206: Rose Tinted Apple Vision Pro Glasses

[Music] on today's episode of still to be determined we're going to be talking about how the future looks and how it sees H hi everybody as usual I'm Sean frell I'm a writer I write some sci-fi I write some stuff for kids and I'm just generally curious about technology and luckily for me my brother is yes that Matt of undecided with Matt frell which takes a look at emerging Tech and its impact on our lives Matt how are you doing on this for me surprisingly snowy weekend for me surprisingly not snowy weekend the snow just completely dodged us oo yes we hear and by we I mean literally me and my partner we did not know it was going to snow so we spent all day the day before the snow thinking wow it's cold outside I wonder why and then the next day we woke up and we had about six to8 inches of snow and we were both like how did this happen well for me the funniest part for me Sean is about I don't know six weeks ago or so it was right around the new year I got a robot snowblower to test out yes super excited to test this thing out and we had a bunch of snow before it arrived and now it's arrived it's all set up it's ready to go and we keep like massive snowstorm going to Northeast and at the last second it like turns slightly Southeast and it completely misses us it's like we're getting like no snow right I can't test the stupid thing out it's the it's the old cliche of it won't rain if you have your umbrella yeah so what you need to do is just make sure you carry your robot snowblower with you wherever you travel I'm going to Florida in a couple weeks pack don't think that's going to work out pack it you don't want to know what will happen happen if you don't take it as I usually like to do when we start our episodes we like to jump into the mail bag and see what we can find from previous episodes and I spotted this one in the comments from episode 203 this relates back to our discussion once again about robots keeps coming up Matt and I keep talking about it and it's making me think maybe Matt you need to do a full-blown episode on robots robots yes but this one's from Animaniac who wrote as a software engineer I may see the whole humanoid robots topic from a different perspective it's all about the user interfaces at the moment a huge part of the world is designed with user interfaces that are optimized for humanoid forms so we either change those interfaces like we already do in many cases allowing digital interfaces for Smart Homes or we designed the middleman as literally that an artificial man it is well prepared to interact with all the interfaces that designed for human use from using light switches to ironing clothes it is also well prepared to interact with you at with us as we also have interfaces to interact with other humanoid actors be it physical or psychological I really liked this comment thank you Animaniac for that that is a really interesting insight into what is driving this because from my perspective there's always that Missing Link of like if this isn't the fastest solution to telling a thing get me a cup of coffee why build a humanoid thing and that's the perfect solution to that question so thank you for that as as a shout out to anybody that's listening or watching this if anybody knows anybody inside of Boston Dynamics or inside of Tesla I would love to be able to get a little tour of behind the scenes of what they're doing um I've been trying to get to Boston dyamics for a while now and it's it's really hard to get I can imagine if for no other reason than they are building robots that look like it will just drop kick you over the building it just yes those robots yeah it's it's a whole that's a whole other b game that robot's not getting you a cup of coffee no that robot is storming the building from another earlier episode from 204 on our discussion about China's solar panel Farm expansion there were lots of comments that revolved around our discussion of China's approach and our repeated statement of like we're not endorsing China as yeah a uh organization as a nation as a government that is in that is pushing for these things and making these decisions and I wanted to make clear just as a like wide brush across this subject the reason we remind our audience that we're not endorsing any country or political approach to any new tech China like every nation including the United States is a particular set of circumstances some which some of which are contested or controversial and we don't want to give the impression that we're arguing that they are better or any one nation's or approach is better we try to take the approach of an Apples to Apples situation and the best tool for that job so in some circumstances we're going to talk about a context that is not widely accepted or we're going to talk about a context that is has a lot of moving parts around it that we aren't going to focus on and that's why Matt and I will repeat the caveat of we're talking about a circumstance here we're talking about a set of decisions that are being made and we aren't endorsing the approach or the even the decision itself we're just talking about the technology that is being applied Matt is there anything you wanted to add to that yeah I actually had a a patron reach out to me with a very thoughtful response is to like he thought I stepped in it in that video of like you you said you're not a geopolitics Channel but you like open the door with all the kind of stuff that you said in kind of a Blas way um I would want to say yeah that's kind of a Learning lesson to me of maybe I was a little too flip in the undecided video about how I kind of glossed over the brri and like China's human rights issues I probably shouldn't have even brought it up uh but I brought it up because it was kind of like I just wanted to acknowledge of like yeah there's controversies around China but that's not what I'm talking about here it's really just this this specific thing that they're doing with this technology so for me I've kind of Taken something away from it of like okay I I I get it you know this is I knew CH China is a very um special thing to talk about and we have I have to be very careful about how I talk about China and other potentially other countries and things like that and for my channel I try to try to be objective when I'm talking about this stuff and so I need to make sure that I'm not saying things in a flip way that makes it sound like I'm just kind of like yeah throwing that off to the side um I got to be very cautious about that feedback too yeah and I would also add to that like Matt and I also take it seriously regarding all contexts and that includes the United States where the United States is not the cowboy riding on the horizon with the white hat we also understand that technology May touch certain aspects of Our Lives that are hotly debated right now everywhere globally including the United States and the arguments for uh AI is going to take jobs the idea that uh use of automated security software May violate human rights these are serious subjects and Matt and I do not take them uh flippantly we do not want to respond to them in that in that way and I just wanted to let the audience know this is not something that he and I are ignoring or taking for granted that everybody is on the same side in looking at these issues so that's just kind of a blanket response to that subject now on to Matt's most recent video which is why everyone is wrong about the Apple Vision Pro including me from February 13 2024 this was of course an early Valentine's to all of you viewers and listeners out there as Matt thought I know what they'll like no it's not roses it's a discussion of the Apple Vision Pro so Matt the the video you move through everything from its physicality what it's like wearing it how it feels all the way through applications and you do a very good job I think of in that overview of touching all those all the different bases I am curious if you were to rank those different aspects from most successful to least successful however many categories however many of however many topics you want to bring break it down into how would you grade the different parts of it from usability applications the physicality of it like which one of those is the best aspect of this new device for me the best aspect of this device is the just the basic UI human interaction when you're using it it is extremely impressive that this is a version one product and it's doing something that other headsets are not doing with the whole like lobster like I'm clicking I'm tapping on things like that whole thing where typical Apple fashion they came with the iPhone and it was like oh it doesn't have a keyboard it's gonna be a failure and this one here's a headset without controllers of some kind it's just your hands they're trying to make it as approachable and human as they possibly can it's impressive what they've done um it's definitely further than what meta's got or anybody else has got right now and those platforms you know are going to be integrating more and more features just like this um competition is a great thing so for me I would give it like a a B+ or an A I wouldn't give it an A+ because there's definitely issues that they have to iron out there um it's good but not perfect um the other aspects of it that I think are kind of like an A+ is just like from a media consumption device it's in it's astonishing like Sean just last night last night I watched dim for murder Alfred Hitchcock's film which he was forced to film that movie in 3D and it was never actually released fully in 3D from what I understand because 3D the trend of 3D at that time in the 50s had waned so by the time it came out I think they only did a limited run of it in 3D and it was 2D for everybody else and then it's never been accessible for us to see the way it was originally filmed until it was like released on Blu-ray a few years ago where they put out the 3D version which who has 3D TVs anymore so still couldn't see it and now it's on the Apple TV plus I I purchased it for like 10 bucks and watched it last night and it was like amazing it was really cool to see a movie from the 50s shot in actual 3D like it was it was beautiful it it added some wonderful texture to the movie that I had not experienced before so it's like for me the media consumption aspect of this uh watching TVs and movies and it is just it's it's it's amazing so for me that's like an A+ um the other stuff is where to fall down um right now because it's so early days the App Store doesn't have a ton of apps in it there's not a what you might call a killer app there aren't any killer apps available quite yet so for that that's kind of where it's like you can tell that this is a 1.0 product and it's going to take a while for the ecosystem to build out and more apps to show up and more use cases to start to fill out so that's kind of where it kind of falls down in the short term so would you say that's a passing grade a failing grade or an incomplete oh like on the App Store stuff I would say it's incomplete like it's too early to judge you can't judge it now right it's it' be like judging the when they launched the app store for the iPhone I don't know about you Sean you know you're I said this before you're not a lite but you're also on The Cutting Edge right as soon as the App Store was available I remember vividly it was such an exciting time because it was like I was checking the App Store no joke every day like what new apps are in the the new list what new apps on the new list trying to see what people were coming out with and what kind of exciting new um interaction schemes where people were discovering for this this platform it was like for me as a user interface designer I was like eating it up it was like it was like candy I was like just couldn't stop consuming every day checking what's new what's new what's new I'm doing the same thing with this like every day I'm popping in there what's what's in the new column of of the app store oh let me download that and check it out well that's interesting that's a new thing I didn't think of somebody doing so it's it's really kind of cool and fun but because it's so early days you can't grade it yet it's like we have to give it six months or a year to see what the Indie developers come out with and then in year two and year three is when the big developers hopefully will really start to come out with stuff and like at that point we can really start to give it a grade so I'm give an incomplete on that I'm laughing to myself about the idea of that sort of focus on what's new what's new what's new in the development of new tech it moves so quickly now that you literally can be this product is new on the market and over a period of weeks and months you literally see the the new technology sprinkling into store connected to that and thinking what would it have looked like if people had been like that with Like the Model T like the first release of a car and every day they're they're going up to the car shop and like what's new in the car shop ooh mirrors like windshield wipers windshield wipers and a windshield oo and what about the wearability the physicality of it do you give that also an incomplete because you think there's room for improvement or do you really think like this is kind of what it's going to be oh there's definitely room for improvement this thing needs to get lighter it needs to get smaller that's going to be version two version three version four um for the one that we have in our hands today I would give it like a B minus B maybe for wearability and comfort because it is noticeably heavy you you notice it like when I put the meta Quest 3 on my head that thing feels like it's made of air compared to this even though it's only like something like 150 grams or something like that lighter it's it's not like it still has weight but it feels much lighter than this so when you have that on your head you notice it a little bit less but it's not uncomfortable it's just that it's you notice the weight um the other thing that I kind of give this one a little bit of a uh I didn't put this in the video is the eye strain issue I've noticed with this if it's sitting in a slightly different position than it normally sits in I'll start getting eye strain or these have to these have to um The lenses have to adjust for your pupilary distance and if the pupilary distance is just a little bit off you'll get ey strained I've noticed that on other headsets too and other headsets sometimes have like a little dial that you have to manually dial it in um this one's automatic so I've noticed that sometimes I have to go into the settings do the automatic adjustment feature lock it in and that solves the problem so there times like when I was watching dial for murder halfway in I was kind of like o I'm getting a little bit of a headache and then I just did the Readjustment and I adjusted it back on my face where it felt more like a where it normally sits and then there was no problem after that so it's like stuff like that really needs to get kind of like better because you know there's gonna be lots of people that put it on and don't know to try those things out and they may just be oh this is garbage giving me a headache take it off yeah so they have to get better about that do you think it would be worth when you get it on and have it in the spot where you're like this is The Sweet Spot take a black Magic Marker and just outline just on your face and trace it so that you get it and then next time you don't have to think about it you just need to line it up with that get it tattooed get it tattooed get it tattooe there you go yeah that's what this channel is all about Solutions that's right there were some comments on this video that caught my eye including this one from Jason Bryant who wrote in to say you know the cliche of kids in the car asking are we there yet are we there yet imagine the opposite every five minutes the dad says okay we're here and the kids say Dad the sign says we're 200 miles from Disneyland over and over again without ever quite reaching Disneyland this is what VR has been in my entire life incremental improvements accompanied by press releases declaring revolutionary advancements and never quite getting there so do you think this is actually now as you say in the video we might be in the future and not quite recognize it as such is this the product or is this now the entry of this kind of product that marks a change in what it would mean to use a computer uh kind of like it's sound like a cop out but it sounds like it's kind of like what I said in the video I kep I kept saying it's all a matter perspective it really does come down to what you are trying to solve by using this kind of device and this is the I think we're right now and I'm counting the meta Quest 3 in so it's not just about the Vision Pro I think we are at that stage right now we're at the turning point where spatial Computing is actually starting to become a thing now where before it was more of a chachki uh a little odity a little um toy that it's like you could jump into this virtual world for a little bit play a little game and then come back to reality we're with um I think what Apple's doing that's different is Apple has an ecosystem around it that meta does not so it has a very kind of huge massive group of developers that are already developing applications for the Mac OS iPhone and iPad and all of them can very easily transition those apps into Vision Pro experiences because they've set up this whole kind of ecosystem way the way everything works um meta doesn't have that So Meta is having a a steeper Hill to climb to get from just being video game into that broader Market where apple is going to have a a less Steep Hill decline they still have a hill to climb but it's going to be more robust than what meta can do and they can get there faster than what meta can do and they have deeper Pockets than what meta has so Apple's playing the long game here but because there's these two mono like Behemoth companies that are both investing a lot of money in this um competition is going to really spur this stuff on they're going to egg each other on with features and costs and what they can do and what Partnerships they get what kind of applications they bring forward so I think we are at that point right now because apple is now in this game and it's not just meta really um I think we're going to start to see this really start to take off um so yeah I guess I would say this is we're at that turning point which is kind of where it's it's hard you can't really judge it quite yet because it's kind of like the it's like the first day first like this style of phone was released like the iPhone it's like we're right at that point we have to wait five years to see how it actually starts to kind of like Mel IM mature do you think a part of that is that meta is approaching this from a social media aspect and a connectivity perspective whereas apple is coming at it from the tech perspective which maybe has wider doors for various sectors that they don't want to or have a hand in so you want to do animation or you want to do gaming or you want to do blueprint design or you want to do 3D modeling or you like apple is just kind of like here you go have at it whereas meta is like how do we use this to connect people to people because that's their modus operandi do you think that that plays a part in this that's that's that kind of goes into something I had been thinking myself which was Apple is coming at this from a computer this is a computer point of view yeah what do we do with computers that's why they called it spatial Computing and I think spatial Computing is a much better term than arvr um arvr it feels like that's the high level description of what this stuff is and then a level below that is spatial Computing meta's approach I mean if you go back into the history of what Oculus is they bought Oculus Oculus the whole point of their VR headset it was gaming it was all about gaming the original company was made up of Gamers gaming was number one it was all about creating virtual reality and playing games in it that's the origin of what it spawned from and that is still very much the roots of that product gaming is strong on the Oculus headsets and then it can do other things you're talking like Yoda now gaming is strong on the Oculus Head Strong he is uh it's it is heavy on my face I guess what I'm saying is you can see the roots of where it came from yeah it's it's very much a gaming first that can do other stuff it's like the Xbox console or the PlayStation they don't just do video games anymore you can watch YouTube and buy movies and listen to music and there's all these other things it can really kind of do it's the same thing with the Oculus is that it it can do screen sharing off your computer with some hoops you have to jump through it can do other things it can do hand tracking in a very kind of weird clunky way but it can do it um so it's like it's kind of doing the same things but it's kind of trying to still bust out of its Origins where apple is coming at it from the other way where it's it's a computer how do people use computers what kind of things they want to do computers and then use the development Community to lean into that and then oh by the way you can also play video games like right now on the Vision Pro there is no virtual reality game you can play on it right now none right and I find that fascinating and that just kind of shows you they're coming at it the same problem they're coming at from two different directions and they're going to collide in the middle at some point um but it's it's just very two two different very different taxs and I think Apple's tact is more broadly appealing yeah than the gaming first attack so I think that's why I was saying meta is gonna have a steeper Hill to climb because they have to bust out of that they don't have the like the whole screen sharing with the Pro with your Mac that can be done but I'm telling people that kept saying this to me in the comments it's not the same thing it's not the same thing it's very very different and how you get it set up and what you can actually do when you're in it um but it is possible to do that but because they don't own Windows because they don't own the operating system it's not this it's not baked into the os's that you can just do this stuff seamlessly and it works in a very integrated way it's it's a ser of boxes that they're having to create tethers between where on Apple side it's all just it's all just kind of one big mish mash together it's really fascinating about the two different approaches they're taking and that's why meta is going to struggle a little bit as they try to Branch out that's why I referred to it as like how wide open are the doors and it just feels like apple sounds like they're like opening the doors and saying good luck like come on in and play in here whereas meta famously had their PR stunt blow up in their face where it was like your avatars have legs now and demonstrated how the legs can move and like as you jump around and move around and then it turned out that was all artificial animation that had been put in on top of a VR display so it was faked they faked the legs so that they could tell you that you have legs now and when you pull back from that not only did that blow up in their face but I was left in that entire discussion I was standing on the side saying like why are the legs even important why is that the selling feature why is you in an virtual environment having legs the thing that's supposed to make me want to go in and be there and it feels like what you've been describing their Roots Run Deep into gaming and the Avatar and your virtual reality your virtual self in this virtual world it's almost like they don't realize they can't escape that thinking like it's so baked in at this point whereas Apple the ad for Apple doesn't even say look you can pretend you're on this gorgeous Beach it's literally people sitting down and typing letters so very different approach last week I think it was last week uh Zuckerberg came out with a post I think it was on Instagram it was a basically a video of him I put this in gigantic a quotes reviewing the Vision Pro um yeah here here's a comp standpoint nice objective statements he did bring up some really good points in his feedback but he his video was essentially him coming out and saying congratulations Apple come to the party but he was clearly being very defensive because there's a lot of hype around this right now and he was basically saying me too like the video May the video quality may be excellent on the Vision Pro but it has a lot of blurring we don't have that on the Met Quest like there's so many things about the Met Quest 3 that are great that are way better than the Vision Pro and he's not wrong there are aspects of the vision of the quest that is better than the Vision Pro but his whole video came across to me as extremely defensive and I thought it was a mistake for him to make that video I think all he had to do he could have dunked on Apple every single day just with advertisements that are Vision Pro 3500 bucks Quest three seven times less you know what I mean he could just Hammer that because if you think about it meta is the 800lb gorilla in the space they're the big dog and so when he was being very defensive and hitting on the Vision Pro he's basically punching down he really is punching down it's like if he's the leader he should act like the leader and just not even respond to it just be like hey man welcome to the party we could get seven quests you get seven Quests for the cost of that one thing which one are you gonna buy it's like that's all he had to do but the fact he came out being very defensive I think it was just a big like marketing mistake and they keep making those mistakes like with the legs and all that kind of stuff I don't think they quite get it that's one of the reasons I think the Apple's approach is interesting because the the whole part of the legs response to you is they're trying to make it more make you feel connected because when you're in that virtual space and you just see floating torsos and heads it's really kind of disconcerting and weird like this uncanny valley so if you have legs things feel rooted and it feels more your your human lizard brain it's like okay I get it that's what they're trying to go for which is the right thing to do they're trying to get it to that connected space Apple's whole choice of what they did with this thing including the creepy ass eyes that they put on the front of this thing that don't work first thing it was a fail this thing is a failure on the front um Apple's whole point was they're trying to make this thing more human they're trying to address that too of like everything their their thing is augmented first like mixed reality first putting your eyes in the front so that it's not weird for the people in the room with you because I can tell you like by my my wife when I'm wearing any of these headsets and I'm talking to her she's like can you see me can you hear me she like it's it's unclear because our human brain wants to see eyeballs and make a connection so we can have that social connection Apple's trying to address that to make this more accessible not just the person using it but the people that are around the person that's using it right and meta isn't even trying that but with the legs that's them kind of going recognizing yeah this human thing needs to get figured out because it's freaking people out so it's both of these companies trying to again solve that same problem in very different ways and one's a little more eloquent about how they're doing it and the other one's just kind of like fumbling around and tripping all over themselves right I really like the idea of a marketing campaign which is appealing directly to the lizard brain like you've got legs don't worry about it you've got legs yes oh oh where are my legs where are my legs well thank you everybody for your comments on Matt's video as you can tell it spurred on quite a bit of conversation here and that was just from one comment so like jump into the comments here let us know what you thought about this conversation do you have any questions for Matt that I didn't ask keep in mind I have not actually put these on my head so I can't answer any questions but I'm curious does anybody in our audience have a use case that they think they themselves would want to jump in with with this new tech somebody in the comments pointed out that they are a test engineer a non-destructive test engineer and that they would love a device like this that could give them the inner workings basically the inner blueprints of a device that they're testing without having to open it up they could actually see okay here's where this gear is here's where this device is and how is it all working as they're studying the the device working that kind of thing is fascinating to me that kind of application of this new tech not in a home environment I'm sitting on myself for watching a movie but I'm using it at work that's I I think that's fascinating yes on that on that note there was a lot of I can't remember if it was an X or Mastadon or I don't know I'm all these Twitter like things are all the same to me I'm on all of them uh but I had it back and forth with somebody it might have been anx um where they were hammering home of like the micro you didn't even talk about the Microsoft H lens they broke the ground on a lot of this stuff the hollow lens this hollow lens that I saw that also in the comments on YouTube a bunch of that and one I didn't bring it up because this was a video review by The Vision Pro so that's why I didn't talk about it right but Microsoft did do a lot of stuff and the stuff that you just brought up Microsoft's Hollow lens starts at 3500 bucks goes up to above $5,000 and it's only really meant for factories and businesses it's not really sold to Consumers at all like you as a consumer probably could get your hands on it and there's nothing you can really do with it like it's very limited in what you can do like oh I could write a word doc you know I could connect it to Windows and do things but it's like beyond that there's really not a rich app ecosystem because it's meant for Enterprise um but it does exactly that kind of stuff like if you go to their website it's all about warehouses and employees that have hard hats wearing these things and they're walking around a fact they're walking around a warehouse and then there's like floating signs next to all the boxes that show you the contents of what's in it or like all that kind of stuff really really cool stuffff um but that kind of um business level thing is what this could easily also do and it's the same price point as all the lens so it's it's I just find that use case fascinating of like the blueprint idea that the commenter brought up I agree completely that's it's a to me that seems like the initial killer application for this is business and then as the price Drops Of The Vision Pro it'll become more consumer level so jump into the comments let us know if you can think of any use cases from your life that you think this would have an application for or do you see use cases where you would shy away from this entirely where you would be terrified of it do you want to see people on a construction site wearing these walking on high beams that's sort of thing jump into the comments and let us know you can also leave a review wherever it was you found this program you can go back there leave a review don't forget to subscribe and please do share it with your friends those are three easy ways to support the program and if you like to directly support us click the join button on YouTube or go to still tbdm click the become a supporter button it allows you to throw some coins at our heads we appreciate the welts and as long as it doesn't damage our VR goggles we be very appreciative all of those are great ways to support the show thank you so much everybody for taking the time to listen or watch and we'll talk to you next [Music] time [Music]

2024-02-28 16:05

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