Pod Insights Better Offline The State of Consumer Tech with Lisa Eadicicco About this episode Welcome to Radio Better Offline, a tech talk radio show recorded out of iHeartRadio's studio in New York City. Ed is joined in-studio by CNN Tech Editor Lisa Eadicicco to talk about the state of consumer electronics, Samsung’s Vision Pro competitor, and why every phone kind of looks the same.
https://www.cnn.com/profiles/lisa-eadicicco
https://x.com/LisaEadicicco
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1:08 Ed Zitron? Call Zone Media.
1:12 Ed Zitron? Enter the twisted mind of Ed Zitron. This is Better Offline.
1:28 Ed Zitron? That's right, we're here in New York City, New York State, and we've got a great guest, Lisa Edichiko from CNN. Thank you so much for joining us, Lisa, on this horrible wet day. Of course. Truly, truly one of the ugliest days in New York history. But nevertheless, we're going to talk about consumer tech today, and everyone says, oh, Ed, you've got to be nicer, you've got to be like things more. But what's a gadget you've actually liked this year? Like, what's some stuff you've been enjoying?
1:52 Speaker 04 Yeah, and it's it's kind of funny because I feel like when I think about gadgets, I think about them two ways. There's one, like, the gadgets I would actually buy and that I actually use every day.
2:02 Ed Zitron? Right.
2:02 Speaker 04 And then two, the ones that are, I think, interesting for what they say about the industry or that have been fun to write about and fun to cover. Um, and for the things that I I have enjoyed using this year, I would say it's a lot of the things you'd expect. Like, the Nintendo Switch 2 was a fun one this year. Um, the new Apple Watch, because I'm a big Apple Watch user, things like that. Um, and then there's the other category of things that I think have been really fun to write about.
2:27 Ed Zitron? Yeah.
2:27 Speaker 04 And for that, I would say, um, the Galaxy XR definitely stands out.
2:32 Ed Zitron? So what is the Galaxy? So that's the Vision Pro compared to the, right?
2:35 Speaker 04 Yes.
2:36 Ed Zitron? So how comfortable is it? Start there.
2:39 Speaker 04 I would say, I mean, none of these things are super comfortable, to be honest. It's still this thing that's bigger than a pair of glasses, bigger than something you're used to wearing on your face. So it's always going to be a little bit uncomfortable. Um, I do think the Galaxy XR was like very easy to adjust and get to fit correctly. For me, I feel like a lot of these headsets usually are a little too big for me or might like fall off my head or something like that.
3:04 Ed Zitron? I have a giant buns, a giant, giant head, and that thing, trying to get that thing on was like balancing a cup of tea on my head.
3:12 Speaker 04 Exactly. It's never, it's never that comfortable. It's kind of weird.
3:15 Ed Zitron? Yeah.
3:15 Speaker 04 I do feel like it was easy to adjust. It wasn't the most comfortable thing to wear. Um, but I only, and I only wore it for like maybe about 20 minutes at a time. So I do feel like wearing it for extended use cases, um, the kinds of things that Samsung and Google think you'll use it for, like productivity and entertainment. I think that's, I I don't know how comfortable it would be to wear it for like, you know, if I'm working on a project or watching a movie or something.
3:38 Ed Zitron? So you wouldn't do like your actual work inside it?
3:40 Speaker 04 I would try it. I think it would just take some time to get used to, you know, wearing that thing for like an hour or longer.
3:46 Ed Zitron? Because as, as like a Vision Pro truther, and I think I mentioned this in person previously, but I can't use my Vision Pro right now. I can use it, but I can't update it unless you keep it on your head during the update, which is one of the most insane. Ideas ever, but I genuinely like that when I was trying it, I was so torn because eighty five percent of the time I fucking hate it. I just, I really, I was just like mad at it because like it would, something would like my cat would brush my head and now it would be out of focus. But there were these times when I'd get in it and be like, this is actually really cool. I'm like writing, I wrote a whole thing on it. Like it was back in the earlier days of the show. I was like, I really like this. Got some music in the background.
4:28 Ed Zitron? And then again, like Babu, my cat would knock me in the head because he's very affectionate.
4:32 Speaker 04 That's what cats do.
4:32 Ed Zitron? No, he's a lovely affectionate cat. Massive part of the show. And then I'd need to readjust it and then I would start to get headache. Did you, did you find that the software was good on the Galaxy one? Like, how was it in comparison?
4:45 Speaker 04 Yeah. So there's a couple of big things that stand out to me. Um, I think the Gemini integration is really good and it should be because that's the one thing that Google and Samsung are kind of pitching as setting this apart from the Vision Pro and, and previous attempts at mixed reality and, and VR. Uh, but the idea that you can just look at something and ask a question about it. Like in, in my demo from October, I was looking at photos in Google Photos. And yes, it's cool that you can look at them on a giant screen and everything. But for me, what felt like the new thing that this is bringing to the table is being able to look at that photo and be like, oh, where in the world do those types of trees usually grow? And it can like that combination of like knowing what you're looking at without having to really specify. I do think the Vision Pro is better at certain things like media, for example.
5:29 Ed Zitron? Right.
5:29 Speaker 04 Uh, I mean, some of the like spatial videos that have been created for the Vision Pro are just like breathtaking when you look at them. But I don't, I don't know that I would buy a Vision Pro for that reason, but it is very impressive.
5:41 Ed Zitron? It is the thing, like even the, with both of them, they have the same problem where it's like, this is a cool idea. Like, oh, I know where that tree is now. Like, great. But it's like practically within my life, when am I sitting down being like, when, where's that tree for? Like, where is, where's the practical uses in with the Vision Pro? It's like, great. I can put this on my head and walk around with it. I can kind of see who is this for?
6:05 Speaker 04 Yeah. I think that's the big question. And I feel like that's kind of, at least For me, when I try to look at, okay, what new products have been successful and did actually start a category and catch on with consumers and which ones haven't. And the thing that I've kind of noticed is the ones that haven't are when you really try to kind of force a user behavior that isn't there. And sometimes I feel like that's what's happening with these headsets is that the technology is very, very cool. It's very advanced. But it always feels like it's a step towards something more natural that we haven't gotten to yet. And you could say that about the Oculus Rift that came out more than 10 years ago. In some cases, even the headsets today, I still feel that way about.
6:44 Ed Zitron? And the Steam, have you seen the Steam frame? We just had the valve.
6:49 Speaker 04 I haven't tried it. I've seen.
6:51 Ed Zitron? I don't think, I don't, I think I just had Steve from Gamers Nexus on and he tried it a bit, but it's with all these things, it's like, I wish that had waited four years. I wish that had waited, because there are those moments, like you mentioned with the spatial video where it's like, holy shit, like this is actually really cool. Like I watched like a basketball game on the Vision Pro. I'm like, this is, this is actually.
7:11 Speaker 04 It's hard until you try it, right? And the best of things, I don't feel like that many people are going to have the opportunity to really try it at length, to work it into their lives. But yeah, the idea of like, oh my God, it really does feel like I'm sitting courtside right now. That's very cool.
7:24 Ed Zitron? And the other thing is that even if it's just a big TV, that is cool. The problem is, is you can just sit down and watch a television. You just turn the bloody thing on. I have, um, I have this Nebula X1 projector, which I fucking like. It's like an anchor. It's so good. Soundboard now. And I just got like a nice screen. I pull up and that just, even that is like two or three minutes to diddling around, but I now have a hundred inch screen in my apartment. That's so much less work than the Vision Pro, because the Vision Pro is like constant maintenance. And I feel like if they waited, I don't know, it may, Kasekawa, friend of the show, he suggests that this will just never happen. I honestly don't necessarily know if I disagree with him on this one, but it's like, I really hope it does, because if it was just something
8:08 Ed Zitron? like maybe, I don't know, like a hat that just worked, that would be cool. But we're like, no, not even.
8:15 Speaker 04 Right, exactly. And I think that's kind of why a lot of these companies are kind of working towards these smart glasses instead, because they are natural. They do feel like something you would wear, whether there was tech in them or not. But again, I feel like. Convincing people that this is something that's actually going to be more convenient might be difficult, although I don't know, I mean, people who wear glasses might say, hey, I need new glasses anyway, that looks cool, maybe I'll try it.
8:41 Ed Zitron? The thing is with the smart glasses is I just have to wonder about the social problem. Because I know if one of my friends, other than like Victoria's Song who came on wearing them, if someone was wearing them when I was like at a bar, I wouldn't want to look at them. I have to wonder how most people would feel about that.
8:59 Speaker 04 I think there's that, that's an important part. I also feel like the interaction element is going to be weird socially because you're out, let's say we're sitting here talking or we're at a cafe and we're talking about something and I'm like, oh, let me go look that up on my phone. If instead I were to say, I can just ask Gemini, are my glasses
9:16 Ed Zitron? And you're just staring dead eyed.
9:18 Speaker 04 Right, exactly.
9:20 Ed Zitron? Well, that Victoria's Song from The Verge was showing, it's like when you're looking, it is this weird kind of dead eyed, this dead eyed stare because you're just, your eye is staring at the corner. And I just wonder like, as cool as it is, what's the point of the smart glasses as well? Like, I can, I see the Vision Pro as a more, and even the Galaxy one, as a more fundamentally sound idea than the glasses. Because at some point, it's like, okay, if I'm wearing glasses, like I need guidance where I'm going, I guess that's useful, but like, am I just putting this on versus, okay, I'll put on a helmet and watch a sports game.
9:56 Speaker 04 I think the way that I see glasses, if they do take off, the reason why, I would almost think of them as like, kind of like the way you think of AirPods and wireless earbuds, like something that's on you. You can use it to listen to music, to take calls as you're walking, and then it also has that optional display so that you can, you know, see where you're going or look at directions or whatever you might want to look at, like the time, whatever. So kind of like bridging together, like what you would use a smart watch for and what you would use wireless earbuds for.
10:26 Ed Zitron? Yeah, I see that. And I, I just wonder as well, will Apple even bother, will Google even, like, actually, if Google does it again, I have to respect them after the whole Google Glass debacle.
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11:46 Speaker 05 Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.
12:01 Speaker 06 People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.
12:12 Speaker 05 And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.
12:17 Speaker 07 One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.
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12:46 Ed Zitron? Are they still around Google Glass? I want, I can't remember.
12:49 Speaker 04 I don't know where the latest on Google Glass stands. I don't think they are. I know they kind of pivoted to enterprise.
12:55 Ed Zitron? Yeah, that's why I wasn't, that's why I wasn't sure if they'd done away. Because I know Microsoft has basically killed HoloLens, but they have a very small enterprise division.
13:04 Speaker 04 Yeah, I mean, at this point with, I feel like, I don't know for sure. I can't speak for Google, but it would make sense for them to, I feel like, focus more on Android XR and the future of that platform at this point.
13:15 Ed Zitron? Well, for me, taking a slight change. The one thing I will say is, this is an unpopular opinion. I'm gonna have my house for this one. I love the iPhone Air. And I heard that they're delaying the next one to like 2037. I'm very disappointed, I'm very upset by this. I love the iPhone Air.
13:30 Speaker 04 I do like it too.
13:31 Ed Zitron? Everyone's mad at me for it.
13:32 Speaker 04 No, I think it's a good phone. And for Apple, I feel like they don't, you know, that's all they need is a good iPhone. People will buy it, right? It doesn't have to reinvent the wheel every single time they come out with a new phone. I do think where Apple can struggle sometimes is when you have these in-between models that are like not too different in price from whatever the cheapest iPhone and the most expensive iPhone is. Like the, for, for whatever reason, this is just again, my own observation. Apple's audience has a hard time latching on to like whatever that like in-between model is, whether it's the Plus or the Mini or the Air. It seems like it's hard for them to generate demand.
14:08 Ed Zitron? It does kind of feel like a weird, I wonder, I hope. Because the whole thing, it feels like, I didn't think of it as an in-between as well. Because you're right, it feels like they would naturally try and make the main ones this thin. Because that's the whole reason I like it. It feels like a smaller, it feels like an in-between between an iPad Mini and an iPad. But I love, I love the iPad Pro. I love having a very thin device. And every phone's getting fatter, it feels like, I don't know.
14:32 Speaker 04 Yeah, and I think we're at that point also where people aren't super wowed by how thin technology can get because we've been there for a while. So I don't think. This premise of an iPhone Air really hit the same way the iPad Air did, the MacBook Air did. And I think it's just kind of for that reason that we're desensitized to it. And I think Apple shoppers tend to fall into two categories. Either I've had an iPhone for years and I'm not even thinking about what phone I have. I'm just gonna get the next iPhone whenever my current one dies. And then you have the people that do get excited about new iPhones. And those people do care about things like maybe not having an extra camera or, you know, the best battery life or whatever.
15:13 Ed Zitron? It's also the camera's pretty bad. It's I've gone around it, but like it sucks.
15:18 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's I mean, like, I'm not, I'm the person that takes casual photos all the time. And I think the camera's fine. I haven't been blown away by it in my own, just, you know, usage here and there.
15:29 Ed Zitron? It does feel like we're approaching peak phone, though.
15:32 Speaker 04 Oh, I feel like we've been there for a while.
15:34 Ed Zitron? Like, the iPhone 17 Pro Max, whatever, it's just, it's the same phone.
15:39 Speaker 04 Exactly. I feel like we've been at peak phone for a while. And I do feel like that's part of what Apple's trying to do here with the iPhone Air is show that it can make something that's different, that's unexpected, that's not just the same phone repackaged.
15:51 Ed Zitron? And then people hated it. So now, now, now they don't know what to do.
15:55 Speaker 04 I do feel like, and this is a common argument, but I do feel like it's a step towards a foldable iPhone, at least in my opinion. Because the technology needs to be, they need to engineer the phone differently for it to be foldable. It's not just about the crease and all that, but you have to think about the battery, the components. And that, like, engineering wise, that was a big step forward with the iPhone Air.
16:15 Ed Zitron? I have to wonder as well if the reason they have jumped on the foldables is they're still very experimental. They jerry rigs everything. There was someone who did a review of a foldable and they made it, like, one of the Google ones that's set on fire. And it just from like bending it too much, it's like, if we're still there, Apple doesn't want to touch this with a 50 foot pole.
16:35 Speaker 04 Yeah, I feel like foldables have gotten really good. I feel like Samsungs in particular, like, because they have been doing this for so long. It's finally gotten to the point where the fold feels like a regular phone. And that's really cool, but I do feel like it's still a subset of. The phone market, most people just want a new phone, but I agree. I feel like the minute there is a foldable iPhone, I'm gonna buy one. Mostly out of curiosity, but also because I really do enjoy using foldable phones and it does make the experience feel a little different. And this, like the iPhone Air, to me, as soon as I picked it up, I was like, this just feels like a Z Flip that doesn't fold in half.
17:11 Ed Zitron? Yeah.
17:11 Speaker 04 Like the shape is the same.
17:13 Ed Zitron? Oh, in the Galaxy.
17:14 Speaker 04 Uh, yeah, that's like the Galaxy um flip phone one. And then of course Motorola has one as well.
17:19 Ed Zitron? Yeah. I know Michael Fisher, Mr. Mobile himself loves those things. And that's like the trifold ones as well. I love these crazy Chinese phones where it's like three giant things that you unfold. Probably breaks very.
17:31 Speaker 04 Samsung just announced theirs like last night too. Yeah.
17:34 Ed Zitron? Yes. I want more weird phones.
17:37 Speaker 04 Me too. I want phones to be weird again. I had a Microsoft Kin back in the day, like I had the Samsung Juke. I had all these weird phones.
17:43 Ed Zitron? Tell me about, what is the Microsoft Kin? I remember the name, but I don't remember what it was.
17:48 Speaker 04 So this was, and this was like way before I was writing about phones. I was just like, this thing's weird. I want it. Um, it was their social media phone.
17:55 Ed Zitron? Oh, my God. Yeah. Oh.
17:57 Speaker 04 So like your front screen.
17:58 Ed Zitron? Picture now. I'll go, I'll go look at this.
18:00 Speaker 04 Yes, that was like peak weird phone. It like had this cover screen that would look like your Facebook feed and then you would open it up. And there would be a keyboard on the inside. I had the second generation one. So that one looked a little bit more like a regular phone.
18:12 Ed Zitron? Looks like an egg.
18:13 Speaker 04 No, not the egg one. The other one. Yeah, that first one.
18:15 Ed Zitron? Yeah, they, so they had one one that looked like a Palm Pre, it looks like, and then one that kind of looked like a normal phone. Twenty ten as well.
18:24 Speaker 04 Yeah.
18:24 Ed Zitron? What a, what a classic twenty ten decision.
18:28 Speaker 04 Exactly. I, I loved it. I thought it was so cool, but it was so glitchy. And that's why I ended up getting rid of it was that like the operating system just crashed one day and I just couldn't use it anymore. And this was before I really knew how to like troubleshoot things and before I was really even interested in technology. And um, I just got it. I think at, at that point I finally switched to a smartphone. But yeah, I mean, phones were weird back then and it was really cool and I kind of miss that. But I feel like foldable phones, to your point, are filling that void. Cause if you look at the common thread between weird phones is that they're all trying to be some kind of like. Like hybrid device.
19:02 Ed Zitron? Yeah.
19:03 Speaker 04 Like those phones of the 2010s were like, oh, you still kind of wanna use your keyboard, but you also want something that feels like a smartphone and, you know.
19:10 Ed Zitron? My favorite was, so I definitely, the BlackBerry Storm, I don't know if you remember that as far. There was that weird generation when everyone was just trying something weird. And there was this horrible, horrible BlackBerry where it was like haptic, but it just felt like pressing into fudge.
19:26 Speaker 04 Oh, gosh, yeah.
19:27 Ed Zitron? So cool. But I just looked this up, Samsung Duke, what the? It looked like a, looked like a key ring.
19:34 Speaker 04 Yeah, it, um, it was supposed to be like a MP3 player slash phone. It was weird, but also it came out at the point where you could already store your music on a regular phone. But I don't know, I thought it was cool and weird and it was so tiny. Yeah, it was so tiny.
19:48 Ed Zitron? I kind of love how small it is. It looks like a chocolate bar.
19:51 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah.
19:52 Ed Zitron? It like swings open. I, I miss when we were doing weird shit with.
19:57 Speaker 04 Me too.
19:57 Ed Zitron? There was that weird, there were just everyone.
19:59 Speaker 04 Everything just looks like this now.
20:01 Ed Zitron? Yeah, everything's a brick.
20:02 Speaker 04 Yes.
20:03 Ed Zitron? And it's a shame. It feels like everything is just kind of normalizing around it when we need more weird shit. But I guess now we've now seen what happens when you, actually no, the iPhone Air wasn't weird enough. That's the problem.
20:13 Speaker 04 Exactly. I think that that's, you know, when I talk about those like in between phones. And I think the, what makes it hard to kind of really create a lot of demand for those phones is that they, they're not different enough. They're just in between and they're not that different in price. And I think that's, you know, a big part of what can make it difficult to kind of sell somebody on that. It's not that much less expensive than the Pro, but it's thinner. So like, do you?
20:37 Ed Zitron? It's, and also they're still like a thousand dollars.
20:39 Speaker 04 Right.
20:40 Ed Zitron? These are not cheap.
20:41 Speaker 04 No, not at all. No, it's meant to be like a Pro that's thinner, I think, except, you know, hardware is different, obviously.
20:47 Ed Zitron? And it's pretty fast. I like it a lot. It's just, I'm annoyed because the camera is, it's just shitting up. It's not that it's bad. It's like just a little bit worse. Like it can't really zoom. You have to digital zoom.
20:59 Speaker 04 Yeah, it doesn't have a lot of zoom. Even digitally, it doesn't zoom in that far. Yeah.
21:02 Ed Zitron? It's weird how little has happened with Apple in the last year as well. Cause they tried the Vision Pro and then they just went, ah, mm mm.
21:09 Speaker 04 Yeah, I don't know. I feel like the Vision Pro is one of those things that it's gonna, I don't know. I feel like people were expecting it for a long time. The expectations were really high. And I think for Apple, they're especially high because they have this history of creating, not necessarily being the first, but being the first to get people excited about a new category.
21:30 Ed Zitron? Category creator, yeah.
21:31 Speaker 04 Yeah, and like show how this should be done, like with the smartwatch. Like, the Apple Watch was not the first smartwatch by any means, but it was the first one that got kind of popular, or popular enough, at least.
21:40 Ed Zitron? And they were smart enough to treat it as a fashion item, which...
21:43 Speaker 04 Right. Although that's not what it is at all now. It's so funny to see how that's, not that they don't care about fashion. Yes.
21:50 Ed Zitron? The launch was like a vanity, a Vogue spread, and they were really, there was a $10,000 amaze one.
21:55 Speaker 04 Yes, oh my god. I remember that.
21:58 Ed Zitron? I love that they tried that and then just walked away, just like, yeah, that's a sports thing now.
22:02 Speaker 04 And that's the thing is like, when you create a new category, you, it's really hard to predict what people are actually gonna use it for, or what they're gonna gravitate towards.
22:11 Ed Zitron? I think they were doing it just for the marketing. I think it was literally just to get people to write about it in a different way.
22:16 Speaker 04 But also, smartwatches were so ugly back then, though. That's the other thing, is that the reason why...
22:20 Ed Zitron? What were the other ones? There was like a dad...
22:23 Speaker 04 There was the Pebble, which I loved so much, honestly.
22:26 Ed Zitron? They're back.
22:26 Speaker 04 It looked, yes, they are back. You know, the original Pebble watch didn't look like anything special, but it was like...
22:32 Ed Zitron? Was it an E-ink as well, or was this...? Yeah, I love that.
22:35 Speaker 04 It was like funky and weird. It was like, had a monochrome display, and I just loved... And it's funny, because I'm not usually this person, like, that cares about customizing things, but you could customize the watch face to be like, literally anything you want. And talk about like weird gadgets, like, I feel like that was also like, not weird, but they had such a fun community around it that would develop all these custom watch faces and things like that. And it was just really, it was a cool little device.
23:11 Speaker 01 Cash Flow Crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.
23:41 Speaker 02 Empower is all about helping you invest well, so you can go out and live a little. And their Free Empower Personal Dashboard shows you your full financial life in one place. You'll be able to see your net worth, monitor budgets, analyze your portfolio, set retirement goals, and more. Whether you're saving for something big, want to treat yourself, friends, or family, or meet long-term goals, Empower helps you see where you stand. You've worked hard for your money, and Empower can help you make the most of it. Download the Empower Personal Dashboard or visit empower.com. Not an Empower client paid or sponsored.
24:13 Speaker 05 Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.
24:28 Speaker 06 People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.
24:39 Speaker 05 And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.
24:44 Speaker 07 One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.
24:50 Speaker 05 So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.
25:13 Ed Zitron? I feel like that era was great. I realized there was a lot of fraud on Indiegogo and Kickstarter, but there was also just weird shit. And now that's all in China.
25:21 Speaker 04 Yeah.
25:21 Ed Zitron? It's just GP. You play with any GPD stuff? You ever seen them?
25:24 Speaker 04 No.
25:25 Ed Zitron? Yeah, they just make gaming PCs, but they're handhelds and they all cost-
25:29 Speaker 04 Oh, that's cool.
25:29 Ed Zitron? They have one. It's cool, but it's also you're like, "You wacky sons of a bitch." They're doing a handheld one where you have an external battery and it's just like, "Sure, why not?"
25:38 Speaker 04 It's like, at that point-
25:39 Ed Zitron? Why not? And they always make $4 million on Kickstarter. I hope all of that money's not from criminal enterprises. I'm not suggesting it is, but every time. But it's just, I wish that there was, I'm sure that there are economic reasons. I'm sure someone will shoot me an email about this. I wish we had more American firms willing to try shit. Because it's dull right now. It's boring out.
26:00 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's, things have looked the same for a long time. And you had like a brief moment in like the mid 2010s, like 2016, 2017, when Alexa was just starting to become really popular. And then everyone thought the smart home was going to take off in a way that it never did.
26:15 Ed Zitron? Wow, yeah.
26:16 Speaker 04 But I'm thinking about like these different phases of like, everyone's like, "Oh, this is going to be the next big thing after phones." And like, we still have not reached that moment yet.
26:23 Ed Zitron? We don't have any, I mean, to the point of everything being the same as well. It's like, you buy a, you buy a Google device, it's got Gemini on it. You buy an Apple device, it's got Apple Intelligence. You immediately turn it off. It's just, everything kind of feels and looks the same. And you watch a commercial, it's just more fucking Gemini. I don't know if you use Gemini. I still don't know why Gemini 3 has caused so much. It's the same.
26:48 Speaker 04 Yeah, I mean, it's like a, sure, it's like a better version of the same. I've used it here and there. You know, I don't, I use AI a lot in like my like personal life or whatever, just to get things done. But it's not like, I don't think we're at the point yet where, at least in my personal usage, I don't see that much of a difference between-
27:08 Speaker 04 Chat GPT and Gemini in terms of what I use them for. And I think it's that's one interesting thing I feel like about AI compared to a lot of the other products in our lives. Like when you have a phone or a computer, you're like, okay, I'm a Mac or a PC person, I'm iOS or Android. I feel like with AI, people do use different models for different things. I don't feel like people are loyal to just one all the time.
27:28 Ed Zitron? I also think that it's the, you know how I feel about AI, but it's also, it's not clear what makes one different from the other. Like with a, I guess that's the case with phones as well, except phones don't just burn money every time you turn them on. But it's, it's strange because this Gemini thing has really taken off. The stock market, you've got people writing, you wrote this piece about like, oh, Google is the new leader in AI. No, it's good. But it's just like, why? And I think it comes down to, they mostly do the same. It makes me think, people are gonna love this. I think that like, the only company that will even do LLMs long term is Google, and then they'll just make it, they'll pull back the prices. But it's like, no one can really explain what the difference is, and thus, no one actually has any brand power.
28:12 Speaker 04 Yeah, I think for Google, it's an extension of like their business model naturally. Like, people use Google Search to find information and do things. And now, people have started using LLMs for that. So of course, it makes sense for them to do that. And they have an advantage in that sense. I think Google has that advantage, right? That you have all these people that don't even know about AI are just gonna naturally start using their product because it's Gemini, and their models are now baked into almost everything Google does. Right, AI mode, everything else. You know, OpenAI, I think their advantage has been that they were, you know, ChatGPT kind of became a household name pretty quickly. So it's hard to kind of, once any brand has that
28:55 Speaker 04 kind of like, has made that kind of impression, I feel like it's, it's hard to compete with that or, you know, I feel like that's why I see so much consolidation in the tech industry in particular is because it's, it's really hard to be that third, right? You have like one or two that are really big, and then being that third is, is really challenging.
29:11 Ed Zitron? It's also, there's little, I feel like there's not really much reward for being first with this as well, or even being the household name, just burn a bunch of money. There was a story in the information that came out this week, this will run now a week after that, but where it's like, OpenAI's own code red because of Gemini, it's like. And you read the article, and it's really funny because there's a bit where it's just like, step one, make chat GPT's answers better. Step two, make it able to do more. Step three, make people like it. It's like, what have you been doing? What have you been doing the last six months? Honestly, that may be what Gemini three is. It's just that they said, I went, what would make people use this more?
29:50 Speaker 04 Well, what's interesting is like you have kind of the opposite, like, OpenAI and Google are in the opposite scenarios. They're like the inverse of each other, like, Google is already playing in so many different areas from search to phones to all these other products that, shopping, right? All of these things that we do every day online. And because they have that in place already, they can just kind of sprinkle AI into things as they go along. OpenAI had the opposite where they had this one like breakout AI service and now they're, you know, kind of in this mode where they're like, hey, we're not just this one thing. We're the next big internet company, right? That's kind of what they're projecting based on all of these areas that they're trying to expand into.
30:31 Speaker 04 So I think it's kind of interesting. Back years ago, the New York Times had that piece where Google was saying, we're in a code
30:37 Ed Zitron? Yes, yes, yes.
30:38 Speaker 04 GPT and now OpenAI, according to that article, is, you know, facing that moment of its own.
30:44 Ed Zitron? I just, I also think that no one knows what to do with large language, but I just don't, I think at this point so much money's gone in and you can't get a straight answer about out of any of them as to why you're using them like,
30:54 Speaker 04 Yeah.
30:54 Ed Zitron? in your personal, I imagine brainstorming stuff or like looking stuff up like.
30:58 Speaker 04 Right, like stuff that I would probably use Google for otherwise. Yeah.
31:02 Ed Zitron? And it's like, if this ends with just Google manages to pull in the customers that OpenAI had and then ends up probably making it, putting some of this away because it's too expensive. It's just like, of course, if this is, that actually is probably how it ends. We're just like a large company destroying a startup and nothing happening. I hope so. I, the sooner the better. I mean. It's, it is three years and we've not really had a proper use case beyond better search. It's strange. It's everywhere.
31:32 Speaker 04 Yeah, I would agree in that. Like, I do think it's moving fast in terms of like, it started out, you know, the shift from just being able to answer simple questions to being able to like reason and whatever and think on these questions more. But to your point, that's not the use case. That's the technology that's changing.
31:52 Ed Zitron? It's also just, it's also just more search. Like, it really is just knowledge search instead of web search.
31:58 Speaker 04 Right.
31:59 Ed Zitron? And sometimes it gets it wrong.
32:00 Speaker 04 Well, I'm sure, I'm sure you've heard this term more times than you would like. I even hate saying it because I feel like it's become such a nonsense buzzword. You could probably guess what I'm gonna say. But AI agents are supposedly gonna be the next step of whatever this AI search trend is becoming.
32:16 Ed Zitron? I love this. Well, it's funny. When you go and look at the term agent, it just means like chat. It really does just mean chatbot. Or even you go back to 2023, that's how OpenAI defined it. But I loved, I saw this statistics, just like 11% was AI agents. It's like, no, it wasn't. If you're just considering AI search agents, if that's just search engines. And I keep reading about these shopping integrations as well, but I can never make them work. Because I go and try. I go and try the Walmart and it didn't work. I managed to make it do something in Canva.
32:46 Speaker 04 Right.
32:47 Ed Zitron? But it's like, I could have just done that in Canva.
32:51 Speaker 04 Right. And that's the thing. That's, I think, for me, where a lot of the skepticism comes in, is that I feel like we've been talking about these agents for years. To your point, since ChatGPT came out, they're like, this is what it's gonna be.
33:02 Ed Zitron? These things are gonna go and do stuff.
33:03 Speaker 04 Right. These things are gonna do stuff for you. And I do think that could be really helpful, honestly. But I also have a lot of skepticism and concerns about, like, I don't know, handing over anything that I remotely care about being done the right way to an AI agent. Like, I'm skeptical that people are gonna trust it enough to handle things.
33:21 Ed Zitron? Well, it's also, it doesn't seem to be able to do it, is my big thing. But even when you looked at like the AI browsers from like, was it Comet from perplexity and Atlas from OpenAI or whatever. When you look, there's like this thing of the prompt injection attacks. I don't know if you've seen this.
33:35 Speaker 04 Yes, I've seen a little bit of that.
33:37 Ed Zitron? With just the website. If you use them on a website, the website could attack you. I, what I love, though, is the people who are innovating appear to just be criminals. The people who are like actually finding AI innovations are like Cambodian pig butchering operations. North Korea, I was, North Korea, I heard this story the other day from a mate where it's North Korean people are using, like in, in like hacker groups are applying to and getting American jobs.
34:06 Speaker 04 Oh, really?
34:07 Ed Zitron? And using deep, called deep fakes for the know your customer stuff and like, it's really fucking grim. It's just like, no, everything I read is just like, man, there is innovation, crime. Well, actually, Robert Evans of Coolzone Meter in 2024 said that was the actual innovation. We're walking to a restaurant, he said, no, that's where it is. It's like fraud, massive fraud.
34:29 Speaker 04 No, I mean, and I feel like anytime you have a new technology, the, the bad guys always find a way to make use of it before, you know, faster than the good guys to keep up with it sometimes.
34:38 Ed Zitron? They are the only ones. They're making, I will say, North Korean hacker groups, I'm pretty sure are making more profit than OpenAI. Which is cool. I think that that's cool. I think, I think that that's the world we deserve. Honestly, and I think that's where we're heading towards because when you create a technology that you're not really sure what it does, of course, somebody malign is going to use it to your own point.
34:58 Speaker 04 Right.
34:59 Ed Zitron? It's like, of course, they're going to find a way around it. All right, as we wrap up, is there anything you're actually looking forward to in the tech industry, though? Is there anything you're, anything on the, on the horizon? It's okay if there isn't.
35:11 Speaker 04 Honestly, there isn't really just one thing right now. I feel like, you know, all of this AI stuff is a little dizzying and there's a lot of skepticism about it. But I will say as someone who's been covering this industry for like a little more than 10 years and a lot of that just being the same, I feel like it's been fun to write about something that it does feel new, whether for better or for worse. It is something that feels new and different. Uh, what am I looking forward to? I, I want weird phones again. That's what I'm looking forward to. I hope that phones get weird again.
35:39 Ed Zitron? I want, I want things with hand cranks on them. No, I mean, that's the Playdate console, but I, I mean, even the Nintendo Switch 2 was kind of safe. I was, it's good. I like it a lot.
35:50 Speaker 04 But it's weird for Nintendo to do that, I feel like, like doing.
35:53 Ed Zitron? After the Wii U. I loved it.
35:56 Speaker 04 No, I have like almost every Nintendo console, but yeah. I feel like coming out with more of the same is not usually in their playbook, but the Switch was so successful that they kind of had to. People, could you imagine if the Switch 2 was entirely different and wasn't a better version of the same console? I feel like.
36:13 Ed Zitron? I do wonder if we're gonna get a pushback on this eventually, though. If people are just gonna, we need some weird shit again. That's what I, the energy I'm putting into the universe today.
36:22 Speaker 04 Yes, me too.
36:23 Ed Zitron? So where can people find you?
36:24 Speaker 04 You can find me on, I'm on X, Blue Sky and Threads, at Lisa Adichiko, and you can also find my work, of course, at CNN.com.
36:32 Ed Zitron? Wonderful, and you can find me at betteroffline.com, subscribe to the newsletter, email me on my webverse. Thank you for listening, love you all.
36:48 Ed Zitron? Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matt Osowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects at mattosowski.com. M A T T O S O W S K I dot com. You can email me at [email protected] or visit betteroffline.com to find more podcast links and of course my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat dot where's your ed dot app to visit the Discord and go to r slash betteroffline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening. Better Offline is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
37:55 Speaker 02 Empower is all about helping you invest well, so you can go out and live a little. And their Free Empower Personal Dashboard shows you your full financial life in one place. You'll be able to see your net worth, monitor budgets. Analyze your portfolio, set retirement goals, and more. Whether you're saving for something big, want to treat yourself, friends, or family, or meet long-term goals, Empower helps you see where you stand. You've worked hard for your money, and Empower can help you make the most of it. Download the Empower Personal Dashboard or visit empower.com. Not an Empower client paid or sponsored.
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39:09 Speaker 06 Zolair 150mg is a prescription medication used to treat food allergy in people one year of age and older to reduce allergic reactions due to accidental exposure to one or more foods. While taking Zolair, you should continue to avoid all foods to which you are allergic. Don't use if you are allergic to Zolair. Zolair may cause a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. Tell your doctor if you ever had anaphylaxis. Get help right away if you have trouble breathing or if you have swelling of your throat or tongue. Zolair should not be used for the emergency treatment of allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis. Zolair is for maintenance use to reduce allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, while avoiding food allergens. Serious side effects such as cancer, fever, muscle aches and rash, parasitic infection, or heart and circulation problems have been reported. Please see zolair.com for full prescribing information. Ask an allergist about Zolair.
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