Apple Immersive Metallica and What's Going on at Apple with Siri?

Intro

Tom Anderson (0s)

And I'm fully self-aware that I was that idiot back in the '90s.

Tom Anderson (4s)

So this is not, you know, a holier-than-thou statement by any means.

Tom Anderson (12s)

Well everyone and welcome to another episode of Basic AF. As always a pleasure to have you joining us here.

Tom Anderson (18s)

I'm Tom Anderson, and I'm joined as always by Jeff Battersby. Hello, Jeff.

Jeff Battersby (24s)

Good morning, Tom. I'm doing a remote today

Tom Anderson (30s)

You are in a different location.

Jeff Battersby (30s)

Doing this. I am I'm on the West Coast. I

Jeff Battersby (35s)

Think there's a Lana Del Rey song in there somewhere

Jeff Battersby (39s)

The yeah, I'm on the West Coast. I'll I'll lead with this and then we'll get there

In Memory of John Brooks

Jeff Battersby (45s)

my uncle John Brooks, who I

Jeff Battersby (49s)

adored from the time I was Probably.

Jeff Battersby (54s)

It popped out of my mom.

Jeff Battersby (56s)

Somebody I really loved.

Jeff Battersby (58s)

He died a week ago today.

Jeff Battersby (1m)

And so I unfortunately didn't make it here on time to see him before he died.

Jeff Battersby (1m 6s)

I was scheduled to fly out on Sunday and he died on Saturday.

Jeff Battersby (1m 10s)

But I have been here and with family which has been lovely.

Jeff Battersby (1m 14s)

And we're all missing my uncle together.

Jeff Battersby (1m 16s)

So I am on the West Coast and will be until Wednesday.

Jeff Battersby (1m 20s)

It's sad but probably good.

Jeff Battersby (1m 27s)

Something else, he really was something else.

Jeff Battersby (1m 29s)

And I miss him and will continue to miss him until I'm done, but yeah.

Jeff Battersby (1m 36s)

So that's it.

Jeff Battersby (1m 37s)

I'm in the ADU that my mom has and recording.

Jeff Battersby (1m 43s)

So that's why it's a little echoey and here I am.

Tom Anderson (1m 47s)

Alright, yeah, and you shared that picture with me of the two of you some some years back and

Tom Anderson (1m 53s)

And I thought it was a great picture and so thanks for sharing that I mean that was yeah, it was great

Jeff Battersby (1m 55s)

Yeah, man, you could see him all over that, man.

Jeff Battersby (2m)

The look on his face and kinda, you know,

Jeff Battersby (2m 2s)

that was us in his kitchen.

Jeff Battersby (2m 5s)

He's the one that taught me how to cook.

Jeff Battersby (2m 7s)

And I would say more importantly,

Jeff Battersby (2m 9s)

taught me to love cooking.

Jeff Battersby (2m 11s)

Like, you know, he was an experimenter in every way.

Jeff Battersby (2m 14s)

He was a tinkerer.

Jeff Battersby (2m 16s)

He was a guy that just did a lot of stuff.

Jeff Battersby (2m 18s)

And that was in his kitchen.

Jeff Battersby (2m 21s)

That was what's strange.

Jeff Battersby (2m 22s)

I was doing a little math on that picture.

Jeff Battersby (2m 24s)

nobody's going to see the picture.

Jeff Battersby (2m 25s)

So, you know, you're not going to get any perspective.

Jeff Battersby (2m 28s)

But I was doing a little math on that picture.

Jeff Battersby (2m 31s)

And he in that picture was my age now.

Jeff Battersby (2m 34s)

So, yeah, right.

Tom Anderson (2m 35s)

Don't you love that?

Jeff Battersby (2m 38s)

So I do a little math and go, OK, I've got this many months left.

Tom Anderson (2m 44s)

Yeah, I do that too.

Jeff Battersby (2m 44s)

All right. Years, years.

Tom Anderson (2m 45s)

Like my oldest son is 32, and I was like, dang.

Tom Anderson (2m 51s)

And then I realized that's the same age that I was when my wife and I, my wife now got married.

Tom Anderson (3m)

I'm like, geez, so he was, we got married 2004.

Tom Anderson (3m 3s)

So she's second wife, but, and last.

Tom Anderson (3m 6s)

And in all the good ways, by the way, she's a keeper.

Jeff Battersby (3m 9s)

Yes.

Tom Anderson (3m 11s)

That didn't maybe come across a bit.

Jeff Battersby (3m 13s)

Whoops.

Tom Anderson (3m 14s)

Arsh, but was not the intention.

Jeff Battersby (3m 15s)

Wait.

Tom Anderson (3m 16s)

She's yeah, trust me.

Jeff Battersby (3m 17s)

Hey, Tom Tammy's behind you with an ax.

Jeff Battersby (3m 18s)

Hold on, pal.

Tom Anderson (3m 20s)

I probably deserve it before I even said that.

Tom Anderson (3m 23s)

So, but yeah, time flies, man.

Tom Anderson (3m 25s)

It's it's something so.

Jeff Battersby (3m 28s)

Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (3m 28s)

Yeah, it really is.

Jeff Battersby (3m 31s)

So, anyway.

Jeff Battersby (3m 32s)

Sad, sad family loss.

Tom Anderson (3m 37s)

So this is episode 57, and I know that segue was awkward.

Jeff Battersby (3m 43s)

Woo-hoo! That was super awkward.

Tom Anderson (3m 43s)

I didn't know what to say.

Tom Anderson (3m 44s)

So yeah, episode 57 show notes can be found at basicafshow.com/57.

Tom Anderson (3m 52s)

Don't forget, we do have chapter markers in every episode.

Tom Anderson (3m 55s)

So if there's a particular segment that you're not particularly interested in and you want to jump around, feel free to, that's why we put them there.

Tom Anderson (4m 3s)

Or if you want to just get a nice overview of what's coming up in the show, you can use them for that as well.

Tom Anderson (4m 8s)

Um, if you would do us a favor, please rate or review us on apple podcasts,

Tom Anderson (4m 13s)

pocket casts, wherever that you listen, Spotify, it doesn't matter.

Tom Anderson (4m 16s)

Um, follow the show.

Tom Anderson (4m 18s)

That would be great.

Tom Anderson (4m 19s)

And if you are so inclined, you can join my newsletter to tomfanderson.com/newsletter.

Jeff Battersby (4m 26s)

Yeah, we'll do a little other business at the top.

Jeff Battersby (4m 28s)

Feedback@basicafshow.com.

Jeff Battersby (4m 30s)

Easy to get to us if you want to leave us a message.

Jeff Battersby (4m 34s)

We also have a voicemail option that you can tap in your podcast app if you want to leave us a message or ask us a question.

Jeff Battersby (4m 42s)

That might be kind of fun.

Jeff Battersby (4m 44s)

We'd be happy to respond to those.

Jeff Battersby (4m 46s)

And we have in the past responded to those when people have asked us specific questions about specific things.

Jeff Battersby (4m 53s)

We have show music by.

Jeff Battersby (4m 56s)

We have Psychokinetics and Celsius 7, so we're grateful to Psychokinetics and Celsius 7 for all of that.

Jeff Battersby (5m 2s)

And Randall Barton Design is our show art, so there we go, we took care of all that stuff.

Tom Anderson (5m 8s)

All right, excellent. So we've got a packed agenda

Tom Anderson (5m 13s)

today To put it mildly, so we're gonna move kind of quick through through the first half of it to get to the I guess the main topic but I do want to say I wish Apple would get their product release schedules in line with our show schedules because

Jeff Battersby (5m 13s)

Yee.

Jeff Battersby (5m 14s)

Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (5m 15s)

Yeah.

Tom Anderson (5m 28s)

It's like we publish a show and then like the next day they release stuff and then it's like a long gap in between and Then they release more stuff I'm sure they're really concerned about that.

Jeff Battersby (5m 37s)

Yeah, some of this is old news.

Tom Anderson (5m 39s)

It is, which is why we're not going to spend a lot of time on it.

Tom Anderson (5m 42s)

But we feel like we should do it.

Jeff Battersby (5m 43s)

We'll get a note into Tim Apple and tell him to get it straight for us.

Tom Anderson (5m 46s)

He's got bigger problems, and we'll talk about that later.

Jeff Battersby (5m 49s)

Yeah, we definitely will.

Tom Anderson (5m 50s)

So, let's see.

New iPad Air and iPad

Tom Anderson (5m 52s)

Week four last, we got some updated, refreshed iPads and Macs.

Tom Anderson (5m 59s)

So, I'll start with iPad Air with M3 chip.

Tom Anderson (6m 4s)

Um, so spec upgrade for which.

Tom Anderson (6m 8s)

I think is the best iPad for most people.

Tom Anderson (6m 10s)

Um, I think it kind of puts you right in that sweet spot of power and, you know, the better Apple pencils, the better keyboards and all that sort of stuff, screen sizes, if you want to multiple screen sizes.

Jeff Battersby (6m 11s)

Yes, agree, agree, good.

Tom Anderson (6m 22s)

So M3 chip, uh, four colors, they always there space, gray, blue, purple,

Tom Anderson (6m 28s)

and star light 11 or 13 inch display storage from one 28 gig up to one terabyte, of course, Apple intelligence support, which we'll.

Tom Anderson (6m 38s)

talk about that a little bit later, too.

Tom Anderson (6m 40s)

Um, and really other than that, nothing really stands out too much that you probably haven't already heard about.

Tom Anderson (6m 47s)

Um, they are available now.

Tom Anderson (6m 49s)

They started 599 for the wifi model, 799 for, or that's the 11 inch model.

Tom Anderson (6m 54s)

I should say 599, 128 gigs, $749.

Tom Anderson (6m 59s)

If you want the cellular model with the one 28 and then the 13 inch model is $200 on top of those.

Tom Anderson (7m 5s)

Um, they did release an updated keyboard.

Jeff Battersby (7m 5s)

Yep, and $9.49 with Celeron.

Tom Anderson (7m 8s)

What that's, yeah, that's a lot.

Jeff Battersby (7m 10s)

Yeah, and if I were getting one now,

Jeff Battersby (7m 11s)

I have an iPad Pro, but if I were getting one,

Jeff Battersby (7m 13s)

this would probably be the one I'd get.

Jeff Battersby (7m 14s)

There's no, you know,

Tom Anderson (7m 15s)

Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (7m 15s)

there's nothing that I'm doing pro on my iPad.

Jeff Battersby (7m 20s)

Unless editing documents manually like I would do on paper in the old days with an Apple Pencil is a thing,

Tom Anderson (7m 25s)

Right.

Jeff Battersby (7m 26s)

and I don't think that uses a lot of juice.

Jeff Battersby (7m 30s)

So, yep, cool.

Jeff Battersby (7m 31s)

Next upgrade, we have an iPad now with A16 chip.

Jeff Battersby (7m 35s)

One of the upgrades.

Jeff Battersby (7m 36s)

Four colors, silver, blue, pink, and yellow.

Jeff Battersby (7m 38s)

Pink, whoo.

Jeff Battersby (7m 40s)

So, but do like those options there.

Jeff Battersby (7m 44s)

11-inch liquid retina display.

Jeff Battersby (7m 49s)

And then the usual suspects.

Jeff Battersby (7m 52s)

This one still has Touch ID.

Jeff Battersby (7m 54s)

Why that's a thing, I don't know.

Tom Anderson (7m 55s)

Yeah, the air does as well.

Tom Anderson (7m 57s)

I'm like, I don't know.

Jeff Battersby (7m 57s)

Yeah, you know, you could throw that capability into any of those.

Jeff Battersby (8m 4s)

Wi-Fi only models.

Jeff Battersby (8m 6s)

128 gigs and go up to 512 gigs which is plenty enough I think for most people.

Jeff Battersby (8m 14s)

Starts at $349, ends at $649. Cellular same arrangement. Starts at $499, goes to $799.

Jeff Battersby (8m 22s)

And as with the preceding iPad, those are available.

Tom Anderson (8m 30s)

Yeah, no Apple Intelligence support on that one, which is a little disappointing.

Tom Anderson (8m 37s)

That's the one we buy at work for students.

Tom Anderson (8m 40s)

And, uh, so that, that was a little bit of a, a letdown, but the big thing, right.

Jeff Battersby (8m 40s)

Okay yeah okay that doesn't bother me by the way.

Tom Anderson (8m 50s)

The thing, the thing is, is like, it's like, they're not going to retrofit it.

Tom Anderson (8m 53s)

I don't think so.

Tom Anderson (8m 54s)

The why I'm concerned about that is the student gets in, they have it for four four years, so they don't get refreshed a lot.

Tom Anderson (9m 1s)

comes in and gets, it's not going to have it for four years on that, but who cares?

Tom Anderson (9m 5s)

The big news though, they did double the starting storage from 64 gig to 128.

Tom Anderson (9m 10s)

So I'm very happy about that.

Tom Anderson (9m 12s)

64 kind of was feeling a lot like the 16 gig iPhone that they kept around for way too long.

Tom Anderson (9m 17s)

So yeah.

Jeff Battersby (9m 18s)

16 kicks, jeez. Woohoo! Yep.

Tom Anderson (9m 22s)

All right.

Tom Anderson (9m 22s)

So those are the two iPad models.

Tom Anderson (9m 24s)

And then later in that week, we got a bump on the MacBook Air.

New MacBook Air and Mac Studio

Tom Anderson (9m 30s)

Which now has an M4 chip and new lower starting price.

Jeff Battersby (9m 37s)

Yeah, let me tell you again, this would be the ticket for me if I were replacing,

Tom Anderson (9m 42s)

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Battersby (9m 45s)

if the internet burger on Hagenberger Road was still open and I wanted a new computer,

Jeff Battersby (9m 49s)

I could drive by there right now and get this replaced. So, but it's a, again, as you said,

Jeff Battersby (9m 56s)

M4 chip, four different colors, sky blue, silver, starlight, and midnight, 13 or 15 inch models,

Jeff Battersby (10m 2s)

which by the way, those 15s are pretty sharp. I had a client right before I came out here,

Jeff Battersby (10m 7s)

who just got one of those and man, it's a nice computer. Starts at 16 gigs of unified memory,

Jeff Battersby (10m 13s)

maxes out at 32, which for most mere mortals like myself, that's plenty of memory. Storage,

Jeff Battersby (10m 23s)

256 up to two terabytes, which two terabytes seems like a ton to me. Yeah, that's a nice thing,

Tom Anderson (10m 27s)

That's pretty sweet.

Jeff Battersby (10m 29s)

which a lot of times these MacBook Airs were kind of stingy when it came to the high end of storage.

Jeff Battersby (10m 37s)

So that's pretty good. 18 hours of battery life and charges up to 50% in 30 minutes when using the 70 watt adapter. So really, really good computer. And the Apple education price,

Jeff Battersby (10m 52s)

which works for you, Tom, and probably for a lot of people, 900 bucks. So,

Tom Anderson (10m 55s)

Yep, and the nice thing about that, I do, I do, 20 bucks, that's, yeah, yeah, we do custom build.

Jeff Battersby (11m)

and Tom recommends adding the $20 70 watt power adapter. Is that what you guys do at school?

Jeff Battersby (11m 8s)

You order them with the $70.

Tom Anderson (11m 9s)

We order them with 70s.

Tom Anderson (11m 10s)

Yeah.

Tom Anderson (11m 11s)

Cause I figure how many times students going to be like, oh crap, my laptop's dead and they plug it in 15 minutes before class, at least they'll get through class with that.

Jeff Battersby (11m 21s)

Oh yeah, for 50% they should get plenty, they should get the rest of the...

Tom Anderson (11m 26s)

Yep, and what's nice, I mean, so they lowered the price there.

Tom Anderson (11m 30s)

And I think it goes without saying, at this point,

Tom Anderson (11m 32s)

the biggest advantage of Apple Intelligence thus far is,

Tom Anderson (11m 38s)

because of it, Apple has raised the base floor for RAM from 8 gigs to 16.

Jeff Battersby (11m 44s)

There you go

Tom Anderson (11m 45s)

Because, you know, I talked to you this week with the price savings.

Tom Anderson (11m 49s)

So we try to hit a price target for the stuff that we order.

Tom Anderson (11m 52s)

and we've traditionally gone with.

Tom Anderson (11m 55s)

16 gigs of memory, 256 storage.

Tom Anderson (11m 59s)

And so with the price change, we were like, okay,

Tom Anderson (12m 1s)

so this could be a chance to bump up storage or the RAM

Tom Anderson (12m 7s)

or unified memory as they call it now.

Tom Anderson (12m 9s)

And so I did a report and I mentioned to you that it was only, you know, a small percentage of our users were actually above,

Tom Anderson (12m 19s)

had, you know, maxed out storage on the 256.

Tom Anderson (12m 22s)

And I think it was 80% or below, well below.

Tom Anderson (12m 25s)

Like 50% usage of the 256.

Tom Anderson (12m 29s)

And so I think a lot of times, and especially like for folks like us who are into the Apple scene and, you know, follow a lot of Apple people on social and everything, we say, gosh, 256 is way too low these days.

Tom Anderson (12m 42s)

That needs to be bumped up.

Tom Anderson (12m 43s)

But when I saw that, I was like, probably not.

Tom Anderson (12m 48s)

And especially from 900 bucks, I mean, that's, that's a steal.

Jeff Battersby (12m 51s)

for the average user yeah I think I think that's exactly correct i've got a terabyte on this mac

Jeff Battersby (13m 6s)

That would be too little for me. I'm using 580 gigs. God knows where not I need to have that much on there.

Jeff Battersby (13m 17s)

Looking at the setup right now, I have system data of 347 gigs, so something's rotten.

Tom Anderson (13m 23s)

Don't you love that?

Jeff Battersby (13m 25s)

Which is a...

Tom Anderson (13m 28s)

So, well, you have to run Daisy disk or something on there that gets more specific and what's using the space.

Jeff Battersby (13m 33s)

Yeah, but that's exactly correct. In fact, my mom had a 10-year-old iMac that we just upgraded while I was here and I was like, "Oh, I should probably get her a terabyte." Then I was looking at what she was actually using. No need. Yeah. I had put in her iMac, I'd put in an SSD just to boost the speed on it a few years ago it had an old

Jeff Battersby (14m 3s)

clatter disc and that was you know that was running fine and I put a terabyte drive in and she's come nowhere near using that so we got 512 we got the off the shelf model top-of-the-line off the shelf model the iMac which comes with 512 and 16 gigs which you know that'll keep her happy for a good long time so yeah for the average bear $257.99

Tom Anderson (14m 18s)

All right.

Tom Anderson (14m 22s)

Planning.

Tom Anderson (14m 27s)

Yeah, I think the big complaints,

Tom Anderson (14m 28s)

just the upgrades are so expensive.

Tom Anderson (14m 29s)

It's like 200 bucks every time you bump it up, I think.

Tom Anderson (14m 32s)

So you get up to like the large terabyte numbers,

Tom Anderson (14m 35s)

like then it's more than $200 per bit.

Tom Anderson (14m 38s)

Anyhow, so we got that.

Tom Anderson (14m 39s)

And then the last ended up being an updated Mac Studio with some, yeah.

Jeff Battersby (14m 45s)

Bat time. In a minute.

Tom Anderson (14m 47s)

It has, it was, I think M2 was last that it had.

Tom Anderson (14m 51s)

And so a little confusing with,

Tom Anderson (14m 53s)

if you just look at the numbers,

Tom Anderson (14m 55s)

which is I think sometimes the Achilles heel of these numbering systems,

Tom Anderson (15m)

because it got the M4 Max in the base model,

Jeff Battersby (15m 3s)

Mm-hmm.

Tom Anderson (15m 5s)

the M3 Ultra at the high end.

Tom Anderson (15m 8s)

So you're like, well,

Tom Anderson (15m 9s)

how can the M3 be more than the M4?

Tom Anderson (15m 12s)

Now, obviously that isn't a big deal,

Tom Anderson (15m 15s)

but just looking at it, you're like,

Tom Anderson (15m 18s)

well, if that's the M4, why is the M3 better?

Tom Anderson (15m 20s)

Well, because, right, right.

Jeff Battersby (15m 20s)

Yeah, why am I getting a three when there's now a four?

Tom Anderson (15m 24s)

But man, these things you can pack full of just about everything and spend a lot of money and have one powerhouse system that I will never need,

Tom Anderson (15m 34s)

but I'm sure somebody does.

Jeff Battersby (15m 36s)

Yeah, you're doing video editing or anything kind of high-end rendering or that kind of stuff pretty bomber And again, I don't often get myself into Apple stores, but I was looking at these these things. It's funny They're very small, but they're very large I forgot how big they are especially since they put it in the Apple Store right next to the Mac mini

Tom Anderson (15m 57s)

The new one, right?

Jeff Battersby (15m 57s)

Which now fits in your pocket?

Tom Anderson (15m 59s)

Yeah, because I think previously, Mac mini was like the studio was like two of the older style Mac mini stacked up effectively, not 100%.

Jeff Battersby (16m 4s)

Yes, that and now.

Jeff Battersby (16m 7s)

Now it's not that but yeah, these these things are I think I saw some place that a maxed out model cost about 8 grand.

Tom Anderson (16m 20s)

I could see it probably being somewhere around there, even more, maybe depending.

Tom Anderson (16m 25s)

I saw someone posted on, might've been on threads, they bought, it was one of the, I think it was for an AI thing, but two of the M3 Ultra, which is the high-end model with 512 gigabytes of unified memory in each one.

Tom Anderson (16m 41s)

I was like, holy smokes, that's a lot.

Jeff Battersby (16m 45s)

Yeah.

Tom Anderson (16m 46s)

So that was a lot of money too.

Jeff Battersby (16m 46s)

Yeah, I wonder what they were doing.

Tom Anderson (16m 48s)

So all that stuff's up on Apple's.

Tom Anderson (16m 51s)

No update for the Mac pro.

Tom Anderson (16m 53s)

Um, and so people are wondering, Ooh, will there be an update for the Mac pro or is the Mac pro kind of, you know, not going to really be around for much longer.

Tom Anderson (17m 2s)

Um, biggest thing it has is just expansion, right?

Jeff Battersby (17m 4s)

Yeah I mean yes yeah I don't I don't know if that's an interesting question.

Tom Anderson (17m 5s)

If you need to put car slots.

Jeff Battersby (17m 12s)

Those things take up a lot of real estate too. They're not you know when you when you look at how much how much is packed into this thing really that sits on your desk and you know

Tom Anderson (17m 14s)

They do, yeah, and I think they've put...

Jeff Battersby (17m 23s)

and that thing sits under your desk and if you want to go for the very expensive rollers

Jeff Battersby (17m 29s)

as wheels on it. You can tool it around you know you.

Jeff Battersby (17m 34s)

You can, I don't know, for the same footprint, you could probably have a dozen or more of these, you know, in that same space. So, who knows?

Tom Anderson (17m 43s)

And you get a lot of external expansion on the Studio too with the Thunderbolt 5 they added.

Jeff Battersby (17m 47s)

Yes.

Tom Anderson (17m 50s)

So if you do want any more information on those, like we say, Apple has them all up on their website or go buy a store if you'd like to see them in person.

Tom Anderson (18m)

There you go.

Jeff Battersby (18m)

There you go, yeah, pretty cool.

Jeff Battersby (18m 1s)

All right, that's it.

Jeff Battersby (18m 3s)

Tom, man, they're handing you a lot of vision pro fun

Jeff Battersby (18m 9s)

over the last few weeks.

Jeff Battersby (18m 14s)

So one of the things that has happened is there is an immersive Metallica concert experience.

Apple Immersive Metallica: A Turning Point?

Jeff Battersby (18m 22s)

You've been headbanging, baby?

Jeff Battersby (18m 23s)

You're out there like flopping your head up and down and holding onto the straps on the back of your head

Jeff Battersby (18m 30s)

just to make sure the vision pro doesn't fall off.

Tom Anderson (18m 34s)

I did, and I was like, "Hold on a second, hold on, can't be doing that."

Tom Anderson (18m 43s)

So they just announced this, I guess a week or so ago, it came out this week.

Tom Anderson (18m 48s)

So we're recording March 15th, Saturday, as we typically do on Saturdays when we have shows and I think they said it was going to come out on the 14th.

Tom Anderson (18m 58s)

It was out Thursday night, nine o'clock or so Eastern time, and I tried to watch it then And then all of a sudden, it started saying--

Tom Anderson (19m 4s)

having trouble accessing this content.

Tom Anderson (19m 5s)

So I don't know if they released it too early and pulled it back or whatever.

Jeff Battersby (19m 6s)

Yeah, that means all five people that got a vision pro were trying to watch it.

Tom Anderson (19m 8s)

But I was like, that's OK, I'll watch it later.

Tom Anderson (19m 12s)

Could be.

Tom Anderson (19m 15s)

So watched it yesterday.

Tom Anderson (19m 19s)

And Jeff, I don't want to say with certainty,

Tom Anderson (19m 23s)

but this could be the turning point in the immersive content strategy or release schedule

Tom Anderson (19m 34s)

way they're approaching it.

Tom Anderson (19m 36s)

This was phenomenal.

Jeff Battersby (19m 39s)

Really? Okay, tell me.

Tom Anderson (19m 39s)

Like, I was like, holy crap.

Tom Anderson (19m 43s)

So it's 25 minutes long.

Tom Anderson (19m 47s)

They still had the super, super close-ups,

Tom Anderson (19m 49s)

which I joked with you about earlier,

Tom Anderson (19m 51s)

saying you look like you were in the immersive video because you're basically face-first into your laptop camera now.

Jeff Battersby (19m 54s)

'Cause my face is...

Tom Anderson (19m 58s)

So they still had some of that in it.

Tom Anderson (19m 59s)

So it's a bit of a light documentary style where each of--

Tom Anderson (20m 4s)

the band members has 60 seconds where they're talking about something.

Tom Anderson (20m 10s)

I think James may have had a few minutes more or a few seconds more.

Tom Anderson (20m 14s)

But most of it is concert footage from Mexico City.

Tom Anderson (20m 17s)

So Mexico City in Metallica is like lightning in a bottle.

Tom Anderson (20m 21s)

The crowds are always super hyped and over-the-top energetic.

Tom Anderson (20m 26s)

So that was a perfect place to do it.

Tom Anderson (20m 28s)

And it's in a big arena.

Tom Anderson (20m 30s)

And they've got, I don't know how many different cameras.

Tom Anderson (20m 34s)

They had set up like they had the one right by Lars Ulrich, who's the drummer they've got them around the stage.

Tom Anderson (20m 41s)

So as they're moving around because it's kind of like a in the ring stage set up and so they're just kind of walking around and then they've got the snake pit in the middle where some people are.

Tom Anderson (20m 49s)

But then they put them up higher in the stadium. So in the upper deck area. And so you get this incredible panoramic shot of the set.

Tom Anderson (21m 5s)

You know, things that go with the video screens up above it, the lights, but then the rest of the arena as well, the sky and all that.

Tom Anderson (21m 14s)

And so they do three songs. They did Whiplash. They did One and Enter Sandman were the three that they included.

Jeff Battersby (21m 21s)

Oh, that must have been a fun one.

Jeff Battersby (21m 24s)

That's about the only Metallica song I'm in for.

Tom Anderson (21m 27s)

And so they've got audience shots, they got cameras right in front of the crowd, all of the band members.

Tom Anderson (21m 34s)

But just the it feels like they brought in. I don't know who did it could have been the same people have worked on some of the other ones, but it just felt like it had gone to a different level with the production style that they used.

Tom Anderson (21m 49s)

But I think part of it, too, is that environment seems perfect for these types of things because it's a huge space.

Tom Anderson (21m 58s)

So you can do your intimate close ups like you're like right on stage and like the performers were right there.

Tom Anderson (22m 5s)

Not that super close up like when they were doing the kind of the documentary piece.

Tom Anderson (22m 9s)

But the but then being in that upper deck section and particularly like in one, which is, you know, seven, seven and a half minutes long.

Tom Anderson (22m 19s)

But, you know, there's a thrash section in like the last three, four minutes of that.

Tom Anderson (22m 24s)

And lights are flashing and fires going off. But it's there. I mean, it's in the panoramic.

Tom Anderson (22m 30s)

It was freaking amazing, and I do have bias.

Tom Anderson (22m 34s)

I went to a bunch of Metallica shows back in the 90s and early 2000s, so there's a little bit of bias there, but I thought, "Okay, so I thought it was great, and I wonder what other people were saying about it."

Jeff Battersby (22m 36s)

Ha ha, no surprise man.

Tom Anderson (22m 49s)

So I went on to Reddit, and there are a couple of Vision Pro subreddits there, and across the board, even people were like, "I don't even know who the hell Metallica is, but this was freaking amazing."

Tom Anderson (23m 4s)

Maybe this is the,

Tom Anderson (23m 6s)

obviously Metallica's huge and they're not going to do a piss poor video.

Tom Anderson (23m 12s)

And so I don't know how much creative input maybe they had into it

Tom Anderson (23m 17s)

and where the balance fell for that.

Tom Anderson (23m 18s)

But it just felt like this was really like the starting point for like really, really good stuff.

Tom Anderson (23m 25s)

It was long, it was 25 minutes, it wasn't eight.

Tom Anderson (23m 29s)

I would love to see the whole concert and I would pay for it if they would release it.

Jeff Battersby (23m 34s)

Okay, cool You know, it's interesting. I

Tom Anderson (23m 34s)

So we'll see. It was great.

Jeff Battersby (23m 38s)

you know Apple developed technology for vision Pro and I

Jeff Battersby (23m 42s)

Mean, there's a lot of amazing technology whether or not you you know are in the market, which I'm not for vision Pro

Jeff Battersby (23m 50s)

You've got When I demoed it really amazing what you can do with it, and I didn't even get to see the you know

Jeff Battersby (23m 56s)

Mac display stuff on it

Jeff Battersby (23m 59s)

But when it comes to video

Jeff Battersby (24m 2s)

You've got to think that the technology

Jeff Battersby (24m 4s)

that was available, is available in the Vision Pro

Jeff Battersby (24m 10s)

outmatched what anybody had ever even thought of when it came to filming that kind of stuff.

Jeff Battersby (24m 16s)

And I'm willing to bet that that's part of the deal.

Jeff Battersby (24m 19s)

That's part of what you're saying,

Jeff Battersby (24m 22s)

that they've started to figure out what's possible,

Jeff Battersby (24m 25s)

what they can do,

Jeff Battersby (24m 29s)

and then how to make that into something compelling.

Jeff Battersby (24m 33s)

So that's exciting.

Jeff Battersby (24m 34s)

Again, not for me in the market.

Jeff Battersby (24m 36s)

In Metallica, definitely, it's like, OK, cool.

Jeff Battersby (24m 40s)

It would be fun to see.

Jeff Battersby (24m 41s)

But you've just mentioned the one song that I know for certain, which is "Enter the Sandman."

Jeff Battersby (24m 48s)

And the only reason I know that is because that's what Mariano Rivera walked into the stadium with for the Yankees.

Tom Anderson (24m 52s)

[Laughs] Right. Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (24m 56s)

So that's how I know the song.

Jeff Battersby (24m 58s)

It's not-- I'm not a Metallica guy.

Jeff Battersby (25m 4s)

That's my familiarity.

Jeff Battersby (25m 6s)

I always like a good concert, so I would be interested in that.

Jeff Battersby (25m 9s)

But it feels like they're getting their feet under them as far as what it is they can do.

Jeff Battersby (25m 15s)

And that's good.

Jeff Battersby (25m 18s)

And 25 minutes, how does your head feel with the headset on it for 25 minutes, other than having to pick it up off the floor a few times when you were in the mosh pit with everybody?

Tom Anderson (25m 30s)

25 minutes is easily doable.

Tom Anderson (25m 35s)

It's usually for me, it's when I get to 40, 45,

Tom Anderson (25m 40s)

I start to notice it.

Tom Anderson (25m 41s)

And again, a lot of it will depend,

Tom Anderson (25m 43s)

like I was enjoying that so much, it wasn't as noticeable.

Tom Anderson (25m 48s)

Like if I'm just sitting there looking at, I don't know,

Tom Anderson (25m 51s)

something on Safari or YouTube or whatever.

Tom Anderson (25m 54s)

so I was a little more distracted.

Tom Anderson (25m 56s)

And, uh, so that, that was okay.

Tom Anderson (25m 59s)

And plus, you know, I bought that Belkin strap that goes across the top,

Tom Anderson (26m 2s)

which looks a whole lot.

Tom Anderson (26m 3s)

If I don't know if you remember, but in the vision pro announcement, you probably will because remember, because it was when the dad was doing the weird video of his daughter, like at the birthday party or whatever it was, and everybody was like, Ooh, that's cringy.

Jeff Battersby (26m 13s)

Yeah. Yeah.

Tom Anderson (26m 17s)

And, uh, but they had Apple had a strap that went across the top with that solo knit band in the back, not the two thin straps, but that wide one.

Tom Anderson (26m 26s)

So Belkin put one out that kind of looks exactly like that thing.

Tom Anderson (26m 30s)

And that's helped out some for me for wearing it a bit longer.

Tom Anderson (26m 34s)

So yeah, it wasn't too bad.

Tom Anderson (26m 35s)

So hopefully this is the start of something.

Tom Anderson (26m 38s)

I can see them at some point starting to do longer and longer of these things and then adding them as, you know, things you can buy if you want to, or rent, whatever.

Jeff Battersby (26m 48s)

Cool.

Tom Anderson (26m 48s)

And I can't see them giving them away for free forever.

Tom Anderson (26m 51s)

So, right.

Tom Anderson (26m 54s)

But I would do it.

Tom Anderson (26m 54s)

that I give.

Tom Anderson (26m 56s)

If this can get just enough traction where they start to,

Tom Anderson (26m 59s)

these types of recordings are being done more frequently and the library builds, I think it's onto something. And then like, you know,

Tom Anderson (27m 8s)

because like tickets say for a Metallica concert,

Tom Anderson (27m 11s)

you're going to pay 400 bucks to be up in the nosebleeds at this point.

Tom Anderson (27m 14s)

I think this was good. And if I had to pay 30,

Tom Anderson (27m 19s)

50 bucks, probably do that

Jeff Battersby (27m 23s)

Yeah, yeah, I can see it.

Tom Anderson (27m 24s)

and not have to deal with idiots.

Tom Anderson (27m 26s)

So at this point, like, that's why I don't go to shows much anymore, either.

Tom Anderson (27m 30s)

And I'm fully self-aware that I was that idiot back in the 90s.

Tom Anderson (27m 35s)

So this is not, you know, a holier-than-thou statement by any means.

Tom Anderson (27m 38s)

This is, you know, I was that.

Tom Anderson (27m 42s)

So, you know, I said bend a bunch of those.

Jeff Battersby (27m 42s)

Yeah, now you're too old to do that.

Tom Anderson (27m 44s)

I know how it goes.

Jeff Battersby (27m 46s)

It was good when we were younger.

Tom Anderson (27m 48s)

God, my neck hurts today.

Jeff Battersby (27m 48s)

Um, yeah.

Tom Anderson (27m 52s)

So anyway, it was good.

Tom Anderson (27m 54s)

It was really good and

Tom Anderson (27m 56s)

I hope this is kind of the starting point for more of those.

Jeff Battersby (28m)

And I 100% think Apple's, as we talked about a couple episodes back, Apple's TV offerings,

Jeff Battersby (28m 10s)

film offerings are pretty great in Apple TV Plus.

Jeff Battersby (28m 15s)

Not gonna surprise me at all if they're developing some, I wouldn't think of a series, but maybe something closer to a full-length feature that has these kind of capabilities built in.

Tom Anderson (28m 27s)

I think they've got something coming up with U2 or Bono from the Sphere shows maybe that they're doing, the residency they're doing there or whatever.

Jeff Battersby (28m 35s)

Oh, that would be kind of cool.

Jeff Battersby (28m 37s)

Yeah.

Tom Anderson (28m 37s)

So yeah, we'll see.

Jeff Battersby (28m 40s)

All right, so good stuff.

Jeff Battersby (28m 41s)

Well, happy that you got to do a little headbanging, Tom.

Tom Anderson (28m 44s)

I watched it twice I did once once with the built-in speakers and then once with the AirPods Pro to see what the difference was because the spatial audio and the AirPods Pro was better yeah which is not a surprise I mean that you know you'd expect it to be but I thought I'd try that - typically I don't use the AirPods with the Vision Pro very much yeah all right so now that we've had all of the good news let's move in to the final top

Jeff Battersby (28m 46s)

Did you really?

Jeff Battersby (28m 52s)

And what was your--

Jeff Battersby (28m 56s)

yeah, OK, that's pretty interesting, right?

Jeff Battersby (29m 4s)

yeah when you're doing that right all right cool

Jeff Battersby (29m 10s)

yeah let's uh

What’s Going on at Apple With Siri?

Tom Anderson (29m 14s)

for today so back at WWDC last year Apple showed off everything new and exciting coming in iOS 18 and Mac OS Sequoia and so forth one of them or several of those features related to a new and improved Siri with personal context which oh you gave it away and so

Jeff Battersby (29m 25s)

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Battersby (29m 35s)

Huh? Still waiting. Sorry. [laughs]

Tom Anderson (29m 44s)

whole background of that is you know it's a Apple is aware of the information on your devices in different applications so photos messages mail etc and Siri will build this personal context index of some sorts and then would be able to leverage that for you to use voice commands to query Siri for certain things like, Hey, what was that photo I took at the park yesterday?

Tom Anderson (30m 14s)

that to Jim or something like that.

Tom Anderson (30m 16s)

Uh, they showed it in video, did not demo it in person, which that will come back to us in this story a bit later.

Tom Anderson (30m 24s)

Um, and not in a good way.

Tom Anderson (30m 27s)

And so that's coming, that's coming, you know, later, later.

Tom Anderson (30m 31s)

And so everyone was working under the assumption that the dot four updates.

Tom Anderson (30m 37s)

Uh, that are now in beta would include the first bits of that.

Tom Anderson (30m 42s)

It turned out that it did not and so.

Jeff Battersby (30m 44s)

Nope.

Tom Anderson (30m 44s)

So then it was like, Oh, so when will that come?

Tom Anderson (30m 49s)

And then Mark Gurman at Bloomberg was reporting, you know, it could be an iOS

Tom Anderson (30m 55s)

19 and then later on, well, it could be an iOS 20 and 2027 and then everything kind of went off the rails and so, and we'll preface off this by saying most

Tom Anderson (31m 14s)

will care about any of this, like the normal folks, like my mom doesn't care.

Tom Anderson (31m 18s)

My wife doesn't care.

Tom Anderson (31m 19s)

My kids don't care really.

Tom Anderson (31m 21s)

Um, And, uh, but in the kind of Apple sphere, which we're in and a lot of other nerds are in and wall street, those types of things that there's a lot of perception around this thing and what it means, doesn't mean a lot of speculation and it's been a wild week of sorts.

Jeff Battersby (31m 21s)

I'm abnormal. I don't care. But go ahead.

Jeff Battersby (31m 43s)

It has and let's let's talk a little bit about this. So John Gruber during fireball

Jeff Battersby (31m 50s)

One of the things that that he posted this week, which you shared with me. I had a lot of business going on here I wasn't too much on the internet. Well, I was

Jeff Battersby (31m 58s)

Well, I've been here But you uh, you sent me a text earlier in the week

Jeff Battersby (32m 3s)

Saying have you seen this article?

Jeff Battersby (32m 6s)

By have you seen this article by Gruber and I said nope and the title of the article you were

Jeff Battersby (32m 13s)

Shakespeare fans is something is rotten in the state of Cupertino and

Jeff Battersby (32m 21s)

John Gruber went to a great lengths to talk about

Jeff Battersby (32m 27s)

first of all In this is kind of interesting for Gruber. He he basically said I

Jeff Battersby (32m 35s)

Missed stuff and I missed stuff. I should have seen straight out of the box started talking about

Jeff Battersby (32m 41s)

Those original demos the thing

Jeff Battersby (32m 43s)

that were taking place what it was that Apple was actually selling at the at was it WWDC it must have been last year was that the and how a lot of the demos of what was going to be possible contextually with Siri was oops Siri just opened up because why wouldn't you do that when I said that right what was

Tom Anderson (33m 5s)

I know you're talking about me, Jeff.

Tom Anderson (33m 9s)

[LAUGH]

Jeff Battersby (33m 13s)

going on with with with that was fake and that's a strong word to use but they were not actual and they never got to see nor did they put hands-on actual demos of some of the features that they were that they were talking about we would have called this in the old days vaporware that would have been the thing you know, that was back in the days.

Jeff Battersby (33m 44s)

In the early days of the battle between Microsoft and Apple,

Jeff Battersby (33m 47s)

for those of you who have not been along for the ride for a while,

Jeff Battersby (33m 50s)

Apple would announce something cool that was working and Microsoft would announce something cooler that was a great idea with a concept video.

Jeff Battersby (34m)

And what John Gruber pointed out that he missed

Jeff Battersby (34m 7s)

in these demos was that while there was big announcements,

Jeff Battersby (34m 12s)

There were big videos really.

Jeff Battersby (34m 13s)

Cool videos of what was going to be possible with, with Apple intelligence.

Jeff Battersby (34m 19s)

Nobody was actually demoing that stuff, even in the controlled way, which, you know, oftentimes any of those WWDC things where they're allowing the press to come in, you'll have a very controlled experiment that somebody's showing somebody here's very, very young version of what it is that we hope to do.

Jeff Battersby (34m 39s)

And none of that was going on.

Jeff Battersby (34m 40s)

And not a lot of people at the time said, Hey, wait a second.

Jeff Battersby (34m 44s)

We're not really seeing any of this stuff.

Jeff Battersby (34m 46s)

Uh, so what we're seeing is this stuff is super hard to implement.

Jeff Battersby (34m 54s)

Way more difficult to implement with maybe dodgier results than anyone was expecting, and so therefore we're not seeing the contextual capabilities

Jeff Battersby (35m 5s)

that, that were promised at WWDC.

Jeff Battersby (35m 9s)

Uhm? So.

Jeff Battersby (35m 13s)

He again to groomers credit. He he basically says within the first two paragraphs.

Jeff Battersby (35m 24s)

Uh, that that he was an idiot for not noticing this. He says this announcement dropped as a surprise talking about Apple Apple intelligence. These features in Apple intelligence and certainly took me by surprise to some extent, but was all there from the start. I should have been pointing out red flags starting back at WWDC last year and I'm.

Jeff Battersby (35m 43s)

Embarrassed and sorry that I didn't see what should have been very clear to me from the start and then he goes on to explain that you know how it was that that he had.

Jeff Battersby (35m 55s)

Basically missed this, which is largely to say that Apple their reputation and our experience with Apple has largely been pretty good when they make promises about the things that they're going to release.

Jeff Battersby (36m 12s)

We see this.

Jeff Battersby (36m 14s)

And then we do this and here you have it.

Jeff Battersby (36m 17s)

And honestly, from my perspective, Siri sucks.

Jeff Battersby (36m 25s)

Siri just woke up again to tell me that.

Jeff Battersby (36m 28s)

Surprised that Siri didn't talk to me.

Jeff Battersby (36m 30s)

I should have turned that off while I was recording.

Jeff Battersby (36m 33s)

And for reasons that we've all been frustrated with for a very long time, okay.

Jeff Battersby (36m 38s)

It doesn't, it does things better now than it did,

Jeff Battersby (36m 43s)

routinely curse it out in my car like I used to. It used to be such garbage that you know it didn't it didn't work. It has gotten better from that perspective but it is still not great. I'll give you an example. At home you know I ask it to add something to the grocery list and you know three out of

Jeff Battersby (37m 13s)

four times it's it's okay Jeffrey adding this to the grocery list but often enough I get I'm sorry I can't tell who's talking to me okay it's Jeffrey and then and then they say it's me and and then it says back to me oh you're going to have to unlock your phone to do this you got to be freaking kidding me you know so they're yeah right it right it adds you know

Tom Anderson (37m 37s)

Didn't have to do that the other three times.

Tom Anderson (37m 40s)

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Battersby (37m 43s)

it adds the by the end of that it adds the the largest possible bottle of cheap hooch to the to the list when I ask you to do that

Tom Anderson (37m 57s)

When you're running into that, is it Siri through HomePods, iPhone, watch?

Tom Anderson (38m 4s)

What?

Jeff Battersby (38m 5s)

It's HomePod, it's happening on the HomePod, and it's happening.

Tom Anderson (38m 5s)

HomePod.

Tom Anderson (38m 6s)

Okay.

Tom Anderson (38m 7s)

Yeah.

Tom Anderson (38m 8s)

And those are the original HomePods or minis.

Jeff Battersby (38m 12s)

I think that's one of the original ones when that happens, but it happens at various times and points.

Jeff Battersby (38m 25s)

juice that, that is supposedly available, but all that to say

Jeff Battersby (38m 29s)

that at the very best, my experience with Siri has been inconsistent. Like enough that probably I would, you know, if this was somebody I was dating, I would break up with them. You know what I'm saying? It was that, that kind of a thing for that consistently.

Tom Anderson (38m 52s)

Well, that was...

Jeff Battersby (38m 55s)

I'll tell you, Benny and Savage was at my house, he swings by my house on his way up to visit his significant other in Canada, because I'm halfway between the two of those.

Jeff Battersby (39m 12s)

He was at the house, he was sitting at the counter having dinner, and I needed to add something to the grocery list, and I picked up my phone and started doing it.

Jeff Battersby (39m 22s)

He goes, "Use your watch!

Jeff Battersby (39m 24s)

Use your watch!

Jeff Battersby (39m 25s)

Why are you using your watch?"

Jeff Battersby (39m 26s)

It's like, "Because it doesn't work!"

Jeff Battersby (39m 29s)

So all that to say that I am not surprised that these deep contextual capabilities don't work yet.

Tom Anderson (39m 41s)

No. And I think I'd have to go back to our transcripts.

Tom Anderson (39m 44s)

But I think when we recapped WWDC and we were talking about that Siri,

Tom Anderson (39m 50s)

we're like, man, if they can get that right,

Tom Anderson (39m 53s)

it will be really sweet.

Tom Anderson (39m 54s)

And I think we've been pretty consistent with this,

Jeff Battersby (39m 55s)

Yeah, yeah.

Tom Anderson (39m 58s)

but we don't have much faith that'll actually ever work.

Jeff Battersby (40m 2s)

Yep, I I I would be willing to bet you're correct.

Tom Anderson (40m 3s)

Because the track record for this particular thing

Tom Anderson (40m 8s)

that Apple does is not good.

Tom Anderson (40m 12s)

They do a lot of things that are amazing, right?

Jeff Battersby (40m 12s)

Correct. Absolutely true.

Tom Anderson (40m 15s)

And there's no question to that.

Tom Anderson (40m 17s)

But this particular thing, and I'll go to say, too,

Tom Anderson (40m 22s)

Siri's the worst of these kind of voice assistants

Tom Anderson (40m 26s)

in a lot of ways.

Tom Anderson (40m 29s)

But from what I've read, and I can't speak to it firsthand because I haven't used them.

Tom Anderson (40m 37s)

I think Alexa, Gemini now on the Google phones and stuff.

Tom Anderson (40m 42s)

Seems Gemini seems to be doing some of this context stuff now from what I see people post again, don't have one, can't verify it. Maybe it does,

Tom Anderson (40m 49s)

maybe it doesn't. But those are better.

Tom Anderson (40m 53s)

But I think even at this point,

Tom Anderson (40m 56s)

none of them to date have been stellar, right?

Tom Anderson (41m 1s)

Like Alexa took the approach early on where you could add on to it with third

Tom Anderson (41m 6s)

parties and you could use Alexa to order things. And at the time that was like,

Tom Anderson (41m 9s)

"Oh, that's pretty cool, and I don't even have to..."

Tom Anderson (41m 11s)

...go to the website. It's like, "Hey, order towels," or whatever.

Tom Anderson (41m 16s)

The Gemini stuff seems to be okay on the phones that run it.

Tom Anderson (41m 22s)

So, you know, Apple's not the only one working on this.

Tom Anderson (41m 27s)

But I think the biggest thing from the Apple side is that...

Tom Anderson (41m 32s)

...they just don't typically do the vaporware stuff.

Tom Anderson (41m 36s)

Where they show it in a video at the keynote...

Jeff Battersby (41m 36s)

And that was it.

Tom Anderson (41m 41s)

...and not have something, like you alluded to.

Tom Anderson (41m 45s)

Even if it's an Apple person, they're like, "See, you can do this."

Tom Anderson (41m 48s)

Because a lot of times, they won't let the press touch it just yet.

Jeff Battersby (41m 51s)

Right because not ready

Tom Anderson (41m 52s)

I remember when the very first iPhone was announced, they just put it in that enclosure...

Tom Anderson (41m 55s)

...because that was nowhere ready to go.

Tom Anderson (41m 59s)

And if you go back and read the stories from the people who worked on that...

Tom Anderson (42m 2s)

...they were like, "We had a very specific script, and we had to make sure these things worked."

Tom Anderson (42m 6s)

Nothing else worked, and so we were all like, "Oh, God, please let it work."

Jeff Battersby (42m 8s)

Mm-hmm.

Tom Anderson (42m 11s)

So demos of that sort by the company, they've done it before.

Tom Anderson (42m 17s)

But compare that, and I think this somewhat ties in.

Tom Anderson (42m 21s)

I didn't think of it until now.

Tom Anderson (42m 25s)

Prior to COVID, these keynotes were live.

Tom Anderson (42m 28s)

And so an Apple exec had to stand up on stage, big screen behind them...

Tom Anderson (42m 34s)

...and they would actually use the stuff.

Tom Anderson (42m 37s)

And that's what Jobs did with the iPhone back in 2007.

Tom Anderson (42m 41s)

When COVID hit, they went to these produced videos, which everyone agrees are very well produced.

Tom Anderson (42m 49s)

But it takes that live element out.

Tom Anderson (42m 52s)

And so if they were still doing live events, what would they have done?

Tom Anderson (42m 58s)

Because apparently this wasn't working enough to show it...

Jeff Battersby (42m 59s)

out.

Tom Anderson (43m 2s)

...even with an Apple person demoing it right after WWDC.

Jeff Battersby (43m 5s)

Not at all, right?

Jeff Battersby (43m 6s)

It's not working presently.

Tom Anderson (43m 8s)

Right. So...

Tom Anderson (43m 12s)

I think if I were CEO, I would say,

Tom Anderson (43m 15s)

OK, we're done with the super polished videos.

Tom Anderson (43m 18s)

We're going back to the Steve Jobs theater.

Tom Anderson (43m 20s)

And if your crap doesn't work, you're not showing it and we're not talking.

Jeff Battersby (43m 24s)

Uh, yeah, so I, I, I a hundred percent agree.

Jeff Battersby (43m 28s)

I, what, what happened?

Jeff Battersby (43m 32s)

That is the downside of the non-live as you say, because nobody has to demo it.

Jeff Battersby (43m 38s)

And you've got the ability with video.

Tom Anderson (43m 39s)

it hides the warts.

Jeff Battersby (43m 41s)

What's that?

Tom Anderson (43m 41s)

It hides the warts, right?

Jeff Battersby (43m 42s)

Oh, sure.

Jeff Battersby (43m 43s)

It does.

Tom Anderson (43m 43s)

Because I mean, how many times do you see in a video of like a live demo, something doesn't work and the presenter's like,

Tom Anderson (43m 48s)

"Oh," and they have a second phone or something,

Tom Anderson (43m 51s)

computer they go to.

Tom Anderson (43m 52s)

And it happened to Steve Jobs before.

Tom Anderson (43m 54s)

And so it was just part of the presentation.

Tom Anderson (44m)

It was inevitable at some point something would go awry.

Tom Anderson (44m 2s)

But yeah, so, and I think that was part of what Gruber got to towards the end of that thing.

Tom Anderson (44m 9s)

There's been some other stuff,

Tom Anderson (44m 9s)

like apparently one of the Siri leads at Apple had a meeting with everybody

Tom Anderson (44m 15s)

that somebody leaked to Mark Gurman.

Tom Anderson (44m 19s)

He leaked some details of that.

Tom Anderson (44m 22s)

And yeah, give some props to Gruber because he's in pretty tight with Apple.

Tom Anderson (44m 29s)

Gurman gets a lot of scoops and leaks and things like that.

Tom Anderson (44m 33s)

But I mean, every WWDC of recent years,

Tom Anderson (44m 36s)

Gruber does live talk show and you usually ask Craig.

Tom Anderson (44m 39s)

I don't know, I don't want to speak for him, but for him to have those connections and like the writing he's done this week, I think that's probably some of the best Gruber we've had in a while.

Jeff Battersby (44m 41s)

Yes. Absolutely.

Jeff Battersby (45m 3s)

I agree, I do.

Tom Anderson (45m 5s)

Because I like when he's taking those critical looks and he ends like the.

Tom Anderson (45m 9s)

Something rotten in the state of Cupertino, um, closing paragraph and we'll link to it in the show notes.

Tom Anderson (45m 15s)

You should go read it.

Tom Anderson (45m 17s)

Tim Cook should have already held a meeting like that.

Tom Anderson (45m 20s)

And the like, that is a reference to the meeting Steve jobs had with the mobile me team when that released and was a total piece of crap.

Tom Anderson (45m 29s)

People lost data contacts.

Tom Anderson (45m 32s)

Mail was a mess.

Tom Anderson (45m 32s)

None of it worked.

Tom Anderson (45m 34s)

Um, and so he had this and it's legendary at this point, but he had this meeting.

Tom Anderson (45m 39s)

And says, can anyone tell me what mobile me is supposed to do?

Tom Anderson (45m 43s)

And so he got an answer.

Tom Anderson (45m 45s)

And this is where we miss Steve jobs.

Tom Anderson (45m 47s)

I think so.

Tom Anderson (45m 48s)

Why the F doesn't it do that?

Jeff Battersby (45m 51s)

Yeah, exactly

Tom Anderson (45m 51s)

Is it a room full of people?

Tom Anderson (45m 53s)

And so that's the, that he's referring to.

Tom Anderson (45m 55s)

So Tim Cook should have already held a meeting like that to address and rectify the Siri and Apple intelligence debacle.

Tom Anderson (46m 1s)

If such a meeting hasn't yet occurred or doesn't happen soon, then I fear that's all she wrote.

Tom Anderson (46m 7s)

The ride is over.

Tom Anderson (46m 9s)

When mediocrity excuses and bullshit take root, they take over a culture of excellence, accountability, and integrity cannot abide the acceptance of any of those things and will quickly collapse upon itself with the acceptance of all three.

Jeff Battersby (46m 22s)

Yep, yep, yeah.

Tom Anderson (46m 23s)

And there you go.

Jeff Battersby (46m 25s)

Brilliant piece of writing on his part.

Jeff Battersby (46m 26s)

And yeah, he's, you're correct.

Jeff Battersby (46m 31s)

He actually followed this one up with another one about the German, what German was able to,

Jeff Battersby (46m 38s)

what German was able to, those notes,

Jeff Battersby (46m 40s)

which by the way,

Jeff Battersby (46m 41s)

that's another little piece of information.

Jeff Battersby (46m 43s)

Apple, nothing usually pierces the veil.

Jeff Battersby (46m 47s)

You know, you don't get insider information on private meetings in any kind.

Jeff Battersby (46m 52s)

I didn't read Gurman's piece because Bloomberg is, yeah, I only read one.

Tom Anderson (47m 5s)

Right. And did you read that? Did you read the leaked stuff that German had, like comments and quotes from the thing? So I read that and my take was, okay, he's like, you know,

Tom Anderson (47m 22s)

this was ugly and it's embarrassing, you know, and works 60 to 80% of the time, you know,

Tom Anderson (47m 29s)

and so it was a little bit of critical stuff there, but then it, it got to bad, but you're all doing really hard work.

Tom Anderson (47m 35s)

And it just, for me, it was like, this is not right.

Tom Anderson (47m 41s)

It's just not, this is.

Jeff Battersby (47m 42s)

It's, it's everybody gets a trophy.

Tom Anderson (47m 45s)

Yeah, and that's what Gruber said,

Tom Anderson (47m 46s)

and that's exactly how I felt with that too.

Tom Anderson (47m 50s)

And I'm sorry, that is just not.

Jeff Battersby (47m 57s)

No, and there was also some passing the buck,

Jeff Battersby (48m 1s)

you know, whoever was in charge.

Jeff Battersby (48m 3s)

"No, marketing wanted to do this one, dude."

Tom Anderson (48m 5s)

Right. And even then that he's like, and we're going to do it, but we still have all this other stuff to do. And so, you know, we got to make sure we do that too. And to me, that's just already giving excuses for why we're not doing it.

Jeff Battersby (48m 17s)

Right, right. And either you stand up and say, "Sorry, we're not going to be able to do this,"

Jeff Battersby (48m 23s)

or you say, "We need to work harder to get it done." I want to say one other thing. Nobody that listens to us, all five of you, nobody that listens to us has any doubts about the fact that you're pretty all-in on AI stuff. I am…

Jeff Battersby (48m 48s)

not close to anywhere near that. But what I do want to say,

Jeff Battersby (48m 54s)

and this is just a thought that I have, we're going to post a link to an Ars Technica article

Jeff Battersby (49m)

that was out, I think, yesterday or the day before. I sent it to you and all I got was a "ha ha ha."

Jeff Battersby (49m 10s)

That's what you gave back to me. Yeah, right. But Ars Technica has a…

Tom Anderson (49m 11s)

I did, aha, yeah, then, yeah.

Jeff Battersby (49m 18s)

…talking about AI in general. And it says, "AI search engines," which is not necessarily…

Jeff Battersby (49m 25s)

a lot of people are transferring over from Google or Google is what's being used as a search engine

Jeff Battersby (49m 33s)

as opposed… AI is being used instead of Google or DuckDuckGo or whatever you're correct.

Tom Anderson (49m 38s)

traditional style where you get a page full of links.

Jeff Battersby (49m 41s)

And what this article says is, "AI search engines give incorrect answers and an alarm."

Jeff Battersby (49m 48s)

"60% rate," study says. Now, some of these services are better than others. You can see that. There's really good charting on this. But "Chat GPT search incorrectly identified 67%,

Jeff Battersby (50m 3s)

134 out of 100 articles queried." So, it's giving a list of all or various of these AIs and

Jeff Battersby (50m 16s)

how bad.

Jeff Battersby (50m 18s)

the information that's been provided by these are,

Jeff Battersby (50m 21s)

particularly when you were talking about, you know,

Jeff Battersby (50m 24s)

works that you're citing, say, in a paper.

Jeff Battersby (50m 28s)

Super, super high rate of failure,

Jeff Battersby (50m 32s)

or, and this is a nice word that Ars Technica uses,

Jeff Battersby (50m 36s)

confabulations, which is another word for bullshit.

Tom Anderson (50m 38s)

Oh, that's a big one.

Jeff Battersby (50m 39s)

Since we've already said bullshit once in this,

Jeff Battersby (50m 42s)

we can say it again.

Jeff Battersby (50m 44s)

'Cause we're gonna get that E for explicit rating

Jeff Battersby (50m 47s)

because we've said those bad words once.

Jeff Battersby (50m 51s)

And here's what I'd like to say.

Jeff Battersby (50m 54s)

The promise of AI is direct back and forth conversation,

Jeff Battersby (51m)

you know, knows who you are, you know who they are,

Jeff Battersby (51m 2s)

you have conversation,

Jeff Battersby (51m 3s)

you're able to do everything that's going on.

Jeff Battersby (51m 7s)

I suspect that all other indications notwithstanding,

Jeff Battersby (51m 15s)

Apple's willingness to.

Jeff Battersby (51m 17s)

put out something that, that is 60, 60% or higher, uh, 60% or higher.

Jeff Battersby (51m 27s)

Incorrect is much lower than some of these other companies who, you know, you've said that what you've done with, with chat GPT and your ability to, you know, refine and create new, new features or new, new things using it has been quite good for you.

Jeff Battersby (51m 47s)

The reality is the difficulty with this, particularly since it's not really thinking and it's only responding, we'll say statistically in a way that it's supposed to, you know,

Jeff Battersby (52m 5s)

that's really what this is.

Jeff Battersby (52m 6s)

This is a math machine at the back end that's pretending to be a language machine at the front end.

Jeff Battersby (52m 13s)

This is very, very difficult to implement.

Jeff Battersby (52m 18s)

Apple may be unwilling to,

Jeff Battersby (52m 23s)

or maybe Apple is running into the grave difficulties,

Jeff Battersby (52m 28s)

and I use that word specifically,

Jeff Battersby (52m 32s)

the grave difficulties that you have

Jeff Battersby (52m 37s)

being able to pull real context out of large language models.

Jeff Battersby (52m 48s)

So I'm not saying that that's good,

Jeff Battersby (52m 52s)

and I think our experience with Siri in the past should have been the thing that told us what to expect from Apple Intelligence in the future,

Jeff Battersby (53m 1s)

because I think that writing is on the wall as well.

Jeff Battersby (53m 6s)

But I'm willing to bet that a lot of the other companies,

Jeff Battersby (53m 12s)

in the interest of big money being able to make.

Jeff Battersby (53m 18s)

to make the big bucks, and press investors and stockholders and all that jazz are willing to put out things that maybe they're not being honest about, the results of this information.

Jeff Battersby (53m 37s)

Independent study, 60% of information on AI search comes back incorrect.

Jeff Battersby (53m 48s)

That's my one positive spin on this, is that Apple is discovering that LLMs and all of this kind of stuff doesn't really work as advertised and may not.

Tom Anderson (54m 12s)

Yeah, and particularly their approach being privacy focused on device, uh, I think makes it more difficult as well because I mean, they do have that private cloud compute that they've set up.

Jeff Battersby (54m 17s)

Yes.

Jeff Battersby (54m 18s)

Definitely.

Tom Anderson (54m 26s)

Uh, and again, kudos for all of the privacy focus.

Tom Anderson (54m 28s)

I think that's great.

Tom Anderson (54m 30s)

Um, plus on top, I don't know how much the security models in like iOS complicate this.

Tom Anderson (54m 36s)

I imagine it has to, um, you know, with everything sandbox and there's probably security implications

Tom Anderson (54m 42s)

for that too.

Tom Anderson (54m 43s)

Um, for that.

Tom Anderson (54m 44s)

So, and I think again, like we said, 15 minutes ago, whatever average person, yeah, whatever.

Tom Anderson (54m 51s)

Um, us nerds who pontificate about such things, uh, sometimes poorly average at best, um,

Jeff Battersby (54m 55s)

Act like we know something, yeah.

Jeff Battersby (55m 1s)

I'm I'm right, I'm right 40% of the time too, so.

Tom Anderson (55m 1s)

you know, it gives us things to talk about and think about, right?

Jeff Battersby (55m 6s)

Maybe less, likely less.

Tom Anderson (55m 9s)

GPT.

Jeff Battersby (55m 10s)

We set up that that 866 number and you can call me and I'll give you just as good information.

Tom Anderson (55m 12s)

It's like in Seinfeld where Kramer does the movie phone at the end.

Jeff Battersby (55m 22s)

Yes.

Tom Anderson (55m 23s)

He's like, why don't you just tell me the movie you would like to see

Jeff Battersby (55m 26s)

Yeah. Really was.

Tom Anderson (55m 29s)

so far ahead of its time.

Tom Anderson (55m 31s)

So, but I think the biggest thing is if Apple would have taken a more conservative approach

Tom Anderson (55m 37s)

with the demo, the video, not the demo.

Tom Anderson (55m 42s)

And even if they showed us a, like, here's a concept, this is what we're working on.

Tom Anderson (55m 47s)

We'll have more to show you later.

Jeff Battersby (55m 50s)

This doesn't work yet.

Tom Anderson (55m 50s)

Instead of coming later this year.

Tom Anderson (55m 52s)

I think people would have been okay with that.

Tom Anderson (55m 54s)

So I think they're really getting dragged for that more than anything.

Jeff Battersby (55m 58s)

Yeah, they they got bamboozled by their ability to create really good video content by their own ability to create really good video content and they

Tom Anderson (55m 58s)

And they, they did seem to be asleep at the wheel.

Tom Anderson (56m 3s)

Right.

Tom Anderson (56m 4s)

Yeah.

Tom Anderson (56m 5s)

And they were asleep at the wheel on, on the degenerative AI stuff.

Tom Anderson (56m 10s)

And a lot of it, I mean, how many times have people said--

Tom Anderson (56m 13s)

You know, Apple hasn't improved Siri since they got it.

Tom Anderson (56m 17s)

You know, or it started off okay, and then it started to fall apart.

Jeff Battersby (56m 18s)

Yeah

Jeff Battersby (56m 21s)

And then Apple got

Tom Anderson (56m 22s)

Well, I think even when they first had it, because there was an old video--

Tom Anderson (56m 25s)

I can't remember if I sent it to you or not--that Scott Forstall was demoing.

Tom Anderson (56m 28s)

That shows you how long ago it was.

Tom Anderson (56m 30s)

But it was a live demo, and it was for sports scorers, and it looked really nice,

Tom Anderson (56m 35s)

and, you know, had decent information in it.

Tom Anderson (56m 38s)

And I think that was, like, on iPhone 4.

Tom Anderson (56m 42s)

And then it just kind of didn't go anywhere.

Tom Anderson (56m 45s)

And what sticks into my mind was that quote,

Tom Anderson (56m 50s)

and I feel like it was probably in another German piece,

Tom Anderson (56m 54s)

where year before last, the Apple execs--

Tom Anderson (56m 58s)

and I think Craig Federighi was one--

Tom Anderson (57m)

was quoted in the article, and not direct quote, but secondhand.

Tom Anderson (57m 5s)

"Wow, this chat GPT is really good. We're way behind."

Tom Anderson (57m 8s)

You know, paraphrased that a lot.

Jeff Battersby (57m 10s)

Mm-hmm

Tom Anderson (57m 12s)

So I think maybe some of that was panic, that we've got to do something and show something, because the market's looking for it.

Tom Anderson (57m 19s)

But I think they could have showed something as a concept and say, hey,

Tom Anderson (57m 25s)

this is what we're working on, and just done the Apple intelligence stuff they've done so far, put that out because that seemed fairly easy to do, and then say this is a vision of what we're looking for.

Jeff Battersby (57m 27s)

This is what we hope to do.

Tom Anderson (57m 37s)

but I think Gruber alluded to in that concepts and visions

Tom Anderson (57m 42s)

John Sculley era Apple did remember the knowledge navigator or whatever that was back in the day yeah he's the turnaround expert brought jobs back that was the turnaround see he's an expert all right I think we've beaten this horse to death

Jeff Battersby (57m 48s)

Gil Amelio, pal. Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (57m 53s)

Yeah, there's well and then that was and it was brilliant.

Jeff Battersby (57m 58s)

Right, he did the right thing.

Close

Jeff Battersby (58m 1s)

Goodness, Tom. Yes, we have. It's almost an hour and we apologize if you stuck with us this long, but we appreciate that you're that you're here for the entire round. So yeah,

Jeff Battersby (58m 12s)

Tom, let's try to knock this off before the hour. We we do to visit.

Jeff Battersby (58m 18s)

Visit with us, listen to us, an hour's a life.

Tom Anderson (58m 18s)

We do

Tom Anderson (58m 21s)

Yeah, so thank you very much

Tom Anderson (58m 23s)

So we will talk to you again in a few weeks until then We hope you have a great rest your day night a couple of weeks and we'll see you then

Jeff Battersby (58m 31s)

See ya.