Clicks Keyboard for iPhone & The End of Apple's Car Ambitions?

Intro

Jeff Battersby (0s)
My car freaked the F out and it's all I have to say.

Tom Anderson (12s)
Hello everyone.

Tom Anderson (12s)
Welcome back.

Tom Anderson (13s)
It is a new episode of Basic AF.

Tom Anderson (15s)
Tom Anderson joined by the man that's always overthinking everything, Jeff Battersby.

Jeff Battersby (22s)
Yes, indeed, good morning.

Jeff Battersby (24s)
How are you, Tom?

Jeff Battersby (25s)
And you never dance.

Jeff Battersby (27s)
You know, you do a little neck crack before we kick it off,

Jeff Battersby (31s)
but I'm over here dancing, having a good time,

Jeff Battersby (33s)
and you looking like, as my father used to call my oldest daughter, Captain Serious.

Tom Anderson (38s)
well I have a bit of a headache this morning and yesterday I told a friend of mine to work my ears felt like what didn't they didn't feel like it but you know when you were a kid people would say listen into the seashell and you can hear the sea right you hear the ocean in there that's kind of what my ears were doing yesterday so I've got some sinus stuff going on I think so

Jeff Battersby (53s)
yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That sounds fun. I've had the same thing for the last probably week and a half. It's been crazy. Yeah. And it's super fluctuating. It's like 60 degrees one day and then, you know, 24 of the next, at least where I live. So

Tom Anderson (1m 2s)
I think it's the changing weather here yeah

Tom Anderson (1m 8s)
it's definitely March so

Jeff Battersby (1m 14s)
yeah, that was February pal. We only just stepped into March is exactly right.

Tom Anderson (1m 16s)
let's March today yeah I think we've stepped into a lot of things but March is the one for today

Jeff Battersby (1m 20s)
It's March today.

Jeff Battersby (1m 23s)
We always do, I have to check my shoes, hold on a second.

Tom Anderson (1m 28s)
all right so we do thank you for being here with us once again if you are new first time giving us a listen we do appreciate that and we do hope to earn a spot on your playlist if you like what you're hearing.

Tom Anderson (1m 38s)
And if hung around, if you'd be so kind as to give us a rating and or review on Apple podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen, pocket, cast, overcast, um,

Tom Anderson (1m 50s)
it doesn't really matter if you help spread the word of the show, we would be forever grateful and would appreciate that we are, and, uh, that's, that's in large part to word of mouth that people are, are sharing, uh, the show.

Jeff Battersby (1m 54s)
Yes, indeed. And we are growing. We're getting more and more downloads every, uh, every ep.

Jeff Battersby (2m 3s)
Yes. Absolutely.

Tom Anderson (2m 3s)
We do appreciate it.

Tom Anderson (2m 5s)
So, uh, topics for today's show.

Tom Anderson (2m 8s)
News roundup.

Tom Anderson (2m 9s)
It's been a while since we've done that.

Tom Anderson (2m 10s)
We did the big tips and tricks show a few weeks ago with Gannon Nordberg.

Tom Anderson (2m 13s)
Thank him again for coming on for that.

Jeff Battersby (2m 15s)
Mm-hmm. Thank you

Tom Anderson (2m 16s)
Uh, that was, that was good.

Tom Anderson (2m 17s)
We had a lot of good tips.

Tom Anderson (2m 18s)
So if you haven't listened to that one, you've skipped ahead to this.

Tom Anderson (2m 21s)
Go back and listen to it.

Tom Anderson (2m 22s)
I think there's some things there.

Tom Anderson (2m 23s)
Um, so back in January, we talked a little bit in episode 26 about the clicks keyboard for iPhone.

Clicks Keyboard for iPhone

Tom Anderson (2m 33s)
That thing had been shown off at CES and was getting a lot of of publicity at the time.

Jeff Battersby (2m 39s)
Buzz.

Tom Anderson (2m 39s)
And it was buzzed, and so I had nothing better to do, so I ordered one.

Jeff Battersby (2m 46s)
And a pocket full of cash.

Tom Anderson (2m 46s)
And it took, yeah, I'm flush with cash.

Tom Anderson (2m 50s)
We'll come back to that probably in the next episode.

Tom Anderson (2m 55s)
So it showed up a couple of weeks ago, and I got to spend a little bit of time with it.

Tom Anderson (3m 1s)
And in that episode, back in episode 26, really the only thing we had to go at at that point was the website and had a couple of

Tom Anderson (3m 8s)
videos up there which we both commented the video was better than we expected just by how they went in depth on what they were thinking about it as they made it and we both commented that we expected it to be pretty good like they put a lot of thought into it and so when it came in it pretty much lived up to expectations like it's it's very well made.

Jeff Battersby (3m 36s)
how do you know that? Yes. So Tom, let's, let's just, you did say that, uh,

Jeff Battersby (3m 40s)
you were buying it straight out of the box.

Tom Anderson (3m 42s)
Yep, I did yep, it's nice yellow

Jeff Battersby (3m 43s)
You got the bumblebee looking thing, which is the name, which I like,

Jeff Battersby (3m 46s)
a nice yellow color. I can see it now. And, uh, so why don't you tell us a little

Tom Anderson (3m 54s)
So here's the thing our the thing is

Jeff Battersby (3m 58s)
What's the thing that sounds like a caveat, pal?

Tom Anderson (4m 1s)
It's big and it's not so

Jeff Battersby (4m 4s)
Yeah. And you're using 14 pro, not a pro max. Right. Okay.

Tom Anderson (4m 6s)
Pro right a 14 pro and my wife has the 14 pro max and so I think

Tom Anderson (4m 12s)
Put them kind of side-by-side and it becomes just a tad bit taller than the 14 pro max

Jeff Battersby (4m 20s)  
• Hmm, okay, interesting.

Tom Anderson (4m 21s)
Okay, so a little bit taller not really

Tom Anderson (4m 24s)
significantly wider

Tom Anderson (4m 26s)
Which I kind of wish it was I think it would spread the keys out a little bit But I can see why they didn't do that

Tom Anderson (4m 32s)
and so

Tom Anderson (4m 34s)
You and I think both the time said it looks like it's gonna be a little top-heavy, right?

Tom Anderson (4m 39s)
because the phone's up top, keyboard's probably the lower fourth.

Tom Anderson (4m 43s)
of the case, which they don't really call it a case,

Tom Anderson (4m 46s)
they just call it an iPhone keyboard.

Tom Anderson (4m 49s)
But the balance is pretty good.

Jeff Battersby (4m 49s)
Yeah.

Tom Anderson (4m 50s)
Like I was surprised, doesn't really feel like it's gonna flip off of your fingers as you're holding it to type.

Tom Anderson (4m 59s)
When I first put it on, to be quite honest,

Tom Anderson (5m 4s)
I was transported back to 2007, pre-iPhone,

Tom Anderson (5m 7s)
and why I hated keyboards, physical keyboards,

Tom Anderson (5m 10s)
fellas.

Tom Anderson (5m 12s)
Yeah, okay, but it was funny because it was like instantaneous I was like oh yeah, yeah,

Jeff Battersby (5m 12s)  
• Oh, come on.

Jeff Battersby (5m 13s)
Everybody says that that's better than what we currently have, but go ahead.

Tom Anderson (5m 26s)
yeah, but the keyboard itself is pretty good.

Tom Anderson (5m 32s)
The buttons are clicky, they don't really squirm around, they're not soft and squishy when you're trying to type and you don't miss one because it's just not firm enough to register the press.

Tom Anderson (5m 43s)
So that's nice. I'll tell you the backlighting is nice that all works really well the keyboard shortcuts

Tom Anderson (5m 53s)
That of course iOS has with the external keyboard

Tom Anderson (5m 57s)
Has been really nice and they've built in some keys into the keyboard. So you've got a command key You've got a tab key. You've got a microphone to kind of bring up dictation or Siri

Tom Anderson (6m 7s)
so again well thought out I

Tom Anderson (6m 11s)
I have been very.

Tom Anderson (6m 12s)
Very slow typing on this thing.

Jeff Battersby (6m 15s)
compared to what you were doing on the virtual keyboard?

Jeff Battersby (6m 21s)
And let me ask you a question about the virtual keyboard.

Jeff Battersby (6m 23s)
Do you use the slide method or do you type key-by-key?

Tom Anderson (6m 30s)
So primarily it is key by key there are times if I'm you know

Jeff Battersby (6m 33s)
Okay.

Tom Anderson (6m 35s)
Got my hands full or something and I need to just do something quickly. No, I'm not driving the car

Jeff Battersby (6m 37s)
Driving the car, Tom? (laughs)

Tom Anderson (6m 40s)
I'll do the swipe which works surprisingly. Well, really I mean

Tom Anderson (6m 45s)
But it's not the first thing I think of I know some people just swipe all the time and I've never been able to make that shift, but

Tom Anderson (6m 53s)
So that's been the biggest thing because the buttons are small

Tom Anderson (6m 57s)
and

Tom Anderson (7m)
With the virtual keyboard, you've got kind of the the bigger touch area and I don't know if you recall But back when the iPhone first came out

Tom Anderson (7m 8s)
And people were typing on it, you know Apple kind of talked about how they've because it's a software keyboard

Tom Anderson (7m 14s)
They do some you know Predictions based on what you're typing and they were they were able to expand the target area around what key they thought you were going To hit next so that you didn't have to be as precise [laughs]

Jeff Battersby (7m 26s)
You didn't. I, on the other hand...

Tom Anderson (7m 31s)  
• And I think that having that is second nature

Tom Anderson (7m 37s)
at this point because we've been using those for so long, I think.

Tom Anderson (7m 41s)
And to go back to the smaller physical keys

Tom Anderson (7m 46s)
and having to actually depress that key

Tom Anderson (7m 50s)
has just really made me a slow typer and not very accurate.

Jeff Battersby (7m 53s)
Okay.

Jeff Battersby (7m 55s)
Really?

Jeff Battersby (7m 55s)
So that was a question I was going to ask you is whether or not your accuracy is better because you have a physical keyboard or whether your accuracy was worse because you're used to, you know, being able to fudge it a little bit when you're working on the, uh, on the, the virtual keyboard.

Tom Anderson (8m 10s)
Yeah.

Tom Anderson (8m 11s)
Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (8m 12s)
Yeah.

Tom Anderson (8m 12s)
And I think I've got like some bad technique picked up from the virtual keyboard, if that's possible.

Jeff Battersby (8m 12s)
Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (8m 13s)
Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (8m 13s)
Bye bye.

Tom Anderson (8m 19s)
Because I know some people just use a single finger and they just peck things out, you know, and I use two thumbs, but like I'm crossing over and stuff like, it's a mess the way that I do it.

Tom Anderson (8m 28s)
And I'm sure that's part of it too.

Tom Anderson (8m 30s)
And I suspect like if I really stick with this keyboard, that would pick up.

Tom Anderson (8m 35s)
But you almost kind of have to use like the very tip of your thumb or even the fingernail is a little easier to get to it.

Tom Anderson (8m 44s)
And that's what I remember from those keyboards back in the day too.

Tom Anderson (8m 48s)
And so I think that the takeaway for this is, and by the way, when I posted this on threads back then, when I first got it, got a lot of questions and quite a few people were interested or they had ordered and theirs hadn't come in yet.

Tom Anderson (9m 2s)
So I do think there are people that want these types of things.

Jeff Battersby (9m 6s)
Yeah, I I think there I think there are people that have you know that use the old ones I never really used

Jeff Battersby (9m 13s)
Anything that had an actual keyboard on it before the iPhone

Jeff Battersby (9m 17s)
had oh

Jeff Battersby (9m 19s)
My gosh, they kind of Nokia phone or something like that. Can't remember who made it or why?

Tom Anderson (9m 23s)
Right. So that was probably just the T9 for texting, right?

Jeff Battersby (9m 25s)
Yeah, yeah, right, which I was hideous at by the way. Yeah, it was that was

Tom Anderson (9m 26s)
Press one three times to get an A. God, I hated that too.

Jeff Battersby (9m 31s)
Worse than it was like, can I just call you? That was what I felt

Tom Anderson (9m 35s)
[laughs] Right. Yeah, but...

Jeff Battersby (9m 37s)
When I was using that

Jeff Battersby (9m 40s)
But yeah, I there are people that that

Jeff Battersby (9m 44s)
You know that are kind of in love with that kind of keyboard and like that tactile

Jeff Battersby (9m 49s)
Feedback that you get which you do by the way get some tactile feedback with your iPhone on a virtual keyboard

Jeff Battersby (9m 57s)
But it you've been now using this for a month solid, right

Tom Anderson (10m 3s)
Uh, two weeks and yeah, I went back and checked.

Jeff Battersby (10m 5s)
Has it been that long

Jeff Battersby (10m 6s)
little time. Dang. That's what I thought, too. That means, I guess 2024 is going much slower than I thought it was, which is a good thing because, you know, the years fly by the older you get. OK, so it's only been two weeks. At this point in time, are you thinking that this is a keeper or this is a this is

Tom Anderson (10m 8s)
It's only been a couple of weeks.

Tom Anderson (10m 9s)
Cause that's at first I put in the, put in the show note.

Tom Anderson (10m 12s)
I was like, I have used this for close to a month.

Tom Anderson (10m 14s)
I was like, no, no, it's not that.

Jeff Battersby (10m 36s)
still kind of test in the water.

Tom Anderson (10m 38s)
Well, I'm keeping it because the return policy wasn't what I thought it was, so I'm stuck with it.

Tom Anderson (10m 44s)
Once I opened it, I had to keep it.

Jeff Battersby (10m 45s)
Wait, wait, wait, what was the return?

Tom Anderson (10m 45s)
I thought it was the Apple equivalent.

Tom Anderson (10m 48s)
It was 14 days, but it was unopened.

Tom Anderson (10m 50s)
I was like, "Oh, yeah, well, yeah, so it's what it said, right?"

Jeff Battersby (10m 52s)
Unopened.

Jeff Battersby (10m 53s)
That's the policy unopened.

Jeff Battersby (10m 57s)
Great.

Jeff Battersby (10m 58s)
Uh, I bought it.

Jeff Battersby (10m 58s)
I put it on my desk.

Jeff Battersby (11m)
I decided I didn't want it.

Jeff Battersby (11m 1s)
That's ridiculous.

Tom Anderson (11m 2s)
Did you open it?

Tom Anderson (11m 2s)
It's yours, pal.

Tom Anderson (11m 4s)
Which, you know, they're a small outfit,

Jeff Battersby (11m 4s)
That's interesting.

Tom Anderson (11m 9s)
so they can't really do like Apple did with the Vision Pro

Jeff Battersby (11m 10s)
Yeah, I get it still.

Tom Anderson (11m 14s)
and just give people like a two-week test window and then let them bring it back.

Tom Anderson (11m 18s)
I'm sure they're not that flush with cash.

Tom Anderson (11m 22s)
So the other thing that was really nice with it,

Tom Anderson (11m 27s)
and I could see somebody, if they're into content creation

Tom Anderson (11m 32s)
and doing live stuff with TikTok or Instagram or whatever,

Tom Anderson (11m 36s)
or if they're just really text-heavy and using Notes or Pages or Bear or whatever they're inputting text into,

Tom Anderson (11m 43s)
what's nice about having that keyboard being recognized by the phone as an external keyboard is when you go into the Notes app and you want to start typing, you get full-screen Note.

Tom Anderson (11m 53s)
There's no keyboard blocking up half of it.

Tom Anderson (11m 56s)
If you're in Safari, you get full-screen Safari, right?

Tom Anderson (11m 59s)
So if you're typing something in there.

Tom Anderson (12m 2s)
The keyboard shortcuts, again, are really nice 'cause you Command + H, you go back home,

Tom Anderson (12m 5s)
you Command + Spacebar, you get Spotlight,

Tom Anderson (12m 8s)
you search, you hit the Return key, the app opens.

Tom Anderson (12m 11s)
All that stuff's really nice.

Tom Anderson (12m 12s)
So I think, you know, it's a little bit pricey,

Tom Anderson (12m 15s)
but I think if someone is diehard physical keyboard type person and has missed it since, you know, the iPhone and Android and everything's kind of taken over, it's great.

Jeff Battersby (12m 27s)  
Okay. Cool. Excellent.

Tom Anderson (12m 28s)
Yeah, so if you're in the market for one of those,

Tom Anderson (12m 30s)
I think it's great.

Tom Anderson (12m 32s)
If you're on the fence,

Tom Anderson (12m 35s)
decide if you think you're leaning towards loving it more than not because of the price and everything.

Tom Anderson (12m 42s)
But quality-wise, very good.

Tom Anderson (12m 44s)
Keyboard is great.

Tom Anderson (12m 45s)
So if that's your thing, check it out.

Jeff Battersby (12m 47s)
Right, awesome, and we will have something,

Jeff Battersby (12m 51s)
we make no money off of this,

Jeff Battersby (12m 52s)
but we will have a link back to this in the show notes.

Jeff Battersby (12m 57s)
By the way, presently, they are almost completely sold out

Jeff Battersby (13m 2s)
on every single one of these things, it looks like,

Jeff Battersby (13m 4s)
which is good for them.

Jeff Battersby (13m 5s)
I'm happy to hear that for them.

Jeff Battersby (13m 7s)
But depending on which one you get,

Jeff Battersby (13m 9s)
the iPhone 14 Pro Max,

Jeff Battersby (13m 11s)
you're not gonna be able to get that until May.

Jeff Battersby (13m 15s)
We are currently in March, the very first.

Jeff Battersby (13m 17s)
few days of March. April for...hop on eBay and make a fortune. Better than a return policy. So yeah, they're all...the iPhone 14 Pro is the one with the shortest amount of timeout. That's two days.

Tom Anderson (13m 20s)
So I could probably sell mine and maybe make a few bucks.

Tom Anderson (13m 38s)
Yeah, and they've got some marketing muscle behind it because Michael Fisher and Crackberry Kevin are the two of the co-founders and you know, they've got big audiences and long history in the mobile phone business and things like that, so hope so yeah, good for them.

Jeff Battersby (13m 56s)
Yeah, well, I hope they're making a fat load of money

Jeff Battersby (14m)
All right, so, um, that's that news we have other kind of big news

Pour One Out for the Apple Car

Jeff Battersby (14m 5s)
No news that you and I were actually

Jeff Battersby (14m 8s)
Gonna be interested in getting into but Apple this past week

Jeff Battersby (14m 14s)
Decided to drop their Apple car project. It was called project Titan

Jeff Battersby (14m 20s)
and Kind of interesting. I don't think either you or I were

Jeff Battersby (14m 26s)
interested in an Apple car, and it wasn't clear yet whether this was going to be an all-electric car, although I think that was the case. Nor was it clear whether or not this was going to be an autonomous driving vehicle. But Apple, after I think they first started doing this in about 2014, or it was rumored that they were working on something like this in 2014, and then as of this--

Jeff Battersby (14m 56s)
last week, they dropped out of it altogether,

Jeff Battersby (14m 59s)
announced formally that they were dropping out of it altogether.

Jeff Battersby (15m 4s)
So kind of interesting, and we wanted to talk a little bit about Apple cars, maybe cars in general, when it comes to tech.

Jeff Battersby (15m 12s)
And Tom, off to you.

Tom Anderson (15m 15s)
Okay, no, yeah

Jeff Battersby (15m 15s)
No pressure.

Tom Anderson (15m 19s)
Yeah, so that like you said the rumors that kicked up 2014 and then

Tom Anderson (15m 23s)
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman as he is oft to do

Tom Anderson (15m 28s)
Has these scoops if you will?

Tom Anderson (15m 31s)
So apparently there were 2,000 employees there were told so like Apple didn't send out a press release But internally apparently they gave the message to all these employees and I think it was

Tom Anderson (15m 41s)
Jeff Williams that did that

Jeff Battersby (15m 43s)
Mmm, don't even know who that is

Tom Anderson (15m 43s)
chief operating officer

Tom Anderson (15m 45s)
of the U.S. Department of Defense. And it looks like some of them are going to be shifted over to Apple's AI division to work on that stuff, which is, yes, which is apparently going to be a big focus at WWDC this year, which should be fun to see what Apple has plan for that.

Jeff Battersby (16m 3s)
generative AI.

Tom Anderson (16m 15s)
This has been an interesting thing.

Tom Anderson (16m 18s)
I have thought from the beginning that this was kind of a wild idea for Apple to get into.

Tom Anderson (16m 23s)
Of course, and it goes back to some of the same things we've said a bunch of times on this show with Apple and some of the decisions that they make is being on the outside, you don't know like what the intention really is.

Jeff Battersby (16m 37s)
Correct. Even on the inside, I think only a very few people have any idea what the

Tom Anderson (16m 38s)
So this is all right.

Tom Anderson (16m 40s)
A lot of them don't.

Tom Anderson (16m 41s)
Yep.

Tom Anderson (16m 42s)
Yeah.

Tom Anderson (16m 43s)
Yeah, so this is all, you know.

Tom Anderson (16m 46s)
Outside perspective, which is all we've got.

Tom Anderson (16m 47s)
So, you know, take it for what it's worth.

Tom Anderson (16m 51s)
And they apparently spent a ton of money on this.

Tom Anderson (16m 53s)
Not that they don't have it.

Jeff Battersby (16m 54s)
in the billions.

Tom Anderson (16m 56s)
Yeah.

Tom Anderson (16m 57s)
And it's, you know, what?

Tom Anderson (16m 59s)
Half a quarter revenue or something.

Tom Anderson (17m 2s)
Which, hey, that's the benefit of being so massively successful is you've got play money.

Jeff Battersby (17m 5s)
Yeah, there you go, right?

Tom Anderson (17m 10s)
And I suspect, even if they never produce a car,

Tom Anderson (17m 14s)
which doesn't sound like they will.

Tom Anderson (17m 16s)
For sure things are going to come out of that project that do reach market if they haven't already, right?

Tom Anderson (17m 23s)
Because we just don't know what's in there.

Tom Anderson (17m 26s)
And you can see that in Vision Pro,

Tom Anderson (17m 28s)
like with some of the things that have come to it,

Tom Anderson (17m 31s)
how Apple is really, really good at executing where work just kind of builds on top of work and builds on top of work and all of the materials work that they've done with Apple Watch into those headbands for the...

Tom Anderson (17m 45s)
Vision Pro, digital crown for the Vision Pro, the button.

Tom Anderson (17m 50s)
I mean, there's so much stuff that they just kind of build upon that extends into other products.

Tom Anderson (17m 55s)
So I'm sure we'll see that.

Tom Anderson (17m 57s)
We may never know what it was.

Jeff Battersby (17m 58s)
You may already be seeing that in the Vision Pro.

Jeff Battersby (18m 1s)
If you think about it, the cameras that are on the exterior,

Jeff Battersby (18m 4s)
you know, and the cameras that are on the interior that know what your eyes are doing and that kind of stuff.

Jeff Battersby (18m 9s)
The fact that, and you'll recall when I said that I tested this, I didn't have to take my hands out of my lap and was able to very gently tap in order to be able to navigate my way through that Vision Pro experience.

Jeff Battersby (18m 23s)
That's all stuff that the automobile--

Jeff Battersby (18m 28s)
that they, quote, unquote, "were working on"

Jeff Battersby (18m 30s)
may have been a part of it.

Jeff Battersby (18m 33s)
I think what's interesting is-- so we'll have a couple of links to articles.

Jeff Battersby (18m 39s)
Some are not GIFT articles.

Jeff Battersby (18m 40s)
I apologize.

Jeff Battersby (18m 41s)
Others will be GIFT article links that you can get to,

Jeff Battersby (18m 44s)
and I'll see if I can maybe find the other ones.

Jeff Battersby (18m 46s)
But the Washington Post, three weeks ago--

Jeff Battersby (18m 50s)
GIFT article available for this one on the site--

Jeff Battersby (18m 54s)
The Washington Post actually, um,

Jeff Battersby (18m 58s)
did an article three weeks ago saying Apple's great guns with this.

Jeff Battersby (19m 2s)
They've got vehicles driving around, you know,

Jeff Battersby (19m 4s)
in Cupertino and other places that, uh,

Jeff Battersby (19m 7s)
that are using, um, their technology.

Jeff Battersby (19m 11s)
What's interesting is it was not anything that looked like any kind of prototype.

Jeff Battersby (19m 16s)
It, they're doing a lot of camera work.

Jeff Battersby (19m 18s)
They were doing a lot of driving around with those vehicles.

Jeff Battersby (19m 21s)
Apple never at any point in time, uh,

Jeff Battersby (19m 26s)
applied for nor did they get a cell.

Jeff Battersby (19m 28s)
Self-driving license, they always had licenses that required that somebody was in the vehicle itself capable of controlling what it was that the vehicle was doing, whereas, you know,

Jeff Battersby (19m 44s)
the Waymo guys, so Google, and obviously Elon, whatever the heck his name is, the guy that does Twitter, they've done a lot of things to make that guy angry.

Jeff Battersby (19m 56s)
The-- you know, they're--

Jeff Battersby (19m 58s)
they're all into the self-driving, you know,

Jeff Battersby (20m)
totally autonomous vehicle.

Jeff Battersby (20m 1s)
Apple never-- while they may have used some of those features, they always had somebody in the vehicle able to control what it--

Jeff Battersby (20m 10s)
what it is that it was doing.

Jeff Battersby (20m 13s)
My feeling about this, again, being nobody with no inside information, Apple at WDC--

Jeff Battersby (20m 22s)
WWDC last year talked about CarPlay and integrating CarPlay into the whole.

Jeff Battersby (20m 28s)
The whole system of vehicles, you know, making it so you have CarPlay essentially driving the car.

Jeff Battersby (20m 34s)
I wonder whether or not that's not what this was all about,

Jeff Battersby (20m 38s)
because that would control cameras.

Jeff Battersby (20m 40s)
That would control a lot of the assisted driving that was going to be going on in the system.

Jeff Battersby (20m 47s)
I will note, and I sent you and actually Gannon pictures a couple of weeks ago.

Jeff Battersby (20m 53s)
I had never tried this before.

Jeff Battersby (20m 55s)
use CarPlay and Apple Maps.

Jeff Battersby (20m 59s)
in my car, in my now new BMW.

Jeff Battersby (21m 4s)
And one of the things that I noted is that

Jeff Battersby (21m 8s)
in my head unit in the car, not the radio unit,

Jeff Battersby (21m 11s)
but in the console where you see speed and all that kind of stuff,

Jeff Battersby (21m 16s)
when I was using Apple Maps to go someplace and I had what was normally the BMW map

Jeff Battersby (21m 24s)
forward in the console,

Jeff Battersby (21m 27s)
as soon as they started driving.

Jeff Battersby (21m 28s)
So, my guess is, guess, is that Apple really was working on the software component of this.

Jeff Battersby (21m 46s)
They are largely a software company.

Jeff Battersby (21m 48s)
They obviously are a very good hardware company.

Jeff Battersby (21m 51s)
But I'm with you.

Jeff Battersby (21m 52s)
An Apple car, first of all, I could never afford one that came out.

Tom Anderson (21m 55s)
Yeah, likewise, $170,000, just put it on your Apple cart.

Jeff Battersby (21m 56s)
Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (21m 59s)
But it's a great car.

Jeff Battersby (22m 2s)
But interest fee for free for 12 months.

Tom Anderson (22m 8s)
12 payments of $15,000 a month.

Jeff Battersby (22m 9s)
Yeah, there you go.

Tom Anderson (22m 13s)
Great.

Jeff Battersby (22m 14s)
Right.

Tom Anderson (22m 14s)
Sign me up.

Jeff Battersby (22m 15s)
No, no.

Jeff Battersby (22m 16s)
No big deal.

Jeff Battersby (22m 17s)
I'll sleep in my car.

Jeff Battersby (22m 19s)
Thanks.

Jeff Battersby (22m 20s)
So my feeling is that this has been more about developing really intelligent software in the vehicles.

Jeff Battersby (22m 28s)
I'm going to step back and say something else, too.

Jeff Battersby (22m 30s)
I've never driven, driven, good God, and I have had coffee, driving you crazy.

Tom Anderson (22m 34s)
Driving me crazy, baby.

Jeff Battersby (22m 37s)
I have never driven a vehicle with fully autonomous driving.

Jeff Battersby (22m 45s)
My BMW does have, you know, the option to do lane assist and stuff like that when you're in cruise control.

Tom Anderson (22m 53s)
Mm-hmm. Do you use that?

Jeff Battersby (22m 56s)
I have tried it, just to see if.

Jeff Battersby (22m 58s)
It works.

Jeff Battersby (22m 59s)
I love the distance, you know, the, you know, you turn on a cruise control and it keeps you basically, you know, several car lengths behind the vehicle in front of you.

Jeff Battersby (23m 7s)
I have played with it to see how it works on streets, and I'm telling you, no thank you.

Jeff Battersby (23m 12s)
No thank you.

Jeff Battersby (23m 15s)
I have, you know, done what would normally be reasonable driving.

Jeff Battersby (23m 22s)
For example, I was driving to a restaurant the other day, and there was work being done

Jeff Battersby (23m 28s)
and they had signaling, and you had to drive around the place where they were doing work,

Jeff Battersby (23m 33s)
and you ended up facing traffic on the other side because they have, you know, they turn it into one lane.

Jeff Battersby (23m 39s)
My car, I was using that at that point in time, and my car freaked the F out.

Jeff Battersby (23m 47s)
It's all I have to say, and it, anytime you're doing anything like that, you know, make it a little pass over the double yellow line on the left-hand side to pass something that's taking place on the right hand side.

Jeff Battersby (23m 59s)
It does stuff that does not make me comfortable at all.

Jeff Battersby (24m 2s)
So I do not use that feature, uh, won't use that feature and would not trust that feature in a, uh, in another vehicle, you know what I'm saying?

Jeff Battersby (24m 12s)
I would not trust any kind of self-driving.

Jeff Battersby (24m 14s)
I realize BMW doesn't have the, uh, the fanciness that, right.

Tom Anderson (24m 17s)
right, not true self-driving, but more lane keep assist, accident avoidance,

Jeff Battersby (24m 19s)
But that being said, yeah, that stuff, I mean, accident avoidance, I'm cool with,

Jeff Battersby (24m 25s)
But it's still, it doesn't.

Jeff Battersby (24m 28s)
Respond in the way that I would respond even in the cruise control feature.

Jeff Battersby (24m 33s)
It breaks way later than I would ever break. You know,

Jeff Battersby (24m 37s)
if I see something going on in front of me, um, you know,

Jeff Battersby (24m 41s)
and I have to slow down quickly,

Jeff Battersby (24m 42s)
it breaks way later than I'm comfortable with, with breaking.

Tom Anderson (24m 45s)
That's interesting.

Tom Anderson (24m 46s)
Do you have any settings in the, in there that you can adjust some of that?

Tom Anderson (24m 50s)
I know the Subaru system has that.

Tom Anderson (24m 51s)
I think I want to say the infinity system, um, has, has that, but I can't recall.

Tom Anderson (24m 59s)
Um, I use that a good bit.

Jeff Battersby (25m)
I'm still digging around to see.

Tom Anderson (25m 2s)
Um, and something that I noticed, like I had the 2016 Forester,

Tom Anderson (25m 6s)
which had eyesight on it, and I don't remember which version it was,

Tom Anderson (25m 9s)
but it was one of the early ones.

Tom Anderson (25m 11s)
Um, and it's breaking was quite aggressive.

Tom Anderson (25m 15s)
Like it would break late.

Tom Anderson (25m 17s)
Like it never was an issue.

Tom Anderson (25m 18s)
Like it always stopped, but it was just like, it's like, okay, I'd like to not have to buy brakes anytime soon.

Jeff Battersby (25m 19s)
Right breaks late and hard

Tom Anderson (25m 24s)
So I replaced the brakes.

Tom Anderson (25m 26s)
Um, but I will say in the Crosstrek that I have, which is a 23, which has a newer version of that, it's way better on the breaking, not, not bad at all.

Tom Anderson (25m 37s)
Uh, but still the, the infinity that my wife drives is even better.

Tom Anderson (25m 41s)
Like it's, it's really good for that.

Tom Anderson (25m 43s)
like I think I've mentioned before when we were talking.

Tom Anderson (25m 45s)
car stuff like when we've gone on beach trips and stuff where it's just hours and hours of driving we usually take her car and it's really nice like it's just takes a lot of the fatigue stuff out of the way those little micro adjustments that you have to make and breaking because the car slowed down you know 100 feet ahead of you or whatever.

Jeff Battersby (26m 4s)  
• Right, yeah, that part I love.

Jeff Battersby (26m 6s)
That feature works really well for highway driving,

Tom Anderson (26m 9s)
Yeah but I'm with you like full autonomous give the car the control sit there and read the newspaper. No, no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no

Jeff Battersby (26m 9s)
I think for me.

Tom Anderson (26m 15s)
no no no no. Right. Right.

Jeff Battersby (26m 16s)
The only way that that works for me at all is, uh, you know, if they have magnetic tracks in the, in the highway, you know, where it's driving like that, a la, uh, minority report, if you remember the vehicles in minority report where, you know, they're going up the sides of buildings and doing all sorts of stuff like that, but it's like a maglev system.

Jeff Battersby (26m 35s)
Uh, I'm down with that because, you know, where each, each device is communicating with, or each vehicle is communicating with the vehicle in front of it and the vehicle behind it.

Jeff Battersby (26m 43s)
Although, you know, when you.

Tom Anderson (26m 45s)
Yeah, and it's funny like I forget which might have been Bloomberg's story some of the

Tom Anderson (26m 52s)
Again reported reactions that some of the people in an Apple were like well, no kidding. This guy canceled. We knew this would never work

Jeff Battersby (27m)
We're, yeah, yeah, I'm not, you know, and, and we've seen what this looks like, you know,

Tom Anderson (27m 1s)
That's kind of how I felt about it

Tom Anderson (27m 4s)
and

Jeff Battersby (27m 8s)
people, people do stupid things when they have, you know, and they're driving something that,

Jeff Battersby (27m 12s)
you know, weighs a ton or more and, uh, goes fast, um, very fast in some cases. And, uh, you know,

Jeff Battersby (27m 22s)
I don't want that dude reading the newspaper next to me. You know what I'm saying? I don't.

Tom Anderson (27m 26s)
Mm-hmm. Right. Like, you know, some of the things you see people do on the road.

Tom Anderson (27m 32s)
Like, when I was commuting a lot, I remember driving down to Northern Virginia, and I saw there was a person driving that had a breakfast sandwich in one hand, a book in the other, and this wasn't in like in a Tesla or anything.

Tom Anderson (27m 47s)
This was eight, ten years ago, and using their knee. Yeah. And I'm like, "Oh my gosh."

Jeff Battersby (27m 48s)
They're driving with their knees, right?

Jeff Battersby (27m 51s)
Yeah.

Tom Anderson (27m 51s)
and I wonder a little bit too like

Tom Anderson (27m 56s)
how much of that decision to finally kind of drop it

Tom Anderson (28m)
again based on the reports

Tom Anderson (28m 4s)
was due to kind of external pressures from investors and maybe board members and things like that with

Tom Anderson (28m 12s)
by all accounts at this point Apple seems to be pretty far behind in the AI stuff.

Jeff Battersby (28m 16s)
Yeah, and they were way behind in the driving stuff too.

Tom Anderson (28m 19s)
And Siri has been crap

Jeff Battersby (28m 21s)
Oh, what?

Tom Anderson (28m 22s)
for ages.

Jeff Battersby (28m 22s)
Tom, my gosh, what are you talking about?

Tom Anderson (28m 23s)
Now we may find in June at the development...

Tom Anderson (28m 26s)
conference that they were not really producing much publicly, although they have done some language models they've published. They've done a lot of documentation they've published, like technical papers and things like that.

Tom Anderson (28m 36s)
They've been buying AI companies a lot, and so they're not doing nothing. But I wonder if it was a bit of a shift to say, "Okay, we're ready to really kind of start cranking this, so let's... we can't do everything."

Jeff Battersby (28m 49s)
No, and like a vehicle never seemed like it was in the cards to me either.

Jeff Battersby (28m 54s)
It seemed like they were saying it, you know, like a little bit of a head fake.

Jeff Battersby (28m 58s)
And I do think that they've gotten quite a bit of good tech out of this.

Tom Anderson (29m 5s)
Probably, yep.

Jeff Battersby (29m 5s)
You know, I think they've, they've gotten a lot of good information, uh, and maybe they just decided for safety sake.

Jeff Battersby (29m 14s)
makes no sense whatsoever at present to have.

Jeff Battersby (29m 19s)
a vehicle out there driving itself, but the technology it was able or the information they were able to gain by spending, you know, a billion or two on this is valuable.

Jeff Battersby (29m 34s)
It allows them to do something that maybe we've never done.

Tom Anderson (29m 38s)
Yep and I think the full fully self-driving cars to be like locked in and great that's so hard to do because there's so many variables and I think people underestimate how quickly we can react to things as humans like because we've got the ability to look ahead down the road know from previous driving history that hey this person is drifting I guarantee you they're going to drift over into this lane and they do and I just don't think that's that's coming anytime soon.

Tom Anderson (30m 8s)
If people work on it, I think it's great.

Tom Anderson (30m 10s)
It pushes other things forward more than likely, but I don't know.

Tom Anderson (30m 13s)
I think that's kind of like the same people who, with the AR/VR stuff, say,

Tom Anderson (30m 18s)
"Well, when it's in eyeglasses format, that's when I'll get it."

Tom Anderson (30m 20s)
And I'm like, "Dude, that's a long ways off."

Jeff Battersby (30m 21s)
right. That's me, by the way. Yeah, totally true. And I don't think it's possible. I mean, I'm kind of joking about the, you know, the maglev system in the roadway, but I, until it's

Tom Anderson (30m 23s)
Um, but that's...

Jeff Battersby (30m 39s)
integrated both into the vehicle and into the, into the road itself, um, and maybe communication between vehicles,

Jeff Battersby (30m 48s)
you know, something that you've got.

Jeff Battersby (30m 51s)
You know, information being, I don't see it.

Jeff Battersby (30m 54s)
I don't think standalone cars, particularly in a, in an environment where you've got individuals driving vehicles and, uh, and then you've got a computer driving a vehicle, you know, there's, you're going to have different consistencies that are difficult to respond to.

Jeff Battersby (31m 10s)
So, um, that's me.

Jeff Battersby (31m 13s)
So in 20 years, when, you know, I'm old and smoking cigars and drinking bourbon on the front porch, somebody can come back to me.

Jeff Battersby (31m 21s)
You're a genius boy.

Tom Anderson (31m 23s)
Maybe I'll say that to you in episode 14,020.

Jeff Battersby (31m 23s)
You knew it all.

Jeff Battersby (31m 24s)
You saw the future in the past.

Jeff Battersby (31m 31s)
4,560.

Jeff Battersby (31m 33s)
Yeah, there you go.

Tom Anderson (31m 33s)
Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (31m 34s)
Whatever it is.

Jeff Battersby (31m 36s)
All right, man.

Jeff Battersby (31m 37s)
Well, here, we've talked about cars.

Jeff Battersby (31m 39s)
We've talked about a keyboard.

Jeff Battersby (31m 40s)
We've burned another 30 or so minutes of your time, and we're grateful that you're here.

Close

Jeff Battersby (31m 45s)
Uh, you can reach us at, uh, feedback@basicafshow.com.

Jeff Battersby (31m 51s)
We'd like to hear from you.

Jeff Battersby (31m 52s)
We have stickers and magnets.

Jeff Battersby (31m 54s)
If anybody's interested, we'd be happy to send you one.

Tom Anderson (31m 57s)
For free.

Jeff Battersby (31m 57s)
Um, for free.

Tom Anderson (31m 59s)
Because we're nice.

Jeff Battersby (31m 59s)
Yes, we would because we are, and we can afford to spend money on a stamp.

Jeff Battersby (32m 4s)
That's about it.

Jeff Battersby (32m 7s)
Um, the, uh, show artwork, uh, by Randall Barton designed our

Tom Anderson (32m 8s)
You're not lying.

Jeff Battersby (32m 14s)
soundscape by Psychokinetics, the, uh, the music that you hear leading into and coming out of this.

Jeff Battersby (32m 21s)
show also Celsius seven, who has a new album out that you can find on Apple music, Spotify, all those places.

Jeff Battersby (32m 30s)
Have a look, pretty good stuff.

Jeff Battersby (32m 33s)
And I think Tom that's us for another show.

Tom Anderson (32m 36s)
That's it. Thanks. We did it. And thank you again. Show 30 the big three. Oh, that's it dirty 30. So

Jeff Battersby (32m 37s)
We did it show 30, right?

Jeff Battersby (32m 41s)
This is show 30.

Jeff Battersby (32m 43s)
Dang.

Jeff Battersby (32m 44s)
Is it?

Jeff Battersby (32m 45s)
This is about when I was having a midlife crisis in my turn 30.

Jeff Battersby (32m 49s)
And that was like--

Tom Anderson (32m 50s)
God, that's a little early, right?

Jeff Battersby (32m 51s)
What am I doing with my life?

Tom Anderson (32m 54s)
All right.

Tom Anderson (32m 54s)
Well, everybody again, thank you so much for being here.

Tom Anderson (32m 56s)
Have a great rest of your day, rest of your night.

Tom Anderson (32m 58s)
We'll catch you next time.

Outro Music (32m 59s)
I don't wanna know about your imperfections, dude Prefer to leave you on a pedestal so I'll improve 'Cause if I'm finding out you know that I'm just like you That gon' smash my whole world, lost in illusion

Jeff Battersby (33m)
See ya