload anything, that Apple is out of that thing.
John:
And if that is true, the reason this is interesting is let's see what happens
John:
when the iPhone is open to all the very hungry, sometimes unscrupulous, but sometimes just plain, like people who were boxed out of the iPhone before, is there some market need that Apple has not been addressing that will quickly be addressed besides porn, right?
John:
Right.
John:
But even if it's just porn, like even if it's just a giant flood of porn coming in the side loading door on the iPhone, that'll still be interesting because we haven't seen this platform exposed to the actual market.
John:
It's always been mediated through Apple severely.
John:
So we don't actually know what's out there and what might come in through the side loading door.
John:
I'm kind of glad it would be happening in the EU and not here in case, you know, bad things happen.
John:
But...
John:
I'm actually interested in something coming of that.
John:
And who knows?
John:
With these things, you don't know how long they're going to wind on or whether Apple thinks they're already in compliance and all sorts of other shenanigans.
John:
So it's hard to make any hard and fast predictions.
John:
But when I was thinking about this, I immediately thought of like, oh, Apple's just going to take their cut.
John:
And I'm like, well, wait a second.
John:
What if they can't?
John:
What if that's the whole point of this thing that everyone's going to be allowed to have an app store?
John:
Like maybe Steam will be on there or the Epic App Store.
John:
Maybe like what will gaming be like on the iPad if you don't have to go through Apple to launch your game?
John:
Maybe that's the maybe that's the only way that Apple actually, you know, gets a hold in AAA gaming instead of just their existing mobile gaming is through the side door of, you know, Steam, the Steam Store and Epic Game Store sideloaded for EU people only.
John:
We'll see.
Marco:
My doomsday scenario that I really don't want to happen is if there's no restrictions for sideloaded stuff and if you can have sideloaded app stores, then I'm afraid that some major must-have app provider like Facebook...
Marco:
would say, you know what?
Marco:
Instagram, which we know you're all going to install, is no longer on the App Store.
Marco:
You have to download the Facebook App Store and let it root your phone, basically.
Marco:
And have to only go through them.
Marco:
They have no more protections from Apple's rules, and they only have technical protections, which are much weaker than technical and policy protections.
Marco:
And then me as a developer, do I have to put my stuff in the Facebook Store?
John:
Only if you want to sell it to people in the EU.
John:
That's the whole thing about this being limited.
Marco:
I know.
Marco:
So I hope that outcome doesn't happen.
Marco:
And what will help keep that from happening is if this stays as small as possible.
Marco:
And maybe it'll just be like... I'm sure Apple will...
Marco:
If they do this, I'm sure they're going to do it in the most reluctant way possible.
Marco:
They're going to only do the bare minimum to satisfy whatever regulation is forcing it.
Marco:
They are going to challenge it at every step.
Marco:
They might, as you said, they might say, we're already in compliance with some little piddly crap and they're still taking a 27% commission or whatever else.
Marco:
And then the EU might sue them or whatever.
Marco:
They have to work through all that.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
So this could be a huge fight for a long time.
Marco:
I don't for a second believe that Apple is going to give any ground that they are not forced to give.
Marco:
So for instance, I would not expect that they would allow sideloading anywhere else besides the EU.
Marco:
Like if they don't have to, they won't do it.
Marco:
And whatever the EU mandate is for sideloading,
Marco:
They're going to do the bare minimum to qualify for that, and they're going to make it as hostile as possible for people to actually do it to ensure no one does it.
Marco:
Whether it's the customer side of scary warnings or whether it's the legal developer side of you've got to give us 27% or both, they're going to make it so it's really unpleasant for everybody.
John:
And there is that Google case that they lost against Epic that actually is in the US.
John:
So there are other legal precedents potentially rumbling towards Apple, maybe not next year, but maybe the year after that.
John:
So this being confined to the EU for now does not mean it's going to be that way forever.
Marco:
Yeah, but I'm hoping that sideloading on iOS ends up being as much of a nothing burger as sideloading on Android has been.
Marco:
And, you know, yeah, maybe we'll get a flood of porn.
Marco:
Maybe we'll get like, we can probably get emulators, maybe.
John:
Well, but the sideloading on Android has been not a big deal, partially for the reasons that Google just lost that case.
John:
true is that it wasn't naturally that way google sort of put its thumb on the scale to ensure that oh you can sideload but you really don't want to do that do you that's why they lost okay so uh things may change in the future and as for the home pod uh i finally reached casey level don't care
Marco:
there it is i'm slowly replacing my home pods with sonos gear and i am much happier for it uh they work a lot better the home pod is smaller and looks nicer and in some in some situations sounds better but it has broken my heart too many times the sonos gear is really reliable
Marco:
The Alexa assistant on it is rock solid, fast and reliable.
Marco:
I hadn't used Alexa in a while because I threw away my last Echo, the ball one that kept dying and being weird.
Marco:
And Amazon's own devices have ratcheted up the annoyance level over time so much.
Marco:
It's like, by the way, did you know I can annoy you in new and interesting ways if you say this?
Marco:
Most of that seems to be absent on the Sonos version of it.
Marco:
It seems to be like a more limited version of Alexa, which in those ways I think is a feature on a bug.
Marco:
I have been extremely impressed with the Alexa Assistant's ability to answer general knowledge questions.
Marco:
Questions that I think are somewhat difficult for a voice assistant to answer.
Marco:
One of the recent things was from Adventure Time, we couldn't remember Marceline's dad's name.
Marco:
And so I asked it from across the room.
Marco:
what is the name of Marceline the Vampire Queen's father?
Marco:
And it got it.
Marco:
Like, it didn't waffle, it didn't say, well, on the web, I found this thing that might be it.
Marco:
No, it just gave me the answer.
Marco:
It was directly correct.
Marco:
The other day, I asked something like, what was the outcome?
Marco:
Oh, my son was asking about Michael Jackson, because one of his songs was on, and it was asking, like, oh, how did he die?
Marco:
And we mentioned, oh, there he had this drug thing, and his doctor was put on trial.
Marco:
And I asked...
Marco:
I asked, first of all, how old was Michael Jackson when he died?
Marco:
It got that instantly.
Marco:
It gave me the straight answer.
Marco:
Perfect.
Marco:
And then as Adam was asking about what happened with his death, I asked something along the lines of, what was the outcome of the trial for Michael Jackson's doctor?
Marco:
Figuring, like, that's a pretty tricky question for it to parse.
Marco:
Like, it got it.
Marco:
It was perfect.
Marco:
And I was thinking, like, man, asking Siri this kind of question?
Marco:
Like, Siri can't even reliably play music when I ask it to play music.
Marco:
Like, it...
Marco:
Whereas Alexa, for all of its faults of, by the way, did you know, it, as a voice assistant, is really solid.
Marco:
It is fast.
Marco:
It is reliable.
Marco:
And it is surprisingly good at general knowledge questions.
Marco:
Not to mention the fact that it kicks butt on timers and all that other stuff, too.
Marco:
So while it feels kind of gross to like Alexa right now, because I find a lot of the other stuff they do with it kind of distasteful with their own products, as the voice assistant on the Sonos devices, I'm fine with it.
Marco:
I'm totally fine with it.
Marco:
you know, airplay is so much better on Sonos.
Marco:
The sound quality is really great.
Marco:
The, the sync, the multi-room stuff is rock solid.
Marco:
Like I am super happy with the Sonos gear.
Marco:
So sorry, HomePod.
Marco:
I gave you lots of chances.
Marco:
You blew them all and I'm done with you.
John:
See, this is what you get for using Siri all this time.
John:
I've always been telling you that both Alexa and the Google thing are so much better.
John:
I think Google is the best one.
John:
Alexa is clearly second and Siri is so far distant.
John:
Third is not even funny.
John:
And I still do it.
John:
It's the game we still play.
John:
I still ask all three.
John:
And it's just, you know, we always ask Siri for comic relief.
John:
Let's see what Siri does with this.
John:
And it's always hilarious.
John:
And, you know...
John:
Alexa and Google depends on what you're asking.
John:
I think Alexa having the IMDB database probably helps a lot with those kind of specific questions that it can answer more directly.
John:
But the Google Home, I mean, essentially, even if all it's doing is essentially running the Google search and reading you that aforementioned top summary thing, that is often close to being the answer.
John:
Although, as both of these things start to get LLM-powered, now I start to go...
John:
It would be nice, you know, the Amazon thing if you told me whether you used LLM to come up with that Michael Jackson age of death, because I would prefer if you didn't, because I'm sure you can give me a plausible age.
John:
But now I have to go to the Wikipedia page to check what the actual age was.
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
Like, I don't want to not I don't want to not trust it because it's LLM stuff as LLM can give you a plausible answer to all sorts of stuff.
John:
But I want to know, is this an answer that comes from it's not even I can't even characterize it.
John:
It's like in the days before LLM, the only way you could give that answer is by pulling it off some well known web page or a database that you have.
John:
But now LLMs can give you that answer with zero knowledge.
John:
They don't have to know it.
John:
And if they do know it, they don't have to give it to you.
John:
They just produce something that is plausible, statistically plausible.
John:
And lots of answers could be statistically plausible.
John:
And you as the user are like, oh, great.
John:
It gave us the exact age.
John:
The whole point is you didn't know the age.
John:
That's why you asked.
John:
So you haven't, unless it tells you like two or 97, if it's within a plausible range, you're going to be like, I guess that's the answer.
John:
And pretty soon that's not going to be as true as it is today, which is kind of sad.
Marco:
I think we are lucky in that I think running LLM inference is still much more expensive than running a search index lookup.
Marco:
So whatever they've already built that didn't use LLMs is probably so much cheaper to run queries against.
Marco:
Yeah.
John:
If you ask something about movies or TV or whatever, doing a reasonable search of the Internet Movie Database and giving you the answer that way with a little bit of intelligence is so much better than saying, we threw a bunch of crap into this LLM and stuff comes out sometimes.
John:
Isn't that cool?
John:
Just do the database lookup.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
Thanks to our sponsors this week, Notion and Trade Coffee.
Marco:
And thanks to our members who support us directly.
Marco:
You can join us at atp.fm slash join.
Marco:
And we will talk to you next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Because it was accidental.
Marco:
Accidental.
Marco:
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-N-T, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A, Syracuse.
Marco:
It's accidental, they didn't mean it.
Marco:
Do you do any kind of New Year's resolution or Cortex-style themes?
Casey:
No.
Casey:
Nope.
Casey:
Definitely not.
John:
Well, I mean, I listen to the show where they talk about them.
John:
Does that count?
Casey:
Yeah, exactly.
John:
Yeah, that counts a little bit, yeah.
John:
I listen and think, boy, how unlike me that they are.
Marco:
They're very regimented.
Marco:
I've often felt like I frequently align with Gray's theme.
Marco:
So for listeners, if for some reason you don't listen to Cortex, the gist of what we're talking about is that it's a thing Cortex does every year where rather than like a New Year's resolution –
Marco:
And our friend Merlin has very successfully argued against New Year's resolutions over time of being fairly dysfunctional and generally considered harmful in the sense that resolutions are usually setting yourself up to fail pretty effectively and pretty shortly.
Marco:
And then you just feel bad about yourself as opposed to what Gray, Micron, Cortex do is like –
Marco:
more setting a theme for the year to kind of guide your your thinking and work over the year as opposed to a resolution that like i'm going to you know and so as an example like instead of saying like i'm gonna lose 20 pounds by june you know like that's that's a specific goal you can call it a resolution um but that's the kind of thing that's like it's very it's very easy for that kind of thing to fail and
Marco:
You also tend to know early on in the year how much you failed at it, and you might then, like, fall off the wagon and go back to your old habits or whatever.
Marco:
Whereas a theme could be more like health.
Marco:
Like, I'm going to make this the year of improving my health.
Marco:
That is something that it's hard to distinctly fail at.
Marco:
I mean, unless you die, I guess.
Marco:
Wow.
Marco:
Sorry, like it's hard to like outright fail to the point where you're discouraged from continuing.
Marco:
And it's more like I'm going to make decisions throughout the year thinking of this as a guiding principle.
Marco:
And so it's it seems to be much more effective.
Marco:
And my apologies to the Cortex podcast if I have any of this wrong or if I'm mischaracterizing it.
Marco:
But I think it's the gist of it.
John:
There's a YouTube video that explains it pretty well.
John:
We can find that for the notes.
John:
We'll put it in.
John:
But if not, just search YouTube for Cortex yearly themes.
Marco:
Yeah, and I think it's a really nice system.
Marco:
It's a really nice reframing of this kind of thing that we do, like getting away from the resolution thing because, again, resolutions are so likely to fail.
John:
Did you two ever do resolutions?
Marco:
I've done them here and there, and I usually forget by the second week of January.
Marco:
I even forget what it was.
John:
Did you forget or you failed them?
John:
Or did you lose interest?
Marco:
Both?
Marco:
Generally both.
Marco:
All three?
Yeah.
Marco:
But yeah, I like the idea of the themes and I oftentimes line up with Grey's themes.
John:
But do you do your own thing?
John:
You like the idea of them.
John:
And when you hear Grey's themes, you're like, oh, that seems like a good idea.
John:
But do you actually ever say, this is going to be my theme for the year?
John:
Even if you're saying, I'm going to adopt Grey's theme and I'm going to do that this year too.
Marco:
Generally, for the last few years, generally, yes, I have kind of set a theme.
Marco:
But sometimes I forget what it is, and it might change at like six months later.
John:
Wow.
John:
You've got to write it down.
Marco:
That's a great theme.
Marco:
But generally speaking, like last year, I kind of had the guiding principle of closing open projects because my life was full of open projects.
Marco:
It's not anymore, though, right?
Marco:
Moving, house renovation, all that stuff.
Marco:
There was so much going on and it was very overwhelming.
Marco:
This year, I'm making it the year of Overcast because Overcast has really...
Marco:
um suffered the last couple years in that like i've had all this other life stuff going on i have not been able to give it a lot of time i actually have turned that around substantially in the last few months like i'm giving overcast way more time in the last few months and i'm not only am i making good progress on the big rewrite but i'm also just much happier like it had been so long since i really had a lot of good programming work done
Marco:
So I'm much happier doing this now.
Marco:
So I'm really making this year the year of Overcast.
Marco:
I'm going to get the rewrite out this year.
Marco:
It's going to be a ton of work.
Marco:
There's still a ton to do.
Marco:
I can't tell you when this year it's coming out because I am no better at estimating software timing than anyone else.
John:
That's the thing about themes.
John:
The theme doesn't say that it's the year I'm going to ship the new version of Overcast.
John:
it just says year of overcast and i would say uh based on listening to all the theme episodes over the years that's probably a little bit too specific for a theme but still it not being so specific to say the year i launched the rewrite of overcast it is more general than that but i bet you could go one level more general if you needed to but since you're not this is not an official cortex brand theme this is just a marco's adoption and by the way a knockoff theme
John:
now you have you have recorded it in a place you haven't written it down in a theme system journal or even a notes document but you do have recorded it on this podcast and casey will forget about it but i won't that's correct themes the theme system journal looks like a really nice product that i would not use because i don't use paper it looks really nice though yeah we have computers people who like paper like paper but every time i see those things it's like this is the whole reason i like computers i don't have to do things on paper
Marco:
I wish I liked paper and pens.
Marco:
It looks so cool.
Marco:
Like, the whole world looks so cool, and you got all these nice notebooks.
John:
To see my own handwriting, that's not cool.
Marco:
Yeah, I guess that's the problem.
Marco:
Like, every time I handwrite anything now, like, God, this sucks.
Marco:
I just want to type things.
Marco:
Are you writing everything in graffiti?
Marco:
I know, it's terrible.
Marco:
Yeah, nice pull.
Marco:
My Palm 5X is already broken, by the way.
John:
Why do your A's not have crosses on them?
John:
I don't know how to write anymore.
John:
I just do graffiti.
John:
I write all the letters in the same spot on top of each other, and then I can't read it later.
Marco:
oh my gosh no but but you know with like setting the goal as or setting the theme as overcast i'm intentionally being a little too specific with that because that's that's the level of focus it needs this year if i if i would instead say something like the year of work that is a valid thing i think that was gray's last year one no that was a year of new decades dawn sequel whatever so like it wasn't actually this is an inside joke there's
John:
The titles of their themes have had varying quality over the years.
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
But in certain years, you might want to open new opportunities.
Marco:
In certain years, you might want to focus on closing opportunities or focus on the ones you have.
Marco:
There can be more broad themes.
Marco:
For me, this year, the theme needs to be overcast.
Marco:
It is a huge part of my income.
Marco:
It is my main business.
Marco:
It is also my main...
Marco:
product that i craft like it is it is the only it's the main thing i work on as a programmer because you know i don't work on the cms so right so uh so like you know it's very important to me and it has been neglected like i have neglected it because i have been spending too much time doing other work or other needs in my life and
John:
and this year is when i need to get back to it and and it makes me confident that i can do it that i've already been swinging back to it for like a month and and it's been going very well a month that you've been doing i think you've been swinging back to it for a while now but although this theme like obviously cortex is about productivity and people's work lives or whatever but themes don't necessarily have to be focused on work life which is another reason that overcast is maybe a little bit too specific and you will hear themes from the two of them that
John:
are not absolutely confined to one of the many things they do as part of their work.
John:
Obviously health would be an example of that because that's not work related.
John:
It's something you're focusing on yourself.
John:
But I'm always waiting for like a yearly theme that has nothing to do with any of their jobs, right?
John:
Like year of romance.
John:
You could apply that to some of their work as well.
John:
But like always the themes are like a thing that applies to one of my businesses and also my life.
John:
And I guess health is the closest they've come.
John:
But like, you know,
John:
Anyway, this is not going to be the year of romance for me any more than any previous years were because I don't do themes.
John:
But I would suggest that for people.
John:
Someone should pick that up.
John:
Year of romance.
John:
It's out there.
John:
Who's going to be brave enough to pick it up?
Casey:
All kidding aside, I really like the idea of a yearly theme, but...
Casey:
I don't feel like I have ever, ever, ever landed on one that I can really grab onto and say, yes, this is what I want for this year.
Casey:
And that's not their fault.
Casey:
That's my fault.
Casey:
But I just, I can't get there.
Casey:
And I'm also not disciplined enough.
Casey:
So let's say that this year was the year of work.
Casey:
And then I decide that I just want to get distracted by, I don't know, wiring the house for Ethernet and Fiber and whatnot.
Casey:
Well, there goes the year of work.
John:
You could have had past themes, like, again, themes that are not focused on work.
John:
You could have had year of reproduction.
John:
You could have had multiple years of reproduction.
Casey:
Yes.
Casey:
Well, in that sense, I have had... I think you did.
John:
I think you did have multiple years of reproduction.
Casey:
We had probably, what, like five years of reproduction?
Casey:
Yeah.
John:
Not all yearly themes.
John:
I mean, it is aspirational in that it is a thing that you went through that is difficult that guided all your decisions for a long period of time.
John:
You just didn't write it down in a little book.
Casey:
I mean, I guess that's true.
Casey:
But I don't – I view – even though I agree with everything you're saying that the yearly theme by no means has to be work-related, I do view it as –
Casey:
It should be work involved, even if it's not specifically for work.
Casey:
And I don't know.
Casey:
I don't feel like I am good enough and disciplined enough to stick with it.
Casey:
And I think that if they were here to argue with us, they would say, well, it's not about discipline.
Casey:
It's just about guiding your actions and guiding your thoughts.
Casey:
And that's fair.
Marco:
Yeah, it's what you make of it, I think, largely.
Marco:
And that's by design.
Casey:
and i don't know i just i feel like if this year was the year of i don't know perfecting call sheet which is again too specific but the year i don't know i can't even think of a good example because i just i can't i can't think of anything the year of living dangerously there's one for you yeah well how would you live dangerously john syracuse so you would you would you leave the house every once in a while coke instead of spray i'm leaving the house leaving the house all the time
Casey:
Yeah, but you won't come to New York when two-thirds of the podcast are there.
Casey:
I'm still grumpy.
John:
Still grumpy, John.
John:
You were there for a reason.
John:
I don't want to get stuck in the sand.
Casey:
You know what you could have been there?
Casey:
You know what your reason could have been?
Casey:
To see some of your great friends that you haven't seen in five friggin' years.
Casey:
Four, whatever.
John:
Just wait until we all get invited to an Apple event.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
Yeah, sure.
Casey:
Like you would go anyway.
Casey:
Like you would go anyway.
Casey:
There's no chance.
John:
I would go.
John:
I'm ready.
John:
Apple, I'm out here.
John:
I'm ready to go to Apple events.
Marco:
So if they have a big Vision Pro event and invite all of us, which I guarantee you is not going to happen, but if that for some reason happened, would you go?
John:
Yeah, no, ever since I've been out of my jobby job, I've been prepared to go to things that I get invited to by Apple.
John:
And the one time it happened, I had to demure because I had my son's high school graduation.
John:
And then since then, I've never been invited.
John:
So I'm just out here waiting.
Yeah.
John:
and i'm sorry i wanted to go to my son's high school graduation graduation so sue me it's like and if my daughter is going to graduate soon too and not this year but next year i'm going to go to that graduation too apple so don't invite me on the day that she's going to have her high school graduation but barring that i'm ready to go to apple events i still haven't even been to apple park i still want to go oh it's really cool i'm sure it is if only someone would invite me