Hands-On With the Vision Pro, Big Tech's Back in Washington, Elon Musk’s $55 Billion Payday — With Joanna Stern

Joanna Stern from the Wall Street Journal joins us to talk about her hands-on experience with the Vision Pro. We also break down the dramatic big tech hearings in Washington, Meta's monster earnings report, Elon Musk’s $55 billion pay package, and Peter Thiel’s steroid Olympics. --- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. For weekly updates on the show, sign up for the pod newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6901970121829801984/ Questions? Feedback? Write to: [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Joanna Stern from The Wall Street Journal joins us to talk about her hands-on experience with the Vision Pro. We also break down the dramatic big tech hearings in Washington, Elon Musk's $55 billion pay package that may or may not end up going to him, and Peter Thiel's steroid Olympics. Yes, it's going to be a classic edition of Big Technology Fridays. All that and more, coming up right after this. This episode is brought to you by Genesis. What does it actually take to put a Gentic AI to work across an entire enterprise? I recently spoke with Genesis chairman and CEO Tony Bates about why orchestration is emerging as a competitive advantage in customer experience, and what companies need to get right in the AI era. Then, I sat down with

• 0:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  Adam Mitchell, head of enterprise business solutions at Voya Financial, to go inside a large-scale Agentic CX transformation, including the business decisions, trade-offs, and lessons along the way. You can watch both conversations now on my YouTube channel today. It's never been more challenging to get frontier compute. How do you know where to look, who to trust, or how much to pay? Akash is an open cloud that provides easy access, flexibility, and peace of mind. That's how companies like Razer were able to cut their inference cost by 15 times. Visit akash.network/alex for a free consultation. That's akash.network/alex for a free consultation.

• 1:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  Welcome to Big Technology Podcast Friday Edition, where we break down the news in our traditional, cool-headed, nuanced format. What a week of news we have for you today. We are talking about the Vision Pro, which is live, basically, or just went for sale hours ago. People walking out of the Apple headquarters in our Apple store on Fifth Avenue, and a bunch of people applauding them. It's pretty weird. Anyway, we want to go hands-on with the device, and to do that, we were going to bring you a guest who's actually been hands-on with it, has experienced it, spent many days within the Vision Pro, and can tell us all about what it is and what it will be. I want to welcome to the show Joanna Stern. She's an Emmy Award-winning digital video and print journalist, a senior

• 2:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  personal technology columnist, and all-around great reporter from The Wall Street Journal. Joanna, welcome to the show.

• 2:15Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me, guys.

• 2:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Thanks for being here, and we're also joined, as always, by Ranjan Roy from margins. Ranjan, welcome.

• 2:22Speaker 02

  I still have not tried the Vision Pro, but Joanna, watching you skiing and chopping onions has gotten me even more excited about it.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  Those are the first things I'm assuming you're gonna do in it.

• 2:32Speaker 02

  Those are the first things I will do.

• 2:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, so Joanna, just give us, give us like a perspective of like, is this device

• 2:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  gonna be something that people are gonna wanna use like on a consumer level? Or is it so beta at this point that it'll be just the enthusiasts and the developers?

• 2:51Speaker 01

  I've been, I've been thinking about this all week because there's so much in it. And when you see non enthusiasts and non developers try it out, I was at the Today Show and NBC earlier this week and just seeing people try this out and colleagues, like they like love it. They're like, wow, that's magic. That's amazing. And then I start thinking, okay, that's the first reaction. What would these people really be doing with this in their lives right now as it stands today? Which is a heavy, bulky headset with a battery that comes out the top of it. And it's buggy in some places and I can list all of the, you know, first generation issues. And that's where it really comes down to, I think everyone should try this thing.

• 3:36Speaker 01

  But I don't know, a small subset of people should buy this thing. And I'm hoping the people who buy this thing are the thing, people who are going to make this thing better in the future. Those are the developers out there. Those are the enthusiasts who are going to be pushing people in the tech community to do more with this type of technology. But that's, that's how I'm feeling after a week of, of this thing.

• 3:59Speaker 02

  So how are you gonna be using it next week? First week, being videotaped, wearing it for 24 hours straight, I think it was. How are you gonna use it next week?

• 4:11Speaker 01

  That is absolutely the biggest question. So I start, like, I finished the review. Oh, boy. What day is it today?

• 4:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  Friday.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  Friday. Zero concept of time. And I think that's kind of.

• 4:23Speaker 02

  You're in the metaverse now.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  I'm in the metaverse. All I've done is talk about the Vision Pro all week. I've done, just done so much around it. But so first week, obviously had to use it, had to test all of the things. That sort of ended on Tuesday because the review posted Tuesday morning. Now I've been doing a lot of demos of it, but yesterday was like the first day I went to work. I had like a normal day of work, kind of in between media hits and stuff like that, talking more about the Vision Pro. And I brought it with me and at my office in, at the Wall Street Journal headquarters. Look, I'm gonna say right here, I have a crappy monitor there. Like, I guess they just don't think that, you know, the senior tech columnist, you know, of the Wall Street Journal should have a decent monitor. And so I like, put it on, and I was using it to work.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  I have a private office, a glass office, and I was using it with a giant Mac monitor. One of the coolest things you can do with it is that you pair it with your Mac. You look at your Mac, if they're both logged into the same Apple ID, and your monitor just pops up. You get like a 60, maybe it's 40 inch monitor, sort of hovering over your Mac. And I was using, I was fully working, I was doing my newsletter, I was writing my newsletter in there, I was listening to music, and people just kept walking by laughing at me, taking photos of me. And I could see them, but I was pretending I couldn't, because I don't want to be bothered.

• 5:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, I just loved your tweet. You said, "First day working at Wall Street Journal's offices with the Vision Pro on. People keep coming by laughing at me and asking if I'm even working. First of all, I'm always working. Second of all, I'm writing my newsletter for tomorrow on a giant Mac monitor. Third of all, I can see you naked." And then you had to follow up in case HR was reading that the last part was a joke.

• 6:00Speaker 01

  But like, so I do like working in this thing.

• 6:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  And that's kind of, that hits on like, the use that Ranjan has been looking forward to the most, is that this is gonna be an enterprise device that will be helpful in the office.

• 6:12Speaker 01

  But here's my like downside, and Neelai Patel talked about this in The Verge Review. Like, I have a backpack that I bring my MacBook in every day, take it on the train. Am I gonna like be carrying, and I don't actually have it right here, but I have this, it comes with this giant travel pack, and it looks like a pillow, basically. And you have, like, I would need a whole separate bag to bring that to and from work every day. Like, am I gonna carry like my Vision Pro satchel and like my backpack with my MacBook Pro?

• 6:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  You didn't see that in any of the product photos that Apple released. I wonder why that was.

• 6:49Speaker 01

  The travel.

• 6:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  The travel bag and the battery pack. There was, the Vanity Fair picture of Tim Cook, you couldn't even see the line coming from that thing. It was as if their battery pack did not exist. I wonder if that was in the agreement.

• 7:04Speaker 02

  But this is why you need two Vision Pros, one for home, one for work. I think that's the grand Apple strategy.

• 7:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, what's $7,000 in the long run?

• 7:13Speaker 01

  Right, right. I think maybe my answer is probably just to get the Wall Street Journal to buy me a nice monitor for my office.

• 7:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  So we have actually a great comment here from Jesse Hempel that we are assuming that people are going to be working in an office. Does, is this, when we think about like the future of work, is this something that you can start to like imagine wearing at home, beaming your coworkers in, and then like that's the office all of a sudden?

• 7:36Speaker 01

  It is when Apple figures out the persona.

• 7:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right, because that was the other, that was the big problem.

• 7:43Speaker 02

  Can you talk about the personas a bit from the review?

• 7:46Speaker 01

  Yes, but I do, just to Jesse's point, I, working from home and it is amazing and like I, or travel working, I think is that thing. Like I do have a nice monitor at my desk here and I have been using it at home, obviously when I was writing the review. But I think travel working will be a big, big use because I usually even travel with an iPad to use a second monitor while I'm traveling. But back to personas. So to quickly explain, when you're wearing the headset, there's no, there's tons of cameras, but there's no cameras facing outward really at you, right? There's no webcam to easily capture your whole face. So what Apple does cleverly is they create a 3D scan of your face using the camera. So you go through this process when you're setting up the Vision Pro, you hold the Vision Pro

• 8:31Speaker 01

  out in front of you and it asks you to do a series of, you know, basically face exercises or head exercises, up, down, side, all the, all the things, right? And it scans and then you put the headset back on and it creates a persona of you. I cannot describe what mine looks like. People just have to see it. Many have said I look like a deformed Mona Lisa. To quote my colleague Jason Gay, he said it botox from hell. To quote my sister, terrifying, scary, just no. To quote my father, frightening. So it just doesn't look, it's not me. Or yeah, as Neelai Patel said, they did you dirty, Joe, is my favorite quote in the video.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  And so, look, and I've seen others being recreated better, but it's not the meta avatar, cartoon avatar situation.

• 9:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Supposed to look like a person.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  Supposed to look like you, but it just doesn't. And anytime I call someone, they're just laughing hysterically at me. So I don't know how I would get work done.

• 9:36Speaker 02

  Do you think personas are going to be, you know, a consistent feature in the next iterations of this? Or do you think Apple's gonna step back? Because I think I read somewhere that they, you know, very carefully clarified that this is a beta feature and, you know, we're learning from this. Do you think it goes away? Or do you think they're gonna get it right?

• 9:56Speaker 01

  I think they'll probably double down on it, but it's hard. It's like, could it be one of these features, you know, certain things which, you know, with the Apple Watch, if you remember, and I think it might still be there. They did this with the first Apple Watch, when you could send your heartbeat to people. Is that feature still there? It's certainly not one they market, right?

• 10:16Speaker 02

  It's still there. It's still there. I do it as a joke to some friends sometimes. You can like, write out these letters in this weird animation form and everything.

• 10:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  The original be real. Don't send me a photo. Send me your heartbeat. Just show me you're alive, that's all.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  Just want to know you're alive.

• 10:29Speaker 02

  It's almost Valentine's Day.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  There are certain things that like, Apple realizes as they go, yeah, this isn't working. Let's, let's not market this, or let's change course. In this situation, you have to, like, if you want this to be a work device, you have to have a way of video conferencing. There's just no way around it. So much of our work is that. Now, it, there has to be a solution there. I can see it just getting rapidly better, or I could see them giving us some other options. Like, I don't understand, like, I, Apple, we have our Apple emojis. Like, we all probably have made those silly, you know, cartoonish things. I'm assuming they didn't do that because they didn't want to be like Meta. They didn't want to have the, like, oh, competing, you know, versus of...

• 11:13Speaker 02

  Plaything, yeah.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, I think that just would step into too many memes, but...

• 11:18Speaker 01

  Who knows? I mean, they gotta do better than this.

• 11:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  That gets us still to a crucial point, which is how Apple has marketed this device. And by the way, we definitely want to get to like the cool things that you saw there and like what blew you away. But let's, let's talk quickly about the rollout. So Ron and I have had this little debate going on about like how big of a deal that Apple was going to make the Vision Pro, because we know this is probably a beta model. We know this isn't anywhere near where they want to get. And to the point where like, well, maybe they're going to downplay the Vision Pro and just get it out into the hands of developers. And then see what happens. Not what happened at all. They have a big Vision Pro logo on the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue. They, Tim Cook basically is talking like he met God inside that device.

• 12:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  The Vanity Fair story talking about how like it's the next generation of computing on your face. Some of the, getting James Cameron and Jon Favreau to talk about it. Like the expectations are now, I think we can all agree, through the roof. So I'm curious, number one, was that a mistake? I'm actually curious to hear from you, Joanna and Ron John about that, about that point. And then B, we don't really know the use case that they're marketing for. Like, is it watching videos? Is it setting timers on top of your cooking? Which that was my favorite part of the video. Or, you know, is it entertainment? Is it enterprise, right? We've talked about work, maybe it's entertainment. Those are two different buyers, consumer versus enterprise. So what do we think about the rollout?

• 12:46Speaker 01

  You're going first, Ron John.

• 12:48Speaker 02

  I'm, I'm happy that they've gone big on it and I think they should go big. I think, and especially when we get into the cooler parts of it, especially the entertainment side of it, which I'm very excited about. This is a big step for their future and they need their next iPhone. They need their next kind of killer device that drives the entire company. And I think this space of spatial computing is they're calling it. Which I think it, I would be curious how you guys would distinguish spatial computing in the metaverse? And if there is a difference between the two? But I, I think. I'm still picturing a world where wearing a headset in a lot of different situations is going to become normal. I think, I mean, sitting on an airplane, sitting at work, these things

• 13:30Speaker 02

  won't be weird, especially working from home or working, as you said, travel work from a hotel. So I think going big and establishing it as a category is the right move. And also, I think, again, Apple can take the heat. Apple can take a little bit of blowback. This is not, again, as a someone who embarrassingly waited in line for the first iPhone and had Apple employees cheering for me as I walked out of the Fifth Avenue store. I was like, I was ridiculed when I went back to work for doing, waiting in line for four hours. So, so I think it's the right move.

• 14:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  Are you waiting in line today?

• 14:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:06Speaker 02

  Now I'm sitting here podcasting with you guys.

• 14:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, that's obviously the right choice, but Apple-

• 14:11Speaker 01

  But you ordered one, right?

• 14:13Speaker 02

  I have not ordered one. I want to, I want to try, I'm waiting for a friend to order one, and one of my friends has, and I'm going to try it on, and then I'll probably pull the trigger pretty quickly.

• 14:26Speaker 01

  I wrote about this in my newsletter today, that you basically just have to like, contact your early adopter friend, small talk, make some small talk, and then be like, can I come over?

• 14:35Speaker 02

  Actually, are they allowing people to try it at the Apple Store?

• 14:39Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 14:40Speaker 02

  Okay, then maybe-

• 14:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, and they just announced this morning that, look, it's gonna be a mad rush. So like, they're only letting you come to the Apple Store right now for the next two days through the weekend. You have to go there, you have to wait in line to get an appointment, like, you have to like, you know, camp out all day. Then, starting Monday, you can make these reservations, or actually, I think you can make the reservations now, and you can book a calendar appointment and go on that day. So-

• 15:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Ron, John, you and I should, we should go on an Apple, Apple Store date together.

• 15:07Speaker 02

  All right, let's do that. Because now that you're saying that, John, and I'm, I'm camp out at the Fifth Avenue for the night to get our-

• 15:15Speaker 01

  I'll put the link in here.

• 15:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  There was this video I saw of the first person coming out of the Apple Store in New York. And maybe I can drop some of the audio in, but there was this, the Apple Store employees were like cheering for this person. He was holding up the Vision Pro box like it was Simba from The Lion King. It was like, this is the weirdest thing I've ever seen.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  I saw these too. I saw these too.

• 15:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  So, but, but Rant, going to your point that we're, you know, obviously they're trying to, and I would never, I mean, I wrote the book always day one, right? You always got to be like, is it your, it's your first day? Don't worry about the legacy product, right? That's the whole point. But like, talking about the rollout, that Morgan Stanley only expects them to sell $4 billion of these things in 2027. Right? Like the iPhone, I mean, the total business did 119 billion in the fourth quarter or the most recent quarter. So it's really tiny, you know, product category for them. So I'm kind of curious. Well, Joanna, why don't you answer your, you know, this question from your perspective about the rollout?

• 16:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I, look, I've been listening to a lot of the analysts on this and that it will be a smaller market than even sort of iPad or, or Apple Watch in the first couple of, you know, it won't hit the, it will, it will be smaller than those in the first couple of years than those were. And I think that's right. I mean, I think first of all, you're asking people to do a lot by putting a computer on their face. And then there's this price point to contend with right now. And I was on CNBC this morning and they're comparing it with the, with the Meta Quest. And it's just, it's, it's, yes, we're in the same category. And, you know, yes, there are some real ways to compare to what happened with the iPhone or BlackBerry and some of the legacy products that were on the market before. But I don't remember a price delta ever like this.

• 17:03Speaker 01

  You know, this is not priced for the average mainstream market. It just isn't. So, and just thinking about sort of the category in its own, one thing that I just think that is actually you, that I really realized, especially using this device is there is an ecosystem play and trap here, certainly. And so partly, partially I keep thinking, you know, the Mac is a really good accessory for it right now. But maybe one day this is actually going to go that way of more of a computing device that is a Mac replacement versus a phone or a, or a tablet. Or maybe I'm wrong. I just, I think they have a number of ways to take this. And I also wouldn't diminish just the thought of like, this is the Pro, right?

• 17:46Speaker 01

  This is the Vision Pro. Apple is very good at coming out with the Pro and the Air and the whatever other version, you know, the Series SE or whatever. There will be versions like that in the future. I just don't know how long it takes them to get to those because of the price of the components in this.

• 18:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  So do you think that this is enterprise or do you think this is consumer?

• 18:07Speaker 01

  It has to start enterprise and like, I think, you know, enterprise is sort of like a bad word for this type of category because like, its only success has ever been in the enterprise. But on the other hand, that's guaranteed units and market that Apple can bank on, right? Already, a substantial number of enterprise have bought, you know, previously the HoloLens, then the Quest, even the Magic Leap. All these companies always brag, and you guys probably heard it as well. You know, they come and have you meet with you, they, well, we're having, you know, X, Y, and Z company bought a huge fleet of these and they're loving them in the factory floor. And, you know, then they show you the pictures of the factory floor and the, you know,

• 18:50Speaker 01

  you definitely know the guy's like grunting, being like, I never use this thing. But it works for them. It works. It sells units. And there's a really decent application of it.

• 19:02Speaker 02

  Let's also not forget that every graphic designer at work has a $3,000 plus Mac monitor. So the pricing isn't even out of range anyways. So, yeah, I think enterprise. But I guess, has Apple ever successfully launched an enterprise product? Other, I guess, I mean, the hardware itself, but anything outside of, I'm thinking from a software perspective or?

• 19:31Speaker 01

  I mean, everyone I know uses pages.

• 19:34Speaker 02

  Sheets as well.

• 19:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  But it is interesting because

• 19:37Speaker 02

  Numbers, numbers, numbers.

• 19:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  Like, if you think about the evolution, like the BlackBerry actually was the thing that pioneered the smartphone revolution, and that was an enterprise device. But we just got better technology, and next thing you know, we all started using iPhones, and the iPhone became the enterprise device. So maybe that's what we see here. Jonah, I'm curious to hear your perspective about like, what was cool wearing this thing? I mean, you wore it a lot. So what were the things that made you say this could be special?

• 20:04Speaker 01

  The entertainment stuff is really cool. I will say, like, I have a very nice TV in my living room, but the rest of my house, I've got to upgrade the TVs there. And there's absolutely something to say for just this immersive viewing experience. And I think I heard Tim Cook say he watched the whole series of Ted Lasso on the ceiling, on his ceiling.

• 20:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  I called that out. That, I have to say, that experience sucks. Like, having the thing on your, I haven't done it with the Vision Pro, but I've watched like full movies or shows like with a projector going up to the ceiling. And also, I had Netflix on one of these Oculus devices. Can we, have you tried it before?

• 20:43Speaker 02

  Wait, people are watching TV on their ceilings?

• 20:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  On the ceiling. There's a reason why you don't play the screen on the ceiling. Yeah.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  Like, you lay back on the couch.

• 20:50Speaker 02

  I did not know that was a thing. I don't have a projector, but ceiling TV, I've never realized is a trend.

• 20:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  Because it's, I just think it's not something that people want.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  I mean, also, obviously, like, Tim Cook's ceilings are so much nicer than my ceiling. So I don't, I can't judge.

• 21:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  But it shouldn't matter, it shouldn't matter in virtual reality. It's a level the playing field device. Give Tim Cook $3,500, and you can live like him. That's the promise.

• 21:14Speaker 02

  You can live like Tim Cook.

• 21:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  Your ceiling can be his ceiling.

• 21:17Speaker 01

  Maybe if my ceiling was as nice as his, it would be a different experience for all of us. We don't know. We don't know. But no, I mean, I'm joking, but I think.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  I think that that is something it's I and I really believe around traveling where like you can't be home and you're I think about the long flights or the times I've okay, I'm gonna I've gotta go overseas and I'm gonna watch 12 hours of something on my iPad and now I'm gonna use this. But so that that is cool. I look, the work experience is cool. When you try it, you're like, oh, yeah. And then you go back to your monitor and you're like, hmm, this is kind of stifling. But look, the part that went viral was this cooking experiment that I did. And in no way, shape or form is Apple saying you should cook with this on. And I'm not saying normal people should, you know, wield a sharp knife and

• 22:08Speaker 01

  be around hot surfaces in a 1.5 pound headset. But I I'm a little bit I like to push the limits. This is what I like to do. So I I somebody the developer pitched me the company's called Crouton, the app is called Crouton, and they pitched me on this. And I'm sure I'm gonna try it out. And I really was blown away by it. I sort of just figured like this gonna be, you know, but like, I'm there in the kitchen, I'm cooking, I pin my recipe up on the right side of the kitchen, which already is a better experience than using your phone. Because with your phone or your tablet, you're tapping on it, it's dirty, you got like, meat on your hands or whatever you're cooking with, and you gotta keep washing your hands and then like scrolling on the iPad or the the phone. So that's great. And

• 22:53Speaker 01

  then I see like, as I'm moving through the steps on the recipe that there's a timer and it was okay, we'll set the timer for the pasta 16 minutes or whatever it was. And then it pops out and I can drag that over to the stove. And every time I look over at the stove, I see the timer ticking down. And then I take another timer and I've got to put that over the mushrooms. And every time I look over, I see these two virtual timers hovering over my stove.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  I know why I was blown away because this is such a melding and a useful melding of digital information in your real world. And it sort of just opens up your eyes to what could be. And I think, you know, I think people are laughing, $3,500 kitchen cooking timers. Like, I've been ridiculed. Does she not know about magnetic timers that she can buy on Amazon? Does she not know about smart speakers? No, I had no idea these things existed. Crazy. So, thank you, Internet, for letting me know. But there's something about that, like, simple digital information in your real world that opens up your eyes for what this could be.

• 24:01Speaker 02

  No, no, I loved this example. I mean, even little details, like you just said, I cook a good amount. And again, washing your hands every time if you're handling meat, when you're going to scroll the iPad to see the recipe again, having another device set up to watch, have a sports game on to the side, having multiple timers. Like, I agree. I think, thinking about in different situations in life and what are all the little bits of information that could contribute to making it a better experience and making it more seamless? Yeah, as a V1, I think that one's going to live years from now. We'll look back at the onion chopping and the cooking as an early use case of this.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  Oh, right, right.

• 24:43Speaker 02

  Or something that showed the promise, yeah.

• 24:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  To me, the thing I want to try most is the spatial video and photos where you can actually, like, you know, feel like you're in your videos. What was it like? I feel like that's one thing that it's, you really just need to hear from someone who's used this versus, you know, try to read about it or watch it. What was that like, Joanna?

• 25:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think you really have to see it. I mean, I think that's the tough thing about all of this is like, and I didn't even show, it's like, oh, when I show it, it looks like 2D video. And that doesn't look like anything to anybody on, you know, watching it on YouTube or wherever they're watching the video. But yes, you can. So for the last couple of months, Apple, or a number of months ago, Apple released spatial video on the iPhone 15 Pro's, which uses two cameras to record 3D video. And so the nice thing is, is that I've been shooting this video and then it just pops up in my Photos app under the Spatial tab when I'm wearing the Vision Pro. So scrolling through there, I already have a nice library of my kids doing funny things and nice things. And so I, just watching that, again, another example of travel, like when I'm not, I wouldn't

• 25:44Speaker 01

  want to like be sitting here if they were in downstairs. Like, I'd rather go live and be with them, not be in the headset. But when I'm traveling, it's nice to be able to relive some of those moments. And it really, it's sort of, it's, look, it's not fully immersive 3D. It's sort of in a, you can, there's two settings where it can kind of sort of float out in front of you. And then there's a setting where it can be within a sort of a square shape. Yeah, like a, just like a frame, basically. And in both of those situations, it's 3D. I mean, it depends on how you've shot it. It works best if there's something in the foreground. A really good one is I had my kids petting a llama, not a llama, it was an alpaca, went to alpaca farm and they're petting this alpaca and they're cracking

• 26:27Speaker 01

  up. And the sound is spatial, so it's surround sound. Oh, this is today. It's, it's, it's very compelling and moving.

• 26:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  Is there going to be a point where we're going to have like little video cameras embedded in our, in our eyes? And then we'll be able to play back any moment in life, just like that Black Mirror episode?

• 26:45Speaker 01

  It feels Black Mirror in some ways. Like, you know, and I think like, you think about the potential of this being combined with AI. And, you know, I, I think a lot about some of this technology about preserving people's lives and afterlife. And it could get crazy. I mean, it will get crazy.

• 27:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I just don't want to live in a world where, I mean, you know, seeing this, my reaction was, A, technology is amazing. B, really do not want to live in a world where we have like this mask on our face at all times. And we have all these distractions there. Sorry, Ron, John, go ahead.

• 27:18Speaker 02

  Wait, would you say the difference between, let's say, you know, a photo and a video, is it the same scale of difference between watching a video flat on your phone and experiencing spatial video in the Vision Pro? Or is it, is it a smaller degree of difference?

• 27:36Speaker 01

  I would say it's a, I mean, it's just a, it's a better experience. You can take spatial, spatial photos. You can only do that on the Vision Pro. You can't actually take spatial photos on your iPhone. The video just feels more immersive. I mean, the photo quality is actually not that good. But I think, you know, look, I think there's something here too. And, you know, I did go skiing with these on. And when I was skiing with them on, I sort of was making the comparison more to what Meta's done with the Ray-Bans, where you have this hands-free experience of shooting video. And I actually always, like, when I actually go skiing with my kids, I bring the Ray-Bans now because I don't want to have my phone.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  I just want to be able to snap and like, I'm not an amazing skier. And it's just, you get a more first-person point of view, like you're there, right? And I actually think that's something Apple's probably really interested in.

• 28:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  Interesting. So maybe they'll do their own version of those, of those glasses.

• 28:36Speaker 01

  I don't think it's a crazy thought, or at least that, that, you know, we get that kind of functionality down the road.

• 28:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  I mean, that's, it seems like that's what Meta figured out. Like, you do those two experiences and then you merge them in some way.

• 28:46Speaker 02

  Are you a big fan, are you a big fan of the Meta Ray-Bans? Like, exactly for that use case, do they fill that purpose well?

• 28:53Speaker 01

  That's like the, I take the Meta Ray-Bans if I'm going skiing, like, or I'm doing something like that with my kids, basically. Or I'm shooting a video and I want some good first-person point of view. Like, I did a piece on EV charging a few months ago and wore them as I was driving around. So I find them very useful for certain things. I wouldn't wear them every day.

• 29:14Speaker 02

  This is going to be the most expensive podcast for me ever, because I think now I want both the Vision Pro and the Ray-Bans. I've been reading about the Ray-Bans here and there. Hadn't really thought about them, but they sound nice as well.

• 29:27Speaker 01

  And they work really well now. I mean, the second generation, they've done a better job of speeding up how quickly they get to the phone and better quality.

• 29:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  So I want to ask about like the societal consequences here because we all know like what happened when we got phones in our hands. Like this is a powerful technology, the phone. And we're like half present all the time anyway. And it's so interesting because like Tim Cook is always gets on his high horse about how like Facebook and you know, Facebook obviously has its problems, but like, you know, all the things about how it's ruining society, but they're using your phone, bro. So I'm just kind of curious, like what happens to society here. This is something that Nick Bilton called out, you know, after he did this big profile in Vanity Fair.

• 30:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  And this is from, okay, one Silicon Valley investor tells him, I'm sure the technology is different. I still think and hope it fails. Apple feels more like the tech fentanyl dealer that poses as a rehab provider. And so he, so Bilton goes, what does the future of all of it look like to Cook? And Cook says, I don't, I think it's actually hard to predict, which is like, you're again, like, this is your device. It's gonna have consequences. I'm just, you know, having been in such an immersive computing experience, do you worry at all about a society where like this gets to the place where Apple wants it, which is on everyone's face, small, easy to use, immersive and addictive?

• 30:52Speaker 01

  Definitely. And I thought that was the most powerful thing about Bilton's piece. It has great details about Cook and all these other executives and how they built this in secret, but then you read to the, to the end and how he weaved that together was just beautiful. Look, you'll, it's funny, what the tagline for the Vision Pro is live in the moment, I believe. I believe that's what they're saying on the website. I don't want to miss quote.

• 31:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  Messenger tagline was break the news. Well, yeah, mission accomplished. Sorry, but go ahead.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  Where it's, I want to make sure it's, it's something like that. I've seen it marketed as as that. Whereas like you can pick your head up from the phone, right? I don't know if that's how they're intending it, or if it's just sort of you can be in your moment and also have this digital thing, but you can pick your head up from your phone.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  I think that's a nice idea, but right now it's so much more isolating than the phone. And one of the things, just to kind of talk back to the hardware is they put these these eyes on the front. Right? These creepy eyes. So the front of the the headset is actually a display and the display can show your persona eyes as you're looking at people. Well, one, those are really subtle. Those are really, really subtle and people don't really see them. And I've probably said, have you, can you see my eyes like 100 times this week to my wife and people around? And they're just like, no, I don't see your eyes. Stop asking. And two, even then, nobody really thinks they're having a conversation with you.

• 32:26Speaker 01

  Right? They don't really know. So like I was sitting, I was sitting and watching a video in my mom's living room, wearing this thing and she had no idea. Am I talking to her? Am I in there? What am I doing? You know, so there's the in there versus out there feeling right now. And it is isolating. There's no doubt about that. And one of the funny things that, you know, they are saying you will be able to do with this. I think you can do it now is if two people are wearing a Vision Pros, they can actually watch the same movie together using Share Play. It's just like, picture that.

• 32:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's weird. Yeah.

• 33:01Speaker 01

  It's weird.

• 33:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's like you gotta get a couple of these.

• 33:04Speaker 02

  If you're in different locations, like Joanna said, the, at those points, it definitely adds something.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, but what if you're, you and your, you know, partner are sitting on the couch and you're both wearing this Vision Pros and you're watching the same thing? I don't know. It's just.

• 33:19Speaker 02

  That's a little disturbing. I agree.

• 33:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a little dystopian.

• 33:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, go in for the kiss and your head headsets will bash.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, the funny thing is at the end of the video, I tried to like go and kiss my dog. And whenever something gets really close, the the cameras get messed up.

• 33:36Speaker 02

  Sorry.

• 33:36Speaker 01

  So like I couldn't find him.

• 33:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's so funny. It's just, this is the most humorous part of the whole thing to me.

• 33:44Speaker 01

  Like I was cracking up and I was like, we gotta get this in the video because like it's so funny. I was just like laughing so hard because I can't like, you see the dog and then as you get closer, it's your depth perception is off because it's cameras that can't see super close.

• 33:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  So, yeah.

• 33:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's amazing.

• 34:01Speaker 02

  I I just looked it up. The tagline is be in the moment. So they are trying to push that. But I think actually. I'm gonna make the argument that an isolating piece of technology is not the worst thing, because when you put it on, you are isolated and you're signaling that I am doing stuff in here and not around me versus if you think about a phone, everyone is half paying attention to their phone while having a conversation at dinner, sitting next to their partner. So what do you think? Maybe is it better that we have technology that kind of definitively isolates us rather than allows us to live in that half attention world?

• 34:41Speaker 01

  I like that idea.

• 34:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  But the goal is to be in there always. Like, that's what these, all these companies are building toward, is that they're on a lightweight pair of glasses.

• 34:49Speaker 02

  Is it something that it's like for focused bursts of experience and immersion? Or do you think that Apple really believes 10 years from now, we're walking around in headsets?

• 35:04Speaker 01

  I think they believe that we're walking around in glasses that are connected, you know, going full back to Google Glass, but better.

• 35:13Speaker 02

  Google was the original on this, the glass vision, I guess. So do you guys think we're walking around in glasses 10 years from now?

• 35:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I think this is, this is gonna be difficult to beat back. Like, we never, humanity is not, has never said, oh, that improvement in technology, leave it aside. We always adopt it and then adapt to it, sometimes better than others. What do you think, Joanna?

• 35:39Speaker 01

  Oh, you know, and it's with this, with AI happening at the same moment and us learning to rely more on those tools. I think it's gonna be a question of which part of our reality are we augmenting the most and which part of artificially are we improving our lives? Probably a combo of these things together, which is just gonna be crazy.

• 36:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, because just wait until you're in these things. And like, the Meta's vision here is to have you hanging out with other people and AI avatars in these settings. Speaking of Meta, Congress, the Senate took a bunch of social media executives in for a hearing this week, notably Zuckerberg was there, Shu Chiu from TikTok, and Jason Citron from Discord was there, and Lynda Yaccarino from X. And, you know, these hearings have largely been

• 36:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  Embarrassing for the Senate, they grandstand, they do theatrics, they get nothing done, they ask dumb questions. And sometimes, okay, sometimes it makes sense to bully, because you can't have executives do whatever they want and ever be called into any moment of accountability for it. But sometimes it's just like, there was even one senator who was like, this is our annual flogging and nothing ever gets done. But there was this one moment where Zuckerberg was basically forced by Josh Hawley to stand up and apologize to the families of kids who have lost kids who they say have taken their lives from interactions or spirals that occurred on social media. And Zuckerberg said, he said, quote, "I'm sorry for everything you've all been

• 37:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  through. No one should go through the things that your families have suffered. And this is why we invest so much and we are going to continue doing industry-wide efforts to make sure no one has to go through the things your family have had to suffer." I've been back and forth about this with Zuckerberg. I can't tell, like, was this a powerful moment? Was this more of the same? What did you guys think when you saw that?

• 37:41Speaker 02

  I felt, I have been on, I have not always agreed with you that these hearings are all useless and more grandstanding. I think there have definitely been productive hearings in the past. And there's, there's earnest, you know, policymakers that are trying to actually get to a solution. I felt this hearing definitely fell into the camp of grandstanding. And I felt the apology as well. The whole thing just feels weird because we all kind of know these problems. I guess it's good, especially in an election year, to remind us of many of the problems that Meta has very conveniently and nicely skated past in the last year and a half, thanks to Elon and X and Twitter. So I think it's good to bring it back. But I think we need to get back to some

• 38:26Speaker 02

  kind of concrete legislation around how to fix these platforms or how to protect us to solve these problems, rather than apologies or Tom Cotton asking the TikTok CEO if he's a member of the Chinese Communist Party, even though he's Singaporean. I think it's probably important to get back to some concrete ideas.

• 38:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  So let's talk about like the the practical stuff here because this is from Nikita Beer, who sold his company to Meta and worked there for a bunch of years, I think, till he vested and got out. He said, "Zuck got roasted today, but I think a lot of people missed the point. Facebook actually does studies on the impacts of their products so they can address those problems. When I was building apps there, I had access to PhD researchers to fully understand the impacts of my work on people. While the findings of those studies may make the company look negligent, you have to remember that Zuck is literally financing and elevating these discussions, not avoiding them." So do you think, does that hold water, in your opinions?

• 39:27Speaker 01

  Well, look, there was also a lot of evidence brought by some of these senators that they have ignored a lot of that. And that's they're holding up some of the Wall Street Journal reporting on that. Of course, they were also holding up some, I mean, Zuckerberg was talking about some of the things they've done in the last couple of months to improve this. They have carefully been rolling out more and more protections and software tools to help people. Now, I have some issues with that because really, they're not forced to make any parents use that. And so, sure, could some legislation help with that? Yes. Could more be done also on the platforms end? And, you know, Zuckerberg was arguing that Google and Apple should be

• 40:08Speaker 01

  doing more, too, for for gatekeeping and getting a sense of how old are our users? So a lot of questions around that. I think one thing, just actually to come back to the apology, I found that was pretty insincere. I think it's important to see because you, it's just a powerful moment. You have these parents standing there. But it felt a lot like when I tell my kids, you have to go say sorry for what you did. You know, they don't want to, but they know if I go say sorry, I'm going to get to move on, right? Like, okay, if I go say sorry, I'll be out of time out and I can go do something else.

• 40:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  Rajan, you point out a pretty interesting solution that's being piloted.

• 40:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, Joanne, I'd love your thoughts. This has been a long-running thing of mine, reverse chronological feeds to try to solve a lot of the problems. I had written about this back in 2019, and I remember when I first brought it up, I would always get the reaction again, "Well, how would we sift through all these, all the information?" And that's the whole point of the algorithmic feed. And it was interesting, because in the Nikita Byer tweet, he talked about, you know, "We have been financing all these studies that we have had access to." And a year ago, Facebook released this study where they had studied reverse chronological feeds, tested them, and the most mind-blowing part to me was the findings were,

• 41:24Speaker 02

  and the headlines that came after it were, that it created a bad user experience. Yes, relative to an algorithmic feed, it is going to be a bad user experience based on how all of these apps have been built over years and years. They've been built to be as addictive as possible and around algorithmic feeds. But to me, the ridiculous idea was, you know, you have default chronological feed, and to change to an algorithmic feed, you get like a pop-up warning, almost like a cigarette pack, that this could be detrimental to your health. But I was very happy that there is a bill in California, the Protecting Kids from Social Media Addiction Act that was introduced,

• 42:05Speaker 02

  where for at least people under 16, for children, it would be default reverse chronological. And I still think like, you know, if that becomes the default behavior, it changes the way all of these companies operate. And of course, they would never, ever want it, because it makes the product less addictive and less conducive to advertising, but it would make it a less engaging experience.

• 42:32Speaker 01

  I've advocated for this for a long, long time. I mean, at least just give us the option for kids, sure, set it as the default. I mean, I think especially when you look at, you know, I mean, well, the issue would be that TikTok just wouldn't exist. I don't know how TikTok would work. I mean, you could get a following tab, and you'd have, you know, the people in order, I guess, but... Yeah, really, it would it would certainly take out the addictiveness of TikTok and the fun of it, probably.

• 43:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  And so Zuckerberg had then this really strange one-two punch, like two days in a row. One day, he's getting eviscerated before the Senate. Next day, he's sitting, you know, giving the company's earnings reports, and they beat everything. They spent 22% last quarter, you know, between this fourth quarter and then last year's fourth quarter, and their revenue went up, their profit went up $10 billion. So the company today on Vision Pro Day has gone up $200 billion in market cap with like a 20% increase. Is this like, I don't know, what do you guys make of the fact that the company has done this well? And yeah, I'm curious, like, given the timing, given how many swings Tim Cook has taken at Zuckerberg, is this maybe the Swedish revenge that they are, you know, soaring

• 43:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  in the stock market? They have their own device ahead of Apple. They don't have any overhang with China like Apple does. They've gotten around Tim Cook's ad embargo. Like, does this sort of reframe the competition between Meta and Apple?

• 44:04Speaker 02

  This was a blowout earnings report. I mean, you just scratched the surface. There's a couple of other things I wanted to highlight was that the average price per ad was up 2% year-on-year, meaning like, the ad business is even becoming more profitable. And then there also, one thing I found was interesting was they're going to stop reporting Facebook daily active users and splitting them out and only Meta family of apps, which I thought was interesting because in one way, maybe it's recognizing that, you know, Facebook Blue is declining in relevance, but still overall, they're at 3.19 billion monthly active users, 3.2 billion people in the world using their apps last in December. And then

• 44:46Speaker 02

  my favorite was Threads is up to 100, it's up to 130 million monthly active users. And this is where I will, you know, apologize a bit to Alex because I had been laughing about his Threads usage. I've been using it more and I kind of like it.

• 45:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, you did text this week. Threads is good.

• 45:06Speaker 02

  I know.

• 45:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  As a long time Thread, welcome to the Welcome board.

• 45:10Speaker 02

  Do you thread?

• 45:11Speaker 01

  I'm on Threads, but I'm still balancing Threads and X. I

• 45:16Speaker 01

  So much of the tech community is still on X. It's just the truth.

• 45:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 45:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I, when I started actively following and curating my feed on threads, it was interesting. I started seeing people that I had, you know, interacted a lot with in tech journalism world and then had kind of disappeared. And suddenly it was like they came back to life almost that they were, they've been on threads, I guess, doing stuff, threading, interacting for the last few months.

• 45:46Speaker 01

  I've been, I know I'm there. I'm definitely there. I'm checking it definitely a couple of times a day. I just think that it's back to the algorithm thing. The algorithm sometimes gets weird.

• 45:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's slow. It's like you see things from days before.

• 45:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. And like, and then it's like just random, like memes and stuff. It's just like, this is not of interest to me.

• 46:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, okay.

• 46:06Speaker 02

  My, my.

• 46:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, Ronton, you go and then I'll.

• 46:10Speaker 02

  I was just gonna say, my algorithmic threads feed this morning was suspiciously all about how great the Meta Quest is and how great Meta's earnings were. I don't know if that was tuned by our friends over on the Instagram team, but it was pretty, uh, pretty consistent with that.

• 46:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, so we have like seven minutes left. I want to hit two more stories before we go. First of all, a Delaware court ruled that Elon Musk's 55, 56 billion dollar pay package was illegal and basically saying that these milestones were milestones that he knew he was gonna hit, which included taking the company from 60 billion to 650 billion, which he did, and therefore, and not fully communicated to shareholders, therefore he doesn't deserve it. I've done a bit of a 180 on this. Obviously, I think we have a problem with CEO pay in the US. And when I first read this, I was like, of course Elon should not make, you know, 56 billion dollars for four years of work. But then you look at the performance bars that he set, which were, everyone thought were unrealistic at

• 47:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  the time. And the fact that he hit them, to me, I think that he just deserves that money. What do you guys think?

• 47:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, probably.

• 47:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  Ron, John?

• 47:28Speaker 02

  I have much deeper theories on how those that the performance package led to the performance itself. Again, the share price, if you had written about this in the past, if you look at the days, basically, the month that the performance package was issued and the share price graph shortly thereafter and ensuing 12 to 16 months, just map out the two and it gets interesting.

• 47:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  But if it was that easy for a CEO to engineer their stock price, don't you think everyone would?

• 48:00Speaker 02

  During COVID, during the, I mean, exactly during that moment, I think he played it incredibly well and he had a platform that allowed him to do it that no other CEO quite had or probably would have been willing to to act on. But I think, and again, we're seeing, it's already down 40% from the high when it was like split adjusted a thousand.

• 48:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  It was at 1.2 trillion. Now it's 579 billion. And by the way, Elon can't sell, can't exercise those options for like three or five years or something like that.

• 48:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  So it has to sustain.

• 48:34Speaker 02

  I think this ruling is not going to have a huge impact. I think, again, it's going to get tied up and it's not like he's going to give back $56 billion in stock. I think, again, and even the people who filed the lawsuit, I mean, they're just looking for compensation as well. So I don't think this, out of all the challenges Tesla's facing, is going to be a particularly big one.

• 48:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, final story. And this is my, I think my favorite one of the week is that this is from the New York Post, billionaire Peter Thiel bankrolling Olympics on steroid events that allows athletes to dope. It says Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel is throwing his financial muscle behind an Olympics on steroids where whose organizers boasts that athletes will dope out in the open and honestly.

• 49:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  Do we like this? I'm kind of into it.

• 49:24Speaker 01

  I'm gonna watch it in the Vision Pro as Ron John's head.

• 49:27Speaker 02

  If I can watch it in the Vision Pro.

• 49:29Speaker 01

  I'm definitely, it better be 3D.

• 49:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:34Speaker 02

  I've missed Peter Thiel in the news. I'm glad to see this headline. I think we've needed a good Peter Thiel story for a while, and this is the one we've all wanted.

• 49:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's the ultimate Peter Thiel. Like, this is exactly the type of thing that he would finance. But I also think that, like, the Olympics is so filled with, with dopers. Like, yeah, get it out in the open. At least have a doctor there. No? Nobody?

• 49:56Speaker 02

  Safety. Safety in doping. That's Alex's platform for 2024.

• 50:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  I mean, I've been doing it.

• 50:02Speaker 01

  I haven't read this story. Are there any details on what sports specifically will be in this version of the Olympics?

• 50:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, he's gonna provide more details.

• 50:10Speaker 02

  You can imagine.

• 50:12Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 50:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, he's gonna provide the details, April 17th. So, and promote it during the Paris Olympics.

• 50:19Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 50:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  I think this will attract a huge audience. Just seeing inhumanly jacked people competing against each other in athletic events.

• 50:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. Can they do a hot dog eating contest, too?

• 50:31Speaker 02

  See, I think, I think they should add only events like hot dog eating or every other kind of absurdist event that exists out there. If you focus on that and let them dope, I think we have a winner.

• 50:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  Ron John, you know that every sport needs a little performance enhancing thing. Like, when you ran the marathon, don't tell them you didn't do any goos the entire time.

• 50:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  You gotta go.

• 50:53Speaker 02

  Are those performance enhancing? I think there is. There's like caffeine in them. Yeah, yeah.

• 51:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  I mean, I'm not calling it. I would never be able to have done it without the goos, but it's all about those goos.

• 51:05Speaker 02

  I admit it. Performance enhancing for the marathon.

• 51:08Speaker 01

  My 24 hours in the Vision Pro without the goos.

• 51:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  Exactly. Yeah.

• 51:13Speaker 02

  Well, that was the true endurance sport, I think.

• 51:16Speaker 01

  I wish I had actually had some of that.

• 51:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  I mean, some PCP, I think, especially for that would be, would be sick. All right, Joanna. Look, thank you so much for joining, sharing your experience, especially on such a busy week for you. You're like setting the world record on podcasts and TV experience and TV appearances. And so, thank you so much for making time. Great having you here.

• 51:36Speaker 01

  Thanks, guys, for having me. This is really fun.

• 51:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  All right. Thanks, everybody, for listening. Next week, John Gruber is going to be here, the author of Daring Fireball. We're going to talk about the state of Apple. So we're going to build on the state of of this conversation. Can't wait to bring that to you. And that'll do it for us. So Raja and I, I'm sure, before we tweet this time and next, make our way out to try to Vision Pro, and then we'll report back next week.

• 52:00Speaker 02

  I'll see you at the Apple Store.

• 52:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  At the Apple Store. All right, everybody. Thank you so much.

• 52:04Speaker 01

  I hope we see a picture of you.

• 52:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, my God. Yeah, there'll be selfies.

• 52:07Speaker 01

  In front, now, holding up his box, like it's like at the first iPhone.

• 52:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, Simba. All right. We'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.

• 52:23Speaker 03

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the HouseMajorityPac.com, not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 52:53Speaker 04

  Mr. Monopoly here. Miss me? Monopoly is back at McDonald's with millions of prizes: a 2027 Jeep Cherokee, a Carnival Cruise vacation, gift cards from DoorDash, and Best Buy. Feel the play in the McDonald's app. Get your bag.

• 53:11Speaker 05

  No purchase necessary. 50 U.S. and D.C. age 18+. See PlayatMcD.com for rules and PlayatMcD.com/amoe for info and playing without purchase by mail by November 2. Chance card game ends November 8. Game ends November 22, 2026. See rules for prize details. Monopoly is a registered trademark of Hasbro.