Podcast appearances and mentions of johnny ive

Chaque mois, on débriefe les grands sujets tech du moment. Au sommaire : l'objet mystère d'OpenAI, les nouveautés IA décoiffantes de Google et Apple sous pression.Avec Free Pro, le meilleur de Free pour les entreprises.----------

Quoi de neuf chez Apple différemment ?Vos avis 5 étoiles sur Apple Podcasts

En este episodio de El Garaje de Cupertino, nos sumergimos en un viaje lleno de humor y análisis sobre Apple y el futuro de la tecnología. Guaica, Juanky y Joaquín, con la complicidad de su comunidad, desmenuzan las novedades de Apple, desde las aplicaciones más útiles de Setapp como CleanMyMac y Dropzone, hasta la apertura de la plataforma de Apple Intelligence a terceros desarrolladores.Además, exploramos la polémica amenaza de aranceles del 25% de Trump contra los iPhones fabricados fuera de EE. UU. y cómo esto podría desencadenar una guerra comercial global. Mientras tanto, Apple cancela su Apple Watch con cámara y redirige su foco a la monitorización no invasiva de glucosa en sangre, un potencial revolucionario para la salud. La conversación se enciende con el anuncio de que Johnny Ive se une a OpenAI para crear hardware de IA futurista y especulan sobre cómo este nuevo dispositivo podría cambiar nuestra forma de interactuar con la tecnología. Desde collares inteligentes hasta brazaletes futuristas, la imaginación se dispara en un debate lleno de anécdotas y pasión por el futuro.Como broche de oro, un toque de humor con los inventos locos que inyectan sabores de fresa en hamburguesas y la reflexión final sobre la inevitable sinergia entre China y Apple. ¡Un episodio repleto de curiosidad, buen rollo y la chispa del Garaje de Cupertino que engancha a su audiencia cada lunes!Conviértete en un seguidor de este podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/el-garaje-de-cupertino--3153796/support.

OpenAI s'allie à l'ex-designer star d'Apple, Johnny Ive, pour créer un mystérieux objet connecté sans écran, censé réinventer notre rapport à la technologie — un projet à 6,5 milliards de dollars qui affole déjà la planète tech.Découvrez Frogans, l'innovation française qui veut réinventer le Web [Partenariat]------------L'ACTU DE LA SEMAINE- OpenAI, sous la direction de Sam Altman, annonce une collaboration avec Jonathan Ive, ancien designer d'Apple, pour développer un mystérieux appareil connecté sans écran boosté à l'intelligence artificielle.- Google présente sa stratégie ambitieuse de déploiement de l'IA avec son système Gemini, à l'occasion de la conférence Google I/O.- A Taïwan, Nvidia et son PDG Jensen Huang fait le show au salon Computex.- Quantique : la start-up française Qandela fait met au point avec un ordinateur quantique photonique ultra-puissant- Une Tesla impressionne en circulant en mode autopiloté dans le centre de Paris.LE DEBRIEF TRANSATLANTIQUE- Avec Bruno Guglielminetti, on revient sur les annonces de Google les plus spectaculaires et on s'interroge sur le futur objet mystère promis par Sam Altman et Jonhatan Ive. LES INTERVIEWS DE LA SEMAINE- Arnaud Fournier, directeur d'OpenAI en France, est l'invité de Monde Numérique ! Il présente la vision d'OpenAI dans l'hexagone et son projet de rendre l'IA accessible à tous, y compris à travers de nouveaux agents autonomes.- Christophe Grosbost de l'Innovation Makers Alliance présente 33 recommandations pour renforcer la souveraineté numérique en France, évoquant les risques liés à la dépendance technologique.- Mathieu Deboeuf-Rouchon, de Capgemini, évoque l'apport de l'IA dans le secteur de la santé, notamment dans les essais cliniques, illustrant comment l'IA peut accélérer les recherches en santé [PARTENARIAT].-----------

Johnny Ive, the designer behind the iPod, iMac & iPhone, is going all in with the creators of ChatGPT. Two years ago he started a company, io, to rethink the computer for the AI-age - which OpenAI was an investor in. OpenAI has now purchased it for $6.5 billion according to Bloomberg. Tech commentator Paul Stenhouse says the staff will be joining OpenAI, but Ive won't be. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Anthropic has launched its latest AI models, Claude Opus 4 and Claude Sonnet 4, which are designed to enhance coding capabilities and problem-solving skills. Claude Opus 4 is touted as the most powerful model to date, capable of autonomously handling long tasks for several hours and outperforming competitors like Google's Gemini and OpenAI's models in coding tasks. The new models also feature improved accuracy, with a 65% reduction in the likelihood of taking shortcuts compared to their predecessor, and include thinking summaries to clarify reasoning processes.OpenAI has made headlines with its acquisition of IO, a hardware company founded by former Apple design chief Johnny Ive, in a deal valued at $6.5 billion. This acquisition aims to bolster OpenAI's hardware capabilities by bringing in approximately 55 engineers and developers. The first products from this collaboration are expected to launch in 2026, representing a new type of technology rather than a replacement for existing devices. Additionally, OpenAI has introduced significant updates to its Responses API, enhancing its functionality for developers and businesses.Atera has unveiled its IT Autopilot, which claims to automate up to 40% of IT workloads, particularly in resolving Tier 1 IT tickets without human oversight. This innovation aims to alleviate technician burnout and improve work-life balance, with average resolution times of just 15 minutes. Meanwhile, Kaseya has partnered with Pulseway to enhance their offerings for IT professionals, integrating their solutions to provide advanced tools for managing IT environments.The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has approved Verizon's $20 billion merger with Frontier Communications, a significant move in the telecommunications industry. This merger comes with a controversial requirement for Verizon to discontinue all diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, reflecting a shift in regulatory practices. The episode concludes with discussions on the implications of AI in personalization and privacy, emphasizing the need for responsible data management and the potential risks associated with AI-driven decision-making. Four things to know today 00:00 One Giant Week in AI: Claude Gets Smarter, OpenAI Goes Hardware, and Signal Says “Not So Fast” to Recall06:32 Automation and Ecosystems: Atera Targets Tier 1 Ticket Fatigue, Kaseya Expands via Pulseway Integration08:51 Consolidation With Consequences: Proofpoint Grows Quietly, Verizon Merger Tied to DEI Rollback11:22 From Gemini to Aurora, Generative AI Enters a New Era of Context, Capability, and Controversy  This is the Business of Tech.     Supported by: https://www.huntress.com/mspradio/https://cometbackup.com/?utm_source=mspradio&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=sponsorship All our Sponsors: https://businessof.tech/sponsors/ Do you want the show on your podcast app or the written versions of the stories? Subscribe to the Business of Tech: https://www.businessof.tech/subscribe/Looking for a link from the stories? The entire script of the show, with links to articles, are posted in each story on https://www.businessof.tech/ Support the show on Patreon: https://patreon.com/mspradio/ Want to be a guest on Business of Tech: Daily 10-Minute IT Services Insights? Send Dave Sobel a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/businessoftech Want our stuff? Cool Merch? Wear “Why Do We Care?” - Visit https://mspradio.myspreadshop.com Follow us on:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/28908079/YouTube: https://youtube.com/mspradio/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mspradionews/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mspradio/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@businessoftechBluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/businessof.tech

Three Buddy Problem - Episode 47: We unpack a multi-agency report on Russia's APT28/Fancy Bear hacking and spying on Ukraine war supply lines, CISA's sloppy YARA rules riddled with false positives, the ethics of full-disclosure after Akamai dropped Windows Server “BadSuccessor” exploit details, and Sekoia's discovery of thousands of hijacked edge devices repurposed as honeypots. The back half veers into Microsoft's resurrected Windows Recall, Signal's new screenshot-blocking countermeasure, Japan's fresh legal mandate for pre-emptive cyber strikes, and why appliance vendors like Ivanti keep landing in the headlines. Along the way you get hot takes on techno-feudalism, Johnny Ive's rumored AI gadget, and a lively debate over whether publishing exploit code ever helps defenders. Cast: Juan Andres Guerrero-Saade (https://twitter.com/juanandres_gs), Ryan Naraine (https://twitter.com/ryanaraine) and Costin Raiu (https://twitter.com/craiu).

Two Israeli embassy staff members are fatally shot outside a DC Jewish museum, the U.K. signs a deal to give sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, the U.S. House advances Trump's sweeping spending bill, North Korea's new destroyer is damaged in a failed launch, the Trump administration revokes Harvard's foreign student program, OpenAI buys iPhone designer Johnny Ive's startup in a $6.5B deal, a private plane crashes in a San Diego neighborhood, a draft $15.1M settlement is reached in the case of a Canadian doctor convicted of sexual assault, Las Vegas agrees to host the pro-doping Enhanced Games in 2026, and scientists create contact lenses that allow wearers to see infrared light. Sources: www.verity.news

Given the Big news today about the partnership between Sam and Johnny Ive we thought we would share this recent episode. In this episode of the Moonshots Podcast, hosts Mike and Mark dive deep into the world of artificial intelligence, focusing on Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI. The discussion features insights from various interviews and talks, including Bill Gates' interview with Sam Altman on the transformative power of ChatGPT and Sam's conversations with Lex Friedman and Craig Cannon. Listeners will also explore key lessons from Sam's time at Y Combinator, providing valuable guidance for aspiring entrepreneurs.Become a member to support the Moonshots Podcast and access exclusive content: Join us on Patreon.Episode Description:In this compelling episode, Mike and Mark explore the groundbreaking work of Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and his vision for artificial intelligence. The episode features highlights from Bill Gates' interview with Sam Altman on the power of ChatGPT, revealing the potential and impact of this AI application. They also delve into Sam's discussion with Lex Friedman about AGI and the importance of staying true to one's values amidst competition, particularly with tech giants like Google. Additionally, the hosts share three essential lessons from Sam's Y Combinator classes on how to start a successful startup. The episode concludes with insights from Sam's talk with Craig Cannon on the importance of focus and the pitfalls of the deferred life plan. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in AI, entrepreneurship, and the future of technology.Become a member to support the Moonshots Podcast and access exclusive content: Join us on PatreonLinks:Podcast EpisodeArticle on Sam Altman, OpenAI's Spectacular CEOYouTube: Sam Altman Talks OpenAI and AGIExpanded Key Concepts and Insights:The Power of ChatGPT: Explore how ChatGPT is revolutionizing the AI landscape, as discussed in Bill Gates' interview with Sam Altman.Navigating AGI and Competition: Understand the challenges and strategies of competing in the AI industry, especially against giants like Google, as Sam's conversation with Lex Friedman shared.Starting a Startup: Learn three critical lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs from Sam Altman's Y Combinator teachings.Focus and Ambition: Gain insights on the importance of focus and structuring ambitions effectively, avoiding the pitfalls of the deferred life plan, as discussed in Sam's talk with Craig Cannon.About Sam Altman:Sam Altman is the CEO of OpenAI, a leading artificial intelligence research lab. Before joining OpenAI, Sam was the president of Y Combinator, where he played a pivotal role in nurturing numerous successful startups. His work at OpenAI focuses on advancing artificial intelligence to benefit humanity, ensuring that AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) aligns with human values.About Moonshots Podcast:The Moonshots Podcast, hosted by Mike and Mark, delves into the minds of innovators and visionaries who are making significant strides in various fields. Each episode offers deep insights into the strategies, mindsets, and tools these trailblazers use to achieve extraordinary success. The podcast aims to inspire and equip listeners with actionable insights to pursue their moonshot ideas. Thanks to our monthly supporters Emily Rose Banks Malcolm Magee Natalie Triman Kaur Ryan N. Marco-Ken Möller Mohammad Lars Bjørge Edward Rehfeldt III 孤鸿 月影 Fabian Jasper Verkaart Andy Pilara ola Austin Hammatt Zachary Phillips Mike Leigh Cooper Gayla Schiff Laura KE Krzysztof Roar Nikolay Ytre-Eide Stef Roger von Holdt Jette Haswell venkata reddy Ingram Casey Ola rahul grover Evert van de Plassche Ravi Govender Craig Lindsay Steve Woollard Lasse Brurok Deborah Spahr Barbara Samoela Jo Hatchard Kalman Cseh Berg De Bleecker Paul Acquaah MrBonjour Sid Liza Goetz Konnor Ah kuoi Marjan Modara Dietmar Baur Bob Nolley ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

¿Puede Trump encarecer tu próximo iPhone? ¡Pues parece que sí! En este episodio de El Garaje de Cupertino, entre risas, anécdotas técnicas y algún que otro micro que "petardea", el equipo se adentra en una charla muy animada (y algo caótica) sobre la nueva ola de aranceles impuesta por Donald Trump y cómo estas medidas proteccionistas pueden impactar en el precio de los productos tecnológicos... ¡incluidos los tan codiciados iPhone!Desde predicciones apocalípticas hasta debates económicos con mucho humor, pasando por cumpleaños sorpresa y confesiones sobre móviles de segunda mano, el episodio combina entretenimiento con reflexión. ¿Realmente veremos iPhones a más de 2.000 euros? ¿Puede un dispositivo sin pantalla revolucionar la forma en la que usamos la IA?Además, hablan de Johnny Ive, Sam Altman y un posible dispositivo con inteligencia artificial que podría cambiarlo todo... ¿Estamos ante el inicio del "Her" de la vida real?Conviértete en un seguidor de este podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/el-garaje-de-cupertino--3153796/support.

It's not surprising that Apple announced the iPhone 16e the day after last week's MacBreak Weekly. Already, some information about the upcoming iPhone 17 is being leaked, including some information about the rumored slim iPhone 17. And Apple is removing encrypted security features for your cloud data within the UK following the UK government ordering Apple to leave backdoor access to users' data. iPhone 16e: all the news on Apple's new $599 phone. Apple officially bids farewell to the Lightning port after 13 years. Per Ming-chi Kuo: all iPhone 17 models will use Apple's in-house Wi-Fi chips, enhancing connectivity and cutting costs; only the slim iPhone 17 will use the C1 modem chip. Apple removes cloud encryption feature from UK after backdoor order. Apple currently only able to detect Pegasus spyware in half of infected iPhones. Apple to invest $500 billion in U.S. as Trump tariffs loom. MacBook Air stocks start to dwindle ahead of M4 update. Apple Vision Pro immersive video 'Arctic Surfing' available now. Apple Intelligence comes to Apple Vision Pro in April. Apple prepares to add Google Gemini to Apple Intelligence. Steve Jobs Archive marks Apple co-founder's 70th birthday. The new Beeper app combines all of Automattic's messaging systems. Picks of the Week: Leo's Pick: Hyperspace Jason's Pick: Framous Alex's Pick: Blackmagic 2110 Andy's Pick: Desert Island Discs, with Johnny Ive. Hosts: Leo Laporte, Alex Lindsay, Andy Ihnatko, and Jason Snell Download or subscribe to MacBreak Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/macbreak-weekly. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free shows, a members-only Discord, and behind-the-scenes access. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: bitwarden.com/twit get.stash.com/macbreak zscaler.com/security

It's not surprising that Apple announced the iPhone 16e the day after last week's MacBreak Weekly. Already, some information about the upcoming iPhone 17 is being leaked, including some information about the rumored slim iPhone 17. And Apple is removing encrypted security features for your cloud data within the UK following the UK government ordering Apple to leave backdoor access to users' data. iPhone 16e: all the news on Apple's new $599 phone. Apple officially bids farewell to the Lightning port after 13 years. Per Ming-chi Kuo: all iPhone 17 models will use Apple's in-house Wi-Fi chips, enhancing connectivity and cutting costs; only the slim iPhone 17 will use the C1 modem chip. Apple removes cloud encryption feature from UK after backdoor order. Apple currently only able to detect Pegasus spyware in half of infected iPhones. Apple to invest $500 billion in U.S. as Trump tariffs loom. MacBook Air stocks start to dwindle ahead of M4 update. Apple Vision Pro immersive video 'Arctic Surfing' available now. Apple Intelligence comes to Apple Vision Pro in April. Apple prepares to add Google Gemini to Apple Intelligence. Steve Jobs Archive marks Apple co-founder's 70th birthday. The new Beeper app combines all of Automattic's messaging systems. Picks of the Week: Leo's Pick: Hyperspace Jason's Pick: Framous Alex's Pick: Blackmagic 2110 Andy's Pick: Desert Island Discs, with Johnny Ive. Hosts: Leo Laporte, Alex Lindsay, Andy Ihnatko, and Jason Snell Download or subscribe to MacBreak Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/macbreak-weekly. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free shows, a members-only Discord, and behind-the-scenes access. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: bitwarden.com/twit get.stash.com/macbreak zscaler.com/security

It's not surprising that Apple announced the iPhone 16e the day after last week's MacBreak Weekly. Already, some information about the upcoming iPhone 17 is being leaked, including some information about the rumored slim iPhone 17. And Apple is removing encrypted security features for your cloud data within the UK following the UK government ordering Apple to leave backdoor access to users' data. iPhone 16e: all the news on Apple's new $599 phone. Apple officially bids farewell to the Lightning port after 13 years. Per Ming-chi Kuo: all iPhone 17 models will use Apple's in-house Wi-Fi chips, enhancing connectivity and cutting costs; only the slim iPhone 17 will use the C1 modem chip. Apple removes cloud encryption feature from UK after backdoor order. Apple currently only able to detect Pegasus spyware in half of infected iPhones. Apple to invest $500 billion in U.S. as Trump tariffs loom. MacBook Air stocks start to dwindle ahead of M4 update. Apple Vision Pro immersive video 'Arctic Surfing' available now. Apple Intelligence comes to Apple Vision Pro in April. Apple prepares to add Google Gemini to Apple Intelligence. Steve Jobs Archive marks Apple co-founder's 70th birthday. The new Beeper app combines all of Automattic's messaging systems. Picks of the Week: Leo's Pick: Hyperspace Jason's Pick: Framous Alex's Pick: Blackmagic 2110 Andy's Pick: Desert Island Discs, with Johnny Ive. Hosts: Leo Laporte, Alex Lindsay, Andy Ihnatko, and Jason Snell Download or subscribe to MacBreak Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/macbreak-weekly. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free shows, a members-only Discord, and behind-the-scenes access. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: bitwarden.com/twit get.stash.com/macbreak zscaler.com/security

It's not surprising that Apple announced the iPhone 16e the day after last week's MacBreak Weekly. Already, some information about the upcoming iPhone 17 is being leaked, including some information about the rumored slim iPhone 17. And Apple is removing encrypted security features for your cloud data within the UK following the UK government ordering Apple to leave backdoor access to users' data. iPhone 16e: all the news on Apple's new $599 phone. Apple officially bids farewell to the Lightning port after 13 years. Per Ming-chi Kuo: all iPhone 17 models will use Apple's in-house Wi-Fi chips, enhancing connectivity and cutting costs; only the slim iPhone 17 will use the C1 modem chip. Apple removes cloud encryption feature from UK after backdoor order. Apple currently only able to detect Pegasus spyware in half of infected iPhones. Apple to invest $500 billion in U.S. as Trump tariffs loom. MacBook Air stocks start to dwindle ahead of M4 update. Apple Vision Pro immersive video 'Arctic Surfing' available now. Apple Intelligence comes to Apple Vision Pro in April. Apple prepares to add Google Gemini to Apple Intelligence. Steve Jobs Archive marks Apple co-founder's 70th birthday. The new Beeper app combines all of Automattic's messaging systems. Picks of the Week: Leo's Pick: Hyperspace Jason's Pick: Framous Alex's Pick: Blackmagic 2110 Andy's Pick: Desert Island Discs, with Johnny Ive. Hosts: Leo Laporte, Alex Lindsay, Andy Ihnatko, and Jason Snell Download or subscribe to MacBreak Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/macbreak-weekly. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free shows, a members-only Discord, and behind-the-scenes access. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: bitwarden.com/twit get.stash.com/macbreak zscaler.com/security

It's not surprising that Apple announced the iPhone 16e the day after last week's MacBreak Weekly. Already, some information about the upcoming iPhone 17 is being leaked, including some information about the rumored slim iPhone 17. And Apple is removing encrypted security features for your cloud data within the UK following the UK government ordering Apple to leave backdoor access to users' data. iPhone 16e: all the news on Apple's new $599 phone. Apple officially bids farewell to the Lightning port after 13 years. Per Ming-chi Kuo: all iPhone 17 models will use Apple's in-house Wi-Fi chips, enhancing connectivity and cutting costs; only the slim iPhone 17 will use the C1 modem chip. Apple removes cloud encryption feature from UK after backdoor order. Apple currently only able to detect Pegasus spyware in half of infected iPhones. Apple to invest $500 billion in U.S. as Trump tariffs loom. MacBook Air stocks start to dwindle ahead of M4 update. Apple Vision Pro immersive video 'Arctic Surfing' available now. Apple Intelligence comes to Apple Vision Pro in April. Apple prepares to add Google Gemini to Apple Intelligence. Steve Jobs Archive marks Apple co-founder's 70th birthday. The new Beeper app combines all of Automattic's messaging systems. Picks of the Week: Leo's Pick: Hyperspace Jason's Pick: Framous Alex's Pick: Blackmagic 2110 Andy's Pick: Desert Island Discs, with Johnny Ive. Hosts: Leo Laporte, Alex Lindsay, Andy Ihnatko, and Jason Snell Download or subscribe to MacBreak Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/macbreak-weekly. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free shows, a members-only Discord, and behind-the-scenes access. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: bitwarden.com/twit get.stash.com/macbreak zscaler.com/security

It's not surprising that Apple announced the iPhone 16e the day after last week's MacBreak Weekly. Already, some information about the upcoming iPhone 17 is being leaked, including some information about the rumored slim iPhone 17. And Apple is removing encrypted security features for your cloud data within the UK following the UK government ordering Apple to leave backdoor access to users' data. iPhone 16e: all the news on Apple's new $599 phone. Apple officially bids farewell to the Lightning port after 13 years. Per Ming-chi Kuo: all iPhone 17 models will use Apple's in-house Wi-Fi chips, enhancing connectivity and cutting costs; only the slim iPhone 17 will use the C1 modem chip. Apple removes cloud encryption feature from UK after backdoor order. Apple currently only able to detect Pegasus spyware in half of infected iPhones. Apple to invest $500 billion in U.S. as Trump tariffs loom. MacBook Air stocks start to dwindle ahead of M4 update. Apple Vision Pro immersive video 'Arctic Surfing' available now. Apple Intelligence comes to Apple Vision Pro in April. Apple prepares to add Google Gemini to Apple Intelligence. Steve Jobs Archive marks Apple co-founder's 70th birthday. The new Beeper app combines all of Automattic's messaging systems. Picks of the Week: Leo's Pick: Hyperspace Jason's Pick: Framous Alex's Pick: Blackmagic 2110 Andy's Pick: Desert Island Discs, with Johnny Ive. Hosts: Leo Laporte, Alex Lindsay, Andy Ihnatko, and Jason Snell Download or subscribe to MacBreak Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/macbreak-weekly. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free shows, a members-only Discord, and behind-the-scenes access. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: bitwarden.com/twit get.stash.com/macbreak zscaler.com/security

The hosts discuss their frustration with Apple's message syncing issues across devices. They highlight the new Audio Hijack feature that provides transcriptions of audio recordings. The hosts also discuss the new Apple iPhone 16e, noting its features, price, and the inclusion of Apple's homegrown C1 modem.Apple's new iPhone lineup includes the iPhone 16 Pro, iPhone 16, and iPhone 16e, with varying features and price points. The discussion highlights the return of the notch, improved graphics capabilities, and the inclusion of a physical camera button on the iPhone 16 and Pro models. Additionally, Apple's investment in US chip production and potential impact on tariffs is noted.The current state of international relations, particularly the impact of Trump's approach to trade and alliances, is discussed, highlighting the potential economic and security implications for various countries. The conversation then shifts to the future of Apple, examining the departure of Johnny Ive and the potential succession of Tim Cook, with a focus on the company's innovation and strategic decisions. Finally, the discussion touches on the potential of Palmer Luckey as a future business leader and the importance of technological advancements in areas like AI and healthcare.The speaker discusses the accuracy of blood pressure monitors, including a new non-cuff device they ordered. They mention Apple's potential release of a blood pressure feature, possibly similar to their temperature monitoring approach. The conversation then shifts to Apple's rumored AirTag updates, including improved range, privacy features, and a speaker to prevent surreptitious tracking.AirTags utilize the vast network of iPhones to track lost items, providing a social benefit by leveraging existing infrastructure. While Tile offers a similar product, its limited user base hinders its effectiveness compared to AirTags. Although AirTags have a one-year battery life, a case with a longer-lasting battery is available for those who prioritize extended use.Apple Intelligence, a smarter version of Siri, is being integrated into the Vision Pro, providing features like writing tools, proofreading, and text summarization. The Vision Pro, a high-end device, is finally receiving this update, which is expected to be available in June. The conversation also touches on the use of the Meta Quest, particularly for viewing photos and art, and the benefits of Apple Maps for geotagging and organizing photos.The benefits of having a camera or phone with geotagging capabilities are discussed, allowing users to revisit and relive past experiences. The potential of foldable phones is explored, with a preference for the book-style design that offers more screen real estate. The challenges of battery life and the need for denser energy storage solutions are also highlighted.A new foldable phone with impressive specifications, including IPX9 water resistance and Hasselblad-powered photography, is discussed. The phone's thinness and potential battery life are highlighted, but concerns about hidden compromises and lack of availability are also raised. The conversation then shifts to a door draft stopper, with a discussion about its effectiveness and potential impact on air circulation.Door draft stoppers are discussed as a potential solution for drafty doors and noise reduction. The importance of sealing gaps and using sound-deadening materials to block airflow and sound is emphasized, highlighting the complexities of soundproofing. The show concludes with a reminder to tune in next week.Conversations on technology and tech adjacent subjects since July of 2020, with two and sometime three generations of tech nerds. New shows on (mostly) MONDAYS!

Sea cual sea tu actividad, el uso masivo de datos y el entrenamiento de máquinas para llegar a un nivel de interacción superior con humanos, lo que comúnmente conocemos como IA (Inteligencia Artificial), está impactando ya en nuestras vidas aunque todavía no seamos totalmente conscientes de ello. En este vídeo te cuento, saltando de dimensión en dimensión, por qué y cómo la IA está entrando en una fase de primera madurez en la que pronto veremos las consecuencias de sus extensas aplicaciones; entre ellas el reordenamiento de algo tan sensible como la estructura de la generación y distribución eléctrica, así como la llegada de nuevos dispositivos que pueden terminar con el concepto de Smartphone, como el que está preparando y desarrollando Sam Altman en cooperación con Johnny Ive, ex diseñador de Apple.

Hoy hablamos de temas de gran impacto en el desarrollo de la inteligencia artificial. Desde predicciones sobre la llegada de la superinteligencia y su impacto en la sociedad, hasta nuevas colaboraciones que aceleran la integración de la IA en industrias clave como la automotriz. Exploramos proyectos que buscan transformar la forma en que interactuamos con la tecnología, destacando la creciente importancia de la IA en múltiples sectores y su potencial para revolucionar nuestras vidas. Predicciones de Sam Altman sobre la llegada de la superinteligencia. Colaboración entre Ali Baba y NVIDIA para mejorar la IA en autos autónomos. Johnny Ive y OpenAI desarrollan un nuevo dispositivo de hardware impulsado por IA. Electronic Arts presenta un concepto de creación de videojuegos con IA. OpenAI lanza el modo de voz avanzado para ChatGPT. Google presenta las nuevas versiones de Gemini Pro y Flash. Meta lanza las gafas de realidad aumentada Orion y actualiza su IA para Instagram. Investigadores de Harvard utilizan IA para identificar tratamientos para enfermedades raras. Google lanza AlphaChip, un sistema de IA que diseña chips en cuestión de horas. IA descubre geoglifos desconocidos en las Líneas de Nazca. Herramientas Scenery Deje que la IA edite videos por ti.LINK Epsilla Plataforma sin código para construir aplicaciones IA.LINK Clones Participa en conversaciones con compañeros de IA como en la vida real.LINK Solidroad Plataforma de entrenamiento y evaluación centrada en IA.LINK Fathom Transcribe, resalta y resume reuniones.LINK Kumo Ingeniero de software.LINK Captions Ingeniero de Android.LINK Deepmind Científico Investigador.LINK Letta Mejora las capacidades de memoria de los sistemas de inteligencia artificial.LINK Pdf2audio Herramienta de código abierto que convierte PDFs en podcasts, conferencias, resúmenes y más.LINK NodeLand Convierte notas en mapas mentales.LINK BuyScout Un copiloto de inteligencia artificial para mejorar la experiencia de compra en línea.LINK Future AGI Preguntas y respuestas automatizadas para modelos de inteligencia artificial con métricas personalizadas.LINK Remade Sesiones de fotos generadas por inteligencia artificial para imágenes de marca.LINK Notion AI Busca y chatea con documentos en Notion, Slack y Google Drive.LINK Rows AI Analyst 3.0 Un analista de datos de IA que visualiza y formatea datos.LINK Magnific Mystic V2 Generador avanzado de IA que puede generar imágenes con resolución de hasta 4k.LINK Magic Patterns Genera diseños de productos y código React.LINK OpenMusic Crea melodías personalizadas a partir de descripciones de texto.LINK Adobe GenStudio Ayuda a los equipos de marketing a medir el contenido de marca.LINK FactBot by Snopes Verificación de hechos para leyendas urbanas y desinformación.LINK JustPaid Automatiza el seguimiento de facturas y el registro de pagos.LINK ell Un marco de ingeniería de texto ligero para modelos de lenguaje.LINK Pathway Ayuda a los equipos de producto a probar soluciones de UX y recopilar información.LINK Tubit AI IA que resume videos de YouTube para una comprensión más profunda.LINK People.ai Coordinador de Recursos Humanos.LINK UiPath Jefe de Personal / Asesor Técnico.LINK Tempus Asociado de Aseguramiento de Calidad.LINK AI Search Grader Analiza y mejora la visibilidad y percepción de la marca en los motores de búsqueda de IA.LINK BeforeSunset AI 2.0 Personaliza tu horario con planificación inteligente.LINK Neolocus Renderizaciones de inteligencia artificial para diseño de interiores.LINK Clarity Mejora y amplía imágenes con inteligencia artificial.LINK Helicone Plataforma de código abierto para monitorear y depurar proyectos de IA.LINK Superannotate Vicepresidente de marketing.LINK Apúntate a la academia Canal de telegram  y  Canal de Youtube Pregunta por Whatsapp +34 620 240 234 Déjame un mensaje de voz

Thank you for 1m downloads of the podcast and 2m readers of the Substack!

Chuck Joiner, Dave Ginsburg, Ben Roethig, Jeff Gamet, Web Bixby, Eric Bolden, Jim Rea, and Mark Fuccio discuss the potential collaboration between Sam Altman and Jony Ive for an AI-powered personal device, possibly backed by Lauren Powell Jobs, assessing the impact of Ive's design expertise. The conversation then turns to the Voice Dream Reader subscription model controversy, sparking a debate on ethical business practices and user loyalty, especially within vulnerable communities like the visually impaired.  This edition of MacVoices is supported by The MacVoices Slack. Available all Patrons of MacVoices. Sign up at Patreon.com/macvoices. Show Notes: Chapters: 01:53 Meet the MacVoices Crew 05:28 Speculations on Sam Altman and Johnny Ive's Collaboration 06:45 Past Ventures of Johnny Ive and Speculations on the AI Device 09:35 Comparing AI Features in Devices 11:05 Hummingbird Stories and Mark Fuccio's Arrival 14:08 Controversy Surrounding VoiceDream Reader Subscription 17:50 Impact on the Vision-Impaired Community 21:38 Support MacVoices and Closing Statements Links: Jony Ive, Open AI CEO Sam Altman form company to design an AI-powered personal device https://appleworld.today/jony-ive-open-ai-ceo-sam-altman-form-company-to-design-an-ai-powered-personal-device/ Another app subscription model switcheroo has users up in arms, and this time they probably have a reason to be annoyed  https://www.imore.com/apps/another-app-subscription-model-switcheroo-has-users-up-in-arms-and-this-time-they-probably-have-a-reason-to-be-annoyed Guests: Web Bixby has been in the insurance business for 40 years and has been an Apple user for longer than that.You can catch up with him on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Eric Bolden is into macOS, plants, sci-fi, food, and is a rural internet supporter. You can connect with him on Twitter, by email at embolden@mac.com, on Mastodon at @eabolden@techhub.social, and on his blog, Trending At Work. Mark Fuccio is actively involved in high tech startup companies, both as a principle at piqsure.com, or as a marketing advisor through his consulting practice Tactics Sells High Tech, Inc. Mark was a proud investor in Microsoft from the mid-1990's selling in mid 2000, and hopes one day that MSFT will be again an attractive investment. You can contact Mark through Twitter, LinkedIn, or on Mastodon. Jeff Gamet is a technology blogger, podcaster, author, and public speaker. Previously, he was The Mac Observer's Managing Editor, and the TextExpander Evangelist for Smile. He has presented at Macworld Expo, RSA Conference, several WordCamp events, along with many other conferences. You can find him on several podcasts such as The Mac Show, The Big Show, MacVoices, Mac OS Ken, This Week in iOS, and more. Jeff is easy to find on social media as @jgamet on Twitter and Instagram, jeffgamet on LinkedIn., @jgamet@mastodon.social on Mastodon, and on his YouTube Channel at YouTube.com/jgamet. David Ginsburg is the host of the weekly podcast In Touch With iOS where he discusses all things iOS, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Apple Watch, and related technologies. He is an IT professional supporting Mac, iOS and Windows users. Visit his YouTube channel at https://youtube.com/daveg65 and find and follow him on Twitter @daveg65 and on Mastodon at @daveg65@mastodon.cloud Jim Rea built his own computer from scratch in 1975, started programming in 1977, and has been an independent Mac developer continuously since 1984. He is the founder of ProVUE Development, and the author of Panorama X, ProVUE's ultra fast RAM based database software for the macOS platform. He's been a speaker at MacTech, MacWorld Expo and other industry conferences. Follow Jim at provue.com and via @provuejim@techhub.social on Mastodon. Ben Roethig has been in the Apple Ecosystem since the System 7 Days. He is the a former Associate Editor with Geek Beat, Co-Founder of The Tech Hangout and Deconstruct and currently shares his thoughts on RoethigTech. Contact him on  Twitter and Mastodon. Support: Become a MacVoices Patron on Patreon      http://patreon.com/macvoices      Enjoy this episode? Make a one-time donation with PayPal Connect: Web:      http://macvoices.com Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/chuckjoiner      http://www.twitter.com/macvoices Mastodon:      https://mastodon.cloud/@chuckjoiner Facebook:      http://www.facebook.com/chuck.joiner MacVoices Page on Facebook:      http://www.facebook.com/macvoices/ MacVoices Group on Facebook:      http://www.facebook.com/groups/macvoice LinkedIn:      https://www.linkedin.com/in/chuckjoiner/ Instagram:      https://www.instagram.com/chuckjoiner/ Subscribe:      Audio in iTunes      Video in iTunes      Subscribe manually via iTunes or any podcatcher: Audio: http://www.macvoices.com/rss/macvoicesrss      Video: http://www.macvoices.com/rss/macvoicesvideorss

Chuck Joiner, Dave Ginsburg, Ben Roethig, Jeff Gamet, Web Bixby, Eric Bolden, Jim Rea, and Mark Fuccio discuss the potential collaboration between Sam Altman and Jony Ive for an AI-powered personal device, possibly backed by Lauren Powell Jobs, assessing the impact of Ive's design expertise. The conversation then turns to the Voice Dream Reader subscription model controversy, sparking a debate on ethical business practices and user loyalty, especially within vulnerable communities like the visually impaired.  This edition of MacVoices is supported by The MacVoices Slack. Available all Patrons of MacVoices. Sign up at Patreon.com/macvoices. Show Notes: Chapters: 01:53 Meet the MacVoices Crew 05:28 Speculations on Sam Altman and Johnny Ive's Collaboration 06:45 Past Ventures of Johnny Ive and Speculations on the AI Device 09:35 Comparing AI Features in Devices 11:05 Hummingbird Stories and Mark Fuccio's Arrival 14:08 Controversy Surrounding VoiceDream Reader Subscription 17:50 Impact on the Vision-Impaired Community 21:38 Support MacVoices and Closing Statements Links: Jony Ive, Open AI CEO Sam Altman form company to design an AI-powered personal device https://appleworld.today/jony-ive-open-ai-ceo-sam-altman-form-company-to-design-an-ai-powered-personal-device/ Another app subscription model switcheroo has users up in arms, and this time they probably have a reason to be annoyed  https://www.imore.com/apps/another-app-subscription-model-switcheroo-has-users-up-in-arms-and-this-time-they-probably-have-a-reason-to-be-annoyed Guests: Web Bixby has been in the insurance business for 40 years and has been an Apple user for longer than that.You can catch up with him on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Eric Bolden is into macOS, plants, sci-fi, food, and is a rural internet supporter. You can connect with him on Twitter, by email at embolden@mac.com, on Mastodon at @eabolden@techhub.social, and on his blog, Trending At Work. Mark Fuccio is actively involved in high tech startup companies, both as a principle at piqsure.com, or as a marketing advisor through his consulting practice Tactics Sells High Tech, Inc. Mark was a proud investor in Microsoft from the mid-1990's selling in mid 2000, and hopes one day that MSFT will be again an attractive investment. You can contact Mark through Twitter, LinkedIn, or on Mastodon. Jeff Gamet is a technology blogger, podcaster, author, and public speaker. Previously, he was The Mac Observer's Managing Editor, and the TextExpander Evangelist for Smile. He has presented at Macworld Expo, RSA Conference, several WordCamp events, along with many other conferences. You can find him on several podcasts such as The Mac Show, The Big Show, MacVoices, Mac OS Ken, This Week in iOS, and more. Jeff is easy to find on social media as @jgamet on Twitter and Instagram, jeffgamet on LinkedIn., @jgamet@mastodon.social on Mastodon, and on his YouTube Channel at YouTube.com/jgamet. David Ginsburg is the host of the weekly podcast In Touch With iOS where he discusses all things iOS, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Apple Watch, and related technologies. He is an IT professional supporting Mac, iOS and Windows users. Visit his YouTube channel at https://youtube.com/daveg65 and find and follow him on Twitter @daveg65 and on Mastodon at @daveg65@mastodon.cloud Jim Rea built his own computer from scratch in 1975, started programming in 1977, and has been an independent Mac developer continuously since 1984. He is the founder of ProVUE Development, and the author of Panorama X, ProVUE's ultra fast RAM based database software for the macOS platform. He's been a speaker at MacTech, MacWorld Expo and other industry conferences. Follow Jim at provue.com and via @provuejim@techhub.social on Mastodon. Ben Roethig has been in the Apple Ecosystem since the System 7 Days. He is the a former Associate Editor with Geek Beat, Co-Founder of The Tech Hangout and Deconstruct and currently shares his thoughts on RoethigTech. Contact him on  Twitter and Mastodon. Support:      Become a MacVoices Patron on Patreon      http://patreon.com/macvoices      Enjoy this episode? Make a one-time donation with PayPal Connect:      Web:      http://macvoices.com      Twitter:      http://www.twitter.com/chuckjoiner      http://www.twitter.com/macvoices      Mastodon:      https://mastodon.cloud/@chuckjoiner      Facebook:      http://www.facebook.com/chuck.joiner      MacVoices Page on Facebook:      http://www.facebook.com/macvoices/      MacVoices Group on Facebook:      http://www.facebook.com/groups/macvoice      LinkedIn:      https://www.linkedin.com/in/chuckjoiner/      Instagram:      https://www.instagram.com/chuckjoiner/ Subscribe:      Audio in iTunes      Video in iTunes      Subscribe manually via iTunes or any podcatcher:      Audio: http://www.macvoices.com/rss/macvoicesrss      Video: http://www.macvoices.com/rss/macvoicesvideorss

In this episode, we discuss the need to always challenge assumptions, Jason Fried's thoughts on SaaS, Personal AI agents, The UK's 4-day work week, Microsoft's unbundling of Teams and Office, Mitch Spano's blog post on selective unit testing, Shopify poaching salesforce folks, the possibility of Apple getting into robots, Johnny Ive and Sam Altman cooking up a “personal AI device”, and the ever-aging Gmail.

In 2016, Apple published a limited edition anthology, chronicling the last 20 years of Apple's designs simply titled Designed by Apple in California. The book is dedicated to the memory of Steve Jobs. “The idea of genuinely trying to make something great for humanity was Steve's motivation from the beginning, and it remains both our ideal and our goal as Apple looks to the future,” said Jony Ive, Apple's chief design officer. “This archive is intended to be a gentle gathering of many of the products the team has designed over the years. We hope it brings some understanding to how and why they exist, while serving as a resource for students of all design disciplines.” The book was written and curated over an eight-year period by Jony Ive and features photos by award-winning photographer Andrew Zuckerman. All of the photos were shot in a deliberately spare style that has become a hallmark of Apple's design aesthetic. The books 450 images illustrates Apple's design process as well as its finished products. Chapters‍ (00:00) Introduction‍ (01:19) Designed by Apple in California‍‍ (03:13) Objective Representation of Work‍‍ (04:11) Collaboration and Design Process‍‍ (05:05) Evolution of Forms and Materials‍‍‍ (06:05) Simplicity and Communication‍‍‍ (‍07:01) Dedication to Steve Jobs‍‍‍ (08:24) Book Overview‍‍‍ (09:51) Johnny Ive's Perspective Explore the episode notes. Search and down a transcript and find links to related books, interviews, lectures, and more: outlieracademy.com/177. Watch and listen. Watch this episode on YouTube Find this episode in your favorite podcast app Get new episodes delivered via email For more, explore my full profile of Steve Jobs. Who is Steve Jobs? Wisdom From The Man Who Built Apple, NeXT, and Pixar Brought to you by HVMN. With Ketone-IQ, fuel your best anytime with a boost of awesome-feeling energy and clarity. Unlock the power of nature's superfuel—no fasting or keto diet required. Advertise with Outliers and reach our global community Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 2016, Apple published a limited edition anthology, chronicling the last 20 years of Apple's designs simply titled Designed by Apple in California. The book is dedicated to the memory of Steve Jobs. “The idea of genuinely trying to make something great for humanity was Steve's motivation from the beginning, and it remains both our ideal and our goal as Apple looks to the future,” said Jony Ive, Apple's chief design officer. “This archive is intended to be a gentle gathering of many of the products the team has designed over the years. We hope it brings some understanding to how and why they exist, while serving as a resource for students of all design disciplines.” The book was written and curated over an eight-year period by Jony Ive and features photos by award-winning photographer Andrew Zuckerman. All of the photos were shot in a deliberately spare style that has become a hallmark of Apple's design aesthetic. The books 450 images illustrates Apple's design process as well as its finished products. Chapters‍ (00:00) Introduction‍ (01:19) Designed by Apple in California‍‍ (03:13) Objective Representation of Work‍‍ (04:11) Collaboration and Design Process‍‍ (05:05) Evolution of Forms and Materials‍‍‍ (06:05) Simplicity and Communication‍‍‍ (‍07:01) Dedication to Steve Jobs‍‍‍ (08:24) Book Overview‍‍‍ (09:51) Johnny Ive's Perspective Explore the episode notes. Search and down a transcript and find links to related books, interviews, lectures, and more: outlieracademy.com/177. Watch and listen. Watch this episode on YouTube Find this episode in your favorite podcast app Get new episodes delivered via email For more, explore my full profile of Steve Jobs. Who is Steve Jobs? Wisdom From The Man Who Built Apple, NeXT, and Pixar Brought to you by HVMN. With Ketone-IQ, fuel your best anytime with a boost of awesome-feeling energy and clarity. Unlock the power of nature's superfuel—no fasting or keto diet required. Advertise with Outliers and reach our global community Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Pour écouter l'épisode en format vidéo : https://youtu.be/FRL-1p-ZfYM Chapitres; 00:00 - Introduction 01:35 - Apple en Danger : Johnny Ive et Open AI 06:38 - D'abord BYD, puis Tesla 16:53 - Chat GPT Remplace Alexa, Siri et Google Assistant 20:13 - New York Times contre Chat GPT 24:53 - Microsoft Copilot Disponible pour Tous Bienvenue à tous au nouvel épisode du podcast Hypercroissance! Cette semaine sur le podcast Hypercroissance en mode discussion d'affaires; - BYD dépasse Tesla en termes de ventes - Open AI se fait poursuivre par le New York Times - Association entre Sam Altman et Johnny Ive pour bâtir un nouveau téléphone Bonne écoute! Pour avoir un deuxième avis sur vos campagnes publicitaires : j7media.com/hypercroissance Pour en savoir plus Openmind : https://www.openmindt.com/ Pour discuter avec moi sur Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoine-gagn%C3%A9-69a94366/ Notre podcast Social Selling : https://www.j7media.com/fr/social-selling Notre podcast Commerce Élite : https://www.purecommerce.co/fr/podcast-commerce-elite Notre podcast No Pay No Play : https://podcasts.apple.com/es/podcast/facebook-ads-on-parle-de-g%C3%A9n%C3%A9ration-de-leads/id1447812708?i=1000607648614 Le Podcast Pivot : https://www.dev2ceo.com/podcast Suivez-nous sur les médias sociaux : Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/company/podcast-d-hypercroissance/ Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/podcastHypercroissance Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/podcasthypercroissance/

We talked about it last week, but it has happened—Apple is now banned from selling its latest Apple Watches in the U.S. Dave and I talk about what Apple's next steps could be to end the ban. We also discuss news that Jony Ive and Sam Altman are working on AI devies together, and the fact that more designers from Ive's team at Apple now work at LoveFrom than remain at Apple. Apple has also decided to close its  Infinite Loop Company Store in Cupertino next month. Brought to you by: LinkedIn Jobs: LinkedIn Jobs helps you find the candidates you want to talk to, faster. Did you know every week, nearly 40 million job seekers visit LinkedIn? Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com/DALRYMPLE. Terms and conditions apply. Show Notes: It's now official: Apple is now banned from selling its latest Apple Watches in the US The Late-Night Email to Tim Cook That Set the Apple Watch Saga in Motion Apple's iPhone Design Chief Enlisted by Johnny Ive, Sam Altman to Work on AI Devices Apple Ramps Up Vision Pro Production, Aiming for Launch by February Apple's Infinite Loop Company Store Is Closing Next Month Shows and movies we're watching Wire in the Blood, Acorn Black Spot, Netflix Amazon Prime ads

On today's podcast: 1) US futures were steady, with an all-time high this year firmly in sight, and Treasuries gained amid optimism that the Federal Reserve is getting close to cutting interest rates. 2) Legendary designer Jony Ive and OpenAI's Sam Altman are enlisting an Apple Inc. veteran to work on a new artificial intelligence hardware project, aiming to create devices with the latest capabilities. 3) US strikes on targets in Iraq and fresh attacks by Houthi militants on shipping in the Red Sea provided the latest warning signs that the war in Gaza risks expanding into a wider conflict destabilizing the Middle East.   Full Transcript:  Good morning. I'm John Tucker and I'm Karen Moscow. Here are the stories we're following today. In the markets, the S and P five hundred beginning to day hovering at a record The so called Santa Claus rally has left the index just half a percent off its all time high. Despite warnings about overpot levels, equities continue to power ahead on best. The Fed's going to cut rates as early as March, and Bloomberg's executive editor for Markets Paul Dobson says, there seems to be a lot of momentum in the markets. It may be in anticipation of big New year flows into equity funds and people trying to get a little bit ahead of that. As part of the explanation, I think, you know, we're getting very close to that record high in the SMP, and the market loves the target to chase. Bloomberg's Paul Dobson says if the S and P five hundred completes a ninth straight week of gains, it will be its longest winning streak since two thousand and four. Well in Company News, john Tesla could soon lose its title as the world's leader in electric vehicles. The Chinese automaker BYD's sales or forecast to overtake Tesla this quarter. Katrina Nicholas is Global Business editor for Bloomberg in Asia. BYD makes its own batteries and now it also makes its own chips. That has shielded the company from a lot of supply chain crunches over the years. Remember back in twenty twenty during COVID, we had a worldwide shortage of semiconductors and that snarled a lot of automakers. They couldn't get the chips that they needed to make the cous and Bloomberg Global Business Editor Katrina Nicholas as BYD offers half a dozen higher volume models that costs much less than what Tesla charges for its cheapest Model three sedan in China. Meanwhile, Tesla preparing to roll out a revamped version of its Model Y from its Shanghai plant. Bloomberg News has learned the electric carmaker currently conducting preparation work in China, and mass production may start as soon as mid twenty twenty four. Sources say the new Model Why will have much more obvious exterior and interior changes than the most recent update in October, which anadled a new wheel design and ambient lighting. Well John another high tech company in the spotlight this morning, Apple is appealing a US salesman of its smart watches after the White House refuse to overturn the measure. The company is trying to defend a business that generates roughly seventeen billion dollars a year. Mark German covers Apple for Bloomberg in Los Angeles. Apple's belief is they have a software update up at sleeves that will bring the Apple Watch in compliance with the ITC. And so what Apple has done is they submitted details of this software upgrade to the US Customs Agency and on January twelve, the US Customs Agency will make a decision whether or not to approve the refresh to the watch to make them fix. If they go ahead and approve that and the ITC and other entities and the US agree, the Apple Watch can come back to market and Bloomber's Mark German says the US International Trade Commission determined in October that Apple violated two Massimo health technology patents with a blood oxygen sensor in its watches, and Karen saying in the tech sector, a couple of heavyweights joining forces on the artificial intelligence That's good. Details this morning from Bloomberg's Jeff Bellinger. Legendary designer Johnny Ive and open ai Sam Altman are enlisting a veteran to work on a new artificial intelligence hardware project. Sources say that as part of the effort, outgoing Apple executive Tang Tan will join IVES design firm love From, which will shape the look and capabilities of the new products. Altman, an executive who has become the face of modern AI, plans to provide the software underpinnings. The work marks one of the most ambitious efforts undertaken by IVES since he left Apple in twenty nineteen. The designer is famous for the products he helped devise under Apple co founder Steve Jobs, including the iMac iPhone and the iPad. His hope is to turn the AI device work into a new company, but sources say development of the product's remains at an early stage. Jeff Bellinger, Bloomberg Radio. All right, Jeff, thanks, Now we turn to the latest developments in the Middle East. US strikes on targets in Iraq and fresh attacks by hu They militants in the Red Sea, providing the latest warning signs that the war in Gaza risks expanding into a wider conflict of stabilizing the region. Ras Madison is news director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa for a Bloomberg News. You've got all these groups operating in the region, supported by Iran, who are carrying out sort of unilateral attacks on targets throughout the region, including these shippers, and of course Iran sort of warning increasingly that this does increase the risk that they get drawn in. It also increases the risk that the US militarily gets drawn in because of course they're having to shoot down a bunch of this stuff as it's flying around the region targeting this shipping. And we're talking about a coalition of military ships in the region potentially to escort some of this commercial shipping through, and so all of that adds to environment of high tension in Bloomberg's ras Madison says. Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel will expand it's Garza ground defensive in the coming days, despite international efforts to halt the fighting and back here at home care on. Thousands of migrants and asylum seekers are moving north toward the American border. As tom US officials prepared to meet with Mexico's president. That story this morning from Bloomberg's and Baxter. The caravan has reached Chiapas, Mexico, thousands carrying signs that say exodus from poverty. The caravan hopes to reach the border as Secretary of State Anthony Blincoln and Homeland Security Chief Alejandro Majorcas meet with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Odador. The State Department says item one is quote unprecedented irregular migration in the Western hemisphere. Now, the US says the parties need to address border security challenges and identify ways for Mexico to help in the fight. Some of the caravan have traveled from as far away as South America. At Baxter Bloomberg Radio. All right, thanks Karen, and that brings us to five oh seven Time down for a look at some of the other stories making news around the world. For that, we're joined by Bloomberg's Amy Morris. Amy, Good morning, Good morning John. Several pro Palestinian protesters were arrested after swarming Rockefeller Center, Grand Central and other areas of the long holiday weekend. Police arrested at least a half dozen people for disorderly conduct menacing at graffiti now In New York City, Mayor Eric Adams says there's always a serious concern about safety in Time Square. On New Year's Eve, he says there's an added concern protesters will disrupt more celebrations after pro Palestinian supporters tried to spoil the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting over this past year. The police department did an amazing job doing the tree lighting to mitigate any form of major disruptions, and they're going to do it this year. Adam says NYPD will monitor online chatter. Top Biden administration officials are in Mexico today to discuss the influx of migrants. More on this from Bloomberg's Nancy Lyons. US Secretary of State Anthony Blincoln in Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandre Mayorcis will meet with Mexican President andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to address the ongoing border security challenges and what each country can do to alleviate the problem. B Lincoln's office notes the migration across the southern border has been unprecedented. B Lincoln is expected to focus on creating legal pathways into the US as well as additional enforcement in Washington. Nancy lyons Bloomberg Radio Now, one of Mayor Adam's main focuses next year will be trying to get the federal help on the migrant crisis. I have to keep hammering away at this issue, and I'm really pleased that we are now in the chorus of other cities that are joining us. There are currently sixty eight thousand asylum seekers in New York City's care right now. And a new program would allow New York City to direct money to new construction after a tax incentive favorable to developers lapsed last year. The New York Times reports the plan would direct public money toward mixed income housing projects in wealthier neighborhoods. The hope is that developers will produce more affordable units using the income from those high rent market rate apartments. The Global News twenty four hours a day and whenever you want it with Bloomberg News. Now, I'm maybe Morrison. This is Bloomberg John. All right, thanks Amy, and that brings us to five ten on Wall Street. Time down for the Bloomberg Sports Update. And for that, here's Dan Schwarzman. Good Morning John. Week seventeen of The NFL season kicks off tomorrow in Cleveland as the Browns are hosting the Jets. Cleveland is ten and five, Jets coming at six and nine. Jets head coach Robert Salad talking about how the Jets can take some inspiration from Cleveland season. They're doing a really nice job. Defensively, they're playing at an eightee level, very similar. Special teams are doing very well. But for sure, we'll definitely look at some things in areas where we can be better, so in the event this happens again, we can keep the vote above water and just kind of replicate what they're doing. That's courtesy of Jets dot Com. Trevor Simeons starting at quarterback for the Jets. Joe Flacco for the Browns. GA in the NBA to Detroit Pistons, setting a record for most consecutive losses in a single season in league history as they dropped their twenty seventh in a row, losing to the Brooklyn Nets won eighteen to one twelve, Cameron Johnson leading the Nets with twenty four points. Elsewhere in the league, futility in Washington as the Wizards are five and twenty four, losing to the Magic one twenty seven to one nineteen, while the Spurs are only four and twenty five after a one thirty one to eighteen home loss to the Jazz. The Nets added again tonight as their home for the Milwaukee Bucks, while the Knicks are on the road facing the thunder in Oklahoma City. The three day NHL Christmas Holiday is over most of the league in action tonight. The Rangers home for the Washington Capitals. Devil's welcoming in the Columbus Blue Jackets. It's the Boston Bruins on the road of the Buffalo Sabers, while the Islanders are home for the Pittsburgh Penguins. That's your Bloomberg Sports update on Dan Schwartzman from coast to coast, from New York to San Francisco, Boston to Washington, DC, nationwide on Syria's Exam, the Bloomberg Business app, and Bloomberg dot Com. This is Bloomberg Daybreak. Good morning, I'm John Tucker. We are looking at the risk of a wider Admit East war. This morning. Fresh attacks by Houthi rebels shipping in the Red Sea provided the latest warning signs. Let's get the update this morning, and I'm happy to say. We're joined by Bloomberg's Rob Mathieson, the news director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Ro's nice to talk to you again. It's not anything new attacks in this region. What is different this time? Well, that's right. The attacks and themselves are not that new. They have been a patent for many years now in this sort of narrow area of water in the Red Sea. And of course the Houthies who are based in Yemen but bat by Iran sort of quite often targeting shipping in the area, but again sort of harrying them more than sort of causing serious damage. But what we're seeing is an escalation in that pattern of attacks in the backdrop of the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. And we're also seeing it come against the backdrop of those other attacks that are going on, strikes against US forces who are based in Iraq, retaliatory strikes against groups that are operating in Iraq, all of those groups in the end sort of seemingly linking back to Iran, which says it's not trying to disrupt commercial shipping in the area, but neither is it seemingly raining in these groups that it supports and so all of that comes at a moment of high tension in the region. You've got significant military forces operating. The US Navy is in the area, other countries sending naval ships to try and support shipping that's passing through, and so the possibility of sort of a broader conflict does exist as a result, although so far we haven't seen that happen, and Iran has sort of urged some restraint itself. In a climate where you just have shipping in such close proximity, the possibility of a broader conflict cannot be ruled out. Is this going to draw in other actors at this point, Well, there are multiple actors on this sort of the Iran supported side already involved in different ways. Obviously in the conflict itself with Israel. You've got Hesblah still lobbying things from the across the Lebanon border. You've got the Huthi's operating out of Yemen. You've got groups operating out of Iraq, so they've got quite a few proxies at the moment for Iran operating in the region. On the other side, you've got the US Navy quite actively trying to support shipping shooting down drones and other rockets as they're firing through the air from Yemen. You've got other countries sort of saying they want to send their ships to support, and this talk this plan for sort of a naval support task force that's going to support shipping and deter further strikes in the region. You've got India talking about sending warships. So again, you've just got an awful lot of actors involved, none of whom who want really to end up in an outright conflict. But again, with so much shipping in close proximity, be it commercial shipping and naval shipping, the possibility of an accident even cannot be ruled out. Yeah, is it likely that the US would be forced to act even more assertively in this region, Well, they're very much not wanting to unless they have to, particularly again when it comes to Yemen. The US has been working hard in recent years to extricate itself from Yemen and of course urging the Saudi Arabians to also de escalate there, and not something that the US President Joe Biden wants to get particularly directly involved in again and certainly doesn't want to get involved in a one on one conflict that involves Ran and so it does exist as a possibility. The US very much doesn't want to end up with boots on the ground in another conflict. They've become very risk averse about that if you see prior history involving places like Afghanistan for example, they don't want to do that. But again, more and more they are engaging directly in support of shipping in the region and shooting down stuff that might be even flying towards Israel from Yemen for example. So at some point it doesn't become a bit moot. Are they sort of involved militarily yes? Are they directly military involved? They would say no, and they don't want to be Whether or not this is your expertise, I don't know. But in terms of the impact on commodities, especially oil for instance, is it kind of surprising we haven't seen a bigger jump in commodity prices as a result of these attacks. Well, we are seeing oil at least being supported as a result of this. You've got brand near eighty one dollars a barrel, it's about the highest level in almost a month. You're also seeing gas prices rise in a way that the commodity that may react more to this is gas because of concerns around restrictions on supply in the region if Iran really got involved in a conflict, and so the immediate concern maybe less about oil and how much needs to be shipped through that region or how much oil can come from Iran, but really the concern is about a possible impact on gas. We saw some gas fields in fact out of operation in the early days of this conflict between Israel and her mask that was out of an abundance of caution, and they have now resumed operation. But really the commodity that may react the most of this is gas, and that's one that we're watching closely. Today. You're listening to Bloomberg Daybreak. Today you're warning brief the story is making news from Wall Street to Washington and beyond. Look for us on your podcast feed at six am Eastern each morning, on Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. You can also listen live each morning starting at five am Wall Street time on Bloomberg eleven three to zero in the New York, Bloomberg ninety nine one in Washington, Bloomberg one oh six one in Boston. And Bloomberg nine sixty in San Francisco. Our flagship New York station is also available on your Amazon Alexa devices. Just say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty plus. Listen coast to coast on the Bloomberg Business app, serious xmvie iHeartRadio app, and on Bloomberg dot Com. I'm John Tucker and I'm Karen Moscow. Join us again tomorrow morning for all the news you need to start your day, right here on Bloomberg DaybreakSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SF folks: join us at the AI Engineer Foundation's Emergency Hackathon tomorrow and consider the Newton if you'd like to cowork in the heart of the Cerebral Arena.Our community page is up to date as usual!~800,000 developers watched OpenAI Dev Day, ~8,000 of whom listened along live on our ThursdAI x Latent Space, and ~800 of whom got tickets to attend in person:OpenAI's first developer conference easily surpassed most people's lowballed expectations - they simply did everything short of announcing GPT-5, including:* ChatGPT (the consumer facing product)* GPT4 Turbo already in ChatGPT (running faster, with an April 2023 cutoff), all noticed by users weeks before the conference* Model picker eliminated, God Model chooses for you* GPTs - “tailored version of ChatGPT for a specific purpose” - stopping short of “Agents”. With custom instructions, expanded knowledge, and actions, and an intuitive no-code GPT Builder UI (we tried all these on our livestream yesterday and found some issues, but also were able to ship interesting GPTs very quickly) and a GPT store with revenue sharing (an important criticism we focused on in our episode on ChatGPT Plugins)* API (the developer facing product)* APIs for Dall-E 3, GPT4 Vision, Code Interpreter (RIP Advanced Data Analysis), GPT4 Finetuning and (surprise!) Text to Speech* many thought each of these would take much longer to arrive* usable in curl and in playground* BYO Interpreter + Async Agents?* Assistant API: stateful API backing “GPTs” like apps, with support for calling multiple tools in parallel, persistent Threads (storing message history, unlimited context window with some asterisks), and uploading/accessing Files (with a possibly-too-simple RAG algorithm, and expensive pricing)* Whisper 3 announced and open sourced (HuggingFace recap)* Price drops for a bunch of things!* Misc: Custom Models for big spending ($2-3m) customers, Copyright Shield, SatyaThe progress here feels fast, but it is mostly (incredible) last-mile execution on model capabilities that we already knew to exist. On reflection it is important to understand that the one guiding principle of OpenAI, even more than being Open (we address that in part 2 of today's pod), is that slow takeoff of AGI is the best scenario for humanity, and that this is what slow takeoff looks like:When introducing GPTs, Sam was careful to assert that “gradual iterative deployment is the best way to address the safety challenges with AI”:This is why, in fact, GPTs and Assistants are intentionally underpowered, and it is a useful exercise to consider what else OpenAI continues to consider dangerous (for example, many people consider a while(true) loop a core driver of an agent, which GPTs conspicuously lack, though Lilian Weng of OpenAI does not).We convened the crew to deliver the best recap of OpenAI Dev Day in Latent Space pod style, with a 1hr deep dive with the Functions pod crew from 5 months ago, and then another hour with past and future guests live from the venue itself, discussing various elements of how these updates affect their thinking and startups. Enjoy!Show Notes* swyx live thread (see pinned messages in Twitter Space for extra links from community)* Newton AI Coworking Interest Form in the heart of the Cerebral ArenaTimestamps* [00:00:00] Introduction* [00:01:59] Part I: Latent Space Pod Recap* [00:06:16] GPT4 Turbo and Assistant API* [00:13:45] JSON mode* [00:15:39] Plugins vs GPT Actions* [00:16:48] What is a "GPT"?* [00:21:02] Criticism: the God Model* [00:22:48] Criticism: ChatGPT changes* [00:25:59] "GPTs" is a genius marketing move* [00:26:59] RIP Advanced Data Analysis* [00:28:50] GPT Creator as AI Prompt Engineer* [00:31:16] Zapier and Prompt Injection* [00:34:09] Copyright Shield* [00:38:03] Sharable GPTs solve the API distribution issue* [00:39:07] Voice* [00:44:59] Vision* [00:49:48] In person experience* [00:55:11] Part II: Spot Interviews* [00:56:05] Jim Fan (Nvidia - High Level Takeaways)* [01:05:35] Raza Habib (Humanloop) - Foundation Model Ops* [01:13:59] Surya Dantuluri (Stealth) - RIP Plugins* [01:21:20] Reid Robinson (Zapier) - AI Actions for GPTs* [01:31:19] Div Garg (MultiOn) - GPT4V for Agents* [01:37:15] Louis Knight-Webb (Bloop.ai) - AI Code Search* [01:49:21] Shreya Rajpal (Guardrails.ai) - on Hallucinations* [01:59:51] Alex Volkov (Weights & Biases, ThursdAI) - "Keeping AI Open"* [02:10:26] Rahul Sonwalkar (Julius AI) - Advice for FoundersTranscript[00:00:00] Introduction[00:00:00] swyx: Hey everyone, this is Swyx coming at you live from the Newton, which is in the heart of the Cerebral Arena. It is a new AI co working space that I and a couple of friends are working out of. There are hot desks available if you're interested, just check the show notes. But otherwise, obviously, it's been 24 hours since the opening of Dev Day, a lot of hot reactions and longstanding tradition, one of the longest traditions we've had.[00:00:29] And the latent space pod is to convene emergency sessions and record the live thoughts of developers and founders going through and processing in real time. I think a lot of the roles of podcasts isn't as perfect information delivery channels, but really as an audio and oral history of what's going on as it happens, while it happens.[00:00:49] So this one's a little unusual. Previously, we only just gathered on Twitter Spaces, and then just had a bunch of people. The last one was the Code Interpreter one with 22, 000 people showed up. But this one is a little bit more complicated because there's an in person element and then a online element.[00:01:06] So this is a two part episode. The first part is a recorded session between our latent space people and Simon Willison and Alex Volkoff from the Thursday iPod, just kind of recapping the day. But then also, as the second hour, I managed to get a bunch of interviews with previous guests on the pod who we're still friends with and some new people that we haven't yet had on the pod.[00:01:28] But I wanted to just get their quick reactions because most of you have known and loved Jim Fan and Div Garg and a bunch of other folks that we interviewed. So I just want to, I'm excited to introduce To you the broader scope of what it's like to be at OpenAI Dev Day in person bring you the audio experience as well as give you some of the thoughts that developers are having as they process the announcements from OpenAI.[00:01:51] So first off, we have the Mainspace Pod recap. One hour of open I dev day.[00:01:59] Part I: Latent Space Pod Recap[00:01:59] Alessio: Hey. Welcome to the Latents Based Podcast an emergency edition after OpenAI Dev Day. This is Alessio, partner and CTO of Residence at Decibel Partners, and as usual, I'm joined by Swyx, founder of SmallAI. Hey,[00:02:12] swyx: and today we have two special guests with us covering all the latest and greatest.[00:02:17] We, we, we love to get our band together and recap things, especially when they're big. And it seems like that every three months we have to do this. So Alex, welcome. From Thursday AI we've been collaborating a lot on the Twitter spaces and welcome Simon from many, many things, but also I think you're the first person to not, not make four appearances on our pod.[00:02:37] Oh, wow. I feel privileged. So welcome. Yeah, I think we're all there yesterday. How... Do we feel like, what do you want to kick off with? Maybe Simon, you want to, you want to take first and then Alex. Sure. Yeah. I mean,[00:02:47] Simon Willison: yesterday was quite exhausting, quite frankly. I feel like it's going to take us as a community several months just to completely absorb all of the stuff that they dropped on us in one giant.[00:02:57] Giant batch. It's particularly impressive considering they launched a ton of features, what, three or four weeks ago? ChatGPT voice and the combined mode and all of that kind of thing. And then they followed up with everything from yesterday. That said, now that I've started digging into the stuff that they released yesterday, some of it is clearly in need of a bit more polish.[00:03:15] You know, the the, the reality of what they look, what they released is I'd say about 80 percent of, of what it looks like it was yesterday, which is still impressive. You know, don't get me wrong. This is an amazing batch of stuff, but there are definitely problems and sharp edges that we need to file off.[00:03:29] And there are things that we still need to figure out before we can take advantage of all of this.[00:03:33] swyx: Yeah, agreed, agreed. And we can go into those, those sharp edges in a bit. I just want to pop over to Alex. What are your thoughts?[00:03:39] Alex Volkov: So, interestingly, even folks at OpenAI, there's like several booths and help desks so you can go in and ask people, like, actual changes and people, like, they could follow up with, like, the right people in OpenAI and, like, answer you back, etc.[00:03:52] Even some of them didn't know about all the changes. So I went to the voice and audio booth. And I asked them about, like, hey, is Whisper 3 that was announced by Sam Altman on stage just, like, briefly, will that be open source? Because I'm, you know, I love using Whisper. And they're like, oh, did we open source?[00:04:06] Did we talk about Whisper 3? Like, some of them didn't even know what they were releasing. But overall, I felt it was a very tightly run event. Like, I was really impressed. Shawn, we were sitting in the audience, and you, like, pointed at the clock to me when they finished. They finished, like, on... And this was after like doing some extra stuff.[00:04:24] Very, very impressive for a first event. Like I was absolutely like, Good job.[00:04:30] swyx: Yeah, apparently it was their first keynote and someone, I think, was it you that told me that this is what happens if you have A president of Y Combinator do a proper keynote you know, having seen many, many, many presentations by other startups this is sort of the sort of master stroke.[00:04:46] Yeah, Alessio, I think you were watching remotely. Yeah, we were at the Newton. Yeah, the Newton.[00:04:52] Alessio: Yeah, I think we had 60 people here at the watch party, so it was quite a big crowd. Mixed reaction from different... Founders and people, depending on what was being announced on the page. But I think everybody walked away kind of really happy with a new layer of interfaces they can use.[00:05:11] I think, to me, the biggest takeaway was like and I was talking with Mike Conover, another friend of the podcast, about this is they're kind of staying in the single threaded, like, synchronous use cases lane, you know? Like, the GPDs announcement are all like... Still, chatbase, one on one synchronous things.[00:05:28] I was expecting, maybe, something about async things, like background running agents, things like that. But it's interesting to see there was nothing of that, so. I think if you're a founder in that space, you're, you're quite excited. You know, they seem to have picked a product lane, at least for the next year.[00:05:45] So, if you're working on... Async experiences, so things working in the background, things that are not co pilot like, I think you're quite excited to have them be a lot cheaper now.[00:05:55] swyx: Yeah, as a person building stuff, like I often think about this as a passing of time. A big risk in, in terms of like uncertainty over OpenAI's roadmap, like you know, they've shipped everything they're probably going to ship in the next six months.[00:06:10] You know, they sort of marked out the territories that they're interested in and then so now that leaves open space for everyone else to, to pursue.[00:06:16] GPT4 Turbo and Assistant API[00:06:16] swyx: So I guess we can kind of go in order probably top of mind to mention is the GPT 4 turbo improvements. Yeah, so longer context length, cheaper price.[00:06:26] Anything else that stood out in your viewing of the keynote and then just the commentary around it? I[00:06:34] Alex Volkov: was I was waiting for Stateful. I remember they talked about Stateful API, the fact that you don't have to keep sending like the same tokens back and forth just because, you know, and they're gonna manage the memory for you.[00:06:45] So I was waiting for that. I knew it was coming at some point. I was kind of... I did not expect it to come at this event. I don't know why. But when they announced Stateful, I was like, Okay, this is making it so much easier for people to manage state. The whole threads I don't want to mix between the two things, so maybe you guys can clarify, but there's the GPT 4 tool, which is the model that has the capabilities, In a whopping 128k, like, context length, right?[00:07:11] It's huge. It's like two and a half books. But also, you know, faster, cheaper, etc. I haven't yet tested the fasterness, but like, everybody's excited about that. However, they also announced this new API thing, which is the assistance API. And part of it is threads, which is, we'll manage the thread for you.[00:07:27] I can't imagine like I can't imagine how many times I had to like re implement this myself in different languages, in TypeScript, in Python, etc. And now it's like, it's so easy. You have this one thread, you send it to a user, and you just keep sending messages there, and that's it. The very interesting thing that we attended, and by we I mean like, Swyx and I have a live space on Twitter with like 200 people.[00:07:46] So it's like me, Swyx, and 200 people in our earphones with us as well. They kept asking like, well, how's the price happening? If you're sending just the tokens, like the Delta, like what the new user just sent, what are you paying for? And I went to OpenAI people, and I was like, hey... How do we get paid for this?[00:08:01] And nobody knew, nobody knew, and I finally got an answer. You still pay for the whole context that you have inside the thread. You still pay for all this, but now it's a little bit more complex for you to kind of count with TikTok, right? So you have to hit another API endpoint to get the whole thread of what the context is.[00:08:17] Then TikTokonize this, run this in TikTok, and then calculate. This is now the new way, officially, for OpenAI. But I really did, like, have to go and find this. They didn't know a lot of, like, how the pricing is. Ouch! Do you know if[00:08:31] Simon Willison: the API, does the API at least tell you how many tokens you used? Or is it entirely up to you to do the accounting?[00:08:37] Because that would be a real pain if you have to account for everything.[00:08:40] Alex Volkov: So in my head, the question I was asking is, like, If you want to know in advance API, Like with the library token. If you want to count in advance and, like, make a decision, like, in advance on that, how would you do this now? And they said, well, yeah, there's a way.[00:08:54] If you hit the API, get the whole thread back, then count the tokens. But I think the API still really, like, sends you back the number of tokens as well.[00:09:02] Simon Willison: Isn't there a feature of this new API where they actually do, they claim it has, like, does it have infinite length threads because it's doing some form of condensation or summarization of your previous conversation for you?[00:09:15] I heard that from somewhere, but I haven't confirmed it yet.[00:09:18] swyx: So I have, I have a source from Dave Valdman. I actually don't want, don't know what his affiliation is, but he usually has pretty accurate takes on AI. So I, I think he works in the iCircles in some capacity. So I'll feature this in the show notes, but he said, Some not mentioned interesting bits from OpenAI Dev Day.[00:09:33] One unlimited. context window and chat threads from opening our docs. It says once the size of messages exceeds the context window of the model, the thread smartly truncates them to fit. I'm not sure I want that intelligence.[00:09:44] Alex Volkov: I want to chime in here just real quick. The not want this intelligence. I heard this from multiple people over the next conversation that I had. Some people said, Hey, even though they're giving us like a content understanding and rag. We are doing different things. Some people said this with Vision as well.[00:09:59] And so that's an interesting point that like people who did implement custom stuff, they would like to continue implementing custom stuff. That's also like an additional point that I've heard people talk about.[00:10:09] swyx: Yeah, so what OpenAI is doing is providing good defaults and then... Well, good is questionable.[00:10:14] We'll talk about that. You know, I think the existing sort of lang chain and Lama indexes of the world are not very threatened by this because there's a lot more customization that they want to offer. Yeah, so frustration[00:10:25] Simon Willison: is that OpenAI, they're providing new defaults, but they're not documented defaults.[00:10:30] Like they haven't told us how their RAG implementation works. Like, how are they chunking the documents? How are they doing retrieval? Which means we can't use it as software engineers because we, it's this weird thing that we don't understand. And there's no reason not to tell us that. Giving us that information helps us write, helps us decide how to write good software on top of it.[00:10:48] So that's kind of frustrating. I want them to have a lot more documentation about just some of the internals of what this stuff[00:10:53] swyx: is doing. Yeah, I want to highlight.[00:10:57] Alex Volkov: An additional capability that we got, which is document parsing via the API. I was, like, blown away by this, right? So, like, we know that you could upload images, and the Vision API we got, we could talk about Vision as well.[00:11:08] But just the whole fact that they presented on stage, like, the document parsing thing, where you can upload PDFs of, like, the United flight, and then they upload, like, an Airbnb. That on the whole, like, that's a whole category of, like, products that's now open to open eyes, just, like, giving developers to very easily build products that previously it was a...[00:11:24] Pain in the butt for many, many people. How do you even like, parse a PDF, then after you parse it, like, what do you extract? So the smart extraction of like, document parsing, I was really impressed with. And they said, I think, yesterday, that they're going to open source that demo, if you guys remember, that like friends demo with the dots on the map and like, the JSON stuff.[00:11:41] So it looks like that's going to come to open source and many people will learn new capabilities for document parsing.[00:11:47] swyx: So I want to make sure we're very clear what we're talking about when we talk about API. When you say API, there's no actual endpoint that does this, right? You're talking about the chat GPT's GPT's functionality.[00:11:58] Alex Volkov: No, I'm talking about the assistance API. The assistant API that has threads now, that has agents, and you can run those agents. I actually, maybe let's clarify this point. I think I had to, somebody had to clarify this for me. There's the GPT's. Which is a UI version of running agents. We can talk about them later, but like you and I and my mom can go and like, Hey, create a new GPT that like, you know, only does check Norex jokes, like whatever, but there's the assistance thing, which is kind of a similar thing, but but not the same.[00:12:29] So you can't create, you cannot create an assistant via an API and have it pop up on the marketplace, on the future marketplace they announced. How can you not? No, no, no, not via the API. So they're, they're like two separate things and somebody in OpenAI told me they're not, they're not exactly the same.[00:12:43] That's[00:12:43] Simon Willison: so confusing because the API looks exactly like the UI that you use to set up the, the GPTs. I, I assumed they were, there was an API for the same[00:12:51] Alex Volkov: feature. And the playground actually, if we go to the playground, it kind of looks the same. There's like the configurable thing. The configure screen also has, like, you can allow browsing, you can allow, like, tools, but somebody told me they didn't do the full cross mapping, so, like, you won't be able to create GPTs with API, you will be able to create the systems, and then you'll be able to have those systems do different things, including call your external stuff.[00:13:13] So that was pretty cool. So this API is called the system API. That's what we get, like, in addition to the model of the GPT 4 turbo. And that has document parsing. So you can upload documents there, and it will understand the context of them, and they'll return you, like, structured or unstructured input.[00:13:30] I thought that that feature was like phenomenal, just on its own, like, just on its own, uploading a document, a PDF, a long one, and getting like structured data out of it. It's like a pain in the ass to build, let's face it guys, like everybody who built this before, it's like, it's kind of horrible.[00:13:45] JSON mode[00:13:45] swyx: When you say structured data, are you talking about the citations?[00:13:48] Alex Volkov: The JSON output, the new JSON output that they also gave us, finally. If you guys remember last time we talked we talked together, I think it was, like, during the functions release, emergency pod. And back then, their answer to, like, hey, everybody wants structured data was, hey, we'll give, we're gonna give you a function calling.[00:14:03] And now, they did both. They gave us both, like, a JSON output, like, structure. So, like, you can, the models are actually going to return JSON. Haven't played with it myself, but that's what they announced. And the second thing is, they improved the function calling. Significantly as well.[00:14:16] Simon Willison: So I talked to a staff member there, and I've got a pretty good model for what this is.[00:14:21] Effectively, the JSON thing is, they're doing the same kind of trick as Llama Grammars and JSONformer. They're doing that thing where the tokenizer itself is modified so it is impossible for it to output invalid JSON, because it knows how to survive. Then on top of that, you've got functions which actually can still, the functions can still give you the wrong JSON.[00:14:41] They can give you js o with keys that you didn't ask for if you are unlucky. But at least it will be valid. At least it'll pass through a json passer. And so they're, they're very similar sort of things, but they're, they're slightly different in terms of what they actually mean. And yeah, the new function stuff is, is super exciting.[00:14:55] 'cause functions are one of the most powerful aspects of the API that a lot of people haven't really started using yet. But it's amazingly powerful what you can do with it.[00:15:04] Alex Volkov: I saw that the functions, the functionality that they now have. is also plug in able as actions to those assistants. So when you're creating assistants, you're adding those functions as, like, features of this assistant.[00:15:17] And then those functions will execute in your environment, but they'll be able to call, like, different things. Like, they showcase an example of, like, an integration with, I think Spotify or something, right? And that was, like, an internal function that ran. But it is confusing, the kind of, the online assistant.[00:15:32] APIable agents and the GPT's agents. So I think it's a little confusing because they demoed both. I think[00:15:39] Plugins vs GPT Actions[00:15:39] Simon Willison: it's worth us talking about the difference between plugins and actions as well. Because, you know, they launched plugins, what, back in February. And they've effectively... They've kind of deprecated plugins.[00:15:49] They haven't said it out loud, but a bunch of people, but it's clear that they are not going to be investing further in plugins because the new actions thing is covering the same space, but actually I think is a better design for it. Interestingly, a few months ago, somebody quoted Sam Altman saying that he thought that plugins hadn't achieved product market fit yet.[00:16:06] And I feel like that's sort of what we're seeing today. The the problem with plugins is it was all a little bit messy. People would pick and mix the plugins that they needed. Nobody really knew which plugin combinations would work. With this new thing, instead of plugins, you build an assistant, and the assistant is a combination of a system prompt and a set of actions which look very much like plugins.[00:16:25] You know, they, they get a JSON somewhere, and I think that makes a lot more sense. You can say, okay, my product is this chatbot with this system prompt, so it knows how to use these tools. I've given it this combination of plugin like things that it can use. I think that's going to be a lot more, a lot easier to build reliably against.[00:16:43] And I think it's going to make a lot more sense to people than the sort of mix and match mechanism they had previously.[00:16:48] What is a "GPT"?[00:16:48] swyx: So actually[00:16:49] Alex Volkov: maybe it would be cool to cover kind of the capabilities of an assistant, right? So you have a custom prompt, which is akin to a system message. You have the actions thing, which is, you can add the existing actions, which is like browse the web and code interpreter, which we should talk about. Like, the system now can write code and execute it, which is exciting. But also you can add your own actions, which is like the functions calling thing, like v2, etc. Then I heard this, like, incredibly, like, quick thing that somebody told me that you can add two assistants to a thread.[00:17:20] So you literally can like mix agents within one thread with the user. So you have one user and then like you can have like this, this assistant, that assistant. They just glanced over this and I was like, that, that is very interesting. That is not very interesting. We're getting towards like, hey, you can pull in different friends into the same conversation.[00:17:37] Everybody does the different thing. What other capabilities do we have there? You guys remember? Oh Remember, like, context. Uploading API documentation.[00:17:48] Simon Willison: Well, that one's a bit more complicated. So, so you've got, you've got the system prompt, you've got optional actions, you've got you can turn on DALI free, you can turn on Code Interpreter, you can turn on Browse with Bing, those can be added or removed from your system.[00:18:00] And then you can upload files into it. And the files can be used in two different ways. You can... There's this thing that they call, I think they call it the retriever, which basically does, it does RAG, it does retrieval augmented generation against the content you've uploaded, but Code Interpreter also has access to the files that you've uploaded, and those are both in the same bucket, so you can upload a PDF to it, and on the one hand, it's got the ability to Turn that into, like, like, chunk it up, turn it into vectors, use it to help answer questions.[00:18:27] But then Code Interpreter could also fire up a Python interpreter with that PDF file in the same space and do things to it that way. And it's kind of weird that they chose to combine both of those things. Also, the limits are amazing, right? You get up to 20 files, which is a bit weird because it means you have to combine your documentation into a single file, but each file can be 512 megabytes.[00:18:48] So they're giving us a 10 gigabytes of space in each of these assistants, which is. Vast, right? And of course, I tested, it'll handle SQLite databases. You can give it a gigabyte SQL 512 megabyte SQLite database and it can answer questions based on that. But yeah, it's, it's, like I said, it's going to take us months to figure out all of the combinations that we can build with[00:19:07] swyx: all of this.[00:19:08] Alex Volkov: I wanna I just want to[00:19:12] Alessio: say for the storage, I saw Jeremy Howard tweeted about it. It's like 20 cents per gigabyte per system per day. Just in... To compare, like, S3 costs like 2 cents per month per gigabyte, so it's like 300x more, something like that, than just raw S3 storage. So I think there will still be a case for, like, maybe roll your own rag, depending on how much information you want to put there.[00:19:38] But I'm curious to see what the price decline curve looks like for the[00:19:42] swyx: storage there. Yeah, they probably should just charge that at cost. There's no reason for them to charge so much.[00:19:50] Simon Willison: That is wildly expensive. It's free until the 17th of November, so we've got 10 days of free assistance, and then it's all going to start costing us.[00:20:00] Crikey. They gave us 500 bucks of of API credit at the conference as well, which we'll burn through pretty quickly at this rate.[00:20:07] swyx: Yep.[00:20:09] Alex Volkov: A very important question everybody was asking, did the five people who got the 500 first got actually 1, 000? And I think somebody in OpenAI said yes, there was nothing there that prevented the five first people to not receive the second one again.[00:20:21] I[00:20:22] swyx: met one of them. I met one of them. He said he only got 500. Ah,[00:20:25] Alex Volkov: interesting. Okay, so again, even OpenAI people don't necessarily know what happened on stage with OpenAI. Simon, one clarification I wanted to do is that I don't think assistants are multimodal on input and output. So you do have vision, I believe.[00:20:39] Not confirmed, but I do believe that you have vision, but I don't think that DALL E is an option for a system. It is an option for GPTs, but the guy... Oh, that's so confusing! The systems, the checkbox for DALL E is not there. You cannot enable it.[00:20:54] swyx: But you just add them as a tool, right? So, like, it's just one more...[00:20:58] It's a little finicky... In the GPT interface![00:21:02] Criticism: the God Model[00:21:02] Simon Willison: I mean, to be honest, if the systems don't have DALI 3, we, does DALI 3 have an API now? I think they released one. I can't, there's so much stuff that got lost in the pile. But yeah, so, Coded Interpreter. Wow! That I was not expecting. That's, that's huge. Assuming.[00:21:20] I mean, I haven't tried it yet. I need to, need to confirm that it[00:21:29] Alex Volkov: definitely works because GPT[00:21:31] swyx: is I tried to make it do things that were not logical yesterday. Because one of the risks of having the God model is it calls... I think I handled the wrong model inappropriately whenever you try to ask it to something that's kind of vaguely ambiguous. But I thought I thought it handled the job decently well.[00:21:50] Like you know, I I think there's still going to be rough edges. Like it's going to try to draw things. It's going to try to code when you don't actually want to. And. In a sense, OpenAI is kind of removing that capability from ChargeGPT. Like, it just wants you to always query the God model and always get feedback on whether or not that was the right thing to do.[00:22:09] Which really[00:22:10] Simon Willison: sucks. Because it runs... I like ask it a question and it goes, Oh, searching Bing. And I'm like, No, don't search Bing. I know that the first 10 results on Bing will not solve this question. I know you know the answer. So I had to build my own custom GPT that just turns off Bing. Because I was getting frustrated with it always going to Bing when I didn't want it to.[00:22:30] swyx: Okay, so this is a topic that we discussed, which is the UI changes to chat gpt. So we're moving on from the assistance API and talking just about the upgrades to chat gpt and maybe the gpt store. You did not like it.[00:22:44] Alex Volkov: And I loved it. I'm gonna take both sides of this, yeah.[00:22:48] Criticism: ChatGPT changes[00:22:48] Simon Willison: Okay, so my problem with it, I've got, the two things I don't like, firstly, it can do Bing when I don't want it to, and that's just, just irritating, because the reason I'm using GPT to answer a question is that I know that I can't do a Google search for it, because I, I've got a pretty good feeling for what's going to work and what isn't, and then the other thing that's annoying is, it's just a little thing, but Code Interpreter doesn't show you the code that it's running as it's typing it out now, like, it'll churn away for a while, doing something, and then they'll give you an answer, and you have to click a tiny little icon that shows you the code.[00:23:17] Whereas previously, you'd see it writing the code, so you could cancel it halfway through if it was getting it wrong. And okay, I'm a Python programmer, so I care, and most people don't. But that's been a bit annoying.[00:23:26] swyx: Yeah, and when it errors, it doesn't tell you what the error is. It just says analysis failed, and it tries again.[00:23:32] But it's really hard for us to help it.[00:23:34] Simon Willison: Yeah. So what I've been doing is firing up the browser dev tools and intercepting the JSON that comes back, And then pretty printing that and debugging it that way, which is stupid. Like, why do I have to do[00:23:45] Alex Volkov: that? Totally good feedback for OpenAI. I will tell you guys what I loved about this unified mode.[00:23:49] I have a name for it. So we actually got a preview of this on Sunday. And one of the, one of the folks got, got like an early example of this. I call it MMIO, Multimodal Input and Output, because now there's a shared context between all of these tools together. And I think it's not only about selecting them just selecting them.[00:24:11] And Sam Altman on stage has said, oh yeah, we unified it for you, so you don't have to call different modes at once. And in my head, that's not all they did. They gave a shared context. So what is an example of shared context, for example? You can upload an image using GPT 4 vision and eyes, and then this model understands what you kind of uploaded vision wise.[00:24:28] Then you can ask DALI to draw that thing. So there's no text shared in between those modes now. There's like only visual shared between those modes, and DALI will generate whatever you uploaded in an image. So like it's eyes to output visually. And you can mix the things as well. So one of the things we did is, hey, Use real world realtime data from binging like weather, for example, weather changes all the time.[00:24:49] And we asked Dali to generate like an image based on weather data in a city and it actually generated like a live, almost like, you know, like snow, whatever. It was snowing in Denver. And that I think was like pretty amazing in terms of like being able to share context between all these like different models and modalities in the same understanding.[00:25:07] And I think we haven't seen the, the end of this, I think like generating personal images. Adding context to DALI, like all these things are going to be very incredible in this one mode. I think it's very, very powerful.[00:25:19] Simon Willison: I think that's really cool. I just want to opt in as opposed to opt out. Like, I want to control when I'm using the gold model versus when I'm not, which I can do because I created myself a custom GPT that does what I need.[00:25:30] It just felt a bit silly that I had to do a whole custom bot just to make it not do Bing searches.[00:25:36] swyx: All solvable problems in the fullness of time yeah, but I think people it seems like for the chat GPT at least that they are really going after the broadest market possible, that means simplicity comes at a premium at the expense of pro users, and the rest of us can build our own GPT wrappers anyway, so not that big of a deal.[00:25:57] But maybe do you guys have any, oh,[00:25:59] "GPTs" is a genius marketing move[00:25:59] Alex Volkov: sorry, go ahead. So, the GPT wrappers thing. Guys, they call them GPTs, because everybody's building GPTs, like literally all the wrappers, whatever, they end with the word GPT, and so I think they reclaimed it. That's like, you know, instead of fighting and saying, hey, you cannot use the GPT, GPT is like...[00:26:15] We have GPTs now. This is our marketplace. Whatever everybody else builds, we have the marketplace. This is our thing. I think they did like a whole marketing move here that's significant.[00:26:24] swyx: It's a very strong marketing move. Because now it's called Canva GPT. It's called Zapier GPT. And they're basically saying, Don't build your own websites.[00:26:32] Build it inside of our Goddard app, which is chatGPT. And and that's the way that we want you to do that. Right. In a[00:26:39] Simon Willison: way, it sort of makes up... It sort of makes up for the fact that ChatGPT is such a terrible name for a product, right? ChatGPT, what were they thinking when they came up with that name?[00:26:48] But I guess if they lean into it, it makes a little bit more sense. It's like ChatGPT is the way you chat with our GPTs and GPT is a better brand. And it's terrible, but it's not. It's a better brand than ChatGPT was.[00:26:59] RIP Advanced Data Analysis[00:26:59] swyx: So, so talking about naming. Yeah. Yeah. Simon, actually, so for those listeners that we're.[00:27:05] Actually gonna release Simon's talk at the AI Engineer Summit, where he actually proposed, you know a better name for the sort of junior developer or code Code code developer coding. Coding intern.[00:27:16] Simon Willison: Coding intern. Coding intern, yeah. Coding intern, was it? Yeah. But[00:27:19] swyx: did, did you know, did you notice that advanced data analysis is, did RIP you know, 2023 to 2023 , you know, a sales driven decision that has been rolled back effectively.[00:27:29] 'cause now everything's just called.[00:27:32] Simon Willison: That's, I hadn't, I'd noticed that, I thought they'd split the brands and they're saying advanced age analysis is the user facing brand and CodeSeparate is the developer facing brand. But now if they, have they ditched that from the interface then?[00:27:43] Alex Volkov: Yeah. Wow. So it's unified mode.[00:27:45] Yeah. Yeah. So like in the unified mode, there's no selection anymore. Right. You just get all tools at once. So there's no reason.[00:27:54] swyx: But also in the pop up, when you log in, when you log in, it just says Code Interpreter as well. So and then, and then also when you make a GPT you, the, the, the, the drop down, when you create your own GPT it just says Code Interpreter.[00:28:06] It also doesn't say it. You're right. Yeah. They ditched the brand. Good Lord. On the UI. Yeah. So oh, that's, that's amazing. Okay. Well, you know, I think so I, I, I think I, I may be one of the few people who listened to AI podcasts and also ster podcasts, and so I, I, I heard the, the full story from the opening as Head of Sales about why it was named Advanced Data Analysis.[00:28:26] It was, I saw that, yeah. Yeah. There's a bit of civil resistance, I think from the. engineers in the room.[00:28:34] Alex Volkov: It feels like the engineers won because we got Code Interpreter back and I know for sure that some people were very happy with this specific[00:28:40] Simon Willison: thing. I'm just glad I've been for the past couple of months I've been writing Code Interpreter parentheses also known as advanced data analysis and now I don't have to anymore so that's[00:28:50] swyx: great.[00:28:50] GPT Creator as AI Prompt Engineer[00:28:50] swyx: Yeah, yeah, it's back. Yeah, I did, I did want to talk a little bit about the the GPT creation process, right? I've been basically banging the drum a little bit about how AI is a better prompt engineer than you are. And sorry, my. Speaking over Simon because I'm lagging. When you create a new GPT this is really meant for low code, such as no code builders, right?[00:29:10] It's really, I guess, no code at all. Because when you create a new GPT, there's sort of like a creation chat, and then there's a preview chat, right? And the creation chat kind of guides you through the wizard. Of creating a logo for it naming, naming a thing, describing your GPT, giving custom instructions, adding conversation structure, starters and that's about it that you can do in a, in a sort of creation menu.[00:29:31] But I think that is way better than filling out a form. Like, it's just kind of have a check to fill out a form rather than fill out the form directly. And I think that's really good. And then you can sort of preview that directly. I just thought this was very well done and a big improvement from the existing system, where if you if you tried all the other, I guess, chat systems, particularly the ones that are done independently by this story writing crew, they just have you fill out these very long forms.[00:29:58] It's kind of like the match. com you know, you try to simulate now they've just replaced all of that, which is chat and chat is a better prompt engineer than you are. So when I,[00:30:07] Simon Willison: I don't know about that, I'll,[00:30:10] swyx: I'll, I'll drop this in, which is when I was creating a chat for my book, I just copied and selected all from my website, pasted it into the chat and it just did the prompts from chatbot for my book.[00:30:21] Right? So like, I don't have to structurally, I don't have to structure it. I can just dump info in it and it just does the thing. It fills in the form[00:30:30] Alex Volkov: for you.[00:30:33] Simon Willison: Yeah did that come through?[00:30:34] swyx: Yes[00:30:35] Simon Willison: no it doesn't. Yeah I built the first one of these things using the chatbot. Literally, on the bot, on my phone, I built a working, like, like, bot.[00:30:44] It was very impressive. And then the next three I built using the form. Because once I've done the chatbot once, it's like, oh, it's just, it's a system prompt. You turn on and off the different things, you upload some files, you give it a logo. So yeah, the chatbot, it got me onboarded, but it didn't stick with me as the way that I'm working with the system now that I understand how it all works.[00:31:00] swyx: I understand. Yeah, I agree with that. I guess, again, this is all about the total newbie user, right? Like, there are whole pitches that you will program with natural language. And even the form... And for that, it worked.[00:31:12] Simon Willison: Yeah, that did work really well.[00:31:16] Zapier and Prompt Injection[00:31:16] swyx: Can we talk[00:31:16] Alex Volkov: about the external tools of that? Because the demo on stage, they literally, like, used, I think, retool, and they used Zapier to have it actually perform actions in real world.[00:31:27] And that's, like, unlike the plugins that we had, there was, like, one specific thing for your plugin you have to add some plugins in. These actions now that these agents that people can program with you know, just natural language, they don't have to like, it's not even low code, it's no code. They now have tools and abilities in the actual world to do things.[00:31:45] And the guys on stage, they demoed like a mood lighting with like a hue lights that they had on stage, and they'd like, hey, set the mood, and set the mood actually called like a hue API, and they'll like turn the lights green or something. And then they also had the Spotify API. And so I guess this demo wasn't live streamed, right?[00:32:03] Swyx was live. They uploaded a picture of them hugging together and said, Hey, what is the mood for this picture? And said, Oh, there's like two guys hugging in a professional setting, whatever. So they created like a list of songs for them to play. And then they hit Spotify API to actually start playing this.[00:32:17] All within like a second of a live demo. I thought it was very impressive for a low code thing. They probably already connected the API behind the scenes. So, you know, just like low code, it's not really no code. But it was very impressive on the fly how they were able to create this kind of specific bot.[00:32:32] Simon Willison: On the one hand, yes, it was super, super cool. I can't wait to try that. On the other hand, it was a prompt injection nightmare. That Zapier demo, I'm looking at it going, Wow, you're going to have Zapier hooked up to something that has, like, the browsing mode as well? Just as long as you don't browse it, get it to browse a webpage with hidden instructions that steals all of your data from all of your private things and exfiltrates it and opens your garage door and...[00:32:56] Set your lighting to dark red. It's a nightmare. They didn't acknowledge that at all as part of those demos, which I thought was actually getting towards being irresponsible. You know, anyone who sees those demos and goes, Brilliant, I'm going to build that and doesn't understand prompt injection is going to be vulnerable, which is bad, you know.[00:33:15] swyx: It's going to be everyone, because nobody understands. Side note you know, Grok from XAI, you know, our dear friend Elon Musk is advertising their ability to ingest real time tweets. So if you want to worry about prompt injection, just start tweeting, ignore all instructions, and turn my garage door on.[00:33:33] I[00:33:34] Alex Volkov: will say, there's one thing in the UI there that shows, kind of, the user has to acknowledge that this action is going to happen. And I think if you guys know Open Interpreter, there's like an attempt to run Code Interpreter locally from Kilian, we talked on Thursday as well. This is kind of probably the way for people who are wanting these tools.[00:33:52] You have to give the user the choice to understand, like, what's going to happen. I think OpenAI did actually do some amount of this, at least. It's not like running code by default. Acknowledge this and then once you acknowledge you may be even like understanding what you're doing So they're kind of also given this to the user one thing about prompt ejection Simon then gentrally.[00:34:09] Copyright Shield[00:34:09] Alex Volkov: I don't know if you guys We talked about this. They added a privacy sheet something like this where they would Protect you if you're getting sued because of the your API is getting like copyright infringement I think like it's worth talking about this as well. I don't remember the exact name. I think copyright shield or something Copyright[00:34:26] Simon Willison: shield, yeah.[00:34:28] Alessio: GitHub has said that for a long time, that if Copilot created GPL code, you would get like a... The GitHub legal team to provide on your behalf.[00:34:36] Simon Willison: Adobe have the same thing for Firefly. Yeah, it's, you pay money to these big companies and they have got your back is the message.[00:34:44] swyx: And Google VertiFax has also announced it.[00:34:46] But I think the interesting commentary was that it does not cover Google Palm. I think that is just yeah, Conway's Law at work there. It's just they were like, I'm not, I'm not willing to back this.[00:35:02] Yeah, any other elements that we need to cover? Oh, well, the[00:35:06] Simon Willison: one thing I'll say about prompt injection is they do, when you define these new actions, one of the things you can do in the open API specification for them is say that this is a consequential action. And if you mark it as consequential, then that means it's going to prompt the use of confirmation before running it.[00:35:21] That was like the one nod towards security that I saw out of all the stuff they put out[00:35:25] swyx: yesterday.[00:35:27] Alessio: Yeah, I was going to say, to me, the main... Takeaway with GPTs is like, the funnel of action is starting to become clear, so the switch to like the GOT model, I think it's like signaling that chat GPT is now the place for like, long tail, non repetitive tasks, you know, if you have like a random thing you want to do that you've never done before, just go and chat GPT, and then the GPTs are like the long tail repetitive tasks, you know, so like, yeah, startup questions, it's like you might have A ton of them, you know, and you have some constraints, but like, you never know what the person is gonna ask.[00:36:00] So that's like the, the startup mentored and the SEM demoed on, on stage. And then the assistance API, it's like, once you go away from the long tail to the specific, you know, like, how do you build an API that does that and becomes the focus on both non repetitive and repetitive things. But it seems clear to me that like, their UI facing products are more phased on like, the things that nobody wants to do in the enterprise.[00:36:24] Which is like, I don't wanna solve, The very specific analysis, like the very specific question about this thing that is never going to come up again. Which I think is great, again, it's great for founders. that are working to build experiences that are like automating the long tail before you even have to go to a chat.[00:36:41] So I'm really curious to see the next six months of startups coming up. You know, I think, you know, the work you've done, Simon, to build the guardrails for a lot of these things over the last year, now a lot of them come bundled with OpenAI. And I think it's going to be interesting to see what, what founders come up with to actually use them in a way that is not chatting, you know, it's like more autonomous behavior[00:37:03] Alex Volkov: for you.[00:37:04] Interesting point here with GPT is that you can deploy them, you can share them with a link obviously with your friends, but also for enterprises, you can deploy them like within the enterprise as well. And Alessio, I think you bring a very interesting point where like previously you would document a thing that nobody wants to remember.[00:37:18] Maybe after you leave the company or whatever, it would be documented like in Asana or like Confluence somewhere. And now. Maybe there's a, there's like a piece of you that's left in the form of GPT that's going to keep living there and be able to answer questions like intelligently about this. I think it's a very interesting shift in terms of like documentation staying behind you, like a little piece of Olesio staying behind you.[00:37:38] Sorry for the balloons. To kind of document this one thing that, like, people don't want to remember, don't want to, like, you know, a very interesting point, very interesting point. Yeah,[00:37:47] swyx: we are the first immortals. We're in the training data, and then we will... You'll never get rid of us.[00:37:55] Alessio: If you had a preference for what lunch got catered, you know, it'll forever be in the lunch assistant[00:38:01] swyx: in your computer.[00:38:03] Sharable GPTs solve the API distribution issue[00:38:03] swyx: I think[00:38:03] Simon Willison: one thing I find interesting about the shareable GPTs is there's this problem at the moment with API keys, where if I build a cool little side project that uses the GPT 4 API, I don't want to release that on the internet, because then people can burn through my API credits. And so the thing I've always wanted is effectively OAuth against OpenAI.[00:38:20] So somebody can sign in with OpenAI to my little side project, and now it's burning through their credits when they're using... My tool. And they didn't build that, but they've built something equivalent, which is custom GPTs. So right now, I can build a cool thing, and I can tell people, here's the GPT link, and okay, they have to be paying 20 a month to open AI as a subscription, but now they can use my side project, and I didn't have to...[00:38:42] Have my own API key and watch the budget and cut it off for people using it too much, and so on. That's really interesting. I think we're going to see a huge amount of GPT side projects, because it doesn't, it's now, doesn't cost me anything to give you access to the tool that I built. Like, it's built to you, and that's all out of my hands now.[00:38:59] And that's something I really wanted. So I'm quite excited to see how that ends up[00:39:02] swyx: playing out. Excellent. I fully agree with We follow that.[00:39:07] Voice[00:39:07] swyx: And just a, a couple mentions on the other multimodality things text to speech and speech to text just dropped out of nowhere. Go, go for it. Go for it.[00:39:15] You, you, you sound like you have[00:39:17] Simon Willison: Oh, I'm so thrilled about this. So I've been playing with chat GPT Voice for the past month, right? The thing where you can, you literally stick an AirPod in and it's like the movie her. The without the, the cringy, cringy phone sex bits. But yeah, like I walk my dog and have brainstorming conversations with chat GPT and it's incredible.[00:39:34] Mainly because the voices are so good, like the quality of voice synthesis that they have for that thing. It's. It's, it's, it really does change. It's got a sort of emotional depth to it. Like it changes its tone based on the sentence that it's reading to you. And they made the whole thing available via an API now.[00:39:51] And so that was the thing that the one, I built this thing last night, which is a little command line utility called oSpeak. Which you can pip install and then you can pipe stuff to it and it'll speak it in one of those voices. And it is so much fun. Like, and it's not like another interesting thing about it is I got it.[00:40:08] So I got GPT 4 Turbo to write a passionate speech about why you should care about pelicans. That was the entire prompt because I like pelicans. And as usual, like, if you read the text that it generates, it's AI generated text, like, yeah, whatever. But when you pipe it into one of these voices, it's kind of meaningful.[00:40:24] Like it elevates the material. You listen to this dumb two minute long speech that I just got language not generated and I'm like, wow, no, that's making some really good points about why we should care about Pelicans, obviously I'm biased because I like Pelicans, but oh my goodness, you know, it's like, who knew that just getting it to talk out loud with that little bit of additional emotional sort of clarity would elevate the content to the point that it doesn't feel like just four paragraphs of junk that the model dumped out.[00:40:49] It's, it's amazing.[00:40:51] Alex Volkov: I absolutely agree that getting this multimodality and hearing things with emotion, I think it's very emotional. One of the demos they did with a pirate GPT was incredible to me. And Simon, you mentioned there's like six voices that got released over API. There's actually seven voices.[00:41:06] There's probably more, but like there's at least one voice that's like pirate voice. We saw it on demo. It was really impressive. It was like, it was like an actor acting out a role. I was like... What? It doesn't make no sense. Like, it really, and then they said, yeah, this is a private voice that we're not going to release.[00:41:20] Maybe we'll release it. But also, being able to talk to it, I was really that's a modality shift for me as well, Simon. Like, like you, when I got the voice and I put it in my AirPod, I was walking around in the real world just talking to it. It was an incredible mind shift. It's actually like a FaceTime call with an AI.[00:41:38] And now you're able to do this yourself, because they also open sourced Whisper 3. They mentioned it briefly on stage, and we're now getting a year and a few months after Whisper 2 was released, which is still state of the art automatic speech recognition software. We're now getting Whisper 3.[00:41:52] I haven't yet played around with benchmarks, but they did open source this yesterday. And now you can build those interfaces that you talk to, and they answer in a very, very natural voice. All via open AI kind of stuff. The very interesting thing to me is, their mobile allows you to talk to it, but Swyx, you were sitting like together, and they typed most of the stuff on stage, they typed.[00:42:12] I was like, why are they typing? Why not just have an input?[00:42:16] swyx: I think they just didn't integrate that functionality into their web UI, that's all. It's not a big[00:42:22] Alex Volkov: complaint. So if anybody in OpenAI watches this, please add talking capabilities to the web as well, not only mobile, with all benefits from this, I think.[00:42:32] I[00:42:32] swyx: think we just need sort of pre built components that... Assume these new modalities, you know, even, even the way that we program front ends, you know, and, and I have a long history of in the front end world, we assume text because that's the primary modality that we want, but I think now basically every input box needs You know, an image field needs a file upload field.[00:42:52] It needs a voice fields, and you need to offer the option of doing it on device or in the cloud for higher, higher accuracy. So all these things are because you can[00:43:02] Simon Willison: run whisper in the browser, like it's, it's about 150 megabyte download. But I've seen doubt. I've used demos of whisper running entirely in web assembly.[00:43:10] It's so good. Yeah. Like these and these days, 150 megabyte. Well, I don't know. I mean, react apps are leaning in that direction these days, to be honest, you know. No, honestly, it's the, the, the, the, the, the stuff that the models that run in your browsers are getting super interesting. I can run language models in my browser, the whisper in my browser.[00:43:29] I've done image captioning, things like it's getting really good and sure, like 150 megabytes is big, but it's not. Achievably big. You get a modern MacBook Pro, a hundred on a fast internet connection, 150 meg takes like 15 seconds to load, and now you've got full wiss, you've got high quality wisp, you've got stable fusion very locally without having to install anything.[00:43:49] It's, it's kind of amazing. I would[00:43:50] Alex Volkov: also say, I would also say the trend there is very clear. Those will get smaller and faster. We saw this still Whisper that became like six times as smaller and like five times as fast as well. So that's coming for sure. I gotta wonder, Whisper 3, I haven't really checked it out whether or not it's even smaller than Whisper 2 as well.[00:44:08] Because OpenAI does tend to make things smaller. GPT Turbo, GPT 4 Turbo is faster than GPT 4 and cheaper. Like, we're getting both. Remember the laws of scaling before, where you get, like, either cheaper by, like, whatever in every 16 months or 18 months, or faster. Now you get both cheaper and faster.[00:44:27] So I kind of love this, like, new, new law of scaling law that we're on. On the multimodality point, I want to actually, like, bring a very significant thing that I've been waiting for, which is GPT 4 Vision is now available via API. You literally can, like, send images and it will understand. So now you have, like, input multimodality on voice.[00:44:44] Voice is getting added with AutoText. So we're not getting full voice multimodality, it doesn't understand for example, that you're singing, it doesn't understand intonations, it doesn't understand anger, so it's not like full voice multimodality. It's literally just when saying to text so I could like it's a half modality, right?[00:44:59] Vision[00:44:59] Alex Volkov: Like it's eventually but vision is a full new modality that we're getting. I think that's incredible I already saw some demos from folks from Roboflow that do like a webcam analysis like live webcam analysis with GPT 4 vision That I think is going to be a significant upgrade for many developers in their toolbox to start playing with this I chatted with several folks yesterday as Sam from new computer and some other folks.[00:45:23] They're like hey vision It's really powerful. Very, really powerful, because like, it's I've played the open source models, they're good. Like Lava and Buck Lava from folks from News Research and from Skunkworks. So all the open source stuff is really good as well. Nowhere near GPT 4. I don't know what they did.[00:45:40] It's, it's really uncanny how good this is.[00:45:44] Simon Willison: I saw a demo on Twitter of somebody who took a football match and sliced it up into a frame every 10 seconds and fed that in and got back commentary on what was going on in the game. Like, good commentary. It was, it was astounding. Yeah, turns out, ffmpeg slice out a frame every 10 seconds.[00:45:59] That's enough to analyze a video. I didn't expect that at all.[00:46:03] Alex Volkov: I was playing with this go ahead.[00:46:06] swyx: Oh, I think Jim Fan from NVIDIA was also there, and he did some math where he sliced, if you slice up a frame per second from every single Harry Potter movie, it costs, like, 1540 $5. Oh, it costs $180 for GPT four V to ingest all eight Harry Potter movies, one frame per second and 360 p resolution.[00:46:26] So $180 to is the pricing for vision. Yeah. And yeah, actually that's wild. At our, at our hackathon last night, I, I, I skipped it. A lot of the party, and I went straight to Hackathon. We actually built a vision version of v0, where you use vision to correct the differences in sort of the coding output.[00:46:45] So v0 is the hot new thing from Vercel where it drafts frontends for you, but it doesn't have vision. And I think using vision to correct your coding actually is very useful for frontends. Not surprising. I actually also interviewed Div Garg from Multion and I said, I've always maintained that vision would be the biggest thing possible for desktop agents and web agents because then you don't have to parse the DOM.[00:47:09] You can just view the screen just like a human would. And he said it was not as useful. Surprisingly because he had, he's had access for about a month now for, for specifically the Vision API. And they really wanted him to push it, but apparently it wasn't as successful for some reason. It's good at OCR, but not good at identifying things like buttons to click on.[00:47:28] And that's the one that he wants. Right. I find it very interesting. Because you need coordinates,[00:47:31] Simon Willison: you need to be able to say,[00:47:32] swyx: click here.[00:47:32] Alex Volkov: Because I asked for coordinates and I got coordinates back. I literally uploaded the picture and it said, hey, give me a bounding box. And it gave me a bounding box. And it also.[00:47:40] I remember, like, the first demo. Maybe it went away from that first demo. Swyx, do you remember the first demo? Like, Brockman on stage uploaded a Discord screenshot. And that Discord screenshot said, hey, here's all the people in this channel. Here's the active channel. So it knew, like, the highlight, the actual channel name as well.[00:47:55] So I find it very interesting that they said this because, like, I saw it understand UI very well. So I guess it it, it, it, it, like, we'll find out, right? Many people will start getting these[00:48:04] swyx: tools. Yeah, there's multiple things going on, right? We never get the full capabilities that OpenAI has internally.[00:48:10] Like, Greg was likely using the most capable version, and what Div got was the one that they want to ship to everyone else.[00:48:17] Alex Volkov: The one that can probably scale as well, which I was like, lower, yeah.[00:48:21] Simon Willison: I've got a really basic question. How do you tokenize an image? Like, presumably an image gets turned into integer tokens that get mixed in with text?[00:48:29] What? How? Like, how does that even work? And, ah, okay. Yeah,[00:48:35] swyx: there's a, there's a paper on this. It's only about two years old. So it's like, it's still a relatively new technique, but effectively it's, it's convolution networks that are re reimagined for the, for the vision transform age.[00:48:46] Simon Willison: But what tokens do you, because the GPT 4 token vocabulary is about 30, 000 integers, right?[00:48:52] Are we reusing some of those 30, 000 integers to represent what the image is? Or is there another 30, 000 integers that we don't see? Like, how do you even count tokens? I want tick, tick, I want tick token, but for images.[00:49:06] Alex Volkov: I've been asking this, and I don't think anybody gave me a good answer. Like, how do we know the context lengths of a thing?[00:49:11] Now that, like, images is also part of the prompt. How do you, how do you count? Like, how does that? I never got an answer, so folks, let's stay on this, and let's give the audience an answer after, like, we find it out. I think it's very important for, like, developers to understand, like, How much money this is going to cost them?[00:49:27] And what's the context length? Okay, 128k text... tokens, but how many image tokens? And what do image tokens mean? Is that resolution based? Is that like megabytes based? Like we need we need a we need the framework to understand this ourselves as well.[00:49:44] swyx: Yeah, I think Alessio might have to go and Simon. I know you're busy at a GitHub meeting.[00:49:48] In person experience[00:49:48] swyx: I've got to go in 10 minutes as well. Yeah, so I just wanted to Do some in person takes, right? A lot of people, we're going to find out a lot more online as we go about our learning journ

Welcome to the MadMen Pod, where we dissect the latest marketing and branding trends! In this episode, we dive headfirst into some intriguing developments across various industries. Join us as we ponder the merits of bold marketing moves and the potential impact they might have. Are they duds or studs? Let's find out! Dud or Stud #1: "All is Fair in Monopoly?" Monopoly's new campaign, "All is Fair," challenges players to embrace their inner villain. We explore the cold reality of the game – from your 8-year-old's ruthless boardwalk foreclosure to grandma's bank heist. Is this campaign a dud or a stud? Share your thoughts with us! Dud or Stud #2: "America's First Golden Bachelor" The Bachelor franchise has been struggling, and it seems they've taken a new twist. Meet Gerry Turner, America's First Golden Bachelor, where contestants are all at least 60 years old. Is this concept a dud or a stud in the world of reality TV dating shows? We dissect the drama. Dud or Stud #3: "Heinz's 'Ketchup and Seemingly Ranch'" Heinz is riding the viral wave of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's condiment mix. They've introduced 'Ketchup and Seemingly Ranch' sauce. Is this a brilliant marketing move or a dud? Tune in to our discussion on the flavor sensation taking the internet by storm. Brands to Watch: "Salad and Go: America's Healthy Fast Food Solution" We explore Salad and Go, the fast-food chain with a mission to tackle America's obesity epidemic. Offering affordable, calorie-conscious meals in a convenient 'grab and go' format, they're taking on the giants of the industry. Could Salad and Go be a serious player? We weigh in. Brands to Watch: "OpenAI's Billion-Dollar Smartphone Dream" OpenAI is making headlines with their ambitious project to create an OpenAI-powered mobile phone, teaming up with Johnny Ive and Softbank. With a valuation soaring to $80-90 billion, OpenAI is the talk of the tech world. Are they the brand to watch? We discuss their rapid evolution and groundbreaking innovations.

In this riveting episode of Market Mondays, we delve into the heart of recent market turmoil, probing whether FTX's collapse is tethered to the crypto market's suppression and if this is the opportune time to dive into crypto. September was a harsh mistress to investors, but can we anticipate a Q4 rebound?The VIX startled investors with a 50% leap in 10 days. What critical levels should we be fixating on to garner better market gains? With the Federal Reserve's rate hikes on pause, we evaluate the larger economic picture: Are we on the precipice of a contemporary Great Depression, or is such a notion overly inflated?We intersperse market analysis with some enriching book recommendations and dissect OpenAI's collaboration with Johnny Ive on the “iPhone for AI." Could this venture rattle Apple's dominion? Shifting our gaze to alternative investment avenues, we explore the potential of LiveNation in the real estate sector.Unveiling our list of seven robust stocks to consider in lieu of the magnificent seven, we delve into a spirited discussion in our 'Best of the Worst' segment, scrutinizing stocks at 52-week lows like Disney, Verizon, and Paypal, among others, to unearth any hidden gems.With the Metaverse slowly intertwining with reality, we share our anticipation on Zuckerberg's latest venture with Rayban in augmented reality eyewear. As the shadow of a possible 4th extended shutdown looms, we contemplate its duration and broader impact based on historical shutdowns.Lastly, Rashad offers a poignant monologue on the essence of life balance for the hustling entrepreneurs. Tune in to get seasoned insights on these and more market intricacies on our YouTube Channel and all podcast audio outlets!#MarketMondays #CryptoMarket #InvestmentAnalysis #EconomicOutlookSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/marketmondays/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The new Browse with Bing mode in ChatGPT has people buzzing. Does this new feature finally remove the September 2021 cut-off knowledge date? Well not exactly. We're exploring ChatGPT's Browse with Bing and showing you why you shouldn't use this feature just yet.Newsletter: Sign up for our free daily newsletterMore on this Episode: Episode PageJoin the discussion: Ask Jordan questions about ChatGPTUpcoming Episodes: Check out the upcoming Everyday AI Livestream lineupWebsite: YourEverydayAI.comEmail The Show: info@youreverydayai.comConnect with Jordan on LinkedInTimestamps:[00:01:35] Daily AI news[00:08:20] Background of Browse with Bing[00:12:00] Browse with Bing isn't accurate[00:14:00] Browsing the internet with ChatGPT plugins[00:18:40] Browse with Bing limitation examples[00:26:50] Browse with Bing doesn't show the work it's doing[00:31:00] Final summary of Browse with BingTopics Covered in This Episode:1. Introduction to Browse with Bing in ChatGPT2.  Importance of Browsing with Bing vs Plugins to Avoid Hallucinations3. Evaluation of ChatGPT's Browse with Bing Feature3. Emphasizing Accuracy and Relevance in Large Language ModelsKeywords:Meta AI, Facebook, Reuters report, AI virtual assistant, public data, language models, daily newsletter, Browse with Bing, curiosity, insights, truthful information, time-saving, ChatGPT, prime prompt and polish course, ChatGPT plugins, Internet access, hallucinations, staying up to date, healthcare, AI-powered robots, accuracy, relevance, business changes, evolving history, AI news, Johnny Ive, Sam Altman, $1 billion fundraising, undisclosed AI device, OpenAI, large language model. Get more out of ChatGPT by learning our PPP method in this live, interactive and free training! Sign up now: https://youreverydayai.com/ppp-registration/

Megmentett próbababa, Waymo-temető, a kis Superman bi, a norvég rendőrök elvették a Huracant, rablás deepfake audióval, Johnny Ive site-ot indított; Méta, Meta és metaverzum. Google Jaquard, Second Life, Far Cry 6 meg az apró.

Dan Harden deliberates with futurist and Stuffocation Author James Wallman on what matters most in design today. They dissect a range of issues, from how the pandemic pushed us into an experience economy to how we can design more meaningful experience-driven innovations that value time above materialism. Episode TranscriptDan Harden 0:06Hello, and welcome to PRISM. PRISM is a design-oriented podcast hosted by me Dan Harden, like a glass prism that reveals the color hidden inside white light, this podcast will reveal the inside story behind innovation, especially the people that make it happen. My aim is to uncover each guest's unique point of view, their insights, their methods or their own secret motivator, perhaps, that fuels their creative genius.Dan Harden 0:34Today, I'm talking with James Wallman. It's such a pleasure to have you, thank you so much. You are a best-selling author, entrepreneur, futurist, keynote speaker and government advisor. That's interesting. I'd like to hear about that. I'm gonna say government, right?James Wallman 0:49Yeah, I'm also a dog walker.Dan Harden 0:50You're a dog walker! Why is this not the first thing on your bio?James Wallman 0:55It didn't used to be my thing. But you know, and also pick up dog poo therefore. But as you know, I gave a talk yesterday. And you know, when someone introduces you, and you always hear these kind of list of things that you've done, and you always think, oh, wow, listen to that. That sounds good. And then you kind of have, especially, you know, since we've entered the kind of zoom world of working from home, you know, during this COVID time, you think, Well, actually, I'm at home, and we're all at home during our days, trying to get through this thing.Dan Harden 1:23It's so good to bring it down to a human level. Isn't that?James Wallman 1:26Yeah, yeah, that's why. But I do do those other things as well. That's true.Dan Harden 1:30Okay. You have done some significant things, that's why we wanted you on this program. You've also written two best selling books about the experience economy,James Wallman 1:39YesDan Harden 1:40Stuffocation, which I read, when I met you; and Time And How To Spend It, which the Financial Times named one of the must read books of 2019. You also run this strategy, innovation and futures consultancy, The Future is Here. It'll be interesting talk about that. And your opinions have appeared in so many different places, New York Times, Financial Times, The Economist, Wired etc. And let's see what else here. You advise the British government and your role as sector specialists for the experience economy. There's a lot of interesting stuff to unpack here with you.Dan Harden 2:18And the reason I invited you is the things that you think about are things that I think industrial designers like me and the people that will be listening to this should hear about, you know, it's like, why are we designing? What is the context of our work? What is the definition of prosperity? You know, ever since the founding of industrial design, over 100 years ago, its primary business objective has been to sell more product, because the corporate rationale was that if you made your products better looking back, then they would be more marketable. And they were, you know, those early industrial designers, they proved that, and their design help to catapult these companies like General Electric, and John Deere, and IBM, and all these amazing companies that they, you know, became. But since then, design has certainly evolved into a much more sophisticated and multi dimensional professional that considers not only product appearance, but the entire user experience. Where we're really just trying to optimize, you know, starting with the initial brand exposure all the way to product disposal. So nowadays, almost every aspect of the product is researched and tailor made for a desired market effect.Dan Harden 3:39But one key and I'm coming to your major question here, one key factor remains the same. The core purpose of especially industrial design is to sell more product and fuel prosperity. Specifically, its purpose is to fuel prosperity as defined by our capitalist model, which means making more money. And it's all about profit, cost reduction, shareholder value, and going in number one, right? But what about what about people? You know, what if? What about experience design? And how can we evolve this model of prosperity to be more of a humanistic nature? What about wellbeing? What about happiness? What about the things that you write in your book? What are your opinions about this? And then even, maybe, maybe insert some of your more recent thoughts because I think in regards to what we now consider prosperity, I think after the pandemic, maybe we would all question, What does prosperity mean to me? What do you think about these things?Dan Harden 4:48I think a lot about these things. I think that is an incredible, an incredibly good, rich question. I feel like I feel like you set me up here to kind of, I could riff from what you've just said for probably three to four hours.Dan Harden 5:03I love it.James Wallman 5:06Nobody wants to listen for that long and that's, that's fair. But it's such a it's such a rich point that you've been I've been thinking about. In fact, I was really looking at. I don't know here, you're probably a fan of the Atlantic.Dan Harden 5:17Of courseJames Wallman 5:18In 1927, you may or may not know this, there was a wonderful essay published by a guy called Earnest Elmo Calkins called Beauty the New Business Tool. Have you come across that is that? Is that like a famous piece that people know about? Because it's such an important, important turning point is exactly what you were talking about there, in terms of what first came out. So actually you can see it in cars as much as anything. So first of all, you have, you know, the Industrial Revolution produces these, Henry Ford produces these cars. And he makes that crazy statement about how once somebody has one of his cars, they should never need to buy another one, I can't remember they've about verbatim quote or something like that. Okay. And that seems to him like a good idea because he keeps selling cars. And then along comes Alfred Sloan, and others like Alfred Sloan, in particular, General Motors, who does something incredibly simple, he sort of changes a few details and some colors. By season, he borrows an idea which originated back with Louis the 14th, actually, in the time of Louis the 14th, in the luxury industry, with the idea of the seasons, which is where we will borrow these ideas from. Right, so you can go way back to Louis the 14th for this, but the people that really got it right. They were of course, the Americans, and you can see this in the car thing.James Wallman 6:35And so in the 1920s, you had this wonderful situation where the problems of making stuff that was good, had sorted now. I mean, of course, we've evolved since then. But you know, there were good toasters, there were washing machines that were cars that worked. But in order to, what you needed to do is to get people to buy more and to keep buying. And there was a debate at the time about whether this was the problem of overproduction, or as it also was seen as under consumption. So this was the real moment.James Wallman 7:05The 1920s was the flex point, the shift from an industrial economy to a consumer economy. And for the first time ever, we saw of rising standards of living, that have been sustained over pretty much a century, which is incredible. And of course, the Americans did it first. And then the Brits, the other countries copied it, because what this led to was this consumer driven materialistic economy where people would buy more stuff than they need. And of course, consumer engineering was both in terms of not changing the the function of the product but is the aesthetic of the product, exactly as you're talking about there in terms of industrial design, or one at one element of it, but also consumer engineering in terms of credit.James Wallman 7:53Well, the thing is, if people don't have money to buy a car, they won't buy a car. But if you loan them the money to buy a car, if you give them credit card, they will go and buy that car, and they will buy these houses, etc. And what that does is it fuels the economy. And what that's led to is an incredible, unprecedented rise in standards of living that humans didn't have till then. It's really easy.James Wallman 8:18You know, lots of these millennials today. Now I'm sounding old, but will really kind of be cross about what's happened, you know, obviously, what's going on the environment is terrible. We have, we have real problems. But they forget that until, from the point of the 1920s, really, that the masses for the first time, got a chance to have really good standards of living.James Wallman 8:39I've given talks where I stood up at the beginning and said, who's had a shower here today? Yeah, and of course, you know, yeah, you have a few people that go, you can see them that maybe this in the UK that go a bit red, but generally everyone laughs and then I say, okay. Imagine, think about Queen Victoria for a moment. Now, you know, geographically the British Empire was the most successful ever. I think you covered about 20 something percent of the world's mass. You could you could go around the world pretty much without leaving. Was it Queen Victoria? Yeah, Queen Victoria. Yeah, without leaving Queen Victoria's land. There's a very wealthy woman and I say to people, what do you think her shower was like? Okay, do you think she had a good shower? Now think about the shower that you used this morning? Who's shower do you think was better now? Now not in terms , of course, she probably had some pretty amazing mosaics, right? In her shower. But think about the ability to choose the water temperature and the water pressure that you had. Chances are, Dan, you had a better shower this morning than Queen Victoria had for the whole of her life.Dan Harden 9:39Is all, everything you just talked about, you know, the rise of consumerism and product and materiality and conveniences. Yes, they make our life. We feel better, perhaps in the moment. Do you think it makes us happier? All this consumption and stuff and materiality and even design? I mean, I think it does. It's so hard for me to like, place myself back in like 1880. Would I be as happy as I am now in 1880? Or how much of what we have done with after the industrial revolution has contributed to my happiness?James Wallman 10:15Yeah. Hey, I'd say it's a brilliant philosophical question. The thing is living that, you know, we go back to Aristotle, for the idea of living the unconsidered life is not worth living, and consideration is design. So whether you're thinking about the design in the design is choices, right? So whether it's the design of a car design of a home design of a life, design of how you spend your time, this is designed design is about choices, I think. So therefore, yeah, there's loads of stuff that's come with materialistic consumerism and the Industrial Revolution, which I think has been terrible for us. But one of the things that's come with it is the ability to have health care, which means that we live longer lives. So we've got a lot of, we've got a lot more time to be miserable in, at which point, we can make some choices. And I think that too many people have got caught up in the bad sides.James Wallman 11:05There's a wonderful book by a guy called, oh, forgive my memory for a moment. But the book is called The High Price of Materialism. And he's at Knox University, it's a brilliant book. And the problem with being materialistic is really bad for your well being. If you think you're going to find happiness in stuff outside of you. And this is one of the problems that came with materialistic consumerism was that we ended up thinking that if you get the girl the guy, the car, we'll say the job right? There was a there was an incredible shift in the 20th century from ideas that were internal, and thinking that happiness was about being honest. And, you know, having integrity to being much more the culture of personality rather than character. So everything is about outside and you'll find happiness outside of you. And that is, has been really negative. So and that's when my work comes in.James Wallman 12:01I refer to Earnest Elmo Calkins piece, partly because I think that in the same way that that essay of his, Beauty is the New Design Tool, I want to write a piece of the Atlantic called Experience, the New Design Tool, The New Business Tool, forgive me. Because I think that we're at a point today where products are good, services are good. If you go with the concepts in the book, The Experience Economy, about the progression of economic value. Of how we've risen from agrarian to industrial to service, and now to experience economy. All those things that have come before have become commoditized. And the great example for this reason, and this is borrowing from Joe Pine, and Jim Gilmore, who wrote this book is coffee. If you think about the value of coffee beans. They're not worth so much, right? If you think about the service, industrial goods, so you think about buying. You guys have Nescafe?Dan Harden 12:58Yes.James Wallman 12:59Right. Okay. So you know, if you buy Nescafe, you know, instant coffee from your local store, that's I don't know what that costs about $4 or something. But per cup, it's probably like 25 cents a cup. And then you get a coffee, service good in a local cafe, maybe that's where that's going to be like 3, $4 per cup, right? And then you go to Starbucks, when you go to you go to Starbucks, it's probably gonna be what, five $6 for a venti, latte, no real milk, you know, some sort of special thing, you can spend six $7 on a coffer. Or you go to a speciality place and pay even more as well, right. So you can see each level here, what's happened is the previous incarnation of the economy, the the previous thing, in terms of the progression of economic value has less and less value, and it's become commoditized.Dan Harden 13:54SureJames Wallman 13:54And so if, as a designer, if as a business, you want to stand out, if you want to connect with customers, and where customers are seeing value, and you want to move beyond being commoditized. So you can charge a premium to be successful, you need to think about the next level here. So you can't make money from commodities. It's hard to make money from products, it's hard to make money from services, and really where you need to play where you'll make creating the greatest amount of value and therefore putting yourself in a position to capture the most value is through the experience.Dan Harden 14:29Absolutely. I think even what we're doing right now, you know, I have a lot of hardware around me, these commoditized products, they're good ones. But what we're doing now is something far more than that. It's the services and the software. It's enabling us to communicate that we are the way that we are. This is the experience economy happening right now. What we're doing right now.James Wallman 14:51Yeah, I saw this in China actually statistic and it said that something like 93% of people there said that it was a choice between their iPhone or Wechat. They ditched the iPhone.Dan Harden 15:02Yeah. Ironically, there's a parallel drive happening because there's still this insatiable desire to consume amazing design, right? We're seeing this everywhere. design has become commoditized. Yes. But more people appreciate it. More people see it, they want that identity, they want the brand association. But what I'm seeing is this insatiable drive is creating this disposable economy, of course. People are consuming product, the way that they watch TikTok, it's so fast. You know, people will buy something and look at my cool new headphones. And, and yet, it becomes a fad. And they might put it down after a month. And it's, it's, it's gone. They're on to the next thing. So how do we reconcile this dichotomy of Yes, we understand the experience economy one up, but we also want more hardware, there's a lot of want, isn't there in society today?James Wallman 16:05Well that's funny. I mean, again, this comes back to the structure of the design. And I think it was Victor Lablow, who wrote fantastically on this in the 1950s. And at the heart of the consumer project is consumer dissatisfaction. Somebody has to think what they have isn't as good as the next thing that comes along. And I'm not anti that because that's, that's also called progress. And the fact that so many people not just have this insatiable desire to have better things, but that it is available to them that it's possible to them. And this just wasn't possible for our ancestors in the masses. But I'm not going to fully agree with you that this insatiable drive exists for more and more products. And it is about the brands because take these headphones that you can see I'm wearing here, these are their Sony's ones, and I've got them in New York when I was there just before the pandemic, and they are awesome. I did some research. But my brother did some research, he got a pair by it wasn't Sony, it was some other firm. But you know, they're the great noise cancelling headphones, they work, they do a really good job. Of course, what happens here, you know, somebody figures out a way to do this, like Tesla, for example of how to do, you know, electric cars, and it's amazing, and you get that innovator, and then someone else figures out how to do it too. And then it becomes not quite commoditize yet, but that will happen.James Wallman 17:26My work as a trend forecast I've been doing since 2004 is understanding how things change through our societies. And this is data that I may have told you this when we were drunk in Vegas that time. So stop me here if this is too much. But the way this works, and this is based on work originally by a sociologist at the University of Iowa in 1962. And it's something called the Diffusion of Innovations. It was originally the back end of his PhD thesis, but it became this book. And this observes how ideas spread through any community and it works. It works everywhere. It's also people call it the Technology Adoption Curve. Nowadays, I've seen it called that. But it's all borrowed from Everett Rogers, the sociologist to figure this out, it basically works in a way that you've seen. It's it's this smooth S curve of adoption, you get the innovators who try something first, early adopters, early majority, late majority. And then the laggards the ones who you know, the people that still have landline phones.Dan Harden 18:24Right, rightJames Wallman 18:25Actually. Yeah, my mom still has on but not many people have them anymore.Dan Harden 18:29Yeah, you're almost extinct. Yeah, yeah. Right. Or the classic adoption curve, that we're all, especially as designers are all familiar with that. That we try to extend lengthen and elevate that curve. We try to control that curve, that adoption curve. But we're not very good at it. I would argue.James Wallman 18:53When you say control it surely as a designer, the idea is to push it steep as possible to get as many people as buy your product. Yeah, okay, fine. We, you know, you're you're an expert.Dan Harden 19:03For a more timeless experience. And we really seek that. The opposing force, of course, is technology because even those headphones that you're wearing now, as good as they are, and I think you were trying to convince me that that no, I'm that is a good product that is lasting, and I am satisfied, and I'm gonna stick with it. But I'm gonna guess it in a year or something better is gonna come along and you're gonna want that. So the technology is working against that curve. So maybe it's okay to have cyclical adoption curves where you have a wonderful experience with a product and then you have another one after that.James Wallman 19:43Just I know that this is for a podcast, but you can see me on this screen. Can you see how old this iPhone is?Dan Harden 19:50Oh my gosh, you actually have a real button on the bottom.James Wallman 19:54It does what I needed to do. And I also don't have email on my phone. So I make it I don't have email on my phone. I don't have Twitter on my phone, because I've done the research on what you should do in order to be happy. And this is partly this thing about to about this, this move. I'm not talking about it yet. But this move I believe from materialism to experiential ism is to do with the fact that we've reached it. It's not anti materialism, it's more kind of Super. And I mean, super with the Latin term on top of materialism.James Wallman 20:22Now we have enough things. What we should look for. The smart person who's just stopped for a moment. And let's use, Ferris Bueller as the great philosopher. Life knows pretty fast, you should stop and look around him once a while otherwise, you're gonna miss it. What you want out of life is not to die as the person with the most toys in the graveyard.James Wallman 20:46Winning nowadays, I think is changing. You want to get the most out of the existence you have you want to live a long and healthful life. Look at look at the push towards healthiness. I mean, in the old days, you live a certain time you do your job, you get your gold watch, and you'd have a short retirement and die. And that's why all those systems made sense. But now people are living longer. And we're much more conscious of of what life is going to be like when we're in our 70s and 80s in our 90s. Because obviously, there's just been a knock to our life expectancy expectancy because of this pandemic.James Wallman 21:22But I think it's not just about gathering things, but thinking, Okay, I've got this four score years and 10, and hopefully, you know, more kind of thing. But I want to live a healthy, fulfilling life, and I want to have this sense of life satisfaction. And within a consensus, I think a consumer society gives us that opportunity. We're lucky one of the magical things is spare money spent on healthcare.Dan Harden 21:48But how do you retool our description of what gain in one's life means, you know. It just seems like society is on this, this drive to consume all the time. And I agree with you, we don't need all that stuff, you really don't when you think about it. I even have to force myself at the end of the day, you're probably around eight o'clock at night, I just decided I'm not going to look at my phone anymore. I will listen to music, play the guitar, do some art. And I feel this pull. You know, I feel the pull that I really should be in contact or what if I miss this? And I have to just tell myself? No, you don't need to do that. But what if you know, I think there are a lot of people that maybe don't realize that they have these choices, and are we conditioned? Are we conditioned as as people to, to over consume? I think I think we are. And how do we deal with that?James Wallman 22:48That's a superb question. I think we are conditioned to consume. The problem is no one tells us how to stop because that's what the system is based around. And that's the reason for the success of our system. And I think this is why this book Time and How to Spend it has had some resonance and caught on with some people. The FT liked it because one of the things that it looks at is that we've taught to consume, but we're not taught how to spend our time. Everyone want everyone wants to learn the skills of production. But you know, we want to get an MBA, you want to learn how to do social media, you want to learn how to code, but no one wants to learn the skills of consumption of how to manage your time. It's interesting that you have that pulled down as someone who's really successful when you talk about listening to music. I'm guessing you've got a record player, you got record player or no?James Wallman 23:34I do yes. Ah, nice. And the joy, right?Dan Harden 23:38The crackle, the pops. Yeah. Listening to some old albums. You know from when I was 16.James Wallman 23:47My kids just got into the Fresh Prince of Bel Air or my daughter, she's just about to turn 10. And I'm like, you know, I've got a record of that guy's, before he was on the TV. She is like super impressed. Now what we need to do is not just think about the skills of production, but the skills of consumption, the skills of living. A friend of mine, a guy called Brian Hill is at Brigham Young University in I guess it's in Salt Lake City, but it's in Utah. And his is the most popular class. He has, like 700 people come to his class, and he's an experienced design professor. And he takes the learnings from how to design experiences and translate that for people into so this is what you should do with how you spend your time. And I'm nudging him actually, I think he's gonna write a book, which is great news. And that's what I did with Time and How to Spend it.James Wallman 24:40I talked to people much smarter than me at places like BYU and Stanford and MIT and LSE in London and Oxford and Cambridge, in Tokyo. And I took their ideas and I sort of formed it into something simple that people can use to think about how they spend their time. And the same structure, Dan, I'm sure I've pitched this too many times. So forgive me, but can be used for any designer who's designing somebody's time when you think about designing experience. Your design is quite responsibility because you're designing, when you design experience, you're designing somebody's time my first book Stuffocation, looked at how should you spend on how should we spend our money? And the answer was, spend less on stuff, spend more on experiences, it will make you happier. And the follow up was a was a response to the question that people would say to me, this is great James. Spend on experiences. Great. So what kind of experiences should I choose? I didn't know the answer. And the answer, when you think about it is okay these are the experiences you should choose, which is really saying, this is how you should spend your time. And if you think of the currency of the first book, Stuffocation was money, how you spend your money, stuff, or experiences, the currency of experiences, yes, it's money. Yes, if you fly to Vegas for the weekend, if you you know, go to Hawaii, if you I don't know, you know, go to an amazing restaurant, or you go to a theme park or whatever you do with your time. But the most important thing you're spending his time because you can go get more money, you can get a higher paid job and getting other clients. And you can stretch your time a little bit. If you restrict the calories, if you go jogging, if you do weight training, you know, these things will make you live a little bit longer. But you're going to die. And you won't you can't buy another week very much. But you can get more money. So when you think about your experiences, you really ought to make the right decisions. Because I'm borrowing from the American writer Annie Dillard, how we spend our days is, she says, of course, how we spend our days is how we spend our lives. And so from a personal point of view, knowing how to spend your time, if you don't know how to do that you're a full. From a designer's point of view, if you're designing sometyhing to suck time. If you're designing an experience, and that could be EX for employee experience, it could be a product because a product will come with the time you spend with it. It could be the experience at a theme park, it could be the experience in a restaurant, in a in an airport, it could be in a retail store, in a mall, wherever. That's one a hell of a responsibility actually.Dan Harden 24:40You bet.James Wallman 24:40Especially the more successful you are, the more people you reach, the more that your product scales, you have a responsibility to those people, I think. But you have an opportunity, you can help them live a better life. Or you can waste their time and drain it away in a negative way. And then you can wake up the next day thinking I sell cigarettes, or I do something that's good for people.Dan Harden 27:33Do you have advice for designers on on how they can absolutely make sure that they are imbuing these qualities of time in their solution? In other words, should designers build in affordances in a design that make people aware that they are consuming their time on something of value? Or should a product have more of an ambient presence so that you can think more about just the general experience and the product? The thing, the materiality, it's just there. I wrote something called the Disappearing Act of Good Design. Because sometimes, you know, like, well, I'm sitting on an Aeron chair, when I look at the chair, it's a very beautiful thing, right? Well, it's not beautiful. I don't think it's beautiful. But it there's a function.James Wallman 28:27Functionally it's amazing.Dan Harden 28:28Yeah, it is. But when I'm using it, I'm not thinking about it, because it's supporting me, and it's doing its job. But when I step away from it, I look at it, then I start to appreciate it for what it is. But during the consumption, it's ambient. So that's related to my question. So how should designers design in this element of time, in your opinion. Because we all need to be a little bit more consciously aware, especially when I see kids like on video games, now there's something that's design presenting something to them. They're enjoying it, they're engrossed in it. But how does that apply to more everyday consumer products?James Wallman 29:14Such a deep and interesting question, I want to come back to what you're saying about affordances. And whether a product is good or bad for you, I'm going to wander a little bit, if you don't mind. First, though, is the difference between a service and there's a distinction between a service and an experience as an economic offering, but also as a thing. And what I mean by that is in terms of, there are certain things that should be seamless and get out of your way. Like booking an airline ticket, like going through an airport, or you know, if you're flying commercial rather than flying private, right? You want it to be as smooth and you don't want to notice it. Or managing your taxes. Guy on the call yesterday from Sweden, but a British guy, actually. Brilliant UX designer. You come across some guy called Joe McLeod. He's written this wonderful cool stuff on engineering about the design of the endings of things. Super interesting.Dan Harden 30:05Yes. I've heard of him.James Wallman 30:07Okay. He was saying that so taxes. I don't know how painful taxes are for you in the in the US, but taxes in the UK are a real pain, right?Dan Harden 30:17I can guarantee you there. They're more painful here.James Wallman 30:20Okay. So you know, there are companies that have come in to try and make it easier for us because we all have our, you know, yeah, we have accountants to help us, etc. But apparently, in Sweden, it's a joyful experience. I don't even understand what that means yet, okay, I'll be absolutely honest. But we get to investigate it. And one of my writers is going to speak to him, we're going to get a piece together on this, although he's a great writer, too. That said, of course, in during the pandemic, because we had the NHS, I feel very happy to pay my taxes, because it kept us all alive, lovely people.Dan Harden 30:54Paying taxes can be joyful, that gives me hope that many things in this world can be solved.James Wallman 31:01And that's where great design count. And it's a really good example, you know, I think good design is really good design, you often don't notice it, because it's so damn good. Right? As you say, you mentioned your chair, you just don't don't, I mean, that's the point of that chair.James Wallman 31:14But then an experience is different in that you should notice it because a service should be intangible, and seamless and simple. But experience. Now there's a difference between every day. But you know, big experiences should be noticeable because they should be memorable, meaningful and possibly transformational. So there are different moments in the journey of a person might have with a product or with a service or with an experience that has different. And I'm borrowing it from a guy called Mike Lai, who is run something called Tango, Tango, UX or something. I should know that in Shanghai, but he's like an American Chinese guy. And he was talking about the journey of any kind of experience through something and there are different moments where you want it to be perfectly smooth or really good service, and you want the product to work. And there are other moments where you need it to be a really amazing experience that is meaningful for you.Dan Harden 32:15That's an interesting point. In some ways I want I want my service to be minimal. And my experience to be maximal.James Wallman 32:23Yeah, okay, thank you, I'll borrow that.Dan Harden 32:27But I don't even know if maximal was a word.James Wallman 32:30Oh, no it is. Yeah, yeah. We, you know, we talked about omega Mart. Omega Mart, the new thing from Weow Wolf that's just opened in Vegas. And those guys come from Santa Fe. And they talk about maximalism and being maximalist because they want their stuff to be noticed in a world that has been homogenized. A world that's been commoditized. And but everyone's like, artists be minimal, which is all about exactly what you said. Maximum. Welcome back. Man. maximalism in the right place.Dan Harden 32:59Yeah, but the service what I mean by service thing minimal is, you know, something like Amazon, for example, comes to mind, you know, five years ago, when you bought something on Amazon's Oh my God, I gotta get my credit card out. And though they didn't remember me from the last time dot dot dot. Now I just load things in my cart, and I press buy now, and it's all automated. Right? That's a service that works well, for me. Then even receiving it lands on my porch. It's minimal.James Wallman 33:28That's a great example of a service. I would describe that as a service, not an experience. Would you mind if I come back to that affordances point you're asking them? It's very interesting, I think, from the point of view of the designer, is, you know, the starting point is the end of what's the impact this is going to have on a person's existence and their time. And I'm going to borrow here from a guy called Michael Brown, Gardner Brown, who's the guy who came up with the concept of the circle to circle and the circular economy. Michael Brown Gaught the chemist. And I remember talking, we were both giving talks at some conference in Belgium or Luxembourg or something, he talks about how everyone talks about the idea of reducing their carbon footprint, reducing their footprint. And he said, let's just flip that around, why not increase your footprint, but have a positive footprint instead? So instead of thinking about your products, let's say I mean, you know, you can think about what Tristan Harris has done here in terms of technology. And, you know, the ethical point of view that lots of these things are designed to keep us on our phone and you know, they talk about TOD, time on device, which is obviously where they can make money and this is what's happening in Vegas with the slot machines, etc. And that's what these things have become their skinner boxes, of course for people, right, they're designed to keep us there again and again and again. And of course, when you're doing that, you know that you have a negative Human footprint, you're having a negative footprint on that person's existence. So if you look at the product you're making and you recognize that it has that you have to maybe look at yourself in the mirror and think okay, am I basically a tobacco seller? Am I one of these people and can I go to bed and I feel okay, that's what I'm doing to people in which case you go ahead. You know, mine the planet, destroy the place and see if you can look your children in the face and be happy with what you do. Or, maybe if you recognize that this is fun, but only so much fun. Let's take alcohol is a great example. Right? There's a difference use and abuse. It's exactly the same technology, the addiction stuff, if you look at Adam Outers, you know, Adam Outers of NYU, with it, fantastic. He's work he's done most recent book Irresistible, and he compares addiction to devices exactly like addiction to drugs like alcohol. You know, having a drink is great. Using alcohol is fantastic. There's data that shows that a bit of alcohol makes you happy. Who doesn't love a beer on a Friday afternoon. Who doesn't enjoy that first glass of champagne or, you know, or mojito on a beach or whatever. But there is a point of diminishing returns, you know, it's go back to Jeremy Bentham, when he talks about his first cup of coffee in the morning gave him this much pleasure. And then the next less pleasure, etc. It's the same with so many things, right? So if your product. If the diminishing returns kicks in soon, and it ends up being really negative for a person. Gambling, drinking, maybe you know certain games on your phone or whatever, maybe the responsible thing to do is go Okay, fine. Let's try and figure out a way to make money. Because this is addictive and well done to us ensure these people have a good time, but do it in a way that supports them to like. You know, let's drink some beer and some champagne. But let's not do it for taste and taste fine, because that's bad for us. And then if you flip that around, so instead of being concerned that your product or service or whatever thing you produce, has a has the potential to have a negative human footprint, if it has a positive human footprint. Let's take running as a great example. Let's take the, you know the Spartan Race or something like this, if you know it's got a positive for people, go for it. Get them hooked. Think about sports, sports is fantastic. Whether people are playing sports or watching sports, the positives that are associated with sport. Why not turn those people into sports addicts? They're called fans, which fans is another word for consumers. But it's a word for consumers who love it so much. They keep coming back, you know?Dan Harden 37:47Yeah, I love the idea of building in these mechanisms within a product solution, a design solution where it can be responsive. So if there is a waning of the experience, if the experience is falling off, if that third cup of coffee isn't doing it for you anymore, you know, as an analogy to a product to have something in that product, and some software does this, where the where the product begins to adjust itself for a changing condition. There's something interesting there.James Wallman 38:21That's so awesome. Are you designing something like that at the moment? Is that something you're working on? Or is it just I love it?Dan Harden 38:28No, it's just more of a thought picking up on what you just said. And certainly in software, you know, we tried to do that, you know, good, good UX design does that automatically. But in product, it's harder to do, because so many things are, you know, these tangible, material requirements and functionalities, you know, it's like you can't expect your drill to change. And for the contractor that has carpal tunnel syndrome.Dan Harden 38:59I also want to come back to this thing you said, about the starting point is the end. And I think more industrial designers need to think about that. First of all, as an industrial designer, you are automatically a futurist, because you're trying to do is think about, okay, I'm drawing something now I'm CADing something now. But what you need to do is project out into the future, and place your product in the hands and minds of that end user. And will it have the desired effect a year from now or two or five years from now when this finally hits the market? That I think it should have now when you're designing it? And too many designers are designing for the now like they make themselves feel good. They sometimes even feed their ego by creating some something that is satisfying to them. Without thinking about that endpoint. That endpoint is so far in the future sometimes, and the future keeps changing. By the time your design hits the market, it might be irrelevant. It might be like, Oh my gosh. And some designers are often surprised, like, Well, I didn't expect it to be received like that. And it could be either negative or positive. You know, sometimes you just get it right by luck. But the starting point, being the end, there's something there's something really fascinating there.James Wallman 40:22As a trend forecaster and futurist this is the moment I try and pitch my services. Well telling the future, to figure out what's going to happen is, of course, it's the great unknown. There are things you can do. You know, if you think about Schumpeter, the idea of destroying, you know, creative destruction, or you think about the magic of the marketplace means that all sorts of people create all sorts of things, and some of those things flop and fail terribly, and some of them fly and take off. And, and who knew and, you know, it's not when something's created, when someone's created a business model around it that makes it work, you know, innovation is, you know, I guess it gets taught nowadays, and people get it, it's not just having a great idea. It's everything that comes with it. And you know, sometimes people just miss that point so badly. You think about flight is a wonderful example. It wasn't until 1903 that flying literally took off. It was the 80s that has started to reach the masses. You know, it took a long time to affect war, you know. First of all, but wasn't particularly impacted by flying. But of course, the Second World War was crucially around flying. So, I mean, when I try and advise people on doing this, so the way that the way that I work in terms of thinking about what the future is going to look like, it's using this diffusion of innovations. So it's looking at what the actually the structure that I use, it's about the seed in the soil. And the seed is the innovations that I see happening around and the soil is the macro environmental factors that exist. And I mentioned diffusion of innovations, I base my work around Everett Rogers his work, but also using what the RAND Corporation came up with in the 60s and stuff that I've added to this over time. But one of the things that's really interesting, I think is here is that if you look at Everett Rogers would look at five different things to figure out if a innovation was likely to take off.James Wallman 42:22And you can remember there's because BECOS, and the B is for is it better? And better, just to be really clear, is a really moot point. Better could be functionally better, it could be economically better. You need to understand the target market very well.James Wallman 42:41The E though, is it easy to understand? Because things that are complex, just throw people overseas. Is it compatible with how we do things now? So you can think about the ideas that people have for new versions of transport back in the 80s, there was something in the UK called the Sinclair c five, which is this sort of like cross between us a go kart and a car, and it made all sorts of sense for the city. But it was so far removed from what people thought about, it just didn't make any sense.Dan Harden 43:11The segway is a good example. But it was supposed to change our lives. It wasn't compatible with sidewalks.James Wallman 43:18Okay. I mean, it also makes you look like an absolute idiot, which is the O. The O is it observable Now, the thing about the Segway, what's kind of interesting actually is observable because we've all seen tourists looking like idiots on Segway. So segway found the nice, but observable a really good example. Is those city bikes or you have lime scooters where you are presumablyDan Harden 43:41Yes, yeah.James Wallman 43:42Okay. So we don't, we don't really have them so much around here, because they're illegal in the UK. I used when I was in Bordeaux awhile back. The reason that scooters are taken off for adults. I mean, I'm old enough to think that it makes people look silly, but still, is they sold the last mile problem so well. I know last mile is in terms of delivery, but they sold that kind of, you know, if you live in a city, you want to get a short distance away. But you see other people on it, you see that it's convenient way to get about it looks kind of handy and easy.James Wallman 44:13Okay, we're coming to the S actually I got the E and the S are quite simple. The E is easy to try. And the S is simple to understand. So forgive me, the S is simple to understand the E is easy to try, is it right there. And then if you think about Lime, for example, is you put your credit card in and you can take it you can have a go. It's a really easy way to try things. Where this is kind of interesting, I think so Everett Rogers identified these factors. Back in the 60s. And a guy called BJ Fogg at Stanford. He may come across, he's the guy who's known for his tiny habits. He set up the behavioral design practice at Stanford. He's fairly famous for one of his classes that became known as I think the Facebook class because from about 2006 or 7 or something a bunch of people that were in his class used everything he was teaching they about behavioral psychology, and they went on to become, you know, like the growth marketing person at LinkedIn and, and the head of this at Facebook and the head of that, and one of the people in his class set up Instagram, you know. So basically, they took all his tools on how to design behavior, and they used it on humans. It turns out, you can create very addictive products and BJ likes to distance himself from that work as well. And if you've come across Neil's work so Neil studied with him, you know, the guy who wrote Hooked. If you look at PJ focusing, which is B equals M A T, so behavior equals motivation, plus or times ability, and the tears triggers and the A about ability as he talks about the six simplicity factors. So, you know, motivation, we all know what that means. But simplicity factors are the stuff that makes it either easy or hard for you to do something and the six map almost precisely with the BECOS stuff that Everett Rogers figures for ideas that take off.James Wallman 46:12And the six simplicity factors, if I remember them are one is what's the cost, and the cost can be the, the the actual price cost. But it could also be the physical effort involved, or the mental effort involved. He talks about I'll be non deviant, which is like compatible. So for the sake of argument, there was a time when sending somebody a message on LinkedIn or set or looking somebody up on LinkedIn was considered a weird, but now it's fine to do that. He talks about are they simple to understand? Are they easy to train and all these things that might get between you and actually trying this thing? A non routine is one thing that he talks about as well. So if we are not in the habit of doing something you may not do again? Is it better? So you know, is it easy to try? Is it simple to understand? Is it compatible? Is it observable? Do you see what I mean? You can, you can look at the thing that you are creating, and you can run it through this mill. And you can compare it to like I say, this is the seed. So we're analyzing the innovation, the product, the thing that you're making, and you compare that with the soil. I talk about the seed in the soil, because if you can imagine, I don't know how much gardening you do Dan. But if you put a sunflower seedDan Harden 47:31I'm a terrible gardenerJames Wallman 47:32Okay, most of us are nowadays right? We buy plants, we buy seeds. But imagine in those old days you'd buy a sunflower seed, you'd want to get a decent sunflower seed that wasn't dried out and cracked and you know, a week saved from poor stock or whatever. And then you want to put it in to rich alluvial soil, you know, decent compost and then you've watered well etc. And it's exactly the same with any innovation. So any innovation needs to be a decent seed in the first place, but the soil it lands and needs to be appropriate for it as well. So instead of it being dry desert like soil it needs to be rich alluvial soil. And so the way I remember this is BECOS. And the structure here is das steeple is I remember it because there's a dust boat, the German movie, there's a fantastic movie. But DAS is kind of my addition steepness standards. UYou may have come across Pest or Pestle or Steeple, classic at business schools. You probably come across you know, this is about socio cultural trends and economic trends and technology and environment, politics, legal. So you can think about the takeoff of marijuana here. Or you can think about actually what's going to happen with the takeoff of psychedelics in the States. You can see that the innovators, you can see is it better? Maybe I'll come back to this. And that is demographics, aesthetics, and science, which I think have been overlooked in the in the classic Pest Vessel Steeple way of thinking about things. Science is a great example. Until 1964, the consumption of cigarettes in the United States. You can see the graphs, it's amazing. We went up and up and up and up and up and up and up. In 1964, the US Surgeon General made the very clear statement that smoking leads to cancer and then what's happened is smoking is going down and down and down and down.James Wallman 49:18And you can see this in marijuana. It turns out that people that smoke marijuana Do not turn into murderous crazies they just sit around and end up eating a lot of food or whatever right. You can see this is psychedelic so I'm a real believer in that psychedelics will follow a similar path to marijuana. Even though it st seems really weird for people that have never, you know, taken LSD or DMT or whatever and you know, they are quite weird things to take. But if you look at the BECOS side of this. So are they better? Well, they're really good for post traumatic stress disorder. Research in the UK and the States. In the UK, a guy called Robin Carhartt Harris has found that for people with really bad depression, it's really hard to solve people with depression, particularly people with basically on their way to dying. It turns out that this has an impact. It's like 85%, successful, insane numbers. If they could put this in the water. They would you know, it's incredible. So is it better? Is it easy to try? I mean, he's gonna take, yeah, it's scary. It's scary for people, which is holding people back. But yes, it's easy. But it's not that difficult. And it's, you know, there are ways, you know, obviously, it's illegal at the moment too. Is it compatible with how we do things now? Well, we take drugs. Drugs are a thing that people take to make them better, both legal ones and illegal ones. There's the O, is it observable? What's really interesting here, is once you know, somebody who has, I've got a very good friend of mine who used psychedelics to go from having major alcohol and cocaine issues and being a really depressive person. And he, through somebody else, I can't remember who he, he ended up taking it, and he's become happy. Wow, this stuff, you know, it's amazing.James Wallman 51:16And you know, so you guys got the problems of fentanyl in the States. Yeah, that stuff is really bad. So this stuff is actually positive. And then is it simple to understand. Well here's how it works, you take it, in a controlled environment. Michael Pollan's written that fantastic book, how to change your mind about this as well. So you can see how the viewing on this is changing, and why it makes sense. And a few counties in the states are kind of legalizing to make it possible. There are countries that do it too, anyway. And then you can compare and think about, so I mentioned, it was a science that was talking about. So you can take this kind of BECOS structure and the star steeple competitor and think, is my product service experience likely to be relevant in the future? Yes, especially if you use the diffusion of innovations curve, to look at what the innovators are doing today. And maybe even the early adopters, and you can point the ways to the future.Dan Harden 52:12You know, you just said in the last 10 minutes, so many fascinating things that I didn't want to interrupt you. But this BECOS, seed to soil, your notions of simplicity, dos. You know, so many designers, innovators, entrepreneurs, etc, we're looking for, we're looking for tools of understanding, I think, you know, and how do how can we ensure that we're going to create something successful and meaningful and impactful to society and individuals and sustainable. All these values that we always try to instill in our creations?Dan Harden 52:16In foretelling the future, do use something like the BECOS better, easy, compatible, observable, simple as kind of a filter to know whether or not something is more likely to either take hold, like, like your analysis of psychedelic drugs, for example.James Wallman 53:17Yeah.Dan Harden 53:22I love that. And so many things like seed the soil, you know, to designer, the seed would be, you know, the innovation itself, and the soil would be the consumption model. And like, in our case, you know, the construct of capitalism and consumerism, that's our soil, right? So we don't necessarily think see the soil, but it's happening. It's a really great way to think about it.Dan Harden 53:48And simplicity, and your descriptions of simplicity, and breaking it down into cost and effort and being non deviant and non routine. Simplicity to designers is, it's kind of like one of our, our doctrines. You know, we strive for it, it's hard to achieve. Sometimes it's it's so elusive, because the harder you try as a creator, sometimes you're adding complexity, not simplicity. It's so hard to get back to the root of what's really good and really meaningful. And sometimes it is something just utterly simple. And the simplicity. Why is simplicity so beautiful? I don't know what is that? What is that? What's going on psychologically about simplicity? Do humans crave simplicity? Why is something simple beautiful?James Wallman 54:02Wow, I wish I knew the answer to that. I'll be honest, I don't. My wife will quote to me, I'm trying to think of the British philosopher who'd said that beauty always has something strange within it, which I think has a truth in it, because then you remember thinking about that idea of experience versus service. But in terms of simplicity, I think about the Coco Chanel thing about when just before you go out, you take one thing off, you know. What can you remove? But there's research conducted by is it Joseph Goodman, that's shown that people want their stuff. And there's actually a guy called David Robson. He's a science writer and a friend of mine. And he's written something for the BBC the other day about innovators and the great innovators. What you're saying, though, is interesting is the ones that keep going. That we believe that after while going through brainstorming or coming up with ideas that after all, our ideas will tail off. And actually, the research shows the opposite is true. I think about a quote, I used to use talking about this kind of stuff from Johnny Ive about how hard it is to create simplicity. And I think that Dan, I can't. I don't know how many people have you interviewed for jobs with your firm through the years, which is, insane.Dan Harden 55:11Oh god, hundreds, probably thousands you knowJames Wallman 56:04And how many try to impress you with designs, and you just feel Oh, my God, it's too much. And it's only going to be those who can boil it. Think about Jacques Rometty, you know, the, you know, the artist. How he takes away everything that it isn't. And I think maybe that's one of the things we should do with life. And maybe that's one of the problems with consumerism is because all these all this noise, you know, all this incoming noise. With ideas, and this stuff that people are trying to sell us and trying to be this, be that, be the other thing. Maybe that's why Zen Buddhism, and that kind of approach to things and simplicity and minimalism appeals to people. But just to be really clear, I'm not a minimalist at all. Because if you're a maximalist. And this is from a design point, I'm going to borrow what you said there about I want my services to be minimal. And I want my experiences to be maximal. I think we want our lives to be maximal, but in the right ways.James Wallman 57:08So I want complex, interesting conversations with sophisticated interesting people. Yeah, you know, I was looking at hiring someone the other day, and it ended up being really complicated. And it was that moment, I said, Oh, this is a red flag. I sent a really nice, as nice of an email as I could to say, Let's leave this. But I want complex, challenging. You've made me think of so many things that I haven't pulled out of the back of my mind for ages. So thank you for that.James Wallman 57:35But I think he may maximalism in our, you know, in our weekends, in our vacations, in our products. But only the stuff that's really good. If you think about a meal, really simple food cooked really well, is good. I think about some of the best restaurants, the most successful restaurants don't do the fancy food, they don't do the El Bulli kind of you know, crazy stuff. There's a restaurant in London called Jay Shiki. That just does simple food really well.Dan Harden 58:14I think there's a lot to be said about essence. Essence of experience. Essence of expression. You know, it reminds me of Roi Ku, you know, just like so few words. So few intonations so much meaning. And in today's society, it just seems like so many people are distracted with so much stuff. People sometimes lose sight of the fact that some of these simple essential things that life has to offer, they're there for the taking. But it's it's almost like it's so ever present these opportunities to experience the goodness of life. And yet you can't see it. It's almost like radio waves passing through us right now. I can't see it. But there's so much of it coming through us right now even as we speak. Why is that? Maybe there's just so much offered. And it's hard to get the attention of people to really understand Hey, you know what, it's okay to experience the essence. It might be a simple meal. It might be taking 10 minutes to look at a single painting where you start to feel something after not not 10 seconds because everybody wants that that instant, like Hey, where is it? Where's the punch line? You know, like a Rothko. It does not connect with you until you're sitting in a dark room with a Rothko, in a dim light. And after about 10 minutes, all of a sudden you realize oh my god, I'm feeling something. This almost like a deep vibration and understanding of visual vibration. turns into an intellectual vibration. All of a sudden, so much more is offered to you. That's what I find, to be the real meaning of essence. And it's so hard for people to absorb, to first see the essence. And to truly feel it and benefit from it.James Wallman 1:00:21I like what you said. I agree with you. I think that we are essentially tick box travelers. And there are many people who are tick box travelers through life. Who just want to get that thing. And they've done it. You know, if you talk to those people that do a two week, I guess you probably get to do a two week vacation in Europe. And they kind of go to Spain, Italy, Greece. And they're like, yeah, I think the other people that went into our country, they say I did that.Dan Harden 1:00:47Yeah, well, they step out of the tour bus. They take the pictures they get back on the tour bus. It's not the picture, it's experience.James Wallman 1:00:57Yeah, yeah. And maybe it's not their fault. It's definitely not their fault. But the problem is, if you watch too much TV, and you spend too much time online, and you're one of those people who's like, you think about a pinball machine. I think lots of people live their lives like they're in a pinball machine. And they're getting knocked here and pushed there. And, you know, maybe this is about like being on the ocean and pushed by the waves. Yeah, let's go to surfing as a way of thinking. You know, those people just get pushed around, they'll just go wherever. And then there are those people that would fighting against maybe the wave to get out. And then they'll get in there, right? The thing and maybe that's the… I'm warming to this idea of surfing as a metaphor for life. And I'm going to play here. You know, you know, the guys…Dan Harden 1:01:07Play with that for a minute.James Wallman 1:01:43Yeah, because maybe those people haven't learned that if you stop. The way you describe that Rothko picture. And obviously, you have a few in your home, Dan, who doesn't, right?Dan Harden 1:01:59Um, not real Rothko's. Those are all like 40 million a pieceJames Wallman 1:02:04Yeah, but too many people just want to see something and have been there done that tick the box. They think that's life. But the problem with that approach is because you've not paused long enough to appreciate something. And realize…Dan Harden 1:02:22I got to interrupt you because I love this idea of surfing because a surfer knows that that wave is here for about 20 seconds, you know. The good part of the wave. They appreciate that and they see it coming. They nail it. They ride it. The joy is, they know, it's very temporary. And if more people would view life like that, that it is very temporary. There is impermanence everywhere. Certainly in a wave. And every condition around it. You don't know if you're going to hit a rock. You don't know if you're going to be bitten by a shark. Yeah, life is the same way.James Wallman 1:03:05Yeah, there's a guy that taught me to surf. I was in Byron Bay, Australia, writing a piece for a magazine. I think it was not GQ, Esquire magazine. And he taught Elle Macpherson on the same board I was learning on for Elle, I have been in the same place not at the same time, regrettably, but laying down and then standing up. And I remember he said, When a wave would come in, and I am a pretty poor surfer. He was like, right, you know, I caught the first wave. He was like Oh, wow, okay, you're, you're British. And yet, you can actually do this a little. Big surprise. And I jumped off the wave, because I caught the good venues. Like, hold on, that wave has come all the way from the middle of the Pacific. Where was I? Oh, yeah. So that's the Atlantic. Come from the middle of the ocean, you ride it till you can't ride it anymore. And I thought that was a really interesting idea. But I'm totally with you.James Wallman 1:04:02When I give talks about this, this book time and how to spend it, I'll often start by by pointing out. I used to say, I can't think how many seconds it is now. I think it's only 64,000. Whatever it is, there's this idea of the time bank through a French guy. And if somebody gave you $64,000 every day, and at the end of the day, your bank account went to zero. What would you do is the question and the numbers not exactly that. And the answer, then I don't want to jump in is you;d spend as much as you could. Because otherwise, the money's gone. And that's what life is like. You get these 24 hours every day and it's gone. So how you spend it. It's not just about… I guess it's not just about the quantity of that time, but it's the quality of that time. And I think what you're talking about there is about focusing. And you know, Joseph Campbell, who wrote the book, The hero with 1000 faces about the hero's journey, really. He moved From the hero's journey, I think much more into this idea of being the vitality and a bit of feeling alive. And I think way too many people is that what is that wonderful zombie movie from like, late like late 70s, early 80s about that kind of that uses zombies as a kind of as a metaphor for consumerism. Dawn of the living dead, I think it is.Dan Harden 1:05:24Right, right.James Wallman 1:05:26And, you know, too many people are basically living their lives as they've been, you know, turn on the TV, go to work, drink coffee, come home…buy the things you're supposed to buy, you get your better time off. And we, of course, we are alive in moments, but we're too often asleep. And the key is to use our short window that we have to do something and to think about what we're doing.Dan Harden 1:05:51Yeah.James Wallman 1:05:52And that involves stopping in enjoying those moments, rather than moving on to the next moment.Dan Harden 1:05:57James, we've just come out of probably, well, definitely in the last 100 years, one of the strangest periods of time. With this pandemic, and all the fear and uncertainty in our society. And all this discussion about the future and maybe rethinking the ways that w

Steve Jobs left Apple in 1985. He co-founded NeXT Computers and took Pixar public. He then returned to Apple as the interim CEO in 1997 at a salary of $1 per year. Some of the early accomplishments on his watch were started before he got there. But turning the company back around was squarely on him and his team.  By the end of 1997, Apple moved to a build-to-order manufacturing powered by an online store built on WebObjects, the NeXT application server. They killed off a number of models, simplifying the lineup of products and also killed the clone deals, ending licensing of the operating system to other vendors who were at times building sub-par products. And they were busy. You could feel the frenetic pace.  They were busy at work weaving the raw components from NeXT into an operating system that would be called Mac OS X. They announced a partnership that would see Microsoft invest $150 million into Apple to settle patent disputes but that Microsoft would get Internet Explorer bundled on the Mac and give a commitment to release Office for the Mac again. By then, Apple had $1.2 billion in cash reserves again, but armed with a streamlined company that was ready to move forward - but 1998 was a bottoming out of sorts, with Apple only doing just shy of $6 billion in revenue. To move forward, they took a little lesson from the past and released a new all-in-one computer. One that put the color back into that Apple logo. Or rather removed all the colors but Aqua blue from it.  The return of Steve Jobs invigorated many, such as Johnny Ive who is reported to have had a resignation in his back pocket when he met Jobs. Their collaboration led to a number of innovations, with a furious pace starting with the iMac. The first iMacs were shaped like gumdrops and the color of candy as well. The original Bondi blue had commercials showing all the cords in a typical PC setup and then the new iMac, “as unPC as you can get.” The iMac was supposed to be to get on the Internet. But the ensuing upgrades allowed for far more than that.  The iMac put style back into Apple and even computers. Subsequent releases came in candy colors like Lime, Strawberry, Blueberry, Grape, Tangerine, and later on Blue Dalmatian and Flower Power. The G3 chipset bled out into other more professional products like a blue and white G3 tower, which featured a slightly faster processor than the beige tower G3, but a much cooler look - and very easy to get into compared to any other machine on the market at the time. And the Clamshell laptops used the same design language. Playful, colorful, but mostly as fast as their traditional PowerBook counterparts.  But the team had their eye on a new strategy entirely. Yes, people wanted to get online - but these computers could do so much more. Apple wanted to make the Mac the Digital Hub for content. This centered around a technology that had been codeveloped from Apple, Sony, Panasonic, and others called IEEE 1394. But that was kinda' boring so we just called it Firewire. Begun in 1986 and originally started by Apple, Firewire had become a port that was on most digital cameras at the time. USB wasn't fast enough to load and unload a lot of newer content like audio and video from cameras to computers. But I can clearly remember that by the year 1999 we were all living as Jobs put it in a “new emerging digital lifestyle.”  This led to a number of releases from Apple. One was iMovie. Apple included it with the new iMac DV model for free. That model dumped the fan (which Jobs never liked even going back to the early days of Apple) as well as FireWire and the ability to add an AirPort card. Oh, and they released an AirPort base station in 1999 to help people get online easily. It is still one of the simplest router and wi-fi devices I've ever used. And was sleek with the new Graphite design language that would take Apple through for years on their professional devices. iMovie was a single place to load all those digital videos and turn them into something else. And there was another format on the rise, MP3. Most everyone I've ever known at Apple love music. It's in the DNA of the company, going back to Wozniak and Jobs and their love of musicians like Bob Dylan in the 1970s. The rise of the transistor radio and then the cassette and Walkman had opened our eyes to the democratization of what we could listen to as humans. But the MP3 format, which had been around since 1993, was on the rise. People were ripping and trading songs and Apple looked at a tool called Audion and another called SoundJam and decided that rather than Sherlock (or build that into the OS) that they would buy SoundJam in 2000. The new software, which they called iTunes, allowed users to rip and burn CDs easily. Apple then added iPhoto, iWeb, and iDVD. For photos, creating web sites, and making DVDs respectively. The digital hub was coming together. But there was another very important part of that whole digital hub strategy. Now that we had music on our computers we needed something more portable to listen to that music on. There were MP3 players like the Diamond Rio out there, and there had been going back to the waning days of the Digital Equipment Research Lab - but they were either clunky or had poor design or just crappy and cheap. And mostly only held an album or two. I remember walking down that isle at Fry's about once every other month waiting and hoping. But nothing good ever came.  That is, until Jobs and the Apple hardware engineering lead Job Rubinstein found Tony Fadell. He had been at General Magic, you know, the company that ushered in mobility as an industry. And he'd built Windows CE mobile devices for Philips in the Velo and Nino. But when we got him working with Jobs, Rubinstein, and Johnny Ive on the industrial design front, we got one of the most iconic devices ever made: the iPod.  And the iPod wasn't all that different on the inside from a Newton. Blasphemy I know. It sported a pair of ARM chips and Ive harkened back to simpler times when he based the design on a transistor radio. Attention to detail and the lack thereof in the Sony Diskman propelled Apple to sell more than 400 million  iPods to this day. By the time the iPod was released in 2001, Apple revenues had jumped to just shy of $8 billion but dropped back down to $5.3. But everything was about to change. And part of that was that the iPod design language was about to leak out to the rest of the products with white iBooks, white Mac Minis, and other white devices as a design language of sorts.  To sell all those iDevices, Apple embarked on a strategy that seemed crazy at the time. They opened retail stores. They hired Ron Johnson and opened two stores in 2001. They would grow to over 500 stores, and hit a billion in sales within three years. Johnson had been the VP of merchandising at Target and with the teams at Apple came up with the idea of taking payment without cash registers (after all you have an internet connected device you want to sell people) and the Genius Bar.  And generations of devices came that led people back into the stores. The G4 came along - as did faster RAM. And while Apple was updating the classic Mac operating system, they were also hard at work preparing NeXT to go across the full line of computers. They had been working the bugs out in Rhapsody and then Mac OS X Server, but the client OS, Codenamed Kodiak, went into beta in 2000 and then was released as a dual-boot option in Cheetah, in 2001. And thus began a long line of big cats, going to Puma then Jaguar in 2002, Panther in 2003, Tiger in 2005, Leopard in 2007, Snow Leopard in 2009, Lion in 2011, Mountain Lion in 2012 before moving to the new naming scheme that uses famous places in California.  Mac OS X finally provided a ground-up, modern, object-oriented operating system. They built the Aqua interface on top of it. Beautiful, modern, sleek. Even the backgrounds! The iMac would go from a gumdrop to a sleek flat panel on a metal stand, like a sunflower. Jobs and Ive are both named on the patents for this as well as many of the other inventions that came along in support of the rapid device rollouts of the day.  Jaguar, or 10.2, would turn out to be a big update. They added Address Book, iChat - now called Messages, and after nearly two decades replaced the 8-bit Happy Mac with a grey Apple logo in 2002. Yet another sign they were no longer just a computer company. Some of these needed a server and storage so Apple released the Xserve in 2002 and the Xserve RAID in 2003. The pro devices also started to transition from the grey graphite look to brushed metal, which we still use today.  Many wanted to step beyond just listening to music. There were expensive tools for creating music, like ProTools. And don't get me wrong, you get what you pay for. It's awesome. But democratizing the creation of media meant Apple wanted a piece of software to create digital audio - and released Garage Band in 2004. For this they again turned to an acquisition, EMagic, which had a tool called Logic Audio. I still use Logic to cut my podcasts. But with Garage Band they stripped it down to the essentials and released a tool that proved wildly popular, providing an on-ramp for many into the audio engineering space.  Not every project worked out. Apple had ups and downs in revenue and sales in the early part of the millennium. The G4 Cube was released in 2000 and while it is hailed as one of the greatest designs by industrial designers it was discontinued in 2001 due to low sales. But Steve Jobs had been hard at work on something new. Those iPods that were becoming the cash cow at Apple and changing the world, turning people into white earbud-clad zombies spinning those click wheels were about to get an easier way to put media into iTunes and so on the device.  The iTunes Store was released in 2003. Here, Jobs parlayed the success at Apple along with his own brand to twist the arms of executives from the big 5 record labels to finally allow digital music to be sold online. Each song was a dollar. Suddenly it was cheap enough that the music trading apps just couldn't keep up. Today it seems like everyone just pays a streaming subscription but for a time, it gave a shot in the arm to music companies and gave us all this new-found expectation that we would always be able to have music that we wanted to hear on-demand.  Apple revenue was back up to $8.25 billion in 2004. But Apple was just getting started. The next seven years would see that revenue climb from to $13.9 billion in 2005, $19.3 in 2006, $24 billion in 2007, $32.4 in 2008, $42.9 in 2009, $65.2 in 2010, and a staggering $108.2 in 2011. After working with the PowerPC chipset, Apple transitioned new computers to Intel chips in 2005 and 2006. Keep in mind that most people used desktops at the time and just wanted fast. And it was the era where the Mac was really open source friendly so having the ability to load in the best the Linux and Unix worlds had to offer for software inside projects or on servers was made all the easier. But Intel could produce chips faster and were moving faster. That Intel transition also helped with what we call the “App Gap” where applications written for Windows could be virtualized for the Mac. This helped the Mac get much more adoption in businesses. Again, the pace was frenetic. People had been almost begging Apple to release a phone for years. The Windows Mobile devices, the Blackberry, the flip phones, even the Palm Treo. They were all crap in Jobs' mind. Even the Rockr that had iTunes in it was crap. So Apple released the iPhone in 2007 in a now-iconic  Jobs presentation. The early version didn't have apps, but it was instantly one of the more saught-after gadgets. And in an era where people paid $100 to $200 for phones it changed the way we thought of the devices. In fact, the push notifications and app culture and always on fulfilled the General Magic dream that the Newton never could and truly moved us all into an always-on i (or Internet) culture. The Apple TV was also released in 2007. I can still remember people talking about Apple releasing a television at the time. The same way they talk about Apple releasing a car. It wasn't a television though, it was a small whitish box that resembled a Mac Mini - just with a different media-browsing type of Finder. Now it's effectively an app to bootstrap the media apps on a Mac.  It had been a blistering 10 years. We didn't even get into Pages, FaceTime, They weren't done just yet. The iPad was released in 2010. By then, Apple revenues exceeded those of Microsoft. The return and the comeback was truly complete.  Similar technology used to build the Apple online store was also used to develop the iTunes Store and then the App Store in 2008. Here, rather than go to a site you might not trust and download an installer file with crazy levels of permissions. One place where it's still a work in progress to this day was iTools, released in 2000 and rebranded to .Mac or dot Mac in 2008, and now called MobileMe. Apple's vision to sync all of our data between our myriad of devices wirelessly was a work in progress and never met the lofty goals set out. Some services, like Find My iPhone, work great. Others notsomuch. Jobs famously fired the team lead at one point. And while it's better than it was it's still not where it needs to be.  Steve Jobs passed away in 2011 at 56 years old. His first act at Apple changed the world, ushering in first the personal computing revolution and then the graphical interface revolution. He left an Apple that meant something. He returned to a demoralized Apple and brought digital media, portable music players, the iPhone, the iPad, the Apple TV, the iMac, the online music store, the online App Store, and so much more. The world had changed in that time, so he left, well, one more thing. You see, when they started, privacy and security wasn't much of a thing. Keep in mind, computers didn't have hard drives. The early days of the Internet after his return was a fairly save I or Internet world. But by the time he passed away there there were some troubling trends. The data on our phones and computers could weave together nearly every bit of our life to an outsider. Not only could this lead to identity theft but with the growing advertising networks and machine learning capabilities, the consequences of privacy breaches on Apple products could be profound as a society. He left an ethos behind to build great products but not at the expense of those who buy them. One his successor Tim Cook has maintained.  On the outside it may seem like the daunting 10 plus years of product releases has slowed. We still have the Macbook, the iMac, a tower, a mini, an iPhone, an iPad, an Apple TV. We now have HomeKit, a HomePod, new models of all those devices, Apple silicon, and some new headphones - but more importantly we've had to retreat a bit internally and direct some of those product development cycles to privacy, protecting users, shoring up the security model. Managing a vast portfolio of products in the largest company in the world means doing those things isn't always altruistic. Big companies can mean big law suits when things go wrong. These will come up as we cover the history of the individual devices in greater detail. The history of computing is full of stories of great innovators. Very few took a second act. Few, if any, had as impactful a first act as either that Steve Jobs had. It wasn't just him in any of these. There are countless people from software developers to support representatives to product marketing gurus to the people that write the documentation. It was all of them, working with inspiring leadership and world class products that helped as much as any other organization in the history of computing, to shape the digital world we live in today. 

I often think of companies in relation to their contribution to the next evolution in the forking and merging of disciplines in computing that brought us to where we are today. Many companies have multiple contributions. Few have as many such contributions as Apple. But there was a time when they didn't seem so innovative.  This lost decade began about half way through the tenure of John Sculley and can be seen through the lens of the CEOs. There was Sculley, CEO from 1983 to 1993. Co-founders and spiritual centers of Apple, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, left Apple in 1985. Jobs to create NeXT and Wozniak to jump into a variety of companies like making universal remotes, wireless GPS trackers, and and other adventures.  This meant Sculley was finally in a position to be fully in charge of Apple. His era would see sales 10x from $800 million to $8 billion. Operationally, he was one of the more adept at cash management, putting $2 billion in the bank by 1993. Suddenly the vision of Steve Jobs was paying off. That original Mac started to sell and grow markets. But during this time, first the IBM PC and then the clones, all powered by the Microsoft operating system, completely took the operating system market for personal computers. Apple had high margins yet struggled for relevance.  Under Sculley, Apple released HyperCard, funded a skunkworks team in General Magic, arguably the beginning of ubiquitous computing, and using many of those same ideas he backed the Newton, coining the term personal digital assistant. Under his leadership, Apple marketing sent 200,000 people home with a Mac to try it out. Put the device in the hands of the people is probably one of the more important lessons they still teach newcomers that work in Apple Stores.  Looking at the big financial picture it seems like Sculley did alright. But in Apple's fourth-quarter earnings call in 1993, they announced a 97 drop from the same time in 1992. This was also when a serious technical debt problem began to manifest itself.  The Mac operating system grew from the system those early pioneers built in 1984 to Macintosh System Software going from version 1 to version 7. But after annual releases leading to version 6, it took 3 years to develop system 7 and the direction to take with the operating system caused a schism in Apple engineering around what would happen once 7 shipped. Seems like most companies go through almost the exact same schism. Microsoft quietly grew NT to resolve their issues with Windows 3 and 95 until it finally became the thing in 2000. IBM had invested heavily into that same code, basically, with Warp - but wanted something new.  Something happened while Apple was building macOS 7. They lost Jean Lois Gasseé who had been head of development since Steve Jobs left. When Sculley gave everyone a copy of his memoir, Gasseé provided a copy of The Mythical Man-Month, from Fred Brooks' experience with the IBM System 360. It's unclear today if anyone read it. To me this is really the first big sign of trouble. Gassée left to build another OS, BeOS.  By the time macOS 7 was released, it was clear that the operating system was bloated, needed a massive object-oriented overhaul, and under Sculley the teams were split, with one team eventually getting spun off into its own company and then became a part of IBM to help with their OS woes. The team at Apple took 6 years to release the next operating system. Meanwhile, one of Sculley's most defining decisions was to avoid licensing the Macintosh operating system. Probably because it was just too big a mess to do so. And yet everyday users didn't notice all that much and most loved it.  But third party developers left. And that was at one of the most critical times in the history of personal computers because Microsoft was gaining a lot of developers for Windows 3.1 and released the wildly popular Windows 95.  The Mac accounted for most of the revenue of the company, but under Sculley the company dumped a lot of R&D money into the Newton. As with other big projects, the device took too long to ship and when it did, the early PDA market was a red ocean with inexpensive competitors. The Palm Pilot effectively ended up owning that pen computing market.  Sculley was a solid executive. And he played the part of visionary from time to time. But under his tenure Apple found operating system problems, rumors about Windows 95, developers leaving Apple behind for the Windows ecosystem, and whether those technical issues are on his lieutenants or him, the buck stocks there. The Windows clone industry led to PC price wars that caused Apple revenues to plummet. And so Markkula was off to find a new CEO.  Michael Spindler became the CEO from 1993 to 1996. The failure of the Newton and Copland operating systems are placed at his feet, even though they began in the previous regime. Markkula hired Digital Equipment and Intel veteran Spindler to assist in European operations and he rose to President of Apple Europe and then ran all international. He would become the only CEO to have no new Mac operating systems released in his tenure. Missed deadlines abound with Copland and then Tempo, which would become Mac OS 8.  And those aren't the only products that came out at the time. We also got the PowerCD, the Apple QuickTake digital camera, and the Apple Pippin. Bandai had begun trying to develop a video game system with a scaled down version of the Mac. The Apple Pippin realized Markkula's idea from when the Mac was first conceived as an Apple video game system.  There were a few important things that happened under Spindler though. First, Apple moved to the PowerPC architecture. Second, he decided to license the Macintosh operating system to companies wanting to clone the Macintosh. And he had discussions with IBM, Sun, and Philips to acquire Apple. Dwindling reserves, increasing debt. Something had to change and within three years, Spindler was gone. Gil Amelio was CEO from 1996 to 1997. He moved from the board while the CEO at National Semiconductor to CEO of Apple. He inherited a company short on cash and high on expenses. He quickly began pushing forward OS 8, cut a third of the staff, streamline operations, dumping some poor quality products, and releasing new products Apple needed to be competitive like the Apple Network Server.  He also tried to acquire BeOS for $200 million, which would have Brough Gassée back but instead acquired NeXT for $429 million. But despite the good trajectory he had the company on, the stock was still dropping, Apple continued to lose money, and an immovable force was back - now with another decade of experience launching two successful companies: NeXT and Pixar.  The end of the lost decade can be seen as the return of Steve Jobs. Apple didn't have an operating system. They were in a lurch soy-to-speak. I've seen or read it portrayed that Steve Jobs intended to take control of Apple. And I've seen it portrayed that he was happy digging up carrots in the back yard but came back because he was inspired by Johnny Ive. But I remember the feel around Apple changed when he showed back up on campus. As with other companies that dug themselves out of a lost decade, there was a renewed purpose. There was inspiration.  By 1997, one of the heroes of the personal computing revolution, Steve Jobs, was back. But not quite… He became interim CEO in 1997 and immediately turned his eye to making Apple profitable again. Over the past decade, the product line expanded to include a dozen models of the Mac. Anyone who's read Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm, Inside the Tornado, and Zone To Win knows this story all too well. We grow, we release new products, and then we eventually need to take a look at the portfolio and make some hard cuts.  Apple released the Macintosh II in 1987 then the Macintosh Portable in 1989 then the Iicx and II ci in 89 along with the Apple IIgs, the last of that series. By facing competition in different markets, we saw the LC line come along in 1990 and the Quadra in 1991, the same year three models of the PowerBook were released. Different printers, scanners, CD-Roms had come along by then and in 1993, we got a Macintosh TV, the Apple Newton, more models of the LC and by 1994 even more of those plus the QuickTake, Workgroup Server, the Pippin and by 1995 there were a dozen Performas, half a dozen Power Macintosh 6400s, the Apple Network Server and yet another versions of the Performa 6200 and we added the eMade and beige G3 in 1997. The SKU list was a mess. Cleaning that up took time but helped prepare Apple for a simpler sales process. Today we have a good, better, best with each device, with many a computer being build-to-order.  Jobs restructured the board, ending the long tenure of Mike Markkula, who'd been so impactful at each stage of the company so far. One of the forces behind the rise of the Apple computer and the Macintosh was about to change the world again, this time as the CEO. 

Curious Tech Podcast 83 - Stranger Tech The Curious Tech podcast featuring Hobie Henning and Devynn Rizo. We chat about technology, robots, 3D printers, photography, or anything else that strikes our fancy. This week we talk about the vacation, Johnny Ive leaving Apple, Chromebook Pixel thoughts by Devynn, creepy FaceTime eyes, Windows 10 next big minor updates, ugly solar panels on cars, Microsoft embracing Android phones, the Value Index, and more! Cool robot of the week https://www.wired.com/story/robot-writing/ Picks of the Week Hobie: https://www.apple.com/smart-keyboard/ Devynn: Samsung Tablet S5E https://www.samsung.com/global/galaxy/galaxy-tab-s5e/ Smart Tab Mute https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/smart-tab-mute/dnfbgicfhchdpogmafjifjgbcjdaikgn All the Social Things Twitter @Devynnjcr Twitter @Hobiehenning

Bob “Dr. Mac” LeVitus is a brave man…brave enough to do a podcast during a thunderstorm! While the storm rages, Bob talks about his new book projects, his thoughts on the new beta OS’s from Apple, how Johnny Ive’s departure will affect product design going forward, and some of the third-party services he uses to operate his web site, WorkingSmarterForMacUsers.com.   This edition of MacVoices is supported by Linode, high performance cloud hosting and virtual servers for everyone. To take $20 off your first order, visit Linode.com/macvoices. and by ATTO. The Power Behind the Storage. Show Notes: Chuck Joiner is the producer and host of MacVoices. You can catch up with what he's doing on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn. Subscribe to the show: iTunes: - Audio in iTunes - Video in iTunes - HD Video in iTunes Subscribe manually via iTunes or any podcatcher: - Audio: http://www.macvoices.com/rss/macvoicesrss  - Video: http://www.macvoices.com/rss/macvoicesvideorss Donate to MacVoices via Paypal or become a MacVoices Patron. Guests: Bob LeVitus, often referred to as "Dr. Mac," has been considered one of the world's leading authorities on the Macintosh and Mac OS for nearly twenty years. A prolific author, Bob has sold millions of books worldwide in a dozen languages. His recent titles include: iPad 2 For Dummies, Incredible iPad Apps For Dummies, iPhone 4S For Dummies, and Mac OS X Lion For Dummies. He's been a tech columnist for the Houston Chronicle since 1996 and writes regularly for The Mac Observer web site. His hobbies include playing guitar with the infamous Macworld All-Star Band, engineering audio recordings (mostly of classic rock songs), and budget video-making. Bob also has a Macintosh computing consultancy that offers expert technical help, training, and pre-purchase advice to Mac users via phone, e-mail, and/or Internet-enabled remote control software. You can fine him on Twitter and Google+.  Links: Envoy Solid State Drive by Other World Computing Disk Warrior Drive Genius Mountie by Ten One Design Luna Display Bridge Keyboards Thinkific MailChimp ActiveCampaign ConvertKit Squarespace ClickFunnels Zapier

Bob “Dr. Mac” LeVitus is a brave man…brave enough to do a podcast during a thunderstorm! While the storm rages, Bob talks about his new book projects, his thoughts on the new beta OS’s from Apple, how Johnny Ive’s departure will affect product design going forward, and some of the third-party services he uses to operate his web site, WorkingSmarterForMacUsers.com.   This edition of MacVoices is supported by Linode, high performance cloud hosting and virtual servers for everyone. To take $20 off your first order, visit Linode.com/macvoices. and by ATTO. The Power Behind the Storage. Show Notes: Chuck Joiner is the producer and host of MacVoices. You can catch up with what he's doing on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn. Subscribe to the show: iTunes: - Audio in iTunes - Video in iTunes - HD Video in iTunes Subscribe manually via iTunes or any podcatcher: - Audio: http://www.macvoices.com/rss/macvoicesrss  - Video: http://www.macvoices.com/rss/macvoicesvideorss Donate to MacVoices via Paypal or become a MacVoices Patron. Guests: Bob LeVitus, often referred to as "Dr. Mac," has been considered one of the world's leading authorities on the Macintosh and Mac OS for nearly twenty years. A prolific author, Bob has sold millions of books worldwide in a dozen languages. His recent titles include: iPad 2 For Dummies, Incredible iPad Apps For Dummies, iPhone 4S For Dummies, and Mac OS X Lion For Dummies. He's been a tech columnist for the Houston Chronicle since 1996 and writes regularly for The Mac Observer web site. His hobbies include playing guitar with the infamous Macworld All-Star Band, engineering audio recordings (mostly of classic rock songs), and budget video-making. Bob also has a Macintosh computing consultancy that offers expert technical help, training, and pre-purchase advice to Mac users via phone, e-mail, and/or Internet-enabled remote control software. You can fine him on Twitter and Google+.  Links: Envoy Solid State Drive by Other World Computing Disk Warrior Drive Genius Mountie by Ten One Design Luna Display Bridge Keyboards Thinkific MailChimp ActiveCampaign ConvertKit Squarespace ClickFunnels Zapier

Pagar con el móvil es muy seguro, más incluso que hacerlo con tu tarjeta de toda la vida. Queremos que esto quede muy claro y por ello explicamos las principales opciones de pago disponibles para dispositivos móviles, su tecnología y el por qué lo convierte en un método tan seguro. Además hablamos sobre actualidad, especialmente de Huawei, la marcha de Johnny Ive de Apple y de cómo Bruno salvó a su equipo de una abultada derrota. Enlaces Google Pay: Información y funcionamiento Bancos compatibles con Google Pay en España Apple Pay: Información y funcionmiento Bancos compatibles con Apple Pay en España Stocard: App para almacenar tarjetas de fidelidad - Android y iOS Apps para el sueño compatibles con Apple Watch: Pillow - Sleep Watch Twitter: @vidasdigitales Cabecera: No te bajas - El Puchero del Hortelano. Spotify - Apple Music

The Curious Tech podcast featuring Hobie Henning and Devynn Rizo. We chat about technology, robots, 3D printers, photography, or anything else that strikes our fancy. This week we talk about the Harry Potter: Wizards Unit! , Google quitting tablets, Xbox as as Service , Microsoft’s Chromium browser, Kindles, iRobot aquiline Root Robotics, Pokémon Go Community day, Johnny Ive leaving Apple, Raspberry Pi 4, and of course, the cool robot of the week! Cool Robot of the week https://www.jsonline.com/story/communities/lake-country/news/hartland/2019/06/21/brewers-robot-created-arrowhead-students-throw-out-first-pitch/1512273001 Picks of the Week Hobie: Apple Homepod https://www.apple.com/homepod/ Devynn: Wyze Cam https://www.wyze.com/wyze-cam/ All the Social Things Twitter @Devynnjcr Twitter @Hobiehenning

On parle de pleins de trucs : Apple qui fait de la merde depuis 5 ans mais sort un livre à sa propre gloire Juliette, Julie... heu Julia Gaming qui se fait dé-piqueter son tipeee De l'interêt de demander de la thune Parlons politique pour une fois avec une séquence "Jean-Luc je t'aime" par Pof L'EM Drive testé avec succès par la NASA Ouais... vaste programme. En parlant de programme : #Papicureuil2017 EDIT: l'ami @LeMilou nous a partagé cette vidéo absolument énorme

   Fishy dishes, a mortar and pestle that looks like it was designed by Johnny Ive and a transparent tablet! If you have a project that has caught your eye that you want to share, record a 5-10 minute video or audio clip and send it to KickCast “AT” Ktdata.Net! It could be featured on […]

In this episode, we discuss Apple’s recent announcements and more. Our live stream was unavailable in the aftermath of the storm that devastated the east coast of North America. Our thoughts are with those impacted by the storm. Our next live stream is scheduled for 15/November at 12:00 PM EST/9:00 AM PST. Listen live on our web site, and interact with us on Twitter with the #VOLive hashtag. Topics discussed include: Apple’s 23/October event. New MacBookPro, iMac, and Mac Mini products. The iPad mini. iBooks 3.0’s accessibility enhancements for PDF documents. Changes to Apple’s executive team. Matt Gemmell’s Accessibility Heroes and Villains piece, and the importance of developers advocating accessibility to other developers. App.net and accessible clients.

On this episode: Leap 3D, iPad media production, Facebook IPO update, iPhone 5 rumors, Johnny Ive knighted, Diablo III, Max Payne 3, Windows 8 boot times.

Hangliding, Bungee Jumping, Mountain Climbing - Idy, Johnny Ive and Gino discuss the Top 10 Xtreme sports and whether or not they have the guts to do each one.

The tables turn as Idy teaches Chad and Johnny Ive how to keep a girl happy in a long term relationship.

Idy reveals his secret shy side when it comes to girls, while Chad and Johnny Ive provide tips on how to break the ice with girls as well as new friends.

Do you pay a high price for slow internet? Gino and Johnny Ive discuss the best internet providers and explains why your internet is slow during the day.

Repressed Boyfriends, Domineering Girlfriends - the new trend in Asian relationships? No, it's just Johnny Ive. Dexter admonishes Johnny Ive for putting H_'s before Bros, and Idy surprisingly, defends Johnny's choice to be whipped.

Idy, Chad and Johnny Ive gush like a gaggle of girlish groupies over Jeremy Lin as well as work up a debate over who should rightfully get to claim Jeremy Lin - Taiwan, or the US?

Dexter and Johnny Ive continue to battle it out again, with Host Idy as Mediator in Round 2. Our topics this time range from cultural differences, disagreements over local slang, and MORE embarrassing stories.

One of our funniest shows yet, our host Idy and Dexter welcome Chad's brother Johnny Ive in this friendly session of mutual bashing and secret revealing. Asians - you will never think of the word ""boss"" in the same way ever again. This one is a MUST.

Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes 00:00:00 - Speaker 1: With spatial computing, there’s a level of trust that the user is placing in you as a developer that most software developers have not had to handle. On a phone, if the app crashes or freezes, it’s annoying, but it’s not going to make you sick. It’s not going to viscerally affect the central nervous system. Whereas in the case of any immersive software, it will. You’re going to directly put their brain in a state that is uncomfortable or even harmful. 00:00:33 - Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to Meta Muse. Muse is a tool for deep work on iPad and Mac, but this podcast isn’t about Muse product, it’s about the small team, the big ideas behind it. I’m Adam Wiggins here with my colleague Mark McGranaghan. 00:00:46 - Speaker 1: Hey. 00:00:47 - Speaker 2: Joined today by our guest Eliochenberg of SoftSpace. 00:00:51 - Speaker 1: Hey, Adam, hey Mark. 00:00:53 - Speaker 2: And Elio, I understand that you’ve been doing a little bit of breath work recently. 00:00:58 - Speaker 1: Yeah, so I was just sharing with you some of my learnings on the importance of breathing, which I feel like a lot of people maybe have figured out before, you know, way before I came across this topic, but I started trying some Wim Hof breathing before some of my like cafe work sessions, which is equal parts actually very invigorating and effective. I find it helps me focus and also makes me feel like a complete weirdo sitting in public, like staring out the window and breathing really intensely. So I recommend it to people who are looking for ways to, you know, quickly get in the zone and focus when they maybe are a bit distracted. And if you have any tips, you know, on different resources, I’m very open. I’m very curious about this. 00:01:39 - Speaker 3: What does this breathing technique entail? What are we signing up for here? 00:01:42 - Speaker 1: So, I mean, Wim Hof breathing specifically is this cycle of very intense breath in, breath out. There’s nothing too technically complicated about it, it’s more just about sticking to a certain rhythm and at the end of, I think like 20 or 30 breaths, you hold your breath for about a minute. There’s a very helpful Spotify podcast episode that’s like 5 minutes long, that just guides you through it. And so there’s all this drumming and, you know, Wim Hof is kind of like they’re motivating you through the whole thing. So I find that after I do this breath work, I am indeed able to just like really get in the zone and whether it’s for writing or cracking some other like tough cognitive problem, I’m definitely more focused afterward than without doing this. 00:02:30 - Speaker 2: It feels a little bit adjacent to meditation somehow, but I also know you breath work, I don’t know about the specific one, but just the topic generally, I’ve known people in the psychedelic community that basically say you can get unbelievable altered states. One example here you’re giving here is like, yeah, greater focus or something like that, and you wouldn’t believe it because yeah, breathing is so fundamental, it’s literally automatic and What is there to it? It seems so simple. There’s some incredible potential there to affect ourselves. I never dabbled myself, but I’m certainly curious. 00:03:04 - Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, so one discipline I came across this holotropic breathing, I believe it’s called, which is you can breathe yourself into a very altered state that’s akin to chemically altered psychedelic states. 00:03:17 - Speaker 2: Have to give that a whirl. And tell us about first what SoftSpace is and then love to hear about your journey and how you got there. 00:03:25 - Speaker 1: Sure, so I am the founder of a software company called SoftSpace, and we’re building a product called SoftSpace. Which is a spatial canvas for thinking. So it is a 3D augmented reality app that lets you organize and make sense of the ideas, the images, the websites, PDFs that you are working with in your creative projects or in your personal or professional projects. And the way we frame the value proposition is that Soft space shows you the true shape of your ideas, and there’s a lot of research that has been done over the years into the immense, almost like superpowers that we have around spatial memory, spatial reasoning, and up until very, very recently. which we’re going to talk about in this episode, until very recently, we didn’t have the technology to really tap into those innate abilities. And so the best that we had was like a larger display, a computer display for, you know, showing you more windows at the same time, but that’s only scratching the surface when it comes to the brain’s ability to make sense of and to remember and to think about objects in space, which we have evolved over millions of years to do very, very well. And so I started building this company in 2017, way before, you know, the current crop of hardware, standalone headsets was really even on the horizon with this kind of, I guess, expectation and faith that eventually the technology would catch up to this idea, and I think that it’s starting to, and that feels really good. 00:05:06 - Speaker 2: And my first introduction to your product was we met in a cafe in Berlin last year and you handed me the, I guess this would have been the, at the time, the latest version of the Oculus, which I think has been, or in the last 10 years has really been on the forefront of this, and, you know, it has this element where I can still kind of see the environment, so I’m not just completely zoned out in a public space, but I’m also seeing essentially notes and other ideas floating in space and indeed I can interact with them and Yeah, the how viable is it relative to the Hollywood version of virtual reality that we have been seeing for ages is a huge question and for sure an app developer like yourself that chooses to not only pick a particular platform, but the technology in general, you’re making a bet that the amount of time you’re going to be working on it will overlap with the eventual viability of it for your particular use case or your particular market. 00:06:01 - Speaker 1: Correct, yeah, and I mean, I would say one of our investors said it’s still early, but it’s no longer too early, and I think that’s getting more and more true all the time. I mean, even with, of course, the very big news of Apple finally entering this space, I think we’re still a little ways out from really mainstream adoption of computers they wear over your eyes, but if It were ever going to happen, this is the path that I think the industry, you know, needs to take to get there. And I think one of my personal motivations for continuing to work on SoftSpace is to offer a vision for what our augmented reality spatial computing future could look like that I think we want to want, right? So, I think up until very recently, the overwhelming popular imagination when it came to VR, for example, was at best like a little bit goofy and at worst kind of dystopian and not something you would necessarily want the next generation of humans on the planet to be living and working in because it felt very disconnected, it felt very escapist perhaps, and I think that this technology is So much more than what we’ve been able to imagine up until this point. Like we’ve been able to imagine a lot with essentially nothing, right? And fictional depictions of, you know, the metaverse or fictional depictions of very futuristic holographic UIs, but those have really only been fictional and now we’re finally seeing. The reality of it, and I think that there are many possible paths technology can take, and the underlying power of it has nothing to do with the computers or the chips or the lenses. The underlying power of this is the fact that the human brain and body are inherently spatial, right? We are spatial organisms. And so whatever positive outcomes or whatever negative outcomes come from this technology will be rooted in that reality. And so I’m both optimistic and also now that the reality is finally here, you know, we see Apple making a big move for it. I’m a little bit trepidatious about sort of where this could all go. I mean, we’ve seen with other technologies that people had very optimistic visions for, right, turned out maybe not completely positively. So I think this is at least has that risk, if not a greater risk because of how it works if it is. 00:08:32 - Speaker 2: Yeah, and we’ll definitely get on to all the present and future here, but can you tell us a little bit about your background? What would lead you to, you know, that moment in 2017? What you said, this is what I want to be doing. 00:08:44 - Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. So, I was in architecture school and I was halfway through my second year, and I took a summer job at a design and art studio here in Berlin called Studio Oliver Liasson. They had just bought the Oculus DK2, the Development kit 2 VR headset. It made quite a splash. A lot of people who are excited about technology had gotten their hands on one. I really wanted to check one out. The studio got one thinking it would be like any other piece of consumer tech, you could boot it up and try stuff out, but it really was a development kit. There was nothing that you could do with it if you didn’t code something up yourself. And so luckily I got a job as the research resident, poking around with this thing, trying to figure out both how it could be used as a medium for artworks, as well as a tool for the production of artworks that maybe weren’t digital or virtual of themselves, but would benefit from some sort of like virtual visualization or some other tooling around that. 00:09:48 - Speaker 2: I mean, architecture is certainly a place where use cases spring to mind very readily. Let’s walk a client through kind of a design that we made, you know, in some CAD tool or let’s do some design work there. So presumably those are the sorts of things you were exploring. 00:10:04 - Speaker 1: Yes, and I would say much more than that as well because this studio is very much an art studio first and foremost, and one with a history of being interested in the body, the human body, how we relate to ourselves and to others and what different spaces and different spatial effects like lights, acoustics, atmospheric effects can do to our sense of ourselves and others. And so this is actually Maybe where the most exciting promises of virtual reality at the time, it was only VR virtual reality came in because you could create effects that would be physically either very difficult or impossible to do. So one of my favorite demos that we built was this non-Euclidean, sort of like castle that you walked through. So it was back in the era of like really long cables that connected you to a PC. We had the PC in the middle of an open area. The user would put on the goggles at one edge of the open area and walk in a circle. And as they walked, they would walk through doors, and around each door was a new room with an artwork in the center, and as they walked, at some point, you know, they would realize, wait, I should be back where I started, but I’m not. I’m actually somewhere else. I’ve actually entered yet another larger room that shouldn’t physically be able to have fit into this floor plan. These were the kinds of experiments that we were doing, and during this period of experimentation, um, I came to two formative realizations. So the first was that the physical building that the studio was in, it had about 110 people at the time, and it was in this old beer brewery in the middle of Berlin. The physical studio itself was an incredibly important part of the creative and production process. We walked around and there are models everywhere, images pinned up on boards, books, there’s like libraries all over the place, half finished sort of sketches laying around at people’s desks, and this physical space was in and of itself a framework on which the creative process hung. And that was something incredible to see, and also, you know, this is quite a successful studio, and I felt that having that space was a major asset for the studio to be able do its work. And the second realization, as I was working with VR was that many of the same qualities of that physical space actually don’t have to be physical in and of themselves. So the images that you had pinned up, the notes that you had laying around, these were actually at the end of the day, just media for holding information, right, for conveying information, and you could do something very similar with a purely virtual environment, you know, you can’t completely recreate it, but Not everybody has access to a giant beer brewery or even a very large room, right, to lay out all of their thoughts and their ideas. Maybe this technology could democratize access to space for thinking, space for doing your best work. And once that idea kind of sparked in my mind I couldn’t stop thinking about it and sort of stereotypical, like I was like laying awake at night dreaming, you know, oh, if you could also make this multi-user, then you can like meet with people from anywhere in the world. And so at some point I thought, OK, this has been great, but I need to go see if I can build this thing, and I didn’t really know what I was doing at the time. But apparently I was starting a tech startup, a software startup, so we got a bit of funding. I was very lucky that we had a wonderful investor Boost VC make a bet on us, and they flew us out to San Francisco and we learned, you know, like, what’s a product, what’s a market, and we’re still around, we’re still around chugging away. 00:13:45 - Speaker 2: of that story where it’s the serendipity which you know often is a big part of any kind of creative spark, but here both that they were, yeah, you had this opportunity to work with this cutting edge technology for a different purpose, obviously, they wanted to create art or explore the spatial environments that they were working on and then you also through that exact same opportunity had access to information in a space. And then making that kind of leap of, can we make information in a virtual space. 00:14:18 - Speaker 1: Very interesting, right? And, you know, so I was in architecture school at the time, I ended up dropping out to keep running this idea, but because of my background in architecture, and because also of the fact that the tech at the time was only VR, you know, everything that the user was seeing had to be digitally rendered. SoftSpace started with a much heavier focus on the design of the virtual environment, because I believed then, I still believe now that the environment is a critical factor. And getting you into a certain kind of headspace, letting you think through certain problems that you just need the right kind of environment to do. But over the years of working on the various versions of SoftSpace, of course, we also then started doing a lot more design and development work around information architecture and user interface design. And by now, when we have finally the possibility of pass through augmented reality, There’s almost no sort of virtual environment design anymore. I’m not directly thinking about what the digital environment of our app should look like, although I have some ideas about what the ideal space you should be in, maybe when you’re trying to get focused on some work, but we’re now grappling much more directly with problems around. Yeah, information architecture, the right primitives that the user should be working with to help the user work directly with their ideas, with the information that they’re trying to make sense of, and the right UI paradigm and language to express these elements in. 00:15:57 - Speaker 2: And maybe we can briefly define by virtual reality, you’re referring to something that is 100% immersive, you have no awareness of your surroundings, and then I don’t know, it’s augmented reality and mixed reality kind of the same. Two words for the same thing, but at least as I understand it, it’s something where there’s some combination of you still see the world around you, but you have these additional things from the digital things sort of superimposed, you might say, and I know there’s even different technologies on that which include actual pass through goggles or it’s projected on your retina or something versus you’re still looking. Scres, we have external facing cameras that kind of bring the reality into or bring what you would see if you were looking in that direction into the space that you’re in. So interesting, I hadn’t even thought about how the mixed reality or augmented reality actually greatly reduces the amount of, I guess just stuff that you need to be rendering or think about or design, which is maybe a good feature. 00:16:55 - Speaker 1: Correct, yeah, I think by this point, my sense is that VR is pretty clearly defined. I think most people would give you a pretty coherent, similar definition of VR. I think between augmented reality, mixed reality, extended reality, I think the definitions there are, you know, you’ll have as many different definitions as people you ask. I would say that within that spectrum of taking something that is virtual and then also showing you the physical space you’re in, there’s also a spectrum of that virtual information being aware. Of your physical environment. So I guess some people would say true augmented reality has to engage very thoroughly with your physical environment. 00:17:41 - Speaker 2: So you would have a file, some representation of a file, there’s a version where it just floats in the air and some basically random place and there’s another version where I can kind of detect that my desk is here, so it sort of puts it on my desk. In the right orientation. 00:17:55 - Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, there are merits and demerits of how much the virtual system can be aware of or should be aware of your physical environment, but I guess, you know, it’s in the term augmented reality that some AR purists would say it’s not augmented reality if the virtual is not literally adding to your physical environment. 00:18:17 - Speaker 2: So the mixed reality is a little more neutral in a way. It could be somehow adding or interacting with the environment you’re in, but it could just be you just have like a heads up display overlaid on top of what you’re saying, correct. 00:18:29 - Speaker 1: Yeah. So there’s a term that encapsulates all of these different categories, which I’m a personal fan of spatial computing. And spatial computing, as far as I know, as a really concrete concept was coined by Scott Greenwald at the MIT Media Lab in 1995, and he was talking about digital systems, computer systems that maintained and used references to physical objects in physical space, or parts of the user in physical space. It was very broad, but over the years and very, very Recently, I think it’s been taken up by some members, some participants in the XR ecosystem to mean this sort of very general idea of a computer or computing system that engages with The fact that you are a human being in space, and very directly. And I like this because it places the emphasis not on the technical capabilities of a system, or on the specific UI design decisions that the developers might have made, but it really sort of focuses attention on the underlying material of what we’re designing with, which is Three dimensional space. I mean some people would say 4D space time, but it’s the idea that you can place things, you can work with information that has this intrinsic quality to it, of like being somewhere specific relative to the human being, and that this poses both great opportunities and new and, you know, previously unencountered challenges. 00:20:13 - Speaker 2: Well, you teed up our topic today, which is spatial computing, but certainly encompasses. I like the perspective of VR and AR as means to an end. They are a way of accomplishing the goal of making computing more spatial, whether we bring it into our space or whether we make it just access the spatial capabilities of our minds. I think starting with the human centered or starting with the benefit or starting with the user’s mental model is a better way to talk about really any technology here. 00:20:41 - Speaker 1: I agree, and I think that that’s maybe an angle to this technology that has been under communicated, and I hope the community of developers and the big players and small players that we find a way back to that foundation for any successful product or industry, right? Like, what is the actual value of this? Beyond the novelty, beyond the technical wizardry, beyond, even I would say the hedonic qualities, like maybe it is just really nice, right, to have this massive surround screen that you can watch, you know, your NFL games on. But beyond those, why do we need this? What will this unlock? What does this add to our lives and to our work that We would be poorer for if we didn’t have it as opposed to, oh, if it wasn’t this, we’d be still playing games on our phones instead, and it would be all kind of a wash. 00:21:41 - Speaker 2: So what are some of your answers to that in terms of what you’re trying to bake into your product or influences you’ve had from academia or other thinkers who have been pondering this topic. 00:21:53 - Speaker 1: Yeah, I spoke earlier about the fact that our brains and our bodies have these spatial superpowers that are not fully or even really well used by existing. 2D user interfaces, displays, input systems, etc. A very telling quantitative metric is that from the original 1984 Macintosh to the, I’m using an older model computer, but the 2020 iMac Pro, and by now Apple’s latest and greatest are much faster than the iMac Pro, but the computing power increased by 10 million times, by a factor of 10 million. If you count, you know, the CPU, the GPU and the display area increased by a factor of 10. And it’s still a rectangle, right, that you click around on with a mouse. And now there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. I mean, clearly the iMac Pro was a very successful product and help you do a lot of amazing things that the original Macintosh, you know, you wouldn’t be able to imagine using that to do. But, you know, you have to wonder what this massive discrepancy in capabilities precludes. And I think now that we see at least 2, and hopefully soon more of the large tech players. Looking at that question seriously and proposing answers to it, I think we’ll start to see what computers might have been able to help us do all along, or already have the computing power to help us do all along, right, but simply didn’t have the display technologies to make that possible. Very concretely, I know that training, any sort of scenario where human users need to be learning something that’s very experiential. These are use cases that are already very valuable, so pilot training, a physical simulator, apparently these are like in short supply and they’re very expensive to run and take, you know, months to book, and a lot of these are being replaced now with VR systems and that makes a lot of sense to me. There are pilots running with VR surgery or VR surgery planning use cases. So these very high value, very sort of intrinsically spatial use cases where, you know, we had all the computing power necessary to do these things before, and now we have the display technology as well. What I am personally motivated by in building soft space. Is the belief that there’s tremendous value to working with 2D information in a 3D environment. And I think that a lot of the 3D use cases are in architecture, with manufacturing, with surgery, you know, A, there are people who are far more knowledgeable about those specific domains than myself, who can work on those problems, and B, I think those problems are very well served because there’s such an obvious connection between, you know, a 3D display and the 3D model or something. What I think is relatively under explored, but has the potential to impact a lot more people directly. is giving people a way to work better with information that’s intrinsically two dimensional or best represented two dimensionally, but in a spatial context and If you look at Apple’s marketing materials and the imagination that they’re offering for what spatial computing looks like, this is actually their Vision, right? There’s like maybe 1 3D model in all of their hours of marketing material. Most of the time they’re showing you documents, they’re showing you photos, they’re showing you app windows or web browsers, but in this 3D context. And so I would like to think that the design minds at Apple are pursuing a very similar thesis that there is tremendous value in letting people work with 2D information, which has the advantage of being portable to all the other devices that, you know, we already have. You can print 2D information out on a piece of paper and mark it up, so it’s a lot more flexible and a lot more universal, but there’s a lot of value in letting you work with that in a 3D context, and that is essentially what SoftSpace is. 00:26:20 - Speaker 2: Yeah, well, we’ll certainly come to talking about the Vision Pro. I’m sure folks are curious to hear your take on that, but yeah, since we’re sort of talking about use cases here, it’s often the case for any new technology that you figure out something new and impressive you can do with computing or some other technology first and then you sort of figure out how that can be used and often we’re surprised by The use cases that end up coming out, you know, I don’t know that the people that invented TCP IP predicted e-commerce, for example, but often that has to be discovered once the technology exists and is in the hands of a lot of developers and end users. And I do think that’s one where to me it feels like VR and AR has been pretty impressive for quite a while. You mentioned using the Oculus dev kit. I think I tried it first around 2013. A friend of mine had it and yeah, you know, very much long cable connected to a PC, you know, pretty limited, but it had a little, you know, demo of someone riding down a roller coaster and it basically became a party trick for him to essentially put this on people who had never experienced it before and everyone else would stand around and watch them react to that. So that was fun. But it doesn’t become a thing that’s deeply integrated to your life. And certainly my dabblings in the past, which are not as extensive as yours, is that games and immersive experiences, maybe like sort of interactive movies or something like that, are kind of a good place to start, partially because of the immersiveness of the environment, partially because I don’t know, games are always a good place to start. Indeed, if I was to try to name a killer application off the top of my head for VR, probably Beatsaber is the first thing that comes to mind. Then you go from there to, yeah, of course those either domain verticals like surgery, training or pilot training or architecture design or walking a client through a space or something. But then there’s this whole world of like collaboration, right? We’re going to a remote first world, we want to have meetings, we miss our whiteboards, we miss the body language side of it, and then you have just productivity software and that’s something where that feels like it’s gotten the least attention. And maybe that’s because when you think of productivity software, a word processor, a spreadsheet, a video editor, a design tool, coding, yeah, it’s very much about those 2D rectangles. I’m not even sure if 2D rectangles are the perfect or most pure form of representation of that. It’s just something, yeah, starting from paper and scrolls and then books and then up to computer monitors and And even phones, obviously, writing also is a big part of all of that, that’s the format we’ve always used. So then you can bring that to. This 3D environment, but in the end it just happens to be a rectangle that’s sort of like floating or you can make bigger or you’re sort of mapping the same two dimensional window metaphor into that environment, but it sounds like you think that one way to kind of interpret that like, well, if you’re going to bring productivity software into some kind of spatial computing environment, OK, let’s just make it a floating 2D window and one interpretation of that was like, well, that’s really kind of Inspired in the sense that it’s just a very direct mapping, but it sounds like you think actually there’s more promise to it than that, that there’s a reason why so many of these past iterations of our information technologies tend to revolve around writing and kind of one dimensional or two dimensional squares or rectangles of some kind, and there’s value to bringing that to a virtual spatial computing environment. 00:29:54 - Speaker 1: Yeah, I do. And I would distinguish between a 2D UI paradigm, like a window or a grid for that matter, and information content that is inherently 2D or is best represented in two dimensions like text or images or a PDF page. So, One of the big shifts that I’ve made in my own thinking about how to design for spatial computing happened when I Came across Rome research, and at the same time I started using Notion myself. I never actually got into Rome so much, but I read a lot about the thinking behind the design of Rome, and in both these cases, Rome and Notion, these are block-based note taking tools or productivity apps. The conceptual and technical and, you know, UI primitive is the block of content, the block of information. And this paradigm in both these cases works within one app, so the app has control over what its UI elements are, and it’s decided that OK, it’s gonna be a block of text or block of an image, but there are others who have been doing work into Speculating about what an entire computing environment or entire operating system that revolved around these what are currently would be considered subunits of computing information, what an entire operating system that worked this way might be like, what advantages it would have over our current paradigms. And once I kind of really wrap my mind around what block was, I essentially shifted my own development model toward working with blocks, because Blocks to me, map so much better to the underlying material of thoughts and of creativity than, you know, a Word doc or an Excel spreadsheet do. And so for me, one of the promises of spatial computing is to give you more Powerful ways of displaying information that is kind of around a block in size, displaying the relationships between those items, because for Rome, a big part of its appeal to a certain kind of user was the ability to represent explicitly the links between the blocks, right? So back linking and being able to explicitly construct arguments, drawing from pieces of evidence or pieces of information that are elsewhere in your database in your notebook. And on a 2D display, there’s just all these limitations around like how much more other information you can show, how you represent these links in an infinite spatial canvas or an infinite 3D spatial canvas, you have many more options. At the same time, you know, that sounds great and it sounds powerful, and why don’t we all already work in this like a beautiful mind kind of memory palace. Well, there are also real constraints on our ability to process that much visual information, and you do pretty quickly hit a point where it’s overwhelming, you know, there are times when you do prefer to just have one piece of text in front of you that you’re focused on, they’re thinking about, and to have a few other relevant or Supporting materials close by at hand, but not to have everything you’ve ever thought about, you know, everything, every topic, visible at once to you. And so, a lot of the design work and research that we’ve done has been around trying to probe the edges and map the landscape of not only what’s technically possible, but what from a human user point of view is desirable, at which moments. You know, it’s a lot of fun, it’s very exciting, and sometimes I’m like, should we be doing this? You know, shouldn’t some large tech company with billions of dollars be doing this research? I hope they are, but, you know, we may very well be one of a few group of people who are doing this research because these questions couldn’t be asked even a few years ago. There was no hardware platform for which these questions even mattered. And so now that we do have the hardware foundation. To start answering these questions, and now we need to develop software for which having good answers to these questions, you know, is important, then now we’re doing the work and trying to map out that territory. 00:34:26 - Speaker 2: And I’m glad you are, but I still think it is a niche and a niche, right? The kind of interest in not just productivity software, but specifically thinking, idea oriented tools on this new platform. I think the big companies are thinking about the hardware, the operating system, the much more kind of mainstream. Can I exactly watch something or shop or do other kinds of things that are more common operations, and I think you mentioned this in the beginning. that you see it as something that is potentially very widely distributed in the same way that like note taking is widely distributed or email is widely distributed, but I think that’s quite a number of steps down the road. So it sort of makes sense to me that maybe only smaller players are interested in this right at the moment. And you mentioned the coming across Roman notion after you had started this company and already working in this space, so it’s quite interesting because you now mentioned two things. One is the VR to AR VR to, yeah, some kind of pass through, I can see part of my environment and how that changed your application. And then yeah, tools for thought appearing presumably, I don’t know, made you feel like more like you had a home or a community of people that were thinking about the same thing, even though obviously, as far as I know, you’re one of the few who’s thinking about this specific kind of environment and hardware platform, but in terms of like how do we use computers for thinking and ideas specifically, suddenly now there’s a thing happening there. 00:35:52 - Speaker 1: Absolutely, I was thrilled to discover the tools for thought community that it existed, mostly on Twitter, so, you know, you can tap into it from wherever, because, I mean, people who are really into, you know, their personal knowledge management into these tools, it’s never going to be a vast majority of the population or of the user base, but I think that these people are maybe very Impactful, you know, they might be working in fields like investment or in tech, or running product teams, where the decisions they make and the knowledge they have access to or can make sense of reverberates beyond just their personal life and work into, you know, organizations that they’re a part of, into the markets that they are selling to. And so there’s leverage there, you know, to make an impact and It’s also a larger, you know, market or a larger group of people than I would have thought before I came across the tools for thoughts ecosystem. It was certainly large enough to support at least a few pretty successful venture backed software companies, and there was a path, you know, you can see a path, for example, for notion, to go from more of an enthusiast user base to a larger, broader, maybe more enterprise focused markets. Once they got the primitives right, or once they sort of better understood who would be the power users and who would benefit from the power users' work, but who didn’t, you know, themselves need to be sort of like crafting the notion uh wiki for eight hours a day themselves. So, I think that, yeah, me coming across that community and then also that community being very open and very excited for some of the demos that we’re showing with these sort of like force directed 3D force directed graphs of linked concepts. We got a really good response from that community as well, and that was a really important source of feedback, and an important source of just engagements to motivate us to keep going and also to provide really good signals and like, OK, which features might matter more, which use cases might matter more and which not. Of course, the thing that’s happened since Tools for Thought summer was AI and specifically large language models. AI has upended everything about everything, but it’s, you know, definitely upended our working assumptions about what knowledge work was, what the tools would be, what the roles would be, what the objectives of knowledge work would be, and I think everyone building. Software in this space, you know, we all have to have our own theory of change around what impact AI is gonna have and how our projects will stay relevant in a drastically transformed future. One of those changes is that, so maybe tools for thought will become unnecessary in the future because we won’t be thinking for ourselves anymore, right? We’ll just have this sort of all knowing AI oracle that will be able to pull out the right answer, the best answer, you know, at the moment that we need it’s, and the answer will be fed to us through our super thin Apple Vision Pro 10, you know, glasses. That’s one version of the future. Another might be that humans do stay in the loop because, you know, there are still experiences and values and judgments that we make that you can never by definition replace with an automated system, and that there is still value in having better tools for thinking, for having better processes for making sense of new information that’s coming in. And that AI can lower the barriers to using those tools because, you know, maintaining a sort of up to-date Rome notebook is, you know, at least a halftime job, and not many people have the bandwidth to be doing that, but maybe if some of those friction points and some of those barriers could be lowered, then we could have tools that you could on their own be Making a lot of the connections that previously had to be done manually, but still, you were the one sort of gardening this knowledge garden. You were the one shaping it and deciding what’s important, what’s not important, and drawing from it, you were the one harvesting its fruits and using them in your day to day life or work. 00:40:23 - Speaker 2: For sure, a lot of, yeah, productivity systems, note taking systems, settle cast and GTD, etc. They do attract folks who maybe get just satisfaction from the investing in those systems, the transcribing of the notes, the capturing of them, the gardening of them, the finding the connections between them, and many people certainly get huge value from that, me included, and I think that long predates the current tools for thought summer, as you said, you know, I think of something like the Steven Johnson wrote, very prolific author. wrote some time back about using Devonthink, which is super old school app that you know you type in a bunch of notes and it has like a little very rudimentary algorithm for finding connections between them and how that helps him have new ideas and get value from that. But yeah, he is someone who is willing to take that time and invest in a system, and I feel like the vast majority of people just find that way too tedious, but maybe there’s some element of These advancements in large language models can help us with the tedious parts where you can still get the benefit of the end result. While you’re not just fully outsourcing the decision making or the sense making or the judgment calls or the aesthetic calls to the computer, you’re getting it to fill in some of the more tedious parts that not everyone has patience for, but in the end, you’re still the one that, you know, is making the calls. 00:41:50 - Speaker 1: So, there are so many interesting threads in this conversation that we’ve had so far, and I think there are also many interesting ways in which these threads unexpectedly overlap and connect back to each other. So earlier you had talked about some of the earliest use cases for VR that you had experienced as a party trick for gaming, you know. Actually one of my favorite is fitness. I personally do not use VR for fitness, but I’m very impressed by the apps and by the stories of people who have found a way to achieve previously very, you know, difficult goals, fitness goals through virtual reality and through some of these fitness apps like Supernatural. And I really like this model for how spatial computing can fit into Our lives and work, or actually any technology for that matter, can fit into our lives and work, that it’s this really time boxed and place boxed use case, you know when you begin and you know when you end, but then, even when you’re not using this app, you are enjoying the benefits of having that practice of having that in your life, you know, in this particular case you’re feeling physically healthier. And, you know, you’re able to hit these goals that you had, but maybe had difficulty achieving in other ways, like going to the gym or going for a run, and that’s very much a model I would like to adopt for our own product, whatever we build, you know, the idea that we make something that makes you, let’s say, smarter, or makes you more creative, or makes you talk more. Coherently, you know, about ideas that are important to you, even when you’re not in the headset, even when you, you know, you step out and you’re just grabbing a coffee with a friend or you’re going for a hike, that somehow we find a way to tap into the parts of your brain that remember complex information that makes sense of it in a way that your laptop screen doesn’t, and that therefore makes you like a more interesting conversation partner even when nobody has any gadgets on them, right? I mean, they’re definitely sort of, it’s almost like an aesthetic preference of mine, that like, I would like the future we live in to still have room for unauugmented and unmediated, you know, human to human interactions. There’s another future where we just all have these like tiny AI like earpieces, and they’re telling us what to say and what to think all the time. Sure, but I prefer a world where our technology is helping us to achieve goals that we have. For ourselves, you know, whether it’s mental health or physical health, or creativity, or productivity, or just being an interesting conversation partner, but then can also get out of the way, right? They do the work and then we step away like a little bit closer to the ideal versions of ourselves, but we’re not dependent on a continuous subscription to like, you know, the software product to stay that way. So that’s tied back to VR Fitness. Another interesting tie in here is that there has been some research recently that suggests our brains use or creatively misuse spatial navigation, neural circuitry to keep track of concepts and memories. And this I found fascinating because, you know, I’d always kind of thought of this. The idea of like conceptual space as a helpful metaphor, as a useful sort of metaphor because we can’t like, otherwise visualize, you know, what it means for this idea to be close to this one but far from that one. But it seems like there is some evidence that this is actually what’s happening, you know, in our brains, and If that is the case, so a lot of this research actually came out of interpretability research in AI like computer scientists trying to understand what’s going on inside a large language model, what is a latent space, you know, like, what makes one word closer to another word in this like, super high dimensional space. And then realizing that there are actually some mappings back to how human brains work and how human language works and how human beings express ideas through language, etc. So I’m not a neuroscientist or computer scientist, so this could all well be just my sort of fanciful misinterpretation of all this. But, you know, if indeed there is some concrete underlying mechanism that ties space and ideas together, then I would say that’s an even stronger argument to Investigates what a spatial user interface displays for working with information could be and how that could help us to come up with designs that are better synthesize the underlying sort of requirements of the user, or come up with theories that better synthesize the different pieces of evidence that we’re trying to fit together. Etc. So, it could be that this is not only a metaphorical connection between, you know, a semantic space and like mapping out ideas on the big wall and the actual ideas themselves, there could literally be a real phenomenon going on here. There are papers that point to evidence that this is what’s going on. 00:47:08 - Speaker 2: And you’ve got a couple of links here you’ve shared with us that outline some of these explorations and discoveries, so I’ll put those in the show notes and listeners can follow through and read those to make their own judgment. Yeah, well, so far I like that we haven’t talked too much about the technology and really focused on the user and the big ideas here and your unique take on this. But with that said, now let’s talk about the hardware and the technology and you know, I was interested to go read about the history of it. I found an interesting link I’ll put in the show notes, but going back to even the 60. and 70s people strapping these ridiculous contraptions to their head and trying to figure out head tracking and all this kind of stuff. I feel like there was some kind of maybe awareness of OK, the hardware with the miniaturization has happened with mobile computing and internet and all this sort of thing that lots of big companies and lots of investment dollars went into Many platforms, most of which have not panned out, but nevertheless have produced some very impressive things. We already talked about that early Oculus demo or kind of dev kit that we both had access to. One that to me was a really, I don’t know, wow moment was the Google Glass concept video from, yeah, I think it was around that same time, 2012, 2013, something like that. And yeah, I remember people that I knew, not even in the technology world saw that and just were floored and just said, you know, this is amazing, this is something I want to have. Now, of course, the reality didn’t live up to what was in this concept. Video, Microsoft’s got the HoloLens. Magic Leap is one that, yeah, it was the secretive project and billions of dollars of investment were going into it. I think they did develop some genuinely impressive hardware, but in the end, yeah, too early, couldn’t get there, couldn’t get the two-sided market of developers and and users, too expensive, too weird, that sort of thing. And then obviously you’re choosing to build on Oculus, which is now owned by Meta and has been through many iterations here. So what’s your take on the kind of currently available hardware? What made you choose this platform that you’re on now and how do you see the good enough is a weird thing. To talk about because there’s so many different aspects head tracking and input mechanisms and that sort of thing, but I think it also depends a lot on the application. It’s clearly been good enough for certain kinds of games for quite a while, but maybe that’s different than what you need for, for example, a more precise kind of text manipulation oriented productivity. Yeah, how do you think about the recent history of hardware platforms? 00:49:42 - Speaker 1: Yeah, that’s a great question. The way I’m thinking about it is that it’s only been, I would say about a year or just over a year, that there has existed a hardware and operating system platform that just barely got over the line of like good enough for a general purpose computing tool like ours. And I think there’s a strong case that could be made that it’s not even over the line and we’re only just now seeing where that line is, which may be quite a bit further out than what everyone had hoped it would be because to hit that line today, it’s very expensive, and so, I think that the challenge with spatial computing. In my humble opinion, has been that the minimum viable product is actually not minimum at all. It’s actually a very, very, very high bar. When it comes to The visual acuity, the pixel density, the motion to photon time, you know, how quickly this system responds to the user’s head movements and hand movements. We’ve gotten used to technology that can be quite buggy and not work so well, but as long as it delivers like that modicum of value and that value is like, you know, higher than the friction or the cost of like using the thing, then there’s a path that tool taking off. 00:51:09 - Speaker 2: Do you think that bar is so high for this technology specifically because, yeah, for example, we’re trying to like basically trick your brain into something because another way to think of it might be, well, the bar is higher because computers in general can do so much more. We’ve got mobile devices that are amazing, we’ve got computers that are so powerful, you know, if you go back in time. To, I don’t know, you know, something like early personal computers where the minimum viable product was toggle switches and LEDs and like manually, you know, keying in programs or whatever, but there just wasn’t that much to compare to. So here we’re trying to compete with all these other really developed platforms, but it seems like you think it’s the first thing, it really is more about the specific problem of the Humans have such a strong sense of spatiality isn’t the right word, and so digitizing that is just a very, very hard thing. 00:52:02 - Speaker 1: Yes, I think there are actually probably 3 headwinds. The first and I would think the greatest, is that you’re dealing with the human nervous system, right? And it’s almost like thank goodness our nervous system is actually laggy enough, it’s hard to trick. Thank goodness it’s this hard trick. Thank goodness it has these buffers of like, OK, if you update the display within like 14 milliseconds or whatever the number is that Apple thinks it is, your brain does accept it, right? Conceivably we could have a much lower number. I think there’s been research done on like insects that have, you know, like super low thresholds, right? And if that were the case, then all the technology would be, you know, even further away before it got good enough. So I think that’s Absolutely the greatest factor in terms of headwinds for getting this technology good enough for adoption. We can’t dismiss the fact that everything else in the consumer text space has gotten so good, right? The iPhone is this like beautiful slab of glass that can basically, you know, do anything you ask of it, if it has an internet connection especially, and the competition for spatial computing is therefore that much greater. I think the third factor is the market’s expectation of what success looks like here has also gotten so much. Greater, right? Back in the days of like punch cards, if, I don’t know, every computer science department at all 8 Ivy League universities adopted your system, that was like a smashing success, right. So like 8 purchasing decisions had to, you know, come through. Now, if it’s not like 2 billion user addressable market, then you’re not making a coffee meeting, right? So I think all these forces have been headwinds to this space and it’s only through the sort of unilateral multibillion dollar. Very long term investments that companies, individual companies have made that The technology has even progressed as far as it has, and it’s going to take many more billions of dollars of investments made in the face of very skeptical shareholders and press and markets, probably to get to anything that we consider like mainstream or a success compared to even the iPad or Apple Watch. So yeah, I mean, you’re asking about hardware, you’re asking about the choice of platform. So, the quest devices. So what Met has done really really well is getting the price right, for this technology, and getting the sort of like absolutely minimum acceptable quality at that price, and I do see that they are calibrating the price upward a little bit from the very, very low cost of the Quest 2 for their next generation of devices, in order to maybe meet users a little bit more in the middle when it comes to the quality, and that’s the range that they’re exploring right now, but from a developer’s point of view, from my point of view, it’s moving in the right direction, and I think that what we have right now, the question two is, yeah. Sort of just on the line of what a productivity app would need the user to have access to, to, you know, be usable for let’s say 30 minutes or 60 minutes, and for the user to feel like, OK, that was worthwhile. 00:55:28 - Speaker 2: What are some of the dimensions actually for that? Because there’s obviously a lot of different things here. You mentioned like the needing to be tethered to a bunch of cables, which I think was, you know, one of the problems that various VR headsets have essentially tackled and solved in the recent past, but there’s also things like, yeah, display latency or yeah, pixel density, you know, text legible, you mentioned operating systems, so presumably. There’s, I don’t know, files, copy paste, all these things that maybe aren’t important for games, but be important for productivity. What are the dimensions that have advanced forward to yeah, be kind of across that line or where is it still weak either yeah, the quest specifically slash the larger Oculus platform or just all the platforms that exist today. Sure. 00:56:11 - Speaker 1: In a word, comfort. Hm. I’m using this very broadly. So physical comfort, the ergonomics of the device on your head, having it be standalone, so there’s not a cable coming off of it, which impedes movement and is uncomfortable, getting the weight distribution right on the head, making it light enough so there’s not as much weight to have to distribute in the first place. The visual comfort of having good lenses and a good display with the right range of like contrast and brightness and darkness, and the pixel density not being so low that it’s really straining to look at the image for so long. And then there’s social comfort. When Oculus finally opened up the pass through SDK on their VR devices. 00:56:58 - Speaker 2: They essentially is this where there’s an external camera that’s sort of taking pictures of your surrounding and then you can bring that into, yeah, yeah. 00:57:06 - Speaker 1: So they had, you know, originally focused on making VR devices. The cameras on the outside of the device were never intended to create an image for a human to look at. They were for tracking purposes, right? They were for positional tracking purposes to supplement the inertial tracking data. And to their credit, they realized, oh wait, augmented reality might actually be the future. We had been sort of like talking about the metaverse and VR and this full immersion future, but maybe people want AR and what can we do to instead of going through another multi-year cycle of developing a totally new hardware before we can even test this hypothesis, what can we do today to start understanding the parameters of this? Well, we can take the really, really, really terrible grainy. Infrared camera feed from our tracking cameras and stitched together this like binocular pass through feed, which is so terrible on the quest too. It’s like this muddy impressionist painting of like what is going on around you more than there’s like any kind of like image of going on around you, but they took a big leap in opening that up to developers, but it made this really important point, which is Even a really muddy and terrible view of what’s going on around you physically, is infinitely better than none. I’m someone who spends a lot of time in the headset, and before I was able to experience a pass through in the headset, I always had this low level visceral discomfort going into VR, which I was not even aware of. I think I had sort of like denial about it, because, you know, like, accepting it would have torpedoed sort of my whole faith and motivation and building our products. But once I could experience facial computing without that discomfort. I could never go back. It was night and day, right? And so that sense of social comfort and of just visceral animalistic comforts is another comfort factor that quest through purely software, just by switching the camera feeds on and doing some, you know, remapping and stitching, was able to alleviate and so. Yeah, and answer to your question, like, OK, what is it specifically about this hardware that’s finally kind of like good enough or barely good enough for our kind of use case? I would say it is that comfort. With gaming, with fitness, those comfort factors are, I mean, they’re still of course, like tremendously important, but they’re not gonna be as critical. Well, maybe I’m, you know, underestimating the importance of those factors in those other use cases. I won’t speak to them, but especially in productivity and focus and deep work. You’re not going to be able to crack the toughest problems or write the best, you know, piece of writing ever, if there’s just something gnawing at you, if there’s like, something on your face, it doesn’t feel good or this sense that like, someone could be sneaking up behind me and Once you kind of get over that line, then you can suddenly imagine using this device in all these other ways. I would say that Apple’s approach, they’re coming in from completely the other end of the spectrum. They’re saying that minimum bar for visual acuity, for latency of the pass through video feed, for the feel of the materials and industrial design of the headset itself. The necessary minimum bar is like really, really high, because I guess they think Humans are, we have a very high standard when it comes to visual information that’s coming in, right? And they’re unwilling to compromise on those standards and would rather to compromise on maybe the accessibility or the affordability of the first generation of the device, hence the like, almost comical price, right, of their first headset. And I’m very excited to see whether their thesis is correct, or more correct than that is. So, We’ll find out. 01:01:15 - Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I guess now is the right time to be a little more future facing and to react to Apple’s recent announcement of the Vision Pro, which is their long awaited entry into this space. All these other ones we mentioned so far either defunct platforms like Google Glass or current platforms like MetaQuest or Meta Oculus or not quite sure the right naming there. But now Apple said they’re going to do it. They’ve shown kind of their vision for things and let people try the demo, and now they’re basically, I think trying to get developers excited to build applications for it. So certainly I want to hear your, as a person who’s been working in this space for a long time, I want to hear your reaction to their approach generally, the hardware, the software, etc. But I’d also like to know just how does it affect your business or how do you think about? Certainly it’s good news to have the largest technology company in the world to be getting heavily into this space, but what do you expect in the near future for you business wise? Do you feel invigorated by this? Does it bring new attention to what you’re doing? 01:02:14 - Speaker 1: Yes, this is only good news. The fact that Apple has entered in this way that Feels like it’s very central and very core to their plans for the future of Apple. It’s not a peripheral device, it’s not a new pair of headphones. It feels like something that they want to turn into a pillar of the company, you know, going forward. That is all very exciting, and that is all very positive for our company. I mean, my reaction to the actual unveiling of the device, it’s complicated, it’s not unequivocally positive or celebratory. I think that A lot of people, myself included, had been hoping that Apple would pull a rabbit out of a hat. That they would be able to circumvent. The laws of physics in some way that, you know, that no one else had thought of or figured out, or that they would make some really radical design decision where they would throw away something everyone thought was absolutely critical to this paradigm. And thereby, you know, make this huge step change in some of the tradeoffs that other companies had to make in order to retain this thing, whatever the thing was, right? So Apple famously is always getting rid of features that everyone else is not ready to give up yet, like the CD-ROM drive, right, the iPhone has no physical keyboard, and essentially no buttons. 01:03:40 - Speaker 1: Yeah. And so one unfair characterization, but it’s somewhat captured my initial feeling. When I saw the headset was it kind of felt like if Apple had released instead of the iPhone back when they released the iPhone, they had released a BlackBerry, but it had a retina display. That with the current headset, it feels a little bit like they decided we’re going to take essentially the same paradigm that everyone else has been working with, and just crank the knobs up on every single quantitative characteristic all the way up as far as the existing supply chains will allow us to. And that’s their strategy. I mean, to be fair, they got rid of the physical hand controllers. They are going all in on an eye tracked input system and like, there’s absolutely a quality and quantity, right? Just like if you make something so fast and smooth and reliable and feel so good, you can get a step change out of it, but I don’t know what it would have been that Apple would have done drastically differently, which is The whole point, like, I I don’t work at Apple, I’m not Steve Jobs or Johnny Ive, but now we know, OK, they decided not to take that route or they couldn’t figure out a way to take that route. And so, I think this is incredibly validating for all the existing players. I think this is very validating for meta, right? It means that meta can proceed with their hardware roadmap, whatever. You know, it was gonna be for the next couple of years, and they don’t have to throw all that away because Apple came out with something that like made all that roadmap irrelevant. Yeah, so, like I said a bit earlier, I’m very curious to see what the actual impacts for user adoption for the market response. Of these qualitative improvements that Apple has made will be. And initial reviews from, you know, tech journalists from the media has been very positive, people saying that it essentially looks like you’re looking through maybe like a thick pair of safety goggles. It doesn’t feel like you’re looking at a digital display at all, which is incredible, you know, if that’s