Episode 38 – I Reject Your Reality and Substitute My Own

Peter:
Hey, welcome dear listener. This is Peter. Just in case you’re wondering, this is going to be Scott and my reaction, not in real time and certainly not a response, nothing so thoughtful, to today’s WWDC keynote, at least today’s at the time that we’re recording this. So if you haven’t already, we recommend that you go directly to apple.com and find the keynote. As of right now, it’s right on the homepage, so it really should be easy for you to find. You have no excuse other than maybe not wanting to or, you know, not having the time or some such. So please go ahead and do that now. I’m not bruised. I’m not bruised.

Soundboard:
Friends with Brews! Hi Peter, what’s happening?

Scott:
Peter with Brews!

Soundboard:
We need to talk about your TPS reports.

Scott:
I… okay yeah everything’s fine.

Peter:
So, I did not make a Google Doc, I know you were wondering, but I did not.

Scott:
That weird problem I had that one time where once we started recording the first time my levels dropped that hasn’t happened since then I’m hoping whatever was wrong they fixed because I’ve had an update to Audio Hijack since then No, I didn’t either I didn’t have time

Peter:
All I did was real-time response watching the WWDC today, the keynote.

Scott:
Right, I had to watch the Apple event and then I had to work out, and then I had to go get my daughter, and then I had to come home,

Scott:
and my family was talking about stuff, and then I had to make a coffee, and then I had to call you, or you had to call me. You used Messages as a Google Docs. You just start spamming it with a million instant reactions.

Peter:
I did analogs to most of those things, minus the daughter part.

Scott:
I didn’t see any of your messages, Peter.

Peter:
Because I was talking, I was sharing my feelings with you in real time as I was having them.

Scott:
I just I want you to know how it feels

Peter:
I figured you didn’t. That happens.

Scott:
Kojima-san

Peter:
Kojima-san to you.

Peter:
I think it’s funny how they introduce him as like, you know, Mr. Kojima as opposed to

Scott:
well I think it’s I think it’s he-dae-oh but okay let’s talk about our beers

Peter:
like, you know, uh, Kojiro Kojima or Ken Kojima or anything, you know, Kojima-san.

Scott:
because my cup is dripping now it’s already not frozen

Peter:
Fine.

Scott:
First of all, are you drinking a beer, and what are you drinking?

Peter:
Not yet, but I will.

Scott:
No, that… okay, well… you know what…

Peter:
I have in front of me, in my cold little hand, well my hot little hand, a cold little beer.

Scott:
Wow!

Peter:
I have Jack’s Abby Copper Legend. This is a seasonal release. It’s from last year. It’ll be back soon, but this is their Oktoberfest.

Scott:
Oh.

Peter:
And this is one of my favorite beers.

Scott:
So, where I work, that would have to have an orange tag and it would have to be ordered

Peter:
So I liked it so much that I bought a couple of extra cases last year and hoarded them.

Peter:
Really, why is that?

Scott:
from the copper store and it would have to be segregated from the non-copper stuff.

Scott:
You don’t know about copper and semiconductor manufacturing, do you?

Peter:
This may surprise you, but I don’t work in semiconductor manufacturing, so…

Scott:
Okay.

Peter:
[laughs]

Scott:
Anyway. Here’s what I have. I have a Von Ebert Brewing, which for some reason their logo is a boar

Peter:
Mm-hmm.

Scott:
and this is their pils. German style pilsner. 4.9% alcohol by volume. 16 fluid ounces. The

Peter:
pils. It looks summery.

Scott:
can is really good Peter. This is a nice can. It’s beautiful. This is a very summery can. Look at this. Yeah. Tasting notes. Fresh flowers. Don’t really know about that. White peppercorn

Peter:
So you’re saying you don’t habitually go down and snack on the flowers outside?

Scott:
and lightly toasted crackers. Not really.

Peter:
Okay.

Scott:
I could.

Peter:
Well, I mean, then you would know.

Scott:
I read an interesting article today that someone posted on Mastodon,

Peter:
Oh.

Scott:
and it suggested that we could do the world a big favor by getting rid of our lawns and instead planting wildflowers, and I thought that was a pretty good idea. Cheers. Alright, so tell me about your backyard and then we’ll express our opinions of our beers.

Peter:
Interesting that you mention that because a lot of my backyard, which is… Oh yes, cheers.

Peter:
Cheers. Well, my backyard, a lot of my backyard is not my backyard.

Peter:
that’s not just because I own a condo so I would only own one eighth of my backyard. Turns out, and I found this after I bought this place, most of our backyard is not our backyard unless you expand our to be the wider collective that

Peter:
includes the state of Massachusetts because it’s owned by the Department of Conservation and Recreation. And the plan is that they’re going to be putting a

Peter:
running/walking bike path out there which I’m one of, you know, I think out of all

Peter:
of my condo association, I’m pretty much the one guy who’s like, “Yeah, this sounds okay.”

Scott:
You’re the one guy that might use it.

Peter:
I mean, you know, I was a little offended when I found it was running right through my backyard only to find it’s not my backyard. But that said, they are planning on turning

Scott:
Hmm.

Peter:
a lot of what is lawn now into wildflowers. So, go Mastodon user. You should be happy.

Scott:
That’s good. Go Massachusetts! Go Mastodon-Chusetts!

Peter:
Go Massachusetts! Yeah, so there you go. Massachusetts.

Scott:
No, I think the lawn, I think the American way of living for those who have yards, I think it has to go passe. I think it’s ridiculous. It can’t be, I think it’s dumb. I don’t think it can be sustained anymore.

Scott:
I think that if anything is going to finally break the peer pressure of communities all having to have neatly manicured lawns, it has to be climate change, because at some point people are just going to freaking give up.

Peter:
Yeah, big giant ones especially are kind of…

Scott:
When they can’t water their lawn and it just dies all the time, what’s the point? Yeah, let’s talk about our giant reactions to our giant beers.

Peter:
Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, I’m sure some things live there, but more things could live in other habitats.

Peter:
Woohoo! I’m a fan. Obviously, you know, this is a thumbs up for sure.

Scott:
So what did the… did it describe… did it have tasting notes like I had?

Scott:
Are you supposed to taste flowers?

Peter:
This does not taste like flowers. Let me see what the can says.

Scott:
Are you supposed to taste… is it supposed to taste flowers?

Peter:
I don’t think it’s supposed to taste like flowers. That much I can tell you. You know, well they don’t say anything on the can. Let’s go to the website. Let’s go to the website.

Scott:
They sound terrible. Jack…

Peter:
Jack’s…

Scott:
Jackastic or whatever his name is.

Peter:
Abby…

Scott:
Oh my god. Dear chatgpt, how do I get to the website?

Peter:
Copper… Leg… I think it’s just Jack. Just Jack’s Abby Copeland. Okay.

Peter:
Jack’s Abby Copper Legend. Well, nope, nope, nope. That’s the untapped review. I don’t want that. Hey ChatGPT, rate this beer for me. I bet you it’ll be happy to write beer reviews for me for things that it’s never tasted.

Peter:
Because it’s an AI and it can’t taste.

Scott:
as a large language whatever it says about itself however tons of losers who you’ve never met have said blah blah blah

Peter:
As an AI language model, I’m incapable of tasting. I have no taste.

Scott:
it’s important to note that some people say that it’s terrible while others say

Peter:
Have said things, and I will paraphrase all of those to come up with something completely

Peter:

Scott:
it’s the best beer that’s ever been brewed up to the individual person yeah

Peter:
Ultimately, the choice of how much you like a beer is up on, you know, up to the person drinking it, right? Copper Legend. It’s an August through October release, and it says,

Scott:
Mmm. Oh!

Peter:
“Octoperfest is the world’s most legendary beer festival, and it deserves a legendary beer.

Scott:
Mm-mm.

Peter:
Copper Legend is the perfect marriage of caramel, sweet, toasty malts, and infinite drinkability. Raise one this fest season and be the legend.

Peter:
So there you go.

Scott:
You’re raising it before the fest season. You’re not supposed to crack that open until

Scott:
August. How did you get a hold of that, number one? And number two, where are the

Scott:
authorities? Do I have a siren sound?

Peter:
I told you that I liked it so much that I got it last year and I stocked up.

Peter:
Oof.

Scott:
Let’s see… Random sounds…

Scott:
Is there a siren? There’s a good punch.

Soundboard:
[Punch] [Tires screech]

Scott:
There’s a car screech.

Soundboard:
(beep)

Peter:
That’s gratuitous.

Scott:
There’s a coin.

Soundboard:
(beep)

Scott:
Ooh, the Mario coin.

Peter:
Perfect.

Peter:
Mario coin.

Scott:
Anyway, consider that to be a siren.

Peter:
Yeah.

Scott:
You’re in trouble. You’re drinking the beer out of season.

Peter:
So…

Scott:
What happened to your camera? All of a sudden it’s like zoomed way up. It’s like, “Scott can’t see enough of Peter.

Peter:
Well, I went to the JacksAbby site and they have a separate site called copperlegends.com

Scott:
Here, I heard you like more Peter in your Peter, so here’s Peter.”

Scott:
What? Literally what happened?

Scott:
Oh, it started using your camera.

Peter:
where you are supposed to hoist your beer and hold it out because that’s an Oktoberfest thing. And as I went there it went it’s like “hey hold your camera up and show” and I was like “no” and

Scott:
Oh

Peter:
I didn’t click no I clicked yes by accident and it messed around with FaceTime.

Scott:
Okay, I was gonna say if they don’t give you permission because they don’t know what people are doing when they go to that website

Peter:
I am the copper legend.

Scott:
They can’t just turn the camera on

Scott:
Hey, honey, let’s go

Peter:
[Laughter]

Scott:
Right

Peter:
No, because my hand was wet from the beer, so the trackpad was a little

Peter:
sticky and I went to tap and the mouse had not moved where I thought it had moved to.

Scott:
I guess we’re in the Oktoberfest Hall of Fame now!

Peter:
There you go. Actually, you know, I’m really curious. Let’s just find out.

Scott:
Okay, okay.

Peter:
Please write me a review of Jack’s Abby Copper Legend. Anyway, let’s see what ChatGPT says about this beer.

Soundboard:
Thank you.

Peter:
Sure, I’d be glad to provide a review of Jack’s Abby Copper Legend.

Soundboard:
I Thank you.

Peter:
However, please note that since I’m an artificial intelligence, I don’t actually have the capability to taste beer or any other food and drink,

Peter:
so I can’t provide a personal opinion. But it did give it a 4 out of 5 rating.

Scott:
It is a good thing it told us that because we would never have known.

Peter:
It says it’s a legendary seasonal beer that certainly leaves an impression known as a

Peter:
traditional Oktoberfest lager. It fits perfectly in the chillier nights of autumn and the warm color by its warm color and inviting aroma. You know, for an AI that can’t taste and has never tasted this beer, it wrote a pretty good review of it. I say we put this right on the website.

Scott:
That sounds good actually. Okay, here’s me trying to use chat gpt to get a beer review

Peter:
Bye. We will all be. We will all be.

Soundboard:
Why does it say “paper jam” when there is no paper jam?

Scott:
Oh, I haven’t talked about my beer so my beer

Soundboard:
I swear to God, one of these days I-I-I just- (upbeat music)

Scott:
So let me review. Let me step back just a moment in time fresh flowers white peppercorn and lightly toasted crackers There is a bit of a crackery taste to it. I have to give it that I wouldn’t have called it crackers

Scott:
But I guess maybe it’s more of the peppercorn that i’m tasting Anyway, there is definitely something to this beer where peppercorn and or crackers don’t sound out of line to me But if you had punched me in the face and taken this can away from me

Scott:
Before I had a chance to read it. I never would have said to you. Ah peppercorn and crackers At first I would have said why’d you punch me in the face?

Peter:
Ah, so I just realized in addition, boy, I am really, I really can’t use messages anymore.

Scott:
As your notepad, oh

Peter:
No, like I realized I got distracted today and one of my friends asked me, you know,

Scott:
Oh

Peter:
a question. He just happened to be like at the Apple store or something. And I sent some

Peter:
of my real time reactions to him instead of you. And that’s why you didn’t talk to me

Peter:
back and tell me like if they had mentioned large language models or generative AI or anything like that. So there’s a section of my reviews were missing. The reason was I pivoted over to a friend’s messages thread because he

Scott:
Oh, okay.

Scott:
Right, well all the rest of you had to scrounge together PCs out of copy machine parts.

Peter:
had just gone to the Apple Store yesterday and he’s been a huge Mac fan for decades. Like he had a Mac, he was like the kid in junior high

Peter:
school whose mom you know got him a Mac for instance. Dude I had a Tandy I mean… Anyway so I’ve got all these things and so he had

Peter:
just gone and experimented with the eye tracking and here we come into WDC and

Peter:
we’re like yeah most useless feature ever right and I had only just found it a few weeks ago I think I mentioned it to you or Adam also and I was like okay it’s kind of interesting but what would I how do you get out of this wait now I

Peter:
don’t want this anymore turn it off he was in the Apple Store just playing with

Peter:
this yesterday and now of course here we come in to the VR headset where of Of course they’re using eye tracking for everything.

Peter:
Well, not everything, their hand gestures too, of course. But I thought that was kind of interesting though.

Scott:
Here’s what I hope though. I hope that, first of all, I haven’t talked to anybody

Peter:
Oh.

Scott:
who uses the eye tracking as an accessibility feature, which it is right now. But I’m hoping that maybe their work on this AR headset will also translate into better eye tracking in general. But you also have to remember something. Typical Macs don’t have the best cameras in the world. There is that.

Peter:

Scott:
It greatly depends on what the camera is that’s looking at you. That’s why I do do that. Hi iPhone.

Peter:
Sure. Yeah, I mean that’s why you can use your iPhone instead of your rack camera if you choose.

Peter:

Scott:
By the way, if anything was trying to eye-track you right now, it would be impossible because all it would get is reflections from your glasses, yeah.

Peter:
The glare. The glare in my glasses. Yeah, I don’t pay the extra money for the anti-glare

Scott:
Well, I think it’s supposed to protect your eyes, not theirs, but…

Peter:
because I’m like, I don’t want you looking at my eyes anyway, so I don’t care if you see glare. [LAUGHTER] Oh, is that how that works?

Scott:
Yeah, I think so. I think you’re shooting yourself in the foot to mock other people.

Peter:
[LAUGHTER]

Peter:
I can’t see my eyes.

Scott:
Yeah, you can’t see my eyes I can’t either I’m blind Okay, speaking of seeing your own eyes, yeah, that’s a good idea let’s talk about some Apple products apparently some things were introduced today

Peter:
My eyes. I think I’m going to pour some more beer here. (slurping) Apparently, yeah, I heard a couple things, just one or two.

Scott:
Okay, so let me ask you a genuine question

Peter:
I have an, yes, yeah.

Scott:
Do you actually care about that 15 inch MacBook Air because you have an M2 MacBook Air right or is yours an M1?

Scott:
You’re a FOMO guy

Peter:
Look, I have, one of my favorite college professors diagnosed me early on as having upgrades disease. I always want to have the latest and greatest, right?

Peter:
But that said, no, I’m perfectly happy with my current smallish MacBook Air.

Peter:
And again, especially given the VR headset now, you know, or the AR VR headset, you know, you can turn that thing into a giant 4K display. I was like, yeah, give me an 11 inch, give me a tiny little MacBook again.

Scott:
That’s the thing, like, Vic was like, “maybe I’ll get one of these instead of a studio display.”

Scott:
And I’m like, “okay, well, it’s not only is it double the cost, but the studio display is 5k, this thing’s 4k.”

Scott:
Now granted, you can take it with you. Right, but I how often do you actually go a place where you where you’re going

Peter:
Uh-huh. Yeah, I’m not I want to see let’s see Vic haul a 5K display,

Peter:
on the next time he hops onto an airplane.

Scott:
to strap that thing onto your head and make use of it for enough time to make up for the fact that it’s double the price?

Scott:
No. Most of the time you’re going to use the perfectly beautiful monitor that comes on your Apple laptop, and you’re going to be happy with that.

Peter:
Yeah, I’m not saying that I would buy this just to be a screen replacement,

Peter:
but with all the other stuff it does and a 4K display, yeah, I’d be perfectly happy with that.

Scott:
You have low standards, my friend.

Peter:
I mean I’m talking to you now, I’m looking at you now on a 4K display.

Peter:
I have a 4K display and I’m perfectly happy with a 4K display. Isn’t it? I think it’s a 4K display, isn’t it? That’s what I bought.

Scott:
Yeah, you bought a 4K. You did.

Peter:
I don’t even remember now. Yeah, and it was a huge upgrade for me, right?

Scott:
Can you do “About this Mac” and tell me what CPU it has?

Peter:
Yeah, I’ve got the M2.

Scott:
About this Mac. Click on the apple. Yeah, but the M2, what?

Peter:
About this Mac, M2 2022.

Scott:
Do… Oh, so… No, but what does it say for chip? Just M2?

Peter:
It says MacBook Air, new paragraph, M2, 2022.

Scott:
No, no.

Peter:
I can go into more info. Chip, Apple M2, that’s what it says. Okay, if I go into, so I just clicked on settings

Scott:
Your “About this screen” is completely different than mine. and has a picture of a laptop, then in a header it says MacBook Pro, then it says 14 inch 2021, then there’s a space, and then it says chip, Apple M1 Pro, memory, 16 gigabytes.

Scott:
That’s not the more info thing, that’s just the about this.

Peter:
and about this Mac and I read what was there. Now, if I go to more info, I get more. Your about sounds like my more info.

Scott:
But that’s what I’m trying to figure out is why is it different?

Scott:
No.

Peter:
Yeah, what you describe here.

Scott:
That’s what I don’t understand is we have the same operating system, right?

Peter:
I think so.

Scott:
Aren’t you on Ventura?

Peter:
Pretty sure I have the latest, I mean, I have an update that’s due for later, you know, installation later tonight.

Scott:
So on the about this thing, what did it say?

Scott:
Mac OS Ventura 13.4 or 13 point whatever 13.3.

Peter:
Yeah, 13.3.1A.

Scott:
Hmm. Okay, anyway, I guess the thing that I’m getting at is you just have a straight M2.

Peter:
And it’s certainly not an M2 Ultra.

Scott:
It’s not an M2 Pro, it’s not an M2. The Airs probably don’t have that.

Peter:
And they just said an M2.

Scott:
So what does the new MacBook Air come with? Just an M2?

Peter:
I thought it was just an M2. I think it’s just the guts, the same processor though.

Scott:
It’s just a bigger…

Scott:
Yeah, you’re right.

Peter:
bigger form factor, more speakers, etc. So no, I don’t need that. I’m not really feeling envy. I’m not feeling that envy.

Scott:
It says it’s virtually identical with the key difference being the size.

Scott:
No, you wouldn’t.

Peter:
I like smaller displays. I’m pretty happy with it.

Scott:
If they had upgraded the display so it was the same display that I have, then you would feel envy, because the MacBook Air display is not quite as nice as the MacBook Pro display.

Scott:
All right, then don’t feel the envy.

Peter:
No envy.

Scott:
I thought the differentiation between the Mac Studio and the Mac Pro was very interesting.

Peter:
Hmm.

Scott:
I found it extremely interesting that the new Mac Pro uses the afterburners.

Peter:
All the PCI slots. Afterburners!

Scott:
Built-in afterburner performance.

Peter:
Is that really what they’re called?

Scott:
No, no, no.

Peter:
That’s not a nickname like “Firewire” or “Thunderbolt” or anything?

Scott:
Those used to be something you had to add in.

Peter:
So isn’t it just a burner? Well you would have to add it in, that would make it an afterburner.

Scott:
But now they’re built in. The equivalent of seven of those. a burner Peter

Peter:
So if it comes with a built-in isn’t it just a burner? They punched in the whole, you know,

Scott:
Right and they made it no farther than 20 miles up the road or whatever

Peter:
like how did they pick the name for Sonoma for the new version? They just punched it

Peter:
into their hippie van and said “awesome vineyards” and… and…

Peter:
and you think that “burner” is a bad joke? It seems pretty darn on point if you ask me.

Scott:
Craig Federighi is pretty much a dad joke generator.

Peter:
Yeah, Mac stuff, it looks cool. No, it doesn’t apply to me right now. I’m not in the market.

Scott:
iOS 17, I thought it looked pretty good.

Peter:
What about the stuff that we are going to leverage?

Scott:
I saw some people complaining as normal that, “Oh no, there’s no huge upgrades.” Listen, they directly said that this is the 15th year of the App Store.

Scott:
That means it’s the 16th year of iPhone OS/iOS. It’s a pretty mature operating system.

Peter:

Scott:
There’s not a whole lot of stuff that’s going to get added every single year. And it’s also the year when they were probably put in the final push to get their headset

Scott:
shipped. So the things that did come in iOS I’m perfectly happy with. I mean I think name drop looks pretty cool. I don’t think I’ll use it all that often.

Peter:
I liked it. I won’t use it all that often, but yes, I can see myself making use of it.

Peter:
was just at a conference two weeks ago and this guy was doing this you know he was trying to type my name and I was like here’s my email address it’s blah blah blah and he was typing my name and it was P E Y E R wait back back back you

Peter:
know and he kept on getting it wrong and

Scott:
Yeah it’s a pain in the ass exchanging information when you’re typing when you’re both standing

Peter:
yeah do you remember the app called Bump

Scott:
they’re typing them into phones. Uh, vaguely.

Peter:
It came out, I want to say like in it was the late 2000s and stuff

Peter:
I guess it would know it. I thought it was 2007. It was after it was an iOS app though

Peter:
No, it wasn’t after airdrop, but it was it was it used the accelerometer if you had bump installed and I had bump installed

Scott:
It wasn’t, it was way, it had to be after 2007 because it had to be after AirDrop came

Scott:
out. Yeah, but what technology did it use to share them with each other?

Peter:
We would bump Colorometer and you had to have the app installed so if the two of you were in the same

Scott:
Oh. Oh, oh, oh.

Peter:
Location and you two both bumped at the same time it would share your contact info

Peter:
bump is a discontinued iOS and Android mobile app that enables smartphone users to transfer contact information in 2011 it was number 8 on Apple’s list of all-time most popular free iPhone apps by February 2013 it had been downloaded

Peter:
125 million times That’s cool. That is cool.

Scott:
Peter, check this out. So, name drop even works when you bring an iPhone near an Apple Watch, which is cool.

Soundboard:
you

Peter:
Yes, over the internet. I liked that as well. Yep. I mentioned this to you too in a text a few days

Scott:
One of the other things I liked about changes to AirDrop itself were that you can start

Scott:
sharing a bunch of stuff via AirDrop and then walk away, and you’ll still get them. Right, yeah, I do too.

Scott:
What do you mean?

Peter:
ago I had not realized that you can use NFC on air tags. If you tap an air tag with your phone

Scott:
Yeah. Right.

Peter:
it will give you information about it and it’ll say like this is an air tag and you know are you

Scott:

Peter:
being followed here’s you know here’s your safety stuff. So I expect that my father will never do

Scott:
Right.

Peter:
that when I tell him and he forgets that I put an air tag in his car so I can track his car for him

Peter:
and know if he’s like visiting my mom on days when he forgets where he put his phone.

Scott:
I was going to say, does he lose his car a lot and call you up?

Peter:
No, he doesn’t. But every now and then he like forgets to charge his phone or he leaves it at

Scott:
Peter, I don’t know where my car is. This way you’ll know where he is.

Peter:
home or something like that. So this is this way I’ll be able to, you know, I’ll call,

Peter:
don’t get an answer, but I can see that the car is moving or, you know, it was in Vermont today and then it was in New Hampshire and like okay well the car is moving around and and dad hasn’t called so either he, you know,

Peter:
it got stolen or he’s just driving around without his phone. Yeah, I would think that it would.

Scott:
I do like the real-time voicemail transcriptions because that way I’m hoping it also works with the “don’t answer numbers you don’t know” thing so that it goes straight to voicemail

Scott:
and then if they’re leaving their voicemail and I see the transcription live I can answer it if I need to. I would think so too, but I don’t know.

Peter:

Scott:
But I have that feature turned on. Literally my phone doesn’t ring for callers I don’t know because I get so many spam calls.

Peter:
Yeah. Oh, I have Silence Unknown Callers enabled too, for sure.

Scott:
Yeah, but every now and then I miss something that I need.

Peter:
Right. Oh, I’m expecting, I’m looking at gathering insurance quotes right now,

Scott:
Yeah.

Peter:
and I’m waiting for a call and I know it’s going to go straight to voicemail and I’ll just, you know, whatever. I’ll call them back.

Scott:
So messages in FaceTime, you said that puts Google Voice out of a job, but I don’t think

Scott:
so because here’s the reason why. Unless you can hand out fake phone numbers with it. Because that’s the reason I use Google Voice is so that I can give a phone number that’s not my phone number to people.

Peter:
Right, no. I was specifically referring to the call filtering or call screening option,

Peter:
where it lets you, you know, basically you can start, you can start screening your call and you’re Like, “Hey, Scott, it’s Peter. I was just wondering, are we recording today?”

Peter:
And then you can just answer the phone in real time. Like, “Oh, hey, Peter. Yeah, sorry. I was waiting to make sure you weren’t a spammer,” or something like that. Mm-hmm.

Scott:
And I like the audio message transcriptions in Apple messages because you send me those a lot of times when there’s no bloody way I can stop and listen to that thing.

Scott:
And I will say, part of that’s Apple’s fault because they make it so inconvenient.

Peter:
Jeez, that sounds crazy.

Scott:
Number one, I work in a place where sometimes it’s hard to hear when I’m on the test floor because there’s a lot of air flowing through.

Scott:
And there’s a lot of loud equipment, semiconductor test equipment, lots of power, lots of air, lots of noise.

Scott:
noise. But what Apple does is it makes it inconvenient anywhere because you can’t just

Scott:
press play and then lock the screen and continue listening through your AirPods because it stops. You have to have the phone on the screen unlocked and that means you can’t jam it in your pocket

Peter:
Mm-hmm.

Scott:
because who knows what will happen while it’s in your pocket if it’s unlocked. So you literally

Peter:
Yep.

Scott:
just have to stand there and listen to the thing and not do anything else and it just is such a major pain in the ass and it’s Apple’s fault. So this is a nice feature that I really like because this will let you much more conveniently use your voice to

Scott:
leave a message while you’re walking along or doing whatever.

Peter:
Yep, well as you have observed on numerous occasions, it’s easier for the sender to send

Scott:
It’s easier for the sender.

Peter:
a voice memo. It’s not so easy for the recipient sometimes, you know, many times for the recipient.

Scott:

Peter:
But even then, yeah, Apple doesn’t make it easy just for regular recipients because you start playing back and then if you put the thing in your pocket it stops playing.

Scott:
You can’t. You have to… it’s a “stop everything you’re doing” thing.

Peter:
Yep, yep, so it is not as easy.

Scott:

Peter:
It’s not good.

Scott:
Right. It’s even worse than a phone call, which I hate, because…

Peter:
It’s not good.

Scott:
I don’t even like phone calls, but it’s even worse than a phone call, because at least with the phone call I can click the screen and shove it back in my pocket, on walking or doing whatever I wanted to do with my hands. I’ve asked so many people, “Do you ever use the audio messages in messages?” and they’re like, “I hate them things. Get them away from me.”

Soundboard:
[ Glasses Clink ]

Scott:
Because they are a stop, this makes it nice. Because those voice messages are super nice when you’re the sender, and they should be made to be usable by everyone, and I like that. So feel free to start sending them. We’ll see how it works.

Peter:
Well, once you get the beta installed anyway, right?

Scott:
I’m not gonna. I probably won’t.

Peter:
On your carry phone? [laughs]

Scott:
That’s not the issue for me. It’s just like I get tired of being on the beta train.

Peter:
I miss the announcement. I’m assuming it’s coming out in September.

Scott:
I don’t know. I didn’t see that.

Peter:
Yeah, I mean, I think some new stuff, okay, home screen modifications, great.

Scott:
Right. And I don’t think I’ll ever use it anyway because I don’t have…

Peter:
Turning it into an alarm clock mode, you know, great. That’s a feature that’s only, you know, 15 years overdue.

Peter:
So I’ll take that. (silence) I do, but I do have a Qi charger

Scott:
I don’t you I just don’t use my iPhone that way I don’t have any charging stands that I look at my iPhone on I just don’t I just don’t do that okay

Peter:
and I will set my iPhone up on that at night.

Peter:
So I will use it at nighttime. I don’t generally, during the day I usually plug in.

Scott:
right

Peter:
You know, and it would support sideways charging.

Peter:
So I could do that. However, I prefer things to be pitch black when I’m sleeping. I want no light whatsoever so that no light is going to disturb me and wake me up early.

Scott:
I literally almost said you should sleep with my wife. She’s the same way.

Peter:
[laughter]

Scott:
[Laughter]

Peter:
[clink]

Peter:
[sigh]

Scott:
Let me walk that back just a tiny bit and clarify. Yeah.

Peter:
Yeah, so, I mean, yeah, okay, so it’s interesting how, like, you were so gung-ho for me to come back and visit again,

Scott:
Peter I have a small favor to ask of you

Peter:
and she was too, I’m… Huh. Interesting.

Scott:
My wife’s getting bored. No, literally no, she’s the same way though. She is exactly the same way

Peter:
Oh brother.

Peter:
[laughs] Mmm.

Scott:
She has to have it pitch black I mean and no noise if two particles of dust collide way off in space somewhere outside the solar system. She hears it

Scott:
And she’ll see whatever minute tiny minuscule bit of light that it produces

Peter:
Gotcha. Okay.

Scott:
She’s very much that along those lines

Peter:
So iOS, okay fine.

Scott:
Don’t care don’t don’t give it

Peter:
iPad OS stage manager updates? Don’t know. Don’t use it. Don’t use it. I have an iPad Mini, so I can’t use it. And I haven’t used it on the…

Scott:
There’s a thing in settings somewhere, I don’t know I

Peter:
How do you even turn it on on the Mac? I don’t even remember. Yeah, so I haven’t used that.

Scott:
Did give it a shot on the Mac and I immediately decided this is so limiting compared to all the other

Scott:
Window management tools available on the Mac. I don’t want to do it

Peter:
I didn’t pay any attention to it, so I have no idea what’s new there.

Scott:
Yeah, don’t know don’t care the the iPad I don’t really care about the only thing I am curious about is why

Peter:
Yep.

Scott:
Does the iPad get multiple timers now, but they didn’t say anything about that on the iPhone they also Talked about working with PDFs on the iPad making them more editable like you can do more with with PDFs on the iPad

Scott:
Which is nice because maybe I can quit paying for PDF expert And I think they also said that will work on the Mac

Peter:
Mm-hmm. So, question.

Scott:
But I never really saw if that’s gonna work on the iPhone or not. I would hope so Mm-hmm

Peter:
Did they mention in the notes, so like their PDF, you know, better note integration with,

Soundboard:
Thank you.

Scott:
Mm-hmm.

Peter:
better PDF integration with notes.

Scott:
They did not say.

Peter:
Did they announce searching? Does search search? Does it do OCR like Evernote does?

Scott:
There’s form fill features, right?

Peter:
I didn’t catch that. form fill features, easier annotation stuff like that, which seems natural, given the

Scott:
Editing. Right, completely edit them. Two things that would be nice that would

Peter:
Apple Pencil and everything. Yeah, so that sounds kind of cool. I can use that.

Scott:
allow me to get rid of PDF expert is being able to search in PDFs and also

Scott:
being able to scan straight to PDF format

Scott:
directly from within notes or whatever

Peter:
Yep, I can see that being useful.

Peter:
Okay, so iOS sounds kind of cool. iPadOS, okay, a couple things. The health app, yeah, there are definitely times…

Scott:
oh that is true health going to the iPad is a good one yeah

Peter:
Yeah, and why?

Scott:
One nice thing about it is that I have shortcuts that I can run that use health data, like

Peter:
That doesn’t seem all that big.

Scott:
mostly to calculate because I’m very specific when I want to know how many calories I have

Peter:
Right. Right.

Scott:
left for the day. I don’t want to count all of my physical activity. I only want to count my exercise, my workouts.

Scott:
And so I have a shortcut that says, it looks at food DOM or whatever it’s called.

Peter:
Food noms!

Scott:
And it says, yeah, it says, how many calories have you eaten today?

Peter:

Scott:
And then it says, “How many calories have you burned in workouts today?”

Scott:
And then it shows me what my remaining calories is. That is something I can only run on my phone. And it will be very nice when I can also, if I’m just reading on my iPad or something and I’m curious, I can also run it there, for example.

Peter:
Got it.

Scott:
Things like that, that never made sense not to have it on the iPad. Yeah, that’s nice. Okay, well let’s talk about macOS then.

Peter:
Yeah, I think it’s gonna be cool. But, you know, that’s a no-brainer. Multiple timers. That’s a- I have them on my freaking watch! Right?

Scott:
Yeah, that’s nice.

Peter:
You know, so- And I thought, oh that was another interesting thing. Something else though.

Peter:
The Apple TV screen savers coming to Mac OS.

Scott:
Okay, well let’s talk about macOS then.

Peter:
That sounds kinda nice. I could use those, you know? So I think it’s kind of interesting. Yeah, well we sort of did and, did we? Wait, no we talked about Macs, we didn’t talk about Mac OS. And yeah, dear listener, this is all over the place,

Peter:
but that’s always the case. Because we’re drinking beer.

Scott:
drinking beer and we assume that we assume that you are too or that you have

Peter:
We assume you are too. Did we tell them that ahead of time?

Scott:
in the past you know what what it’s like no we assume that you’ve watched the keynote we assume that you know kind of what we’re talking about and that we’re

Scott:
just giving our opinions on those things no

Peter:
Like, hey, go listen to the keynote or watch the keynote before you listen to this episode.

Scott:
okay Peter here let me make a gong and then you say it in a in an official way

Peter:
Great.

Scott:
as though this was the very beginning of the podcast and I will take that and I will put it at the beginning so ready

Peter:
Hey, welcome dear listener.

Peter:
This is Peter. Just in case you’re wondering, this is going to be Scott and my reaction, not in real time

Peter:
and certainly not a response, nothing so thoughtful, to today’s WWDC keynote.

Peter:
At least today is at the time that we’re recording this. So if you haven’t already, we recommend that you go directly to Apple.com and find the keynote.

Peter:
As of right now, it’s right on the homepage, so it really should be easy for you to find.

Peter:
You have no excuse other than maybe not wanting to or, you know, not having the time or some such. So please, go ahead and do that now. Oh boy.

Scott:
And dear listener don’t worry I was totally only kidding about Peter sleeping with my wife

Scott:
Okay, I’ll move that to the beginning so thank you

Peter:
Great!

Scott:
Not the joke part

Scott:
Okay, the one thing I did like is that they finally are at least trying to address the horrible widget situation in Mac OS.

Scott:
They’re getting them out of that horrible long thing where notifications pop up and then your widgets move down and then you have these endless. One thing they didn’t talk about though was are they making the notification thing better on Mac OS?

Scott:
Because on Mac OS, like at least on the iOS devices like the iPad and the… Well, is that even true anymore? I was going to say, usually the notifications on one will

Scott:
disappear if you respond to them on the other, but I’m not 100% sure the notifications always

Scott:
disappear on my iPad if I respond to them on my phone. But I know one thing’s for sure,

Scott:
they damn well don’t disappear on the Mac when you respond to them on another. Yeah.

Peter:
On the Mac, right, right. Yeah, no, I think they do.

Scott:
Badges do, yeah.

Peter:
I’m pretty sure, well I know at least like badges and things do. I don’t remember the notifications. Now I need to take a look.

Scott:
But I’m not sure about notifications.

Peter:
Yeah.

Scott:
But anyway, I would love for them to deal with the notification thing, but just making the widgets better is pretty good. So we’ll have to see how that shakes out on Mac OS. Will it make widgets more useful? Maybe. Anyway, I’m glad that they’re at least addressing it and thinking about it. I also like the fact that if your iPhone is nearby, you can use widgets that are really

Scott:
only available on your iPhone, you can also use those on your Mac. As long as your iPhone’s nearby, you can use widgets that really only appear on your iPhone on your Mac, which is pretty cool.

Peter:
That was cool. That was pretty cool. I agree with you on that one. I look…

Scott:
Yeah. Because what if you… because who’s going to put water llama on their friggin’ Mac?

Peter:
That’s such a great name. And as you mentioned, it should be Water Camel. But yeah, sure, Llama. Why not? Water Llama. Yeah, Water Llama.

Scott:
It is a great name.

Peter:
Anyway, yeah, no. But you had mentioned some time ago, you mentioned a lucid air.

Scott:
water whatever hmm

Peter:
the world’s most expensive electric vehicles and stuff.

Scott:
did I I mentioned it

Peter:
And when he was… you mentioned, now Peter you can get a Lucid Air or something.

Scott:
oh right I was giving you Tesla options yeah

Peter:
And coincidentally I… yeah, I had only just heard of it in the most recent, the annual

Peter:
Consumer Reports vehicles issue. I had only just heard of that then. I was like, oh Scott heard of it. I live in a cave obviously so that’s why I haven’t heard it. Craig Federicchi’s demonstration when he was demonstrating the vehicle widget, it was for

Peter:
Lucid Air.

Scott:
Yeah, I saw it, but Peter, let me ask you two things. Number one, do you live in a cave because you’re Batman? And number two, is your Batmobile electric? So I guess I have three questions. And number three, Do you really think that’s Craig’s? Do you really think that’s what he really drives? Because like is that guitar really his? Is that hair really his? You know lots of questions.

Peter:
Why wouldn’t he?

Peter:
Why wouldn’t he?

Scott:
Yeah but I wonder if he was playing that guitar. Craig Federica I think used to be in a rock band.

Peter:
I think it’s his real hair. I think that’s his real hair. That was definitely a fake guitar.

Scott:
I’m not 100% sure on that.

Peter:
I mean, does he at least play with a software called Rockband? We could verify this.

Scott:
Did Craig Federighi ever… No, I’m asking Google.

Peter:
Are you asking ChatGPT?

Scott:
Craig Federighi…

Peter:
Nice.

Scott:
Accomplishments history. Sometimes called Hair Force One. Yes, we know that. Public image…

Scott:
It doesn’t really say. I don’t know. I like Craig Federighi though. Anyway, if that wasn’t him playing… If he wasn’t really playing the guitar, They did a pretty good because his hands were it looked like he was doing the right things. He wasn’t just doing guitar hero I don’t believe that

Peter:
Was it like do you think he was really using that iPad like Thor throwing Mjolnir and having it come back to him as well?

Peter:
Or more I guess more like Captain America’s shield actually. That’s the catch was a little more.

Scott:
I don’t believe that

Peter:
Oh I thought that was real.

Scott:
I love this. There’s an article from 2016 in the ringer called apples. Craig Federicki is perfect and And the snippet that shows on DuckDuckGo is, “He went to UC Berkeley and I’m 95% sure he was stoned a lot there.”

Peter:
sigh

Scott:
“He’s a fan of the awesome Canadian rock trio Rush,

Peter:
sigh

Peter:
silence

Scott:
which is dorky but in a hot dad way.”

Peter:
What? Rush is dorky?

Scott:
That’s hilarious. No, the fact that he loves Rush is dorky

Peter:
Excuse me, who wrote this? silence

Scott:
but in a hot dad way.

Peter:
I love Rush! And I’m hot, but I’m not a dad. What the? scoffs

Scott:
Anyway, I’ll put a link to this article.

Peter:

Scott:
That’s hilarious. Apple’s Craig Henry is perfect. So what else? What else do we want to talk about? What do you think about gaming? Do you think the fact that they have a metal conversion kit

Peter:
Kojima-san.

Scott:
Kojima-san!

Scott:
Do you think they’re actually going to do you think any game makers are going to go? Oh, my God, Apple made it so easy for me to convert my games to metal now. Now I’m going to do it. Do you think do you think so?

Peter:
Haven’t they been saying stuff like this, like, since the iMac?

Scott:
No, this is a new thing that’s made

Peter:

Scott:
that’s made to convert your games to using metal specifically easier.

Peter:
Okay, I was not paying any attention to that. I’m not a gamer anymore.

Scott:
Did you say ball-der with a D or baller?

Peter:
I play games every now and then. I play Baldur’s Gate, which is, which was re-released in 2014 and originally released in like 2001.

Peter:
Baldur.

Scott:
You and your… you and your Norse gods.

Peter:
Durr as in the god of the Norse, you know, god of whatever he was who was killed by mistletoe I play that game and again That’s something that was released like 20 years ago and then re-released remastered in like 2014 or something

Peter:
That’s the kind of game I play. I don’t need metal or whatever

Scott:
You know what’s really bad about my beer?

Peter:
That’s not a bad thing that means it was a good thing so before we rush out to get another beer

Scott:
It’s gone. It’s all gone. Ooh!

Peter:
I’m going to follow up with a brew here. I have a spare at my standby.

Peter:
It’s a cup of Wegmans English Breakfast Black Tea.

Scott:
Well I am drinking a coffee that I’ve drunk on the show before, but right now I couldn’t

Scott:
tell you what it was without going to look, so I’m going to go search on friendswithbrews.com because I hear there’s a wonderful search engine there. I’m going to search for coffee.

Scott:
I think it’s the S.O. blend. Yes, I’m drinking the S.O. blend. Coava Coffee Roasters S.O. blend.

Peter:
Cool over

Scott:
I’ve drank it before on this podcast.

Peter:
Okay

Scott:
It’s honeycrisp apple, dark caramel, and chocolate covered fruits, Peter. It’s a thing of beauty. I love their coffees.

Peter:
Oh wow, it’s amazing. So

Scott:
And I love the website, by the way, with the search feature.

Peter:
Some other yeah, yeah

Scott:
I wonder who put that on there. Hmm. Some genius. Most likely.

Peter:
Yeah, yeah.

Scott:
Hmm.

Peter:
Okay.

Scott:
Alright, it must be Craig Federighi. Here is perfect. So I did see some people complaining that Death Stranding has been out for a while blah blah blah But Kojima did say that they’re gonna bring other games to it as well

Scott:
So

Peter:
Yeah.

Scott:
I personally don’t care. Yeah, I personally don’t care

Peter:
Well, I think that makes sense. You know, if you’re a gamer, that’s great. You know, I know a lot of people have a Mac and would like to play PC games and/or Xbox games or whatnot.

Peter:
But, yeah. I think that’s what I think, too. So, you know, great. Good for them.

Scott:
The only game I want to play I want them to bring the bedrock edition of Minecraft to the Mac

Peter:

Scott:
So that my daughter and I can play it and I can play it on my Mac and she can play it on her iPad Pro

Scott:
But I can’t the only version of Minecraft that will run on the Mac is Java Edition I don’t want that and it’s also not compatible with the bedrock version in terms of playing together Like we can’t jump into the same world and all that. That’s all I care about. I don’t I just I don’t care about games

Scott:
I don’t want to sit around playing games

Peter:
I’m with you.

Scott:

Peter:
So, iOS, Mac OS, oh widgets? I do want to have widgets though. We touched on those. I can definitely see myself throwing some widgets. I remember back when Mac OS had widgets.

Peter:
They were on their own home separate page.

Scott:
Oh yeah, they weren’t called witches though. What were those things called? What was that view called?

Peter:
I don’t know, but they were definitely widgets. They may not have been called widgets, but they were widgets.

Scott:
They were, yeah. I don’t remember what that view was called, but eventually they got rid of it.

Peter:
But it’s gone now. But it’s coming back. It’s coming back to our desktop. So that’s cool. So I’m happy about that.

Scott:
Let us talk about watchOS for us, yeah.

Peter:
That’s probably the coolest thing right there. Yeah, having the ability to scroll up on the home screen and see your widgets there. That’s cool.

Scott:

Peter:
Start a timer and immediately scroll up and see it right there. Nice! That means when I teach yoga classes, I don’t have to use a dedicated screen that has all of my timers as complications.

Peter:
So I like that.

Scott:
And it means that instead of using the generally useless Siri watch face, now you’ll use a smart stack if you want and what I don’t know what they didn’t show is can you build

Scott:
your own stacks is it like the iphone where okay you can get a smart stack but you can also build

Scott:
your own stacks with widgets that never go away they didn’t address that so maybe not

Peter:
It uses machine learning. Back on that note, wait, sorry, back up, back to iOS 17.

Peter:
Back to iOS, I missed something. Improvements to dictation and autocorrect and Siri.

Scott:
I was going to mention that and say we’ll see how that goes, but…

Peter:
We’ll believe it when we see it.

Scott:
But you know what though? They’re using a large language model now, a specifically tuned

Peter:
But I mean, the fact that Craig said, “Sometimes you just wanna type a ducking word.”

Peter:
Okay, that was great. I know. Right.

Scott:
large language model for the auto-correction, which I think is not what they were doing before.

Scott:
So there’s actually some hope for it. Because although I may have to correct

Peter:
(sighs)

Scott:
ChatGPT when it tells me that to disable a site in nginx I need to go into the sites available directory instead of the sites enabled directory and remove a link and I have to tell it it’s not the sites available directory you want it’s the sites enabled directory

Peter:
Yeah, yeah.

Scott:
that kind of stuff it might get confused about but it’s pretty freaking good at language it can very eloquently express things that are incorrect to me

Peter:
I’m impressed that it got that close. Usually I think it doesn’t get like, you know, this instead of that.

Peter:
Usually it just makes up something else. It would be like the enabled sites directory or, you know, something else or, you know, like active sites directory, you know, something like that.

Scott:
Somewhere along the line it read about, it saw the word “Engine X” and it saw the word “Sites available”

Peter:
Yeah, must be it. Done.

Scott:
and it thought that, whatever, I don’t know how they trained those things, yeah. Anyway, watchOS does look good.

Peter:
Yep.

Scott:
Yeah, I like the redesign to the widgets. I like the redesign to some of the apps.

Scott:
Vic pointed out to me, he was like, “Hey, did you see the cycling stuff?” And I’m like, “Yeah, that’s great, but I don’t bike outdoors anymore.”

Peter:
Yeah, none of the fitness stuff. I was like, okay, whatever. I mean, every now and then, I still cycle

Peter:
and I’ll mountain bike from time to time, but none of that had me up in arms or whatever.

Scott:
See, in the past I would have liked the fact that now it could connect to and read your Bluetooth accessories like your speed and cadence sensors, but I don’t even have an outdoor bike at the moment.

Peter:
Mm-hmm.

Peter:
Mm.

Scott:
So, you know, it’s not that I am not glad that they did that I am glad it’s just I

Peter:
Wow. (silence) Okay.

Scott:
never gonna use those things and I’m wondering how it’s generating its estimates for functional threshold power because

Scott:
There are very expensive power meters that you can buy that go into your pedals on road bikes that are specifically for calculating how much wattage you’re generating your body how much power you’re outputting and

Peter:
Hm.

Scott:
They cost a lot of money, so I’m curious as to how accurate this thing really is, but it’s it’s interesting

Scott:
Anyway, uh, you said something about waypoints. What’s so great about cellular waypoints? Oh, okay

Peter:
Waypoints, like telling you the last time when you’re out in the backcountry

Peter:
how the watch will automatically mark a place like this was the last place you had cell signal. So if you get lost and you need to make a phone call and get you back there or even like here,

Scott:
I broke my leg all I have to do is get up and hike 20 miles back to that place where

Peter:
you can make a GPS call from here. So that was pretty cool.

Peter:
Perfect! That reminds me, I have still not yet actually tried the SOS feature or

Scott:
I lost that cellular connection. Yes! Saved! Peter.

Scott:
Peter. Peter, Peter, Peter, it’s time for you to find out how much the Massachusetts emergency

Peter:
the alarm on the Ultra. The two things, like the reasons that I bought these things, I don’t even know if they work yet. I’ll just call 911 or… oh brother.

Scott:
services actually cares about you.

Scott:
See if anyone shows up.

Peter:
SOS yourself, jeez.

Scott:
If people are walking by you on the path going, “Why are you staring at the sky?

Peter:
No one’s coming, no one loves me.

Scott:
I’m waiting for a helicopter and nobody’s coming. No one cares. Damn it. Oh, my God.

Peter:
Oh boy.

Scott:
OK, so let’s talk about the headset in the room.

Peter:
[laughs]

Scott:
Let’s talk about the headset in the room.

Peter:
Yeah

Scott:
[laughter] No, and I think that

Peter:
Okay, as is often the case, you know, the Steve Jobs reality distortion effect still

Peter:
persists and as I was watching that demonstration I was like, yeah, I could I could see myself with one of those but right now I don’t want to spend three grand on something or three and a half grand as the case might be be.

Scott:
I think that This is not an original idea. A lot of people have already said this. This is step one in a long series of steps just like the original Mac was a boxy little underpowered undermemoried overpriced step towards a very useful Macintosh computer this is a first step towards a future where you can see things in your

Scott:
eyes augmented over you know your reality that you can still see and being able to move your hands and do things to control them that future will get here

Scott:
but this is step one and it’s not palatable for a lot of people both because of price and because of clunkiness. It’s a gigantic… this looks like a gaming headset. Oh yeah, it is not only the most stylish, it definitely has the best hardware and they

Peter:
Yes, that said, out of all the VR headsets I have seen, this is the most stylish.

Peter:
Right.

Scott:
definitely went the extra mile on everything. And that is why I was not surprised when they said $3499. I was actually thinking this could cost close to five grand at one point. They went out

Peter:

Scott:
out of their way to point out all these potential use cases like this will be great for work this will be great for entertainment this will be great for games this will be great for calls this will be great for all these things one thing they didn’t talk about was when you make a FaceTime call what do the

Scott:
other people see did they

Peter:
I thought they did talk about that. I thought they said that, yeah, it renders your avatar of some sort.

Scott:
that’s a bad experience for the other person

Peter:
I mean, not if they’ve done a really good job and they’ve nailed it.

Scott:

Peter:
If what I’m thinking is what they’re going to be doing, though, you know, they’re essentially basically deep faking you.

Peter:
There you go.

Scott:
“Vision Pro FaceTime call.” “Apple’s Vision Pro headset will turn you into a digital avatar when FaceTiming.” You’re absolutely right. This is from The Verge.

Scott:

Peter:
See, I may not read your text messages, but I get video. It’s an AI-generated avatar of you.

Scott:
Oh my god, it looks kind of creepy though.

Scott:
Oh, I see.

Peter:
Yeah, it deepfakes you.

Scott:
You point the thing at yourself let it generate the avatar and then from then on it uses that The price yeah vic missed it, too

Peter:
So as you know, I had to jump to a call right at the very end, so I literally missed the last minute of the presentation where they announced the price.

Scott:
I don’t know to be honest

Peter:
When is it available? Is it available next week like everything else?

Scott:
I missed that part of it too because so many people were messaging me that I i’m a monotasker now

Peter:
Huh, so like if you get messages and stuff, and if you get more than one message at a

Scott:
I can’t I can’t do too many things at once anymore If I’m reading a message no because I know that there’s more than one and I scroll up

Peter:
time you might miss one?

Scott:
That’s a lot different than trying to listen to something and reading at the same time

Peter:
Anyway, I think it looks cool.

Scott:
No, I don’t miss messages

Peter:
I am definitely more interested in it now. I do not think I will be buying version one of this product. Just like any Apple.

Scott:
It says “Vision Pro will be available sometime next year.” Yeah, I can’t justify… I can’t…

Peter:
Next year.

Scott:
This is money that if I had, it would be going straight into my daughter’s college fund.

Scott:
It would not be going to Apple for a headset. And someone on Mastodon said, “Hey, did it bother anyone else? Am I the only one that was bothered by the guy playing with his child while staring through this thing at them? And i’m like no that really bugged the hell out of me, too for wearing around the house and interacting with other humans this thing has to

Peter:
Hmm.

Scott:
This is where apple has to start now. I totally get why they release this now But it’s not going to be socially acceptable until it gets to the end point of it

Peter:
[sigh]

Scott:
Looks like a pair of glasses that you’re wearing

Peter:
You say that now, but in 2007 it was not socially acceptable to be having a conversation while doing this all the time.

Peter:
And dear listener, you can’t see me. I’m staring at my phone and not even looking at Scott while I talk to him. And people do this all the time.

Scott:
But Peter, human beings have this instinctive thing about other human faces.

Peter:

Peter:
Yeah.

Scott:
And it doesn’t matter if you’re—when you’re staring at your phone, you still have a normal human face.

Peter:

Scott:
But when you cover up part of your face, it removes the idea that you’re really interacting from me

Scott:
Yeah, but that’s ex-

Peter:
Didn’t you used to go snowboarding? You ever talk to people while you were wearing your goggles?

Scott:
And that’s totally expected because society expects it

Peter:

Scott:
But if you’re just standing in your kitchen and the entire top of the head is covered

Peter:
This will change.

Peter:
It will change.

Scott:
I know but it still bugged the hell out of me. It just bugged me

Peter:
I’m not saying it’s right, and I’m not saying it’s not going to bug me when it happens,

Scott:

Peter:
but it will change. People will just adapt and we will become more disconnected and more rude and less engaged.

Peter:

Scott:
But what I’m saying is, to me, interacting with your own flesh and blood child, a small human being who’s learning from everything that you’re doing in front of them, that to me is worse than looking at your phone. I mean, looking at the phone and clearly not paying

Scott:
attention to the child bad enough but having your eyes covered

Peter:
I think it’s the exact same thing.

Peter:
I think it’s the exact same thing, because if you’re interacting with your child and look at your phone, you’re teaching your child that it’s okay to not be engaging with the person you’re talking to.

Scott:
because your phone goes down from time to time this thing

Peter:

Scott:
stays on your face it doesn’t go away so a hundred percent of the time you’re saying i’m not interacting with you don’t expect

Scott:
a hell of a lot from me and by the way if it seems like i’m interacting with with you maybe I am but maybe I’m also looking something else this is worse than the phone because they can never see your eyes move away from it to them

Soundboard:
(silence)

Scott:
which with the phone even the most inattentive parent will occasionally

Scott:
glance up and pretend to listen to the child

Peter:
But I thought when someone else got close to you, your eyes were visible to them.

Scott:
it does but it’s still when they were showing that guy interacting with the

Peter:
All right.

Scott:
child you couldn’t see it until they did the close-up of the guy it still just

Soundboard:
[ Glasses clinking ]

Scott:
looked like he was being an -------- in his own home not paying attention to his

Scott:
family. That’s literally what it looked like. I’m just saying that it is something that I don’t think Apple can hand wave away.

Peter:
I would not have thought 20 years ago if you told me that anybody, you know,

Scott:
But is that really okay? Is that really something we want to make even worse?

Peter:
it’s going to be totally cool for people to be staring at their phone while they’re supposed to be having a conversation with you that that would be okay, but somehow it is.

Peter:
No! I remember like I was teaching a yoga class a couple of years ago and I walked into the

Scott:

Peter:
studio and I had my phone and I before I said anything else to anybody I said to the students

Peter:
there I said first off I just want you to know I forgot my printed lesson plan so I’m calling it

Peter:
it up here and I will be referring to my notes on my phone tonight.” And one of the students looked up and said, “Is it bad that I didn’t even think anything

Peter:
of you looking at your phone?” And I was like, “Yeah, maybe.”

Scott:
Did you just say “get out”? You threw them out. Get away from me.

Peter:
Kind of.

Scott:
me.

Peter:
So watchOS widgets, that looks cool.

Scott:
Yeah, and I like the fact that if you are obviously detained it gives you an

Peter:
Scrolling up to find your stuff, that looks cool. Safety features. Oh, the new safety features. Check in, the check in feature, I’m on my way home, I should be home by around 11.

Peter:
Right, oh, he’s in traffic, okay, fine.

Scott:
opportunity to say, “Hey, add more time to this so they don’t panic.” Well, then it doesn’t, then you don’t update it.

Peter:
Now what if you’re getting kidnapped and the kidnapper just pulls off to the side of the road? Well, it stopped.

Scott:
And then you also the people on the other end get a notification of saying, Hey, this guy’s not getting where they’re said they were going to.

Peter:
But they can tell that you’re not stuck in traffic. That’s right.

Scott:
Yeah.

Peter:
Okay. So yeah.

Scott:

Peter:
But what if you get kidnapped and they wisely detain you in an area with a lot of traffic?

Scott:
Well yeah, but if the traffic is going loop-de-loop around the

Peter:
Perfect.

Scott:
fountain in main square and obviously not heading towards your home, it’s still going to be obvious to them that something’s wrong.

Peter:
Perfect. [laughs]

Scott:
Unless the kidnapper wants to go to your house for some reason, “Hey let’s take you

Peter:
Mm-hmm.

Scott:
home!” “You bastard, I’m taking you home. This will show you.” You know, they’ll know. But anyway, going back to the headset, I just want to say

Scott:
Even though this is not a product for me, and even though I think this is not a product for most people for a long time, I think there will be many iterations before many people want to buy this product.

Scott:
It really does look like Apple did it right. It really does look like this is better than what’s already there. It’s certainly better hardware.

Peter:
Yep.

Scott:
But it looks like if the software works the way they showed, with the hand gestures, with the movements, with the being able to focus on different things and rearrange your desktop and all that stuff, it does look really nice.

Peter:
Yep.

Scott:
it does look like this is at least done proper.

Peter:
Yep.

Scott:
Will it succeed or not? I don’t know. Eventually, probably yes. Eventually in the future, we’re going to wear glasses

Peter:
Mm-hmm.

Scott:
and we’re going to see AR stuff.

Peter:
Mm-hmm.

Scott:
That’s just we know that’s going to happen.

Peter:
yeah it’ll happen

Scott:
Is it going to be Apple that’s going to succeed?

Scott:
Maybe, maybe not, but this is a very good first step.

Peter:
I like the fact that they support Zeiss corrective lenses as add-ons so you

Scott:
Yeah, how much do those cost?

Peter:
just add those in

Scott:
Anytime you see the word Zeiss, you can add $300 to the price.

Peter:
I was gonna say those are cheap yeah I mean that’s gonna just add just a

Scott:
Can’t it just say LensCrafter?

Peter:
pittance on top of your existing

Scott:
I mean, come on guys.

Peter:
Lenscrafter is not bad. Give me Warby Parker would you? I’d much rather that

Scott:
Seriously. Yeah, exactly. I think it’s a first good step.

Peter:
Yeah.

Scott:
I think this is where they had to start. I do understand if the rumors are true that some people within Apple felt like releasing

Scott:
this was a mistake. I get that sentiment because it is expensive and it’s not a universal appeal device.

Peter:
Mm-hmm. [no audio]

Scott:
But I also understand the fact that for this technology, if Apple is afraid that eventually something like this is going to eat the phone, they have to be one of the companies on the

Scott:
path towards this or else they’re going to get eaten. It’s just like the original Mac. Even though Steve Jobs’s vision of what computing would probably be like for most people is

Scott:
was probably more similar to the iPad, he certainly couldn’t start there.

Peter:
I don’t know that the the objection being not universally appealing to people. I mean,

Scott:
Those are things that still,

Peter:
I know plenty of people who don’t want an Apple Watch and plenty of people who don’t want an iPad. COVID changed a lot though.

Scott:
even those are things that could universally appeal to way more people than this can. How many people are gonna pay $3,500 for something you strap onto your face and they’re only actually gonna feel good about wearing

Scott:
when they’re at home by themselves? They’re not going to do this at work, not when other people are around. They’re not going to do this on an airplane. I don’t care what Apple says. First of all, just carrying the thing around is a pain in the ass. It just takes up s— True.

Peter:
A lot of people spend a lot more time at home than they used to.

Scott:
For me, it’ll be—

Peter:
I’ll check back again maybe at version 3.

Peter:
Well, let’s find out. We’ll find out.

Scott:
I think it’ll be more like 5, maybe 10. Why?

Peter:
On that note, I think we should wrap things up. Because I haven’t eaten dinner yet and I’m hungry, and I’ve had beer.

Scott:
Why do you have a big red button in your pocket?

Soundboard:
I have the memo.

Scott:
Oh, I get the message.

Peter:
Alright, I’ll be sure to send you another copy of the memo.

Scott:
Right.

Peter:
And dear listener, if you want to find us, you already found us. Links are in the show notes. Links are everywhere.

Scott:
Friends with Brews.com use the search feature.

Peter:
Wherever you found this podcast, that’s where you found it. That’s it. Yeah, it’s use the search feature. Find the beers that we drank about. Don’t drink the ones that we said you needed to be desperate for. Ugh, yuck, yuck.

Scott:
If they say thumbs down and they say desperate, don’t do them.

Peter:
I think we should push the big red button.