mergeconflict391 === [00:00:00] James: Welcome back everyone to Merge Conflict, your weekly developer podcast. And welcome to the year of 2024. Frank, we made it. I can't believe it. It happened. [00:00:10] Frank: Yeah, I, there were doubts there. Uh, you know, you get late in the race and you start to feel a little bit tired. And you're like, maybe, maybe I'll just walk out the rest or, you know, I don't really need to finish this year, but we've both decided. Let's do it. Let's finish 2023 and do the next year. You know, maybe we won't do 2025, but let's do 2024, [00:00:31] James: let's go for it. Yeah, it seems like a good number. You know, 20 plus 24, that's 44. Six times two, that's number 16. That's great. Plus each other than seven. So, you know, basically that's what the whole year boils down to. It's the number seven. Um, anyway, [00:00:50] Frank: welcome to the new era, James. Whoa. Wonderful to be here. [00:00:54] James: Whoa, 20 plus 24. 44, 4 times 4, 16, iPhone 16 predictions. What, what, what, why? [00:01:06] Frank: I, you cracked it. You cra we now, we understand Tim Cook's brain. I, I, you solved it. Um, I always thought he was a numerologist and you just proved it. According to me. Well, I want [00:01:18] James: to talk about something that's on my wrist, Frank, because as you know, I've been, I've been eyeing those new fancy Apple watches and. This Apple watch has a huge crack in it and I can't put it under water. I'm terrified that it's going to electrocute myself. Uh, and when we were on a recent trip, I did a lot of swimming and I took it off every single time Heather's over there getting all of her sweet calorie counts in activities on her watch, doing open water swims, poor me. Nope. I put my little Apple watch over here. Cause I don't want it. I don't want it to electrocute me. It's it's a little, I can see the innards and that's not good. So I went yesterday. I just went yesterday to go buy the new Apple watch. I was like, it's time I got the credits, you know, from the, the, our fitness program at work, time to buy the new, I can't, I can't buy it. Frank can't buy it. [00:02:05] Frank: What is going on in the world of watch manufacturing? It is the craziest thing, just happened. Uh, I, I was like, I was scrolling through Twitter, doom scrolling mostly, you know, that's what you do at the end of the year. And I, the, the silliest little article came up and I'm like, no, that, that can't be anything. That, that's not, there's no way this is anything. The news article said something about the pulse Trioxology sensor. Hi everyone. I don't know anything about medical stuff. But I am an electrical engineer, so I'm happy to talk about wavelengths of light here. But there's a patent dispute, James. There is a patent dispute going on with the Apple Watch, and there is some bad blood between some California companies, and they called the lawyers, and those California lawyers are making things happen. It is, I think, the weirdest story on the planet. It shouldn't be, like, what, how long are these? Uh, oxygen pulse oximeter thingy's been out now, but there is a California company, totally forgetting their name, just blanking on it right now. And they're claiming that Apple's little oxygen sensor that reads how much oxygen your blood is carrying. Your blood, not mine, because I have an older watch. How much your blood is carrying around in your body. And I thought this was kind of interesting because recent events have gotten me thinking about health and my own oxygen levels, and I've been curious about my oxygen levels. So I've been thinking about upgrading my watch and now I can't because of lawyers and perhaps actual. Patent infringements. Who knows? Not a lawyer. [00:03:47] James: Yeah. So this is Amasamo is the, is the company and they're a medical device maker. And as you can imagine, Apple has, uh, over the last several years added more medical device sensory things into the Apple watch, which is good for. Uh, if you have it so you can detect things if things are going awry. Um, one of the most famous features is the, um, the eth. Like basically if you have a spike in, in, um, your heart beats and you know it starts to go heart rate. You heart rate, you might be having a heart attack, right? They, they can sense that upper low. Both are bad, by the way. I don't know if you know, if you're, if it goes really high or goes really low, that's bad and you don't know. Uh. [00:04:34] Frank: I will differ with you there. Um, I have numerous times I've been calmly sitting at my computer, very calm and Zen as I do. And then an email will come through and my watch will start buzzing saying, your heart rate is up, even though you're sitting down in a chair, buddy. And I'm like, Ooh, that email affected me. My heart rate will [00:04:54] James: spike right up. Oh my gosh. And, um, and like all this stuff, it really brings me back to some of the early. Uh, things that Hanselman was going through with, uh, Scott Hanselman is, is, is diabetic and he has insulin pump. And there's, there's a whole long lineage of attempting to get that information onto different smart devices. And you can go back to years upon years and now it's app and all this other stuff. It's kind of at least more mainstream and things like that now, but having not only the, the, the insulin. Like the reader, but also the pump, those are two different, you know, two different things that are different doing different things and just, you know, medical technology is, is very, very fascinating, kind of slower moving, which is fascinating. So that's what makes this interesting to talk about because the technology of what can be on a wrist and can potentially help many, many, many people is there. However, yes, the whole debate here is that Massimo has the patent and on. on this type of technology. So you can't be like just breaking patents, Frank. That's bad news. [00:05:57] Frank: Can't you? I don't know. Ever since I was a little kitty hacker, Hacker Frank, little kitty Hacker Frank has always been against patents. And I still, still kind of am. Um, I'm, I'm not, I think the patent system does a little bit more harm than good. If we're looking at the general good, um, the patent system seems geared toward. Making rich companies richer, but this isn't a game of David versus Goliath. These are two large corporations that both are patent heavy. Apple's got tons of patents. They got tons of patents. This is what large corporations do. They argue about patents. It's why, um, every large company you work for will give you, you know, usually there's a bonus if you can file a patent because They build up this arsenal of patents. So if one company sues them, they can countersue with their patents, or they can work with little side deals, backroom deals with that kind of stuff. But I thought it'd be funny to, fun to talk a little bit about, uh, the actual technology since it's, it's interesting. Um, anyone who's gotten an Apple, a recent Apple watch, I should say, has noticed the really cool lights that emit off the back of it. Man, that sensor array on the back of the watch just keeps getting more and more complex. And it's, it's a cool technology where they actually, you know, shine an LED into your little blood veins, blood arteries, blood carrying vessels in your body. And they look at the absorption spectrum of what you're absorbing and they can tell the hemoglobin levels, which is proportional to your oxygen carrying capability of your blood. And that's an important factor because it turns out. Humans need oxygen, it's very vital to our existence. And, uh, just from that data, it's, it's, it's honestly like electrical engineering, one on one kind of stuff. This is not new technology. We have been looking at absorption spectrums of galaxies and planets and suns and plants and all this stuff. We know that different molecules absorb light at different frequencies. You shine some light through it, you look at what frequencies it's absorbing, how much it's absorbing. It's going to be hard to say all these big words in this podcast today. Uh, you keep, you just look at those things and they're proportional. Um, the amount of light it's absorbing is proportional to the amount of oxygen that your body is carrying in it. And so at some levels, it's a fundamentally very simple technology. Like you could do this in an eighth grade lab experiment. Yeah. The patent is on. The devil's in the details. Uh, so if you do it the simple engineering 101 way, you get a slight undercount in, uh, the amount of oxygen carried throughout the blood. They, I think the numbers are roughly like the Apple Watch is maybe two to 5 percent accurate. of if you know you cut someone's heart rate open and you measured the oxygen you sat there and counted every little oxygen molecule Uh, it's about two to five percent accuracy level And the tricky part in that is where this patent dispute exists. It takes, um, really specialized knowledge to Close the gap between the very simple science experiment to one that is actually accurate enough to give Proper medical advice, you know, we all should be 95 to 100 percent oxygen carrying. And if you go below that level, bad things are happening in your body. And so that two to 5 percent kind of matters. You want to know if you're within the error margin or if you're doing fine. And the patent, and it's more than just the patent, and there's all this, you know, did you, did you steal employees from us? Did you, you know, do all these other things? Um, and, and I think that's, that's where I found it kind of interesting. It's, it's a very simple technology. That's why I kind of doom scrolled right past it in the beginning, because I thought, oh, that's not going to even make it to trial, let alone make any difference. But it turns out, no, uh, someone thought that Apple's technique was close enough to the patented techniques, uh, in that, in that refinement area, uh, to actually get the watch, uh, I'm just going to say banned. Yeah. Apple watch is banned. Uh, you can't, can't import it anymore into the grand United States of America. [00:10:22] James: Yeah. And it's very fascinating too, because these lawsuits around different pieces of technology and what's out there have different. Impact on You know, on us as a consumer, but obviously, you know, we don't want, you know, we don't want things to be infringed and all this stuff and blah, blah, blah. But this reminds me of the early two thousands when full Sony and Microsoft are actually sued by immersion, uh, for rumble. by vibration controllers. God, that's one that I remember, but I was a Nintendo kid. So Nintendo, they had like a rumble pack and they had, like, they didn't include stuff in the different technologies that they use and Nintendo kind of went around it in different thing, but basically there was. This, uh, patent that was Tactile Feedback Man Machine Interface Device. That was called. And basically it was years and, and, you know, they, they went back and forth between removing things and adding things back and paying, but then again, it's like, well, if you remove every single Xbox and PlayStation controller on the planet that has rumble, you can't bind it. Like you don't have a video game system. So you're, oh, I gotta. Re engineer and then how does that impact games that we're doing stuff on rumble XYZ. Right. So very, very fascinating. Like that went on for many, many years. I mean, I'm looking at the Wikipedia article went on for like five, six, seven years. Right. Just in, in, from the beginning of that. So the fascinating part here is. In our prediction of 2024 Apple esque episode, we have a few different things to talk about. There's a very fascinating case. And I mean, funnily enough, when I was, I was joking about me going to the store, I knew this was happening. But a week ago, right before Christmas, Heather goes, should we go buy new Apple watches? Like, should we go? Cause she's like, maybe we'll never be able to buy this. I said, here's my thought on it. Because as of this recording, we're recording this day after Christmas. So we're not just, so maybe everything has changed by New Year's. And we're sorry, we're wasting 20 minutes of your time. But we knew that it was going to be taken off the market, but my thought. Is that, I think, I mean, we're waiting for December 25th, which is when I think Biden could sign an executive order for Apple and be like, it's fine. Don't worry about it. And that didn't happen. And, um, my assumption here is that they could just flip the switch on the software and disable it. In general, and that's a, that's a tricky, uh, tricky thing because these are the top end devices. Like this doesn't impact the SE or the lower end or older models. This is the Ultra 2 and the Series 9, which are the high end models of the Apple watch, um, that are out there that have these features. And not only does it impact this, but as we think about 2024, would they just remove that sensor? Are those things already in manufacturing? Like, do they again, turn off the software on it? Now that can totally be a plausible thing. But how do you relay that to your, your customers? Like, obviously it halts the sales of new models. And new ones that are in production. But really when you think of software, you can't like, retroactively do you, do you still have a series then it's like, oh, this was purchased before this data inactivated, so the feature can be on. I don't know if that features too in violation. Right. It's a tricky, tricky conundrum that's in there because obviously with. Like Xbox and PlayStation controllers of days of yore, like now you can software update them back in there. You can't now, but like, you couldn't just be like, Oh, we're turning off the rumble. Right. But even me, if I bought this thing with rumble, I wouldn't be mad if you turned it off. Like as a consumer, I don't care about what your litigation is going through. All I care about is, is, is me, right. And the consumer. Which is fascinating. I mean, what do you think is going to happen here? Like, what do you think the next steps are? [00:13:58] Frank: I'll give that, but I, I have to ask you, do you remember the whole D pad thing with Nintendo? Like other game controllers couldn't even have a D pad for the longest time. Well, we had to, I don't know if they finally settled with Nintendo or the patent just ran out. I don't know what the thing was there, but finally we got D pads on other controllers. Thank you, Nintendo, for holding everyone back, but you know. Uh, my prediction is, and I have to admit, I don't know all the technicalities here. So everyone, this is my prediction. This is all going to blow over very quickly because one beautiful thing about the U. S. patent system is it's very specific. It is a specific way to do something. And all Apple does, has to do is find something that is. Substantially different from that algorithm. Just use a different algorithm. Use machine learning. Would probably be enough to separate it because the patent lists out an algorithm. Just change your algorithm. And there's already signs that that's happening. Um, right now, um, the, uh, what is it? The Trade Commission that handles imports into the United States has blocked the watch being imported. And the whole hubbub is, um, they're, they have two weeks to make, um, their, their final, final ruling. And that's two weeks of sales that Apple is missing out on, which, you know, for a huge product like the Apple watch, that's a big deal. But the signs are that, and Apple, I should say, is making the case that this is a important health device, and you are depriving the American people from a health device, and shame on you. Don't you care about health? Plus, they have a good argument that that other company doesn't have consumer devices. So where is the infringement here? But. I think that Apple will just tune their software algorithms, leave the hardware alone. Um, like I said, it's such an engineering 101 thing of you, you pick a few wavelengths for LEDs to emit, and then you measure the results of that. You can't patent that. That's spectrography. We've been doing spectrography for hundreds of years now, hundreds, but you know what I'm designing. Yeah. Um, you, you can't change that. The hardware can stay there. I think it will be fixed in software. And by fixed, I mean, they're just going to pick another random algorithm out of the hat because there's a million ways to accomplish the same goal. As we all know, in software, you can do the same thing. Billion different ways. And I think that Apple will just find another way to do it with the hardware that they're given, the hardware they chose to put on those devices. And this will blow over, but I still thought it was newsworthy because it's scary. Um, we all want these advanced sensors and I don't. I don't believe in monopolies. I don't believe in the patent system and it is frustrating to see the state of the art held back because someone filed some random patent, but I know that's how the world works, but it's frustrating. I think Apple [00:17:01] James: will find a way around it. Yeah. You can always pay the patent, I guess, too. You could pay to license it, you know, and that's what, if they offer a [00:17:08] Frank: license, just because you patent it doesn't mean you have to offer a license to anyone. It'd be smart. I'm sure this is a money grab because that company has been moving into like sound systems and other things. I don't want to talk trash, but obviously I'm an Apple fanboy, right? So I cards on the table, but that company is not a consumer company. You know, they're trying to get into consumer. They want to pad out their bank account a little. So you go over, you go to the biggest guy in the jail cell and you punch them in the nose. You know, that's what you do. And that's what they're doing. Well, it's [00:17:42] James: also interesting too, because like, you know, well, the D pad for example, did it, it's a patents last for 20 years. It was, the patent was approved in 1985, right before I was born and expired in 2005. Now there's tons of systems that came out, not from Nintendo that had it, but of course you could license the D pad technology. Now I worked in the, um, I worked in the. Uh, DVR television space, um, you know, and the patent that we were always really concerned with at the company I worked at, uh, was the grid guide. So the television grid, I mean, it was, uh, it's probably expired now. At least when I was there 10 years ago, the grid, the, the displaying of a grid in a, in a way of showing shows and schedule for television and for programs was, uh, was patented. And Uh, patented the [00:18:40] Frank: grid teams. Yeah. I, I, they, they patented the [00:18:43] James: timeline. , I believe, I believe TiVo did, and I could be wrong, and I have to look at it. I think TiVo did, and then TiVo went after, but then TiVo was, I think, was acquired by some other, but then that company, they were acquired, like they just went out and patent, trolled it right. And just did all this Mm-Hmm. stuff. Basically just got everyone now. You can always break a patent, but as long as, as long as that company doesn't get mad at you, you're okay. Right? So it was really scary when we came up with some of our first products, which was putting a grid guide on a television, on a phone, right? I would take it what was on your television and put it here. Uh, which was very, was very scary, but there's all these licenses in the TV industry, as you can imagine, is very, so it's very. Um, scary to create some of this soft, you know, as a software developers, us, you know, I don't think, I don't think, I don't think about patents very often. Right. I mean, often I'm putting a number on the screen. It could be hard, but I don't know, maybe someone has something patented to about reading a, a, a cadence device that displays a metric. I'm sure there's all right. I'm sure there are, but like, I know. I'm not looking it up in the US patent system, but it is something to kind of think about. I mean, and obviously hardware is there too, but software, there's patents in software of what you can do on different things. So it's very fascinating. [00:19:55] Frank: Yeah. I, I, my first patent I got was, I remember an engineer came over to me one day and they're like, Oh, I'm having a hard time. I got to make this decision and that decision. And I can't. Figure out how to organize this thing into a coherent system. And we just had like a 30 minute conversation. I'm like, calm down, dude. Here's how I would solve it. Here's a very simple thing. And then we patented that idea. And honestly, I felt dirty because like the solution I came up with is what I considered the obvious, simple solution to solving his problem. And the fact that that was a unique bit of art that I created, I don't think it was, to be honest. And yet, I still got a patent out of it. The patent office thought it was. The lawyers we hired to write the patent thought it was. And there I am. So here I am, a person who really doesn't believe patents should even exist. I have patents, and I still, I think the whole system is stupid. It's bonkers. I think part of it is because you and I are software people. If I release an app, there is nothing stopping someone from copying my app. Change the name, write your own code, but otherwise copy my app. Yeah, don't, don't copy the source code, but we're all smart. We can all copy each other's apps. No app is that complicated out there. And I think I just have that software mindset that it's so easy to copy things. That, why legislate whether you can or not cannot copy? Release a better product, you know? Compete in the marketplace, that's what I believe. I don't believe competing with lawyers. But, again, Apple is a big, large company with its own patents. I should be mad at Apple for copywriting, what, the um, solar charging iPhone. That will never exist, even though they have a patent on it. It's, uh, it feels awkward defending a billion dollar trillion dollar company. Um, but it, it just, this one rattles my anti patent bones. Like this is, this is not how we advance the state of the art. I never heard Jean Luc Picard say patents are important to creating the future of the universe. [00:22:13] James: I see two, um, I see two Frank Krueger patents. I see one. That's a consistent set of interfaces derived from a business object model. Is that you? That's a [00:22:22] Frank: whole different one. Oh, yeah, that was, well, no, that was Microsoft. That was a team effort. My name got put on it because I was a part of the team. So yay for the team. Uh, energy efficient front end fan control or something like that is my original earliest patent in my life. Uh, I was saving the environment before it was cool. Kids. That's cool. [00:22:44] James: I see one for architectural design. For sell from stock application software. Is that you? That's going to be a team effort. I don't know. [00:22:52] Frank: Oh, that one's probably the team effort. I have three Microsoft patents and one patent through General Motors. Did you get the cube? I got the cubes. I got my cubes. I got my, I got my Microsoft cubes. I didn't get the bonus. Did I get the bonus? I don't remember if I got the bonus. I don't even know if they do. But I remember I was like, um, whether my name got on that first patent or not was questionable because I was only 16 at the time. And the lawyers were really confused on whether I was even allowed to have the patent or not. Of course. Um, yeah, there were, there's a lot of politics in patents. I don't know if you know this, but you don't just go out and file for one. Lawyers are involved and it's ugly. [00:23:35] James: Well, if I type in my name, I can guarantee I got zero. Uh, out there, James Montemagno, Google has patents on google. com. Zero results found, problem solved, [00:23:47] Frank: problem solved. Yeah. You know, some people Google themselves. I just check the patent office. I'm like, Oh, maybe I was sleepwalking one night and filed a [00:23:54] James: patent. It's like domain names. Just collect them all. Yeah. Um, well talking about advancing Apple technology in 2024, we're on the precipice now that we're in a new era of. Through the computing that we're gonna shove more. Now, the, the idea of shoving a computer directly onto your eyeballs is not new. We've had lots of VR headsets. You could slap a cell phone onto your, you know, on your, onto your eyeballs for a long time. We've got the Google glasses, we've got the HoloLens, we've got the, the meta, the quests that we got, all the things. But we've, we've done a few episodes on. The Vision Pro, and I've gotten a lot of emails from Apple that's like, Hey, get ready, get yourself ready. Mm-Hmm. , get yourself ready. Your apps ready. Are you ready? Is every ready? You're ready? Do you, are you ready? Because I'm ready. It's the world Ready's the world Ready. Um, how do we think this is gonna roll out, Frank? There's been some predictions in the market of, of units. There's been predictions of, of, uh, uh, for app developer engagement. How are you feeling? Because. More interested in shoving things onto your eyeballs than I am. Um, how are you feeling about this and how do we see this going into the year of your 2024? Yeah, [00:25:08] Frank: well, you know, a product's coming out when the leaks start getting a little more interesting and a little more specific and a little bit more fun. And so the current leaks are saying we're going to have real hardware end of January, beginning of February, assuming the production line is. It gets spun up running and is running very well and all that. So it could be as early as one month from now. One of us could have a Vision Pro probably not me. One of us could probably have a Vision Pro in their hands on this episode and we'll, we'll show it off. Maybe we'll do an unboxing. Who knows what we'll do? I do need to [00:25:44] James: write off some stuff on my next tax form. [00:25:47] Frank: Taxes. It's taxes. [00:25:49] James: There's a little business write off, I think. Yeah. Okay, got it. There we go. There we [00:25:54] Frank: go. Um, so it does, um, it honestly puts a little fear into me, um, because I am not very happy. I have a few apps that I've written for the Vision Pro. Um, I think one of them's pretty cool. One's going to be fun, but I also know it's going to drain the battery. It's going to kill that battery, man. The battery's gone. Um, I feel like. It's just the, the thing I've been putting off, like, will this device be successful? Should I devote my time to it? All of our questions will be answered within a few months. I mean, obviously it takes a little while for a product, even after release to gauge whether the general public is going to buy it, whether it's going to be a success and all that kind of stuff, but the current leaks are saying that there's going to be a measly 500, 000 units released, which. That sounds like a big number. It is a big number. 500, 000 steps. That's like 50 days worth of steps. 500, 000, that's a house. Um, you know, 500, 000, that's a, that's a lot of things. But for units of Apple, for a 3, 500 device, it's not a very large number. And these are leaks, of course. We, we don't know if these numbers are true. Um. So honestly, uh, I'm a little bit scared for the Vision Pro. I'm not sure it's going to be a runaway success in the very beginning, at least. If they release a product that's called the Vision Standard, or the Vision SE, or the Vision Minus, or something like that, perhaps it'll have some success. But this Vision Pro, I don't want to say it's dead on arrival because I think I'm going to be wrong. And there's a lot of people who are excited for it. Uh, but, um, I, I'm a little bit weary. Um, I, I personally haven't seen any killer apps. You know, everyone wants the killer app. What will it, what, what is the Twitter of the Vision Pro? going to be. And I haven't seen it yet. I've seen a lot of cool game demos. People are great at doing game demos. It's obviously going to be a fun little gaming device. So is a 500 device. So for 500, 000 units, um, I'm feeling a little bit nervous. I think if Apple was more confident that that number would be more around 2 million or 10 million or something like that. If they thought the sales were going to be very high. So you have to consider as app developers, uh, there's going to be a new market. In a couple months, that's going to have about 500, 000 users over the year. And can we make a profit at 500, 000 users? I think, um, there's something like 200 million iPhones being produced a year. So, you know, if you're writing an iPhone app. There are good chances that you have a very large customer base behind you, or I should say, at least say a marketplace that could potentially become your customers. But at 500, 000 units, I'm not sure I'm going to make back my, my investment in the hardware. So I'm a little bit weary and I'm a little bit nervous because I realized I need to whip some apps into shape very [00:29:03] James: quickly. I think there's two, two routes that this can go. I mean, but in the air. And so the one thing is. I think as an app developer, there's a big opportunity, even in a small space. I think sometimes people forget this. I kind of hear, Oh, I don't have hundreds of millions of people. Yeah. I mean, it's a big pool, but however, if you depends on what you're building, right, if you're building something that's very general and you're having to be the first one to do it. And you can charge dollar a year, two, two bucks up front to buy the thing. Like this might be an opportunity where people just want to buy apps, right. For it for a few bucks, five bucks. You know, Hey, you get, you know, 20 percent of the people that buy this, you know, blah, blah, blah app. It's a measuring app or a house app. I mean, here's the thing I think about the windows phone. I'll bust out the Windows Phone. Had a pretty small install base overall comparatively. There are many, many, many, many, many, many app developers that did very well in the days of Windows Phone. Um, because of competition in the space. There's an opportunity in which there, it's like a supply demand app trend curve, right? So I don't really know. And I don't know how Apple is going to show the apps, right? I'm assuming that they're going to really, really highlight the apps. Built for VisionPro and then everything else that just happens to run there. It'll be kind of over here. That's what they kind of do on the iPad. And that's what they do on the Mac right. It's over here if you really want it, but we're going to reward our developers and really enrich it. Right. So there's that aspect of it, you know, and what, what does that app going to be? Is it going to be an existing app? Like, uh, the stars at night type of app that shows you the constellations and like that, that app exists on iPad, they could bring it over and they have, they'd be tons of money. So they could probably do just fine. The FART app. Yeah, exactly. Right. Is there going to be the, the, the, the fart in your face app? I don't know, but you know, I, I, but, but again, you, you, there, there is this sort of, Hey, there's opportunities to nibble there, right. On, on something that is, it's brand new. People don't know people are willing to try more things again, three years from now, if it does go big, there'll just be, might, might be much more saturation into the market. So it's hard to say, right. I'm not. I'm not a put stuff on my face type type of guy for goggles and googles that are out there. So it's fascinating. Um, and then of course, since we don't have one, it's hard to envision how similar or different this is to existing goggles. Because if I look at something like, um, these meta Ray band, I'm sure you've seen the commercials for them. It's like meta partner with Ray band. They have like, you know, smart glasses that have. They're so smart. They're the smartest. You can listen to music and you can like live stream on Instagram for some reason, but I can kind of, I've worn glasses. You're wearing glasses right now. You can envision glasses and like, now that you can see something or you can, you can envision them playing music for some, you know, you can envision that, but I'm not sure. How this is, you can see this, the emulator and simulator, but you maybe not be able to envision the app in the same thing. So it's a little bit harder based on when it comes out to market. So there is this kind of weird supply demand. Other aspect of it is go down the Nintendo route. And I call the Nintendo strategy route, which is this. And this is a 100 percent made up. Nobody knows a hundred percent for sure supply demand thing. But if you look at the lineage of Nintendo systems that were very, very, very, very popular, Nintendo Wii. The Nintendo Switch for some reason in the first two years, he just couldn't buy one. PlayStation 5. Oh yeah. He just couldn't freaking buy one. Even Xbox Series X. He couldn't, but everybody, guess what? Everyone was talking about it. So, you know, Apple's like, Oh, we can't make too many, but you can't, you know, maybe they don't even make that many. Oh, supply chain. I don't know, but, oh man, everybody, I don't know if it's artificial. I'm not saying anything. I'm just saying. That there's no, no presses, bad press and not, it's weird, right? Like, don't you want to sell as many as humanly possibly? Yes. Oh, but also we definitely want that long tail, right? To say, oh, well we only, we only sold 500, but now we sold 5 million. You know what I mean? I don't know, whatever that is, but that ramp up. So the question is, they're pretty invested in this thing. So I. Apple doesn't, when was the last time Apple brought something to market? And then it kind of went away. I can't even. [00:33:25] Frank: Yeah. Fair point. Uh, the Newton. [00:33:29] James: I mean, I would say the thing that's gotten the least amount of love is like the Apple TV and the HomePod, but besides that, I mean, they're still hanging around. You know what I mean? Well, [00:33:39] Frank: you have a great point. Um, so, okay. I'll, I'll play devil's advocate to my own argument. Um, those people buying this ridiculously priced device are going to be. So enthusiastic. [00:33:51] James: And they have money. They just, [00:33:53] Frank: yeah, they just spent 3, 500 on a random piece of hardware. They know literally nothing about it because those demos don't mean anything. And this happened when I bought my first Quest or my first Rift. What do you do? You get this thing. You're like, okay, you look through the settings and then you go to the app store and you're like, okay, what can it actually do? Show me some games, show me something fun. And so. Yeah, plain devil's advocate to my own argument. If you have a day one built for vision OS app and you have an okay monetization strategy, then you can make some money. Um, I would not put a 1 app on this thing because even if you had. Yeah, you're not going to get a 10 percent market purchasing. You're not going to get 1%. So you're going to have to charge a few dollars. Um, and if you do that through [00:34:45] James: subscriptions or not, yeah. Whenever new systems came out, just like the Nintendo switch came out. I remember getting my switch. Cause you know, I'm. I'm going to get my switches. Like I'm going to get my stacks of switches and X Boxes. Um, I get, you know, cause how I, how I, how I, I mean, I literally had, I had X Boxes and switches stacked to the ceilings because how my strategy. is, I'm going to buy one. I don't believe in any company basically that sells you a brand new video game console. I don't believe that it's going to actually show up, which means I am a ravenous clicker of multi window, everything. Every I am, you know, I am. So when I bought the switches, I bought four switches because I bought one from every single company I possibly could. Different models. I don't know if they're going to cancel them. Maybe they'd overstock. Maybe they didn't get enough. Right. I don't, I don't know, but I do know that if I get them, I'm going to have friends that didn't get them because they didn't click fast enough. So I just give it to them at cost. Right. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not, I'm not, I do not believe in markups. I do not believe in going in and being, uh, that, but if I'm going to get four of them, I'm going to give three away at cost to friends are gonna pay for shipping, of course. So, but besides that, um, and I've done that for many, many years, the we, the, the, the switch, all these things, I believe I'm not a Sony person, so I don't have any of those, but the other ones, Microsoft, Sony, and Microsoft, and, uh, Nintendo, if it's in the MN ratio, then we're good. Now, that being said. When I got my Nintendo switch, of course I got Zelda, right? I would get my Zelda, but when I logged on to the eShop, there was like 15 apps, 15 games, guess, guess what? Guess what? Bought them all. Like I bought, I mean, again, like I would look and like if it was halfway decent and whatever, but those games, I knew they were overpriced, whatever it was. But guess what? I'm going to want some games for my system. So I think that could be an opportunity that is out there. Now you, I think you downplay it, but it could be the opposite of it because. They bought it, they want to do stuff with it. Frank Krueger's machine. [00:36:53] Frank: Okay, you know what, I'll admit here, this is a good therapy session for me. I'm just scared because I do want to see it succeed. I've wanted VR to succeed ever since the Rift came out. You know, I thought it was a great device even though I got sick in it after an hour. I, I, I still think VR is going to play some role in the future, especially AR also. It will, because screens are dumb, they're finite, and with a headset you can create an infinite world. Um, even the military believes in VR. The first VR goggles I ever used were from the military, so they've even been invested in it because they thought it was a decent device. It will, it will exist. I'm just, I'm scared because it's so expensive and I don't know how much time to devote to it and all that stuff. And I just want to see it succeed. Um, and I think that's why I keep nay saying it because I'm, I'm setting my own expectations low. You know, that, that's how you win. You know, Apple says we're only going to release 500, 000 units, but surprise, we actually put it in order for 10 million units from the, from the manufacturer, set expectations low, then you can surpass them. Your stocks go up and you can release the vision minus to follow up after [00:38:06] James: it. I think it'd be just the vision. No, I mean, when you go to the website, it is, it's vision. I do think Apple vision is a weird name. Apple vision pro sounds good. Cause it's got like vision pro like it. By Apple, the Asian. I don't know. That's just my prediction. It will evolve. [00:38:25] Frank: Yeah. And, and like you said, Apple is heavily invested into this thing. Apple has some of the best 3D libraries of any OS right now. Some of the best 3D APIs. They wrote their own stupid 3D composition app, Reality Composer Pro Minus, uh, to do all this kind of stuff. They have been prepping for this thing for years. So long, in fact, that we all were wondering if it was vaporware, because honestly it was feeling very vaporware. And the fact that this vaporware is finally coming out in a month, like, is this going to be a, uh, what's the, what's the cyber game called? So cyberpunk, you know, is this going to be a cyberpunk release? Or is this going to be a Nintendo Switch release? Like, um, will, will there be a Zelda game that is the killer app? Everyone loved Breath of the Wild. And I think Breath of the Wild sold that Switch for a very long time. Cause it got great reviews. The only reason I want a Switch is so I can play Breath of the Wild from five years ago or whatever people were talking about it, I still want it because that hype train was so strong. Did you still not buy [00:39:31] James: your Nintendo [00:39:31] Frank: Switch? We did all episode. You know, I was, um, some kids for Christmas got it. Some kids in the family and got it for Christmas. I'm like, get over here. Let me play that. I stole the switch out of their hand so I could try it out. Oh my gosh. So I still, I do hope it has that moment. And I think it's just nervous energy that I have right now because when the leaks came out and said end of January, I'm like, Oh God, I really did think they were going to punt until right now. March or April, make it like an, that's when iPad came out. So I always assume everything's going to come out in the iPad timeframe. Um, but I think watches came out early in the year too. And those kind of surprised everyone, but you know, for the watch, I got to play with a watch before it was released. I got to go to the lab. So this, this time I didn't get to go to the lab, so I don't have any. NDA information. I can, I don't [00:40:25] James: know what's going on. It's, you know, but here's the funny part too, is I think about it. It's like with the watch, we're like, Oh, I can kind of envision like doing stuff on the watch and there's an app and there's this big push towards it. And, you know, I know there are watch apps. I don't want to belittle any watch app. However, I really feel like that really fell off or it's like, okay, I'm, I'm going to have something, whatever. There are some things on there, but I don't know, they kind of ebb and flow up and down and the toolkit. It changed so vastly, it was a little bit different with the, uh, the vision pro, at least like I feel as though the toolkit is pretty good. V1 where like the watch, it was just really, it was not great. You think the vision pro toolkits, not that great. I didn't play with it. So you only, you know. [00:41:08] Frank: No, it's, it's, well, they give you two ways to program it. Um, you can use their very simple API and create a very simple app, or you can jump into the deep end and program a metal app from scratch, basically build your own game engine. The third way of course, is use someone else's game engine. That's the obvious third way. That's, I think that's the way most developers will go. Um, but you know, it does have one thing going for it. You know, the Apple watch. What's its primary thing? We, we hate to say it, but do you know what I do the most? I check the time on my watch. And that's why I think apps didn't really take off because the watch does what a watch is supposed to do. The built in apps for the Apple watch aren't decent enough. I mean, it tells the time and it tells me my text messages while I'm driving, you know, whereas the Vision Pro It doesn't do anything. [00:42:02] James: I am a little worried. It doesn't do anything necessary. Yeah. I am a little worried as I look at like the, the Apple Vision Pro website, I'm like, Oh, is it all going to work that good? Is it going to? I'm a little worried, but I don't know. I think it'll [00:42:13] Frank: work good. I think Apple's going to release a good product. I think the quality will be high. I think there'll be gorgeous screens. I think the OS is going to feel good. These are things Apple will always nail. They are passionate about these things. But, they don't have the, you know, show the time. That is the fundamental thing that a watch does. There is no fundamental thing VR, AR goggles do, aside from play video games that make you a little sick after an hour. That's what they do. [00:42:48] James: Yeah. That's a good point. Well, we'll see. [00:42:53] Frank: Are you nervous? Okay. That was my prediction. What's your Bottom line. Bottom line. I'm nervous. I think maybe in five years, it can be a good product, but I think this is going to be a rough launch. What's [00:43:05] James: your prediction? Oh, it's definitely going to be a rough launch. I think all of these devices, there's a ceiling. There's a, there's a cap. There's a plateau on them. There are, there's a plateau on wrists, which, which are the number of wrists in the world that we'll put on a watch. There are a limit of heads. And there's a limit of people that will put, there's people that don't wear watches. I was, I was not a watch person. I never wore watches. Right. I now wear an Apple watch. Right. Because the fitness stuff, I just want to finish mostly a fitness tracker, but I like, let's see the time, but I never, I never wore a watch, never wore a watch ever. Right. And now that is something that's kind of like ingrained. Right. I wish the battery lasts longer, but you know, it's fine. We've accepted it. We've given into the 24 hour, maybe 10 hour life cycle. But that being said, like, I think that the shoving stuff on your face. It's a hard, it's a hard thing, which means that the Apple Vision Pro will have, I assume it will evolve. Right. I think that the long term vision is that they're just like glasses that you put on to your face, just like these things, but it's like really, really good. And who knows if that's five, 10, whatever years from now, I think there's a cap on the meta quest on the. The, the, the, any of the Samsung ones on the cardboard, like all those things that you put on your face, there's a, there's a, there's a limit of it. Right. And there's only a limit of people that will buy it. It's the usage that's on it. Right. I hear tons of people talking about, Oh, I got the PlayStation VR, which I hear is like amazing. Like, but I'm going to set it up. It takes time to sound like it's just too much, too much work. Right. So that's the other part too, is when you have a watch that's on you 24, 7, you have a phone that's with you 24, 7, the other concern about it that I have is What's the engagement numbers going to be? Am I going to sit in front of my desk? Like I see the, I see the, I see the marketing website and I'm thinking, Man, it'd be pretty cool. I could just like be here. Just imagine my desk has like no computers on it and like no crap. And I'm just like, yeah, that sounds and looks cool. Am I going to want to strap this thing into my head for 10 hours? That really going to be a thing? It's like, is it going to work seamless? be able to, am I going to in tune this device to work on? Like. I don't, I don't, what if I want to just do this podcast with you? Can I do it on the vision and VR? We're going to try to, you know what I mean? But you know, I, these are the things is like, what's the limitation that I ended up getting to, to actually try to use these things. So that's my real concern at the end of the day for vision pro is that they're going to sell it. Will it make the shareholders happy? Will it make Apple happy with whatever that, that, that cap is? And I don't know what that plateau number is and they can grow it over the years, but. Is that a sustainable model that they want, right? [00:45:55] Frank: I don't know. And honestly, it's, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. I like where you're coming from. I was also just thinking though, it's a harder one to have word of mouth about. I remember when the iPhone first came out, I was a naysayer. I'm always a naysayer because I had a BlackBerry, man. BlackBerry was fine. You could send texts and it told you the time. What else do you need in a device? Uh, until someone handed me their iPhone and then I felt the buttery smooth scrolling and the beautiful color graphics. And I got to play with the apps a little bit and it was. Tremendous. Um, so goggles are a little different. You got your sweaty face, it puts a little outline around your head. Yeah. The lenses are fit to you. It's going to definitely make someone else whose face shape is different than yours a little bit sick because your eyes are not going to line up. Yeah. Uh, and then even the Apple watch. You know, someone's sitting at the table, you look at their wrist, and you see this shiny glowing device on their wrist, and you're like, oh, what is that? What can it do? And they can show you. It's really easy. This one's going to be a lot harder to sell by word of mouth, because you're going to have to Unsuction it from your face, wipe the sweat off. Say like, Oh, here, try this game, but, um, don't look down. It might freak you out a little and then, uh, go from there. So I think the word of mouth is going to be a little bit harder. The one benefit is other companies have paved the road. Facebook has paved the road that at least. The general public knows what VR is. They might not know what AR is or might not be ready for the mixed computing lifestyle. But, um, at least people are cognizant of it. It's, it's a lot harder to demo to your friends. [00:47:40] James: I'd agree with that. We'll see. It's going to be an interesting year. I think the things that I'm more excited about coming towards the end of the year is I do pull up my M1 MacBook air and I'm like, you know, I watched a recent episode of, uh, on, on YouTube. So I guess, uh, recent. YouTube, uh, video video. And, um, and they sat down with the lead engineers of the hardware and, um, of the chips and the M1 chips, uh, interview is really good interview. It's whatever it is. I forget what the guy's names are. They're talking about like, you know, how they pair this next one. They're talking about the M3 and all this other stuff. And yeah, I think. You know, it's been what a year, few years for Apple with, with their own Silicon. And really at this point, everything is their own Silicon going forward. And the integrations we've seen advances in hardware and design wise in there. Um, where do you want to see, you know, the next hardware beyond the Apple vision pro? Like, what are your predictions for what we're going to see? Like we, we saw this year, right? We saw new, you know, Mac books and Mac book pros and IMAX, right. You know, um, we obviously knew. See new iPads and iPhones and watches every year. But the Mac is like over here is, I guess, are we going to continue to switch off? Where like, do we get a new Mac mini? Do we get a new Mac pro? Do we get a new Mac Air? Like if the design's different, like is M3 synonymous everywhere? Is M2 good enough? Uh, I don't know. Like, what are your thoughts in the. In the hardware space. Ubiquitous. Ubiquitous. Ubiquitous. Ubiquitous. [00:49:09] Frank: M3s everywhere. Uh, it's me. So I gotta take the AI approach. I'm not sure VR is a revolution in computing. I'm happy to be wrong. I hope I'm wrong. But you know what definitely is, is AI. And I'm, yes, we're in a bubble and all that stuff, but I got to tell you, these M series of chips are crushing it. In the early days of AI, we all thought speed mattered. Speed was the king. I need to train my networks fast. I want to run my networks fast, but this year and last year have really taught us that's not the bottleneck. The bottleneck is memory. These days, you need big networks to do sophisticated things. You need lots and lots of memory. And the one thing that these M chips provide you is the unified memory model. It's slower than, um, some NVIDIA GPU for sure, but NVIDIA consumer grade NVIDIA chips cap out at 24 gigabytes of RAM. That's not enough. It is enough, but it won't be enough for the proper future of the world where you can get these M series chips with unified 48 gigabytes of RAM, 96 gigabytes of RAM. That's the future. I remember when the very first Xbox came out, there was a beautiful article in one of the game dev magazines from Michael Abrash. He just went on and on for like two or three pages, which is a lot in print magazine, about how wonderful the unified memory model is, because it's so much easier to write software for a device like that. You don't have to worry about synchronizing between GPU memory and CPU memory. You can just write your app to just run on this thing. And I think, I think that model, that unified memory model is going to pay dividend after dividend to Apple, because. The, the proper revolution that's happening right now is the AI revolution and having these machines and consumer grade hardware that can run these giant models is gonna be such a game changer. I, I bemoaned WWDC this year because Apple didn't release a large language model, but you know, they're gonna do it. Maybe it'll probably be this year. It'll probably be 2024. But even if it's 2025, they have set themselves up to be the kings, the dominant force there because they have this hardware that can do it. That's what matters. And they're putting this hardware in people's hands. And so M3, yes, M3 everywhere. I just want more gigabytes. Everywhere. And, um, my personal thing is, yeah, I want either an iMac Pro You know, I'm not even sure I want that anymore, but I definitely want a Mac Mini or a Mac Studio. I want a desktop machine that I can put a big old M3 in that's fast and also have 48 or 96 gigabytes of memory to run ridiculously large size models that do very sophisticated things. We are moving out of the niche into the public. Um, and running locally on machines is going to be very important in the future for privacy, for security, for just, for the environment. Honestly, it's better for the environment if these machines are doing it. So my prediction is, yeah, M3 everywhere. I don't think Apple's going to play the game of continuously selling the M1 along with the M3. I think they're going to keep pushing their hardware onto the newest silicon. As fast as they, as fast as their manufacturers can do it as fast as their financial books will allow it. And so I think it's going to be a great year for the M series. Actually, I am curious, which, how fast of a chip is going to be in this proper vision, vision for [00:53:00] James: M4, M4 coming out? Well, we didn't get this year. We don't need it. Yeah, we didn't get the Ultra. I bet they released the Ultra on something, maybe the Mac Studio, and then phase out the M1 and go to the M2 and more other things have M2s in them that are out there. I mean, you know, when they announced the M3, they They had everything on the chart, but they would talk to the improvements over the M1 in general. So I think that they sold a lot of M1s and did really obviously sold a lot of M2s as well. But I think they'll push forward on that, which will be good. Yeah. I mean, ideally I would love to see the other M3 and all of them, like a 13 inch MacBook, you know, Air, for example, would be great. I would buy that up, you know, and get rid of the other one. And, uh, I think that would be a nice, nice jump that I get a pro or max or something like that. But I think that you're right. To me, I have a Project Volterra, uh, Windows device, which is an ARM based device. These are everyday at work. Um, it's a lovely device that has a dedicated neural core in it. Um, I, I feel as though the advancement, you know, and I think you said Apple has this advantage they've been putting this stuff in their devices for a long time. It's dedicated. You know, chipsets. And so it's Google, right? But again, the Android ecosystem is very vast, right? You know, just maybe the pixel line has that, but not everyone has pixels. Like what is Samsung doing? And is it unified XYZ? And I would love to see that advancement happen faster. Right now, that being said, you know, there's probably got to be some sort of reason. You know that Apple hasn't really talked about AI a lot, and maybe that's just like you're waiting for more adoption of M Chipps. Right. Just 'cause then, just 'cause new MacBooks came out doesn't mean everyone has a new MacBook or upgrade. Right. Yeah. , I had my MacBook, uh, 2013 until my MacBook 2013 [00:54:45] Frank: died. Yeah. I still have an Intel iMac, you know? Yeah. [00:54:48] James: And here I am, , but you know. And so there might just be waiting for some sort of adoption metric or something like that. And, you know, hardware does move slower, right? It's not like new, it's not like iPhones and AirPods and watches where, you know, people are more apt to adopt more quickly. You know, they're less likely now every single year, but every few years. Right. So if it is a three, four, five years, they're like, okay, but Hey, remember those M1s they're possible of this. Oh, but if you have, this is possible of this. Uh, on device, which would be fascinating. And yeah, no, I think that you're right. To me, there is, you know, everyone's gonna talk about AI all the time, but. You know, I know it's, it's tiring. I'm not, you know, AI wasn't excited to me when it was machine learning, when we were talking about ML, all this stuff, it doesn't. Doesn't excite me. Still doesn't excite me. It really doesn't get me. It excites you. I don't care. I want an API. I want to infuse. I want stuff to just be better. Right. That we talked about in the last podcast, the dev experience, the inner loop. And I can envision so much more happening and faster and all this stuff. Like as it could do more of these things on device. And you're going to see a blend. I feel like it's a blend of AI. Right. When is it going to something on device when it compared to a 3. Uh, you know, five versus turbo versus, you know, there's going to be a, what is it doing? It's going to, all these models are all going to just, one thing is going to be better at one scenario versus another scenario is going to be faster. It's going to be tweaked. I imagine all these different, sorry, who cares what model you're using? As long as you get the end result at the end of the day. But I think that, that power, that harness without bogging down the IDE, without bogging down the, the, the text processor, without bogging down, hitting the start button or searching for something on Google or Bing, right? That's the stuff that's important to me at the end of the day. Um, and I think those are the things that. I would love to see more of it ingrained, um, on these devices. So I do think it's got to blend down the line to the lower end devices, which everything is, you know, at least in M1 at this point, but I would love to see, I would love to see some of the higher end devices. I would love to see the Mac studio ramp up because I got to say. You know, the Mac mini, the project Volterra, these types of devices that are these small, super powerful. I mean, man, it's a lot. I mean, they're good machines and I'll give you this, this arm based machine. I've been, I've been, I've had it for like a long time. I was a, I was an internal beta tester and. Um, it's come a long way. I'm just really impressed with it. And just the size, obviously software and hardware and all these things. But obviously it's the same on the M1, right? I mean, I remember when I got the M1 and it's come, come a long way. And just the software as we, we get better, I think of AOT and I think of all the things that we're doing just in the NET space, what Apple's doing and all these things can really come a long way. So I feel like, yes, I think a lot of people have been watching a lot of it's end of year, right? Is there, are we, did we hit peak AI? I feel like we're at, we're barely crawling or it feels, it feels like it's we're sprinting. Nope. Now we're barely, we're barely out of the crib. You know what I mean? Because it's the use cases for the AI and those use cases for all of these different models. I mean, there's plenty of use cases for even 3. 5, you know what I mean? That are out there today. That is, so once it's the democratization and the. The cheapness of it. Right. Cause as soon as that 3. 5, we talked about the drop down, right? There's plenty of UK use cases for 3. 5 versus a Ford. I don't know, whatever model, right? These turbo models or whatever it is that are out there today. So I'm excited to see how that blends in just hopefully into this. And you know, you know, it'll be good when you don't know that it's an AI thing happening. I think that's the thing right now. It's got, you know, it's got emotional. It's got little stars. It's got little twinkle little star. Oh, AI is powered by AI. You know what? Now just do the thing. Hey, just when I'm doing this thing, go do the thing, you know? And I, I will say I've been generating images with Dolly three for a while now. And Hey, it's gotten really good at displaying texts. Like a year ago when I started, I would, I would try to do things for the show. And put it, no, it was garbage. It's gotten real good. It's gotten, it's sometimes like spot on or just a little bit off, but like really, really good. Yeah, it's crazy. And I'm excited. It's crazy what it's doing. And I'm excited for the integrations like right now, because I generate a lot of my, our backgrounds for this podcast and for my YouTube with DALI 3 on the Bing image creator. But it's integrated into other projects. Oh, you created this image. Oh, go not take it into the designer thing and do this other thing. Like, Oh, okay. You start to see the blending of things. And I think that's, what'll be exciting about it. And even Zencastr, we use Zencastr and they have an AI feature that will figure out stuff I'm not going to pay for it, but at some point. It's going to be part of whatever offering they have or some credit, you know what I mean? It'll be part of something, but that blendability will be exciting. I am interested if Apple will jump, what the jumping point is from them to, to be like, okay, here's the, I think, is it going to be dub dub? Is it going to be some new hardware? Is it going to be something else? Or do they not want to take away their excitement around division pro, right? Or is that whenever it comes out? I don't, I don't know. So that'll be, there's obviously those two things are not contradictory, but you. You're battling for what do you want to have on center stage? [01:00:09] Frank: Honestly, part of their problem is their success. Like, um, the M3 is out. The M3 has been out for a while, but the M1 is so darn good. You know, I'm talking to you over an M1 computer right now and it feels snappy and fine. [01:00:22] James: Like if [01:00:23] Frank: they really, yeah, if they released an M3 MacBook Air right now, Eh, I'll, I'll wait for the M four That's why I kind of dismissed your M four uh, outta hand because I'm like, they're already pretty good. You know, we don't need the M four right now. Yeah, because on YouTube there, there were just some new reviews of the M two . You know, like M two reviews are still coming out. People are still wrapping their head around the M two, and here comes the M three. And so I, I don't think we'll see an increase in the M series at all. Um, I do rail this a little bit with the, um, talk of AI and everything, but I, I feel like Apple's just on really solid hardware footing right now that what happens, hardware bumps up, software catches up, software surpasses it, hardware. Very slowly surpasses software, and then we repeat that cycle over and over again. Right now, honestly, um, even if we sidetable AI, we do not need an M3, M4, M5. Like, the M's are fine for pretty much everything, except for maybe the highest end gaming. But you know what, we're not all 12 year old boys, so we don't have to worry about that all the time. And I think that from like a comp computer standpoint, from a technologists standpoint, we don't need those chips. With the new technologies with AI and stuff, we definitely do need those chips. So I think w e are seeing that give and take of software, pushing hardware, Hardware pushing back, pushing software to do better. And it's always fun to be in one of those cycles because that means things are advancing. Um, I'll, I'll, I'll take that over those, the boring mid two thousands when it didn't feel like anything was advancing at all. So I I'm, I'm happy to be in this state right [01:02:21] James: now. Yeah. And it's an exciting year. I think, you know, we started off with. With watches and then the Vision Pro, I'm excited for something new and different, no matter how it goes up or down. We haven't gotten something very new, different form factor for a long time. Like the watch was cool, but there's been smart watches forever. Right. No, it's not a jump and a leap. Uh, we've had desktops and I thingies a lot that, so it is, it is the question is like, is, is, uh, the next hardware thing. You know, uh, this, this, this vision pro type of thing is the next software thing, AI things, which has answered probably, yes, already is, yes, we can't get away. It's already ubiquitous. I think that Pandora's box is open. It's already, yeah, it's open. Right. And it's, it's all there. I do, but I do think there's, was it you talking about it on the last podcast? It's like, it was either you or someone else where they're like, oh yeah, I was home and I was explaining, you know, GPT three. Was it you? [01:03:20] Frank: Yeah, that was probably me. Yeah. [01:03:22] James: The, I think the potential and how AI will simplify. Over the next X, X year or so and make it much more even approachable for people and how the user experience will improve. That's some of my quirks with it is just like, you know, ideally, here's a great record and here's a great example. Like it sure would be great if AI. Could help me improve the thing that I want from AI. For example, I want something from the Bing image creator, right? Oh, and I have the, I put in a prompt. What if the AI says, Hey, If you prompted it this way and with these features, Oh, did you know that you could add on these examples? Do you want it in a, in a, in a, in a style of yarn? Do you want it in style of Picasso? Do you want it in? Oh, outside. Do you want it? You know what I mean? Like it could give you these other recommendations in the engine instead of me. Guessing all the time. Right. And I think that's the advancement that we're really going to see is the AI guiding us more. And that I think is going to be a game changer instead of us telling it what we want it to do. It's going to help us through the process of getting to what we want. That's the game changer. Right. And I think that's the iPhone moment, right? The iPhone moment wasn't that I could place a phone call. It was that I could open an app and I could order a car and it would be there, right? [01:04:47] Frank: You're touching the third rail. You are touching the third rail because, yeah, obviously, um, for reasons, mostly fear mongering, we have not allowed neural networks to be critical of Us, probably for a good reason. I'm ready. Yeah. Why doesn't it respond? That's a stupid question. Here's the question you should have asked. [01:05:08] James: Exactly. It knows, it knows, by the way, it knows what you should [01:05:11] Frank: have asked. Yeah. And so, yeah, we, we've avoided that because, you know, people watched the Terminator movies when they were too young and they formed some bad opinions. Um, we'll get over that when people are more comfortable with it, but eventually, yeah, um, these machines need to start being critical of us and that'll be a great day. [01:05:31] James: Well with that, let's wrap up this Marathon Apple 2024 Prediction episode. Uh, you can find us anywhere on the internet. We're at Merch conflict fm, merch conflict fm. Uh, there, there's a contact button you can write into the show. We have a Patreon. You become a Patreon subscriber. We put out bonus episodes several times a month, so you can check those out. Also, have a YouTube channel, youtube.com/at merge conflict fm. You can find all those links at Merge Conflict fm. Uh, which is out there. You can find Frank and I on the internet. Our links are over on that website. If you enjoyed this episode of this pod at all. Yeah, just let us know, uh, you can just write to us or you could share it with people. If you enjoyed it and like, Hey, check out this, these people are talking about cool things. What do you think about this? If you have other predictions, let us know. The best place to do that is actually on the YouTube. So go over to the YouTube, hit that subscribe button over there and leave a comment. Because we get notified when we get comments over there. You can also email us if you're, if you, if you don't want to YouTube. So that's fine too. But either way, let us know what you think. And, uh, you know, we'll, we'll bust out the, the, the listener thoughts and predictions and I'll see how 2024 goes. I'm excited for a big year, Frank. And thanks for hanging out with me. Safe travels back home to anyone that's traveling over the holidays. Happy 2024. Uh, let's do this. So until next time, this has been Emerge Conflict. I'm James Montemagno. And [01:06:46] Frank: I'm Frank Krueger. Thanks for watching and listening. Peace.