9to5Mac Happy Hour 316: iOS 14.5 Maps, Apple Glasses rumors, first TV+ AR app

Seth Kurkowski | Feb 11 2021 - 11:28 am PT

This week Zac and Benjamin discuss Apple’s updated offer on the Developer Transition Kit, the stalled state of Apple Car talks, new features coming in iOS 14.5, Dan Riccio’s not so secret project at Apple, Apple’s first AR app for Apple TV+ shows, and more.

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Transcription

Developer Transition Kit update

Zac Hall: [00:00:00] This week on 9to5Mac Happy Hour. We’re going to talk a little bit about Apple car. A lot about IO is 14.5 features and some Apple glasses streamers. And then some Apple TV plus stuff has come up this week. So let’s start out with the developer transition kit update. We spoke last time. Yeah. I mean, I broke the news to you about how like, you know, halfhearted the deal was, and, and then you broke the story to me on, on how they fixed it.

So what, what, what are the details there? Yeah.

Ben Mayo: [00:00:47] Like. There was a very muted response, I think, to DTK thing. And, and look, we, you know, we’re privileged people to even get the development of first place, so to be able to afford it right. But everyone was based on the precedent of what they did for the Intel to for the past PC to Intel position where, when the DTK went back, what got replaced was an iMac of equivalent value.

And then this. Pregnant comes along. Obviously they never promised it. Right. So you can’t get too mad. Right? They, you said that the, the, the, the transaction was stated, you pay $500, you get to use this thing, and then we want it back done. But there was like, you know, is that what they’re going to offer us a nice little bonus.

And I sit with, thank you. And what we got slapped with last week was a $200 credit that you had to use by the end of may. Which just feels terrible, like, especially as a, not me. Cause I didn’t actually get any M one compatible stuff out yet, but a lot of the developers that do get that kit, they’re the most dedicated people in the community they’re rushing to support, you know, Apple’s latest platforms on day one, often with the bad quality apps as well, right.

Just the bad, you know, just the bad quality developers or the people getting that care. And they’re like, You coming off Aqua’s biggest quarter ever. And what do they give you? They give you a tangible credit on something you paid $500 for. And you’ve got used by the end of may, before it could be an immediacy before WWC.

Any of the cool rumor stuff actually comes out and it’s like, do you want to get this map book that you might’ve already bought? Well, incredibly. They actually had a change of heart. I can’t believe they actually changed the moment, but on February 6th they sent out a new email and the new email basically said, we understand, we heard you, and this is what we’re doing instead.

So rather than a $200 credit that expires at the end of may. Now all of us fancy developers can get a $500 credit. Which is the same price as what we paid for the drug in the first place and the credit doesn’t expire until the end of December. So it runs through the end of this year, better than you’ll get a dreamed of.

So now my forthcoming. Cool. M one X six inch mapper pro would have been $500 cheaper because I paid phones and I was a bit last year prepaid a little bit. I prepared. Yeah.

Zac Hall: [00:03:00] That’s very good at that because it especially feels good. Like if they would’ve just on that had been like, Okay, cool. But because it was so half-hearted before, you know, it was more than half, but it was less than half the, the value that was like, Oh, this really is a good value compare because it was so low

Ben Mayo: [00:03:17] before.

Yeah. And now we feel great about it. And they also clarified that for people that have actually already bought M one staff and they didn’t need it, they’ll be able to use the credit on any purchase in the Apple store that helps them with development. But I think it just basically means you can buy whatever you want with it.

No. Okay. So get you some AirPods, max, pay an extra $50 and get some AirPods,

Zac Hall: [00:03:36] man. They really, they help with development. I mean, they do a lot of things with them. Yeah,

Ben Mayo: [00:03:40] definitely. I’m going to make everybody, I’m going to make an edit buddy compare and go against Rambo.

Zac Hall: [00:03:44] I’m going to make an everybody’s to come back.

Ben Mayo: [00:03:48] No, but I’ll be saving mine for the property. Okay. $3,000 end up having to spend or whatever on the 16th mapper pro at the end of the year. Good call. Like it’s a nice, it’s at least the, at least they listened to the community, right? Like there’s been no, quite a lot of, you know, roundabouts of does Apple really care about the community?

Do they really care about the big PayPal? Did any come out the people that are giving them subscription revenue every five seconds, or did they actually care about like, you know, the small people, the indie developers and at least the fact that they saw this response and they. Did something about it? You know, it’s got to make people feel good versus the kind of like sour taste in the mouth.

So I have indeed prepared the packaging as the email asks me to call now I await my email turf to send it back. Are you ready?

Zac Hall: [00:04:29] Are you allowed to mail things in the UK right now?

Ben Mayo: [00:04:32] That is a good question actually. Like, I mean, technically if they do a courier service, I can like drop it off at the door.

If they expect me to go to the post office, then I guess I’ll have to negotiate with the British government that sending back at him. One developer kit is a, an essential

Zac Hall: [00:04:47] service. Does he have to be the theater to do this? Basically? All right.

Ben Mayo: [00:04:51] Let’s go with, you have to return it promptly. I think like you get the voucher to use, but by the end of the year, but they want the thing back sent back.

What should it be?

Apple Car Talks

Zac Hall: [00:04:58] This should be a reality, reality show. It’s planet. What is it called? Planet of the apps? Here’s season two. Let’s talk about some Apple car stuff, because we spoke over the last few weeks about how Apple is talking with they slash Kia about manufacturing, the Bali of their car, just doing the, making the Apple cart for Apple

Ben Mayo: [00:05:22] Foxconn of the iPhone, but for the cab.

Zac Hall: [00:05:24] Yeah. And Hyundai was pretty chatty about it. And then they were like, we’re not actually working with them. Just really bizarre stuff. It seems that there’s at least reporting this week that that all talks between Apple and Hyundai slash Kia have stopped. You know, we don’t know if it’s because of the chattiness in the press or, or what, but just this is all weird to me.

That’s all I’m going to say.

Ben Mayo: [00:05:48] I mean, maybe in the Steve jobs era, if a company said something slightly too early, They get caught off and never spoken to ever again. But yeah, it’s a bit beyond the childishness of that nowadays. Like

Zac Hall: [00:06:01] whatever. Well, it was reportedly buying beads and it was going to be for 3.3.

Billion dollars. 3.2. Yeah. 3.2 million. And then it ended up just being three flat because of Dr. Dre celebration video. Yeah.

Ben Mayo: [00:06:16] That was actually the reason, but that was like float around as the reason it’s

Zac Hall: [00:06:19] good head Canon.

Ben Mayo: [00:06:20] Why not outside? Well, that’s $3.6 billion investment that kids get, or you just spent half, not only getting 1.8.

No, but that’s obviously not how it works. Right? Like, you know, Apple can’t back down like. It felt, you know, cause Foxconn leaks stuff about the iPhone quite often, like we see those internal presentations where they’re like the iPhone 12 is going to have 5g and they have a do a little PowerPoint slide for everybody and it leaks and you know, they never get repercussions of that stuff cause they haven’t got a choice like they have to.

And if Apple wants us manufacturing of their car, They only have a very limited number of options. And if they’ve already basically signed the dotted line for, you know, a $4 billion deal with Highlander, they’re not going to back out of that just because it leaked out to the price it’s just unrealistic.

But I think what the truth here is because the news is basically like a client, Diane, the affiliate Kia basically. Did a legal fight in this week that said they had that they aren’t in discussions with Apple and corporate and driving a car. So that kind of like flattened the idea, right. Even though crazily, we were just talking, the reason it popped up in, you know, even on the podcast so much was like, you know, CNBC and ruse were like saying, is it as if it was like a signed deal and it’s going to be announced on February 17th, if you remember that.

Like, so the fact that those massive publications have got the wrong end of the stick, that’s kind of crazy, but I don’t know. I

Zac Hall: [00:07:31] haven’t due on that date. Yeah,

Ben Mayo: [00:07:34] you’re wa it’s just a boring out February 17th. Now there’s Apple car announcement. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know what, obviously Apple is going to be making a car like, or at least they are currently again, looking to make a car based on this latest rumor.

It seems like the enthusiasm and the hype train is probably a bit premature. I think they’re still gonna do it. Right? Like, but maybe it’s not announced in February. Maybe it will be later in the year. Maybe they’ve found all those suppliers they’re negotiating with maybe, maybe the high end icon and Kia deal was like on the table, but it wasn’t like signed.

So then they’d been looking around talking to other people and now they’d like, you know, maybe found someone else for instance. So that’s how I read it. Obviously it’s like, you know, the automotive industries and our special specialty, but just in terms of like the Apple rumors fair, that’s how I kind of see it.

But. Like, like as soon as there’s a, if you’re only in the anti-Apple car camp, as soon as there’s a report, that’s like, Oh, now they’re not there to Africa. Everyone’s like, Oh, I told you, so this is the Apple television set all over again that never going to make one. It’s just all flummery and made up words and, you know, Chinese whispers, like it’s not real.

You can’t say that, like, you know, we just talked about that. Hide the poor chassis had a, you know, had a body and chassis, right? Like they’re building this team out and they’re going to probably not to make the next iPhone. Yeah, they’re going to be making hardware, some hardware contribution to the car market at some point, maybe in five years, maybe in 10 years.

And I know as we still know just about all this there’s, the autonomous driving aspect is still way underway. There was that. Did you see the filing that they released with the California government, that the number of hours or the number of miles driven by the Apple cart? You know, like prototypes basically doubled over 2020.

So they’re obviously, you know, ramping it up and they’re disengagement went down. So like they get in there. Right. And I assume they’re trying to time it so that when the autonomous system is ready to go, it will be perfectly timed with the hardware being ready to actually ship the car. Yep.

Zac Hall: [00:09:32] And even though we don’t have anything for February 17th anymore, they send that one crazy river.

The day after February 18th. The next American Mars Rover will arrive at Mars and land. So now that you’ve got that vacancy in your calendar next Thursday. All right. Do you have to take a sponsor break here?

Setting Spotify as default music service for Siri

Zac Hall: [00:11:37] Thanks. TextExpander. IOS 14.5. We discussed this last week that this software update that’s in beta right now for developers and public beta testers things like the redesigned podcast app.

The ability to unlock your, your, your iPhone with your Apple watch on your wrist. If you’re wearing a mask very, very useful, which last

Ben Mayo: [00:11:55] week you hadn’t used. Cause you didn’t turn it on. Yeah. It’s very

Zac Hall: [00:11:57] useful when you turn it on. Yeah. Approached pretty well. It’s a little bit weird whenever it says that your watch is not close enough to the phone, even though you’re holding your phone and your watch wrist hand.

But yeah, last. But we still have new things to talk about. And I was fortunately five, some, some new things that have been discovered. So let’s begin with Spotify. What’s what’s new at Spotify as it comes to iOS for two point. Oh

Ben Mayo: [00:12:21] yeah. So obviously the HomePod supported third-party music services on it natively.

Very recently, right. And Pandora have adopted that. We’re still waiting for others to do it like Spotify. And then if you go back to iOS 13 Apple added the Siri kit, media intense, which let you control third party music apps. Like you can do the, the Apple music app through Siri on the iPhone.

But there was no facility. And I was 13 up to now to be able to specify like, I don’t want to use Apple music. I want to use Spotify predominantly. So if you just asked a generic music request to Siri, like, you know, play Taylor Swift, it would always. Go to Apple music. You’d have to explicitly say play Taylor Swift on Spotify for it to instead route the request to the Spotify application on the iPhone.

Right? What now? Well, wasn’t actually announced, this is like a feature or thing. It’s just kind of turned up in the, in the Bayer. So maybe it’s like premature and they’re going to take it out or they haven’t decided it’s going to ship yet or not. But what people have discovered in foreign 0.5 is that when you interact with Siri for the first time after updating with music, it’ll actually prompt you.

To pick a default music service. And what it does is it brings up a little list on the screen of Apple music, Spotify, Pandora, all the, all the apps that you have installed that support the Siri kit, media intense. So all the apps that previously you could use via Siri by saying, you know, play this song on Spotify, I’ll play a song on Pandora, or would those apps now appear on a.

It will list as part of the series. Have you experienced any happens one time, no cheesy D for music service. And so if you pick Spotify from then on, when you just a unqualified requests, like play this album, play this playlist, play this artist it weren’t a full-time music anymore. It will, it will be as if you said on Spotify at the end of it.

So you’re basically getting a default music service through Siri for the first time, which is pretty cool. It’s also kind of strange. It just kind of popped out the blue, like it’s like, Oh, here we go. Like, Oh wait, we’re not going to read it. You announced it as a feature. I mean, already with Aras 14, they announced, you know, you can set your default web browser or default email app.

Right. And yeah, they work to a limited extent, but they do work, but you know, they’ve sneaked in here and offered it for music. The thing is they could offer this for like every Siri kit, domain you know, there’s like messaging reminders, mapping, and navigation, and. So far in filling this Ivy only offers you default options for music, which spell it, but

Zac Hall: [00:14:48] there you go.

I would love if it worked with the reminders. I mean, with the things that you could just use things as your reminders app,

Ben Mayo: [00:14:56] and it would be to say on things every single time

Zac Hall: [00:14:59] with things, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And also there’s a really good example of this being used already with what Amazon does. With echo products and the Alexa app, because you set the category for your preferred.

Music streaming service and your preferred music radio service. So you could say, I want my on demand stuff to come from Spotify, but my streaming stuff to come, or my radio and an algorithm radio to come from Pandora. You know, I think there’s probably more likely that you’ve got the same for both, but that’s how far.

The, the ecosystem goes it it’s an obvious next step, perhaps when UI for this, especially. So it’s discoverable because it’s of how do you invoke it now? You just talk, you talk to Siri and then it, you, you ask it to use Spotify and then it, then it. Suggested

Ben Mayo: [00:15:46] for you. Yeah. Basically I think the way it works is first time you update the phone book five, whenever you next, make a music requests, it would say pick a default service, and then you choose it from the list.

Or afterwards you can like specifically ask Siri to change your default music service. And then it will give you the options. Or this is meant to give you the options. But yeah, like you’re right. It’s not very discoverable because if you, if you choose Apple music the first time, and then you forget, there’s no like.

You UI to change it with the web browser and Safari stuff. If you go into settings and you go onto Safari, it says like default browser. And it says, you know, if you pick Chrome or something, instead as of the current beta, if you go into the music app where you’ve selected, like Spotify, it doesn’t have any interface, they changed it back.

So they should definitely add that. And if they’re going to keep adding more and more of these like default preferences, they need to like, Make us a dedicated section of settings where it just has all the stuff listed and you can tweak it to your heart’s content.

Zac Hall: [00:16:34] Yeah. They have a series settings

Ben Mayo: [00:16:35] section.

So by the way, I think this has still has the same limitations as the HomePod music thing, where. Like, if you pick a third party service, it will try and use that for podcasts or audio books and music. Like it only knows this, the audio domain, it doesn’t have subcategories beyond that. So it’s a bit of an issue there.

Like if you’re using Spotify for music and podcasts, when it’s fine, right. Or if you only ask for music, like personally, for me, if I did use it, I use Apple podcasts at the moment, but if I did use a third party podcast app and I wanted to use Spotify, it wouldn’t actually bother me. Cause I don’t know. I never asked Siri to.

Play podcasts. If you see what I always ask her to play music, but I never I to play podcasts. I don’t know why is it just a rally because it’s not reliable. Yeah. I mean, that’s probably one of them. No, I mean, right. Like it’s so it, you know, it’s better than nothing obviously, but ideally down the road they’d have like, you know, it doesn’t need to be complicated.

You just have every single category and it says whap, you want to use by preference and you can still use the other ones just by saying their name. But it’s a nice, they’ve done it. And obviously there’s the antitrust thing having over here that this probably helps them assuage some of that criticism.

Maps getting Waze-style accident/speed trap reporting

Zac Hall: [00:17:41] Yeah. Something else that I, I discovered this week with Siri is I was on my motorcycle and I was using AirPods for audio navigation and a series set over the AirPods. Did you know, or you can now tell me about accidents along your out. And I was like, Oh, okay, cool. So then I tried it in the moment and I said, Siri, there’s an accident.

And then gave me the definition of accident and asked me if I wanted it to read more. And I said, no, but it was okay. It it’s the, the voice activated version of this new user interface that’s in maps and maps has a little bit of a redesign in terms of the current you’re you’re. Now you’re currently navigating screen.

I think everything’s just, there’s like more rounded buttons and it’s just tweaked a little bit. But what they’ve definitely added in there is the ability to get feedback. Along the route to say. There is a, there’s an accident that I had. There’s a speed trap ahead so that if you’re going to come around the corner and there’s a police officer taking, you know, taking radar, then you can Mark that in the same fashion as what, as what the app ways does.

And ways it was a dependent and then it was bought by Google. And so now it’s a Google property. Apple now has full control of their map data in, in many parts of the world. So this is, I guess, just one more example of, of where they go from, from there by owning their own data. And it’s. Yeah. I, I don’t, I don’t expect it to be as robust as what yeah.

It’s just because of the whole networking thing. I mean, it’s just a beta right now, but maybe, you know, come iOS 15, Iowa, 16, this isn’t in the wild and other people know about it. And the ability to do this. With Siri is useful because I believe to do the, do the report, an accident with ways you have to tap through the user interface or make a Siri shortcut for it, which who does that.

And so they have it, the ability to have it as a Siri command and say, Hey Siri, there’s a, there’s an accident I had is, is useful. I, once you get down the, the wording the right way, excuse that I didn’t quite do it for some reason.

Ben Mayo: [00:19:52] Yeah. So the, the categories that you can report for is accident, hazard and speed check.

That’s what they call it. And so you’ve got a red icon, you got a yellow icon, you’ve got blue icon You like, this is cool and it’s great. They’re doing it. Cause you know, we’ve seen that when they control the data for their maps, they can offer better experiences. Right. And they’ve delivered that with a rural map data.

And if they can build on that with, you know, navigation, directions and smarter. Stuff there. It’d be great, but like, there is a kind of social networking chicken and egg aspect to this, where to actually the reason why he’s valid, always not because you can report accidents it’s because other people report accidents and then it routes you around them.

Right? Like, so for this to work well, this stuff actually has to be used. People have to report it. And so then when you go to you know, do a map, do a rooting with Siri on. Apple maps in the future. He actually gives you a better route because it can be informed by the upcoming accidents or the hazards.

Or even like, I dunno, I dunno how they’re going to fully expose this yet. Cause this is just a beta for reporting, but like, cause for stuff like hazards and accidents. Yeah. Obviously it’s going to just like route you around them. Right. And that’s hopefully what you would do, but for something like the speed check stuff, is it going to like, I guess, I guess they have speed camera.

You like smokers on the map as a vice 14 anyway. Yeah. There’s police

Zac Hall: [00:21:12] markers for speed, for track, for speed cameras and then red light cameras. And then they also tell you, like, if you’re actively navigating, CA will tell you as part of your directions red light camera had, so yes, I guess it may be, Oh, I don’t know that that way is quite, does that I think weighs it has some of it.

It will give you an alert. Yeah, it, it notifies you. So th th but this will be good was once that it’s actively in a non beta version of iOS and people are heavily using it

Ben Mayo: [00:21:43] out of character for them to offer you to like, report speed cameras.

Zac Hall: [00:21:46] I didn’t set out

Ben Mayo: [00:21:47] to me like, cause I feel like in the past, and maybe I’ve got the impression that that was the kind of thing Apple maps was never going to do because you know, Apple wants you to follow the law in all circumstances, but.

I mean, if they’re going to show you the speed cameras on the map, they might as well let you have to use the report. It’s big cameras as well. Yeah.

Zac Hall: [00:22:05] I mean like, well, remember when Apple went head to head with the FBI over encryption, you know, I know this is different,

Ben Mayo: [00:22:13] but funny thing where it’s like, because he’s not on a mission to like break the law, but it’s kinda like.

This helps you break the law. Do you know what I mean? Like, it’s, it’s a weird thing like Apple’s brand to have, but the reality is every other mapping app that has, you know, user contributed data, crowdsource data offers the speed check stuff, so they couldn’t not do it right though.

Zac Hall: [00:22:32] Mainly maybe I’ll get pulled out of the band and we’ll hear your story about how it was, it was in Rogan turn, who included this stuff,

Ben Mayo: [00:22:40] but yeah, like it’d be, it’s cool that they’ve added the reporting and then we’ll have to wait and see how they actually like expose it on routes to, you know, to actually be useful.

Yep. That’s all

New fraudulent website warning behavior

Zac Hall: [00:22:48] right. And then the last thing that we’ve noticed this week, and now it’s 14.5 is how fraudulent website warning the setting works and I was watching the 0.5 because it’s already there in previous versions, but how it behaves a different is that right?

Ben Mayo: [00:23:04] Yeah. So I bet you remember the story, the background of this, because, but do you remember like, was it a year or so ago?

There was a big up that Apple was reporting. Web browsing hits to Baidu in China. Okay. And basically, so the safe browsing feature, this is existed for ages and this is on every browser, right? When you visit a website, it checks against a database to see if it’s like. You know, bad, right? Or it’s like a scam or whatever.

And if it’s in the database, it can show that alert on the screen instead of actually taking it to the website. But to do that, you know how to do it, it’s somewhat on private, right? Because it’s basically having to send the website that you’re on to a third party to validate it and send you back. The response now is more complicated than that because they like hash the around and they only send parts of it.

And, you know, they try and make it good. But at some level, You’re sending every page, you visit somebody else. And this happens in the U S and most of the world through Google’s fraudulent safe browsing service. It’s used by Firefox. I think it’s used by those browsers. It’s used by Safari and then in China, because Google is blocked in China, they use the Baidu version and about a year or so ago, there was like a semi privacy scandal because it was like, Apple sending every website you visit to China, you know, that kind of, that kind of story.

What they’ve done in 14.5 is they basically taken the privacy protections to another level because now rather than. Safari browser contacting like the Google service directly. It first contacts like an Apple endpoint and the Apple endpoint contacts, Google abide you on the back end. So basically your IP address now no longer gets sent to Google or Baidu or whoever else they use for fraudulent search in the future.

So it’s slightly more privacy preserving in that way, because. Your IP addresses any of it, getting to share to Apple because then they go and make the request for you for, to Google and to think anything. So it’s an improvement. And as they continue to tout you know, they’re focused on privacy and security.

It should be their prerogative to do this wherever they can, like tying down the hatches in every, in every single way. Like, if you want to talk the talk, you gotta walk the walk and this is a way to do it.

Zac Hall: [00:25:12] Well, that makes sense to me. Do you think any other podcasts, Apple podcasts, podcasts for the iPod max every week?

Ben Mayo: [00:25:19] Talk about AirPods max every week, no podcast with poke us whip. It was nice every day. Yeah. So fine. Now I only know that you’re the one that does it. So yeah,

Zac Hall: [00:25:31] I just wanted to mention it because it’s every week I’m consistent here. All right. Let’s take a sponsor break.

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Zac Hall: [00:27:24] ever seen the American office? Cause now that

Ben Mayo: [00:27:26] you’ve got your own, I’ve seen the American office, then you have your own version over there.

I actually prefer the American office to the British one. Okay, cool.

Details on Dan Riccio’s secret project

Zac Hall: [00:27:34] All right. Good to know. Let’s talk about Dan Richie. O’s secret project. We discussed this whenever Apple made their. No vague mysterious pressure leads to say that the Dan ratio is no longer going to be what the VP of hardware. And he was now going to be working on a, a secret project.

I think, I think the guesses were, were two things, you know, Apple glasses or Apple car, and then you can narrow it down and say, well, which one’s more likely to happen, you know, sooner you know, domestic gas. And there’s also w w w you know, our, our former colleague Mark Harmon at Bloomberg, he had reported this week that, that.

That reports on what it is now, just a guess, but, but based on reporting. So what is Dan working on?

Ben Mayo: [00:28:16] Man? Go into Bloomberg. Dan Richo is transitioning to oversee the AR headset, the AR slash VR headset. He’s on the team that’s developing future Apple and VR headsets. There’s obviously the reamer that is going to be kind of like a developer version or a super high end, like $3,000 headset coming in 2022.

You know, that’s going to have super high resolution displays and it’s going to be expensive. And, but the idea is this will come out and then down the road, they’re going to do one that is like, actually, what’s going to be as big as the iPhone. So, you know, like the Apple watch or larger ambitions, like the $3,000 headset is not going to have Apple watch ambitions.

And you know, that blue book report from a couple of weeks ago said they aim to sell one per store per day or something. So which is like 200,000 units a year, which then know that that is

Zac Hall: [00:29:00] cheaper than some of the original Apple watch models.

Ben Mayo: [00:29:03] It’s true. Yeah. They’re not going to come out where they are with the AR headset in solid gold.

Yeah. So Bloomberg says the Apple is hitting roadblocks and developing its AI has so, and that’s the first one. So I guess Russia Rickio is gonna, you know, step back from his day-to-day responsibilities of doing or with Apple, hydro engineering. So we can help ship the. You know, the developer buy a prototype wherever you want to call it, industry focused one out the door.

And then after that’s done, be able to move on to get the, you know, the mass consumer one on the way. Yeah. It says the app has informed staff that they also transitioned in the group. That’s Connie work on in-house displays and camera technology under Johnny control. So, so Ruggie is obviously the one that’s managing Silicon design and the a team leader for, you know, the M one chips, the eight, 14 series, all that stuff, and motive, modems, currently charged practices and modems.

We haven’t yet seen. The Apple modem come out, but that’s obviously in development, that was last room. It’s becoming like 20, 23, 20, 24. What’s the hold up for

Zac Hall: [00:30:08] max getting cellular is

Ben Mayo: [00:30:12] if they wait too, if they really do wait to 2024 to give you a say about it, that’ll be

Zac Hall: [00:30:17] good. The, the low traffic. Cause there’s like nothing in licensing fees.

Cause it’s so, so low volume.

Ben Mayo: [00:30:23] Yeah. The Goodwill of the architecture transition will have more than died out. But yeah, that’s interesting. Cause they’re moving under his domain as the rumors that Apple are developing their own micro led displays. Right. They’re going to ship fully custom displays, probably starting with the Apple watch.

At some point there’s been on an offering that they’ve got a little like headquarters near, near like a dedicated building Apple park where they’re like growing. Cause Marco lady’s like organic. So you’re like. Growing the screens, and then you work out to make one or two of them and it’s like, Oh, this is great.

And then you’ve hit the problems of how do you make a million of them. So that’s, that’s kind of where micro led is sitting at the moment. It’s like, you can make some in a lab and they look really cool. And then how’d you get you is up to actually be practical. But if that’s going to reach his head, that probably means that probably signals this closer to being done because generally a lot of the time Apple like incubate something.

And then when it’s like getting close to prime time, they then go and give it to lo. The head of the, the head of the group.

Zac Hall: [00:31:22] Otherwise you’re not going to waste that executives time on something that’s R and D.

Ben Mayo: [00:31:26] Yeah, like R and D projects, aren’t going to get that kind of attention. Right. I think we saw the same kind of thing with the Apple watch or like the iPad, like the VPs that they work on the iPhone.

And then as the iPad got close to ship, they pick, you know, some of their favorite VPs to go and head up the iPad project to actually get out of the door. Same with the Apple watch. And obviously the same things playing out here where they are Those inside Apple hope that Ricky owes hardware expertise will help move past the issues that they’re having.

But did you say work on the project is still being led by Mike Rockwell? So he’s still leading what bimbo describes as well over a thousand engineers working on the AR and VR headsets, but. They hope that re that Ricky has influence is actually going to make a difference in getting the thing out the door.

And finally Bloomberg basically says that around last March Rickio had handed oversight of many, many of his responsibilities already, like electrical engineering, product design and project management for the iPhone. And most of Apple was other major products to John Turner’s who don’t obviously John Tony’s and now they have the SVP of hundred engineering, but it seems like this, this transition has been long in the works and it started last year and now it’s been formalized basically.

Very cool.

Apple Glasses displays to use micro OLED

Zac Hall: [00:32:33] And, and there is this well, where are we in Apple glasses? I mean, what, what’s your timeline that you think this is going to be more than just the $3,000 thing that

Ben Mayo: [00:32:44] we, the problem with the, the real glasses, right? Is that. Current technology can’t make them like, you just have battery problems.

Like if you want something to have a decent battery life, like if you want to, if you’re gonna, if you, if you need to product that you’re going to wear all day long, it needs to have all day battery. Is that the same? Probably with the Apple watch, right? Like. And people complain about the Apple watch battery life.

Like there is a limit on how much stuff people are gonna accept to be able to charge on a regular basis. And the very minimum for all that gas is, is you wanna be able to wear them all day long? Like you can’t, you can’t have AR glasses. Do you wear for like three hours and then even the trucks? Yeah.

Yeah. Like that’s just stupid. Like people cause people that obviously, if you don’t need glasses to see, it’s like, okay, you’ve put in your bag, but people are gonna, they’re not gonna carry two pairs of glasses around. Do you know what I mean? Like you just going to need. They’re going to need to last a long time.

But to last a long time, you need bigger batteries, but then that means you kind of a slim and slender design, which they looks bad, so they can’t be made. Right. That’s the current issue with the air gas it’s thing, like the headsets it’s going to like HoloLens. Right. And that’s just a big thing that, you know, you look like a a submarine controller with a, you know, the whole, the mask on and everything like, and that’s fine if you’re doing industry work or you’re just playing games in the comfort of your own home.

Although I don’t, I doubt that the $3,000 headset is going to be a big hit in terms of gaming at that price point. Just cause it’s so expensive. Right. And, but if you’re trying to make a lifestyle AR Garcia’s product, no, I had set. There’s a reason. None of them exist. Right? The closest you saw was like Google glass, but that wasn’t anything close to the actual AR experience.

It was like a little screen that was in the top of the heads of display. Yeah. Heads up display. Yeah. The Google glasses. It was like an Apple watch that you could see by looking forward rather than looking at your wrist. Right. And maybe Apple does ship a portal like that sooner than anything else, but that’s not going to be like, obviously what they want to do with like a proper AI and mixed reality AR experience.

So I think, I think they are project is like, Still years away. So when did Lynch join for the Apple watch? That was like 2012, 2013, basically. I,

Zac Hall: [00:34:47] I, I, it had to be after 2013 because I started at 95 back in April, 2013, I think we both said, and, and

Ben Mayo: [00:34:58] after that, so it was probably 2013, 2014, basically in the airport shipped.

No, he’s gotta be longer than 24 because the airport was announced at the end of the year. Like, yeah. So it’s gotta be, it’s probably around 2013, probably sometime in 2013. So, I mean, if you work on the airport’s timeline, you’ve got two more years, but yeah, but you can’t just copy and paste that over to this cause it’s good.

Different, different ball game. Right. But yeah, I think you’ve at least got two years. Let’s put it that way.

Zac on motorcycle helmet with CarPlay

Zac Hall: [00:35:23] Yeah. A friend Chaos Tiana on Twitter. Yeah, a few weeks ago he sent me a link to. A motorcycle helmet that I think in his words apparently works with CarPlay and the apparently is pretty strong there because it looked at it and it’s called highlights.

I ride and the whole Apple glasses thing. Got me thinking about this again. What it is. Yeah, it’s a six, it costs about $600 us dollars. You add it to any helmet I already have, and this is whole system that there is like Bluetooth and voice control. And speakers, which you can already do all those things with the helmet, but it also has one of those little tiny prism lenses that you have, I guess, angled so that you can see through it as you’re writing and projected on Google glasses.

Exactly. Like Google us. And they, they work out in some way to project apps, like ways Google maps and they even show CarPlay projected. No, I’m not so sure how they achieve that. You know, I know that there’s aftermarket ways to have wireless CarPlay on an existing car play system. And it’s like, it runs a version of, of ILS on that little dongle and in a way that’s not very trustworthy, but it works.

This thing, I don’t have one to test it out yet, but it just, the, the premise alone to have a heads-up display, like, like this, or not, not even AR glasses, but this thing that attaches to your, to your helmet is just you put your helmet on and then you can see, you know, with translucency. So you, you see through it, but it’s also on the road.

There’s that? And that’s something that you can. Apparently by today, I don’t want to risk $600 on trying to get it, but that’s out there and it made me think this is a thing that would be useful for, for, you know, the Apple glasses in the future. You know, definitely not the HoloLens version, but, but the long-term goal Because right now I’m navigating, you know, if you’re in the car, not your phone or have a screen and your car screen.

I Mount my, my, my phone on the, on the handlebars and that works out really well, but sometimes the phone’s in my pocket and I’m using the watch and that’s a little bit too far from my comfort zone. And so this would be neat to have, and it certainly isn’t the full CarPlay experience, you know And the other thing I, I, I stumbled upon today and looking at looking for the first thing that I lied.

I ride product. It’s something called life map and it’s still not really AR I mean, it, it tries what this does is it’s, it’s, it’s a full motorcycle helmet. So the first thing you put on your helmet of any type, this thing is the helmet itself. And it’s got this, you know, project, your bolts in the Google glass style.

And it overlays, I guess it looks at the road and overlays. Lane guidance on the road and that’s this big thing. And it costs $2,500, which I thought about. So that was interesting to be the single obligation use of something like this. And then they promise availability in Q3 of 2022.

Ben Mayo: [00:38:21] No, it’s a bit, a bit of a wide off.

Then you could buy an Apple cart by that time.

Zac Hall: [00:38:24] Yes, this says specific Q3, you know, usually you see like the first half, second half, or like two, one, you know, but say Q3 the first half of the second half of the year, we think we’ll start this thing. But

Ben Mayo: [00:38:37] that’s what I hope they do on the Apple cart, by the way, when they eventually do make one, like as the.

Not just a heads up display, but like, you’d be a proper overlaid light. So you almost get like a mixed reality AR experience projected onto the road. We’d like, cause I always talk about how we need it on the Apple maps on the IFO, where you get the little augmented reality thing to point you left and right.

Which I still haven’t shipped, but they should totally do like do that on the actual car. And then maybe if you’re like sitting in traffic, you can like press a button and it zooms forward to the what do they, what do they call their Google street view? What’s it code? Look around, look around. Yeah.

So, you know, you get stuck in traffic and you just want to see what you’re getting to. You press a little button and then you know what you’re looking at instead zooms forward. And you can almost pretend like you’re already there. Like, that’s what I want from the applicant. It’s gotta be that cool. Like, yeah.

Zac Hall: [00:39:21] A friend, a friend of mine has a BMW SUV that projects out onto the road. We’re not really under the road, but just on the windshield. And you see things like your, your. Miles per hour. And I guess they do there is that you don’t have to look down at the dash. You’d just look ahead and you see those things, but it’s not intrusive.

And it’s just, it’s kind of a neat, it’s kind of a neat gimmick kind of a neat demo, but yeah. Yeah. I’ve

Ben Mayo: [00:39:45] seen them, maybe those two they’re there as a parallel, they’re more like the Google glass experience, right. Where you get a little projection in the corner. Sure. And then the real deal was like, Yeah, it can actually just intellect it, superimpose over anything on the, on the screen, like interacting with the environment.

Yeah. Yeah. The all the investments we’re seeing them do in Apple maps, whether it’s their own map day, a look around car accident, reporting all of that stuff that all feeds into the eventual car product, right? Like, I don’t think there’d be half as interested in developing these Apple maps features if they didn’t have hardware ambitions to actually ship a car in the future.

Cause it’s all gonna, it’s all gonna go in there. And you’re like, do they keep adding new features to CarPlay, which is great, but all that stuff’s going to be rolled into like the actual Apple car eventually. Yep.

Apple TV+ news

Zac Hall: [00:40:28] And on the topic of AR a couple of things for the Apple TV plus. So first I published my review of for all mankind this week.

So I’ve seen, I’ve seen all of season two. I can’t say much about it, except that I very much enjoyed it. And then you can read my view review, which has no spoilers but just general sentiments about the season. And the bottom line for me is that if you like season one, You might’ve seen the trailer for it and thought this is going to be vastly different, but the trailer is.

You know, it’s an action trailer and the show is, is a scifi drama. And so if you’d liked all the character development and interactions and stories and season one you get that same thing, but, but you know, in 10 years later in season two so I, I thought it was very enjoyable and I got to do some

Ben Mayo: [00:41:14] interviews with him.

Can I ask you a question about that? You can if you’re not there to answer, that’s fine, but Is there. Cause the only thing I didn’t like about forum kind season one is that quite a lot of it felt like a, a drama in the ground. Right. And it almost felt like it, it w it, you know, it didn’t have to be related to space.

It was just like family, I, which is fine. And intuitions the story on season two. I know you’re saying it’s like, you know, the actions in the trailer and then there’s the thing, but is it still like family stuff or is it more like, you know, like space, cold wall bowels? Do you see what I mean? Like, even if it’s just talking about it, I would, I would

Zac Hall: [00:41:45] say that there’s as much like family drama on the ground again, but the further they go into the show, the deeper they’re integrated within this is the space program.

These people work in this space program and that the drama is because of the space program. Not just because they’re. You know, a family of three or four. And, and, and there’s, there’s certainly more space because they’re further along

Ben Mayo: [00:42:08] and they’re yeah. The train has gone, like with guns walking across the moon, I want the moon conflict with the Russians life, big shoe out, you know, based on your description, it doesn’t sound like that’s quite, I would also say

Zac Hall: [00:42:18] that that is something I mentioned in the review.

You know, the, the cold war was largely. Tension building up of what’s going on, what could happen with nuclear weapons and that, that didn’t and, and it’s kind of this season is a bit like that too, where the tension builds up throughout the season. And then I also mentioned in the review that if there’s one thing that I could critique about it, it’s that it, it.

Well, a couple of concerns is if you do a 10 year jump every season, are you really going to have the same cast every year? You know? And, and the, as you can see, probably from the trailer, I imagined the way that the character at Baldwin, his age, wasn’t very it, it, it caught, it took you out of the scene.

When he was, you know, had like fake gray hair and like way too dark of a tan I mean that’s realistic, but also it’s distracting. But so there’s the concern of, you know, are, are the characters that we’re following and care about now? Are they going to be in future seasons? No, we’ll see. And then the other thing is because it is tension building up the season and then near the finale that there’s, there’s so much happening all at once.

That it, you definitely get pay off, but it becomes hard to keep track of some of the things that’s happening in your life. You know, it kinda, they, they, they don’t spread it out across the show. It’s, you know, they could have been like three or four arcs that they, that they had and that’s the season. And instead it was cold war style buildup.

It really models the cold war, you know, as, as history. But it’s, it’s nice. And then the first, this won’t even be a spoiler that, you know, I can totally see this in the first You know, a few minutes in the first episode, there’s a new drill. Montage is only in that first episode, but it’s just very entertaining.

If you’re a fan of history to see all the things that happen differently, including John Lennon, narrowly escaping assassination. So it’s, it’s neat to see how many things are different. And of course, in the series a, in the season, Ronald Reagan’s president, I think it was kind of an undertone, but in the first season, I think Ted Kennedy was president, which never happened.

He ran, but it didn’t wasn’t elected as president. And now we’re back to reality. Maybe the timing of the years are off, but then the events are what shifted, but it’s. I also think it’s it’s, you know, you don’t have to care about space stuff to really appreciate it. It’s it’s the drama all on its own.

Now that this year, I know more about space stuff than I did a year ago when the first season was, was available. And I picked up on some of the Easter eggs, the trivia you know, there’s, there’s things like LC 39 C being a launch launch complex 39 C that’s at the Kennedy space center.

There is one now. As a 2015 for very small rockets. And I think it’s about to open soon, but in the seventies, eighties, there was not a C launchpad. There’s just a and B. And the idea and the show is that they just, they just mentioned it. That there’s about to be a shuttle taking off, right? No, from LCD United sea.

And it’s to say that the shuttle program is so successful, that they have more launchpads at that one watch complex. And so if you’re. Space fan and you know, the kind of the history there, those things will stand out as, as, as the trivia, you also see an eighties Tesla equivalent and, you know, things like that.

It’s entertaining. So it’s

Ben Mayo: [00:45:27] it’s it’s Oh yeah. They can say, yeah, they released like a second, like feature at trader thing and there’s like, Oh, cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Zac Hall: [00:45:34] In the range of like comical, like

Ben Mayo: [00:45:37] it’s 60

Zac Hall: [00:45:37] miles. Yeah. But so, so yeah, if you liked season one, I think this is it’s the same chef from the same creators.

It’s just the story continues and I liked that about it. So

Ben Mayo: [00:45:47] seq, we can talk about your, you know, you’ve got your interviews and they go away our thing. Let’s just do our last out of the show.

For All Mankind Season 2 interviews

Zac Hall: [00:47:30] Thanks LinkedIn. Yeah. So but I’ve seen, I also did interviews with some of the casts and creators from, from mankind. And it was really cool experience. It’s the first time I’ve ever done something like that before. And I had mentioned that a previous episode, but now they’re now they’re published.

And I would promote like the things inside of them, but I haven’t actually listened back to them besides. Doing it a little bit of editing for the video. My plan was to listen through and transcribe and include as quotes in the, in the article. But then, because the video is hard, but it turns out editing videos, clips together and is easier than transcribing and listening back to half an hour of interviews.

Ben Mayo: [00:48:05] better on the

Apple TV AR App

Zac Hall: [00:48:06] YouTube channel. I think it, I think it worked out well. And then lastly on for all mankind for this week, at least because I guess next week will be a couple of days away from the, the season premiere. Apple has released their first augmented reality app connected to Apple TV plus.

So this was reported as, as, as a remember, like the last August or so from Bloomberg that Apple was working on some kind of director’s cut materials, some bonus materials for Apple TV plus content. And the first version of it is, is from mankind time capsule. And it is an iPhone and iPad app uses AR kit.

There’s even a couple of parts of it that require the LIDAR sensor on the iPad pro.

Ben Mayo: [00:48:46] And I’ve asked why they added the LIDAR scanner, Apple TV plus bonus con Oh, all that

Zac Hall: [00:48:51] time. And the iPhone 12 pro and I from told pro max and what the app is, is th the name kind of suggests what it is. It’s time capsule.

You’re the character I can raise again. I, I, you know, this is the comeback. I wish it were so that this is the alternative. This is alternative timeline aspects

Ben Mayo: [00:49:09] of it, a couple of your iCloud account information. It’s

Zac Hall: [00:49:12] like iCloud for your Mac. That would be amazing. No, it’s, it’s set in, it’s set between the two decades.

So I think problem in kind isn’t one ended in the. Well, early seventies, I think seventies. Yeah. And this picks up in the early eighties. And so it’s, it’s, it’s the character, Danny Stevens. Who’s the son of Gordon Stevens and Tracy Stevens, both astronauts. It it’s, it’s some of his teenage years because he’s, he’s a character who’s in season two.

Sort of prominently versus being, you know, a kid in the background and the first season based on that decade job. And it’s a, it’s a cool AR demonstration. You’re going through a kind of a box of trinkets and, and there’s some storytelling involved. There’s theme music. They have the same person who made the same composer and made the music for the show.

Do the under music for the, for the app. There’s some, some music like some Bob Dylan licensed to kind of put it in the, in the time that it said. And and the AR kit. So it looks cool and it works well. And there’s some, some keys on the screen that you interact with where you like slice up in a cookie or, you know, open this envelope, that kind of thing.

There’s a little Mac. I was gonna say there’s a little bit of an Apple cameo. This happens in the season as well, where the Apple two makes an appearance as like the computer of the day and the eighties. And that’s normal, but what’s not normal is that there’s email and they call it D mail. For digital mail and they say it’s a predecessor to email.

But I, and that makes sense to me an email. Okay.

yeah, these are four E. Yeah, exactly. And you know, that’s what happens when this base program flourishes, I suppose, is that you get email before you get email, so, okay. They’re gonna have next,

Ben Mayo: [00:50:54] the end phone. And doesn’t come before I have to it. Doesn’t no, that’s not right. Why can’t it do the alphabet?

Zac Hall: [00:51:04] J K L M H I.

Yeah. Yeah. It’s yeah. He nailed that joke.

Ben Mayo: [00:51:14] He fell bad. Yeah.

Zac Hall: [00:51:15] But anyway, the app is available. It’s in the U S only I think, I think people were saying it’s in the UK as well. Now it’s going to be available in more markets. Sarah and they say, but it’s interesting. I mean, they, they, they. And a little bit of a panel discussion with Ron Moore the Cirque creator.

And he, he said something that was interesting, which has that the news cast that they use in the show and for all mankind, you know, they’re obviously fictitious, you know, newsreels. But they, they, they write a bunch of those and that’s one of his favorite things as a history buff. And they only get to use a fee because otherwise it would be a show about newscast.

And this was a way to recycle some of those because there’s a newscast in the app experience and he likes, he likes those. So this was a way to use that. I asked if there’s gonna be a more of these. You know, for season two, as it’s available or feature seasons. And the answer was really, we’ll see how it goes, how the reception is with this one.

So I guess if it’s a diet, no, but if it’s popular yes. And, and putting it in more markets in the U S will certainly help. And, and you don’t have to have seen. And you have the seasons to really enjoy the app. Cause it’s, it’s a cool demonstration of AR

Ben Mayo: [00:52:23] anyway. Cool. Like even if throwing content exists, it’s just called a little thing to play around with.

Right. It’s like an AR demo. It’s like playing table tennis or whatever, like, like might come with this latest, cool bonus content. Right. But. If it’s like, because he’s, he says, it’s not, it’s not, it’s not integrated into the actual TV app. It’s just like, you have to go download it from the app store. Right.

Zac Hall: [00:52:42] And I imagine at some point they’ll promote it, but right now it’s, you know, the, the press got a link to it. And then you read the press story and click the link to it. I was looking at before the show and without, without reading my story to find that I couldn’t find it on the app store yet, maybe that changes as they promote it.

There’s

Ben Mayo: [00:52:58] these listed on the Apple’s developer account, at least. So it’s helpful, but like, What you need to have is like in the TD app, when you scroll down to the bit where it says bonus content, that needs to be as well as the little extra videos they have there and used to have a link to the AR experience, or when you like finish an episode.

So you’ve watched, you know, you’ve watched your finished the season even, right. You finished season wonderful mankind, and then they should have, look, now you can enjoy this extra AR experience. It’s like the special features on a DVD, right? Like it has to be integrated into thing you’re watching like.

Apple has done a bit of this already with various kinds of multimedia bonus content. They’ve done wallpapers, Ted lasso. They’ve done. I met your sticker packs for Dickinson and Snoopy in space, but. They tweet about once and then they go on forever. Like they’re on the street. Th the sticker packs don’t even listen to rap was do I break out?

They’re made by some third party company and they’re just lists. So you’re never, literally never going to find them. Right. At least the foreign mankind one is under Apple’s account. So that’s an improvement, but they need to be like actually integrated into the TV experience. And it doesn’t need to be like, You know, annoying or just in the way, but maybe, you know, in the right format kind of season two on the little, like, if you’ve watched for mankind before it could give you a little notification, it’s like, you know, get ready for season two, enjoy the AR experience at Loretta or you do, or afterwards you just finished an episode.

It’s like, okay, now you’ve enjoyed this. You could watch the next episode right now. Or why don’t you try this on your phone? Or, you know, Or if you’ve finished a concern, you know, now go and share with your friends and tweet, tweet us and chose Susan, and you stick it back in and stuff like that. Doing the extra bonus content, things are good, even though even the wallpapers, like the headlights hope was a great idea, but that needs to be like in the TV app.

So you can scroll down, see the wallpapers and then. No, from within the TV app set the wallpaper, right? Like not this thing where it’s like, Oh, we’re just going to upload these photos to Twitter in the right font file format. So not only do you have to like, see the tweet once when they ship it, then you have to say the image of your photo library, then set it as your wallpaper.

Like, you know, you’ve got to do all the steps put together. And the thing that worries me when they say, Oh, we’ll see how the reception isn’t, if we do more or whatnot. But obviously if you’re never going to promote the things or you never can actually have integrated the core experience, they’re never going to be popular.

Like you have to do it’s chicken and egg. Right. You’ve got to do the, you got to do the work upfront and then integrate it all together.

Zac Hall: [00:55:02] Yeah, hello. A little bit concerning there. And I would have asked him, I would have asked how they planned it, promote it, but it was a second grader. It’s not Apple.

Yeah. What are they gonna say? And they were, they were happy that it’s, you know, it’s on Apple’s platform with the ability to, but it’s all users. So that’s neat. And I actually haven’t checked out. I haven’t used the app yet because and, and the couple of hours I had access to the, to the story before it came available we, we were just on the demonstration of it, but not the, not able to use the app.

So because it requires a LIDAR for at least one or two scenes in the app experience. I’m looking forward to that because there aren’t a lot of things that require LIDAR. If you just want a good example of the LIDAR sensor on my iPad or iPhone, you know this is, this is one sure way to do that.

Apple TV+ purchases Dolly movie

So I’m looking forward to trying that out. So one of them mentioned this week is a movie that Apple has purchased for Apple TV plus called Dolly. Have you seen this story?

Ben Mayo: [00:55:57] I’ve seen the story. Yeah. Yeah. I can’t actually remember what happens, but they, they, they acquired the rights to a package of a movie called Dolly.

And the, the concept of the movie is basically it’s a robotic assistant that’s standing trial in core. Yeah. And it’s not about Dolly pollen because whenever she, I saw the headline, it going to be a Dolly Parton biography,

Zac Hall: [00:56:19] because they’ve had so much, they’ve got the Suzanne news. They’ve got the time to walk thing, but it’s, it’s not it’s it’s.

I mean, again, I guess the name is like a doll, but it’s a robot, you know, I don’t play on that. I just, it sounds weird. It just, it stood out to me is I think

Ben Mayo: [00:56:35] different this coming in, I robot the a will Smith movie. So on along those lines, kind of a little. Yeah.

Zac Hall: [00:56:43] Is it that the, that the robot kill someone though, and then it’s like, I didn’t do it or something.

This is, this is from our story. Dolly is a scifi drama inspired by inspired by Elizabeth Elizabeth, their story in which he robotic doll kills us owner. And shocks the world will ask you for a lawyer claiming she’s not guilty. The film has elements of both classic courtroom drama, and Saifai so as weird, he may be, it’ll

Ben Mayo: [00:57:07] be really interesting and different defending Jacob, but with robots.

Sure. Yeah,

Zac Hall: [00:57:11] definitely. Yeah. It’s definitely,

Ben Mayo: [00:57:13] I like courtroom dramas and I Saifai. So if they can do well. Cool. Yeah.

Apple TV 3 losing access to CBS All Access

Zac Hall: [00:57:17] All right. We’ll see how it goes. And then there’s news we’ve we’ve been discussing the Apple TV three that their generation Apple TV, that Apple sold. For a hundred dollars for a few years, and then for $1,600 at the very end of his life for a few months, and we discussed the last week or so when this box lost access to YouTube, but it’s going to be losing access to YouTube in March.

And we’ll be airplay only for, you know, probably the biggest app on the platform. And obviously I bought the Apple TV four and five, the HD and the 4k versions now. And they’ve been out for a while, a

Ben Mayo: [00:57:45] long time, but Rosa

Zac Hall: [00:57:47] so long in the tooth but the, the latest casualty on Apple TV. Three is CBS all access users of that box and no longer have access to that.

And it will be airplay only. So that’s one more for Apple TV, three with, with, I think your point is a good one in that there’s no clear replacement for the a hundred dollars streaming box, or if you paid $70 for it, even that price you’ve got to look at you know, $35 streaming sticks as their replacement, Apple just doesn’t have a replacement in this category yet.

Ben Mayo: [00:58:16] Yeah. And, and when you know the Apple TV three still used by millions of people. When the little notifications pop up on your screen, saying YouTube is going to stop working in March CBS sites, you can start working in March. Do you think they are blaming YouTube? Do you think they’re going to blame Apple?

Like, so not only are they furious Apple for intentionally making their hardware obsolete or that’s at least how they see it, right? Like technically it’s a bit. Like this all stems from the fact that the third gen Apple, Apple TV never had an app store. Right? So all these, all these things that are stuck in the space that we, the foam, where of what they had back in the day.

So they, when they do big, major new initiatives, they never get, they never, I like the

Zac Hall: [00:58:48] feature phone equivalent of a streaming box.

Ben Mayo: [00:58:50] Yeah, it’s kind of like the old iPods, right? Like where they just kind of like they ship, this is what they have and then slowly the stuff doesn’t work anymore. And that was a mistake of Apple.

They should have done an app store on the opportunity way before 2015, when they did the original Apple TV. And they wouldn’t be in this problem, but Hey, yeah.

Zac Hall: [00:59:04] Especially when they had like so many and you could only, you could show her hide, you couldn’t like remove or add.

Ben Mayo: [00:59:10] Yeah. Like, and now. It’s even worse because people are mad.

They’re like, Oh, you know, you’ll make your making my box worse. And then they go and look at buying another one. They’re like $150. This is ridiculous expensive. Cause they remember buying it for a hundred or 60 or whatever. I said, they go by Firestick very understandably. So it was just a bad situation.

CBS All Access + Showtime bundle with Apple TV+ can no longer be accessed

Zac Hall: [00:59:29] And also CBS all access related. A few months ago there was this really nice bundle that if you subscribe to Apple TV, plus. Then you can have, you can purchase a bundle from CBS that has CBS, Alexis, and Showtime for $10 a month. And so I, I think CBS all access is to knowledge month on his own.

So you basically got Showtime at no extra cost, $10 as well. Yeah. So if you were an Apple TV plus Trevor, so it’s pretty clever, you know, it makes you want to be an Apple TV plus subscriber, or if you already are, it’s a award, it’s a treat. And for me, I paid for an Apple TV plus. And CBS, CBS all access.

So it was a no-brainer to do two opposite to the bundle because then I get time. I had no additional cost that bundle went away and it’s not, it’s not weird while there’s this paramount plus coming to replace CBS, all access as their streaming service versus, you know, kind of a back how August CBS stuff, some of the new stuff.

And then, you know, a few originals. So it’s going to be kind of goes from being a channel to being a whole service of its own. And so it makes sense that the bundle goes away. It is funny though, that for me, I never got to actually pay for Apple TV plus because the free trial has been extended so many times that, you know, I do the bundle as you pay for Apple TV plus.

And one of the two things, when you get the third one for free it’s just been, I paid for $10 a month for CBS all access. And I got, you know, the other things just shut up there, so that’s too bad. But you, you, your, your hunches that. We, we probably won’t because CBS all access is it can be a channel, an Apple TV time.

Internal, it can be a channel that you subscribed through Apple TV directly or through Apple TV. And you know, that, you know, deal a, a subscription through the other app or anything. And it plays directly in the app. It’s a very good experience, but your hunch is that that’s going to go away because paramount plus, because it’s kind of Netflix level, it won’t be a channel within Apple TV.

It’ll be its own. Sarah.

Ben Mayo: [01:01:22] Yeah, we saw this happen last year with HBO, right? Like HBO was like the flagship TV channel. And then when they launched HAPE spear max, they removed the channel and now no one new can actually sign up to HBO through Apple TV channels. You get the app integration, HBO, max. So it shows up in up next.

But when you actually want to go and watch something, you then get your act out the TV app. And if you’re going to the HB Mayo max experience, it’s really annoying. Like you just won’t be able to watch everything in one place. And. The TV that doesn’t let you do that unless you’re either watching an Apple, Apple content or channels content.

Zac Hall: [01:01:54] My favorite thing about channels is on the map. There’s not a lot of apps in me. If you have an M one Mac, you’re not going to have a good HBO experience and you’re not gonna have a CBS Alexis app at all Sanford time. So by doing Apple TV channels, it’s in the TV app and you can save it. You can offline download it.

And it’s a good experience. Works with picture in picture is not. A web browser involved and that goes away whenever there’s not, you can’t pay it. Yeah.

Ben Mayo: [01:02:19] And it’s a consistent UI that’s with everything that you’re using, right? Like it’s not like, you know, a lot of different silos. But unfortunately, due to everyone wanting to like, you know, make their stand with their own services Apple TV channels are going away as fast as channels on their third generation.

Apple TV are like, they’re just dropping like flies, unfortunately. And this one was the result of a. A promotional deal between Apple, that they literally made a press release about. Right. Like I can’t deal. And the it’s going to last five months. Cause that was August and it’s going to be going away. So it was kind of a stupid situation, but it’s sad.

Like, I don’t know what they’re going to do with this here, the app. Cause at the moment, like. It’s like the place for everything put into one place, but it doesn’t make you a good spirits. You don’t get Netflix at all and all the channels are just disappearing. So they might as well just make it like Apple.

Yeah. Yeah. The Apple, the actual Apple TV app, not like an aggregator thing

Zac Hall: [01:03:08] other than I think I agree with that. Fortunately there’s that, but there are a bunch of small channels that are never going to go away. And, you know, the Nickelodeon thing is like that.

MacBook Pro 2016/2017 battery replacement

Oh, well last thing I wanna mention this week, before we go away is because it affects, I think your Mac could be affected as this MacBook pro battery replacement program for the 2016 and 2017 models.

Is is yours effective because you’ve got a

Ben Mayo: [01:03:32] 2016. Is it 2016? My battery seems to be okay. Okay. Wow. Okay. And how it has been, because obviously it’s now four years out to the battery jury depleted. So if you actually unplug it, you only lost her about an hour off battery on battery, but this, this is not exhibiting the problem that this replacement program describes,

Zac Hall: [01:03:53] which is that the battery can’t charge past 1%.

Is that right? That’s probably a good thing. The better place to program, you know, when the M one Mac has as bad or wherever for years, just going to be like you only like five.

Ben Mayo: [01:04:04] Yeah. You already get five hours. This is a really funny bug though, because it’s like, if you get affected by it, you have to send your.

Laptop physically into Apple to get it fixed. But if you haven’t been affected by it yet, Apple says you can just update to 11.2 0.1 and you won’t be affected by it, which you

Zac Hall: [01:04:24] presumably

Ben Mayo: [01:04:25] did. I’ve done that. Yeah. So, so a software bug causes a permanent hardware fault. Breaks your battery. Yeah. And so if you, so if your battery was stuck at 1% and you update 11.2, but one, it would still be stuck at 1%.

And that’s why, so you have to have a, it’s a hardware problem to cover up a software full. They don’t say the reason for it. I have to assume there was some like weird logic error with the optimized battery charging stuff. Cause they introduced that on the map pretty recently. Right? Like it’s gotta be something to do with that.

And then. No, it’s sent a way to message down to the battery. You control it. It doesn’t let it charge past 1%. So then they have to go and like, they don’t specify exactly what’s wrong with it. It just says, you know, there’s an experience with the battery, not charging. I shamed me when they take it into app and get it fixed.

They’re probably not replacing the battery. They’re probably replacing like, you know, the little microcontroller that like cha you know, he’s in charge of powering. The battery will charge you the battery. Right. That’d be my guess. But the

Zac Hall: [01:05:16] battery would be nice though. Yeah. And that’s four year old machine.

Ben Mayo: [01:05:20] Yeah. I mean, this dish, don’t worry. I’ve had petty replacement programs. I have alleged before, or was allegeable for like the butterfly keyboard situation, which is now, cause that was, that was, that was four years. Wasn’t it? They gave you four years to get that fixed. So I’m now filming outside the window of that.

Zac Hall: [01:05:35] Th when they say don’t buy for a generation products, like the 2016 pro. Is that example. Yeah.

Ben Mayo: [01:05:43] It’s like this batch, like this 1% battery charge. It’s like the smallest footnote on the list of problems with the 2016 mobile Crow. Yeah.

Zac Hall: [01:05:52] All right. Nice. Thanks everyone. Who tuned in live to listen on youtube.com/nfl back and on Facebook as well.

And if you enjoy the show and you don’t subscribe already, we, we are well podcasts, overcast, Spotify, Google podcasts, Amy, we appreciate you subscribing and joining us back every week. We, we bright guys live on Thursdays at 4:00 PM Eastern time. And then you can

Ben Mayo: [01:06:16] follow us in the Apple podcast app.

Now that’s

Zac Hall: [01:06:19] a, that’s a new feature that’s coming in the beta version. And now it’s out of beta is subscribed, becomes follow. Which gives you room to subscribe monetarily in a different way, or it’s just, maybe it’s just differently way of doing it. But anyway if you have any feedback for the show, you can email both of us together at happy hour at podcast at night.

What is it now? What’s the email.

Ben Mayo: [01:06:43] I just need just happy

Zac Hall: [01:06:45] probably. Yeah. That’s that’s it we’ll definitely, definitely work. It used to be different. Madigan.

Ben Mayo: [01:06:53] I know I

Zac Hall: [01:06:53] need a lunch or something and you can follow me on Twitter. And Instagram at apollozac Benjamin. You’re on Twitter at bzamayo. And we will be back next week.

Bye everybody.

Ben Mayo: [01:07:05] Bye-bye.

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