CZM Rewind: Where Did Tech's Magic Go? feat. Alex Cranz & Michael Fisher

In a special live-to-tape episode of Better Offline, Ed is joined by The Verge's Alex Cranz and YouTube influencer Michael Fisher to talk about what they're actually enjoying in the tech industry - and why things don't feel quite as magical and exciting as they used to. https://www.youtube.com/@TheMrMobile https://www.theverge.com/authors/alex-cranz https://www.theverge.com/authors/alex-cranz Original Air Date: 6.26.24 --- LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/ Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/ Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at https://discord.com/invite/QUUQUP9szv Ed's Socials: https://twitter.com/edzitron https://www.instagram.com/edzitron https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com https://www.threads.net/@edzitron See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:08Speaker 03

  Coolzone Media.

• 1:11Ed Zitron?

  Hello, friends. It's me, your host, Ed Zitron, the host of Better Offline. Now, of course, it's Christmas week, so we're all taking a week off here at Coolzone Media, so I'm rerunning one of my favorite episodes, Where Did Text Magic Go?, featuring Alex Cranz and Michael Fisher. Now, you're going to hear a lot more like this. It's recorded in the awesome iHeartRadio studios in New York. We're going to be doing way more of this next year. But also, the theme of this one is about where text magic is gone. And I think this is a formative theme of Better Offline, but also going to be a big thing in 2025 for us. So please enjoy. This is a wonderful episode, full of laughs and larks. And honestly, those two are way more funny than I am, anyway. Please enjoy and have a happy holidays.

• 1:55Ed Zitron?

  Hello and welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host, Ed Zitron, otherwise known today as Woke Joe Rogan.

• 2:13Ed Zitron?

  We are live kind of from the iHeartRadio studios in New York. Today, I am joined by Mr. Mobile himself, Michael Fisher, and of course, Alex Cranz from The Verge. Thank you for coming.

• 2:23Speaker 03

  Thanks for having us.

• 2:24Speaker 05

  Glad to be here. Thanks for having us.

• 2:25Ed Zitron?

  So, today is about where the magic's gone in tech. Got two great tech journalists with me, and I myself have done some writing on tech, I guess. And the big thing, and this kind of started actually from a conversation between you and me, Michael, where it was about, kind of like, what are we even looking at in tech anymore? Things aren't fun. Like, it feels like we've stopped getting... The most fun thing I have found is, I'm actually gonna pull it out of my pocket, and there's no video, so you're never gonna know, like this Anker charger that's like 30 bucks.

• 2:53Speaker 03

  I mean, they're sick. That's a sick charger.

• 2:55Ed Zitron?

  No, like, battery packs are cool, but otherwise, everything that comes out that's meant to be exciting, like the Humane pin and the Rabbit R1, which obviously were bad from the beginning, and sorry, anyone who thought otherwise, you were wrong.

• 3:08Ed Zitron?

  And like the daylight tablet, which we'll get to, of course. These things just have turned out to be just not even fun. You can be kind of shitty, but fun. Like, there's something you can look at. Even some of the great tech failures like that weird frame that you could upload things to from like 2015, like a few of these weird Indiegogo things. There was a cute weirdness to it, but now it's just almost just nothing.

• 3:32Speaker 03

  There's a lot of reasons for that, I feel like.

• 3:33Speaker 05

  There are, yeah. I feel like there are like a lot of compounding problems that have like, that have deposited us here today. But I will say that I think that there are, some of those examples you gave are still, could have been fun. I think Rabbit is still trying to like salvage the situation and make it work. But I mean, Humane, I think, you know, took a giant swing, which was this thing we've learned, I think, you shouldn't do at this point, which is try to replace the smartphone. Call the smartphone the enemy and say, "We're gonna replace it with this wearable thing." And when you deliver a product that's so undercooked, I think that's the problem. Like, when Star Trek, you can't even get there.

• 4:10Speaker 03

  And I think also just, everybody's in this big quest to beat the smartphone, right? Like, everybody wants to make the next smartphone so they can make all the money the way Apple did.

• 4:20Speaker 03

  What is it? And so they're all like, throw it at the wall. Is this it?

• 4:24Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 4:25Speaker 03

  You know, but it's not even like, you, I mean, I think you're right when you say like the rabbit and you look at these AI devices and stuff. Where there feels like there's sort of a cynicism.

• 4:34Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 4:35Speaker 03

  To these products where you're like, oh, you're just out here to make money. There's not like something fun and exciting here. Like the daylight computer is a good example. They're like, yeah, we're gonna, you know, make computing black and white.

• 4:45Ed Zitron?

  And just, just for the listeners who might not know about it, can you describe the daylight?

• 4:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, the daylight computer, uh, you, you just reviewed it, right?

• 4:51Speaker 05

  I did, yeah, it just came off the back of it. Yeah, it's like, I think I called it an ordinary Android tablet with an extraordinary display. Cause the special thing about it is the display and David Pearce, you know, like thinks, uh, this, this is, this is a display company. This isn't necessarily a consumer product.

• 5:07Ed Zitron?

  But what is it though?

• 5:08Speaker 03

  It's like an LCD display.

• 5:10Speaker 05

  Right.

• 5:10Speaker 03

  That only does black and white, correct?

• 5:12Speaker 05

  And the special thing is that it has a fast refresh rate that makes it very smooth. So when you're manipulating it, it's like using a black, it's like using an iPad from the Fallout world.

• 5:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:21Speaker 05

  Right? Where you're like, it's all black and white.

• 5:22Ed Zitron?

  Kindle?

• 5:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's kind of like using an e Ink Android tablet.

• 5:26Speaker 05

  Right.

• 5:26Speaker 03

  If the e Ink could go fast.

• 5:29Ed Zitron?

  Right. And that's why I was excited about it. So what's bad about it?

• 5:32Speaker 03

  The, I mean, the problem for me fundamentally, I've used a lot of Android e Ink tablets. I'm a nerd about these things. And fundamentally, the problem is they're built for black and white, which is cool. The internet isn't.

• 5:43Ed Zitron?

  Oh.

• 5:44Speaker 03

  So you're like, okay, I'm gonna download this app. I can't see any of the buttons. Cool.

• 5:48Ed Zitron?

  Oh, so they just did not prepare for people to use their device on the internet?

• 5:52Speaker 03

  Like, I mean, I'm.

• 5:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think that's true of the, of those e readers. No, that, that is true. But I think daylight, like to their credit, they have come out and said, look, we don't want color. You know, it's this very granola, very like, if you watch the coverage of the.

• 6:05Ed Zitron?

  I've seen, I've seen the Instagram ads.

• 6:07Speaker 05

  Yeah. And like, that is their pitch. That is their whole thing. It's like your screen is too colorful and too addictive and you should, you should be able to use your tablet. Outside in, in daylight.

• 6:18Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 6:19Speaker 05

  And it should function as you expect. You should be able to do whatever you want. But at the end of the day, ideally, you're not as, you know, drawn into this vortex of, of, of TikTok endless feeds. Because you know, you don't want to watch YouTube on it. You want to do some work.

• 6:30Ed Zitron?

  So they made it bad deliberately.

• 6:32Speaker 05

  Right. Which, which is a whole industry now, isn't it?

• 6:35Speaker 03

  Right. Like the light phone is, is another example where people are just like, what if we took all the cool capabilities of your phone? And then like turned off a bunch of it.

• 6:45Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, I've seen the ads for that that weird phone where it's like, oh, we we block out all the things you use your phone for.

• 6:51Speaker 05

  Right.

• 6:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:52Ed Zitron?

  So the the thing that you wouldn't use your phone. It's just very confusing. And I love posting. I love looking at my phone 92 hours a day.

• 7:00Speaker 03

  Well, you are an online person.

• 7:02Ed Zitron?

  I will die if I don't go online. But also, it doesn't feel like any of these companies, same thing with Rabbit, same thing with Daylight. It doesn't feel like they've actually talked to a person, like an actual person, like a normal person.

• 7:16Speaker 03

  Right.

• 7:16Ed Zitron?

  Someone who uses Facebook and Instagram to talk to their friends or get AI spam. And someone who has like a regular job, someone who isn't in tech at all.

• 7:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:26Ed Zitron?

  And just said, what do you think? And then when that person said, I don't know what this, why do I have this? What do I do? They should have gone, oh, shit, I shouldn't have released it. But it doesn't, it doesn't feel what Rabbit, I think, is a separate thing because I think they're fully cynical. I think I think that they just don't give a shit.

• 7:42Speaker 05

  Rabbit has to be held out separately, yeah.

• 7:43Ed Zitron?

  Daylight, it almost feels like they just folksy, simple people who chose to.

• 7:49Speaker 05

  Well.

• 7:50Ed Zitron?

  But you said they were, Alex, you said they were, there was something cynical about it. So I'm curious.

• 7:54Speaker 03

  I mean, I think for me, like I said, I've used a lot of similar tablets to this. So when they reached out and and were like, hey, we have this device. It's it's electronic paper. And they were very careful of saying electronic paper, not e-ink, because that's like an actual branded thing and e-ink will descend from the heavens.

• 8:09Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 8:09Speaker 03

  To just slap you down if you use it appropriately. And they said they're e-ink and they said they were electronic paper. Really cool refresh rate. And they wanted to like do this whole daylight thing in the warm light stuff. And I thought all of, I think the warm light stuff is very unproven science that is just like.

• 8:27Ed Zitron?

  What is the warm light stuff?

• 8:28Speaker 03

  Where it's like, the idea is if you look at an orange light before you go to bed, that'll make you sleepy. Blue light wakes you up and makes you angry.

• 8:34Ed Zitron?

  Didn't they just prove this wasn't the case?

• 8:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, that was bad timing for daylight, for sure. Because Wired came out with that thing. It's like, yeah, like all these studies are not conclusive. And also, some new ones have proven this.

• 8:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:45Ed Zitron?

  Very cool.

• 8:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 8:47Speaker 03

  It's just like, and so that was also part of their marketing.

• 8:49Ed Zitron?

  It's also $800, right?

• 8:50Speaker 03

  Right. It's $800.

• 8:52Speaker 05

  That's the problem for me. So here's the thing. I don't think the CEO is, I had some time to talk to the CEO and I, in a vacuum, in absentia, I kind of was like, this guy's gotta be a charlatan, right? He's gotta be going for a cash grab. What he is, my takeaway was, is that no, he's a, he's a, he's a display nerd. Who really cares about making this particular kind of display technology. And the display is cool. And they didn't take an off the shelf component from Sharp, which I also thought, and stuff it into a white label Android tablet, which is what I thought they did. Like this is their own design.

• 9:23Ed Zitron?

  Is it their own operating? What, their own baked Android?

• 9:26Speaker 05

  It's Android, but the hardware is they built.

• 9:28Ed Zitron?

  But did they make an effort with the software?

• 9:30Speaker 05

  Uh, yeah, the thing is, the devices they seeded, you know, it's, it's early and this is the thing we complain about with almost every product. Where it's like, yeah, well, this is just Niagara launcher on top of Android, but we have all these ideas. I'm like, great. Please deliver the ideas before we have a press cycle, aren't you? It's very frustrating.

• 9:48Ed Zitron?

  I wish I could do that with like the bank.

• 9:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:51Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, mate, I've got the money this month. However.

• 9:53Speaker 05

  Right.

• 9:54Ed Zitron?

  I will one day and I'll have lots of it.

• 9:57Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, that's.

• 9:58Ed Zitron?

  How? I'm not sure.

• 9:59Speaker 03

  That's called a credit card and, and then the understanding is, okay, you have to pay extra because you borrowed it. Whereas these companies are like, hey, give us your money. We're going to be your product. It's not going to be a good product, but if you just wait. And I'm like, no, you should actually pay me.

• 10:14Ed Zitron?

  Bad product.

• 10:15Speaker 03

  Yeah. Pay me to wait. Pay me to wait. Right?

• 10:18Speaker 05

  Yeah. I think the uncertain thing for me is like, it's the price. The thing that for daylight, if daylight was down at, at, you know.

• 10:24Ed Zitron?

  Two hundred, three hundred bucks.

• 10:25Speaker 05

  Call it three hundred, four hundred. Put that kind of premium on it. And I'm like, look, okay, it's an intentional product for a very specific market and, and that's, that's great. So I hit him on that a lot. I was like, you've got to make me understand why this is $729. And to, to hear them tell it, it's the work that went into the display, plus the tiny, um, you know, um, minimum order quantities. They have to, they have to hit. So it's like.

• 10:45Speaker 03

  So it's basically bitch gotta eat?

• 10:46Speaker 05

  Uh, no, no, it's like, they don't even make, they don't even make a big margin on each tablet. That's the thing. They're like, they, they are.

• 10:52Speaker 03

  No, no, I assume that.

• 10:53Speaker 05

  Faced with that from the factory. Like it's like.

• 10:54Speaker 03

  They just put in a lot of effort and these things are much more expensive to make than they have been in a while.

• 10:59Speaker 05

  I can see that side of it now. Like on clicks. Like I've gotten some experience with that and I'm like, okay, I get it. I don't know if it's true. I'm not, I don't know enough to know if that's a true point.

• 11:07Speaker 03

  Is clicks now $800?

• 11:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's right. Yeah, they're announcing today that the clicks for iPhone is now a $1,000 accessory.

• 11:13Ed Zitron?

  For listeners at home, so Michael is using this case on his, on his iPhone. It's called a clicks, I assume?

• 11:19Speaker 05

  It is clicks for iPhone.

• 11:20Ed Zitron?

  Clicks for iPhone, yes. And this allows you to type with your, with your, you've got a nice click to it.

• 11:26Speaker 03

  It's got a little keyboard.

• 11:27Ed Zitron?

  How much does that cost?

• 11:28Speaker 05

  Uh, this is 129 or one, excuse me, 139 or 159. I do like it and I'm not just saying that because I'm a co-founder. I'm very biased. You can't trust me.

• 11:38Ed Zitron?

  God damn it. No, so um, the thing is with something like that is it actually feels useful because people type stuff on their phone sometimes.

• 11:45Speaker 03

  I'm just like fucking around with it. I'm sorry.

• 11:46Speaker 05

  Please do.

• 11:49Ed Zitron?

  But actually, that's the wider thing. It's, they feel like less fun things to fuck around with these days and that's something, even like CES for years has been like this. Everything, I'm sure next year is just gonna be all AI again. But even the years before, it felt like they were less fun things. There's the kind of exterior ring of security camera, uh, toilet light and dildo companies all from China. And they're amazing. They're called like the Shenzong, Shenzong Dong, uh, romance company. And they sell 11 different products, mini batteries, and they're all very nice people. Then you've got like the cat litter company that always turns up. You've got the wifi grill company that always turns up.

• 12:29Speaker 03

  That one folding machine?

• 12:30Ed Zitron?

  The one folding machine that will never launch, but even then the folding machine, I kind of like that. It's like a folksy dumb product that will never launch. But otherwise it's like, where's the magic? Like, when was the last time we had something fun even?

• 12:43Speaker 03

  I mean, I, CES is a weird one because it is so, I think most of the people coming there are coming to sell things in American markets.

• 12:51Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 12:51Speaker 03

  And if you don't need that, if you sell online, you don't necessarily need to go to CES and have that big presence because you don't, you can just sell directly to the consumer. You can just skip it. And we see that with stuff like, like the stuff I'm really into right now is Ayaneo, I think is how you say it.

• 13:05Ed Zitron?

  What's that?

• 13:05Speaker 03

  Which is like a, a gaming console.

• 13:07Speaker 05

  Oh, it looks like a giant sidekick, right?

• 13:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, they've got one. It's called the Ayaneo. It's A Y A N E O. I'm absolutely massacring the name. A Y A.

• 13:17Ed Zitron?

  A Y A.

• 13:18Speaker 03

  N E O. The Flip DS. And this thing is the dumbest, most fun thing I've used in a while.

• 13:25Ed Zitron?

  What is it?

• 13:26Speaker 03

  It's like a Steam Deck, but if the Steam Deck ran on Windows and therefore sucked. It's got two screens.

• 13:32Ed Zitron?

  Why do you enjoy it?

• 13:34Speaker 03

  I think I like it because it's different, it's doing something new. And there's like, like, okay, the software is garbage, but that's kind of their fault because it's hard to do software.

• 13:44Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 13:45Speaker 03

  And like, you shouldn't launch things with garbage software, Steam Deck, it's fine. But it's also cool because like, there's like, it's just got a good display, there's like a really good thought behind it. And it's like, you know what, there's gonna be people who really, really like this thing and are gonna have fun with it.

• 13:59Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 13:59Speaker 03

  And it's mainly gonna be nerds who wanna play Nintendo DS ROMs.

• 14:03Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 14:04Speaker 03

  And I'm like, yes, cool, I want that.

• 14:06Ed Zitron?

  That feels like the first weird thing I've heard of in a while, other than like, the rabbit.

• 14:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, and I think the ones that become a success are like, almost unavoidably not as weird. Like, the thing that jumps to my mind is, what's the last time I was really impressed by something that I kept after the review period? Or bought after the review period? And it was the Meta Ray-Bans. Where I was like, wow, oh my god, they stuffed really good speakers and a really, and a pretty good camera into sunglasses. And a bunch of AI stuff that you really shouldn't talk about, but yeah, it's like, it's a really great accessory.

• 14:34Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, I've, I've heard good things.

• 14:35Speaker 03

  They, they just, they just work. Like, I'll use them on the, on the train a lot.

• 14:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 14:40Speaker 03

  And it just sounds good and like, everybody in the train car gets to listen to my music with me. But then I sound really good on phone calls, so I don't care.

• 14:47Ed Zitron?

  Oh, so you can use them for calls?

• 14:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:49Ed Zitron?

  So that's verging on useful.

• 14:50Speaker 03

  It is extremely useful, except for it's Meta.

• 14:54Ed Zitron?

  How did they make that?

• 14:55Speaker 03

  They made it because they have, like, Meta has this big vision for AR and VR, right? So they have, they have, they have the whole, the Quest and all of that junk. And then they were like, well, we need to do AR stuff and we need to start normalizing what AR is gonna look like, so we're gonna start with these glasses.

• 15:10Ed Zitron?

  But you can't see anything in them.

• 15:11Speaker 03

  You can't, no. And so it's all audio. Bose was doing this a couple of years ago.

• 15:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's right.

• 15:16Speaker 03

  There's a few people who have done this. And it's like, you know, it, it, when Bose did it, it was a stupid concept. And even the first set of Ray-Bans were really stupid. And then this time, the quality was just good enough where you're like, Okay, I get it now.

• 15:29Ed Zitron?

  How much are those?

• 15:29Speaker 03

  They're like 250 or something?

• 15:31Speaker 05

  Oh, God, yeah, between 200 and 300.

• 15:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, they're fairly, it's one of those things where you're like, I just got paid. I don't got any bills due anytime soon. Let's do this.

• 15:39Speaker 05

  And they actually accomplish something that like a lot of these AI companies that we've touched on earlier have tried to do and sort of failed to do, which is get you out of your phone. For me, I don't know, well, I'm a stupid influencer idiot, but like 30% of the time I'm pulling out my phone. It's just bad. But like I'm firing up the camera, right? That's why I got my phone out is to use the camera for something. And when you have a camera built into your glasses, you can just literally hit a button on it and capture what you're looking at.

• 16:03Ed Zitron?

  Well, the humanized 35mm, right?

• 16:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, I have no, I don't know, I don't remember what the specs are.

• 16:07Ed Zitron?

  I'm just wondering what the perspective is like.

• 16:08Speaker 03

  The perspective is weird because it's off to the side.

• 16:11Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, of New York Times, he does lovely videos of him cooking using them. And he'll turn, he's got his Burmese mountain dog Bruno, lovely. And he'll be like talking to Bruno and like making stuff he's got his name. That's fun. I actually really enjoy that stuff. It feels bad the Meta is doing it, though. Like the idea, but also how it feels also weird that Meta made something good. I'm just very confused because, all right, the VR stuff with Quest. I know we're like meant to, like, most people are like, oh, Quest is good. It isn't good. I, I'm sorry. I'm very sorry, Casey, my very close friend Casey's gonna hear this, gonna get pissed off, gonna get a Signal message. The Quest's fine, but even the new one, I still get sick.

• 16:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:56Ed Zitron?

  I still feel weird. It still doesn't go on my face right.

• 17:00Speaker 03

  That's why they did the glasses is because they know there's, there's some people.

• 17:04Ed Zitron?

  Can I play Half-Life Alex on the glasses?

• 17:06Speaker 03

  I'm coming back to the glasses because they like, they did, they did these headsets. And everybody was like, oh, wait, this is not the future for AR and VR. People look stupid. Like I saw my nephew come, like, one day I went over and I'm visiting, I'm saying hi to everybody. I'm like, oh, where is he? And they're like, oh, he's upstairs. And I go upstairs and there's just a little kid all alone in a room, like wagging the sticks around. And that's the dumbest thing I've ever seen. Like I wanted to give my.

• 17:29Ed Zitron?

  It was a kid, so you're like, yeah, you little loser.

• 17:30Speaker 03

  I was like, I wanted to give him a wedgie, right? And I'm like, that's, that's a bad response for an aunt. Just like put my hand in my pocket and walk away. And, and, but that's the way it is for everybody. And so they're like, okay, we gotta do these glasses. Cause if we do these glasses, then that won't be as dumb and stupid looking.

• 17:48Speaker 05

  And I should just give a shout out to a company that not a lot of people remember. And I bet you do, but remember Focals by North?

• 17:55Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 17:56Ed Zitron?

  I remember the name, I don't remember what they did.

• 17:58Speaker 05

  They shipped a pair of glasses that were very, like, they were a little chunkier. They were obviously something a little, it's a little off about these glasses.

• 18:04Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 18:05Speaker 03

  Horrible display.

• 18:06Speaker 05

  But, no, but, they had a display. And when you put them on your face, all of a sudden, what materialized in your vision was a little Tron-like heads-up display. And you could see your text messages from your phone, you could get driving directions, turn-by-turn directions, little point-of-interest things. And it was like it was appearing in your eyeball. Of course, it was very strange, because when you're talking to somebody, you'd see they'd look kind of above your eyebrow? And then you'd be like, "Are you, are you checking your messages while I'm talking to you?"

• 18:30Ed Zitron?

  Uh, uh-huh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 18:31Speaker 03

  No, no, that's where you get the sunglass version.

• 18:33Speaker 05

  Right. But like, this was a great idea, the technology was very fascinating. And then, as often happens, they were purchased by Google, and Google either mismanaged it or killed it.

• 18:44Speaker 03

  Killed it.

• 18:45Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 18:45Speaker 03

  Killed it.

• 18:46Ed Zitron?

  Probably both.

• 18:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:46Speaker 05

  It was just brutal. I mean, and that was the last time I felt like we were on the cusp of maybe the next chapter of personal mobile computers.

• 18:55Ed Zitron?

  I thought Google Glass looked cool. I never got to play with it. And I think Robert Scoble has done a lot of bad things. But that weird picture of him in the shower, I genuinely...

• 19:05Speaker 05

  I knew you had a shower picture.

• 19:06Ed Zitron?

  So, listeners, there is a really disgusting fellow called Robert Scoble, famous for reasons I'm not actually sure. He kisses up to Elon Musk now, wants to marry his Tesla, I believe. I haven't really checked that fact and its opinion, so you can't sue me. So, Robert Scoble took a picture wearing his Google Glass while what looks like screaming in the shower.

• 19:31Ed Zitron?

  And I mean, just...

• 19:34Speaker 03

  A lot of people talked about that photo.

• 19:36Speaker 05

  Uh-huh.

• 19:36Speaker 03

  It was very...

• 19:37Ed Zitron?

  The inverse of pornography. And... But that moment was really unfortunate because Googles was too expensive and all that. And I don't think anyone should have ever looked at it as the future arriving that day. But it, the idea of a heads up display is cool. I think heads up displays are cool. I think, I don't agree with thee. We need to get away from our phones thing. What we need is better society so that it's worth looking away.

• 19:57Speaker 03

  Same.

• 19:58Ed Zitron?

  That's, that's the actual, this is an escapism. We made a tool to escape from the world.

• 20:01Speaker 03

  It rules.

• 20:02Ed Zitron?

  Kind of ripping off Paris Marx from Tech Won't Save Us. There he made a similar point about the Vision Pro to distract us from real life, which is a bit much, but he's not totally off. But it's weird. Like heads up displays feel like a future. I don't know if it's the big capital T, but that's a way that they could be useful while getting us away from constantly staring. Because there are times where I'd like to walk through New York City and just listen to music, but also know where I'm going because I don't ever. And heads up display would be good. But it's almost like they shouldn't be trying for 15 years. Like they need to get to a completely different level of chip.

• 20:38Speaker 03

  There's.

• 20:38Ed Zitron?

  Plus display, plus everything else, and then do it really well.

• 20:42Speaker 03

  It's just because they are all so desperate to be the next iPhone.

• 20:46Ed Zitron?

  Hypertrophy.

• 20:47Speaker 03

  Like, like I love, you know, I think everybody in this room currently has an iPhone. They're, they're, they're very good.

• 20:53Ed Zitron?

  They're great devices.

• 20:54Speaker 03

  Yeah. And everybody wants to be the next one because then they get the 30% lock in. They get, they get just all, I mean.

• 21:01Speaker 05

  Cultural cachet.

• 21:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, it just makes you the next big thing. And so Meta's been doing that. Google's been doing that poorly. Uh, Samsung, you know, a lot of these people do it and they all fail at it because the tech's not there right yet, right? Like glasses, you're not going to get glasses until you have actually good displays that can also pass through.

• 21:19Ed Zitron?

  And can turn off in an intelligent way.

• 21:22Speaker 03

  And most importantly, that you don't look stupid wearing.

• 21:25Ed Zitron?

  Yes.

• 21:26Speaker 03

  Like if I want to give you a wedgie, you've, you've lost the plot. And I'm, I'm liberal with the wedgies. So actually it's like a high bar.

• 21:33Ed Zitron?

  That's the trans factor.

• 21:34Speaker 05

  I'm gonna move my chair over a little bit. I'm gonna make myself a little more room here.

• 21:38Speaker 03

  The urge.

• 21:41Ed Zitron?

  So with my sunglasses on the entire time.

• 21:43Speaker 05

  You would have to.

• 21:44Ed Zitron?

  No, but I would, what I'd then do is have, I'd take them off, but have a second pair.

• 21:50Speaker 05

  You gotta get some with the decals of the flames on them.

• 21:54Speaker 03

  Moon Guy Fieri moment.

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• 24:01Speaker 03

  Three, six, seven, eight.

• 24:07Ed Zitron?

  So it feels like augmented reality is at least where there could be fun now.

• 24:12Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 24:12Ed Zitron?

  But it feels like it's not twenty seven, what, twenty fifteen, when they had that weird burst of them. It feels like they've all stepped back from it, which sucks because it feels like we actually need R and D money there.

• 24:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:23Speaker 05

  Yes, because I feel like that's the thing. I see the point you were just making, Alex, is that the technology needs to catch up to the aspiration.

• 24:30Speaker 03

  Right.

• 24:30Speaker 05

  And we've seen a lot of this demo, and again, the most promising one got bought and killed.

• 24:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:34Speaker 05

  And I've never seen anything get close.

• 24:35Speaker 03

  I mean, I think that I think the Ray-Bans are are close and they're planning apparently to put a lot more like invest a lot more there, right? Like they just this week, I think, did a whole reorg, the week we're recording this, did a whole reorg of this of the the meta division. And so they're like Oculus, you go over here and you go over like an under an ad sales guy.

• 24:54Ed Zitron?

  Who?

• 24:54Speaker 03

  I don't remember the name.

• 24:56Ed Zitron?

  I'm going to look this up.

• 24:57Speaker 03

  And then the Ray-Bans, they're like, OK, this is like, this is our focus. They they've they've got plans for some glasses in the next couple of years that are like much more involved. We've heard like Google bought Focal and we haven't heard anything there. And so it could be dead, but also like, everybody's talking about AR right now. So it feels like maybe they're coming back.

• 25:16Ed Zitron?

  I think that so I had an episode about this called the Rockcom bubble.

• 25:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:20Ed Zitron?

  Where I think what they're doing right now is freaking out.

• 25:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:23Ed Zitron?

  Because they don't have, and they all want to be the next iPhone. But what they realize is there is no next iPhone right now. There is no next Google or Facebook or anything.

• 25:32Speaker 03

  So they're chasing AI.

• 25:33Ed Zitron?

  They're chasing AI, but come on, come on.

• 25:36Speaker 05

  I was gonna say, you've done a very good job in the past few weeks of demonstrating on this very show why AI is not as exciting as everyone would like it to be.

• 25:44Ed Zitron?

  That's a good point to bring up, though. How do you two feel about AI?

• 25:48Speaker 05

  Well, I feel I'll say this dovetails with what you were just saying. I, the companies are not the only ones desperate for the next iPhone. I am desperate for the next iPhone. Anytime, again, Pierce, you know, wrote that little blurb about, you know, the the season of AI gadgets is here.

• 26:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:04Speaker 05

  Before any of the humane and rabid stuff came out. And I was like crossing my fingers. Because as somebody who covers this stuff and as somebody who has loved the. Stuff for as long as I can remember, I love the excitement of new things coming out and introducing new possibilities.

• 26:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:18Speaker 05

  And I feel like the AI, I have an increasingly severe grudge against the AI bubble, the hype cycle, for raising my hopes, actually putting some pretty cool hardware in my hands. Say what you want about the humane, that hardware rocks. And then absolutely cutting its legs out from under it because most of its functionality is based on an LLM that you can't trust. Because it tells you the sun is going to set 40 minutes ago at 11:00 in the morning.

• 26:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think like AI is, you know, I'm super excited about Apple Intelligence mainly because I'm going to be able to make the best shit posts to send my friends because you can do image generation and it's hideous. It's terrible looking. And I'm so excited to just troll people. But otherwise, like, you know, AI is, is one of those things like we've built lying machines and, and as far as large language models go, they're really bad at it to the point where Tim Cook's like, well, I wouldn't say a hundred percent get it right.

• 27:10Ed Zitron?

  How busted that was.

• 27:11Speaker 03

  That's actually a bad thing you to say, dude. And, and everybody's saying that because they're like, don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. Meanwhile, the researchers are like, actually, large language models aren't the thing.

• 27:21Speaker 05

  Right.

• 27:22Speaker 03

  Don't, you should worry about it. But everybody's like, but we can make money now.

• 27:26Ed Zitron?

  Except we can't.

• 27:28Speaker 03

  Well, Jensen Huang can make money.

• 27:29Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, Jensen Huang, when he's not serving PC gamers like me.

• 27:36Ed Zitron?

  But that's the thing though, it, that's something you were saying there, Michael, is actually kind of the impetus for us being here today. Something in this show that people say, people say about me all the time is, oh, you're just a pessimist. You don't like this stuff. I love this shit. Do you know how excited I am when I get a new dumb gadget I can mess around with?

• 27:53Speaker 03

  You've got a charger right here.

• 27:55Ed Zitron?

  Anchor charger. I'm so excited. I've got two. So I've got redundancy. So happy with that stuff. I love my little gizmos and gadgets. I love this stuff and I haven't really had anything to, the Steam Deck was the last time I was really like excited for and then excited after.

• 28:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:11Ed Zitron?

  And kind of the Vision Pro.

• 28:13Speaker 03

  Oh, interesting.

• 28:14Ed Zitron?

  But it's like. There's always a but, and the but is usually, yeah, but the people who made it, they didn't really give it to real people.

• 28:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:22Ed Zitron?

  They gave it to a focus group, and it was a McKinsey one, so three quarters of them were paid to say whatever they wanted to hear. And the rest didn't turn up. And it's just frustrating because there was a time, I think this is just like the Rock on bubble. There was a twenty year period when we just got new stuff, new stuff, new stuff, and even the bad stuff was kind of funny.

• 28:41Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 28:42Ed Zitron?

  Even all this dorky Indiegogo bullshit like the coolest cooler, which had a speaker and a margarita machine. You knew that was never gonna work, but you kind of enjoyed them trying. And then they scammed a bunch of people. That was also bad.

• 28:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:53Ed Zitron?

  But you stopped getting fun. Like, there wasn't something to look forward to. But the Vision Pro, the reason I brought it up is, my first hour with it was so exciting. And then I realized that I had like light bleeding in, so I started fucking with it. And I couldn't get it on right, and I spent like another hour trying to make it work. And it just turned out that like I didn't have the right size thing, which dramatically improved it. And I was using it fairly often. I'm like, this is not there yet, but this is different and cool. And watching movies on it is great. Then I tried to watch on a plane.

• 29:28Speaker 03

  How'd that go?

• 29:29Ed Zitron?

  I got a migraine. And I've yet to finish Dune.

• 29:34Ed Zitron?

  People say this and Altima or whatever it is from that to me all the time, but it's, it's very strange because it almost doesn't feel like anyone's trying.

• 29:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:44Ed Zitron?

  Well, go ahead.

• 29:45Speaker 03

  I was gonna say, like, the VR thing is a weird one because it is so dependent on the person, right? Like, I, I had a friend who also just recently did a cross-country flight, wore their Vision Pro, watched Dune and Dune Two.

• 29:57Ed Zitron?

  Nice.

• 29:58Speaker 03

  All back to back, and they were, they loved it.

• 30:00Ed Zitron?

  Absolute legends.

• 30:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, whereas you would have presumably thrown up everywhere and they would.

• 30:06Ed Zitron?

  Oh, no, my head just felt like it would explode.

• 30:07Speaker 03

  Yeah. Uh, and, and, and that's just because like your, your vestibular response is totally different than their vestibular response. And it's, that's what's gonna happen there. And that's why VR is a dead end. That's why Meta now has like been like, you go, you go over here. We tried it.

• 30:22Ed Zitron?

  Under the watchful hand of Boz.

• 30:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, we did that. What was it? The Meta Quest Pro? Was that the one?

• 30:28Ed Zitron?

  The Pro one they cancelled.

• 30:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, where they released it and everybody's like, this is garbage. And they're like,

• 30:34Ed Zitron?

  No, they released it. I think what it was, was they released it at the same time as the Quest 2, which was like 300, 400 bucks. People were like, this is pretty good.

• 30:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:41Ed Zitron?

  Like, the expectations were low. And they're like, but what if you paid 1,400 dollars for something that wasn't as good?

• 30:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:48Ed Zitron?

  But was more powerful.

• 30:50Speaker 05

  Well, yeah, and you were saying a second ago, like, it doesn't feel like people are trying anymore. I think that's not, I think people are trying at the wrong thing.

• 30:56Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 30:57Speaker 05

  Former journalist, should become a journalist again, because we miss him, David Ruttig, was just complaining about this on LinkedIn. And he was just like, you know, with respect to the product managers, who I call my friends, like, product managers are ruining the segment.

• 31:13Ed Zitron?

  Ah, I don't disagree with that.

• 31:14Speaker 05

  And even if you take it above the PM, it's like, companies have realized that if they do enough marketing to create artificial demand, then that is a way to make money in the short term, and you can keep the business growing.

• 31:25Ed Zitron?

  Or is that just what they believe is the case?

• 31:27Speaker 05

  It may well be, right. For the long term, it's certainly not true.

• 31:30Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 31:30Speaker 05

  But for the short term, it may be.

• 31:31Ed Zitron?

  You can get a spike.

• 31:32Speaker 05

  And it feels like there's 10 times as much of that as there is, for every 10 examples of that, there's one example of a company that's actually like, hey, we actually have a good idea. Maybe it's a little weird idea, but we think enough people will buy it and find delight in it that we can make a business out of it.

• 31:45Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 31:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:47Speaker 05

  And if more people did that, instead of like, what, how can we make money and get out as quickly as possible?

• 31:51Speaker 03

  Right.

• 31:52Speaker 05

  Then I think we would have those glory days of.

• 31:55Ed Zitron?

  You can make the money and get out by doing something people want to buy. It's just frustrating.

• 31:59Speaker 05

  True.

• 32:00Ed Zitron?

  Alex, it's, are you enjoying any devices other than the strange, not-quite Steam Deck?

• 32:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, the garbage Steam Deck that I'm not even gonna score, because you shouldn't buy it. It's not gonna be good for most people, but it's so much fun to like fuck around with. Um, I don't know. That's one of the reasons I got really into e-ink, because it felt like it was much closer to like, there's felt like there was something there that could be solved pretty quickly. But that was like five or six years ago and it hasn't happened.

• 32:29Ed Zitron?

  What's slowing it down?

• 32:30Speaker 03

  Um, because everybody wants to make money through vertical integration. So they're like, well, I don't want you to actually get anybody else's books on your device. I want you to get my books.

• 32:38Ed Zitron?

  Oh, so everyone wants to do a platform play?

• 32:40Speaker 03

  Right. So everybody's doing a platform play. So it's money again, right? Like, everybody's like, I need all as much of the money as I can get to my little side because Apple did that and it worked really well for Apple.

• 32:49Ed Zitron?

  It's never worked for anyone else.

• 32:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's like, guys, stop. Well, I mean, Amazon, it kind of worked.

• 32:54Ed Zitron?

  Amazon already had that scam going though.

• 32:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's true. That's true.

• 32:57Speaker 05

  And you haven't seen meaningful evolution in the Kindle with the exception of the scribe in a long time.

• 33:01Ed Zitron?

  Which is insane.

• 33:03Speaker 03

  It's like garbage compared to a lot of the stuff. Cause like China, and this is, the other point is, there's a lot of innovation happening in China, a ton.

• 33:10Ed Zitron?

  Have you ever used the Odin?

• 33:11Speaker 03

  The Odin?

• 33:12Ed Zitron?

  So there was this, it's an Android gaming console before the Steam Deck. So just to be clear, probably not as fun, but super fast. You could do a PlayStation remote on it.

• 33:21Speaker 03

  Okay, yeah, yeah.

• 33:22Ed Zitron?

  Almost like predecessor to the PlayStation port, which is literally just playing PlayStation. And it was great. And what they did, this crazy idea, they were like, why don't we make it really easy to run the specific gaming apps you like? And what if we made the buttons good?

• 33:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's.

• 33:34Ed Zitron?

  And what a crazy, like sold out Indiegogo, did really well, comes out of China. And it's like, this current synophobic climate is fucking frustrating because let them, please borrow the innovation from them. They seem, China seems to be fucking trying with tech.

• 33:48Speaker 03

  Right. And, and one of the reasons they're trying, because I kind of went down a rabbit hole with the e Ink thing where I was like, why is nobody trying this? Like, you're getting all these really cool e Ink readers out of China and nothing here. And it was because we're so obsessed with that lock-in. We're so obsessed with how do we build that bigger model? We don't want to just sell one thing. We want to sell you the services. We want to sell you the platform. And, and America's just super hyper focused on that where China's like, yeah, I mean, I don't care who you use, just like buy our shit. I mean, they're, they're also.

• 34:15Ed Zitron?

  They also have one monopoly, that might be why.

• 34:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's like, we all operate within this one monopoly.

• 34:21Ed Zitron?

  We're all controlled by Tencent, but.

• 34:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's fine.

• 34:24Ed Zitron?

  It, it's frustrating because. I feel like what it might also be is that they're like, how do we make the next trillion dollar company or billion dollar company? They're like, what if you made a fifty million dollar company? No, yeah, fuck that.

• 34:35Speaker 03

  Well, you got, you gotta, you gotta get your, your, your investors, right? You gotta get your stockholders. You gotta do all of that. And, and apparently money is not free. People don't just give money away.

• 34:46Ed Zitron?

  You gotta give a hundred million dollars to Adam Newman again, so that he can make the next bad company.

• 34:53Speaker 03

  I think that happened.

• 34:54Ed Zitron?

  It did. He got two hundred and fifty million dollars.

• 34:55Speaker 03

  I just, I wanna fail that hard up. That sounds great.

• 34:59Ed Zitron?

  So good.

• 34:59Speaker 05

  Well, and like, we, I don't mean to keep bringing it back to humane, but that was the thing I kept saying in the humane briefing. I was just like, guys, I, I know this is not what you want to hear, but this would be a great little accessory for the phone. You could still do a lot of cool things and have it linked to your phone. And then it wouldn't be, well, a bunch of things would be better.

• 35:15Ed Zitron?

  It also did not work, but.

• 35:17Speaker 03

  I'm just, you didn't catch on fire. That's.

• 35:19Speaker 05

  That's exactly, I'm still here.

• 35:20Speaker 03

  You're still here.

• 35:21Speaker 05

  Um, but like the, it wasn't a bold enough vision. And they didn't say this. I, I, I assume this. It wasn't a bold enough vision, one, to get a bunch of people motivated to do. Cause if you're replacing the smartphone, big quotes around that, well, that's a, that's a mission that's at least difficult. That's like a moonshot. And then B, you can't get enough investors excited, to your point, to give you all the, all the money that you want to put together.

• 35:41Ed Zitron?

  Just this note for listeners, that's the humane AI pin, Google it, it's terrible, seven hundred dollars, twenty four dollars a month. Just, just a basic thing. But the humane was so weird though. And this is the thing that I will never understand and they will never tell me is, how did you put this out the door? How did you look at this thing? Oh, it overheats in two minutes. Oh, chat GPT sometimes doesn't work. Basic shame?

• 36:03Speaker 03

  I mean.

• 36:03Ed Zitron?

  I would not want to do it. I would be like.

• 36:06Speaker 03

  They kind of had to, right? Like they, they kind of hit their, their point where it's like shit or get off the pot.

• 36:11Speaker 05

  This is the question. I don't know. I asked that about rabbit too.

• 36:14Ed Zitron?

  Is it rabid cynical? I one hundred percent believe.

• 36:17Speaker 05

  I think rabbit had to launch before the, what we all knew was gonna happen, which was Google was gonna do Gemini.

• 36:21Ed Zitron?

  People used it?

• 36:22Speaker 05

  Apple was gonna do Siri thing. Yeah.

• 36:24Ed Zitron?

  People saw how it operated, so that they could say this.

• 36:28Speaker 03

  It looks. Cool.

• 36:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, it does look cool.

• 36:30Ed Zitron?

  He is on the board of teenage engineering. He is on the board. This boy's a si- okay, we're gonna talk about the rabbit. It's time. So those listeners who don't know about the rabbit is this $200 AI device and it claims to have something on it called a large action model. Large action model claims it was trained on 600 plus apps to distinctly control your apps, but for some reason it only launched with four or five. Turns out that when you ask the lamb to do something, it would sometimes just not work. Sometimes you would say, order me McDonald's and it would go. Sorry, Uber isn't working. And it turns out, due to some friendly hackers, that it turned out that it isn't actually using a large action model.

• 37:10Ed Zitron?

  It's connected to playwright, a script thing. I'm sure more technical listeners are gonna email me corrections. I'm very sorry. But in short, instead of running a large action model, an actual AI thing, it was triggering scripts using chat GPT. Now, I could do a whole episode. I'm surprised I haven't over the whole thing that they used to be an NFT company, but putting all of the obvious horrible things aside, it just fucking sucks.

• 37:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:35Ed Zitron?

  It's just really bad in a way that is almost unbelievable. I recommend you go and look up Dave 3D did a whole thing about it before it came out. It was very good. But go and look at Linus's and Linus, I know people have problems with him, but his thing about the rabbit was great because it was mostly him trying stuff and not working. He goes, what, what, what? Which was very entertaining.

• 37:55Speaker 03

  It's very funny.

• 37:56Ed Zitron?

  But it, it's just broken.

• 37:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 38:00Ed Zitron?

  And they raised another $32 million in March. It feels like I am living in a different universe to the rest of the world. I see this. It's bad. The YouTube's like, this is the worst thing I've ever used. Investors like, absolutely. Yeah, I need to get in on this shit now.

• 38:15Speaker 03

  Right. Yeah, yeah. Elon Musk has just sent them, wrote him a check. Um, he did not, to my knowledge, write them a check. He wouldn't do that.

• 38:22Ed Zitron?

  It's an epic and base device.

• 38:24Speaker 03

  You know, I don't think you're alone. I think there is a weird tension happening where we have Silicon Valley and we have all these investors in Silicon Valley who are all just desperate to make money and never took a single history, English course, like any liberal arts. They think that's stupid. And then there's the rest of the world.

• 38:40Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 38:40Speaker 03

  And and these people are so focused on money, they forget the rest of the world. They'd never touch grass. And so they'll put on the Vision Pro and be like, this is going to change the face of computing and not consider the billion of different other ways people use computers. Or or they'll see the the the the Rabbit with the worst name on the planet, by the way. Every majority of women I know.

• 39:01Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 39:01Speaker 03

  The Rabbit was coming out was like.

• 39:03Ed Zitron?

  Why would I pay $200 for that?

• 39:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, like I I got one in the my drawer next to my bed. What the hell, guys?

• 39:08Speaker 05

  I'm dying to know more about that. Wait, I didn't even put that.

• 39:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, the Rabbit is a very notorious like that's that's a term for a whole type of of sex toy.

• 39:15Ed Zitron?

  Is it really?

• 39:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:16Speaker 05

  Oh, I had no idea.

• 39:17Speaker 03

  Yeah. And so like when they were like, we've got the Rabbit. I was like, do you? Oh, it's a different Rabbit.

• 39:22Ed Zitron?

  Jesse Lou's like, and now bring out the rabbit. You're like, whoa.

• 39:27Speaker 03

  What's happened at CES? I knew you guys were doing sex tech now, but wow.

• 39:30Ed Zitron?

  I moved the adult thing away from CES.

• 39:33Speaker 03

  This is the that that.

• 39:34Speaker 05

  Depending on the year.

• 39:35Ed Zitron?

  But I think I think that it is that that there's the kind of disconnection from the real world. But there's also, I don't know if these people use stuff. I just don't.

• 39:42Speaker 03

  I don't think they do.

• 39:43Ed Zitron?

  I don't know if they use it like I really want to just get behind Marc Andreessen at one point and can't say the rest of that. But I mean, look over his shoulder and see the font size on his iPhone.

• 39:54Speaker 05

  Right.

• 39:54Ed Zitron?

  Like, I want to see it because I don't think these people interact with the real world or touch grass. But I also don't think they like, I don't think, well, app Vision Pro is different because public company, whatever.

• 40:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:05Ed Zitron?

  But like the Rabbit, for example, I don't think they fucking cared. They'll be like, these little pigs will buy this.

• 40:10Speaker 03

  Well, they'd already bought it, right? Like, like, they announced the thing. They made these huge promises. They they did a ton of pre-sales. And then it came out and I we haven't heard how the pre-sales have or how the the sales have been.

• 40:21Ed Zitron?

  Hundred thousand units.

• 40:22Speaker 03

  After.

• 40:23Ed Zitron?

  Oh, we don't.

• 40:24Speaker 03

  No.

• 40:25Ed Zitron?

  They are.

• 40:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, we're well, and I don't know what we're going to hear about that, right?

• 40:28Ed Zitron?

  We are not. It's coming from Jesse Lou.

• 40:31Speaker 05

  I think, you know, I mean, if the I I I'm with you. I think there are. Dubious business motivations to a lot of this, right?

• 40:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:39Speaker 05

  But I I can't help but think that if I was inside one of these organizations that I wouldn't. Look, no, I know I would have been caught up in it. I would have been caught up in the ambition. I would have been caught up in the promise, especially when you consider that the design process of a lot of the stuff goes back to the time where we were. Most of us are getting our first chance to interact with chat G P T. And I'm like, make me a text adventure in the style of Star Trek Deep Space Nine.

• 41:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:02Speaker 05

  And it did it. And I was like, oh, oh, my God. You know, I remember where I was when that happened. It was like the first time I put on a V R headset. I remember the first time I I was actually blown away by A I. And if I was in it inside a company or recently hired a company, I was like, we're going to change the world with this tech. I think I would have, I probably would have been on that boat for like a year before I started getting really skeptical about it internally.

• 41:22Speaker 03

  By chat G P T.

• 41:23Speaker 05

  Initially, yeah.

• 41:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, I like, for me, I used it and it just reminded me of the aim bots.

• 41:28Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 41:28Speaker 03

  From like, I'm I'm old here. I'm apologies to the audience. I'm sure you're all twelve. Hi, why are you listening?

• 41:34Ed Zitron?

  Pretty sure I'm old of you.

• 41:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, we're we're old people, but the aim bots you'd go and you'd log in and you type and then type back. And and then there's there, we've seen this so many times. And this one, I was like, okay.

• 41:44Speaker 05

  To Eliza, yeah.

• 41:45Speaker 03

  We're back to this, we're back to this, like, the the the pattern recognition and recreation machine has gotten just really, really good. And I was like, that's fine.

• 41:53Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, that's kind of, that's actually where I was as well, like, oh, you can do a text based adventure. And I think if I'd have heard that, I would have gone, cool, all right. And just kind of just say, because I, on a P R firm.

• 42:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:06Ed Zitron?

  I have clients in A I, but nothing that touches this show because I'm scared of that. And it's like, there's a few clients now who have even just do A I things. That's the thing I don't, surprisingly enough, A I companies aren't super excited to work with me when I'm talking about them actually having to do stuff. But it's like with chat G P T, for example, I know, I actually understand totally, Michael, why you were excited like that. I can understand why others might have been excited by that. I just don't understand how they're still that way.

• 42:33Speaker 05

  Oh, well.

• 42:34Ed Zitron?

  Because nothing has happened.

• 42:36Speaker 03

  Money.

• 42:37Ed Zitron?

  Money, I guess, but.

• 42:39Speaker 03

  I mean, money is a very powerful driver of people.

• 42:41Ed Zitron?

  If you work for a financial institution, I get it. But like gadget, even just regular people don't seem excited. It's just so weird. It feels like living in two realities at once.

• 42:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:52Ed Zitron?

  And like, there was a sign that someone posted on Blue Sky. It was like, um.

• 42:57Ed Zitron?

  We put the AI in an IPA. It was a Dell advert.

• 43:01Speaker 05

  What?

• 43:01Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, I just, I feel like I have, I have a friend who is in a dot com boom company.

• 43:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:08Ed Zitron?

  Like a textbook related one. And I'm really tempted to call him and be like, was it like this? Was it like this? And if he says yes, I'm gonna do nothing because I can't invest in anything now because I run a bloody tech podcast.

• 43:21Ed Zitron?

  Can't do anything, can't short shit. It's like the big short, but Steve Cross is like, well, I'll just go home, I guess.

• 43:26Speaker 05

  I think like we have to give, give credit to the, to the entire thing. First of all, the, the marketing approach to AI has been really frustrating because everything is AI now. Stuff that was, that existed before in it has been ported directly unchanged and just rebranded as, as AI. Just much in the same way, I think somebody brought up to me at the, at the John Deere event I was just at, which we will not be talking about.

• 43:48Speaker 03

  Okay. I had so many questions.

• 43:50Speaker 05

  Somebody brought up, it's like, yeah, it's like slapping a non-GMO label on a, on an unchanged box of wheat thins. Like it's like, okay, well, AI is just being marketed much too aggressively. So you have stuff stuck in here, kind of getting caught in the, in the flack that's like, that's really useful, but it's, it's these, it's a seasoning that you put on something that is already useful. It's not in itself a self-contained thing capable of driving a whole new range of, especially gadgets. Which again, makes me very sad because every time you would touch a new AI, I think the plot, the plot note, that little self-contained AI voice recorder was like, this is very cool. I wish it were an alternate universe in the year 2000 and I could actually get excited about this. Cause what this is, is a feature

• 44:30Speaker 05

  that belongs in the Google recorder. And oh, sorry, I just finished this video and that's exactly what Google built in to their recorder when that was done. And I was like, okay, well.

• 44:40Ed Zitron?

  Have fun with that for now.

• 44:41Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's bummer.

• 44:43Ed Zitron?

  Pivot to AR?

• 44:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, everybody's, I mean, yeah, I think they're just gonna pivot back and forth. Everybody's gonna be constantly oscillating until like something sticks because they're so desperate for that next thing. They're so eager. They, everybody's just looking for the money. They know it's somewhere and like, right now it is all in Nvidia stock and, and they're hoping that it will somehow come to them at some point.

• 45:06Ed Zitron?

  Why not, why not you? I don't know. It's like, why not build some fucking hardware to put Nvidia stuff in? I realized those blackboard chips aren't what we're talking about, but I don't know, do so. It's almost as if no one wants to do the work in the middle. They're like, I've got an idea and I need to make a product. Can I skip the middle part? It's boring, it's expensive, it takes forever. I need to have this shit on the market in six months. And it can't be in, I've, it is the growth at all costs for our economy ever in about a hundred times. But it's also frustrating because I actually think if they put in the effort, this would be cool. When it comes to AI, part of my frustration comes back to that thing we were saying earlier about how we've been let down. Because I would actually love it if I could reliably tell my phone to take distinct actions. Send the calendar invite to Alex and Michael.

• 45:51Ed Zitron?

  Yes. Three P M. At the iHeart Radio Studio and just fucking send it. And it would know how, or maybe it goes, do you want Eastern or Pacific time? Or wait, I said, New York, you already know. And it sends the invites and it finds your emails. That would be useful. I wish in my regular email job, I could have it do the spreadsheets and the documents. It can't, it can't actually do these things.

• 46:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:13Ed Zitron?

  And this, the, please make that the future. No, it isn't the future. We need to, they can't even describe what it is. And it's just.

• 46:18Speaker 03

  Well, because they can't do that future yet, right? Like there's, they, the, the things we have now, the thing that everybody got really excited about was they released chat G P T three point five. Everybody went, oh crap, this can write, this can write stuff and it can write it not like garbage for once. And this is huge. And all of the researchers just rolled their eyes because they'd seen this for ages. They're like, yeah, it's a large language model. That's what they do.

• 46:41Ed Zitron?

  That's what they do.

• 46:41Speaker 03

  Calm down. And everybody's like, no. And then it, they, they, the downloads increased, the downloads increased. And everybody's like, wait.

• 46:49Speaker 03

  I think there's some money here.

• 46:51Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 46:51Speaker 03

  And let's just like ride this hype just right into the ground as long as we, or ride it as long as we can until it gets around. And that's pretty much what happened.

• 47:03Speaker 03

  Just, right?

• 47:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm trying to, I'm like, I'm still, you know, I'm halfway between like the stuff that that we're all talking about and then the stuff that I see again in these little flashes of like, what, I'll be on a, on a trip with, and Kevin either will be, I'll be like, what are you doing? He's like, well, I have a cold, so I can't do voiceover for my video, but I built a model of my own voice. So now all I have to do is type in something in script and the model in my voice reads it to the audience. And I'm like, well, that's useful. Cool. All right. Well, you know, bookmark that. Yeah. Like generative fill stuff or it's like, it's not like I'm typing into Midjourney, like make me a photo of a high turtle eating macaroni and cheese while watching. It's like, no, like fill in.

• 47:42Speaker 03

  I typed that in.

• 47:42Speaker 05

  I mean, that is a cool photo. Yeah. But like when you rotate a photo, right? And you have to fill in the, the stuff with, with fake scenery just to make it look okay. So you can run a blog post. It's like, that's useful. So there's these little.

• 47:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's a lot of these smaller things that could be super, super useful, but that's not what they want to focus on because that takes actual work. That takes, there's more development that needs to happen there.

• 48:02Speaker 05

  You're already big enough that you've bought whatever little company came up with that and you've built like your Adobe, you've built it into Photoshop.

• 48:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:08Speaker 05

  So.

• 48:09Speaker 03

  And then everybody hates you because you're Adobe.

• 48:11Ed Zitron?

  I think it's almost like they, they are really good at features, but terrible at products. But these aren't useful because the actual user interface of phones is really good and also very bad.

• 48:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:22Ed Zitron?

  I will lose what I am doing on my phone sometimes. I have 587 Safari tabs up.

• 48:30Speaker 03

  That doesn't surprise me.

• 48:30Ed Zitron?

  Because the UX on there is so wonky and it's so like, it's not like on a computer where you have like, uh, like, uh, actually that would suggest I close Chrome tabs on my computer too. But I don't lose shit as much, but I still do on the computer.

• 48:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:44Ed Zitron?

  I, I don't miss meetings because I generally force myself to be on time as I was not today. And it's.

• 48:53Ed Zitron?

  The fact that I have to moderate so much of this stuff, yet everyone's talking about AI that really pisses me off. Why can't the phone, if AI is the goddamn future, why are we so far from?

• 49:04Speaker 03

  Well, the other part of that is the security and privacy. Like, we just saw, as we're recording this earlier today, Apple said, actually, a bunch of these features that we announced at WWDC, like Apple Intelligence, which is gonna make Siri, like, do a lot of the stuff we all want it to do. They're not coming to Europe. Because the DMA, and they're like, oh, you know, we're worried, it's gonna like, do something about the privacy. Recall is another example, that was the Windows feature. Where it was like, what if we just, to me, I was editing our post for it, and I was like, this rules. I didn't even think about security, because I was like, oh, it's gonna take a picture? I'm just gonna know? And I'm like, I'd recently been trying to look for a text message from 10 years ago, so it was feeling very like, this is perfect for me, specifically.

• 49:46Speaker 03

  And then everybody's like, this is the worst thing to ever happen, in my life.

• 49:51Ed Zitron?

  What's great about Recall as well is, they didn't actually solve the real problem, which was, search. Searching for things, Spotlight is actually really good.

• 49:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:00Ed Zitron?

  But it's not good enough.

• 50:01Speaker 03

  Nope.

• 50:01Ed Zitron?

  It could just be a little bit better. Searching for stuff on your messages could be better. That would require them to make that better. They're like, nah, what if we just?

• 50:08Speaker 03

  What if we did a new feature?

• 50:09Ed Zitron?

  What if we just, like, just wrote it down? Well, just write down literally everything you've ever done.

• 50:13Speaker 03

  Put it in a plain text file, and then we'll just use AI to train on that, and...

• 50:18Ed Zitron?

  And it'll be great.

• 50:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I'm like, yeah, that is definitely a solution.

• 50:22Speaker 05

  It's reminding me of something. I switched to a text message provider, like, 15 years ago.

• 50:28Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 50:29Speaker 05

  And I was intoxicated by the prospect of being able to search all of my text messages for all time, which I've done a few times. And over the course of the past, like, two years, I've been like, I must delete that entire archive.

• 50:40Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 50:41Speaker 05

  This is a massive liability.

• 50:43Ed Zitron?

  I have all my emails, but not my texts.

• 50:44Speaker 03

  No, I keep all of them. Don't worry, guys.

• 50:47Speaker 05

  You and I will go down together.

• 50:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, I'm taking everybody down.

• 50:51Ed Zitron?

  When you're indicted, it'll all come out.

• 50:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, hopefully, please don't indict me.

• 50:56Ed Zitron?

  No.

• 50:57Speaker 03

  Federal government?

• 50:57Ed Zitron?

  Please don't indict anyone who's on Better Off Line.

• 50:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, thanks.

• 51:00Ed Zitron?

  Blanket request.

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• 53:15Ed Zitron?

  So returning from a commercial break that I'll announce next time. Um, it's just, I wonder if it's something to do with the venture capital climate, but not just that they don't want to invest in things that aren't going to grow huge, but also I think they're scared of hardware. They just, the concept of hardware is just-

• 53:34Speaker 03

  It's expensive.

• 53:35Ed Zitron?

  It's expensive, but also like you've been saying, there's not really a platform. Like there is if you own the hardware device, but you need to come up with some noxious way to charge them more.

• 53:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, everybody is obsessed with how do we get that extra, that extra money, right? With the exception of some hardware in this room currently.

• 53:53Speaker 05

  Thank you very much.

• 53:53Speaker 03

  That was for you.

• 53:54Speaker 05

  Clicks for iPhone, buy it.

• 53:57Speaker 05

  We just had an ad break down.

• 54:00Speaker 03

  But, but for the most part, everybody is obsessed with this. And we saw this with video games. I think that's one of, that was like one of the first ones we saw it with, where they were like, what if we charge you just to play online with your friends, even though it doesn't cost us anything to do that, really?

• 54:15Ed Zitron?

  Well-

• 54:16Speaker 03

  I mean, it costs them a lot, but-

• 54:17Ed Zitron?

  I think it became with, it became, Jesus Christ, began with the game, it was in Morrow End or Oblivion that they did the horse armor. That was the big moment. They charged $2.99 for some armor for your horse.

• 54:29Speaker 03

  Did you get it?

• 54:30Ed Zitron?

  No.

• 54:30Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 54:31Ed Zitron?

  Maybe in the Elder Scrolls Online, but nevertheless, that was the moment when it, but they were like, ah.

• 54:35Speaker 03

  And then we got the more microtransactions. They're like, oh, do you want to do a cool little like hand wave in Destiny? $5 and I paid it. Unlike you, I paid the $5. I was like, take my money, Bungie, I'm sorry.

• 54:48Speaker 05

  Since we're talking about old timey things, the first time I encountered this was with Napster, when Napster went legit. Do you remember that very brief moment?

• 54:56Speaker 03

  You were still with Napster when it went?

• 54:58Speaker 05

  No, I returned to it. No, I, cause like, you know, I done the LimeWire, done the, cause I had ruined several computers.

• 55:03Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 55:04Speaker 05

  And then Napster comes out and it's like, hey, we're going legit. Just pay us this very affordable monthly fee and you get unlimited music. I'm like, great. And then I got to the part of the, you know, front page. It's like, yeah, and if you ever stop paying us, you will lose access to all that music. I'm like, what?

• 55:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:17Speaker 05

  It's 2006 and what is this?

• 55:19Speaker 03

  And now that's how Spotify works.

• 55:20Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 55:21Ed Zitron?

  Yes.

• 55:21Speaker 05

  Now we're into it.

• 55:22Ed Zitron?

  But you have a free account, so.

• 55:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't pay for Spotify.

• 55:26Speaker 05

  I don't either, because I'm an influencer.

• 55:29Ed Zitron?

  I pay for Apple Music. I'm like, I really like it.

• 55:31Speaker 03

  I get it through my, my, my phone bill for some reason.

• 55:34Ed Zitron?

  That's good.

• 55:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's great. So I'm like, do I pay for it? Unclear.

• 55:38Ed Zitron?

  But it's just weird because it feels like there are very obvious problems that people have. Like phones are, the whole stop using your phone thing is stupid. Kate in the topless at BI had a really good piece where it's like, I love my phone. I love being on my phone. Yeah. The problem is there's too much shit in it.

• 55:54Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 55:54Ed Zitron?

  And that doesn't mean Google, I need you to search for me. You're also not good at it. But it's the, I feel like they are selling us back the idea of interfaces, except they're not even doing it. They're not actually automating anything. That's the thing with the AI. That is the problem of AI other than all the other ones, which is it's not doing anything for me. What is it doing? When? Where? What? Even the Apple intelligence thing, which just did an episode on, excited about the prospect of what they could do. But also they didn't actually say much.

• 56:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:24Ed Zitron?

  Siri can do actions across multiple apps.

• 56:26Speaker 03

  And also it's not coming until well after launch, right?

• 56:30Ed Zitron?

  Is it? Jesus Christ.

• 56:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, they, or some of the features, they were really like, they, they weren't clear on which features are coming immediately, which are later.

• 56:36Ed Zitron?

  Just this obfuscation. And it's, it almost went.

• 56:40Speaker 03

  I mean, because that was WWDC, Google I O, we just finished this big developer conference season. And while it was ostensibly for developers and ostensibly for the rest of us, and it should have been developers because never has the relationship between these platforms and developers been more fraught.

• 56:55Ed Zitron?

  Oh, God.

• 56:56Speaker 03

  The stuff that's happening in Europe with the DMA has made it really, really difficult. And instead it was for investors.

• 57:02Ed Zitron?

  Mm hmm.

• 57:02Speaker 03

  And saying, here, we've got, we've got our AI thing too. We are in on the hype. And it's like, you don't have to be. Like, we talked about, um, I'm going to do a little plug here. We talked about this on the Verge cast, the, uh, the Verge's.

• 57:13Ed Zitron?

  The what? Sorry, the what?

• 57:14Speaker 03

  The what? The what? Uh, where, where I sometimes talk about, uh, stuff too. And, and we talked about it over there and it was really, really clear that they just, they'd done this for the investors. And if they hadn't been doing AI this year, and it was really clear that that was kind of bolted on. Everybody would be talking about how stupid and dumb and delightful your phone looks because you can change the color on it now, right? Like you can change the user interface and like, there was these cool moments that happened and they just were like, no, no, no, forget that. AI.

• 57:45Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, don't, don't, Mike.

• 57:46Speaker 05

  No, no, that's it. I mean, like, it's that, that, and that has been the case since I got into this business, right? It's like, you go to a show and, oh, well, what's the theme this year? You know, and I think we saw the seeds of this zone in 2017 when Google first spent like, half of Google I O talking about bots. Remember that?

• 58:01Ed Zitron?

  Oh, yeah.

• 58:02Speaker 05

  What are we even doing here, guys?

• 58:04Speaker 03

  I think it was the same year that Facebook, when they did F8, was it Fate or whatever? And they're like, "We're gonna revolutionize the world with chatbots in Facebook."

• 58:14Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 58:14Speaker 03

  Where are those?

• 58:15Ed Zitron?

  M. It was the M Assistant, right? With, with Matt, with Facebook?

• 58:19Speaker 05

  Oh, was it?

• 58:20Speaker 03

  Was it?

• 58:20Speaker 05

  Was that the Metairie brand?

• 58:22Ed Zitron?

  It was so fucking stupid.

• 58:23Speaker 05

  But it's always, there's always that big, you know, overarching theme, and it's, again, it, to, to your point, yes, it is to, um, you know, curry favor with, with investors and make sure, no, Google's not being left behind. We can't afford to be seen as being left behind. And then, you know, you, you get the search query, the, the glue-on-pizza stuff, the Go Eat Rocks thing, and of course, they've got egg on their face now because that, and I cannot, for the life of me, understand why no one internally said, "Hey, stop. Let's, let's actually..."

• 58:51Speaker 03

  Because Google is one of the biggest companies in the world, and it is a nightmare to work in.

• 58:55Speaker 05

  I've heard that.

• 58:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, Tony Fadell, who, who built like Nest and all of that stuff, he wrote a book that was all about how he, he knows business. And, um, one of the really actually interesting parts in it is how his just relationship with Google collapsed after he was, Nest was acquired. They acquire Nest, and then, like, immediately, you know, his boss is like, "Actually, I'm not your boss anymore. This guy over here is your boss. You're doing this." And then that guy's like, "Oh, actually, you're doing this." And it was just constantly changing because it's such a big amorphous

• 59:24Speaker 05

  Right.

• 59:24Speaker 03

  thing.

• 59:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 59:26Speaker 03

  And like, a lot of these companies are that way. Google's probably the worst at it. Amazon's pretty bad at it. Apple is generally pretty good at it. Apple's whole thing is just like, the culture of the place can sometimes get in the way of that.

• 59:37Ed Zitron?

  It's cultish.

• 59:38Speaker 03

  Yeah. Uh, and, and Google's also a cult, but it's like, what if we were like a big kind of disorganized?

• 59:44Ed Zitron?

  They're also run by, I'm sure, regular listeners will know, McKinsey graduate, Sandar Peshaw. What confuses me is like Liz Reid has been there like decades, the search chief now, but also her boss is Prabha Gaurav Anand, who, former head of ads, who also used to run Yahoo. Please listen to the episode.

• 1:00:01Speaker 05

  Great episode.

• 1:00:02Ed Zitron?

  Arguably the weirdest thing I ever discovered, other than what I see in the mirror. Anyway, um- It's frustrating as well because they must have no shame. They must legitimately just be like, who gives a shit? Like, the only way you are able to release products this bad is when you just, to your point, it was for investors, but now the company is for investors?

• 1:00:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:00:25Ed Zitron?

  Because I think that that is the Rubicon that's being crossed.

• 1:00:28Speaker 03

  That's why I like someone like Panos Panay, who's now at Amazon, or Steve Jobs, had these like-

• 1:00:33Ed Zitron?

  Panos Panay was-

• 1:00:35Speaker 03

  Panos Panay ran the Surface department, ran all of the Surface products at Microsoft for years.

• 1:00:40Speaker 05

  One of the most gifted presenters at press events.

• 1:00:43Speaker 03

  I mean, he knows how to present things.

• 1:00:45Speaker 05

  A crowd favorite.

• 1:00:45Speaker 03

  And he really understands how to like build these things. And I think he made a real moment with the Surface because he cares about the products. And he's now at Amazon and they won't let me talk to him and it's fine, I'm okay with it. But, and that's because he's going in like, okay, we've got to fix Amazon's like product lineup because it's pretty shit.

• 1:01:02Ed Zitron?

  What if it was good?

• 1:01:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, what if it was good? And you see that, but those are the rare guys, right? Like, the reason these people are so beloved is because they do care. Joni Ive, terrible ideas a lot of times. Apparently it was like his idea to put the eyes in the Vision Pro.

• 1:01:18Speaker 05

  Oh, really?

• 1:01:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:01:19Ed Zitron?

  It would be up to their little eyes.

• 1:01:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:01:23Ed Zitron?

  What if the watch was a triangle? No, no.

• 1:01:28Speaker 03

  That's the rest of the show.

• 1:01:29Ed Zitron?

  By the way, I want to see, Joni Ive, apparently Sam Altman really badly wants to make a device for them.

• 1:01:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:01:34Ed Zitron?

  Honestly, give them as much money as they want.

• 1:01:36Speaker 03

  That's what I want.

• 1:01:37Ed Zitron?

  I want to see the homomobile ass gadget that these idiots put out.

• 1:01:41Speaker 03

  Zero ports, zero display.

• 1:01:43Ed Zitron?

  I'll call it the Hexagon.

• 1:01:45Speaker 03

  You just think at it.

• 1:01:47Ed Zitron?

  It's a new type of Bluetooth device. Well, to do, you can connect your Bluetooth device, do anything. Oh, shit.

• 1:01:54Speaker 03

  But it looks gorgeous.

• 1:01:57Ed Zitron?

  Which is, I'm fine if things look good, but if they're just completely useless, come on.

• 1:02:02Speaker 03

  No, no, I mean, but that was the thing is like, he's kind of like a lesser example because he does have some bad ideas. He's so about the minimalism and weirdness that it goes, like, somebody tell him no. But that's why Steve works, that's why, or Steve Jobs works. I don't know, Steve Jobs, he's dead. That's why Steve Jobs works, that's why Panos worked, was because they can, they actually care about the products. They actually want to make something good. And most of the time now, like Tim Cook, I'm sure he cares about the product because he is the CEO and he has to make money and please his investors and stuff, but he is a supply chains guy. Right, like

• 1:02:38Ed Zitron?

  I also feel like Apple's laptops have been really good, their phones have been really

• 1:02:41Speaker 03

  They have gotten, they've gotten really good because everybody was like slagging on the laptops being like, they're garbage, you haven't updated the MacBook Air, your most popular device in half a decade, do something. And they're like, oh, we, we probably should. And then, but they only really did it when they actually had, could put their own processors in it.

• 1:02:57Ed Zitron?

  Which is right, and silicon's great.

• 1:02:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:59Speaker 05

  That's the thing. I think I'm, my problem, as I'm discovering, in the middle of this conversation.

• 1:03:05Speaker 03

  I love this.

• 1:03:06Ed Zitron?

  No, this is good.

• 1:03:06Speaker 05

  Is that my problem is not with the devices, because everyone who buys them, the millions of people who, who give Apple whatever, it's three trillion dollar market cap or whatever it is right now, are very happy with them, because they're very good products. And anytime they try something that I would like, like, you know, for example, I thought the touch bar was kind of a fun idea.

• 1:03:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, I like it.

• 1:03:25Ed Zitron?

  Same, I thought it was fun.

• 1:03:26Speaker 05

  But it, but it, it, it craters, and it's not supported and whatever, you get this developer thing, but there are no options anymore for these types of products. Like, your phone has to look like that. I'm pointing at Ed's iPhone.

• 1:03:36Ed Zitron?

  iPhone 15 Pro.

• 1:03:37Speaker 05

  Your phone has to look like that. And even if you go crazy and you make something that I really appreciate, like a foldable, which is one of the big reasons I still use Android phones, because foldables change the way I use phones, and they're great, they still have to unfold into vaguely, something that vaguely reminiscent of, of that rectangle. And a laptop, oh my god, we just saw Qualcomm, you know, processors introduced into like, I don't know, 17 new laptops from a bunch of new, new companies, and they all look like the existing Intel powered laptops that they've been shipping forever.

• 1:04:06Speaker 03

  Because in most cases, they just

• 1:04:08Speaker 05

  Just stop it.

• 1:04:09Speaker 03

  I think, I think Microsoft and HP were like the only companies that actually launched

• 1:04:14Speaker 05

  To do something new.

• 1:04:14Speaker 03

  New products.

• 1:04:15Speaker 05

  But even they, that's not new.

• 1:04:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:16Speaker 05

  Like, you can go, Asus, god bless them, they make these crazy weird laptops with multiple screens, you get these foldable screens. And honestly, those do, they're not just, they're not gimmicks. Like, they, they change the way you compute, and in some cases, they are very, very useful. But no one wanted to take a risk. No one wanted to, to take the affordance of all that space freed up by this ARM based chip and like the, the reduction of fan size and everything. No, they're just, everyone's just being very conservative because, same reason that phone makers only make white and black phones in quantity, because that's all people buy. We make clicks in a very fetching yellow color, and that's 30% of them or something like that, because most people want

• 1:04:54Ed Zitron?

  White or black.

• 1:04:55Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:04:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:56Speaker 05

  And I get it, but I don't like it.

• 1:04:59Speaker 03

  It's boring.

• 1:05:00Speaker 05

  I would encourage people to remember that fun can be a reason to consider a piece of technology. When did we decide that fun is not a priority in our, in our like buying?

• 1:05:10Speaker 03

  When we decided selling more products mattered more than selling cool products.

• 1:05:15Ed Zitron?

  And shareholder supremacy.

• 1:05:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, like the shareholder supremacy.

• 1:05:18Speaker 05

  I agree with you both on the business side, but as consumers, like when did, when did we just go like pick up a phone like, I don't know. I feel like.

• 1:05:25Ed Zitron?

  That's blaming the victim. I feel like.

• 1:05:28Speaker 05

  I'm serious.

• 1:05:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, I say this a lot about.

• 1:05:30Ed Zitron?

  I think, I think that is you, I don't say this in a bad way. You're right. Like, I understand what you feel that way, but it's their job to sell these things. It's their job to make these things important.

• 1:05:39Speaker 05

  Titillate us.

• 1:05:40Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, exactly. Like the two screen laptop is Lenovo, right?

• 1:05:43Speaker 05

  Asus and Lenovo.

• 1:05:44Ed Zitron?

  So these things are crazy. Like you've got the, you've got the screen where your keyboard is.

• 1:05:48Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:05:48Ed Zitron?

  And then you have another screen. Make, have a go at it. Do a proper national campaign. Make some weird choices for it because that's not a mass device, but guess what? There are cool things you can do with it.

• 1:05:59Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 1:06:00Ed Zitron?

  Many people use two screens. Do a big enterprise push. Do a big business push. When I see the AI IPA ad, that should be the double screen one.

• 1:06:08Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:06:08Ed Zitron?

  And what's weird is like Dell, for example, that company was dog shit for a long time. And now they're pretty good because they went, why if we make good, good computers? Use our computers, we say, yeah, they're dog shit. What if they were good? Nah. And it's just, and I think it's this disconnection of the company from the product on both a business and just a culture level, like the people building things. Like, it's so weird to me that Meta made the Ray Bans because all of the people who run Facebook now. So it's Mark Zuckerberg, Javier Olivano, the COO, you've got Boz.

• 1:06:42Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:06:42Ed Zitron?

  The ultimate growth at all costs asshole. Every terrorist attacks are justifiable for growth. Literally, he said that. Uh, yeah, it's really grim thing. Uh, Alex Schultz, former growth guy, all these are growth people. I'm shocked that there's anyone building anything in Facebook other than the torment nexus and its plugins.

• 1:06:59Speaker 03

  Well, that's because Mark said. Bill, you have to build me a hardware. Because nobody wants, nobody, like, everybody hates us because we're terrible at software. You've got to go build me some cool hardware so I can get as far away from the phones as possible.

• 1:07:13Ed Zitron?

  I'm laughing only because you said he could build, build me a hardware, but I could imagine Mark Zuckerberg just like, his cold dead eyes looking at, build me a hardware.

• 1:07:21Speaker 03

  That's, I assume that is exactly what happened.

• 1:07:23Ed Zitron?

  And it just leaves.

• 1:07:23Speaker 03

  Yeah. Build it for me.

• 1:07:25Ed Zitron?

  Slams the door.

• 1:07:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:07:26Speaker 05

  Honestly, I think if they brought back the HTC Cha Cha, it would do pretty well right now.

• 1:07:30Ed Zitron?

  What's the HTC Cha Cha, right?

• 1:07:31Speaker 05

  That was a, a physical QWERTY keyboard Android phone with a Facebook button on it. That would let you directly share to Facebook.

• 1:07:38Ed Zitron?

  Tens of them sold.

• 1:07:38Speaker 05

  Absolutely. Could be the new minimalist phone for the Facebook friendly, it could be the Boomer phone.

• 1:07:43Speaker 03

  Oh my god, that's the Boomer phone.

• 1:07:45Ed Zitron?

  They sell a Boomer phone, a great call, has one with just giant numbers on it.

• 1:07:49Speaker 05

  Chipmunks still around, right?

• 1:07:50Ed Zitron?

  They're still around.

• 1:07:51Speaker 03

  Is it?

• 1:07:52Ed Zitron?

  They're owned by like a private equity firm, so not for long.

• 1:07:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was like, that's, that's a, oof.

• 1:07:56Ed Zitron?

  They'll be sold to a barbecue company or so owned by a private equity firm.

• 1:08:00Speaker 03

  Green Egg will buy it next week, don't worry about it.

• 1:08:02Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, great things go, what's funny though is at CES with the grill stuff, so as some of you may know, I make excellent barbecue at home, I do smokers. I admit, I got in a little bit of trouble at CES last time I was there, because I went up to these people, I start asking them grilling questions, not like being an ass, I was like, so how does this help with the cooking?

• 1:08:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:08:19Ed Zitron?

  They're like, well, you see, you go on the app and you can see recipes. I'm like, sure, but the device.

• 1:08:25Ed Zitron?

  Pause. Uh. Well, you can connect it on Wi-Fi, I'm like, excellent, then what? Uh, and that's because you can't really innovate that anymore, other than the combustion thermometer, which is incredible. It's made by a guy who made a video a few years ago called Your Oven Is A Liar, and it's got eight, I'm not connected with this, it's just excellent, I have to, has eight sensors in it, so it can find the coldest point in your food.

• 1:08:48Speaker 03

  Ooh. What?

• 1:08:49Ed Zitron?

  Like, all my hate, my, the various haters.

• 1:08:52Speaker 03

  Excuse me, I've got a.

• 1:08:53Ed Zitron?

  My detractors on, on the, you're saying I don't like anything, the combustion thermometer's excellent, is so good, I finally got my beef ribs down with it, but that's the thing, that one's a great example of solving an actual problem, that most people, they use a thermometer, they don't know where to put it, and they don't know if they're in the right place, and they're, I personally am a deeply anxious person, so constant anxiety, which is great for a 12-hour cook. With this, it works, and it works really well, and there's not a bunch of other bullshit. It costs like 169 bucks, so it's not cheap, but it solves a problem.

• 1:09:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:09:25Ed Zitron?

  Now it's like. You'd think with all of this money in AI or AR or all these things, they'd solve a problem. We've had very similar problems for like 10 years.

• 1:09:36Speaker 03

  I think part of it is a lot of these people do not, they think they're solving a problem, right?

• 1:09:42Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 1:09:42Speaker 03

  Like, I think everybody in this room is probably a good, we're good writers, right? Like, we all, that's part of, that's part of how we make our living. Like, when you're doing a video, you, I.

• 1:09:52Speaker 05

  I always write the script.

• 1:09:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, you write the script. Like, we're good writers, right? Like, this is a skill we have and we can do. If somebody sends us a horrible text message, we will groan because we don't want to answer it emotionally, but we'll still respond on it. Like, and we'll respond the hell out of it. It'll be well written.

• 1:10:07Ed Zitron?

  That's right.

• 1:10:08Speaker 03

  Well-written. But these people don't value that because they think that's just, that's a thing they can surmount with AI.

• 1:10:15Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:15Speaker 03

  Right? Like, that's, that is the thing for them. And I run into this, like, I was talking to a woman the other day who gave me the first legitimately good use for large language models.

• 1:10:25Ed Zitron?

  Go ahead.

• 1:10:26Speaker 03

  She had a really bad blind date and the guy sent her like a long, long email. And she's like, read this email for me because I'm not going to read it because I don't want to go on another date with a guy, then respond to it, like politely saying, saying, no, I don't want to see you again. And I was like, you figured it out. That, because like, if you did that to me in, at work, I would be furious. Blind date, yes, go.

• 1:10:49Speaker 05

  That's, no, that, you're right. And that is the, more specifically than the only good example for like AI. It's the only good version of that demo that every company insists on thinking is good.

• 1:11:00Ed Zitron?

  Rewrite my email.

• 1:11:01Speaker 05

  Where it's just like, oh, what, who's, oh, send a text to my wife and tell her that I'm going to be late for dinner. No, make me sound more sad about it. No, apologize more. Just text your wife.

• 1:11:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, just text your wife.

• 1:11:11Speaker 05

  Stop it.

• 1:11:11Ed Zitron?

  I love that as well. It's like more effort to do.

• 1:11:14Speaker 05

  It's ridiculous.

• 1:11:15Ed Zitron?

  And how do you even know what good is? You can't write.

• 1:11:17Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:11:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:11:18Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 1:11:20Ed Zitron?

  And I must also say, just as a note, there are people out there who have like cognitive disorders and learning, yeah, yeah, yeah. Learning disability called dyspraxia, for example. It's physical, but there are people with dyslexia. Those are not, when I say you should be able to write an email, just to be really clear, not the people I mean. If you have an individualized problem, and I also must be clear, none of the AI companies give a rat fuck about you. They do not care that it's not, you are not the person they are selling to.

• 1:11:45Speaker 03

  Accessibility is not.

• 1:11:47Ed Zitron?

  They are selling to someone who does not exist, that they made up.

• 1:11:49Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:11:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:11:50Ed Zitron?

  That is who it is. Because the rewrite stuff is crazy and then the, oh. I have these five ingredients in my kitchen.

• 1:11:58Speaker 03

  That's my favorite one.

• 1:11:59Ed Zitron?

  Has that ever happened to someone?

• 1:12:02Speaker 03

  You just only have, I mean.

• 1:12:03Ed Zitron?

  You can't work out what you, like unless you've got, I've got an onion, one piece of ham, three knives. I've got cumin, chat G P T, help me. Like, what is the situation where you can't look at it and go, all right, fine? Like, I'll make a sandwich, like.

• 1:12:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, because you're, you're, you're imagining, what they imagine when they're doing this is themselves. They're just like looking in the mirror and they're being like, okay, I put on my little Patagonia vest.

• 1:12:29Ed Zitron?

  I put on my clothes.

• 1:12:30Speaker 03

  I put on my little Bluetooth headset. I haven't looked at my spouse in three weeks. Um, I'm gonna have my assistant text them, oh shit, my assistant got laid off. Okay. I really wish I had an A I assistant who could text them so that they don't leave me because they probably will.

• 1:12:47Ed Zitron?

  Because the divorce would be quite messy.

• 1:12:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, it would be expensive. They will take all of my stock.

• 1:12:52Ed Zitron?

  But I don't care, so.

• 1:12:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, and like, I mean, that is a gross, gross exaggeration. I'm sure many of you in Silicon Valley are lovely human beings.

• 1:13:00Ed Zitron?

  Husbands and wives.

• 1:13:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, um, there are plenty of people who have lovely relationships there, but that is like the thing, they are, they are very cynically going after this one group who, to your point earlier, they're not talking to real people. They're not going out to like fucking middle of nowhere rural Nebraska and being like, what do you think of this? Cause they'll be like, can it connect to the internet? Yeah, it needs the internet to do everything. Cool. I can't use it at all because I don't have internet.

• 1:13:25Speaker 05

  I wonder, and I, I have a real question here and like, is it that so many problems have already been solved? That it's harder to find new ones, like, or that the new ones we find are too niche and too narrow and too like.

• 1:13:38Speaker 03

  No, because.

• 1:13:38Speaker 05

  You can't dedicate Google's resources to solving like a.

• 1:13:42Speaker 03

  Fixable problem is, I would love to just say, fix my schedule for the week.

• 1:13:47Speaker 05

  Oh, I mean, same.

• 1:13:48Speaker 03

  Right? Like, that should be easy.

• 1:13:50Ed Zitron?

  Motion has been lying about this. I'm calling you out, Motion, you assholes. All right, you motherfuckers, I see you on Instagram every goddamn day. I've, I've supercharged my A D H D with Motion. Fuck you. It's not how it works. You're a bunch of scumbags. I'm so sorry, that's a little much, but you lied. I loaded your goddamn product up and it's like, I'll rearrange your schedule. I'm like, go, and it just. It like tries to like suggest they do something once, like that does not work. What the fuck you do? And I just don't trust it anymore and it doesn't do it. And I cannot find any real users. I'm sure they exist. But that's the thing. It's that is a problem to be solved. But I also think you're right in that there are no big problems.

• 1:14:29Speaker 05

  Right, I feel like.

• 1:14:30Ed Zitron?

  No more lands to conquer.

• 1:14:31Speaker 05

  Tens of thousands of little problems and little niche like issues and certainly stuff that I run into every day. That shouldn't be a problem now that Google Home is what? You know, over a decade old and those things are just absolutely trash. But like, th- those are little things. There's one light in my room doesn't go off with the rest of it goes like, no one's gonna. Those are troubleshooting bug fixes. Like, we're not doing this whole maps thing again. We're not, we're not saying like, hey, you know how it's hard to get around a city? Or you know how you gotta print out MapQuest directions? Like, no, we drove down every road on the planet and now you have Google Maps.

• 1:15:03Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:03Speaker 05

  Like, I, I feel like those big ambitious problems just don't, don't obviously present themselves.

• 1:15:10Ed Zitron?

  We do need to go back to this idea that there are no more lands to conquer. It's the thing I've talked about before, the there are no more big problems. And I think we're finally, maybe this is the first time in history where we're really being made to reckon with the fact of how these companies make money. Because it, consumers are perhaps dealing with a death by a thousand cuts right now. It's the 10,000, 10 million little problems we face, which are usually a response, sorry, a result of technical debt. It's just things built on top of things. People I've talked to inside of Google have said this, that they just build shit on top of other shit. Google Home, one of the most evil apps of all time. Horrible. Invented by the devil to separate you from your thermostat. But that is a result of them being like, okay, we bought Nest.

• 1:15:55Ed Zitron?

  Tony Fadell. Yeah. Genius, genius guy. They've got these amazing, they've revolutionized the smart. I'm not sure if any of you remember when the Nest came in, that was a huge deal. You had this shitty Honeywell thing and Nest actually worked and it worked, it did exactly what you wanted. It looked cool. It looked cool, but it also, very satisfying. And guess what? It worked. It actually worked. And they went, wow, so we just bought Nest. And they've got these cameras and they've got these thermostats and they work really well. And the software, pretty reliable, people like that.

• 1:16:25Ed Zitron?

  But we also have another app that people hate. What if we added the thing people liked to the thing people hate? Then they will love it. Instead, I don't know what I what actually happens to them. Just go describing, which is someone from Google absorbed Nest and then said, you are run by Steve now. Don't know if his or her name was Steve, but you are run by this department and we'll build on top of it. We'll connect all the bits of Nest into this app because we must have everything in one place. When you're not really solving problems other than company apps and making a feature work rather than a suite of things work.

• 1:17:06Ed Zitron?

  This is the result, and I think we're finally reaching a point where just there's not enough exciting stuff to hide from the fact that most computing experiences are cluttered and bad.

• 1:17:15Speaker 03

  Well, that's why.

• 1:17:16Ed Zitron?

  Many, many times of the day.

• 1:17:18Speaker 03

  That's where the fix is, right? Like Google, I think we can all agree is not doing great.

• 1:17:22Ed Zitron?

  No.

• 1:17:23Speaker 03

  As far as like search goes, right? Like you go and you search something on Google. It is so much worse now. I'm using Coggi, the the paid one at the moment.

• 1:17:31Ed Zitron?

  How about some good? Is it worth it? No.

• 1:17:33Speaker 03

  It's like, it's interesting. I'm still trying it out, but it doesn't feel measurably worse, which is not great for Google. And and that is something that could be solved and that would be a huge boon, right? Like, like it is hard to find things and and these companies have all decided that they are going to solve it by just taking all of the content and then may or maybe or maybe not accurately.

• 1:17:58Ed Zitron?

  I liked to Google I O where some of the shows like, and then you will be able to use search to find your UPS tracking number and it will tell it when you get tell you. And then when you're trying to do a return, it'll automatically generate that. That could happen.

• 1:18:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:18:13Ed Zitron?

  Don't know when.

• 1:18:14Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:18:14Ed Zitron?

  And it just moved on.

• 1:18:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, don't worry.

• 1:18:16Ed Zitron?

  That was actually useful.

• 1:18:18Speaker 03

  Yeah. There's a lot, there are these useful things. They're nowhere close to ready. And then they go and they promise them way too early. And then like AI is getting poisoned. There's so much really interesting things that can happen with AI.

• 1:18:31Ed Zitron?

  It has been for a while.

• 1:18:31Speaker 03

  There has been for a very long time. And instead they're like, what if we just make a bunch of money by pushing lying bots out into the world? And that won't backfire in any way, shape or form. And it's like, no, it's already backfiring. It's just going to get worse. Like Google, you shot yourself in the foot. Microsoft with Bing, you shot yourself in the foot. Because you're like, what if we release these lying machines? At the same time, we have our garbage search engines that can't see the lies and it'll be fine. No, you've just made the web like almost impossible to navigate.

• 1:19:02Ed Zitron?

  And that one is very much like it was a way to sell cloud computer space. It was a way to promise.

• 1:19:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:19:07Ed Zitron?

  The eternal growth machine could keep growing. But also like search, I've done the episode. It's that's a whole thing. It just feels like they're not building things for people. Like it really, like if I worked on Google search and I saw them launch that, I probably wouldn't quit if I had a mortgage, but I would take my LinkedIn offline.

• 1:19:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:19:28Ed Zitron?

  I wouldn't want to be associated with it. If you're like, yeah, the face of the library.

• 1:19:32Speaker 03

  You take a lot of vacations.

• 1:19:34Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, I would, yeah, vacation. But it's just someone like in a sane society, Sundar Pichai would have been fired.

• 1:19:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:19:43Ed Zitron?

  Immediately.

• 1:19:44Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 1:19:45Ed Zitron?

  Immediately, Liz, Liz read sent off. Prabha Gargavan would have been sent off. These people would have been fired, not just for, but they've already not been fired for making search bad, but for publicly breaking the probably the biggest contribution tech has made ever.

• 1:19:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:19:59Ed Zitron?

  Like at least in software.

• 1:20:01Speaker 03

  And instead it's like a little hiccup and they're like, don't worry, AI is going to fix this. How?

• 1:20:07Ed Zitron?

  AI is going to fix the AI.

• 1:20:09Speaker 03

  How? Well, you know, that's the other part of it. They're like, well, AI will fix it because AI just needs to learn more stuff. And if it learns more stuff, we'll do that. Okay, but didn't you just, there was just, I think the Atlantic wrote a really great story about how they run out of stuff to teach the AI on. And so they're like, what if we just make more machines that make a content from AI, synthetic content, data?

• 1:20:30Ed Zitron?

  So if you go back to the PKI episode, this is a big problem, the synthetic data. And by the way, did you know that that will break them?

• 1:20:36Speaker 03

  Yeah. It's gonna be great.

• 1:20:38Ed Zitron?

  Habsburg AI is what uh Jathan Sadowski calls it, one of the funniest terms ever. But it's so funny as well because there are so many to there's so many things to fix and just using the phone is kind of a ball like it it.

• 1:20:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:20:52Ed Zitron?

  It's it's like you have this click clicky keyboard company.

• 1:20:56Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:20:57Ed Zitron?

  I'm surprised that that didn't come out like one of the weird like not quite works for Apple but seems to get all their revenue through the Apple Store companies like these these ones that have just kind of bubbled up and hung around in a good way like it's just solving a very specific need.

• 1:21:10Speaker 05

  Right, right, for a very small like niche, yeah.

• 1:21:13Ed Zitron?

  But also there are plenty of people who don't like clicky who want a clicky keyboard, people who like keyboards like that's a thing that you can connect to a person who does not live in Silicon Valley.

• 1:21:21Speaker 03

  Uh Kim Kardashian, by the way, right? That is famously a thing she loves.

• 1:21:25Speaker 05

  Uh it one of the first things I learned about being on this side of the business, I'm not allowed to talk about the customers that have not

• 1:21:32Speaker 03

  rude.

• 1:21:32Speaker 05

  Have not given me the permission to talk about them, but yeah, no, no, no.

• 1:21:35Ed Zitron?

  I hear Henry Kissinger clutching his clicks as he passed on. His last words were, I like the device.

• 1:21:46Ed Zitron?

  Now, I it's it sucks as well and getting back to something I was saying earlier as well. I wanna be excited about this stuff. I love my Ismos, my doodads.

• 1:21:55Speaker 03

  Is there anything you're excited about right now?

• 1:21:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's a good like.

• 1:21:58Ed Zitron?

  The Steam Deck, I the next, I genuinely believe, and I know the OLED was the second one, I no. That's not what I'm talking about. Whenever they do the next Steam Deck, I'm so excited for that.

• 1:22:10Speaker 03

  It's gonna be cool.

• 1:22:11Ed Zitron?

  I love the Steam Deck. I think it's one of the coolest things I've ever used. It it is like a really great PC gaming console. PC gaming consoles, they've tried them a few times, they never quite work, but this works. It's a bit too big. But I can play.

• 1:22:25Speaker 05

  That isn't great, but yeah.

• 1:22:27Speaker 03

  So worry about it. It's cool, right? And it's it's customizable in a way that you don't generally get with products nowadays and it's just it's fun to use. Like that's that's what I got like I got into the IONEO, I got into these weird like Steam Deck replacements because there's a place where I'm like, oh, something's happening.

• 1:22:45Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:45Speaker 05

  Gaming is kind of immune from the. From this thing because like you can go back to Nintendo Switch.

• 1:22:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:22:50Speaker 05

  I still love my my Switch and Razer kicks out a new gaming accessory every CES. You've got this crazy ridiculous webcam that like most people don't need, but streamers love.

• 1:22:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:22:59Speaker 05

  RGB enabled lights and all the stuff like there's there are a lot of gadgets to be had in the gaming world. I feel like if I were a.

• 1:23:05Ed Zitron?

  What's the one beginning with E? I'm completely blanking. They do the lights.

• 1:23:09Speaker 03

  Well, Elgato.

• 1:23:11Ed Zitron?

  Elgato.

• 1:23:11Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:23:12Ed Zitron?

  They make really good stuff. Dan or Dan or producer there with the win. It's. Elgato. They make great shit as well.

• 1:23:19Speaker 05

  And production gear and camera nerds like there are still gadgets out there for for specific niches.

• 1:23:23Speaker 03

  But it's definitely niche. Yeah.

• 1:23:25Speaker 05

  But yeah, or you know, little professions, but they're like, it's specialized gear. It's not really a gadget. There was just like, yeah, a hundred bucks a Best Buy and I got this weird thing.

• 1:23:33Ed Zitron?

  There is something exciting happening where the normalization of photography writ large is pretty magnificent. The photos I can take on my iPhone with portrait mode are not my DSLR. I got an Alpha three. I got a Canon five DSLR. I've done a lot of photography.

• 1:23:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:23:46Ed Zitron?

  Got some nice glass, too. And yeah, when I take them out and I get the right lighting lighting and I've I've made sure I do the settings right.

• 1:23:53Speaker 03

  You feel like you've earned you.

• 1:23:54Ed Zitron?

  And I nailed it. And I nailed it. Sure. It's great. Ninety eight percent of the other time, though, my phone's in my pocket and I can get a really good photo. And it's easy. I can upload it somewhere. It's easy to share with a friend. I could do a little editing. I can make a podcast at home in my pajamas in Las Vegas. I can have it edited. There are actual things that happen that are so good in tech. And they see these things and they're like, shit, all right. What problems do humans have? And like, I don't I don't know.

• 1:24:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:24:23Ed Zitron?

  And they go to their assistant and like, what problems do you have? And they start talking like, yeah, sure. And it's just, it's frustrating because if the tech industry would realize this was happening, they actually have a lot of good stuff to do. The normalization of whatever professional things are, you can record a podcast that sounds really good from home now in a way that you couldn't four years ago.

• 1:24:41Speaker 05

  Absolutely. Yeah.

• 1:24:43Speaker 05

  Also, I think like some of this is just it uh, I don't know if you want to call it like a victimless crime is not the word. It's like this was this was this was inevitable, right? When stuff got this good and when when you got able to do those things that you just talked about on your phone. You have a production studio in your pocket, like it we had to get here. We there was there's no longer any reason for Motorola to make a phone that with double action hinges.

• 1:25:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, we figured it out and the same thing happened in Hollywood, right? Like they were like, oh, superhero movies make money. What if we only did superhero movies? And that was really cool for me as superhero nerd for two days.

• 1:25:21Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:25:21Speaker 03

  And then I was like, shit.

• 1:25:24Ed Zitron?

  That's a really good example because they saw that superheroes did well. What they didn't realize was the movies were good and the actors were good in the roles. Iron Man didn't do well because people love the concept of Tony Stark. It's because Robert Downey Jr.

• 1:25:38Speaker 03

  Nobody fucking knew who Tony Stark was before that movie came out.

• 1:25:43Ed Zitron?

  I don't know. Guardians of the Galaxy was good, not because of Guardians of the Galaxy, but because the actors are very good at so excellent Scamora like.

• 1:25:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:25:51Ed Zitron?

  I forget who plays Peter Quill, but the guy from The Office. There's gonna be someone who's so pissed when I hear it.

• 1:25:56Speaker 03

  That was an incredible, the guy from The Office.

• 1:25:58Ed Zitron?

  I'm like a huge Guardians of the Galaxy fan. I have a bunch of comic artwork from it, but they saw that and that's why, yes, there you go. I have a guy from that uh, that show with.

• 1:26:07Speaker 03

  Parks and Rec.

• 1:26:07Ed Zitron?

  Trace Williams. Treat Williams, sorry. Um, so the thing is they see that and then they spill out all these shit ones. They're like, what? What don't you like about it? They're all three hours long. That's more superhero, you fucking ingrates.

• 1:26:24Speaker 03

  And so you just take your slop. You don't want your slop.

• 1:26:27Ed Zitron?

  Take your slop and I guess that maybe we are in tech slop era.

• 1:26:30Speaker 03

  We are in tech slop era.

• 1:26:31Ed Zitron?

  Oh, no, we're actually in tech slop era. That's the title of this episode now.

• 1:26:35Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:26:35Ed Zitron?

  Fuck yes.

• 1:26:36Speaker 05

  Well done.

• 1:26:36Ed Zitron?

  There we are.

• 1:26:41Speaker 03

  But it is, we're in this moment where it's like, we, they are more focused on their bottom line, they're more focused on, on pleasing people who don't care about the technology than actually making good technology. And there's, there's a lot of good examples where that's not the case. We've talked about a lot of those here, but a lot of it is just garbage. And so for me, I, that's why I go and I mess with these Steam Deck competitors and e-ink devices, because that's the areas where it feels like, yeah, there is the slop, like, right now until Panos does something about the Kindle.

• 1:27:10Ed Zitron?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:27:10Speaker 03

  Garbage device. I do not want one in my house. Sorry to everyone at Amazon. Fix it.

• 1:27:15Ed Zitron?

  No.

• 1:27:16Speaker 03

  But, but these other Onyx books is making like really, really cool, interesting stuff here. It's not great yet, but they're trying. And every time like, we write, I write a review, then the next thing comes out and it changes a little and I'm like,

• 1:27:28Ed Zitron?

  Okay.

• 1:27:29Speaker 03

  Then I feel very powerful. And then I just want to like, write a whole, like, here's what I want actually from it. And then I'm worried that I got too close. I got too into it.

• 1:27:38Ed Zitron?

  It's funny though, that you're afraid to write that.

• 1:27:40Speaker 03

  Right. Just be like, fix it.

• 1:27:42Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, because like, you're afraid the company would be mad. And the company should just be like,

• 1:27:46Speaker 03

  No, no, no.

• 1:27:47Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:47Speaker 03

  No, then I'm, no, I'm more afraid that like, I'm doing labor and not getting paid for it. I mean, I'm getting paid for it, but like,

• 1:27:53Speaker 05

  Right. The, the unpaid consulting check is not, yeah.

• 1:27:56Speaker 03

  Yeah. Where's my consulting check now?

• 1:27:58Speaker 05

  Well, I wonder about this. Actually, that's what I've been thinking about, kind of weirdly for the past few minutes. It's just like, there is still, obviously, really good reporting out there. There is still really good gadget reviews out there. There's still people calling companies to account for, for the, all the stuff we've been talking about for two hours. But I, I, I do wonder how much disruption is actually being introduced by the, this kind of like, rise of, of influencer marketing that kind of like, just clouds the whole thing. And nobody can tell the difference, I've found. I started to find 15 years, or 12 years ago, that people could not tell the difference between sponsored content and

• 1:28:33Speaker 03

  And it's gotten way worse.

• 1:28:34Ed Zitron?

  Even when you lead in, even when you lead in quite aggressively?

• 1:28:37Speaker 05

  Yeah. Because, well, oh, I'm like, I tweet and someone replies, asking a question that I've answered in the original tweet.

• 1:28:44Ed Zitron?

  Oh, yes.

• 1:28:44Speaker 05

  You know, because nobody pays attention. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's an attention span problem. I don't, I don't know, we could spend another two hours talking about the changes. That would need to happen in the media world to actually kind of make it close to good, but I don't know that it would make a difference.

• 1:29:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:29:00Speaker 05

  Based on people's willingness to actually listen or ability to listen.

• 1:29:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's wild how many times we'll put a review up and you know, the verge, we do not accept few units. We send them back after we we review them. We've got very strict policy used to we wouldn't even eat food.

• 1:29:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, you're one of the strictest.

• 1:29:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, we're one of the strictest.

• 1:29:17Ed Zitron?

  Ross Miller.

• 1:29:17Speaker 03

  And I love him. And nowadays, like we get people being like, oh, you just spawn con for Apple. And I'm like, rude.

• 1:29:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:29:27Speaker 03

  I'm more, I'm mainly just offended more than annoyed because I'm just like, but it's it's the same thing. There's this assumption that everyone is pay to play.

• 1:29:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:29:35Speaker 03

  And you see that even with PR, you get a lot of these younger PR people being like, hey, how much can we pay you to get our product on your site? And I'm like, well, nothing.

• 1:29:42Speaker 05

  Absolutely. Yeah.

• 1:29:43Ed Zitron?

  Oh, that that isn't legal.

• 1:29:44Speaker 03

  It's not that. And it's it's shockingly common nowadays.

• 1:29:49Speaker 05

  Marquez running, you know, a really great review on MKBHD. And then we have two weeks of discourse because somebody on Twitter with a large audience said, you know, I just don't think it's right that a YouTuber can kill a can kill a company, you know, with this with this thoughtless headline. I'm like, no, that's a review of a product that didn't do what it said it was gonna do. That's how this works.

• 1:30:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:30:10Ed Zitron?

  I think that there is a problem.

• 1:30:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:30:13Ed Zitron?

  Within the media, that there is a fear that if you step outside the lines in gaming, for good reason, I was in there before all of that horror show happened.

• 1:30:22Speaker 03

  And now it's awful.

• 1:30:23Ed Zitron?

  Those people, you will actually get fucked, especially so much worse for a woman. But in gadgets, there's a fear of losing access.

• 1:30:30Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:30:31Ed Zitron?

  But I also think no one wants to say anything that's particularly different because I don't know what if they're wrong. And the answer is, you've been wrong plenty of fucking times. Why stop now? Like, no one wants to make the step and say, this sucks. I mentioned Dave 3D earlier. Great YouTube.

• 1:30:47Speaker 05

  Dave 2D.

• 1:30:48Ed Zitron?

  Dave 2D, pardon me, Jesus Christ. That's his predecessor.

• 1:30:50Speaker 05

  I think 3D is, yeah, in 10 years from now.

• 1:30:52Ed Zitron?

  There we are. And he he did this thing about the gap, about the rabbit and about the pin. And he was just saying, what are these companies doing? Like, what is this? I looked around. Really? No one said that. There was a thing in Bloomberg being like, so why is it so good that you're doing this? It was like a month before it came out. It's just completely insane. And I understand. That when you see the world, everyone's saying AI, everyone's saying this is gonna be big. Everyone's saying the same thing. It's scary to step out, but also my Keith Oldman, have you no shame? But it really is like,

• 1:31:29Ed Zitron?

  do you not want to just say what you see?

• 1:31:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:31:31Ed Zitron?

  If you believe this, I actually am fine with it. Please explain yourself.

• 1:31:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:31:36Ed Zitron?

  Because in the case of the rabbit, the case of the humane, I know the argument is, oh, it's just for affluent people, whatever. It's still a lot of money. It's still, who knows whether someone didn't actually save for the rabbit or save.

• 1:31:46Speaker 03

  A lot of people save for the rabbit.

• 1:31:48Ed Zitron?

  Two hundred bucks isn't a screw you. If you think two hundred bucks isn't a lot, if that is your response to something as a justification for it being shit, that's unconscionable.

• 1:31:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, I always said that wasn't an excuse, especially since it was being like compared directly to the to their humane. And I'm like, well, yeah, it's cost less, but it still doesn't do what it said it was gonna do.

• 1:32:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. In fact, it did even less.

• 1:32:08Speaker 05

  Much less, yeah.

• 1:32:10Speaker 03

  And it's. But you can put an Android phone on it now.

• 1:32:12Speaker 05

  I know. I wanted to do that for my video, but it didn't come out in time.

• 1:32:16Ed Zitron?

  It's just frustrating. That guy was like, oh, he killed the product. No, they killed the product.

• 1:32:20Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 1:32:20Ed Zitron?

  Marcus just said what was in front of him.

• 1:32:23Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:32:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, I had a friend, um, Sharice Smith, who would review laptops and sometimes she'd give them a bad score.

• 1:32:28Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 1:32:28Speaker 03

  And the companies would call and be like, well, why, why did you give us a bad story? And she's like, you made a bad product. Make a good product and I'll give you a good score. It's that easy.

• 1:32:37Speaker 05

  We were just talking about this off, off air. It's just like, no, look, I, I will tell you why and I'll take you through the process. And oh, I've just narrated my whole video for you again. Just go, go watch it.

• 1:32:47Ed Zitron?

  If I like it, I'm gonna lose my shit over this. I'll be emphatic about how much I like it. When I like something, I love it.

• 1:32:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:32:53Ed Zitron?

  I get into the guts of it. I use it for hours. I really enjoy it. And I wanna do that again with tech. Like, I actually really miss it.

• 1:33:00Speaker 05

  And I think people, what people don't get is that that's actually, um, that makes it easier. Like, when I run a review, that's, that's good.

• 1:33:06Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:07Speaker 05

  It's great because I get to geek out. The product, the product people are happy, which like I doesn't dictate what I do, but they're not yelling at me. And the commenters aren't, aren't yelling at me either. You get the occasion like, how much they pay you for this?

• 1:33:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:33:17Speaker 05

  But you block them and that's fine. And like, everyone else is just like, oh, yeah, yeah, I was geeking out about this too. I'm glad it's not a, you know, dumpster fire.

• 1:33:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:33:25Speaker 05

  Great.

• 1:33:26Speaker 03

  Cool.

• 1:33:26Speaker 05

  It's much more of a hassle to do a bad review.

• 1:33:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, a bad review. I mean, the verge this year, we did three that were like lower than average. And people were like, what? Because we gave the rabbit a really low score. I believe we gave it like a three or a four.

• 1:33:40Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:33:40Speaker 03

  No, we give it a three because the humane pin got a four because it did slightly more. And then the Vision Pro got a seven and we all joke now and say it probably should have been a six. But, but even then, it was pretty like, like the Vision Pro actually still did the thing, right? It was mildly expensive. Yeah, but.

• 1:33:57Speaker 05

  Seven should be outlawed. I'm just gonna say, seven should be retired.

• 1:34:00Speaker 03

  Yeah. But, you know, it's very uncommon in our space. And a lot of times if you are using the garbage products, you don't want to talk about them. And, and then you're using the mediocre products and you're like, how do I make that sound interesting?

• 1:34:12Speaker 05

  Oh, my God, yes.

• 1:34:13Speaker 03

  Now, we're just talking.

• 1:34:14Ed Zitron?

  Oh, no, no, no.

• 1:34:15Speaker 03

  We're just over here talking about reviewing stuff. We're having a great time.

• 1:34:18Ed Zitron?

  Sorry. No, no, no. I'm happy, that's why you're here. And so it's funny, I've been asked recently to do more review stuff, but that's the thing. It's like, what if I hate it, man?

• 1:34:30Speaker 03

  You just say you hate it.

• 1:34:31Speaker 05

  It'll be the most epic bad review anyone's ever heard.

• 1:34:33Ed Zitron?

  And I can do, no, but I can absolutely rip something apart, but also, do I want to? Like if, like something I truly despise, fine, absolutely. The injustice inside me, but it's like something that's just kind of shit. Like a six out of 10 review, that sounds horri-

• 1:34:51Speaker 03

  I mean, I definitely, when I first, I went from, from one place that had a very kind of strict tone. And then I went to a place with a much looser tone, which was Gizmodo, at that point owned by Gawker. And I started there and I was ready to go. And I got a product in and I think, I mean, I gave it a really bad review. And it was mainly because I was just, I was like, it was not very good. And I was like, I'm gonna dig in. And it was the meanest thing I've ever written in my life. I even think about it now and I cringe a little because it was so mean. But it was also so fun to write. And you, you get older and you learn and you temper things. And so you're like, well, maybe I don't need to compare it to like a baby dropped on its head in a Target. Like. Maybe that is not appropriate.

• 1:35:32Ed Zitron?

  So we're approaching the end now.

• 1:35:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:35:35Ed Zitron?

  So for both of you, what is actually something you really, really, really love in tech? There you go, everyone on Reddit, you want something positive? Geez. No, you go first, Mike.

• 1:35:44Speaker 05

  You mean like a, like a product?

• 1:35:45Ed Zitron?

  You just really, really love.

• 1:35:47Speaker 05

  I have a question, like a currently available one or one from the vast history of? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:35:53Ed Zitron?

  Even from history, I don't mind.

• 1:35:55Speaker 05

  I will get, I'll blend the two. I'll give you where I think a company really got something right and it didn't, it didn't do very well. Motorola, as you know, revived the Razr for 2019. It brought back the Razr as a foldable Android phone and it was, it was pretty cool. But it had some stuff wrong with it, one of the greatest. Then the next year, they brought out the Razr 2020 and I tell you, for somebody who is terminally nostalgic, this thing maintained the industrial design of one of the most famous phones of all time and concealed within it a really quite good Android phone. With a bad camera, because it's maybe a Motorola, but you know, aside from that. And it was very fragile and whatever, but it was beautiful. I still, I, there are very few gadgets that I don't just throw in a drawer or return or whatever.

• 1:36:39Speaker 05

  This one I didn't have the heart, it sits there on my shelf in the back. It's out of focus in most of my videos and it's a masterpiece.

• 1:36:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:36:46Speaker 05

  And I love it when a company just absolutely nails it. And I hate it when it either doesn't have the ability to market it enough or it just doesn't capture the public imagination. And I don't think it did very well, but I loved it.

• 1:36:58Ed Zitron?

  I thought it looked cool.

• 1:36:58Speaker 05

  So the Razr 5G was the coolest, one of the coolest things I've ever used.

• 1:37:01Speaker 03

  That was a cool fucking phone. Yeah, I think me, right now, it's Arc, the browser.

• 1:37:07Speaker 05

  Oh, wow.

• 1:37:08Speaker 03

  I recently switched to it. I won't shut up about it anywhere I go, so you guys have to listen to it too. You were talking about all your tabs earlier. I'm also a tab monster and it, it just works. It, it better like collates this stuff for me.

• 1:37:21Ed Zitron?

  Okay, I'll give it a go.

• 1:37:22Speaker 03

  So like it, it does the job. I waited like two years to use it and now it's got a bunch of AI features that I think are kind of stupid. But you ignore the AI features and you just focus on the core product and it rules. And it just came out, the iPad version came out the week we're recording this.

• 1:37:36Speaker 05

  I've heard that a lot. I've heard a lot of people enjoy that.

• 1:37:38Speaker 03

  It's one of those things where you do have to take a minute. It's not something immediately like, "I get it." You have to kind of sit with it a second. Because the first time I looked at it, I was like, "This is stupid," and immediately uninstalled it.

• 1:37:48Speaker 05

  That wasn't what I did. All right. Where can people find you, Michael? People can find me at Captain2Phones, mostly on Threads. It's Captain, the number two phones. I'm also still on X, you know, I have no choice, and Instagram. And I make YouTube videos at TheMrMobile.

• 1:38:03Speaker 03

  And you can find me at AlexHcrans, I think, on Threads. And Twitter exists, but I don't check it very often. It's also AlexHcrans. And then I'm at The Verge. I write and edit at The Verge. I'm on The Vergecast every Friday and sometimes on Tuesdays.

• 1:38:21Speaker 05

  All right. My name's Ed Zitron. You can find me at WW... Anyway, sorry. You've been listening to Better Offline. We've been recording this in the beautiful iHeartRadio Studios here in beautiful New York City. Dano, my producer, thank you so much, Dano. I'm calling this thing Better Offline now. We're going to do this in multiple cities. I'm proud and happy that we did this. Thank you, Michael. Thank you, Alex. This has been wonderful. And thank you all for listening.

• 1:38:52Speaker 05

  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 wheresyoured dot at 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.

• 1:40:00Speaker 02

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• 1:41:32Speaker 01

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• 1:42:02Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.