526: At Least Mine Has Four Legs - podcast episode cover

526: At Least Mine Has Four Legs

Nov 06, 20241 hr 16 minEp. 526
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From Relay, this is Connected, Episode 526, today's show is brought to you by NetSweets, Marta World, and ExpressVPN. I am the Rikibanchman Mike Erly, and I am the pleasure of introducing to you all Federico Vitegi. Hi Federico. Hello, it's me. How are you Mike? I'm tired, but I'm fine.

And in this very special occasion, after four weeks away, spent in the wilderness, spent apparently becoming a gamer and doing many other things, including running cables and wires and installing things and fishing and whatnot, I'm very happy to welcome back to the show Mr. Stephen Hackett. Hello, Stephen. Hello. It is good to be back. I have missed you all. He has returned. He has returned. Here I am. What a day. When I was most needed, he returned to Gotham City.

You want the hero we want, but you'll the hero. Wow. Wow. Is it that line? No, but you are the hero we got regardless. Is there really a couple of men anymore? That's what we got. The hero we're stuck with. Yes. I enjoyed the show. Connected is the only podcast that I listened to consistently on my break. The others I was kind of in and out of. And I, just this morning, I really declared bankruptcy in overcast, but I wanted to hear y'all and thank you.

A huge thank you to John for filling in a couple of times. I cannot say thank you enough. That's not accurate. I was John and Jason. John and Jason and one Jason. The double J. Double J. Is that cold? When they're together. I don't know what happened in James. I don't know where he was, but he didn't make it. He didn't make it. But no, I know me being away, put a lot extra work on everybody. So thank you, the two of you, for helping make that possible. And I'm very happy to be back.

Wow. It was a pleasure. Yeah. And yeah, Jokes on you, we got all the topics done with AI. So we did no work. Wow. That's. Okay. That is not true. That is not true. Okay. That is not true. Yeah. Let's do it. Let's just do it. Let's just even one of you stop. It feels like this affects you the most. Yeah, it does. I mean, we're recording this on Wednesday, November 6th. You not know that because the date is not part of the introduction of the podcast for some reason.

But you know, the day after the election in the US, and I know that many of you, including myself, are not happy with how things turned out. And it's sobering and scary, and I know a lot of people are hurting. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry that that's the case. And I know many of us spent the night, a doom scrolling. I certainly did. I woke up at like 130. I was in bed and my wife had already gone to sleep. But I was like, I woke up and my phone was still in my hand, which is not a good feeling.

Like not, not good. So yeah, we're, yeah, it's a sobering day. I think that looking at last time, it's going to be a difficult period. Right? I think it's probably the easiest way to say that. Like I don't necessarily feel like people are more equipped to know what the next four years are going to bring just to know that it's going to be a lot.

And like one of the things that I've been struck by in reminiscing, if you'd call it that on that period of time, is it's one, it's not just the things that are happening, but just how much you're going to hear about it. Right? Like that was, that was, I think one of the defining things of the first Trump presidency is the media reaction to it.

And I was watching a live stream from a podcast that I like called the rest of the politics and they had a journalist from the Guardian who was on their live stream and she was like, as a journalist, she was like, well, I'm going to have a lot to write about. And there is a kind of a thing of like, yeah, they're gone. Like it was good for the journalism industry last time and it will be again this time. So you know, think about that in your lives about how much you want to take on it.

But anyway, I'm going down a rabbit hole now and I'm going to eject immediately out of and just say, I think we will continue to do over this period of time. The thing that we are actually best to do, which is every single week, try and entertain you. That's what we're here to do and to provide some escape from time to time. That's what we're here for. That's what we'll do. Yep. It's still OK to care about iPhone rumors and adorable Mac minis. And yeah, that's OK.

And we don't have to let the world waves down. And you know, I would say be kind to each other. There are people who are struggling and who will struggle for years to come because of this. And so be kind. I look out for each other and we'll get through it. Yeah. Yeah. I just wanted to say that I feel like we are almost obligated to keep doing what we do and, you know, say stupid jokes and talk about the new Apple rumors. And we're going to do that today. We're going to keep doing it.

Obviously, the thought that we, the three of us, we can do this without fear in any other consequences because like, let's, I mean, let's face it, especially Mike and I like, you know, it's not like we have other thoughts or really any. I guess what I'm saying is that we're lucky and we're privileged and we are in a position to be able to say, well, we'll just keep talking about tech, you know, because that's what people want. And obviously we can do this.

And we find comfort in the idea that we have listeners and readers who can find some escapism in what we do. But at the same time, I think, and I speak for the three of us, we are fully aware of the fact that this is a privileged spot that we're in and that, and that if other people, if if, if, if certain listeners or readers, they cannot possibly have the energy or the time to listen to us anymore and to, you know, to, to just be silly for 90 minutes that we understand that.

But I would say similarly, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I agree what you're saying, but I encourage people to try and find these things in their lives. I think so too. I think so too. And, and I think it's important. It doesn't have, right. I, I think I don't really have any advice because like, I was not like, if you ask me, you know, I don't know, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, I wouldn't have imagined this timeline honestly. But this is, this is what's happening. And so what can we do, right?

We can keep providing the show. We can keep, I can keep writing Mac stories. Steven can keep, you know, finding weird Apple support documents. That's what we do. We're going to support, you know, we're going to, I think, now we're going to never support each other because even though, you know, you may not be happy with what has happened. I am not personally, lots of other like us are not.

But that doesn't change the fact that you have, you can have your community, you can have your friends, you can have your family, you can have your, you know, you can find your small corners of brightness if you go looking for them, you know, and if you are happy with this news, which of course lots of people will be. I think a lot of the same things apply. I've just like, just been nice to people though. Yeah. You know, I mean, yeah. Yeah. I think people can understand that.

The thing is none of us and most likely none of our listeners were not in charge of anything politically speaking, you know, we're all just passerby's in this, in this, I don't even know how to describe in this stage play that is happening. Of course, especially me and you, Federico, I just want to meet like where it's just like Becky, I couldn't do anything.

Nobody, nobody, nobody, nobody listeners, you know, even our listeners, if there's people who sits on the completely opposite side of the political spectrum, there's nothing that we can do about it. And this is how democracy works. Sometimes you like it. Sometimes you don't. And as long as it stays at democracy, that's a big ask. It shouldn't be. It shouldn't be. We're going too long on this now. Let's just move on and love each other. Yes. Yeah. And love each other and get on with the show.

Follow up. Follow up. Several people wrote in about Tim Cook's multiple Mac situation. And I sort of merged several pieces of feedback into this, but the, the gist of it is that multiple Macs is completely normal for a lot of people who work at Apple. You typically have one Mac reading, like using like the nightly builds of Mac OS or whatever product you work on, and then you've got the one where you do your actual work because your beta machine is always broken.

One person wrote in to say, the laptop you carry around to meetings is probably not the laptop you want to be crashing and kernel panicking every five minutes. Unless that meeting needs you to demonstrate the crash, which is kind of funny to me. So I don't, I don't know what Tim Cook's nightly software situation is. Mike, when you interview him about his workflows, please ask about, you know, the state of the beta on Tim Cook's devices.

But I thought was an interesting insight and one that even though I do this and like, I know you all have done it in the past. And like a lot of us who cover this stuff will have, you know, like I've got an M1 in MapGar that in the summer runs the beta's right. And it's, it's okay if that machine explodes because I'm not doing my work on it. But apparently that's quite common at Apple. I will say though, yeah, that make, but remember it wasn't just two laptops. He was using three max.

He was using three max. So, you know, that was the thing. It's like he just gives also all of them. He just uses so many. To be fair, he was like a full on Apple store worth of setup. Yeah, sure. Yeah. So I, you know, missed the conversation about that interview. But the thing that that jumped out at me the most was like, he has a favorite software and I think and they don't have it at Apple Park. Oh, yeah. Mountain Dew, right? Was it down mountain Dew?

Is he just stopping by the, is he just stopping by 7 to 11 every morning and picking the one up? Also, I mean, Tim Cook's in good shape. So I guess he can like have a soda every day. I'm not judging. But it's also struck to me as odd that he has a favorite soda. I feel like he would be a, a water only kind of guy. Interesting. Everyone's got a vice. And this is Tim Cook's like, this is him, like this is his vice, right? You don't smoke, you don't drink, die a mountain Dew every afternoon.

So I did, I did get word from someone, did a little bit of on the ground research. There are no Pepsi products at Apple Park as well as told. Okay. So they got a conduct with Coke. I guess maybe. But again, who made the deal, right? You know, like Tim, you can make this deal. Yeah. Right? Like, you just call Pepsi. Maybe it's like a, maybe there's like a Gila Melio thing. Was it a Melio came from Pepsi? Maybe that was like a, like John Scully. Oh, John Scully, that's it.

Maybe there's like, you know, there's like a, I know Pepsi now. Fascinating. Fascinating. You know? We got good news here in Memphis. Basketball season is upon us, which is excellent. I went to the first University of Memphis home game on Monday night. And our basketball arena. Can I, can I try and guess the name of the team? Because I, I think I know it. Yeah. Is it the Grizzlies? That's the NBA team. That's the professional team. The college team is the Tigers. They're very good. Very good.

Why are two different animals? Two different teams. They're two different teams. Well, but they should have been like, I don't know, the Cubs and the Grizzlies. Yeah. Well, they're the Grizzlies. They should have been like that. They're the Grizzlies because they came from Vancouver. And we don't have Grizzly Bears in Tennessee, at least in my part in Tennessee. I don't know about other places.

But the basketball arena has switched from Pepsi products to Coke products, which is excellent in news. And makes up for the fact that the football stadium went the other way. They were Coke and now they're Pepsi. So like Pepsi's awful. So what I'm saying. Wow. I think. Right. Me about that. Feedback form, you know? I think Pepsi has the better and silvery products though to the to the to the cola because they got Mountain Dew and the others. Did I have Dr. Pepper? Dr. Pepper is independent.

Is that all? Interesting. I think. I always thought that like Pepper. I always felt that people who are like, oh no, I prefer Pepsi. It's like performance heart. Like you say it because it's like I don't because I don't truly believe it. I just want the attention, Federica. Dr. Pepper is its own brand. They also own Gatorade and tropical canons. Most of Dr. Pepper is the best soft drink. My favorite. But yeah, it's up there.

But Pepsi. Really Pepsi just has an all-in-rept thinking that they just have Mountain Dew, which I like that that's kind of it's kind of all I care about. So I'm actually going to say no coke is best. Yeah. Okay. So anyways, Colonel Panics, that's that's all people have multiple max. Rick wrote in about the continuing availability of the Mac pro.

I know something that both of you are really concerned about and talked about even though you can't put GPUs inside of them, you can host multiple cards holding SSDs. And that's one thing I did when I had my Intel Mac pro. I had a couple of cards in there with additional storage at my time machine and my nightly bootable backup internal, which is pretty cool. And then Rick also wrote in that an audio in particular, audio processing cards can be common.

Rick wrote, I know of a composer that previously used a 2019 Mac pro network with multiple PCs for his work, but now uses the rack mounted M2 Ultra Mac pro instead. I love the rack mounted Mac pro. It's cool. It's cool. We were getting real time follow up last week and a discord about this stuff and I still stand by what I said. There's nothing to put in these max anymore. There isn't.

There are better options now than buying a Mac pro for anything that you would have bought a Mac pro book for before. That's my feeling. Good news. I guess now a new Mac pro is going to be made in the US again. So. Wow. Thanks, Tim Apple. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. We got like 20 minutes. Yeah. First joke. So sorry. I am so sorry. But this is how I cope. Okay. Yeah. No, look, what else are we going to do? I said to Indiana.

I said to Indiana this one and I said, I feel sorry for Steven because there's no way we're going to let him get through the episode and you have proven it because I appreciate it. I really voted the first day. This isn't on me. I tried. I know I said it was on you. But like you don't want to be recorded. You're in the conduit. You all the conduit. You just follow this through. That's a different podcast. So Mike, you have been historically you're a flip flopper when it comes to Apple hardware.

This is well done. It's me. I'm the flip flop. Out of the three of us. What are you doing with your Apple watch? Because you've been on a journey here. I have never flipped off. I was thinking about getting the series 10 and Federico suggested that I don't and I didn't and I let me say Federico was right. I'm not getting. I'm sticking with my Apple watch. Okay. There you go. What do you say? I don't want to give up on the battery.

And for me, like my thinking was, oh, you know, at some point Apple's going to come out with like a, you know, like this big new watch design and it's and it's going to not going to be on the ultra line. It's going to be like the series line. And at that point, I'll have to give up like the battery gain. So I might as well just rip the band out of and deal with it. But I've decided no, I like my Apple watch ultra. I like that. I don't have to think about the battery life.

I just am going to stick with it for now. I'm not going to change to the Apple watch series 10. And so I'm sticking with it. So I'm taking a Federico approach on this one. Nice. Yeah. I think you'll be happy. Go ultra. I mean, I'm still, I have my launch day ultra one and it's still rocking a row on. But I would like to make an appeal to Apple to do about a job with the bands in the next season because I didn't think they did a good job with the bands this season.

There's usually like one season in the year where like I find the band colors to not be that good. So I hope, you know, maybe the next one they can, they can nail it for me. Yeah, the ultra doesn't get the band updates every time the regular watch does, which is kind of a letdown. Like they should do them. They should do them all. And not all of them are going to be popular, right? I would, I would love to know how, how those things do.

But they should turn those over at the same time for all the watches. Almost going to say Apple. Look, I know you're struggling over there, but like just, just go back to leather for the watch for straps. Just go back to leather. Just get rid of fine woven. Just go back to leather. Like, come on, you know fine woven is not right. Just make watch straps in leather. Charge more money for them. I don't know, but let's go back to leather for the watch straps.

Okay. What about a leather vision pro strap? That would be gross. That would be hot and gross. That would be gross. So Belkin, the company that Apple gets to make products, Apple's a shame to make, is now making a top head strap for the Apple Vision Pro, so in it bad. This basically looks like what they showed off at the launch, right? I mean, Mike, in Federica, you all had demos at WBC last year. Is this pretty much what they had? This is, uh, well, no, not me. No, okay. I mean, it is close.

It's very, very close. Like the strap itself is close, but the way it attaches, right? So like it attaches with that like plastic thing that locks around kind of like those 3D printed things where the ones that we tried, like it was attached to the inside in the same way that the solo top is. So like it was that kind of like double thickness magnetic thing that put into the side. Like it was, it was attached, sorry, to the solo knit the same way that the dual loop band is. You know what I mean?

Got it. Okay. That's what I meant to say. So it was the actual thing that I want, which is the amalgamation of both things. So, but yeah, this looks interesting. I have this big one. I'm happy with this big one. Yeah. Uh, if the balcony one proves to be better, then great. Well, I do like the look of the balcony one because it looks like it has easier adjustability. Yeah. It looks pretty good. I think it looks nice. And so we'll see what this one looks like.

The actor said the strap itself looks like the strap that we use Federico, right? Like the actual strap and the attachment. I'm not sure about where that came from. But yeah, so if people like this, I may buy yet another Vision Pro headband because the speaking one I like, but I think I would like it to be a little bit tighter sometimes. And I think I'm at the tightest. So this might be a better option. Okay. It looks very comfortable.

I'm continuing to be so fascinated by Belkin's role as effectively apples fixer. Like they just go in and solve the problems. It's what a what a fascinating relationship they have. Maybe they can sneak some diet, diet, mountain doing there, you know? I mean, yeah, I don't get it. This is like what's the only thing the Belkin doesn't make? That's your Logitech. Logitech's deal. Like they don't make iPad keyboards. I'm surprised that Belkin doesn't make those. Because that Apple do a good job.

Yeah, I guess. Belkin clean up the things that Apple don't do a good job with. Yeah. Or they need an alternative where Apple's keyboards are like, they work great. Yeah, I wonder like what that arrangement is. Because I can't, some of the stuff that Belkin do for Apple like this, I can't imagine sell very well. Yeah. So like, I mean, I would love to know what that arrangement looks like. Like our Apple Pay and Belkin to make some of this. I think they are.

I think they are like on a retainer to design these accessories that Apple just one doesn't want to make and put an Apple logo on them. And as the Discord points out, I was googling it. Belkin got bought by Foxconn in 2018. So you know, Apple already has a, I mean, Apple was doing Belkin's stuff before then, but it just, you know, I had just forgotten Foxconn bought Belkin, Linccess and Waymo. Waymo? Waymo's a different thing. Waymo. Waymo's self driving cars. Waymo's self driving cars.

What's Waymo? Well, that's the, uh, weemoo. Weemoo, remember the, the best. The best. Weemoo. Yeah. Yeah. That's the waymo. That's the waymo. That's the waymo. Yeah. That's the waymo. That's the waymo. Yeah. That's the waymo. Uh, y'all spoke about Thunderbolt 5 coming on the new M4 Pro and M4 Max computers, which is very exciting. OWC, uh, as they want to do, has announced a SSD that will support Thunderbolt 5, the, uh, Invoy Ultra to Terrible PlayStation 2.

It kind of does doesn't look at the picture. Looks like a place they got kind of the ribs around it. I think it's nice. Yeah. Um, one of the, uh, so there's two models, $400 for two terabytes, $600 for four terabytes, up to $6,000 megabits a second and, uh, backward compatible, two Thunderbolt 3, if you've got a, a lesser Mac. At a certain point, is it too fast? No. The bits flout the end. No, it's never too fast. That is. Like, $6,000 megabits per second. No, it's never too fast.

File sizes go up, display resolutions go up. It'll never be too fast. 10 years from now, you'll be wishing for Thunderbolt 6. I wasn't wishing for five. No, no, no, no, no, you, you, you, you, you, you, deep down your heart knows you were. Yeah. It's, yeah, it's like fiber, you know, deep down you wanted it. That's right. The cable is built in to the drive chassis.

They say that's a benefit because they can make it waterproof and, you can go swimming with your very expensive SSD, uh, if you want to. Sure. I'm now surfing the OWC website. Steven, if you ever come across the OWC Thunder Bay Flex 8, Thunder Bay, was it Thunder Bay? Thunder Bay. It looks like a Mini Mac Pro. It's like a little Mac Pro that you put loads of the drawings. Oh, yeah. Don't give him more ideas. No. Back in the day, this was called the Guardian Maximus. It basically looked the same.

What? And it, I, I had one. It had two, three and a half inch drives in it. I had it rated. That's how I kept my, like, I didn't celebrate back in the day. Guardian Maximus. What a great name for a product. I mean, Thunder Bay is also good. So whoever's coming up with OWC's names is good. Thunder Bay. Thunder Bay. Thunder, Thunder Bay. Thunder Bay. Thunder, Thunder Bay. Thunder, Thunder, Thunder Bay. They have like a whole range. Save us, Guardian Maximus, you're our only hope.

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Speaking of opportunity, go download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning at NetSuite.com slash connected. The free guide is waiting for you at NetSuite in ETSUIT. NetSuite.com slash connected. Thanks for the support of the show and relay. So Steven, you're back and everybody's been dying to know what have you been doing? Yeah. That's like what you do. It reminds me of like an early iPad keynote and Tim Cook was like everyone's been wondering what we'll do for the next iPad.

No one's wondering Tim. Quick question up front. Have you tried Ayahuasca? Just wondering. That's a game. Obviously I'm a gamer. Yeah, sure. That's go with that. Yeah, it is. It is. No, I feel like I've stumbled into something here that I'm going to stop talking because I feel uncomfortable. Steven, I love you so much. You know, the great thing that Erick is he can't Google that. Like there is no way with you will be able to Google that. No, I'm just walking away from it. I kept a list.

Steven, lots of people who go away for a long time and come back inspired. They perform that activity. So yeah, I was just wondering. Obviously you haven't. Right, it's good. Send me a gift. I anticipated this question and I made a checklist of things that I did on my break. Okay. Installed a new stereo in the truck. Built a new sound. I can't like a long time ago. Maybe you're doing that multiple times a month ago. Yeah. Built or assembled a new Ikea bed for one of my children.

It has like pull out drawers under the bed. It's awesome. Get all the stuff in the way. Very good. We had to have another this was before. I think it was before. Yeah, we had my daughter's iPhone repaired. Or maybe I'd set that up and then did it on the break. I forget, but she broke her phone. We went to the zoo as a family with some friends of ours from out of town. Detailed my wife's van inside and out at a whole day. Did you find the thing that was rolling around in that?

So here's the thing. So I don't know. I took the front seats out of the van. Unplugged under the battery, undid all the little connectors under the seat, unbolted them. The seats were sitting in my front yard and I pulled a bunch of carpet up and I couldn't find a marble. But I did find this piece of hard plastic that was just kind of in there. I don't even know where it was from. And I removed that, do it away.

And my wife has said she's not heard the sound since, but the sound was intermented to begin with. So I think maybe, but I really, it sounded like a marble and I didn't find a marble. So I don't know. I mean, really, the fact that you did all of that and didn't introduce a new sound is really the win. It really is. Yes, yeah. The fact that you took the seats out and didn't introduce a new rattling or anything into the van. Yeah, like why is it? Why is this? Why does everything sound shaky?

I will put, I'm putting a picture of the van taking apart in the discord for our members. Um, uh, these are the van early voted, spoke to a journalism class at the University of Memphis. Did they give you a degree yet? Not yet. I don't know. I don't know. I think he said he got that, didn't he? We were talking about it. Oh, Ricky may have an unfortunate accident. Ordered and received a Sony Mavica, which is a digital camera from the 90s and early 2000s, it suits on floppy disk.

So you posted some of the things that you did to the car. I don't know. I don't know. I think he said he got that. Didn't he? We were talking about it. Oh, Ricky may have an unfortunate accident. He said he didn't have that in the 90s and early 2000s, it suits on floppy disk. So you posted some images of this on your Instagram. I think I urged you to do it because I said if you just said look how much better this is than the iPhone, uh, computer program, what do they call it? Computers.

Computer program. Computer programming photos. They call them. Basically because there's this business meme, federally come show you've seen it on threads. like, oh, I'm using my iPhone 3GS and just look at the warmth of these images. So I was actually agree with most of them. I'm not saying it's wrong. I'm just saying it's a thing people are doing for the threat. I know it's a thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I urged Stephen to post his floppy disc photos as a way to prove that some of these images look really good. And some of them don't. And the best one is the last one. It's all over the second last one. It's really wise. And the sound it makes. So it takes the picture instantly, but it takes like nine seconds to save it to the floppy disc. And the sound's this thing makes unbelievable. I got four books read. I cut down a small tree in my yard with an axe. Oh, that's the tree to you.

In the way. Reported to federal jury duty, but was not selected for a jury. Oh, no, no, no, it's good because if he would have been selected for jury duty, we maybe never would have seen him again. It's still beyond the ad. Was it a was it a murder case? No, but it was a violent crime, unfortunately. Okay. Well, that was guilty for sure. Built a shelter for firewood to keep firewood dry. Okay. When fishing with my dad got a COVID-19 booster. Can you guys sign up for AT&T fiber?

Learn more about that. Because you got the booster, do you think? Yeah. Oh, maybe that's what it was. Increases speed. I'm gigabit inside and out, you know? Let's go. Uh, volunteers my brothers nonprofit, presser watched the porch and driveway. Sure. Uh, detailed the truck. And then I'm not going to read their names, but I had several. So I told a lot of people in my life, like, oh, let's catch up in October because September so busy and everyone cashed that in.

And so I had multiple breakfastes and lunches with people, which was really great. This reads like a bucket list of things I want to do before I turn 40. Yeah. Well, you know, some of us that's pretty close. And I also had lots of days where like, I just, you know, was a couch potato. Like it wasn't busy every day. You bought? Or were you bored? Did you like, did you get bored? And you know, the last week, I definitely was like ready to get back to work.

Like I kind of felt like I kind of had, I had, I had other to do things on my list here on the house that I just decided like, it's important to have some days where I don't do anything. So, yeah. Um, I mean, that last week was real tempting though. Like, yeah, Apple was really trying to pull you back in. Right. And, and that was really strange. Like in terms of things I didn't do, no podcasting, no writing. I only listened to connected. I heard some of other podcasts, but not all of them.

And I only kind of lightly kept up with the news. Now until that last week when there was a new Mac every day, and then I was like, you know, reading stuff and texting with some people and it, but it was really weird not to be writing, not to be blogging about those and then not to be, you know, preparing for connected and MPU talking about those new Macs.

But so yeah, it really was like the only work I did was enough that we could pay people really like just kind of the bare minimum of bookkeeping and now catching up on a bunch of stuff administratively. Well, there was that one day where your website broke. And both websites broke relay broke one day and then five of the books was broke. So I had had to deal with it. What about that? That was pretty early on that relay really broke. I tried so hard to fix it.

I was bouncing dinos left right in center and I could not, could not bring the website back to life. Yeah. It was outside of my capability. One thing not on the list is that I bought a new iPad mini. Huh, and it's great. Okay. Why is it not on the list? I don't know. I just realized it wasn't. I'm going to write down for history. Hang on, I'm finding a pen. Yeah, please do. Because it's delicious and if the list isn't accurate. Now I don't think I can trust the list of alt bits.

But I've had many parentheses A17 pro. So I use the iPad mini six for a long time and then one of the kids iPads needed replacing. And so the mini became a kid iPad and I bought a refurbished iPad pro. I don't even know what generation like just whatever. They're all the same. Do a degree. But back on the mini and I got to say the size is really good. I really like the size for just a little tablet for reading and watching YouTube. I don't work on the iPad.

I've just decided like, is this your only iPad? It is only iPad. There was a while where I was trying to use the iPad for like some non-work meetings and other stuff that I do. But I just got frustrated like, oh, I need like three PDFs open in this meeting to like check on things and like bouncing around. It's like iPadOS just doesn't work the way I want it to.

And so the mini is like, I set it up as like, I made it as a TV and reading like RSS articles, you know, that sort of thing and it's great. Very happy with them. So good sabbatical. I feel rested. I feel excited to be back. Right. And you know, I've said this before and I will say it again like thank you all for helping make it possible. I know both of you had more work to do because I was gone and that means a lot to me. Yeah. So it was it was easy to do to allow you to do that.

You know what I mean like the amount of work that it was was nothing compared to being able to give you that time. So I appreciate that. And you know, we've been doing this a long time and you know, relays and the show is like, you know, we know what we're doing and we can we can do this sort of thing. And you know, Mike, you haven't talked about it yet, but like I think you should do one at some point in the future.

Yeah. And I would like us to like talk about, you know, like is this something that we each get to do every, you know, number of years because I think it's really useful. And what I found, you know, and kind of reflecting on it the last couple of days being back at work is that the part of me that feels the most rested is like the creative part. Like the the admin stuff is fine. And maybe it's because I was still doing some of it. But the admin work isn't what's hard, right?

What's hard is like talking about what we're going to do on the shows and the writing and, you know, working on ideas and stuff for the apps. Like that creative work is what's draining and that part of me is like the most excited to be back and feel energized. And so it was great. And I think you know, what we do is creative and stepping away from that sometimes professionally is good.

And it's obviously a huge privilege that, you know, we get to do this for a living and take a break from it for a living. So thumbs up all around. I would like to give a special thanks to our editor of this podcast Jim Metzendorf because if we didn't have Jim this month would have sucked from me. Yeah. Thank you, Jim. Because the fact that I still all I had to do was just post the show when Jim was done with it made this very simple.

Where if I would have been editing the show every week, that would have been much harder. So thank you to Jim. Yeah. Yeah. For for making it an important part of this. I mean, the show he had its Mac Power users as well. Like I don't know what would have happened with that because David's not an editor. And so yeah, Jim is just so important to us and the team at relay. Like everyone is. Kathy and Carrie picked up a bunch of stuff too. It was great.

I will say just to wrap up this, you know, missing a bunch of the Mac news. I'm pretty psyched about the new Mac Mini. I don't have a place for one of my life. I wish I did. Like not that. Not that I chewed you don't. I can find one. I mean, I haven't had one Mac Mini as a co-server. I mean, it's so small. Doesn't everyone have a place? You just put in a pocket underneath something. It's like a pet rocket.

If I bought one, I don't want to put googly eyes on the front of it because it's just adorable. And Mike, I think you've said it's going to be your next computer. So I hope you, whenever you order one, I think you're going to like it. I'm very excited when they're for sale next week. I will go out to the Apple store. I want to put my hands on one and just just experience. I think it's fun when Apple revisits something out for such a long time.

Like that iPad design is from 2010 or sorry, the iPad gosh, the Mac Mini designs from 2010. Like long time coming and I think we did a great job with it. This episode of Connected is brought to you by Smarter World. If you're into podcasts that delve into how tech shapes our lives, which I think you probably are, then this ad read is for you. Let's start with a couple of questions. How do you control a robotic forearm with your voice?

What technology allows cars to communicate in real time as they drive? And what's inside the smart plug that reduces home fires and saves lives? If you're curious about these answers, you want to check out the Smarter World podcast. The host speak to some of the world's biggest brands and with exciting startups about how they're using technology to change the world around us. This Kyle Fox recently spoke to Honeywell about how smart energy is changing the buildings we work in.

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You can listen to these conversations by searching for Smarter World wherever you listen to podcast. That's the Smarter World podcast. Go search for it. Our thanks to Smarter World for the support of the show. As we record this, iOS 18.2 just just today in our public beta. We got dev beta to yesterday or two days ago and I've been playing with it. I know you all spend a lot of time talking about Apple intelligence when I was gone. And I said a couple things to add.

First of all, I did not have Gen Moji on my phone. I was like, that's weird. I even turned Apple intelligence off in the back on. And then someone in the relay discord said, oh, you have to have stickers enabled for Gen Moji to show up, which I had stickers off on my phone. I'm not even sure why. I don't know. Because you're a grinch. Because I'm cranky. And so I turned stickers on and they were there immediately. And I'm not the first person to say this.

But the Gen Moji designs the way it works and looks so much better than image playgrounds just night and day. Yep. Yep. It's actually a good system. So you can make some like horrors, right? Usually what I've found is it just takes a little tweaking of what you're asking it for. But I think it is better than image playgrounds in my opinion. But yeah, I found more fun in Gen Moji. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The all that stuff though, man, if you're playing with it, your phone gets warm.

It hits your battery. These things are working hard and that indicates to me that this stuff is all happening on device or at least a lot of it is. I'm not sure how much if anything yet is going to the secure cloud thing Apple has built. Private cloud. Private cloud compute. I don't think the imagery is the all. I don't think it's remembering right. I don't think that is. Let's see. Let me put my phone in airplane mode and see what it does. Let's see.

You know it's happening on device because your phone gets uncomfortably hot. Especially in a case. Oh, this is getting. This is not good. Image playground. Let's say I'm going to make picture of an airplane with spaghetti. Well, that's nice. Spaghetti plane. Yeah, it's doing it. So this must be, oh man. It's bad. Yeah, I'm going to. I mean, I do think I can get to some feedback in a minute.

But I think one of the reasons that these images are the way that they are and like from a quality perspective is because they're happening on device. I think that's maybe one of the reasons. I think there are many reasons, but one of the reasons there may be not that high quality is because they are doing them on device. I think that's one of the things that's happening. Yeah. They really, I mean, it's no different than Dolly or any of the others except that Apophils behind those other models.

But they do all the same weird things. Like if there's text and it tries really hard not to put text and things, but the text looks bad. It's not words. It's not even less. No, it's just like nonsense. Nonsense. Yeah. And it definitely has terms that it won't use. Federico, you talked about this, how you were able to, and I saw those images, made some things that it shouldn't. But I think some of those words got changed. You got remove it, you know? Oh, that's good to hear.

Yeah, that is good to hear. Yeah, all in all, like not really impressed with image playgrounds. It's fun to use for the memes or whatever, but you know, this is not something that's going to like change the way that I work in any capacity. Well, I asked for the passionate ones to write in, right? I made a plea and I was like, if you disagree with me and you have a use for this software, I want to know what it is. And we had some people write in, would you like to hear what they had to say?

Please. Jim wrote in and said, I've used Dali to create images for my role playing sessions, being able to use people's faces would be cool for personal versions of that. Makes sense? Right? Like you're playing like an RPG game of a bunch of friends and you want to create an elf character and you want it to be me as an elf, like sure. I can see it. Right? I can see it.

Other ideas says Jim themed birthday invitations where the child looks like a knight or an astronaut, costume party invitations where the hosts are dressed in their costumes, even before they get them ready, family calendar with fun images on birthdays. Okay. The family calendar one I really struggle with, like just use images if you're family. I feel I'm not saying anyone's wrong, but like people are just, you know, this is what people suggest.

My initial take on that is like, I wouldn't, but I understand that you might want to. Sean says, I'm a coach for a junior high cross country team. If image playgrounds could create accurate and fun images of the athletes, I could see myself using it for social media posts. I also make posters on occasion to cheer on athletes and can see fun or cartoony images being useful for that as well. We'll come back to these.

I think if I read them all and I think I have like an overall thought and some and stuff. Tom says I'm using image playgrounds and I like it. It's not going to change my life, but I enjoy being able to create photos of my family in certain situations. I haven't used other AI image generators for this type of thing.

And on anonymous users says I use Photoshop a lot to make birthday cards from my family and can't wait to use the image playground to create versions of my three and six year old and my partner in some funny scenarios. John says I will 100% use it for as Mike puts it griefing my friends, which is the only use I've found so far. It's just griefing my friends. That's my own commentary.

And Dwayne says this integrated tool is perfect for generating fun images to feature on digital news that they're aimed at young mentees, including graphics that may showcase caricatures of our mentors. We appreciate any design features that enhance engagement with Jan Alpha. Dwayne goes on to talk about image one a little bit, just like similarly. I have used image one. I was really surprised about how that feature actually works. Have you ever used image one? Yeah. No, never.

So this is where you draw something and then you make a circle around it. Then it asks you to describe what you're looking for. So I don't really know what the point of the sketch is. So I guess I can draw Mike. You can draw and it can I think what it's what it's doing is it's like you're giving it another data point, right? So like if you want a house, maybe you want the house to specifically look like this. But I just, you know, I'm like, what how do you do it?

You draw something and then draw something and then in the Apple pencil tools, there's like something that looks like a magic wand in the tools. It's like a kind of Apple intelligentsie colored wand thing in the pencil kit tools. You draw around, you like draw a circle around the thing that you have drawn and then it will pop up the image playgrounds UI to be like, give me some more information about this and you type in what you're looking for.

And then it should take what you've drawn and turn it into something else. For all of these things, which I'm very happy that people have written in because it's like I kind of feel like I understand a little bit more the types of things that people might want to use this stuff for. I think maybe one of the places where these things are hard for me to get my head around is like, so in the UK, we have a company that makes greeting cards called Moonpeg.

And the whole thing is like they have an app and you can order cards and they print the cards and send them to people. And most Moonpeg cards, I think, have the ability to add the photo with the person you're sending it to in it in some way. So you upload a photo and it can be like a little person I'm seeing or maybe it's a funny thing like you put their head on, I don't know, John Cena's body or something. But I never ever once have put a photo on one of these cards.

I specifically choose the cards about photos on. I would never want to do that like to take a picture of somebody and put it on a card and send it to them. Like for me, I don't understand that. And so maybe that's why I have such a version to this is like for whatever reason, just for me, I would never imagine taking a photo or a likeness of somebody and like sending it to them honestly. Like for whatever reason, that doesn't click with me.

And so like I'm reading these and I'm like, okay, I still have an issue with the consent of these images, like people are having images created of them. Do they, you know, do they want you to do that? I don't know. But I can see that people would want to use it. I just see that this isn't for me. But again, as I said before, I think my biggest issue of it is I just don't think the image is good enough. Yeah. Stephen, do you have any thoughts on this?

I mean, I get those use cases and I think in those use cases someone was not going to go higher somebody to like make those images. And so I can, I can understand that. But I agree with you. Like they're just not, the images aren't good. And they're definitely not something that I would want to put out like in a serious context. Or like Apple's demos like, oh, like you have this, this presentation and like you make a picture of a gazebo and stick it in like go look at that airplane picture.

I put it in the show notes like just go look at it. Like this is not something I would want to have in any sort of context beyond pranking somebody or you know joking with somebody. And so I don't know. I don't think it's that useful for me. And if you've got places in your life where it makes sense like, hey, I guess that's fine. But the quality is just not, it's not great. I just, I'm based in the discord, the results of my artistic creation.

As you can see, I drew a sketch of a very incredible sketch of what I described as a really long dog. And it was later turned into a long dog. Count how many legs that dog has. My room and it's the overall quality of that image is good. Is that like the illustration one which I never really have used? Yeah. I think the illustration is a significant, there is a significant issue there, isn't that?

Yeah. It's like the highest horse I made on social media the other day is like, it's got an extra leg. So what are we doing? Yeah, do you prefer my regional sketch or define on illustration? I have a sketch, Federico, that you made of me sitting at a Macintosh that I treasure. And so sketched pretty good. I've got to say Federico in this situation, I think I'm like the final one, even with the five legs. Sorry. I don't know man. I know man. Look at that dog.

Look at that dog and look at the tail. Man, come on. Yeah. How can you not like it? How can you not like it? I don't need AI. I can use my long dog, you know, really long dog. So long dog. At least mine has four legs. This episode of Connected is made possible by ExpressVPN. The more big companies know about their potential customers, the more targeted they can be with their marketing. Thankfully, there is a way to keep your browsing history private through ExpressVPN.

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So it seems like according to Mark Gurman, Bloomberg, that Apple has officially started exploring the idea of making smart glasses with this internal project named Atlas. It seems like, and this is interesting because I remember conflicting reports from Gurman. I was under the impression that Apple already had an internal team dedicated to exploring the idea of making smart glasses.

Like not augmented reality glasses, but something more akin to the Meta Ray-Bang glasses, which are regular glasses that have a camera or maybe speakers built into them. But now it seems like the project has gotten off the ground with this internal focus group where Apple is basically gathering feedback from employees about the idea of making, entering this new category and making this smart glasses as a companion to the iPhone as a potential competitor to the Meta Ray-Bang glasses.

Obviously, I have many thoughts on this topic. I just want to say upfront that I find it kind of strange and maybe this is how Apple operates. This idea of like doing focus groups with employees. So like, I don't understand what step of the process this is. Like, I mean, the way that Mark Gohmann describes it is it's like the beginning. So like, this product has not been decided?

No. So what you're remembering is a report from ages ago where this was a thing that Apple considered and moved away from. Like nothing was done with it. That in there, many considerations for what their AR product would look like, something that was basically the Meta Ray-Bang was something that they considered doing and decided not to bother with. So this is like very first steps of the process. This is like, hey, do we want to do this? Let's talk to our employees and see what they think.

Like, that is basically as far as they seem to be if this report is to be believed. Interesting. I didn't know that they were going to their employees too. Because like, I don't know, was the original iPhone decided with Apple employees? Like, did they do a focus group to say, should we do an iPhone guys? Right, but this focus group though could be of like 12 people who are all in like, of course, like, right?

It's what are you, you know, it's like the way this is not a poll on Slack being like, vote yes or no, do you want us to make glasses? No. My expectation is like, this has been described in the way that it's been described, right? But I would assume that this takes different shapes depending on what they're doing. But this is essentially a meeting, but it even could be this, right? You get like 12 people from the Harbor engineering group in a room.

And it's like, all right, gang, what do we think about this? Right. That's why I found the reporting sort of strange because it really painted a picture of Apple writing a memo and circulating a memo internally being like, hey, do you think we should make glasses like can you help us out here? And what you're saying makes more sense. Like maybe it was like a really small focus group of like, it could be anywhere in between those things, right?

I think like depending on the product probably depends on how big those conversations are, you know, this might have been with a hundred people or something like that. Right. Yeah. Regardless. I have a lot of thoughts, especially because I've been using for the past three, four months at this point. I mean, we're in November, yeah, almost five months. No, I was using them in May. Gosh, six months at this point. I've been using for half a year the meta-rabe and glasses as my everyday glasses.

And this continued to be for me truly a resounding success for my personal usage. As well as for sort of my in real life social, you know, situation with people around me. Everybody, literally everybody I've spoken to about this, everybody knows them. They've heard of them. They have seen them in a store. They have seen them on social media. They have heard about them. They are familiar with what they are.

The fun thing is, although everybody knows the product, nobody, and I mean, it must have happened with ten different people so far. So it's not a small group of people. Nobody has noticed them upfront when they and the conversation has always gone with, oh, Tici, you're like, you're super into tech. Have you heard of the Ray bands with the cameras? And I'm wearing them now. And they go like, oh, are those the things? Everybody knows them, but nobody has noticed them upfront.

And that's the benefit of it being Ray band, right? Where if meta would have designed their own glasses, this wouldn't be the case. People would know what they would look like, snapchat spectacles, right? This was the genius in actually using the wafer of design. I've been really liking them, and one of my goals for later this year have been working on this iPad story, and after the iPad story that I finished writing today, finally, I want to move on to this meta Ray band story.

But we mentioned this before. I've been using them as glasses, but also as like a really quick camera for short videos or quick photos, as well as my speakers. When I'm doing chores around the house, when I'm walking the dogs, listening to podcasts, like it's been my go-to accessory for life. And it's not, I see the thing is I don't even think about this as an accessory. It's just their my glasses.

Obviously, an Apple version of this that I would, to say that I would welcome an Apple version of this would be an understatement. But I imagine what an Apple version of these glasses could do, like in terms of better gestures, for example. This is something that I struggle with sometimes with the Ray bands, that sometimes they don't recognize the gesture for pausing them, you know, toggling, playing them pause, for example. And I need to tap on the sidearm of the glasses like multiple times.

And occasionally happens. Apple, I think, as over the past decades, they have really nailed gesture recognition across multiple devices and form factors. I would imagine that an Apple version of these glasses would have always on low power sync, like background sync with my iPhone instead of having to rely on a separate app, just like my watch, my Apple watch is always in sync with the iPhone, it just happens in the background.

I don't have to worry about syncing my phone to the watch and vice versa. It just happens with the made-up Ray bands. You need to install the made-up view app and it does some background sync at night when you're charging the glasses. But it may fail. And during the day, if you want to import a photo, it's a manual process. I would imagine that an Apple version may just, you know, you take a photo with your glasses, you find it immediately in the photos app.

And speaking of cameras, obviously, you know, I would imagine an Apple version would have a much better camera, much better picture quality and integration with Apple Integence. You got to think about Apple Integence when thinking about this new category. They would be a natural fit for what they're doing with visual intelligence and just the idea of, you know, advice that can be Siri with literally eyes. I think it's really compelling.

If I were Apple, that's what I would consider, you know, what can we do in terms of like something that people wear and they can potentially wear all the time, just like AirPods, but unlike AirPods, we now have cameras that we can use and we can, you know, we can capture what the user is looking at. I think that's really fascinating. And obviously, I think, you know, the Siri integration and the Apple Integence integration is a given.

But also, I think in a way, glasses made from Apple would reinforce the idea that you're still going to depend on your phone. You know, because glasses like at this point, we're not kidding around anymore. These are, these need to be cool looking. They need to be lightweight. They need to be something that people can wear without thinking about them. And so, realistically, in the near future, you want to hand off as much as possible of the processing to the phone.

And that in turn reinforces the role and the importance of the iPhone, just like with the Apple Watch and just like with AirPods. Yes, the Apple Watch has some degree of independence now, but really, you just want to use it with an iPhone. And I think the glasses may just do the same thing.

If Apple were to make this, like, or maybe a better way to say this is like, what are the things that you feel like you're missing from the Meta Raybanz functionality wise, that if it was like connected to either your iPhone, which it would be connected to your iPhone, it's connected to your iPhone. It's connected to your Apple stuff. What are the features that you think you would conceivably get that you otherwise don't get?

Sure. Obviously, better integration with the camera and the photos app on the phone instead of having to, like, this idea of like sinking, you know, between the Meta View app and the photos app. No, just take a photo and you find it in the photos app. Yeah. FaceTime integration, I think having, you know, first person perspective FaceTime calls, because I've done them with WhatsApp and they are incredibly cool. Just that sort of FaceTime experience would be neat.

I also think I would very much welcome better, like the thing that I'm missing most is better Siri audio and voice quality. When I use Siri on the glasses, it's kind of reminiscent of using Siri in non-car play cars that have regular Bluetooth, like you get that degraded voice quality. And it's not like when you're speaking and listening to Siri while wearing AirPods, right? When using AirPods, you're getting the like full on, full quality Siri experience.

Here there's a bit of a delay because it's Bluetooth and Siri's voice doesn't sound as clean and polished. And so a natural Siri integration, especially now with Apple Intelligence, that's what I would like to see in the Apple version for sure. Right. Yeah. Yeah, it would be nice. I don't know about this though. I would like them to do this, but like if they're just starting, that's a many years away, right? Yeah. From now, like if they're just starting this, that is quite away away.

And I don't, I'm just not sure where is this going to be in multiple years. Like, yeah, I don't know. I'm really not sure about this. It's just also strange to see this report. I mean, Girmary reporting of this days after this was like talked about internally as just wild. And to see, like we don't see this. We don't see Apple's internal initially spots to what a competitor is doing all that often. So this is kind of a unique, a unique thing.

And then when it's something that they were rumored to be looking at in the past and they shelved for whatever reason. And like we got the Vision Pro instead or until it's all just very strange. And I think we talked about this after a run, we showed off like something like this is much closer to the future than Vision Pro, which is effectively like ski goggles and pass through and Apple could use things you got to do this to get to that. But it is, it's just very strange.

The whole story is just like the more I think about it, it's just very odd that we are even having this conversation this early on. Well, I, you know what you're saying about getting doing this to get to that. I think what Matt's on my show is you actually have to do both to get to that. Maybe. Right. That like it has required them making the quest and the Brabans to get them to a place where they could make a Ryan.

And that maybe you do need to comment this from both sides to get to that middle perfect product in 15 years time from now or whatever. Because I think that is the kind of timeline we're on to where you can see what we get, what we have in these technologies today in something so small, you know, like if you, like for example, you know, like I was imagining, you know, Federica said about FaceTime, like what would it take to get a persona in a FaceTime call from regular glosses?

And I think that that is like a 15 year. Something you know, when it, that is a long time to get the technology good enough to do that, but I do think it's doable. But I do think that there is something to be said for doing both sides of this. And because I think it does both things. I think it builds the company's technological prowess in both areas and also builds the customer. Like Apple would sell a lot of a smart glasses product if it was done well.

It is weird that they have not started this project before now in earnest because like, surely the AirPods are the suggestion and the Apple watch are the suggestion that you would find success in this. Yes. Right. Yeah. Those are products which they're not a million miles away from what this thing is. Like it's just the wearable that does some things that you're connected device can already do. Like, but does them slightly differently.

Like I can listen to audio out the speaker of my iPhone and I know everyone around me, but I can do that. But AirPods are better for that. You know, like I can look at my notifications on my iPhone screen, but my Apple watch is more convenient for that at times. Like a glass of product like this to be able to take photos that won't be as good, but it will be more convenient to be able to take calls. You know, like it is really a kind of the one of the products that could orbit around the iPhone.

It's intriguing if they are only like as of a week ago, thinking that this is a project that they should pursue an honest. And I would genuinely wonder about this. I'm like, full off into theory town now. If like the general disdain that they have for meta has clouded them into thinking if this is a product they should do that they're like, oh no, that's them. Like we don't do what they do.

And I would wonder if that kind of thinking could have gotten in the way for them or maybe thinking that like, oh, that's meta people won't want to buy a product from them. So we don't need to worry about that. But like I don't think that's the case. So I don't know. But like it is weird to me that if this is if German's reporting is correct that they only have just started this, I would find that to be curious because it does seem like a logical step or maybe it's a logical one hindsight.

I don't know. Check back in a decade is what we're saying. Boy, I don't know. I don't know. Like I don't know how long it would take them to produce a product like this. I think it would be complicated. I think Apple could do it faster than meta with their hardware expertise. But can they make it look good? Yeah, I don't know.

Right. I think Mattel was able to produce the product that they were able to produce at the time that they could because of the partnership with the Luxoptica, I think is the brand, right? Yeah. And to be fair, Orion, like, yeah, the meta stuff, meta Raybanes are real, like Orion, not a product, right? It's on its way to a product. And so. Yeah. And this project is not that, this project is, it's just Raybanes, right? It's just that, right? Yeah. Like, it's not.

Apple was working on, they definitely are working on AR glosses, right? But that is not this. That's a different thing that is many years away. But like, I mean, I don't know. It's a hard, it's a hard thing to produce a product that people want to put on their faces. And obviously Rayban has had a long history of working that out. Apple has very good ideas. Apple hasn't made something people want to put on their faces. Sorry, it's a good point. Sorry, it's a good point. Sorry, it's a good point.

But it's, I mean, it's the best looking VR headset, but that's, you know, you know, it's not necessarily a high bar or a bar that's worth crossing. So yeah, I don't know. I think that that is, that's what that, for me, that's the biggest risk factor is will they be able to produce something that people actually want to wear because the anonymity factor that you're getting Federico would not work here, I don't think, because people would know it's the Apple one.

Yeah, yeah, because it's not going to look like something else. Yeah, I think you're right. I don't know. I'm a little concerned, like you say, that this project just started and maybe was, I'm curious to see if like three years from now, five years from now, this will turn out to be a bigger miscalculation on Apple's part than we, than what we're thinking today, you know, like, I don't know.

I just feel like it'll be interesting to see if going down the path of a really expensive headset instead of starting a little more humble and a little smaller and being like, but most people really want glasses now and maybe there's, there's value to be had in, in, you know, making glasses that don't cost a fortune and can help our AI features with cameras and microphones and speakers. I don't know, I don't know.

Like it's, the thing is, it's not like I bought these glasses because I'm a met up superfan or anything, you know, I just think they look cool and it's, and I don't even think I'm that locked into the meta ecosystem. I'm not using any AI features with these glasses, but other people are and I don't know. I just feel like I'm, I think it's surprising that a company like Apple didn't see the success of this product coming and were here in late 2024 and they just started a focus group about it.

I don't know, very strange. Well, I think that does it for this week. If you want to find links to the stories you spoke about, check out your podcast player or the website, relay.fm slash connected slash 526. There you can get connected pro, which is a longer ad-free version of the show. You do each and every week, this week we talked about my move to fiber finally, finally available at my address and super excited to have it. So go check that out. You can find us online.

You can find Federico's work at maxstories.net and he is on Macedon and Threds as the teachy. You can find Mike across a bunch of other shows here on relay and his work, of course, over at Cortex brand, you can find him as I mic online. You can find me as I SMH 86 and I go host Mac Power users here on relay each and every Sunday and right over at 512pixels.net. I think our sponsors this week, NetSuite, Smarter World and Express VPN. And until next time guys, say goodbye. How do you think, you?

Cheerio. offenses every day.

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